9-11 Quiz

[vicente]

There may be a lot of reporting on September 11, but there's been very little good reporting. Major stories have been overlooked, reporters have failed to follow important leads and when it comes to this subject, both politicians and the media have suffered from a type of collective amnesia, oftentimes forgetting information that is publicly available. Take the quiz below and see some of the things the media has been missing out on.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.com/911quiz.htm

[vicente]

BUSH ADMINISTRATION EXPLANATIONS FOR 9-11 WARNINGS
FAIL THE SMELL TEST

Warnings Received From Heads of State, Allied Intelligence Services Specifically Warned of Suicide Attacks by Hijackers using planes as weapons.

Never in the history of scandals involving the United States government has an attempt to conceal criminal conduct by an administration been more transparently dishonest or more easily exposed. On May 15 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer -- while making the startling admission that President Bush received CIA and FBI intelligence briefings in August indicating Osama bin Laden might be planning hijackings -- told major news sources including CBS News, "All appropriate action was taken based on the threat information we had," Fleischer said. "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers."

Then Bush himself said, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people". Does that mean the hijacking he was warned about was OK, it was just slamming them into the WTC that bothered him? Did Bush figure they were to be safely returned to the ground when they got the Egyptian sheik out of jail?!?!?

Then, Dick (the energy guy) Cheney says: "I did not anticipate that the terrorist would turn four commercial airlines into missiles on 9-11" Gee Dick, what did you anticipate?

Every major position taken by an administration in full retreat and on the defensive can be easily deconstructed and shown to be false.

For more than seven months FTW has been documenting specific warnings received by the U.S. government from both foreign intelligence services and, in one case, from Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicating commercial airliners were going to be used by terrorists to attack -- among other things -- the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. In order for Fleischer's statement to be credible he would have to assert then that George W. Bush either ignored or was not informed of a direct warning from a head of state and also from the German intelligence service, the BND.

As reported in the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) http:// www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/
f_a_zeitung_story.html on Sept. 14, the BND warned both the CIA and Israel in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.

No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ report indicates the information was received directly from BND sources.

According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.ie, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ free/ww3/
online_ie_story.html German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning U.S. intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the U.S. government for the story but refused to discuss additional details.

According to a story in Izvestia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.

In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Putin stated he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11. No credible information has emerged from any source indicating that Putin omitted the above information when issuing the warning.

Many other direct warnings were received by the U.S. government and have been documented in FTW's 9-11 timeline located at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3
/02_11_02_lucy.html.

On September 9th the NSA recorded a conversation between Osama bin Laden and his adoptive mother, Al Kalifa bin Laden two days before the attack. The report quoted Osama as saying "big news, in two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while". This info was leaked in early October from a undisclosed person in the NSA, to support alligations that Osama "knew" about 9-11,...but it also says that Condi Rice "knew" two days before the attacks, when George Bush's "trifecta" as he likes calling it, would manifest with certainty.


FBI MEMOS TRIGGER WHITE HOUSE BACKSTEPPING

In "traditional" hijackings the hijackers have no need or desire to learn how to fly.

As reported by the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post (among others) the events leading to Fleischer's statements were the recent disclosure of FBI memoranda originated by field agents in Arizona and Minnesota that warned of a possible hijack attempt by bin Laden's followers. In both cases the suspects were taking flight lessons.

According to Newsweek and the New York Times, FBI agents in Phoenix submitted a classified memorandum in July naming Osama bin Laden and tracking the activities of possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects who had enrolled in local flight schools. The memo, according to the Times, stated bin Laden's followers "could use the schools to train for terror operations." The information in the Phoenix memo was not shared with FBI field agents in Minnesota who had uncovered other startling evidence.

Just days before the attacks in early- September, FBI agents in Minnesota wrote notes that subsequently became included in an internal FBI document warning that accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui "might be planning on flying something into the World Trade Center." A story from the May 20 issue of Newsweek by Michael Isikoff described how a local flight instructor had reported Moussaoui had "showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer [and not land] large airlinersThe [FBI] agents were 'in a frenzy, absolutely convinced he was planning to so something with a plane.'"

A multitude of sources have reported the FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer but were denied by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. After the 9-11 attacks the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks.

This apparent lack of support from within the administration is consistent with reports released last fall by the BBC's Gregg Palast showing that in January 2001 the Bush Administration had issued direct orders to the FBI to curtail investigations of two of Osama bin Laden's relatives, Omar and Abdullah bin Laden. The two bin Ladens had been connected to possible terrorist activities and were living in Falls Church, Va., near CIA headquarters.

APPROPRIATE WARNINGS?

Fleischer's statement that adequate warnings had been given to appropriate federal agencies falls flat on its face. Two of the most "appropriate" agencies would have been the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard.

As documented by researchers like Jared Israel at www.tenc.net, it has been standard FAA procedure for more than 25 years to scramble U.S. fighters to intercept -- not shoot down -- any errant or non-responsive aircraft under FAA control. This protocol is even more stringent in the case of a hijacking. Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have stated publicly there were no fighters available in some cases, and there was no heightened state of alert on Sept. 11. For 50 minutes on 9-11, in direct contravention of established policy, no fighters were scrambled to intercept two outstanding hijacked airliners even though it was known attacks were in progress.

Given the above information, it would have been an obvious move to have placed fighter aircraft on a heightened state of alert in this time period. This unresponsiveness stands in contrast to the fact that, in October 1999 at a time when there was no heightened alert, the ill-fated Lear Jet occupied by golfer Payne Stewart had an F-16 fighter and an A-10 attack aircraft flying beside it within minutes of losing radio contact and veering off course.

INSIDER TRADING

FTW has spent months on this important story that proves foreknowledge of the attacks by people who also profited from them. This was a glaring warning signal, since such trades ran the risk of being detected by intelligence agencies that routinely monitor all market activity in real time.

The insider trading involves the placement of large numbers of "put" options on stocks of companies directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. They include United Air Lines, American Air Lines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, AXA Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance and Swiss Reinsurance. Put options are a leveraged bet that a stock's price will fall dramatically.

As CBS news noted on Sept. 26, the peak of trading activity occurred just before the attacks. There was a jump in United Air Lines put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It is uncontested that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying before the attacks. No other airlines were affected.

A May 13 story by the Washington Times' Insight Magazine attempted to explain the insider trading by stating higher numbers of put options had been placed on United and American stocks earlier in 2001. By relying only on the numbers of put options, Insight asserted that there was nothing unusual about the pre-9-11 trades.

However, FTW has contacted several experienced traders and reviewed existing documentation from financial experts, which indicate the alarm for insider trading is to look for any "imbalance" between the level of put options (a bet that a stock's price will fall) and the level of call options (a bet that a stock's price will rise). It is a significant imbalance in puts vs. calls that indicates criminal insider trading. The Insight piece did not address this point.

Several traders have stated that in a fairly flat market with high trading volumes, it has been a routine procedure for experienced traders to place roughly equal numbers of puts and calls on various stocks in order to generate a paper cash flow. They were quick to point out that by September, the market had gone into sharp decline and trading volumes were way down. Thus, lower numbers of put options did not mean that everything was normal. They stressed it was the imbalance in put-to-call ratios that signaled the insider trading. [Ed. Note: FTW has undertaken a more detailed investigation of this trading activity and hopes to have a more comprehensive report within 4- 6 weeks].

Part of the problem in Insight's research stems from the fact that since Sept. 11, there has been no transparency from either the government or the financial sector on how the trades worked or how the markets tracked them. Secrecy is everywhere. Telephone calls have not been returned, and the government refuses to divulge any information about probes it admits are still ongoing. But simplistic dismissals from sources quoted in the Insight story contradict not only other evidence, but statements made by financial experts and major news sources just after the attacks.

"This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you've ever seen in your entire lifeThis would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence," said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed Sept. 20 on Good Morning Texas.

"'I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,' said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle," reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19.

To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market."

Assertions that the reported number of puts involved were not abnormal also failed to analyze highly intricate shell games that involve the movement of put options to markets outside the U.S. or hidden in what traders refer to as "net positions." Serious financial experts have indicated the profits from insider trading could have been in the billions. Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German parliament responsible for oversight of Germany's intelligence services, estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.

A hasty conclusion reached by many is the insider trades were placed by bin Laden and his associates. Such a notion is flatly contradicted by the now absolute certainty that such insider trades would have -- and apparently did -- set off alarm bells. It makes little sense to argue bin Laden et al would have risked compromising at the last minute an operation planned in total secrecy for at least four years.

Also lacking credibility is the argument that many of the trades were what some brokers described as inconsequential amounts valued at $1 million or $2 million. This does not address the possibility that U.S. intelligence officials decided in a few cases to make a quick profit from attacks they knew were going to succeed. As distasteful as it may seem, this explanation is far more credible than an assumption that bin Laden made the trades himself and risked the exposure of what the world has been led to believe was his life's "masterpiece."

[sahyo]

A New Terrorist Threat


At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be
a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in
possession of a ruler, protractor, setsquare, slide rule and calculator. At
a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes
the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged
by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. "Al-gebra is a
fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and
extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value.
They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as
"unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of
the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek
philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle,"
Ashcroft declared. When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush
said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He
would have given us more fingers and toes." I am gratified that our
government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us form
these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard.
Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence,"
the President said, adding: Under the circumferences, we must differentiate
their root, make our point and draw the line." President Bush warned,
"These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything
in their path on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of
a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.' Attorney
General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse.
Here is one principle he is uncertain of though they continue to multiply,
their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks.

[rich]

sheer excellence, asheera :D :lol: ;)

[rich]

Originally posted by rich@Dec 13 2003, 05:47 AM
sheer excellence, asheera :D :lol: ;)
Sorry for the above post, asheera!

I did not think you would be insulted. :(

[sahyo]

which imagins can "insulted", richie? ;) :D

didn't happen quotations when 'A New Terrorist Threat'
when was quoted

[rich]

oh! :D

richie imagines asheera insulted? imagining insult a figament of my imagination? B) :o

[sahyo]

y :D erichhhhhs

[sonrisa]

:D great story Asheera! :D

[sahyo]

s :D nrisla
lallalala :D alaa

[a random hack]

:loves having a sly-drool :lol: ;)

[sahyo]

:lol: :lol: :D

[sahyo]

but "sly"? :)

[a random hack]

:lol:

[sahyo]

ha :D ck'ng

"lallalala :D alaa" wasn't responsing "great story"

.......................... ;)

................................................. :D

[a random hack]

ha :D ck'ng

"lallalala alaa" wasn't responsing "great story"

.......................... ;)

................................................. :lol:


:blink: :unsure:
has nothing to do with drooling, either, right?

[sahyo]

hehehe :D

[sonrisa]

u droolin Random?
then quit hitting those porn sites! :D

[a random hack]

:lol:

[vicente]

Two Loud Words

By William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.com
January 5, 2004

There have always been 'third-rail' issues in American politics, subjects that, if touched upon, will lead to certain political death. For a long while, and until very recently, Social Security was one of these issues.


A new one, surrounding the attacks of September 11, has been born in this political season. If September 11 is discussed, the only allowable sub-topic to be broached is whether or not the Bush administration is capable of keeping us safe from another onslaught.


Friday's edition of the Boston Globe had a case in point on the front page. An article titled 'For Bush, Readiness is Key Issue' stated that, "In speech after speech, President Bush has emphasized his administration's pledge never to forget the lessons of Sept. 11. He says the top goal of his administration is to prevent another attack." The Globe article contained, in the next paragraph, the standardized rejoinder: "And while Democratic opponents of the administration are unanimous in their hope that that vulnerability is not exposed with deadly results, they have also argued that Bush has done far too little to protect the country from another attack. He has refused to adequately reimburse state and local officials for homeland security costs, they argue, and has ignored dangerous gaps in air cargo and port security."


Thus, the 'preparedness-gap' becomes the whittled-down talking point du jour. This is a whiff of colossal proportions, the implications of which will echo down the halls of history unless someone develops enough spine to speak the truth into a large microphone. The talking point is not difficult to manage. It was splashed in gaudy multi-point font across the front page of the New York Post in May of 2002.


Two words: 'Bush Knew.'


It is, frankly, amazing that this has fallen down the memory hole. Recall two headlines from that period. The first, from the UK Guardian on May 19, 2002, was titled 'Bush Knew of Terrorist Plot to Hijack US Planes.' The first three paragraphs of this story read:


"George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday. In a top-secret intelligence memo headlined 'Bin Laden determined to strike in the US', the President was told on 6 August that the Saudi-born terrorist hoped to 'bring the fight to America' in retaliation for missile strikes on al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998. Bush and his aides, who are facing withering criticism for failing to act on a series of warnings, have previously said intelligence experts had not advised them domestic targets were considered at risk. However, they have admitted they were specifically told that hijacks were being planned."


Another story on the topic came from the New York Times on May 15, 2002, and was titled 'Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes.'


Unlike the Guardian piece, the Times chose to lead the article with the Bush administration's cover story; one the administration has stuck with to this day:


"The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned by American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden was seeking to hijack aircraft but that the warnings did not contemplate the possibility that the hijackers would turn the planes into guided missiles for a terrorist attack. 'It is widely known that we had information that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States or United States interests abroad,' Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, said this evening. 'The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9/11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile.'"


Yes, we were warned, said the Bush administration, but who could have conceived of terrorists using airplanes for suicide bombings?


A lot of people, actually.


According to a Time Magazine story that appeared on Friday, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is balking at requests to testify before Thomas Kean's September 11 commission under oath. She also wants her testimony to be taken behind closed doors, and not in public. The crux of her hesitation would appear on the surface to be her comments of May 16 2002, in which she used the above-referenced excuse that no one "could have predicted that they would try to use a hijacked airplane as a missile." If that excuse is reflective of reality, why does she fear to testify under oath?


Perhaps Ms. Rice fears testifying because too many facts are now in hand, thanks in no small part to the work of 9/11 widows like Kristen Breitweiser, which fly in the face of the administration's demurrals. For example, in 1993, a $150,000 study was commissioned by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of an airplane being used to bomb national landmarks. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee broke into the cockpit of a DC-10 with plans to crash it into a company building in Memphis.


That same year, a lone pilot crashed a small plane into a tree on the White House grounds, narrowly missing the residence. An Air France flight was hijacked by members of the Armed Islamic Group, which intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower. In September 1999, a report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism" was prepared for U.S. intelligence by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress. It stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."


Throughout the spring and early summer of 2001, intelligence agencies flooded the government with warnings of possible terrorist attacks against American targets, including commercial aircraft, by al Qaeda and other groups. A July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS had a top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke, state that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, who is a three-star general, was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush administration. When the Bush administration came in, he wrote a memo about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, "We will be struck again." As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings.


In a late November interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal said, "Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council. He has since left. Clark urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Right at the present, the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible."


"The public has a right to know what happened on August 6," continued Blumenthal, "what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were. Then the public will be able to judge exactly what this presidency has done."


George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones that took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.


Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.


This administration must not be allowed to ride their criminal negligence into a second term. Someone needs to say those two words. Loudly. After all, Bush has proven with Social Security, and with September 11, that third rails can be danced across. All it takes is a little boldness.