- Signs of the Times for Fri, 10 Mar 2006 -

1990: Observer 'spy' sentenced to die

A court in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has imposed the death sentence on The Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft.

He has been convicted of spying for Israel while working on a story about an explosion at a weapons complex 30 miles (48km) south of the capital.

The British nurse, Daphne Parish, who is said to have driven him to the site has been jailed for 15 years.

The pair were arrested last September after visiting the military establishment.

Mr Bazoft, who came to live in Britain from Iran in the early 1980s, had written a number of articles on the Middle East for The Observer newspaper. He was subsequently invited by the Iraqi government to join a journalists' trip to examine reconstruction work after the war with Iran.

But on the day he flew out, there were reports of an explosion at the Al-Iskandrai plant, said to be at the centre of Iraq's development of medium-range missiles. Hundreds were reported to have been killed.

The Observer newspaper commissioned Mr Bazoft to write a report. Independent Television News was also interested in the explosion, but a camera crew was stopped from reaching the plant. Mr Bazoft, travelling with Mrs Parish, got through.

He was picked up at Baghdad airport, waiting for a flight back to London.

Observer editor Donald Trelford said: "Farzad Bazoft is not a spy. He is a reporter who went to do a story. He said in advance the story he was going to do.

"He told the Baghdad government where he wanted to go... This is not the action of a spy, this is the action of a reporter."

The so-called spies were tried behind closed doors. Mr Bazoft had earlier been filmed making a confession - his colleagues say it was false.

Foreign Office Minister William Waldegrave met the Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister, Nizar Hamdoun, before today's hearing to demand a full and fair trial. Now he says he will be pressing for clemency.

He said: "Our objective now is to concentrate on the next few hours to try to get the death sentence lifted and to appeal on humanitarian grounds for an urgent review of the sentences."

Sadly, the attempts to get Bazoft's death sentence commuted were not successful and he was hanged by the Hussein government five days later on March 15th 1990. Equally sad is the fact that this story, as presented by the BBC, is so short on the real details of the events surrounding Bazoft's death that it may as well be a complete fabrication.

The following is excerpted from ex-Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky's book The Other Side of Deception and provides us with a startling insight into just how far from reality the 'official' version of events usually is. It also provides us with a deeper understanding of the 'why', the 'who' and the 'how' of the previously inexplicable, continued resurgence of conflict, death and suffering over the past 100 years of world history.

The Mossad realized that it had to come up with a new threat to the region, a threat of such magnitude that it would justify whatever action the Mossad might see fit to take.

The right-wing elements in the Mossad (and in the whole country, for that matter) had what they regarded as a sound philosophy: They believed (correctly, as it happened) that Israel was the strongest military presence in the Middle East. In fact, they believed that the military might of what had become known as "fortress Israel" was greater than that of all of the Arab armies combined, and was responsible for whatever security Israel possessed. The right wing believed then - and they still believe - that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.

The corollary belief was that peace overtures would inevitably start a process of corrosion that would weaken the military and eventually bring about the demise of the state of Israel, since, the philosophy goes, its Arab neighbors are untrustworthy, and no treaty signed by them is worth the paper it's written on.

Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad's general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be a party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for the Hamas (Palestinian fundamentalists) to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.

The Mossad regarded Saddam Hussein as their biggest asset in the area, since he was totally irrational as far as international politics was concerned, and was therefore all the more likely to make a stupid move that the Mossad could take advantage of.

What the Mossad really feared was that Iraq's gigantic army, which had survived the Iran-Iraq war and was being supplied by the West and financed by Saudi Arabia, would fall into the hands of a leader who might be more palatable to the West and still be a threat to Israel.

The first step was taken in November 1988, when the Mossad told the Israeli foreign office to stop all talks with the Iraqis regarding a peace front. At that time, secret negotiations were taking place between Israelis, Jordanians, and Iraqis under the auspices of the Egyptians and with the blessings of the French and the Americans. The Mossad manipulated it so that Iraq looked as if it were the only country unwilling to talk, thereby convincing the Americans that Iraq had a different agenda.

By January 1989, the Mossad LAP machine was busy portraying Saddam as a tyrant and a danger to the world. The Mossad activated every asset it had, in every place possible, from volunteer agents in Amnesty International to fully bought members of the U.S. Congress. Saddam had been killing his own people, the cry went; what could his enemies expect? The gruesome photos of dead Kurdish mothers clutching their dead babies after a gas attack by Saddam's army were real, and the acts were horrendous. But the Kurds were entangled in an all-out guerrilla war with the regime in Baghdad and had been supported for years by the Mossad, who sent arms and advisers to the mountain camps of the Barazany family; this attack by the Iraqis could hardly be called an attack on their own people. But, as Uri said to me, once the orchestra starts to play, all you can do is hum along.

The media was supplied with inside information and tips from reliable sources on how the crazed leader of Iraq killed people with his bare hands and used missiles to attack Iranian cities. What they neglected to tell the media was that most of the targeting for the missiles was done by the Mossad with the help of American satellites. The Mossad was grooming Saddam for a fall, but not his own. They wanted the Americans to do the work of destroying that gigantic army in the Iraqi desert so that Israel would not have to face it one day on its own border. That in itself was a noble cause for an Israeli, but to endanger the world with the possibility of global war and the deaths of thousands of Americans was sheer madness.

The previous august (1989) a contingent of the Maktal (Mossad reconnaissance unit) and several naval commandos had headed up the Euphrates, their target was an explosives factory located in the city of Al-Iskandariah. Information the Mossad had received from American intelligence revealed that every thursday a small convoy of trucks came to the complex to be loaded with explosives for the purpose of manufacturing cannon shells. The objective was to take position near the base on Wednesday August 23rd and wait until the next day when the trucks would be loaded. At that point, several sharpshooters would fire one round each of an explosive bullet at a designated truck while they were in the process of loading, so that there would be a carry on explosion into the storage facility.

The operation was quite successful and the explosion generated the sort of publicity the Mossad was hoping for in attracting attention to Saddam's constant efforts at building a gigantic and powerful military arsenal. The Mossad shared its "findings" with the Western intelligence agencies and leaked the story of the explosion to the press.

Since this was a guarded facility Western reporters had minimal access to it. However, at the beginning of September, the Iraqis were inviting Western media people to visit Iraq and see the rebuilding that had taken place after the [Iran-Iraq] war, and the Mossad saw an opportunity to conduct a damage assessment.

A man calling himself Michel Rubiyer saying he was working for the French newspaper "le figaro", approached Farzad Bazoft, a thirty one year old reporter freelancing for the British newspaper the Observer. Rubiyer was in fact Michel M. a Mossad agent.

Michel told Farzad that he would pay him handsomely and print his story if he would join a group of journalists heading for Baghdad. The reason he gave for not going himself was that he had been black-listed in Iraq. He pointed out the Bazoft could use the money and the break especially with his criminal background. Michel told the stunned reporter that he knew of his arrest in 1981 for armed robbery in Northhampton England. Along with the implied threat he told Bazoft that he would be able to print his story in the Observer as well.

Michel told Bazoft to collect information regarding the explosion ask questions about it get sketches of the area and collect earth samples. He told the worried reporter that Saddam would not dare harm a reporter even if he was unhappy with him. The worst the Saddam would do was kick him out of the country, which would in itself make him famous.

Why this particular reporter? He was of Iranian background and would make punishing him much easier for the Iraqis and he wasn't a European whom they would probably only hold and then kick out. In fact, Bazoft had been identified in a Mossad search that was triggered by his prying into another Mossad case in search of a story involving an ex-Mossad asset Dr Cyrus Hashemi who was eliminated by mossad in 1986. Since Bazoft had already stumbled on too much information for his own good - or the Mossad's for that matter - he was the perfect candidate for this job of snooping in forbidden areas.

Bazoft made his way to the location as he was asked and as might be expected was arrested. Tragically, his British girlfriend, a nurse working in a baghdad hospital was arrested as well.

Within a few days of his arrest, a Mossad liaison in the US called the Iraqi representative in Holland and said that Jerusalem was willing to make a deal for the release of their man who had been captured. the Iraqi representative asked for time to contact Baghdad, and the liaison called the next day, at which point he told the Iraqi representative it was all a big mistake and severed contact. Now the Iraqis had no doubt that they had a real spy on their hands, and they were going to see him hang. All the Mossad had to do was sit back and watch as Saddam proved to the world what a monster he really was.

On March 15th 1990 Farzad Bazoft, who had been held in the Abu Gharib prison met briefly with the British Ambassador to Iraq.

A few minutes after the meeting he was hanged.

The world was shocked, but the Mossad was not done yet. To fan the flames generated by the brutal hanging, a Mossad sayan in New York delivered a set of documents to ABC television with a story from a reliable Middle Eastern source telling if a plant Saddam had for the manufacturing of uranium. The information was convincing and the photos and sketches were even more so.

It was time to draw attention to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Only three months before, on December 5, 1989, the Iraqis had launched the Al-Abid, a three-stage ballistic missile. The Iraqis claimed it was a satellite launcher that Gerald Bull, a Canadian scientist, was helping them develop. Israeli intelligence knew that the launch, although trumpeted as a great success, was in fact a total failure, and that the program would never reach its goals. But that secret was not shared with the media. On the contrary, the missile launch was exaggerated and blown out of proportion.

The message that Israeli intelligence sent out was this: Now all the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together. This maniac is developing a nuclear capability (remember the Israeli attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1981) and pursuing chemical warfare (as seen in his attacks on his own people, the Kurds). What's more, he despises the Western media, regarding them as Israeli spies. Quite soon, he's going to have the ability to launch a missile from anywhere in Iraq to anywhere he wants in the Middle East and beyond.

After the arrest of Bazoft, Gerald Bull, who was working on the Iraqi big gun project called Babylon, was visited by Israeli friends from his past. The visitors (two Mossad officers) had come to deliver a warning. They were both known to Bull as members of the Israeli intelligence community. The Mossad psychological department had studied the position Bull was in and analysed what was known about his character. It arrived at the conclusion that, even if threatened, he wouldn't pull out of the program but would instead carry on his work with very little regard for his personal safety.

Ultimately, Bull's continuing with the program would play right into the Mossad's hands. Through the bullet riddled body of Gerald Bull the world would be made to focus on his work: the Iraqi giant gun project. The timing had to be right though; Bull's well publicised demise had to come right after an act of terror by the Baghdad regime, an act that could not be mistaken for an accident or a provocation. The hanging of the Observer reporter on March 15 was such an act.

After the reporter's execution in Baghdad, a Kidon (Mossad assassination) team arrived in Brussels and cased the apartment building where Bull lived. It was imperative that the job be done in a place where it would not be mistaken for a robbery or an accident. At the same time, an escape route was prepared for the team and some old contacts in the Belgian police were revived to make sure they were on duty at the time of Bull's elimination so that, if there was a need to call on a friendly police force, they'd be on call. They weren't old of the reason for the alert, but would learn later and keep silent.

When Bull reached the building at 8.30pm, the man watching the entrance signaled the man in the empty apartment on the sixth floor (Bull's floor) to get ready: the target had entered the building. The shooter then left the apartment and hid in an alcove.

Almost immediately after the elevator door closed behind Bull, the shooter fired point blank at the man's back and head. The shooter then walked over to Bull and pulled out of his tote bag a handful of documents and other papers, which he paced in a paper shopping bag he had with him. He also collected all the casings from the floor and dropped the gun into the shopping bag.

In the following weeks, more and more discoveries were made regarding the big gun and other elements of the Saddam war machine. The Mossad had all but saturated the intelligence field with information regarding the evil intentions of Saddam the Terrible, banking on the fact that before long, he'd have enough rope to hang himself.

It was very clear what the Mossad's overall goal was. It wanted the West to do its bidding, just as the Americans had in Libya with the bombing of Qadhafi. After all, Israel didn't possess carriers and ample air power, and although it was capable of bombing a refugee camp in Tunis, that was not the same. The Mossad leaders knew that if they could make Saddam appear bad enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance before he went nuclear. [...]

In Stuart Rosenberg's classic film, Cool Hand Luke, Strother Martin, playing the Captain of Road Prison 36, tells Luke Jackson, played by Paul Newman: "What we have here is… failure to communicate." As I read the news this morning, I am reminded of the film and this memorable line. Rupert Cornwell, writing for the Independent, tells us "the neo-conservatives who sold the United States on this disastrous war are starting to utter three small words. We were wrong." Cornwell cites the examples of William Buckley, Andrew Sullivan (described as "an influential commentator and blogmeister"), the "patrician conservative columnist" George Will, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the disgusting William Kristol, all who apparently have second thoughts about the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Cornwell seems satisfied these neocon icons, actually little more than common criminals with expensive educations, have admitted they were "wrong" and have accepted "realistic Wilsonianism," in the words of Fukuyama, or as Cornwell pegs it, neo-realism. "And if that brings a smile to the face of a certain former US high priest of realism with a pronounced German accent, who can blame him?" Cornwell concludes, apparently making reference to the Leo Strauss, the late student of Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, the former exploited by the Nazis and the latter having collaborated with them directly.

Cornwell fails to communicate the essence of the depth and severity of the Straussian neocon plot and instead concentrates on the "failure" of Iraq-and thus, as the hackneyed old saying runs, Cornwell misses the forest for the trees. Regardless of anything Fukuyama has written as of late, the Straussian neocons will not now "temper the idealism of the neo-conservative doctrine with an acceptance that some things are not so easy to change," viz., the United States cannot deliver democracy to benighted Arabs and Muslims, as we are told, ad nauseam, Bush wants to do, or wanted to do before reality hit him upside the head.

Zalmay Khalilzad warns that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has opened "a Pandora's box," spreading "conflict," as Cornwell describes it, across the Middle East. In fact, this is precisely what the Straussian neocons want-chaos and "conflict" spreading like an uncontrollable wild fire, scorching Muslim and Arab culture, eating away at the very societal cohesion of the region, thus leaving it decimated and malleable to reorganization along the lines envisioned by the Straussian neocons and the original architects of the plan, the racist Jabotinskyites in Israel. Cornwell, lost in the forest of corporate media spin and lies, is unable to see the tree planted by these devious Machiavellian co-conspirators.

Mr. Cornwell does not bother to take into consideration the trouble brewing over Iran's illusory nuclear weapons, simply another pretext for more violence and misery, as a few neocons may step forward and admit "mistakes" over the invasion and occupation of Iraq while their fellows prepare to repeat those "mistakes" in Iran.

As noted above, the actions of the Straussian neocons, following a well-established pattern, are anything but mistakes. Iran realizes this. "The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain," Javad Vaeedi, head of Iran's National Security Council, declared as the United Nation's Security Council was manipulated into place, setting it up for a re-run. "So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll."

Vaeedi was responding to Dick Cheney's threat of "meaningful consequences" (code words for mass murder and destruction) if Iran continues to refuse to go prostrate. Vaeedi "declined to spell out precisely how Tehran would respond to Security Council pressure but experts told London's Daily Telegraph that Iran's options included driving up oil prices, blocking the passage of tankers through the Gulf, stirring more chaos in Iraq, fomenting violence against Israel or promoting terrorist attacks against the West," in short, exercising its only viable options, since there is absolutely no way Iran can match the military prowess of the United States. Of course, in the weeks ahead, Iran will be vilified for attempting to defend itself, as the Iraqis are now vilified (resistance is not only futile, it is the evil handiwork of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and the ever useful "al-Qaeda").

It should now be obvious the Straussian neocon plan not only includes an effort to destroy Arab, Persian, and Muslim culture, but American culture as well. "The real question is not whether the American military can topple Hussein's regime, but whether the American public has the stomach for imperial involvement of a kind we have not known since the United States occupied Germany and Japan," Lawrence F. Kaplan, the neocon sidekick of William Kristol, remarked as the invasion of Iraq unfolded. "The theory behind this, developed by Michael Doyle, professor of international affairs at Princeton University, is that democratic governments are reluctant to go to war because they must answer to their citizens. And the history of liberal democracies, though comparatively short in the grand scheme of history, tends to buttress his point," explains Bruce Murphy, writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Leo Strauss, the grand daddy of today's Straussian neocons, was opposed to classical liberalism, as defined as the sovereignty of the individual, the very foundation of the philosophy of John Locke and Adam Smith. As Michael Doliner writes in a review of Shadia B. Drury's Leo Strauss and the American Right, Strauss' "vision was of a hierarchical society based on natural inequalities and welded together with the fanatical devotion state religion engenders," an idea planted in his head in part by the Nazi Jurist Carl Schmitt, a doctrine mixed together into a dismal hodgepodge with heaping portions of bellum omnium contra omnes-war of all against all-cynicism extracted from the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. "Strauss's hatred of liberalism is so virulent that he sees the struggle against it as a war, and in war all is fair. For this reason Straussians will use every dirty trick they can think of in the democratic arena in order to defeat liberalism. While doing so they will corrupt democracy itself. But since democracy is only a tool with which to defeat liberalism in order to institute the true Straussian hierarchical society, this is of little import. In the end they will jettison democracy if to do so is expedient."

In fact, Bush, the useful idiot sock puppet, unelected, court-appointed president of the Straussian neocons, is in the process of jettisoning democracy-or rather, the principles of our once proud constitutional republic-as the NSA "scandal" and repeated attacks against the Bill of Rights make painfully obvious. For the Straussian neocons, those of us alarmed and moved to action by the in-your-face onslaught against the Bill of Rights are considered the enemy. "Opponents of the ruling cabal, whatever their stripe, are 'them.' Indeed, since the cabal of philosophers is deceiving everyone else, even those who have joined the cause out of religious zeal are, in a real sense, 'them.' A small circle of initiates who repel the advances of everyone else is a feature of the Straussian State. These initiates are philosophers who rely on reason, and nihilistic reason tells them there are no rules, none, in this domestic battle," Doliner continues.

In order to construct the Straussian hierarchical society required to wage total, unrelenting, generational war, those opposed to the plan must be systematically eliminated, a process well under way with the illegal use of the NSA's massive high-tech snoop apparatus. Of course, this apparatus is not employed, as we are assured by a complicit corporate media, to ferret out "al-Qaeda" telephone calls and email messages, but rather to locate and compile electronic dossiers on critics of the Straussians, who will be dealt with in coordinated manner after the next "Pearl Harbor" event occurs-and no doubt the Iranians will endeavor to provide this event after their country is brutally invaded, as Javad Vaeedi promises.

It is foolish to consider all of this a "mistake," an unintended result of the over-zealousness on the part of a few "neoconservatives" who are in fact neo-Jacobins, murderous radicals, as Professor Claes Ryn and Paul Craig Roberts note. "More dangerous an enemy of the US and its traditional values than Muslims, neo-Jacobins have seized control of the Bush presidency and US foreign policy. They will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of World War IV in the Middle East," Roberts warns. "The neo-Jacobins are rushing to get America involved in a general Middle Eastern war before Americans have time to think. The terrorist scare which worked the first time is being employed again. Once we have attacked other sovereign Islamic countries, we will have to bring back the draft in order to raise the necessary armies or resort to nuclear weapons…. If the American public falls for the second round of neo-Jacobin propaganda [in the current context, against Iran], neither do they deserve, nor will they have, liberty and democracy."
In fact, we are well on our way to a Straussian hierarchical dictatorship in America. Once the opponents are dealt with, either rounded up and forced into Halliburton constructed concentration camps or slaughtered outright, the Straussians will construct their nihilistic paradise of pseudo-masculinity based on a chicken hawk war ethos, i.e., the bamboozled masses will be used as cannon fodder.

Not unlike Orwell's dystopian world, the New America of Straussian fascism and total war will be unrecognizable to those of us who dream of resurrecting a constitutional republic based on a classical liberalism so reviled by the Straussian neocons, who we are told simply made "mistakes" and now wish to repent, or at least explain themselves. Of course, this fake and criminal contriteness is simply more deception, as one of the primary tenets of Straussian fascism is deception, a tactic used to great effect by Hitler and Nazis. Unfortunately, if we don't get our act together and soon, America will suffer the same consequences of Nazi Germany, or more likely a consequence far worse.
Comment on this Editorial

In Iraq 2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom. There was a steady growth of NGOs and other civil society associations that promote human rights. The January 30th legislative elections marked a tremendous step forward in solidifying governmental institutions to protect human rights and freedom in a country whose history is marred by some of the worst human rights abuses in the recent past.

Throughout the year the prime minister renewed the "state of emergency" originally declared in November 2004 throughout the country, excluding Kurdistan. The state of emergency allows for the temporary imposition of restrictions on certain civil liberties.

The following human rights problems were reported:

* pervasive climate of violence
* misappropriation of official authority by sectarian, criminal, terrorist, and insurgent groups
* arbitrary deprivation of life
* disappearances
* torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
* impunity
* poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities
* arbitrary arrest and detention
* denial of fair public trial
* an immature judicial system lacking capacity
* limitations on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association due to terrorist and militia violence
* restrictions on religious freedom
* large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
* lack of transparency and widespread corruption at all levels of government
* constraints on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
* discrimination against women, ethnic, and religious minorities
* limited exercise of labor rights

PLUM TV: [How] are people going to change the way they're thinking about this war, and to change the public perception?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: I think the biggest problem we've got in the country is people don't study history any more. People who go to school in high schools and colleges, they tend to study current events and call it history.

There's never been a popular war...Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most hated people in the country and he was President of the United States. He was Commander in Chief. He did a terrific job.

Government procurement records show that MZM, which Wade started in 1993, did not report any revenue from prime contract awards until 2003. Most of its revenue has come from the agreement the Pentagon just cut off. But over the past three years it was also awarded several contracts, worth more than $600,000, by the Executive Office of the President. They include a $140,000 deal for office furniture in 2002 and several for unspecified "intelligence services." (italics added)

What I think this story reveals is that the 9-11 Commission and the U.S. government deliberately withheld information from the U.S. public (and everyone else for that matter) that linked Al Qaeda operatives to persons who had close ties to Pakistani government officials, including members of Pakistan's ISI. One can only guess whether that was to save embarrassment or to hide illegal conduct.

One thing is for certain, i.e., the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA have deceived, and continue to deceive, the public concerning Rana's connection to Al Qaeda and the facts regarding the 9-11 attack.

One of the standouts in this spin of lies is Neil Herman, a former FBI official who was involved in the Bojinka investigation and a former supervisor of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force in New York. Herman was quoted in an August 5, 2004 New York Times article entitled, Qaeda Strategy is Called Cause for New Alarm by Eric Lipton and Benjamin Weiser, which reported:

Even though the large-scale jetliner attack over the Pacific never happened, it is clear that the elaborate planning was an unappreciated warning of the sophistication and determination of the terrorists.

"It showed the government back in the mid-1990's how detail-oriented these individuals were," said Mr. Herman, the former FBI official, who was involved in the Bojinka investigation. "It also showed that there was an active network, although, of course, we were unable to determine the extent of the network back then."

Another prominent figure suspected of quashing the truth is Dietrich L. Snell, the Senior Counsel and Team Leader of the Official 9-11 Commission. Peter Lance writes extensively in his books Cover Up and 1000 Years for Revenge about Snell's shenanigans in cherry-picking evidence and excluding credible witness testimony, including information collected by the Defense Department's Able Danger Unit concerning pre-9/11 sightings of Mohammed Atta, one of the nineteen suspected hijackers. These allegations are now resurfacing in the news. The Associated Press (AP) reported on February 15, 2005 that U.S. Representative Curt Weldon, the vice Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee advised the public that the Able Danger Unit had identified Atta more than a dozen times before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Weldon also reportedly said the secret team found "a problem" in Yemen two weeks before the deadly Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000, of which the ship commander was not told. Former (unidentified) members of the 9/11 Commission reportedly dismissed Weldon's findings.

My experience in the Philippines also appears to overlap Snell's involvement in the Murad case that Snell prosecuted. The Cooperative Research 9-11 Timeline (www.cooperativeresearch.org) contains a very peculiar account entitled: Early 1998:Prosecutors Turn Down Deal That Could Reveal Bojinka Third Plot.

The entry said: "Abdul Hakim Murad, a conspirator in the 1995 Bojinka plot with Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Shaik Mohammed, and others, was convicted in 1996 of his role in the Bojinka plot. He is about to be sentenced for that crime. He offers to cooperate with federal prosecutors in return for a reduction in his sentence, but prosecutors turn down his offer. Dietrich Snell, the prosecutor who convicted Murad, says after 9-11 that he doesn't remember any such offer. But court papers and others familiar with the case later confirmed that Murad does offer to cooperate at this time. Snell claimed he only remembers hearing that Murad had described an intention to hijack a plan and fly it into the CIA headquarters. However, in 1995 Murad had confessed to Philippine investigators that this would have been only one part of a larger plot to crash a number of airplanes into prominent U.S. buildings, including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a plot that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed later adjusts and turns in the 9-11 plot. While Philippine investigators claim this information was passed on to U.S. intelligence, it's not clear just which U.S. officials may have learned this information and what they did with it, if anything. [New York Daily News, 9/25/01] Murad is sentenced in May 1998 and given life in prison plus 60 years. [Albany Times Union, 9/22/02] After 9-11, Snell goes on to become Senior Counsel and a team leader for the 9-11 Commission. Author Peter Lance later calls Snell "one of the fixers, hired early on to sanitize the Commission's final report." Lance says Snell ignored evidence presented to the Commission that shows direct ties between the Bojinka plot and 9-11, and in so doing covers up Snell's own role in the failure to make use of evidence learned from Murad and other Bojinka plotters. [FrontPage Magazine, 1/27/05].

I know who the intelligence officials were at the U.S. embassy at the time of Murad's arrest and interrogation. These are the same officials who discounted the threat information I received about Rana. Do these people have something to hide? You bet they do!

Peter Lance was entirely correct when he told CNN anchor Lou Dobbs in a December 5, 2005 interview that the 9-11 Commission was essentially "a whitewash" and that it intentionally limited its investigation to 1996-forward. He said the Commission moved the plot's origin "to 1996 from 1994"and in so doing omitted information that linked Mohammed Atta to the terrorists responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Lance said Congress should put Dietrich Snell under oath to find out why the 9-11 staffer prevented the Able Danger information from getting to the 9-11 Commission.

Clearly, the 9-11 Commission's decision to use 1996 as the date that the 9-11 plot originated was also designed to omit the information that I obtained concerning Tariq Rana, and the connection he had with the Al Qaeda operatives who conceived the 9-11 plot.

Given these revelations, how can the American public trust a government that has rationalized its own failure to protect this nation by implementing draconian measures (e.g. the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, and abductions and torture) - measures that have stripped its citizens of the rights and protections for which this country was founded. And what have these measures bought us but a seemingly endless war of attrition with an adversary that grows stronger and more lethal everyday.