Book Review

The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror

Len Bracken with Andrew Smith Adventures Unlimited Press, 2002 www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com Review by Joan d'Arc The dangerous schemes our statesmen use to obtain what they by no means deserve prevent us, for the moment, from relaxing or writing about men and women who set good examples.

A new book from Adventures Unlimited, The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, is an astute political thesis on state-orchestrated terror. Taking the reader on a tour of three continents, spanning a century of terrorist events, political historian Len Bracken finally lands in the present day to examine whether the state "attacked itself" on September 11.

Exploring numerous historical precedents for such a bold assumption, Bracken winds a treacherous tale of travesty and incomprehensible malfeasance on the part of governments worldwide and throughout history. Be prepared to go on an historical journey from Caesar to George W. Bush, and from Pearl Harbor to the Oklahoma City bombing to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and up to the September 11 horror and the following anthrax mailings, all of which, according to Bracken, fall under the CIA nomenclature, "false flag" operations.

As Kenn Thomas writes in the foreword to Shadow Government, "of all conspiracy theories put forth since 9-11, the state terror thesis is the simplest, most elegant and most easily followed." In this case, 'elegant' means, 'damn, how'd I not see this till now?' Bracken's analysis has the precision of a watchmaker, but his watch piece is a time machine. His distinctive genre is the first to combine progressive anarchist philosophy and history with conspiracy journalism to bring the reader to an exceptionally broad and heightened state of awareness. This is the first of its kind. Anarchy has finally joined conspiracy and has realized we're all hammering away at the same wall.

Rather than zooming in on the one smoking gun we're all looking for, Bracken steps back, way back, and allows us to see the guns of revolution firing all over the place, but incredulously the guns belong to an increasingly huge conspiracy of elite global controllers with factions vying for their own place. With wide-sweeping historicity, Bracken paints a picture of endemic political crimes of the state, and on that canvas we the people are pawns on a great chessboard.

Bracken defines defensive terrorism as "direct use of terrorism by the state, that is, open displays of violence by the state or paramilitary organizations acting on its behalf [to] terrorize the public into subordination." Outlining the historical baiting of anarchists by countries such as Italy, Bracken asks a question we should all be asking: are we dealing with a fringe group or a state? Are we being led to point a finger at 'fringe groups' and 'rogue nations' rather than our own Shadow Gestapo? In one Italian example, Bracken shows how defensive terrorism is accomplished in a "false flag" covert operation in a way that is "designed to make citizens feel more dependent on the state." Is this beginning to sound a little too familiar?

As has become clear since 9-11, the state used international operatives, anarchists, radical militia members and CIA rogues to do their dirty work in the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center bombing, and on 9-11. These are the activities of the state that breed all social violence as the children learn to emulate the father: a depraved state that would sicken even Machiavelli. One may ask, are we talking about the "state" or a rogue faction of international intelligence operatives? That's an important question. If our elected representatives and appointed judges can't uncover the obvious, and when they do are thwarted from opening the Pandora's Box by a nefarious political artifact known as "national security," then what we would normally consider "the state" is both doppelganger and driver for this rogue international hit man and should be considered part of it and wholly under its spell. Conspiracists intuitively know the state as trickster; perhaps we can even say it's the least argued common ground between anarchists and conspiracists.

Bracken asserts that "the massacres in New York and Virginia were engendered or facilitated by statesmen in order to silence opposition, consolidate power, and rally the population behind a war favorable to military and oil industries." As proof, Bracken points to "the way terrorists and their financiers were repeatedly protected and the way statesmen deceived us." It is downright ridiculous that the government had no idea that terrorists would use skyjacked planes as missiles, considering that the idea was mentioned in reports and memos, and used in video games and in a Tom Clancy novel, Debt of Honor. Was the FBI simply inept, as has been admitted by the media's limited disclosure, known as "limited hangout" by the CIA? This is only possible in the universe of the terminally na«ve.

With his sweeping timeline in the back of the book, which begins with the sinking of the USS Maine in Cuban waters on February 15, 1898 and carries us to June 13, 2002, we graduate from the playpen into the real world. The blinders are gone. We realize the truth of Bracken's words: "Terrorism, which fails as a long term strategy for small groups with big demands, can be an effective if messy tactic when used defensively by states." We can no longer afford to be na«ve. As Bracken writes, "Self-inflicted wounds, or what amount to them, become the rationale for expanded roles and funding for agencies that routinely dissimulate and deploy ruses on civilians, namely the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence." For instance, we now know that J. Edgar Hoover withheld information from the White House regarding Japanese plans to attack the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. And as Canadian political prisoner Vreeland claimed he saw on a memo before 9-11: "Let one happen, stop the rest!"

Conspiracy theories are today marginalized by an elite-owned and state-aligned press that tells you not to believe anything you read on the Internet, since they have yet to figure out how to control the information contained there. At the moment, the only way they can control it is to disparage it. However, as Bracken points out, the conspiratorial view is perhaps the oldest political critique on the planet. The first conspiracy in history, he points out, is noted in the first chapter of Histories by Herodotus. Smart man. As Bracken also points out, all contemporary covert ops would be considered conspiracies by Prince Machiavelli, whom Bracken quotes as saying: "Many more princes have lost their lives and their states in this way than by open war."

We would do well to ponder, then, why historians and media alike are discouraged from holding this maligned point of view, and why, therefore, Bracken and Smith must offer a semi-apology: "Merely by broaching the subject of the state indirectly attacking or allowing an attack on citizens it should defend, we stand accused of being conspiracy theorists, a label we neither accept nor reject because we are independent historians and strategic theorists who do not share the widespread academic prejudice against conspiracies."

Yet, as Bracken points out, 9-11 plane hijacker Moussaoui is on trial on conspiracy charges, so the system somehow "recognizes the event for what it was" although it "may limit the scope to protect the state." Aha! Will the concept of "national security" win again? Whose alleged security is that anyway? In the end, it won't be ours. It will be "theirs"; but forgive me for saying there's an "us and them." What was I thinking?

To read Bracken is to realize the political strategizing behind 9-11, although we are unable to see it as such, was actually nothing new in history. It is merely a new type of colonizing venture disguised as terrorism. It is the state terrorizing itself so that it can gain the political expediency to attack a land that contains the natural resources it wants! Bracken believes the 9-11 acts were a pretext for war over oil in Afghanistan, and were facilitated by the states of U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If you have been unable to take that great stride into conspiracy territory to see for yourself whether this could be possible, begin by paying attention to trends. But look both ways before you cross the divide: that is, to the future and to the past. In the first case, pay attention to current events. Try to make predictions on what will happen next. Once your antennae are up you'll feel political events being controlled from some sort of invisible backdrop. Write down all your predictions and thoughts. In the second case, look back in history and see if this trend of hidden manipulation spreads into the past. Lucky for you, Bracken has provided you with the tools for the second experiment, and his hindsight is 20/20.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, from our point of view. But for the elite global rulers the world is but a chessboard and we are the pawns. Read carefully as Bracken, also an economist, points out:

"History shows that the costs for infrastructure and security to colonize a country can exceed the riches gained by the empire in raw materials. For example, costs associated with the September 11 attacks and the US response should be added to the defense budget because they were at many levels the consequences of US troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia and US military support for Israel. While the masses pay back war debts, the elite almost always profit from the extraordinary military consumption that feeds our rulers' greed and lust for dominion."

Len Bracken would rather be relaxing, or writing about "men and women who set good examples." We are grateful that he felt compelled to write this book and hopeful that when he's old and gray he will have many more principled men and women to write about in the next generation. It is the only real hope we have left.

Joan d'Arc is co-publisher of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader and may be reached at joandarc@earthlink.net.

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