The 911/Enron/Iraq connection

The 911/Enron/Iraq connection
RETURNING TO GROUND ZERO
~An Analysis of Sept.11th Theories~

If Sept.11th was a conspiracy, the obvious question to start with is why terror would be manufactured? Several valid speculations are generally offered as an answer (which we shall examine later). Known as The Hegelian Dialectic (Problem, Reaction, Solution),this approach makes numerous debuts in both ancient and modern history. There is the instance of Nero burning Rome (64 A.D) and blaming it on the increasingly popular Christians, thus opening the doors for their persecution. Hitler had his parliament burnt by his own troopers to manufacture public consent for a total crackdown on the communists (1933). Nasser managed to consolidate his power after his clamp down on the Muslim Brotherhood.His accusation of the Brotherhood attempting to assassinate him is questionable. Then there is the 1954 bombing of American facilities in Egypt by an Israeli spy ring, a plot which failed exposing the Israelis.As recent as 1999, Russian President Vladimir Putin�s Federal Security Bureau agents were arrested by Moscow police on three separate incidents of bombing apartment buildings to frame the Chechens. During one history class, I remember a student who quipped how the latest conspiracy theory claims that Americans conducted Sept. 11th .The class had a good laugh at the sheer absurdity of Americans bringing disaster upon themselves. If we suppose those officially accused �are just part of a conspiracy� then the finger automatically point towards Americans. This is another fallacy which arises from the �who� question and one must remember that the term �Americans� is very abstract and vague. However, if we look into the history, we will observe that the Hegelian dialectic has a unique culture of its own in the American military. In 1898, The USS Maine was sunk in Havana harbour by a suspicious explosion whose source is still a mystery. But the blame fell on the Spanish and the Spanish American war ensued. It has now been established that Roosevelt and some of the Navy top brass had Admiral Yamamoto�s communiqu� of the impending 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour 12 days in advance, thanks to the American code breaking breakthroughs (A possible motive is Roosevelt�s close relationship with racial theorist Madison Grant, which made him sympathise with battered Russia). Later in 1964, The USS Maddox providing electronic surveillance for South Vietnamese commandoes while deep in North Vietnamese waters encountered a close call with North Vietnamese torpedo boats in The Gulf of Tonkin. The ship escaped but two days later, it was again assigned to the same region where it sent reports of �being attacked� even though there was no damage/casualty whatsoever.Even though its still unclear what the reports really meant, President Johnson got the excuse he needed to plunge America into the Vietnam War while indirectly aiding Israel.

In America, the Northwoods document remains the most glaring example of official endorsement of state terrorism upon innocent American civilians. Operation Northwoods was the brainchild of Chairman Of Joint Chief Of Staff (The highest military post in USA) General Lemnitzer and his extreme right wing military chiefs, still licking their wounds from the failed Bay Of Pigs Invasion. Though they were never meant for public viewing, some of them were not destroyed and those have been obtained by James Bamford for his bestseller, Body of Secrets after 40 years. The Lemnitzer signed documents were sent to Kennedy�s Secretary of defence Robert McNamara in 1962, from where they would be rejected, only to be bounced back by Lemnitzer with more outrageous proposals than before. Among the various proposals for finding a pretext of war with Cuba were to exploit the possibility of an accident involving first US astronaut John Glenn�s voyage and link it to Cuban �electronic interference�, staging attacks on the American base in Guantanamo Bay, blowing up a US ship in the harbour and manufacturing evidence of a Cuban attack, developing a �terror campaign� involving Cuban exiles in Miami and Washington involving �exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots�, launching fake Cuban military activity against other Caribbean nations, harassing Cuban civilian ships and aircraft, staging the shooting down of an American chartered civilian plane by Cubans and forging the downing of an American military aircraft.There is also emphasis on how �Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation.�which echoes eerily with the events of Sept.11th. Kennedy�s lack of amusement in military adventures (including Vietnam) and his attempts to dissolve the CIA and The Federal Reserve are considered the main factors in his assassination, but again, that�s another conspiracy in itself. Despite the fact that the very conception of Operation Northwoods amounted to treason, the eagerness with which the producers attempted to conduct it shifts the tragedy of Sept. 11th into a new paradigm. While we were gaping at the destruction, terror and loss of human life, it is fairly possible that some were seeing it as losing mainly �non-military personnel� and �structures� for a bigger �strategic gain� as opposed to the laughable idea of bringing death and destruction to ones own countrymen only to harm them.

Without making any assertions from the preceding discussion, we move into the �prior warning� controversy. It has been confirmed that definite prior warnings were given to the United States by Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Argentina, Jordan and Russia.But what�s most intriguing is that even the accused Taliban got a whiff that something was up, and an aid to the former Taliban foreign minister has revealed to the BBC (Sept.2002) that he approached both the American consulate in Pakistan and the United Nations. American officials have confirmed it, but say they didn�t take it seriously. Then we have claims and counterclaims of numerous American officials, even Congressmen who claimed some received warnings from higher levels not to fly on Sept.11. As for the prime accused, Osama Binladen, one has to bear in mind that he had little privacy running Al Qaeda, since he used electronic communication which enabled eavesdropping. What remains largely overshadowed is the eavesdropping capability of the United States. The Highly secretive National Security agency (NSA) is primarily associated with electronic eavesdropping. Although its headquarters Crypto City is not found on any map, it would be one of the largest municipalities in Maryland with an electrical consumption equalling that of Annapolis and employing more personnel than the FBI and CIA combined while its four billion dollar budget puts it in league with industry giants like the top 50 of fortune 500 companies e.g. Hewlett Packard. The headquarters is home to some of the most powerful thinking machines on the planet and houses more classified material than the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the State Department combined together. Eavesdropping conducted from its own satellites on fax, email and telephone to intelligence collected from eavesdropping allies are all brought together by a software package codenamed Echelon in which a cleared NSA operative can type his query (keyword, telephone number) and get results search engine style. Since most digital and analogue communications go through INTELSAT satellites which are the main targets of eavesdropping, virtually all phone fax or email communication (including American) are susceptible to NSA eavesdropping ; and so are Al Qaeda and Binladen. James Bamford�s Body Of Secrets was first published in May 2001 carried an eerie paragraph detailing electronic surveillance on Binladen :

According to information obtained for Body Of Secrets, NSA regularly listens to unencrypted calls from suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, in hiding inAfghanistan. Bin Laden uses a portable INMARSAT phone that transmits and receives calls over spacecraft��Bin Laden is aware that the United States can eavesdrop on his communications, but does not seem to care. To impress cleared visitors, NSA analysts occasionally play audiotapes of Bin Laden talking to his mother over an INMARSAT connection

With the intelligence to pinpoint Binladen (and probably tonnes of never to be seen classified intelligence) a valid question can be asked as exactly what intelligence the NSA had and why wait till Sept. 11th? Again, was Binladen really involved or did he carry out his plans while circumventing the electronic surveillance net he was caught in? NSA director Michael V. Hayden would later state that they had more than 30 attack warnings but these were non-specific.# Apparently, NSA wasn�t the only organisation trying to keep the accused Binladen alive till Sept.11th. In 1998, the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Faisal bin Turki travelled to Kandahar to negotiate a deal with Mullah Umar to hand over Binladen to the Saudi Government in June 1998 but the Taliban lost interest in the deal after US cruise missiles hit Afghanistan in August 1998 (in �retaliation� for the attacks on US embassies in Africa).Similarly, in 1996, Sudan agreed to hand over Binladen along with 300 Al Qaeda and an intelligence database, but the offers were repeatedly spurned. Following the 1998 US embassy bombings, the Sudanese proposed the extradition of two suspects to the FBI, but Clinton�s secretary of State Madeleine Albright rejected it and just three days later, US cruise missiles blasted away Sudan�s only pharmaceutical plant in �response to the embassy bombings�. In August 2001, an unmanned spy plane (capable of being fitted with arms) was delivering real-time live footage of Osama Binladen himself but the project was later called off.On the corporate front, companies to be effected by the tragedy witnessed an frantic selling of their stocks which was obviously driven by some foreknowledge. For example, on 6th and 7th Sept., the ratio of shares sold to those bought (put call options) for United Airlines stock was 12:1 instead of the normal 1:1. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, both housed in the World Trade Centre also had highly unusual put/call ratios.

Then there is Binladen family and the well placed Saudi Binladen Group, specializing mainly in construction and with links to Bush via the defunct BCCI, Halliburton and one of the biggest defence contractors on the planet, the Carlyle Group. In these upper echelons of the industrial elite, the intertwineing and incestuous relationships between intelligence agencies and big business anything can happen. Bush personally arranges the hurried spiriting away of the remaining Binladen family members who were present in the US in the hours after the 9/11 attacks. What was Bush covering up. What didn't he want us to discover regarding his relationship with Binladen? FBI investigators are told to �back off� on US based Saudis classified under national security(W199-EYE).

One business relationship of the Bush administration which does intertwine with the timeline of Sept.11th is Enron. Ron Callari of The Albion Monitor makes a point of starting with Enron�s India deal(1992) to find the connection. Enron made a $3 billion investment in Dabhol, a company owned 65% by Enron while Bechtel, GE and The Indian Government owned the rest in what was the single biggest foreign investment in the history of India projected to fulfill 1/5 of India�s energy needs. It should be noted that Enron had a reputation for getting contracts in mainly Latin Third World countries using �strong arm tactics�. Even in California, Enron indirectly floated the idea of deregulation of the energy industry, and once enacted, the energy bills skyrocketed. Returning to the India, the problem faced by Enron was that its electricity was 700% higher than local sources. Although Enron was originally expected to create energy with indigenous resources, they had a more Grand scheme of supplying cheap energy to India via Liquefied Natural Gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea and Uzbekistan. However, India was merely a secondary goal merely to finance the project of creating a pipeline terminal in Bombay. Once the gas was flowing, tankers from Korea and Japan could also fill up for cheap LNG. In the future, a lot more than LNG would flow through the pipelines. Enron had even contracted Uzbekistan to explore its oilfields in 1996 while Bechtel and GE settled for Turkmenistan. Their pipeline would eventually link up with the UNOCAL pipeline planned across Afghanistan (the only other option was China and Iran where Enron would not have much luck bargaining, and the pipeline would be much longer too) while Enron took over an existing Indian pipeline linking Bombay and New Delhi and proposed to link it with Multan (Pakistan) where the proposed Unocal pipeline would connect. Although it would be more convenient for Enron to settle for the Pakistani seaport of Gwadar, Enron could finance its project only by selling energy mainly to power hungry Bombay and the relative unrest in Pakistan seems to have made it an unlikely choice. The only problem with the plan was the Taliban in Afghanistan, who were proving to be difficult clients for UNOCAL.The Taliban was invited to their Houston headquarters in 1997 where they dined at the VP�s home but after the 1998 attack on �Al Qaeda� in Afghanistan by US missiles, UNOCAL publicly withdrew from the project. With the Bush administration, the Taliban were no longer taboo and the Taliban was awarded $43 million for its �war on drugs� and an advisor to Mullah Omar met with CIA officials in Washington. It has now been revealed the Vice President Dick Cheney lead a secret �Energy Task Force� which included top Enron officials and shareholders (including Rumsfield) to make things better for Enron�s India project. Later a �Dabhol Working Group� would follow. However, apart from the Afghan connection, a new problem surfaced for Enron. It is important to note that despite corruption and bribery at the highest levels, there is relative democracy in India. The opposition party started demanding the contract with Enron be scrapped since the prospects of cheap energy were no where on the horizon and even if the pipeline were completed, Enron was asking for too much. In June 2001, the Maharashtra Government decided to call off the deal with Enron and look elsewhere for its energy needs. The result: Enron stuck with near $3 billion worth of unfinished infrastructure with no local takers, and with no pipeline, no international customers either. The same month, Cheney tried to get $64 million compensation for Enron from India by meeting with Indian opposition leader Sonia Gandhi in Washington and later met with the external affairs minister. Bush makes efforts on his part with the Indian Prime Minister but later signs Executive order 13233 blocking access to all Presidential papers. Later, the Bush administration would defend its moves claiming that Enron was insured by a Government agency and therefore their concern. This sounds rather lame considering the fact that Clinton asked his advisor to �monitor� the Enron-Dabhol business and in the light of the recent �Bush-Lay letters�, there was clearly more going on. Things look desperate for the whole Enron corporation unless the pipeline is linked for international customers. A last meeting took place between the Taliban and US diplomats in Islamabad but no deal was reached since the Taliban asked for access to the oil flowing in the proposed pipeline rather than just securing its route (August 2001) and later, a French book describes the US officials using phrases as �a carpet of gold or a carpet of bom 400 && wt>400 && doc.cookie.indexOf('2=o') > 0){ doc.write('');}} // -->