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A plan, crafted in
exquisite detail, was drafted describing the scope of
Operation Northwoods, and was later signed in approval by
all of the Joint Chiefs. Citizens would be shot in the
streets. Boats of Cuban refugees would be sunk on the
high seas. Bombings would be perpetrated within
Washington D.C. and Miami. There were even plans to fake
the hijacking, and later the destruction, of a civilian
aircraft.
Phony evidence would
then be provided pointing a finger at Castro. The
American people, in their outrage, would demand a full
invasion of Cuba. General Lemnitzer would have his war.
Needless to say,
Operation Northwoods was never put into effect. When
directly asked by Congress whether plans were afoot for
the invasion of Cuba, General Lemnitzer swore an oath and
said no. Eventually, he was removed from his position.
Northwoods became buried under subsequent events, a
forgotten idea for more than forty years.
It is an appalling
thing to know that such an idea could even be spoken
aloud in the Pentagon. It is comforting to believe
General Lemnitzer was on the lunatic fringe, a man
obsessed with Cuba to such a degree that he would be
willing to attack his fellow citizens to create the false
pretext for war.
Yet Operation
Northwoods was signed off on by all the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, leading to the inevitable conclusion that this
cavalier and bloodthirsty attitude towards the lives and
safety of American citizens and military personnel was
not the exception, but the rule.
This is but one story
of our government, of the men behind the curtain. It took
forty years for this story to be told. The reason why
such an insidious plot was hidden so completely and for
so long from the eyes of the American people lies within
the trust we give to the agencies that are supposed to
stand in defense of our country. We give the Pentagon,
the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence
Agency, and to a lesser extent the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the widest possible latitude with vital
information, all in the interest of national security.
Today, a war is being
fought in Afghanistan and on our own soil. Before the
snow flies, it may well expand into a variety of other
countries. The purpose of the war is as clear as the
twisted rubble at the end of Lower Manhattan, as clear as
the smashed and gutted section of the Pentagon.
Terrorism has arrived
on American shores, and those who perpetrated these acts
must be brought to justice.
We have been told that
this is a 'new type of war,' where secrecy is paramount.
The news media has been cut almost completely out of the
information loop, relegated to reporting on grainy green
videotapes of nothing highlighted by almost nothing.
Those who operate in this new theater do so under the
cover of complete darkness.
In light of Operation
Northwoods, in light of the legacy of men like General
Lemnitzer, and in light of recently revealed information
regarding warnings about the September 11th attacks that
were received and virtually ignored by the CIA and FBI,
the question of whether our government deserves that
cloak of secrecy must be voiced in the strongest possible
terms.
According to CIA agents
interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, who refused to give
their names, a warning about two "bin Laden related
individuals" was transmitted to the FBI on August 27th,
2001. The information was classified as 'Immediate,' one
step below the 'Flash' warning reserved for the outbreak
of war.
Somewhere in the
translation, according to the CIA, the veneer of urgency
was dropped from the document. The FBI failed to
apprehend Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two men
named in the CIA warning who later crashed an airplane
into the Pentagon, killing 189 people.
What is disquieting is
the simple fact that this warning did exist, and was
bungled. The INS was not given the information in a
timely fashion, and was unable to block the entry of
Almihdhar and Alhazmi, which they could well have done.
The State Department's
Bureau of Consular Affairs was likewise kept uninformed
of the threat and warning. This Bureau is responsible for
giving out visas to foreign visitors, and in fact gave
one to suspected terrorist Mohamed Atta, because the
information was not shared. The head of the Consular
Affairs Bureau, Mary Ryan, commented angrily before
Congress that she was "surprised how much we learned
in the immediate aftermath" of September 11th.
Likewise, the airline
industry could have been warned to stop passengers with
names matching those on the alert from boarding any
aircraft, had they been provided the information. None of
this happened. The terrorists managed to walk through a
wide variety of governmental firewalls, up the ramps to
those aircraft, and into the cockpits unmolested.
At this point, the
questions must turn to dark corners, places from whence
monstrous plots like Operation Northwoods have sprung.
A former Los Angeles
Police Department field officer and narcotics agent named
Michael C. Ruppert, who twice turned down recruitment
overtures from the CIA before being forced out of the
department for questioning CIA involvement in civil
police affairs, has leveled some disturbing accusations.
Some very strange
transactions regarding United and American Airlines took
place in the days before the September 11th attacks.
Similarly odd transactions took place regarding Morgan
Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and a variety of other prominent
companies who made their homes in the World Trade Center
towers. These transactions, made in astoundingly large
volume, were essentially betting that stocks for those
companies would lose an enormous amount of value.
On September 11th,
planes from United Airlines and American Airlines crashed
into the World Trade Towers, obliterating the offices of
Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and others associated with
the above-described transactions. The stocks for those
companies immediately sank. Whomever made the
transactions reaped an enormous profit: $16 million alone
for trades on the airline stocks, and the stocks for
Morgan Stanley.
Mr. Ruppert was
interviewed recently by a Berkeley, CA radio show on the
subject of the CIA's involvement with Wall Street. He
provided the following information:
"One of the primary functions of the Central
Intelligence Agency by virtue of its long and very close history of relationships
with Wall Street, I mean to the point where the current executive vice president
of the New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a mandate
to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look for anomalous trades,
indicative of either economic warfare, or insider currency trading or speculation
which might affect the US Treasury, or , as in the case of the September 11
attacks, to look for trades which indicated foreknowledge of attacks like we
saw.
"One of the vehicles that they use to do this
is a software called Promis software, which was developed in 1979...and Promis
is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had the ability to integrate
a wide range of databases using different computer languages and to make them
all into one readable format. And secondly, in the years since, Promis has been
mated with artificial intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect
trades that are anomalous, as a result of those projections."
Mr. Ruppert asserts
that the CIA, with all of its abilities and with its
careful observation of financial transactions, should
have seen the September 11th attacks coming a mile away.
He further asserts that the CIA let the attacks happen to
further the economic and military agenda of the current
administration.
The first assertion,
that the CIA should have been able to detect a pattern in
the financial trades and been able to act in the defense
of the country, connects nicely with the botched warning
of August 27th. The terrible scenario that develops is
that the CIA, with its budget declared a state secret and
with all of the trust given in the name of national
security, failed in spectacular fashion to do its job.
The second assertion,
that the CIA knew of the attacks and allowed them to
happen in order to provide inertia for a variety of
governmental agendas, is almost blasphemous in its
implications. Only the existence of plans like those
delineated in Operation Northwoods makes the accusation
even worth consideration.
The first assertion
gives birth to the second. How could such a powerful and
far-seeing agency like the CIA have so thoroughly failed
to perceive and thwart such a monstrous threat, unless
that ignorance was deliberate?
One thing is certain.
Every agency tasked with the care and protection of this
nation failed in their duty on September 11th, and
thousands of Americans died as a result. The
justification for the billions of dollars in budgetary
allocations these agencies receive from our tax dollars
has disappeared in a ball of flaming dust. Unless and
until this catastrophe is set right, these agencies will
no longer deserve our trust or our money.
As for the assertions
raised above, assertions that use words like 'complicity'
and 'foreknowledge,' they will not go away. Northwoods
makes anything and everything possible. Until this matter
is settled appropriately, the CIA stands in taint of high
treason and murder. It's time to pay attention to the man
behind the curtain.
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