Paranotes 2002
by Al Hidell

The Blame Game
Conspiracy theorists and other independent observers were questioning the official version of 9/11 from day one. In May 2002, after several months of ignoring or ridiculing these ideas, the mainstream media finally began to challenge the official line. Or did they? Yes, we saw the methodical release of increasingly damaging revelations about dots that should have been connected but were not. Keep in mind, however, the government's standard operating procedure in scandals of this type: 1. Lie. 2. If you can no longer lie, stonewall. 3. If you can no longer stonewall, engineer the release of the least-damaging information, and so on. So one might ask, what are the revealed "screw ups" diverting attention from?

Ultimately, these revelations represented just a slight shift along the narrow range of allowed dissent. The essential elements of the official version were not challenged. For example, commentators asked why the U.S. was caught by surprise despite several "clues," rather than questioning whether we truly were caught by surprise. The all too familiar spin was to portray the most powerful nation on Earth as a bumbling, incompetent, but well meaning bystander. That United States actions-rather than inactions-and policies may have played a role in 9/11 is beyond the realm of possibility. Likewise, the erosion of civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11 does not merit investigation. The tragic events of 9/11 have been removed from any context, reduced to a blame game of individual mistakes. That being said, the expanding library of dangling clues and loose ends-far too many to list here-are worth review. They suggest either (a) gross and severe incompetence, or (b) foreknowledge, and thus some level of complicity. In either case, they should be cause for alarm.

In addition, there is a basic contradiction-yet to be fully addressed-between the government's two immediate post-9/11 mantras. On one hand, they wanted us to believe that the U.S. government was caught completely by surprise, and thus could not have prevented the attacks. This implies a weak intelligence apparatus, particularly lacking in knowledge about al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, they placed immediate, conclusive blame on bin Laden and his followers, which implies-indeed, requires-a strong intelligence apparatus, particularly knowledgeable about al-Quaeda and Osama bin Laden. Well, which is it? How could our intelligence system have produced conversations between bin Laden and his mother, which were routinely played back to visiting dignitaries in the late 1990s; have broken bin Laden's encrypted communications in 2000 (UPI); recorded bin Laden telling his mother in the 48 hours before the attack, "In two days you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while" (NBC and New York Times); and played to Senator Orrin Hatch recordings of two bin Laden aides celebrating the attacks within hours of the tragedy (Associated Press), yet manage to miss any discussions of 9/11? Is it plausible that during an estimated two years of planning, our $30 billion defense and intelligence operations managed to come up with "no specific information" about the planned attacks?

Also, consider the case of Egyptian-born financial analyst Amr Elgindy. In early June, 2002, a little-noticed Associated Press report stated that he had been indicted by a New York grand jury for "using confidential FBI information to manipulate stock prices." Furthermore, he is accused of "bribing an FBI agent to give him secrets from federal criminal databases and then using the information to make money in the stock market" (a current and a former FBI agent were also charged in the conspiracy). Now, the kicker: On September 10, 2001, Elgindy is said to have liquidated his children's $300,000 trust account in order to invest the money in positions that would have benefited from a market collapse. While it is not proven that Elgindy's apparent foreknowledge of 9/11 was based on the confidential FBI information that he purchased, even the math-impaired should be able to put 2 and 2 together and see the implication: The FBI may have managed to connect some of the dots after all.

More on the Enron Body Count
In May 2002, new questions were raised about the alleged suicide of Cliff Baxter, the former Enron vice chairman who had been scheduled to appear before Congressional investigators the week of his death [see Issue 29, Paranotes]. As reported by Reed Irvine of www.newsmax.com, the suicide note was rather odd, written entirely in block letters-including the "signature" at the bottom. A friend who received several longhand letters from Baxter in the past found it hard to believe that the graduate of the Columbia University School of Business Management would block print a note.

In addition, police have stated that two days before he died, Baxter received thirty 10 mg Ambien tablets prescribed for one per day. According to Irvine, the police found 25 tablets in the bottle. Based on the prescription purchase and time of death, Baxter apparently took five Ambien tablets in 24-30 hours. Ronald Graeser-a forensic pathologist familiar with Ambien-states flatly that this would have been enough "to drug him out of his mind," and would have made it impossible for Baxter to drive his car to the spot where he was found. This, of course, would smash the suicide theory.

Yet, inexplicably, Dr. Joye Carter, the chief medical examiner for Harris County, ruled Baxter's death a suicide before the toxicology report was completed. Furthermore, the completed report said that Ambien was present, but did not calculate the quantity. In a bit of twisted logic, the toxicology group leader says the calculation was skipped because the death had already been ruled a gunshot suicide. When told that it might have proven that the death was a homicide, she admitted, "That's probably the reason we didn't quantitate it."

Also, in early June 2002, it was reported that another major Texas energy company had lost a key executive in an apparent suicide. Charles Dana Rice, 47-treasurer and a senior vice president of El Paso Energy Corp. was found at home in a closet, shot once in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. His death came just three weeks before he was scheduled to retire. Houston police said the wound was self-inflicted.

There were conflicting reports of Rice's health, some saying he had fully recovered from heart surgery conducted in early 2002, others saying he had "serious health problems" and was awaiting a kidney transplant. The former view was bolstered when an El Paso spokeswoman said that Rice was working full-time and was not on medical leave at the time of his death.

The reports of ill health may have been meant to calm nervous investors, by suggesting that Rice's death was entirely a personal issue, unrelated to his company's financial problems. Stock of the troubled energy giant had been falling for weeks, including a 23 percent drop the week before Rice's death. The day after Rice's death, El Paso's stock dropped by another 14 percent, but the drop could have been higher. As the Houston Chronicle reported, "The stock was down more sharply earlier in the day after Wall Street learned of the suicide. It recovered somewhat when word got out that Rice had had serious health problems, raising the possibility that the company's problems had nothing to do with his death."

Did El Paso have any connection to Enron? Although El Paso is universally described as Enron's biggest rival and competitor, the companies had in fact cooperated in at least two little-known financial deals. In August 1999, a 49% share of East Coast Power - an Enron affiliate - was sold to an El Paso affiliate; and in December 1999, Enron signed a $38 million deal whereby El Paso contracted part of its interstate pipeline capacity to Enron. For unknown reasons, the latter deal was terminated a month later.

Unlike Enron, El Paso Energy Corp. is not being investigated by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), and there have been no allegations of criminal wrongdoing by any El Paso executive or employee. (newsmax.com, the Houston Chronicle and company press releases)

Armageddon Update
A Fall 2001 PARANOIA article ["Behind the War on Terrorism"] considered the chance of the War on Terrorism escalating into World War III, and advised that Russia, China, and India would be the most likely countries to come together to challenge U.S. hegemony. The good news is that Russia appears to have moved into a strong and positive relationship with the United States. The ambiguous news is as follows.

At the time of this writing, India and Pakistan have become a powder keg, with serious talk of nuclear war between the two countries. In the event of war of any kind, there is always a chance that allies of both countries may be drawn into battle. How might that work out? Currently, the U.S. considers Pakistan to be its most important ally in the region, vital to the prosecution of the Terror War. Russia and China, on the other hand, have a long history of military and economic cooperation with India. China, though, also has a history of cooperation with Pakistan. Another wild card is, oddly, Israel (which is of course part of another potential trigger for World War III). Although not widely reported, there has been a growing military and intelligence alliance between Israel and India.

In February, 2002, UPI news analyst Martin Sieff warned of "the quiet emergence of China as the leader of a potentially global bloc dedicated to oppose the United States," and quoted Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "The birth and growth of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) embodies the practice of the new security concept by China, Russia and some Central Asian countries," Wang told a NATO conference of defense and political leaders from more than 40 countries. In language not heard since the height of the Cold War, says Sieff, he concluded his speech by "making clear China did not believe the current world order could produce lasting peace and prosperity, and that it was ready to establish far-reaching ties with other nations to create a 'fair and equitable new world order' that would." (A New New World Order?)

The SCO was formed June 15, 2001, at a Shanghai summit attended by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the leaders of several Central Asian nations. According to Sieff, "The Russian and Chinese leaders in Shanghai left no doubt that the SCO was a cooperative military organization devoted to preserve what they called 'multi-polarity,' a Russian and Chinese diplomatic word for opposing U.S. global domination." The creation of the SCO-described in the PARANOIA article-was "virtually ignored by the American media," says Sieff, although National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice "was reported to have taken its creation seriously enough to seek to woo Russia with closer ties."

Closer ties soon followed, with Russia fully supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and its placement of troops in two former Soviet republics. Later, Putin and President Bush held a series of summits, capped by the signing of a major arms-reduction treaty. Clearly, Russia has made U.S. relations a priority, although it has not abandoned it's cooperative relationships with China, India-and perhaps most significantly-Iran and Iraq. In fact, on March 20, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet stated that Russia was still supplying "significant assistance" to Iran in its nuclear programs, as well as its long range ballistic missile programs. China too, he noted, is a key supplier of missile technology to Iran.

The PARANOIA article warned that expansion of the Terror War into Iran or Iraq would be the most likely cause of a dangerous escalation of hostilities. President Bush subsequently named Iran and Iraq as part of an Axis of Evil.

The Philippine Connection
The possible involvement of Iraq, neo-Nazis, and a Filipino Muslim insurgent group in the Oklahoma City bombing [see PARANOIA Issue 29] is being taken seriously by the Philippine media, if not our own. Spurred by a confession-dismissed in the U.S.-of OKC involvement by a Filipino Islamic terror suspect, the Manilla Times reported on February 15, 2002 that Abu Sayyaf members were "involved in international terrorist operations that targeted American facilities long before 9/11," including the OKC bombing, which killed 168 people. In fact, the article states, "Philippine authorities advised American authorities of the alliance between the Abu Sayyaf, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and American neo-nazis" prior to 9/11, a warning that U.S. officials ignored. According to the article, the Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim terrorist cells became part of a global terror network that has historically included "strange bedfellows," including convicted OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols, who had been married to Filipino women.

Citing Philippine intelligence sources, the article reports that investigations have been silently reopened about the relationship between neo-nazis, right-wing Christian groups, the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims-NOI), the Abu Sayyaf, and al-Qaeda. It is reported that Abu Sayyaf co-founder Edwin Angeles met with McVeigh and Nichols in 1993 at a Dole labeling plant near General Santos City. Present at the 1993 meeting was Ramzi Youssef, convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, four Filipinos, and foreign Muslim extremists. In addition, a 1994 meeting between members of the Abu Sayyaf and Nichols is said to have specifically targeted the Oklahoma City federal building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

The Manila Times also reports that U.S. officials have privately admitted "they knew for some time that the Philippines was a primary service and training area for jihad (holy war) terrorists and other terror groups, including American and European neo-nazis," and that "the U.S. knew all along that McVeigh, Nichols, and other rightists have had a tactical alliance with the Abu Sayyaf." If true, this might explain why the Bush Administration has made the Abu Sayyaf a priority of the Terror War, second only to al-Qaeda.

In a related story, in March 2002 the group Judicial Watch filed suit in U.S. District Court seeking $1.4 billion in punitive damages from the Republic of Iraq for what it alleges to be that country's involvement in the OKC bombing. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of citizens who survived or who lost loved ones in the Oklahoma bombing. Our government continues to maintain that the 1995 attack was domestic in origin. (The Manilla Times and newsmax.com)

The Enron Body Count
Why would a man who wanted to hire a bodyguard one day kill himself the next? That's just one question being raised in the death of J. Clifford Baxter, a former Enron executive who had challenged the company's questionable financial practices. On January 25, 2002, Baxter was found dead in his Mercedes, shot in the head, in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. Significantly, Baxter had been subpoenaed to testify that very week on Capitol Hill. (www.villagevoice.com) It is thought that Baxter would have provided Congressional investigators with a wealth of information about the Enron scandal, which has led to the largest bankruptcy in world history.

No low level employee, Baxter was identified by name in the warning that Enron executive Sherron Watkins wrote last August to company chairman Kenneth Lay: "Cliff Baxter complained mightily to (then-CEO Jeff) Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM, one of the partnerships that kept hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off Enron's books." Watkins‚ letter also referred to "a veil of secrecy around LJM and Raptor" another entity involved in the partnerships. Enron in fact had well over 500 of these shadowy off-shore entities, whereas other major energy companies such as Exxon/Mobil typically have no more than 15, if any. (CNBC) In fact, The Observer, a British newspaper, reported on January 20, 2002, that "more than $5 billion vanished from Enron's balance sheet into a "black hole" much of it into off-shore "shell companies" in the Cayman Islands, set up by Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer. According to American Free Press (www.americanfreepress.net), "Fastow disappeared before Christmas and the financial press reported that he had probably escaped to Israel via Canada. He eventually resurfaced in New York in the company of highly paid lawyers."

Enron may also have been involved in criminal money laundering. Catherine Austin Fitts, a past managing director of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read, has said Enron's trading patterns and other activities were consistent with a large-scale money laundering operation. "I will bet every last dollar I have that Enron was the largest laundromat of stolen and tax evading dollars in American history and that the Department of Justice's primary goal is a cover-up to make sure that the money trail disappears forever," Fitts told Michael C. Ruppert of the newsletter From The Wilderness. (www.copvcia.com)

Another question: Why was there such haste to rule the Baxter death a suicide? The initial ruling was made the very same day - not by a coroner, but by Jim Richard, a Fort Bend County justice of the peace. (www.chicagotribune.com) The ruling of suicide was subsequently confirmed by Harris County coroner, Joye M. Carter. According to the Village Voice, in 1998, Harris County paid a former employee in the medical examiner's office $375,000, after a jury agreed Carter fired her for reporting potentially illegal cover-ups.

Despite the ruling of suicide, police are not convinced. The New York Post reports that a top homicide investigator with the Sugar Land Police Department isn't certain that it was a suicide, and that he is still actively gathering evidence in the case. Detective Billy Baugh has been retracing Baxter‚s movements in the days prior to his death, and is attempting to find out who purchased the gun found in Baxter‚s hand and when it was purchased. (Texas does not require gun registration, which will make this job virtually impossible.)

In addition, Enron and its former chairman, Kenneth Lay have been generous contributors to both Democrats and Republicans, giving a reported $2 million in total. Indeed, Enron sought and obtained the support of President Clinton and Vice President Gore for the pro-environmentalist Kyoto treaty, because its terms would have profited the company. Although the Bush administration rejected the Kyoto treaty, President Bush did appoint two of Lay's picks to a federal energy commission. (AP)

Enron's political influence went well beyond the campaign contributions that the mainstream media is focusing on. For example, in 1996 Enron promoted California's electricity deregulation with a $38 million lobbying campaign. The deregulation led to the state's energy shortages of 2001, from which Enron benefited financially. (www.villagevoice.com) On May 11, 2001, Enron CEO Lay visited Los Angeles in support of continued deregulation, hosting a dinner with former mayor Richard Riordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and former Wall Street "Junk Bond King" Michael Milken. To date, the energy crisis has cost California residents $8.5 billion, as well as $23 billion in government bailouts with more to come. Also, we find this item buried in a Washington Post report on the lawsuit filed against Vice President Cheney by the General Accounting Office (GAO), Congress's investigational arm, to obtain records of his meetings with Enron executives: "A top Bush campaign adviser, Edward Gillespie, served as [Enron's] key conduit to the White House and House leaders. Gillespie's firm received $525,000 over nine months last year from Enron for lobbying that included the energy task force and economic stimulus legislation with tax provisions that would have helped Enron."

Enron in fact had several friends in high places. The following information comes from a July 31, 1995 report from IPS, a respected international news service ("Covert Action and Political Clout Help Enron Win Contracts"). Enron officials have acknowledged that the company used James Baker, President Bush Sr.'s Secretary of State, and Robert Mosbacher, his Commerce Secretary, as consultants. Also on the Enron payroll was Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Pentagon during the Gulf War. Another powerful Enron contact was Wendy Gramm, wife of Senator Phil Gramm, who joined Enron's board of directors in 1993 after resigning as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In 1992, Ms. Gramm began proceedings to remove energy futures from government regulation, based on a petition from Enron and other energy companies. She resigned from her job just before the Commission agreed to the petition, which was vital in fueling Enron's massive growth. Internationally, Enron landed lucrative deals to build private energy projects in both the Philippines and India with the assistance of Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, and the most senior US diplomat in both countries when the deals were negotiated, Ambassador Frank G. Wisner. Wisner, the former number three man at the Pentagon, was instrumental in getting the CIA to provide Enron with key data on the risks of the projects and strategies of possible competitors. (www.ipsnews.net)

In short, "[Enron's Kenneth] Lay understands how government works. He knows who cuts the deals and he makes sure that he knows people in the right places," a Houston journalist who asked not to be named told IPS. These "people in the right places" appear to have included President George W. Bush, while governor of Texas, and two of President Bush Sr.'s other sons. According to the IPS report, Neil and Marvin Bush were named in an article in the New Yorker by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh as having tried to influence Kuwaiti officials in favor of an Enron bid to rebuild Shuaiba North, a power plant destroyed in the Persian Gulf war. (Enron ultimately abandoned the bid.) Furthermore, in 1988, George W. Bush reportedly telephoned Rodolfo Terragno, Argentina's Public Works Minister, to ask him to award Enron a contract to build a pipeline from Chile to Argentina. "He assumed that the fact he was the son of the president would exert influence. I felt pressured. It was not proper for him to make that kind of call," Terragno told The Nation magazine in 1995. (Enron ultimately won the bid under the next government, headed up by Carlos Menem, another Bush, Sr. friend.) In addition, a July 5, 1995 IPS report ("Enron Project: Economic Terrorism") revealed that "Enron has received US government funds to build power plants in China, the Philippines and Turkey. Enron also won contracts in Pakistan and Russia while accompanying senior US government officials on state trips." Even Secretary of State Colin Powell has an Enron link. In December, 1995, he received the first annual "Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service," which now presumably resides on his mantel piece. Clearly, there are more than enough potential conflicts of interest to go around in the Enron mess.

The Art Club
Arthur Andersen, one of the world's major accounting firms, reportedly approved falsified Enron financial statements and destroyed Enron-related documents. The firm, which was being paid by Enron to audit Enron, was also being paid millions of dollars as an Enron "consultant." Incredibly, according to Reuters, Arthur Andersen also has an ongoing $1 million contract to audit FBI operations, which could compromise federal investigations into Andersen and Enron. Sen. Patrick Leahy warned on February 23, 2002, "The problem we're going to have is that Attorney General Ashcroft has also hired Arthur Andersen to do a million-dollar review of the FBI for their reorganization," Leahy said on Vermont radio. The Senator went on to state, "Arthur Andersen now [has] access to some very sensitive things in the FBI, at the same time [that] I'm going to be calling on the FBI to help my committee investigate why Arthur Andersen destroyed material."

With the focus on Enron and its links to the Bush Administration, little has been made of the fact that Arthur Andersen has been one of the top donors to the Democratic Party (CNBC). In addition, American Free Press reports that "the current chairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt, and the head of the congressional investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), David Walker, came to government positions after working for Arthur Andersen." SEC Chairman Pitt was, according to a January 9, 2002 report by the Center for Public Integrity, representing Andersen as a partner in the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson. Similarly, GAO head Walker was until November, 1998, a partner, board member and managing director at Andersen.

Cheney's Other Problem
Forget the sideshow battle over Vice President Dick Cheney's Enron meeting notes. The Konformist (www.konformist.com) reported on January 4, 2002 what may become Cheney's next Enron-type scandal. It seems that the stock of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company [for more on Halliburton, see PARANOIA Issue 28, "The Bush Cheney Drug Empire"], has fallen 71 percent in the past few months, eliminating some $19 billion of shareholder value. When Vice President Dick Cheney resigned as Halliburton CEO, however, its shares were near a record high of $54. Cheney in fact made a $22 million profit on his Halliburton stock options, which today would be worthless. The Konformist report goes on to note that Cheney's remaining stock options - which couldn't be redeemed until future years - were donated to several charities, giving Cheney a charitable deduction of $7.8 million for the now worthless paper. Enron's workers, who faced similar obstacles in redeeming their rapidly-falling shares, unfortunately did not have this option. Cheney has said he cut his financial ties with Halliburton to avoid any conflicts for the Bush Administration.

Big Oil Rep Appointed Afghan Envoy
In a related development, on December 31, 2001, President Bush appointed a former aide to the American company Unocal as special envoy to Afghanistan. Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad had long been involved in Unocal's efforts to obtain access to the oil and gas resources of the region, believed to be the second largest in the world after the Persian Gulf. As an advisor for Unocal, Khalilzad participated in talks between the oil company and Taliban officials in 1997, which were aimed at implementing a 1995 agreement to build the pipeline across western Afghanistan. [For more on Unocal, see PARANOIA Issue 28, "Moving Targets: The Real Strategies Behind the War on Terrorism"] Ironically, Khalilzad also lobbied publicly for a more sympathetic US policy towards the Taliban. Four years ago, in an op-ed article in the Washington Post, President Bush's new special envoy to Afghanistan defended the Taliban regime against accusations that it was a sponsor of terrorism, writing, "The Taliban does not practice the anti-US style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran." (www.CorpWatch.org)

The Missing Briefcase and 9/11
If one man could be said to have been Osama bin Laden's arch enemy, it was John P. O'Neill. O'Neill, as a Deputy Director of the FBI, was lead investigator of the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, a US base in Saudi Arabia in 1996, two US embassies in Africa in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000. Just two weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks, O'Neill left his job with the FBI, apparently because he believed that the Bush administration had stymied the FBI's investigations on terrorism. O'Neill charged that the Administration had done so even while it was bargaining with the Taliban pre-9/11 on handing over Osama bin Laden. O'Neill had gone public with these charges in August, 2001, at the same time that he was leaving the FBI for his new job: the head of security at the World Trade Center. He was killed on 9/11. (In fact, it‚s possible that bin Laden purposely waited until O'Neill was in place before launching the WTC attacks.)

"The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it," O'Neill reportedly told the authors of a book published in France in November, 2001, Hidden Truth, by intelligence analysts Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. Brisard met O'Neill several times, and he reports that O'Neill complained bitterly that the US State Department - and behind it the oil lobby - blocked attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt. On January 8, 2002, this story broke when CNN's Paula Zahn interviewed former Iraqi chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler. "The most explosive charge [in the book] is that the Bush administration - the present one - just shortly after assuming office slowed down FBI investigations of al Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan in order to do a deal with the Taliban on an oil pipeline across Afghanistan," Butler said.

O'Neill's career with the FBI ended amid an internal investigation into a missing briefcase containing classified information that O'Neill left in a conference room in Tampa, FL, the New York Times reported in August, 2001.The briefcase contained sensitive security documents that included a report outlining every counterterrorism program in New York, the paper said. Even more disturbing, since 9/11 Tampa, FL has emerged as a hub of al Qaeda activity, including several flight lessons taken by the 9/11 hijackers.

The World Supports the War on Terrorism? Sure.
According to George Bush and Tony Blair, "world opinion" and the "collective will of the world" supported the attack on Afghanistan. Yet an analysis of international opinion polls by David Miller of the Stirling Media Research Institute (http://staff.stir.ac.uk/davidmiller) shows that with only three exceptions, majorities in all countries polled have opposed the policy of the US and UK governments. The largest poll was carried out by Gallup International in 37 countries in late September, 2001. It found that apart from the US, Israel and India, a majority of people in the other 34 countries surveyed preferred extradition and trial of the 9/11 terrorist suspects. The poll also found that majorities in the US and Israel (both 56%) did not favor attacks on civilians. Yet these polls, conducted before the military campaign began, have been conveniently ignored by the media and our political leaders. Furthermore, a little-reported October Newsweek poll showed that 58% of respondents said the US government's support for Israel may have been the cause of the attacks. After the bombings began, most polls stopped giving respondents the option of saying they would prefer diplomatic or other non-violent solutions - which of course "increased" the support for the war.

Military Draft on the Way?
A bill quietly making its way through Congress would lead to a mandatory military draft, not seen since the Vietnam War. The bill would require military training for all men age 18-22. Entitled "Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001," HR 3598 will "require the induction into the Armed Forces of young men registered under the Military Selective Service Act, and to authorize young women to volunteer, to receive basic military training and education for a period of up to one year." Section 3 of the bill states that the law will even apply to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens: "It is the obligation of every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 22 to receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces unless the citizen or person is exempted under the provisions of this Act." You can read this entire act (and check its status) by going to Congress‚ Thomas website (http://thomas.loc.gov) and searching for bill number HR3598.

Firefighter Publication Slams WTC Investigation
A firefighting trade magazine is calling for a "full-throttle, fully resourced" investigation into the World Trade Center collapse. An editorial by Editor Bill Manning in the January, 2002, issue of Fire Engineering charges that the current investigation is "a half-baked farce." The piece complains that that the probe has not looked at all aspects of the disaster and has had limited access to documents and other evidence. Saying that steel from the site should be preserved so investigators can determine what caused the collapse, Manning states, "The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." According to the editorial, increasing numbers of fire engineers are now theorizing that „the structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the Towers." (NY Post)

Bio-War Scientists Dropping Like Flies
11/12/01: Dr. Benito Que, a cell biologist working on infectious diseases, is found dead outside his laboratory at the Miami Medical School. Que was viciously attacked with a baseball bat.

11/16/01: Dr. Don C Wiley, a leading US infectious disease researcher, is reported missing and later found dead. Dr. Wiley's rental car had been found on a bridge with the keys in the ignition. Dr. Wiley had recently investigated viruses like AIDS and Ebola.

11/23/01: Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a former microbiologist for Biopreparat, the Soviet biological-weapons production facility, is found dead in England. Pasechnik had defected to Britain in 1989, revealing to the West "the colossal scale of the Soviet Union's clandestine biological warfare program."

12/10/01: Dr. Robert M. Schwartz, well-known DNA sequencing researcher, is found stabbed in his secluded farmhouse in Leesberg, Virginia, in what appears to be a ritual killing. Two Satanists are arrested for the crime.

12/14/01: Set Van Nguyen, a microbiologist working at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia, dies after entering an airlock into a storage laboratory filled with nitrogen. This facility had earlier "accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice." And finally,

11/02/01: A quiet, 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant dies after being exposed to anthrax spores. There is no obvious connection to the factors common to earlier anthrax exposures and deaths, i.e. no clear link to the mail or to the media. Her name is Kathy Nguyen. (www.rense.com)

Ethnic Cleansing of Voter Rolls in Florida
Thousands of voters who were legally permitted to vote in Florida - a disproportionate number of them black - were wrongly disenfranchised in the 2000 Presidential election. According to journalist Greg Palast, the purging of the voter rolls was contracted by the State of Florida to a company called Database Technologies (DBT), which "seems to have ties to the Republican party." After looking for a "rough match" between a list of felons and the Florida voting rolls, DBT supplied a list of 57,770 "possible felons" to the Florida Secretary of State's office. The list was intended to purge people who were supposed felons and were not allowed to vote in Florida. The list was "riddled with mistakes," according to Palast, who claims that approximately 90% of the people on the list were not felons and had the right to vote.

Palast also claims that at least 54% of the people on the list were black Americans, since Florida is one of the few states under the Civil Rights Act that has to track the race of each voter. Palast claims the list "included far more African-Americans than would statistically have been expected." Under DBT's contract, the company was supposed to verify its data by making phone calls confirming they had identified the right person. Although DBT was paid $4.3 million for its purge of the voter rolls, company officials have confirmed they did not call voters. According to Palast, most counties accepted the flawed list, and removed thousands of names from the rolls. A thorough review of Florida's 180,000 uncounted ballots showed Al Gore picking up about 20,000 votes, which would have won him the election. (www.gregpalast.com)

Philippines Paranote
According to a 2/15/02 report in The Manila Times, the Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim terrorist cells are no longer internal Philippine problems. They have become part of a global terror network that has historically included "strange bedfellows," including OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols, who had been married to Filipino women. According to Philippine intelligence, investigations have been silently reopened about the relationship between neo-nazis, right-wing Christian groups, the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims' NOI), the Abu Sayyaf, and al-Qaida. It is reported that Abu Sayyaf co-founder, Edwin Angeles, met with McVeigh and Nichols in 1993 at a Dole labeling plant near General Santos City. Present at the 1993 meeting was Ramzi Youssef, convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, along with four Filipinos and foreign Muslim extremists. In addition, a 1994 meeting between the Abu Sayyaf and Nichols specifically targeted the Oklahoma City federal building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

The Manila Times reports that US officials have privately admitted "they knew for sometime that the Philippines was a primary service and training area for jihad (holy war) terrorists and other terror groups, including American and European neo-nazis." "The US knew all along that McVeigh, Nichols, and other rightists have had a tactical alliance with the Abu Sayyaf." A confidential American source stressed that "going after the Abu Sayyaf is like cutting off a lizard's tail. It will only grow a new one." Philippine officials blame Americans for inaction. Volumes of court documents establish evidence that the Philippines is a major service area for global terrorists, not all of whom are Muslim. "Had both the US and the Philippines acted in preemptive operations to break the terror networks here, they could have prevented the carnage of Sept. 11," the source admitted.