Hilton's suit charges GWBush
All Along the Watchtower
By William Rivers Pitt
Thursday, 20 June, 2002
Stanley Hilton, a San Francisco attorney and former aide to Senator Bob
Dole, filed a $7 billion lawsuit in U.S. District Court on June 3rd. The
class-action suit names ten defendants, among whom are George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Norman Mineta.
Hilton's suit charges Bush and his administration with allowing the
September 11th attacks to take place so as to reap political benefits from
the catastrophe. Hilton alleges that Osama bin Laden is being used as a
scapegoat by an administration that ignored pressing warnings of the attack
and refused to round up suspected terrorists beforehand. Hilton alleges the
ultimate motivation behind these acts was achieved when the Taliban were
replaced by American military forces with a regime friendly to America and
its oil interests in the region.
Hilton's plaintiffs in this case are the families of 14 victims of 9/11,
numbering 400 people nationwide. These are the same families that rallied in
Washington recently to advocate for an independent investigation into the
attacks. The current 9/11 hearings are being conducted by Congress behind
closed doors, a situation these families find unacceptable.
Mr. Hilton, by filing his lawsuit, has joined the ranks of an
ever-increasing body of Americans who subscribe to what they call the LIHOP
Theory. LIHOP stands for Let It Happen On Purpose. The LIHOP Theory puts
forward the accusation that Bush and his people allowed the September 11th
attacks to take place, despite the fact that they had been repeatedly warned
of an impending strike.
The LIHOP Theory is straightforward: In the months before 9/11, American
intelligence agencies received ominous warnings from the intelligence
services of nations like Israel, Russia, Egypt and Germany. These warnings
were pointed - an attack involving hijacked aircraft and prominent American
landmarks was imminent, our security forces were told. Bush himself was
briefed of these warnings weeks before they happened. Instead of responding
vigorously to these warnings, the Bush administration and its security
apparatus did nothing.
LIHOP is, of course, the purest breed of conspiracy theory, involving
high-ranking members of government from both parties, as well as the CIA,
FBI and NSA. Like all good conspiracy theories, LIHOP is surrounded by
disturbing facts and bits of evidence that are difficult to ignore.
The warnings from all those foreign intelligence services, after all, are
quite real. Egypt, Germany, Russia and the Israelis were vociferous in their
concerns. The German intelligence service BND told US and Israeli
intelligence that Middle East terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial
aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and
Israeli culture." The BND's information came through Echelon, the
American-controlled network of 120 satellites that monitors all worldwide
electronic communications.
Egypt voiced similar warnings that same month regarding aircraft attacks.
Delivered just before the G-8 summit in Genoa, Egypt's alert carried such
weight that anti-aircraft batteries were placed around Columbus Airport in
Italy. The Russians warned the US that same summer of 25 pilots who had been
trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself delivered the warning "in
the strongest possible terms" to the US government. The Israeli intelligence
service Mossad delivered a warning to both the FBI and the CIA detailing "a
major assault on the United States" against "a large-scale target" that was
"very vulnerable."
The Washington Post has reported that the NSA intercepted two messages on
September 10, 2001, warning that something was going to happen the next day.
"Tomorrow is zero hour," was one of the messages. The NSA's charter is to
intercept, translate and pass on to FBI and CIA operatives important
electronic signals from all across the globe. The Echelon satellite network
which provided the German BND with their 9/11 information last June is part
of that system.
According to the NSA, the September 10th data was not translated until
September 12th, but it stands to reason that they were privy to the same
electronic data the other foreign services were using as the basis for their
warnings. One US intelligence source claims the data provided "no actionable
intelligence," a fair claim given the vagueness of the messages and the
volume of material NSA must deal with. Yet in combination with the strident
foreign intelligence warnings, the words intercepted by our large electronic
ears on September 10th add to the growing questions.
Then, there are the threads. A FEMA official told Dan Rather that the
disaster agency had been at the World Trade Center on September 10th. Why?
Governor Jeb Bush of Florida signed executive order #01-261 on September
7th, putting his state's National Guard on heightened alert status,
essentially placing Florida under martial law for no demonstrable reason.
Why? Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial aircraft in
the weeks before 9/11, something he had commonly done since his entry into
the administration. Why?
At the core of the LIHOP Theory lies motivation - what possible purpose
could be served by the Bush administration allowing a terrorist attack to
take place on American soil? It is flatly inconceivable to most Americans
that Bush and his people could demonstrate such callous disregard for
American lives, and accusations that they allowed an attack to happen reek
of the worst kind of poisonous partisan politics.
LIHOP Theory, however, is not so easily dismissed. Two French intelligence
analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, have published an
extensively-researched book entitled "Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth."
In it, they allege that the Bush administration put energy policy before
national security concerns. According to Brisard and Dasquie, a foundering
pipeline project aimed at exploiting natural gas reserves along the Caspian
Sea in Turkmenistan was revived by the Bush administration when it arrived
in Washington in January of 2001.
The pipeline project, which sought to bring oil and natural gas from
Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a warm water port, had been the
brainchild of American petroleum giant Unocal for much of the 1990s. After
the destruction of two American embassies in Africa in 1998 by Osama bin
Laden, the Clinton administration forbade any American companies from doing
business with the Taliban, which had been sheltering bin Laden in
Afghanistan. Unocal's pipeline project was frozen.
After the Bush administration came to power, Brisard and Dasquie allege that
reinvigorating the pipeline project became a high-priority matter of policy.
Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was dispatched to Pakistan to
discuss the pipeline with Taliban officials in August of 2001. Rocca, a
career officer with the CIA, had been deeply involved in Agency activities
within Afghanistan. According to documents Brisard and Dasquie claim to
hold, the main subject of their discussion was oil. A Pakistani foreign
minister was also present at the meeting, and witnessed the exchange.
How does this pipeline relate to September 11th? According to Brisard and
Dasquie, the main obstacle to the completion of the pipeline was the fact
that it had to pass through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The project
would receive no international support unless the Afghan government somehow
became legitimized. In bargaining for the pipeline, the Bush administration
demanded that the Taliban reinstate deposed King Mohammad Zahir Shah as
ruler of Afghanistan, and demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin
Laden for arrest. In return, the Taliban would reap untold billions in
profit from the pipeline. According to Brisard and Dasquie, part of the Bush
administration's bargaining tactics involved threats of war if these
conditions for the legitimization of Afghanistan were not met.
The BBC of London reported on September 18th, 2001 of the existence of war
plans on Bush's desk aimed at Afghanistan. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani
Foreign Secretary, stated that the war plans were slated for October of
2001. Conditions set by the Bush administration to avoid war involved the
Taliban's handing over of bin Laden and the acceptance of King Zahir Shah.
Naik went so far as to doubt that America would hold off on war even if
these conditions were met.
The result, according to the French analysts, was total disaster. The Bush
administration fundamentally misunderstood the Taliban regime - to bring
back the King and hand bin Laden over to the West would have been tantamount
to suicide for the Taliban. Instead of acquiescing to the hard-sell tactics
of the Bush administration, the Taliban unleashed their pet attack dog,
Osama, upon America. They were going to lose everything, and chose to attack
first in the hope that all-out war would break out in Central Asia and rally
other Muslim nations to their cause.
Motive suddenly becomes far more clear. The Bush administration very much
wanted the Unocal pipeline to go through, and put intense pressure on the
Taliban to see it happen. As this was happening, American intelligence
services were flooded with warnings of an impending attack upon American
targets by bin Laden and Al Qaida. The decision was made - let the attack
come, and in the ensuing outrage American forces can carve out the guts of
the Taliban government like a ripe gourd, replacing them with a 'legitimate'
regime more receptive to the pipeline plan.
Did the Bush administration have an inkling of the massive death and
destruction that would come on September 11th? Those who espouse the LIHOP
Theory disagree on this point. Some believe that FEMAs presence at Ground
Zero on the day before the attack, coupled with specific language within the
international intelligence warnings pertaining to aircraft and high-profile
targets, are prima facie evidence of specific prior knowledge. Others
believe that the Bush administration only knew vaguely that an attack would
come, but not where or when. They did not foresee the level of destruction,
and were caught flat-footed when those planes appeared along the New York
skyline.
In the end, LIHOP Theory can encompass either view. Whether they had
specific knowledge beforehand, or merely decided to let some attack happen
somewhere, the final results were the same. The Taliban were routed and
replaced by an interim government headed by a man named Harmid Karzai.
Karzai was recently elected President of Afghanistan in his own right,
legitimizing the Afghanistan government. Soon after this, Karzai announced
the impending construction of a pipeline that would exploit Turkmenistan's
natural gas reserves He named Unocal as the lead company for the project.
Before becoming President, Karzai was an advisor to Unocal.
For LIHOP Theorists, the evidence is clear. The Bush administration got the
pipeline it wanted. Along the way, they used the horrors of 9/11 to place
themselves above reproach. In the patriotic fervor that resulted from the
attacks, both the press and the Democratic opposition were bracketed by the
administration-espoused idea that any questions or criticism were tantamount
to treason.
The passage of the PATRIOT Anti-Terror Act has given the US government
sweeping abilities to snuff dissent by defining it as terrorism, thanks to
the loosely-defined wording of the bill. Bush enjoyed stratospheric approval
ratings that persist to this day, and American citizens were given new
enemies to hate. The Defense Department, and the weapons contractors who
cater to them, received billions from the federal budget to do with as they
pleased in order to address the objects of that hate.
Even the most hardened political observer must admit the dismal truth -
September 11th was the greatest thing ever to happen to the Bush
administration. Attorney Stanley Hilton has brought LIHOP Theory into the
federal court system with his class-action suit, and with the families of
9/11 victims he represents. It will be interesting to see what transpires
when these two facts collide in an American courtroom. Given the current
climate, it does not seem likely that much will come of it. After all, these
conspiracy theorists are just a bunch of nuts.
Right?
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