THE LIE WON'T STAND
Bush Administration Explanations for Pre-9-11 Warnings Fail the Smell Test
Warnings Received From Heads of State, Allied Intelligence Services
Specifically Warned of Suicide Attacks by Hijackers
Insider Trading Also Clearly Warned of Attacks
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com.
All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet
web site for non-profit purposes only.
May 16, 2002, 19:00 PDT (FTW) -- 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."
In other statements Fleischer told the press, "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." According to a May 16 story by the New
York Times, "Mr. Fleischer said the information given to the president in
Texas [last August], had prompted the administration to put law enforcement
agencies on alert."
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.
These stories give the immediate lie to Fleischer's statements that Bush had
no inkling of airliners being used as weapons.
But there is more.
In 1996 -- as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6, and by Agence
France Presse on Dec. 7 -- Western intelligence services, including the CIA,
learned after arrests in the Philippines that Al Qaeda operatives had
planned to crash commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. Details of the
plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a
computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called "Operation
Bojinka." Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New
York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing.
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 airliners…The [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 life…This 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."
For more information on 9-11 insider trading please visit www.copvcia.com.
The explanations offered by the Bush Administration over the last 48 hours
will not withstand even the slightest scrutiny if a major press organization
asks any question about the warnings received from credible foreign
government sources and heads of state. Other questions must inevitably
follow that will implode an oil dictatorship whose sins and crimes are
exposed and just waiting for someone to pick them up and run with them.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051602_liewontstand.html
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