NATO's Secret Armies, Operation Gladio and JFK

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

Yes and No and sorry but I'm going to do it again because I spent chapter after chapter addressing this in Shadow Warfare...mea culpa

Bottom line....in Afghanistan phase one the CIA sent money through Pakistan and partnered with Saudi to send even more money.  Nobody cared where the money went as long as Russians got killed. And the Pakistani intelligence was literally allowed to run the entire show, with no CIA  field involvement or oversight....

In reality the Saudi's and their ultra religious wing wanted the money to go to very specific jihad oriented groups as did the Pakistani's...and it did.  CIA teams did not go in with it nor exercise normal field control of any sort.  We just shoveled money to the Pakistani's, the Saudi's sent even more money and Bin Ladin went with it to ensure the right groups got it, establishing his base first in Pakistan and then Afghanistan.

In phase two, other non jihad nationalist groups in Afghanistan complained they were being cut out of the money but as more and more Russians were being killed the CIA station chief in Pakistan was in no way going to sacrifice his primary goal of  victory over the Russians over a few religious complaints. 

Finally, in phase three, things had gotten so bad that when we tried to send CIA folks into the field in Afghanistan to check they were threatened and sent packing by jihad militia - but by that point it was totally out of control and the Taliban was set to take the country back for the jihad (not for the old line nationalist or royalist Afghans...who eventually ended up forming the  Northern Alliance - who would be our new post 9/11 friends).

But we had shipped in anti-aircraft missiles, taken down lots of Hind gun ships, bloodied the Russians and made them look really bad, got our revenge for Vietnam and every politician involved took a bow......and promptly chose to ignore the whole bloody mess and how much we had been taken by the Saudi's and Pakistani's - until 9/11.

Oh, and on your other point, the first warning of exactly how bad things had gotten was when CIA intel from Bosnia began to show that the same jihad groups the Pakistani's and Saudi's had funded in Afghanistan were showing up as well organized units in Bosnia...with plenty of weapons and plenty of money, stockpiled from the Afghan funding no doubt, but with new investments from Bin Laden and their own "charitable" fund raising.

That's the short story, the citations are in the book...grin.

 

Thanks, Larry, I obviously need to read your book.

But, in the meantime, can I ask you the $6,400,000,000,000 question?

What is your opinion about the "rumors" that Osama Bin Laden (aka "Tim Osman") and the 9/11 "Al Qaeda hijackers" were CIA/Saudi trainees at some point prior to 9/11?

Put differently, were these guys the "Lee Harvey Oswalds" of a 9/11 black op?

[Larry Hancock]

Actually I delve into that as part of my 9/11 chapters in Surprise Attack.

I would absolutely say that there were Saudi's were involved in sponsoring and enabling the attacks;  it gets quite confusing because there is an under layer of radical Islamism in Saudi comparable to that within Pakistani intelligence.  And Saudi is particularly hard to read (or was) considering its autocracy and fiefdoms...which Bin Laden was part of for a good while. They gave him a pass to act outside the country just as Pakistan gave the radicals the same deal - looked good for a time but that never lasts.

Bottom line, Saudi charities and individual wealthy Saudi's did support the attack, some knowingly, some in denial and all of them telling lies after the fact.  Actually the FBI and the 9/11 Commission had a strong case for Saudi complicity but Rice in particular and Bush in support managed to keep that largely out of the report.

Now for CIA involvement.....both the CIA and FBI were desperately seeking informants on al Queda and they got rolled as they always do....by that I mean individuals who were radicals pretended to volunteer, got training, provided a mix of information and in the end the CIA had to cover that up to a certain extent out of embarrassment and operational security.   Not really much different than being stung by the KKK or the Mafia years ago;  you are always at risk trying to penetrate any organization. The CIA got stung repeatedly around the globe by dealing with exiles and ex-patriots.

In this case the CIA got stung the most because it was cultivating potential sources and even assets and withholding information from the FBI; I write about that a lot and so have others. 

So Saudi "trainees", yes just a question of who and what for, same trade-craft works around the world...look up the Bojinka air attacks out of Indonesia.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot

The CIA, possibly with one or two of them who were being prepared as penetration agents and who either got turned or were doubles to begin with....its a nasty business.

That's my overall cut at it.

 

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Tom Hanks' Charlie Wilson's War  was about as truthful as Parkland.

BTW, I think Larry would agree with this, one of the things that the CIA would not stand up to with Zia was  the terrible decision to back Hekmatyar  over Massoud.

Larry, is Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars, still the best on Afghanistan?

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Anthony Thorne]

Quote

Osama Bin Laden (aka "Tim Osman")

Without belabouring the point, try and find an official source, report or document that cites that Bin Laden was ever known by the name Tim Osman, or addressed in that manner by anyone.

UK researcher Tom Secker pointed this out. You won't find any source document for this anywhere. Just an endless stream of online blogs and conspiracy articles that make the assertion that Bin Laden was called Tim Osman, and yet never cite where that information came from. As far as he, and I can see, it's a bogus claim sourced from nowhere, just more of the chaff floating around the subject that clutters up discussion of what really happened. I'd read the assertion a few times, until I came across Secker's note that the factoid seems to be derived from thin air. Unless someone here has a link to a proper source, I suspect he's right.

Below, a funny citation about Bin Laden from Paul Fitzgerald's INVISIBLE HISTORY.

 

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Ghost Wars and his new Directorate S on Afghanistan,  bin Laden and the Saudi connection to the growth and evolution of the  jihadi movement are unsurpassed.  Ghost Wars was a major source for me in my writing on the path from Afghanistan to the 9/11 attack.

And yes I would agree on the CIA not standing up to ZIA but I think it was bigger than that, segments of Congress wanted Russian heads as did the National Security Advisor and the leading members of the NSC...nothing else much mattered, the CIA was quite literally given the order just to go kill Russians in Afghanistan.

I would also agree with Anthony,  in the decades following 9/11 the internet has become a terrible source of chaff and clutter on these sorts of topics....

 

[W. Niederhut]

    If I recall correctly, Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator and whistleblower, claimed in Classified Woman that Osama Bin Laden was working with U.S. Intel before and after 9/11.

    Edmonds also reported high-level FBI suppression of pre-9/11 field reports about the alleged Al Qaeda "hijackers."  (When Louis Freeh was still FBI Director.)

    We also know that the much-publicized tapes in the U.S. mainstream media linking Osama Bin Laden to 9/11 were forgeries.

    And, speaking of dubious evidence, what is the actual evidence linking Osama Bin Laden to 9/11?  Where is it?

[Paul Brancato]

I don’t think you’re going to find answers in Steve Coll’s books. 

[Larry Hancock]

Its easy to present certain of the claims mention but I would need to see sources and citations to really discuss them objectively.  As to bin Laden working with the CIA before 9/11,  it depends what "working" means.  He was getting money channeled through the Saudi's, some of it possibly US money and he was working with rebel groups in Afghanistan which the US was in theory supporting...just not directly with CIA field officers.  As to afterwards...I would have to see something more than a claim.

As to the suppression of reports by FBI HQ....I think "non-responsiveness" would be a better term but I do write about that extensively in Surprise Attack and attribute blame to both the CIA and FBI as the evidence dictates. The CIA did definitely suppress data but apparently to preserve assets it was trying to develop within the jehadi movement.

On evidence directly linking bin Laden to the airplanes and the aircraft team...what would you want?   As the head of the movement he gave overall orders to attack the US, you can see it in his published calls to jehad.  There is no doubt about that; was he the tactical director of the individual missions like Bojinka etc....no, you don't do that and preserve compartmentalization.  That's not the way any good operation is set up (we see the same thing with JFK).  You incite it, you get the message to the write people and you step back from the operation.

But I'm honestly not going to try to persuade anyone who believes much of this anymore than many of the conspiracy scenarios for JFK.  I've presented an analysis of 9/11 in Surprise Attack (specifically in the context of threat and warnings intelligence and command and control) and I will discuss or defend that point by point, as I would on anything I put in print.  That's really the best I can offer.

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Steve Coll writes good history; he does not write conspiracy......but hey, everybody gets to take their pick.

[W. Niederhut]

23 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Its easy to present certain of the claims mention but I would need to see sources and citations to really discuss them objectively.  As to bin Laden working with the CIA before 9/11,  it depends what "working" means.  He was getting money channeled through the Saudi's, some of it possibly US money and he was working with rebel groups in Afghanistan which the US was in theory supporting...just not directly with CIA field officers.  As to afterwards...I would have to see something more than a claim.

As to the suppression of reports by FBI HQ....I think "non-responsiveness" would be a better term but I do write about that extensively in Surprise Attack and attribute blame to both the CIA and FBI as the evidence dictates. The CIA did definitely suppress data but apparently to preserve assets it was trying to develop within the jehadi movement.

On evidence directly linking bin Laden to the airplanes and the aircraft team...what would you want?   As the head of the movement he gave overall orders to attack the US, you can see it in his published calls to jehad.  There is no doubt about that; was he the tactical director of the individual missions like Bojinka etc....no, you don't do that and preserve compartmentalization.  That's not the way any good operation is set up (we see the same thing with JFK).  You incite it, you get the message to the write people and you step back from the operation.

But I'm honestly not going to try to persuade anyone who believes much of this anymore than many of the conspiracy scenarios for JFK.  I've presented an analysis of 9/11 in Surprise Attack (specifically in the context of threat and warnings intelligence and command and control) and I will discuss or defend that point by point, as I would on anything I put in print.  That's really the best I can offer.

 

 

     There's a photo somewhere of Osama Bin Laden meeting with Zbigniew Brezhinski during the Soviet Afghan War.  And, of course, Osama's brother was a principle investor in George W. Bush's Arbusto Oil Company back in the day (who was attending a Carlyle Group meeting in D.C. with "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" when the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11.)

     Curiously, there is no evidence (CCTV or flight manifests) that any of these alleged Muslim "hijackers" boarded any of the hijacked planes on 9/11.  The 19 names and data about these alleged hijackers was left in a rental car at Logan Airport.  Several were known to be alive after 9/11.  And, of course, the FBI testified at the Moussaoui trial that Barbara Olson's 9/11 phone calls from AA Flight 77 about Muslim hijackers with box cutters never happened.

    What we do know is that Raytheon Corporation had successfully tested their GPS remote piloting technology in Boeing jetliners by August of 2001.  It worked much better than the reportedly horrible Cessna piloting skills of Hanzi Hanjour.

     Hanjour with a Boeing 757 is analogous to Oswald in the TSBD with a Carcano.

[Larry Hancock]

I'll leave you to it .... there is no way I would (or could) address the entire world of 9/11 conspiracy here;  any more than I can the entire world of JFK conspiracy for that matter.  I may not have learned much in the past thirty or so years of self education on  national security and military history topics but I've definitely learned that. 

[Paul Brancato]

it does seem to me that we are confronted with secrecy at every turn. I was thinking about all the white supremacist terrorism recently. You would think there would be a repository of facts and biographies so we could look for patterns or make connections. We are basically told that a bunch of mentally ill racists with access to assault weapons, acting on their own, incited by like minded internet sites, commit these acts. I think that back in the day CIA learned to program people to kill. Now the brainwashing occurs online in plain sight for anyone curious enough to look at. Shouldn’t we be asking whether CIA is funding any White Supremacist orgs or leaders? Or Muslim Jihadis? 

[W. Niederhut]

16 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I'll leave you to it .... there is no way I would (or could) address the entire world of 9/11 conspiracy here;  any more than I can the entire world of JFK conspiracy for that matter.  I may not have learned much in the past thirty or so years of self education on  national security and military history topics but I've definitely learned that. 

Understood.  But, one final, hypothetical question.

Let's posit, just for the sake of argument, that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA-affiliated patsy, like Oswald, in a complex CIA 9/11 black op.

If the CIA still hasn't released their Oswald-JFKA files after 56 years, how long would it take for them to release their Osama-9/11 files?

[Larry Hancock]

OK, that I can do.  Let's suppose Bin Laden convinced someone early on that he was key to making the campaign against the Russians work and became some sort of CIA contact, asset, what have you for that purpose.  He might also have offered all sorts of information about the nasty jihadi's who could be a danger to everybody. sort of like Oswald offered to inform on anyone who contacted him after his trip to Russia...or later offered to assist in other ways.

So you have both as "assets".....that would be perfectly reasonable, heck Oswald could have been doing it because the liked spy games and Bin Laden because he was a fanatic.  I can cite several other individuals who managed to fool both the CIA and FBI at different times in a similar fashion.  As to Bin Laden, for some time things were working so well and so many Russians were getting killed that the CIA Chief of station refused to acknowledge any warnings about the jihadis and I assume that would include Bin Laden.

Lets even go further and say Bin Laden fed a few other doubles into the system and the CIA worked with them as potential penetration assets....they were truly desperate to catch up to terror attacks so that's conceivable .  

How long would that go on, how much would the CIA tolerate...could be a lot...would they let Bin Laden issue a manifesto...maybe...would they let him call for attacks against the US...hard to believe but I can show you FBI assets that were important enough in Klan busting to let them commit murder and not disclose or prosecute them.  In a similar vein I can show you instances where the CIA got badly taken, by people that did indeed go on to commit terror attacks and crimes.

So, we get to Dallas and we get to 9/11 and deep in the files there are contact reports,  perhaps money issued, records of meetings, memorandum approving ongoing contact in spite of public sins (Bin Laden issuing a manifesto, Oswald going on radio praising Castro) etc.  When will those documents be released....I suspect never because they would have been soft files never entered in the system or pulled out of it and destroyed. 

Which of course does not mean that the CIA as an institution told Oswald to shoot Kennedy or Bin Laden to attack New York and Washington.  What it certainly does mean, and which I fully support, is that when an intelligence agency (or the military) does something that seems sane at the time, goes really off the rails later, when it gets had, then it covers its blunder as best it can and that includes destruction of documents.  An example of that with another agency would be the NSA and the national security advisor and  the Gulf of Tonkin...another story but illustrating the same CYA. I'm writing about yet another CIA operation which included destruction of both CIA and a military service documents right now. 

So to answer  your question....most likely never.  Which will also mean no conspiracy theory about anything ever dies ....

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

       Within an hour of the first plane hitting the WTC on 9/11, the Assistant Director of Kissinger Associates, Paul Bremer, announced in a nationally televised CNN interview that the 9/11 attacks were most likely perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda."  Similar announcements blaming Al Qaeda were made on BBC television by Ehud Barak and, on Sky Television, by Henry Kissinger.

     Curiously, the first plane struck the WTC North Tower precisely at Paul Bremer's Marsh and McLennan office, killing many of his colleagues.  Needless to say, Bremer wasn't there at the time.

     It had all of the hallmarks of a pre-planned psy op-- including prompt broadcasting of the official narrative in the mass media-- as seen on 11/22/63.

     Osama Bin Laden, himself, denied any involvement in 9/11-- similar to Oswald's, "I'm a patsy" statement -- but Bin Laden's statements were blacked out in the U.S. media.  Why?

     Also, why were forged (and mis-translated) videos of Osama Bin Laden "confessing" that he did 9/11 shown on U.S. television?