Bin Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked Away
by Michael C. Ruppert
© 2001, All Rights Reserved, Michael C.
FTW, November 2, 2001 - 1200 PST -- On October 31, the French daily Le
Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment
for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA
official - presumably the Chief of Station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's
private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when
he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and this
year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution
according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton
before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14th he was allowed to leave
Dubai on a private jet and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him
down.
In 1985 Oliver North - the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn't
appear to have a hand in the current war - sent the Navy and commandos after
terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography
"Under Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas, North wrote, "I used to
wonder how many dead Americans will it take before we do something?" One
could look at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have
killed before September 11 and ask the same question.
It gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events
both before and after the September 11th suicide attacks, which have been
blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA foreknowledge of them and strongly
suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the U.S.
government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events which
have taken place since September 11th are based upon an agenda that has
little to do with the attacks.
One wonders how these events could have been ignored by the major media or
treated as isolated incidents. Failing that, how could skilled news agencies
avoid being outraged, or at least even just a little suspicious?
1. 1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco,
Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing
heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil
reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct
investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay
exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines the major oil companies
have no way to recoup their investments. ["The Price of Oil," by Seymour
Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I
Jan. 26, 2002.]
2. December 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to
the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the
pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed,
allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source The BBC, Dec.
4, 1997]
3. February 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca - later to
become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan - testifies before the House that
until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the
trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built.
[Source Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.]
4. 1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi
Arabia was harboring an al-Q'aeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more
detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August
2001 and refused. [Source Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by
Robert Baer (release date Feb. 2002).
5. April, 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical
generating plant at Dabhol India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from
Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment
profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from
Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of
Multan. [Source The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002.]
6. 1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia
on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense
contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal
family and the bin Laden family. [Source Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27,
2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," -
http//www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/carlyle.html. ]
7. January, 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence
agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family,
including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were
living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed
previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the
bin Laden family. [Source BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast - Nov
7, 2001].
8. Feb 13, 2001 - UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale - while covering
a trial of bin Laden's Al Q'aeda followers - reports that the National
Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if
this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh
with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned
for years.
9. May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to
the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving
since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the
Taliban regime. [Source The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001].
10. May, 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert
operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while
CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with
Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep
Pakistani intelligence connections and he is the recipient of the highest
civil decoration awarded by Pakistan. It would be reasonable to assume that
while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long
meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad,
head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001.]
11. June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that
Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use
as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture."
[Source Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.]
12. July, 2001 - Three American officials Tom Simmons (former U.S.
Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of
State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department
expert on South Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers
in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against
Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La
Verite´ Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on
the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the
threats to the Taliban. [Source The Guardian, September 22, 2001; the BBC,
September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001]
13. Summer, 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working
group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by The
Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source The Albion Monitor,
Feb. 28, 2002]
14. Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian,
correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of defense
official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's
Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special
troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek
special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."
15. Summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad (see above)
orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was according
to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently
resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI.
[Source The Times of India, October 11, 2001.]
16. Summer 2001 - An Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an
imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th.
German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would
not reveal any further information. [Source German news agency
"online.de", September 14, 2001, translation retrieved from online.ie in
Ireland.]
17. June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran
will 'facilitate' US and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against
the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by US and
Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source
indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.]
18. August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in
Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of
bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying
lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical
information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source Reuters,
September 13.]
19. August 11 or 12 - US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto
on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval
intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an
envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source The Toronto Star,
Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
20. Summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist
pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions. This is
reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a
retired CIA officer.
21. July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease
at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official who returns
to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source Le Figaro, October 31st, 2001.]
22. August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian
intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms"
of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source MS-NBC
interview with Putin, September 15.]
23. August/September, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly
900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market
crash is imminent.
24. Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a
Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack
on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.
25. September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned
for four years, 23, 000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although
the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was
implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups
arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also
at the same time, some 17,000 U.S.
troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright
Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the
World Trade Center. [Sources The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer,
International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]
26. September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency
executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National
Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency- management personnel in the
event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source
State of Florida web site listing of Governor's Executive Orders.]
27. September 6-7, 2001 - 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock
will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396
call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and
abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are
purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the
current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source The
Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism,
http//www.ict.org.il/, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street
Journal.]
28. September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American
Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source ICT - above]
29. September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading
patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases
on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters
(September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be
poised to take off."
30. September 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are
purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25%
of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly
impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV,
No.7, October 18, 2001, http//www.fromthewilderness.com/
members/oct152001.html. ]
31. It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other
intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly
advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to
alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis
was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's
possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the
Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering
through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional
advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources The Washington Times, June
15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October 26, 2001, -
http//www.fromthewilderness.com/ members/magic_carpet.html; FTW, Vol. IV,
No.6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http//www.fromthewilderness.com/
members/sept1801.html; FTW, Vol. 3, No 7, 9/30/00 -
www.fromthewilderness.com/ free/pandora/052401_promis.html.
32. September 11, 2001 - Gen Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of
Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is
meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
Porter Goss (R), FL and Bob Graham (D), Fl [Sources MS- NBC, Oct. 7, The
New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002.]
33. September 11, 2001 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the
world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York,
receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours
before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone
silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development
offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of
Tel Aviv which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism
which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source CNN's Daniel
Sieberg, 9/28/01; Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, 9/27/01; Ha'aretz, 9/26/01.]
34. September 11, 2001, For 50 minutes, from 815 AM until 905 AM, with it
widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been
simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President
of the United States. It is not until 930 that any Air Force planes are
scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the
National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft,
even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred - an
event that has never happened in history. [Sources CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.]
35. September 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization
quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source The New York
Times, Sept. 30, 2001.]
36. September 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike
Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and
Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as
a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in
intelligence. [Source The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior
Court records]
37. September 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III
has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown unit of
Deutschebank.
38. September 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5
million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are
unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the
NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission
time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.
39. October 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports
that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil
minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across
Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas
to China, is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical
developments."
40. October 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all
terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York which has
had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases
connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2002.]
41. Mid October, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having
suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre- attack losses.
Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash
has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense
programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for
corporations.
42. November 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story
headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story
reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country.
43. November 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious
Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being
encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being
encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible."
44. December 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is
recruited by the US government to help establish control in Afghanistan by
unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of
the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from
prison in order to do this. [Source The Asia Times Online, 12/4/01].
45. December 25, 2001 - Newly appointed afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai
is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal.
[Source Le Monde.]
46. January 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalamy Khalilzad as a special
envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote
op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime.
[Source Pravda, 1/9/02]
47. January 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11.
In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of
resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new
surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science
Monitor, January 4, 2002.
48. January 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court,
attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator who
confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She
provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in
the Pentagon. [Source Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior
Court.]
49. January 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from
the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his
2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting
Federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against
ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco who have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both
were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source CNN, Jan. 10, 2002 - FTW
original investigation, The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I, Apr 4, 2002.]
50. February 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader General Musharraf and Afghan leader
Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of
activity" including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give
$10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghani government workers. [Source
The Irish Times, 2/9/02]
51. Feb 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium
harvest in Afghanistan in the late Spring of 2002 will reach a world record
4500 metric tons.
Now, let's go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro - the one that has
Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June.
The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden
received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a
black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this
time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the
elevator and going to bin Laden's room.
"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having
visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent
visited CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden's departure
for Quetta.
"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence
itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist
attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory."
"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with
French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact
details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai
banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry.
When asked the question, "What do you fear in the coming days?' the
Americans responded with incomprehensible silence."
"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been
put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the years. The
meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American
policy.'"
Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff
that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1
contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On
November 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied
that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.
Who do you believe?
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