Cliff Varnell Posted March 14, 2009 Share Posted March 14, 2009 The Justice Department routinely piles on indictments whenever the evidencewarrants. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, Panamanian dictator and drug smuggler Manuel Noriega, and influence peddler Jack Abramoff each received two separate indictments. That's just off the top of my head... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Varnell Posted March 14, 2009 Share Posted March 14, 2009 (edited) The Justice Department routinely piles on indictments whenever the evidencewarrants. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, Panamanian dictator and drug smuggler Manuel Noriega, and influence peddler Jack Abramoff each received two separate indictments. That's just off the top of my head... Perhaps the best example, in the context of this thread, is Pablo Escobar, the Colombian coke kingpin and terrorist: 1) Indicted in Miami for racketeering and drug smuggling (Nov. 18, 1986) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/ 2) Indicted on March 23, 1989 for drug smuggling and arranging the murder of Colombian Justice Minister Lara Bonilla. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...20and%20Traffic 3) Indicted on August 13, 1992 for plotting to blow up Avianca Airlines Flight 203 in November, 1989. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1020287.html When I'm shown to be wrong about something, I'll readily admit it. We'll see if others are so capable. Edited March 14, 2009 by Cliff Varnell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted March 15, 2009 Share Posted March 15, 2009 The Justice Department routinely piles on indictments whenever the evidencewarrants. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, Panamanian dictator and drug smuggler Manuel Noriega, and influence peddler Jack Abramoff each received two separate indictments. That's just off the top of my head... Perhaps the best example, in the context of this thread, is Pablo Escobar, the Colombian coke kingpin and terrorist: 1) Indicted in Miami for racketeering and drug smuggling (Nov. 18, 1986) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/ 2) Indicted on March 23, 1989 for drug smuggling and arranging the murder of Colombian Justice Minister Lara Bonilla. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...20and%20Traffic 3) Indicted on August 13, 1992 for plotting to blow up Avianca Airlines Flight 203 in November, 1989. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1020287.html When I'm shown to be wrong about something, I'll readily admit it. We'll see if others are so capable. Ah yes, Pablo Escabar. Didn't the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down also write about the squad that tracked down and killed Pablo on the roof of his girl friend's apartment building, having tracked him down via his cell phone? And in the pictures of the dead body, just like MLK, isn't there a person who turns out to be a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) undercover agent? We really should look at these case studies more closely. And isn't Noreago out free, or about to be released from federal custody? As for the trouble with "Conspiracy Theories," I like what my friend Kenn Thomas says at his web site: "All Conspiracy, no theory." BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 15, 2009 Share Posted March 15, 2009 (edited) The Justice Department routinely piles on indictments whenever the evidencewarrants. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, Panamanian dictator and drug smuggler Manuel Noriega, and influence peddler Jack Abramoff each received two separate indictments. That's just off the top of my head... Do you have any evidence the last two were re-indicted? Even if you do it’s irrelevant because they never were fugatives. Rudolph was but he does not seem to have been re-indicted WHILE ON THE RUN. He was indicted twice while on the lam but they were on the same date (Nov. 15, 2000) in two different jurisdictions (Northern Alabama and Northern Georgia) all the subsequent indictment listed on the FindLaw site was described as “superseding” and was issued June 26, 2003, less than four weeks after he was arrested. (May 31, 2003) http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/documents/archive_r.html Perhaps the best example, in the context of this thread, is Pablo Escobar, theColombian coke kingpin and terrorist: 1) Indicted in Miami for racketeering and drug smuggling (Nov. 18, 1986) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/ 2) Indicted on March 23, 1989 for drug smuggling and arranging the murder of Colombian Justice Minister Lara Bonilla. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...20and%20Traffic 3) Indicted on August 13, 1992 for plotting to blow up Avianca Airlines Flight 203 in November, 1989. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1020287.html OK you got me there Escobar was re-indicted twice but this does not seem to be a common practice which is why you can only cite one example of this happening to someone at large.. To a certain degree the exception proves the rule. In 1989 he wasn’t really a fugitive his whereabouts were known and he was in a country friendly with US and there was a valid extradition treaty between the countries. The problem was that Colombian authorities weren’t really disposed to capture him: “Escobar’s first serious run-in with the law was in 1976, when he and some associates were caught returning from a drug run to Ecuador. Escobar ordered the killing of the arresting officers, and the case was soon dropped. Later, at the height of his power, Escobar’s wealth and ruthlessness made it almost impossible for Colombian authorities to bring him to justice. Every time any attempt was made to limit his power, those responsible were bribed, killed, or otherwise neutralized. Pressure was mounting, however, from the United States government, which wanted Escobar extradited to face drug charges. Escobar had to use all of his power and terror to prevent extradition. La Catedral Prison In 1991, due to increasing pressure to extradite Escobar, the Colombian government and Escobar’s lawyers came up with an interesting arrangement: Escobar would turn himself in and serve a five-year jail term. In return, he would build his own prison and would not be extradited to the United States or anywhere else.” http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/2...ioescobar_2.htm It might reasonably be assumed that the 2nd indictment was part of the “increasing pressure to extradite Escobar” and/or that the prosecutor had reasonable expectation he would be extradited. In any case he was only one of 30 people from various countries indicted by the grand jury. Though he was a fugitive on August 13, 1992 he’d (nominally at least) been a prisoner 21 days earlier thus he probably was in custody when the grand jury was convened. According to the ABA: “Generally, most federal indictments involve grand juries that sit for five days a week for a period of one month. For cases involving complex and long-term investigations (such as those involving organized crime, drug conspiracies or political corruption), "long term" grand juries will be impaneled. Such "long term" grand juries typically sit fewer days each week, and their terms can be extended in six month increments for up to three years.” http://www.abanet.org/media/faqjury.html Obviously the prosecutor spent a good amount of time preparing the case before bring it to the grand jury the NYT reported that, “The indictment yesterday, said Andrew J. Maloney, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District, was the culmination of an intensive 11-month investigation conducted by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration "in close cooperation with Colombian authorities."” [1], thus the investigation began sometime in September 1991, Escobar had turned himself in three months earlier in June [2]. The other man indicted was in custody in NYC [1]. 1] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...75BC0A964958260 2] http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Retail-indus...-surrender.html Why did Escobar suddenly leave the comfort of his luxurious prison after 13 months? “Everyone knew that Escobar was still running his operation from La Catedral, but in July of 1992, it came out that Escobar had ordered some disloyal underlings brought to his “prison,” where they were tortured and killed. This was too much for even the Colombian government, and plans were made to transfer Escobar to a normal prison. Fearing he could be extradited, Escobar escaped and went into hiding.”* Since the other defendant was one his close associates it can reasonably be assumed he knew about the Brooklyn grand jury. http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/2...ioescobar_2.htm Thus Escobar’s 2nd re-indictment wasn’t analogous to the situation with Osama, the Columbians were in custody when the investigation began and probably still were when the case was brought to the grand jury but one of the two [Escobar] escaped shortly before the indictment was delivered. Your premise that it would not have been possible to indict OBL is unfound. I think you can remember what the mood was in the US in months following the attacks when Bush’s approval rating was between 82% and 92% [1]. Getting an indictment is a very low hurdle the prosecutor only has to show “probable cause” and only needs 12 out of 16 – 23 to vote in their favor [2]. The process is basically run by the prosecutor. He (or she) “decides which witnesses to call. The prosecutor decides which witnesses will receive immunity. The basic questioning is done by the prosecutor on a theory he or she articulates” there isn’t a judge in the room and no one represents the defendant(s), even attorneys for the witnesses must wait outside, “A prosecutor can obtain a subpoena to compel anyone to testify before a grand jury, without showing probable cause” [3]. You can argue it was all faked or coerced but there would have to tell the jury this, there was considerable evidence against OBL including flight manifests and other forensic evidence tying 19 of his associates to execution of the hijackings, his “confession” video, the martyrdom videos, NSA intercepts from 9/10/01 of his associates talking about the big operation the next day and the statements of Moussoui and later KSM etc. 1] http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob1.htm 2] http://www.slate.com/id/1001959/ 3] http://www.abanet.org/media/faqjury.html Interestingly as far back as 1998 OBL was even wanted for terrorism in Libya. http://www.interpol.int/Public/Data/Wanted.../1998_20232.asp EDIT - "Missing link" added Edited March 15, 2009 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Varnell Posted March 15, 2009 Share Posted March 15, 2009 (edited) As I commented in my previous post, I can admit when I've made a mistake. Well, I made another mistake in that last post. Pablo Escobar was first indicted in 1984, not 1986. World Encyclopedia Of Organized Crime, pg 336: On July 27, 1984, a Miami, Fla., grand jury, on evidence from informant Barry Seal, who had once managed shipping operations for the Colombian drug cartel, indicted Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Federico Vaughn, Jorge Ochoa Vasquez, and Jose Gonazalo Rodriguez Gacha for drug trafficking and racketeering. From the PBS Frontline web page linked above: (November 18, 1986) A U.S. federal grand jury in Miami releases the indictment of the Ochoas [Jorge and Fabio], Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha under the RICO statute. The indictment names the Medellin cartel as the largest cocaine smuggling organization in the world. From the March 23, 1989 Reuters article: Among those indicted [today] were four accused of being chiefs of the Medellin network: Mr. Escobar, Jorge Ochoa, Fabio Ochoa, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. That's five guys with multiple indictments issued at various times while they were fugitives. Usama bin Laden hasn't been indicted for the attack on the USS Cole or the attacks of 9/11 because the Justice Department has no hard evidence he was involved. Some people are emotionally incapable of admitting error, as we are going to witness some time soon... Edited March 15, 2009 by Cliff Varnell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Varnell Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...757C0A96F948260 Fugitive Vesco Indicted In Drug Conspiracy AP Published: Tuesday, April 18, 1989 The fugitive financier Robert Vesco today was added as a defendant in a narcotics conspiracy indictment, accused of persuading the Cuban Government to allow planes with cocaine to fly over Cuba on the way to the Bahamas.Mr. Vesco, indicted on one count charging that he conspired to import cocaine into the United States, is believed to have lived in Cuba since 1982, after moving around the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Costa Rica. He has been wanted in the United States since 1973 on charges of looting an investment company, Investors Overseas Services, of $224 million. etc., etc.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 (edited) Speaking of “hard evidence” you don’t have any indicating why the Justice Department didn’t indict OBL, all you have is the undocumented claim of a blogger than an FBI agent not directly involved in the investigation told him this. So you were right the department re-indicted several people at large on drugs charges in the 1980’s and at least in one case (Vesco) did so when extradition was improbable. However if you think in the post 9/11 climate a prosecutor could not have convinced 12 out of 16 to 23 grand jurors there was “probable cause” to charge OBL with involvement in the Cole or 9/11 attacks when he (or she) ‘ran the show’ in the absence of anyone to offer contrary evidence you are deep in truther la-la-land. AQ boasted of their participation in the 2000 attack [1] and the DOJ indicted two of the organization’s members “Jamal Mohammed Al-Badawi and Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Al- Quso for their roles in the Cole attack” [2] Quso had previously identified a close bin-Laden associate and reported head bodyguard, Khallad a.k.a. Tawfiq bin-Attesh as the mastermind of the bombing when interrogated by FBI and Yemeni agents. [3] As for 9/11 even Michael Rupert acknowledges that US intelligence has recordings of KSM and Atta from 9/10/01 saying things like "The match begins tomorrow" and "Tomorrow is zero hour" [4]. There was significant evidence, including flight manifests [5] implicating Atta and the 18 other hijackers and tying them to bin-Laden and AQ. Elias Davidson a “truther” wrote up a good summary of the evidence implicating the hijackers [6], though he claims the evidence is all suspect there would have been no one to raise such doubts with the grand jury. Davidson failed to mention that two flight 11 stewardess correctly identified the seat numbers of some of the hijacks though both also named seats that were empty or assigned to people not believed to have participated [7], but such errors in a such a situation are to be expected and the wrong seat numbers were often close to those of the actual hijackers [7]. One said they appeared to be Middle Eastern [7]. There were numerous reports that the CIA had previously ID’ed several of the hijackers as AQ operatives, this is frequently cited as evidence of LIHOP or an inside job, additionally some of them were spotted and photographed meeting in Malaysia with Khallad [8]. Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan the infamous OBL confession tape was found, you of course will claim it was forged but once again there would have been no one to raise such doubts to the grand jury and about this time Zacarias Moussoui started acknowledging he was an AQ operative preparing for a later attack blessed by OBL. By 2003 KSM had been captured and bragged about planning the attacks, a hard drive captured with him and other AQ operatives “contained information about the four airplanes hijacked on 11 September 2001 including code names: airline company, flight number, target: pilot name and background information, and names of the hijackers...photographs of 19 individuals identified as the 11 September 2001 hijackers...a document that listed the pilot license fees for Mohammad Atta and biographies for some of the 11 September 2001 hijackers...images of passports and an image of Mohammad Atta...[and] transcripts of chat sessions belonging to at least one of the 11 September 2001 hijackers [9] “letters from Mr. bin Laden and the details of other plots” [10]. KSM didn’t dispute the authenticity of the information on the hard drive but claimed it belonged not to him but rather to someone else in the house he was captured in, Mustafa Hawsawi, [11] another high ranking AQ operative tied to the attacks [12]. KSM seems to have bragged of his role in 9/11 long before his capture: “Last September, Yosri Fouda, a reporter for the Arab-language Al-Jazeera television network, said he interviewed Mohammed while making a documentary for the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Fouda said Mohammed introduced himself as the head of the al Qaeda military committee. He told Fouda that he attended the meeting, complete with details, in which the decision was made to strike at America inside America. Coalition intelligence confirmed Mohammed's presence at the meeting.” [13] Bin-Laden himself was interviewed by Al-Jazeera on October 21, 2001 (two weeks after the invasion began), he neither directly admitted or denied involvement but he admitted to attacking America made comments strongly suggesting involvement in the attacks and justifying them : “America has made many accusations against us and many other Muslims around the world. Its charge that we are carrying out acts of terrorism is an unwarranted description. […] They describe those brave guys who took the battle to the heart of America and destroyed its most famous economic and military landmarks. They did this, as we understand it, and this is something we have agitated for before, as a matter of self-defense, in defense of our brothers and sons in Palestine, and to liberate our sacred religious sites/things. If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists. […] Just as they're killing us, we have to kill them so that there will be a balance of terror. This is the first time the balance of terror has been close between the two parties, between Muslims and Americans, in the modern age…The battle has moved to inside America. […] So we kill their innocents, and I say it is permissible in law and intellectually, because those who spoke on this matter spoke from a juridical perspective. […] The [Twin] towers are [sic] an economic power and not a children's school. Those that were there are men that supported the biggest economic power in the world. They have to review their books. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and our innocent people, we will kill their women and their innocent people until they stop. […] Those men who sacrificed themselves in New York and Washington, they are the spokesmen of the nation's conscience. They are the nation's conscience that saw they have to avenge against the oppression. Not all terrorism is cursed; some terrorism is blessed. A thief, a criminal, for example feels terrorized by the police. So, do we say to the policeman, "You are a terrorist"? No. Police terrorism against criminals is a blessed terrorism because it will prevent the criminal from repeating his deed. America and Israel exercise the condemned terrorism. We practice the good terrorism which stops them from killing our children in Palestine and elsewhere. […] We swore that America wouldn't live in security until we live it truly in Palestine. This showed the reality of America, which puts Israel's interest above its own people's interest. America won't get out of this crisis until it gets out of the Arabian Peninsula, and until it stops its support of Israel." [14] But go ahead despite all the above continue in your fantasy that the DoJ didn’t have enough evidence (authentic or fake) to get indictments. Why didn’t the DoJ pursue additional indictments against him? I missed the obvious explanation. Remember that about 2 weeks after the attacks FBI agent Rex Tomb, the same one who spoke to the blogger said "There's going to be a considerable amount of time before anyone associated with the attacks is actually charged" [15]. “a considerable amount of time” is of course open to interpretation but it would be unreasonable to limit it less than two months, KSM was only indicted for planning “Operation Bojinka” about 9 months after the Philippines informed the US of the plot and Escobar’s 1992 indictment came after “an 11-month investigation”. On November 6, 2001 the Bush administration took the matter out of the DoJ’s hands and transferred such trials to military tribunals which they argued were exempt from the 5th Amendment obligation for grand jury indictment [16] REFERENCES: 1] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/06/20/...ain297600.shtml 2] http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=28976 3] (a)Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower pg 371 (Vintage edition) http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Qaeda-...0753192-1877268, (b)Newsweek 11/20/01 http://web.archive.org/web/20030212062013/...31818.asp?cp1=1 4] Rupert, Michael, Crossing the Rubicon pg 343 http://www.tiny.cc/rubicon 5] http://911myths.com/html/no_hijackers_on_the_manifests.html 6] http://newdemocracyworld.org/Noevidence.pdf 7] http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Identifying_the_Hijackers 8] (a)Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower pg 384 -5 (Vintage edition) http://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Qaeda-...0753192-1877268, (b)Newsweek 11/20/01 http://web.archive.org/web/20030212062013/...31818.asp?cp1=1 9] http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/15/guantanam...mmed/index.html, http://counterterrorismblog.org/site-resou...ng%20032007.pdf pgs 6 - 7 10] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15gitmo.html 11] http://counterterrorismblog.org/site-resou...ng%20032007.pdf pg 11 12] http://articles.latimes.com/2002/sep/27/nation/na-intel27 13] http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/...biog/index.html 14] http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf...ript/index.html 15] http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/09/47109 16] http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/2001/pub-millcommfinal.pdf, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1113-07.htm Edited March 18, 2009 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 (edited) Speaking of “hard evidence” you don’t have any indicating why the Justice Department didn’t indict OBL, all you have is the undocumented claim of a blogger than an FBI agent not directly involved in the investigation told him this..... What indictments did the grand jury, cited as convened after 9/11, in numerous reports, end up filing, Len? USA Today09/18/2001 - Updated 10:20 PM ET 75 people detained for questioning, 4 arrested ....The government searched for more than 190 people who investigators believe may have information about the attack or who may have assisted the hijackers. The effort was being aided by a grand jury in White Plains, N.Y., and officials said other grand juries would likely be used around the country to issue subpoenas and gather evidence.... Here's one.... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...753C1A9679C8B63A NATION CHALLENGED: THE COURTS; In Terror Inquiry, Student Is Charged With Perjury By BENJAMIN WEISER and CHRISTOPHER DREW Published: Saturday, October 20, 2001 A Jordanian student was charged yesterday in Manhattan with lying before a federal grand jury investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Federal prosecutors said that the student, Osama Awadallah, had lied about his associations with Khalid al-Midhar, one of the suspected hijackers who helped crash a jetliner into the Pentagon. In court yesterday, a federal magistrate judge, Gabriel W. Gorenstein, ordered Mr. Awadallah, 21, held without bond on two counts of perjury. He could face a total of 10 years in prison if convicted. The judge acted after a prosecutor, Robin L. Baker, said that Mr. Awadallah's lies ''promoted terrorism'' and that if he were released on bail, he might flee. There were no allegations that Mr. Awadallah had any role in the hijackings, and in court, one of his lawyers, Jesse Berman, contended that Mr. Awadallah was exhausted and confused when questioned before the grand jury. ''He had nothing to do with the terrible events of Sept. 11,'' Mr. Berman told the judge... ....After the hearing, Mr. Berman assailed the government's decision to charge his client, saying it was trying to justify the arrests of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims. ''The Justice Department has to come up with defendants,'' Mr. Berman said. ''It's been five weeks since the hijackings. The public wants someone to be drawn and quartered. We've got 6,000 bodies. They've got to justify doing their job.'' Mr. Awadallah had been held as a material witness in Manhattan since his arrest about a month ago in San Diego, where he attended college. The United States attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White, said yesterday: ''Every witness brought before a grand jury as part of the investigation of the horrific attacks on Sept. 11 -- indeed, as part of any investigation -- has an absolute obligation to tell the truth throughout his or her testimony.'' Her office had no comment on Mr. Berman's criticism..... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/nyregion/18immigrant.html Acquaintance of 2 Hijackers Is Acquitted By RAY RIVERA and MATTHEW SWEENEY Published: November 18, 2006 Most here would accept this as "documentation".... published on a government owned, Canadian Radio web page: (You predictably won't accept it as such, Len, but consider the probability that most here will....especially since Haas's report was widespread, probably triggered the Washington Post article, and likely too, the KSLA inquiry quoted below, and the FBI never challenged the veracity of Haas's June 6, 2006 quotes attributed to Rex Tomb, and neither has Tomb himself.) http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...%3Doff%26sa%3DNhttp://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Inter...uestion-5.shtml 11 Questions How is it that the FBI file on Osama bin Laden does not mention that he is wanted for the events of September 11? - Éric Beauchamp, de Mascouche - Eric Beauchamp, Mascouche .....This omission has been widely circulated on the Internet in spring 2006. Un article du « Muckraker Report », en juin 2006, indiquait qu'un porte-parole du FBI, Rex Tomb, lui avait avoué que le FBI ne détenait aucune preuve tangible reliant Oussama ben Laden aux attentats du 11 septembre. An article in the "Muckraker Report, June 2006, indicated that a spokesman for the FBI, Rex Tomb, had confessed that the FBI had no evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks of September 11. En entrevue, M. Tomb, chef des communications d'enquête, Section des affaires publiques du FBI, nous a plutôt parlé d'un « grand malentendu » et a affirmé qu'il n'avait aucunement l'intention de donner cette impression. In an interview, Mr. Tomb, Chief of Communications of Inquiry, Public Affairs Section of the FBI, we instead talked about a "great misunderstanding" and said he had no intention to give that impression. En fait, si la fiche du FBI exclut toute référence aux attentats du 11 septembre, c'est tout simplement parce qu'il se conforme aux dossiers du département de la Justice des États-Unis. In fact, if the FBI does not form any reference to the attacks of 11 September, simply because it conforms to the files of the Department of Justice of the United States. Or, le département n'a porté aucune accusation formelle contre Ben Laden dans cette affaire. However, the Department has brought no formal charges against bin Laden in this case. M. Tomb nous a donc invités à nous adresser au département de la Justice américain, ce que nous avons fait. Mr. Tomb has therefore invited to contact the Department of Justice, what we have done. La porte-parole du ministère a répété qu'il était « le terroriste le plus recherché », mais a affirmé « ne pas pouvoir commenter » cette omission. The spokesperson of the Ministry repeated that it was "the most wanted terrorist," but said "not able to comment" this omission. Du côté du FBI, on nous dit que cela n'est pas inhabituel. The side of the FBI, we are told that this is not unusual....... The backlash from Ed Haas's reporting of what Rex Tomb said on June , 2006, caused Tomb to "revise" his statements to Haas. He does not deny that he told Haas "there was no evidence". Instead, he is quoted as "he had no intention to give that impression". Is Radio Canada, "lying", too, Len? KSLA offers a similar report. If you were the FBI spokesperson, and you had weeks to take in the reaction to your "no evidence" statement, would you back pedal, if you hadn't said it, or would you accuse Haas of making it up? Rex Tomb is quoted as back pedaling, not denying he said it to Haas... http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=5590113SHREVEPORT, LA FBI Bin Laden Poster: No 9/11 Updated: Oct 30, 2006 02:06 AM REPORTER: Jeff Ferrell Long before the war in Iraq, the "War on Terror" began in Afghanistan and the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden. So, why then is there not a single reference to 9/11 on the FBI'S '10 Most Wanted' poster of Bin Laden? First of all, it turns out, Bin Laden has never been indicted for the attacks of September 11th. The FBI poster reads: "Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world." Regarding the 9/11 omission in the FBI poster, Special Agent Sheila Thorne in the bureau's New Orleans office told us quote, "the indictment could be superceded if necessary." In other words, charges relating to September 11th could be 'tacked on' later-- for something described as 'The Pearl Harbor of our generation.' So, we decided to contact the White House for their reaction to the 9/11 omission in the FBI poster. But when we told Blair Jones in the White House press office that we wanted a statement 'independent' of anything the FBI told us, Jones said quote, "we speak with one voice." You may remember, it was just nine days after 9/11 that the President addressed a joint session of Congress where he blamed Al Qaeda, even mentioning its leader Usama Bin Laden by name. Then came December 13th, 2001, when the Pentagon released Bin Laden's so-called confession video. The FBI even revised Bin Laden's poster two months after September 11th. And five years later there's still no 9/11 reference. We asked retired Barksdale Air Force Base Brig. General Peyton Cole, the former Commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing and its fleet of B-52 bombers, for his reaction on the omission. General Cole told us, "it's puzzling and begs the question why not?" FBI Special Agent Thorne called KSLA News 12 right before news time, telling us that our question is not one the FBI should answer. Thorne told us the decision whether to indict Usama Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks is made by the U.S. Justice Department. We'll keep you posted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/1...stan.terrorism5Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over Sunday 14 October 2001 22.19 BST President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan. Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty".... So if you consider that most readers will accept that we are past the "there is no documentation for what Ed Haas claimed Rex Tomb said about "no evidence" to achieve an grand jury indictment of Bin Laden in the crimes related to the 9/11 attacks", where will your rock solid belief system take you in your next post? Are you familiar with the phrase, "a healthy dose of skepticism", Len? You exhibit none, unless it is toward those who challenge the official line. You defend the indefensible, you defend this "record"....why? How? http://web.archive.org/web/20071208004744/...2/20030208.htmlPresident Bush March 6, 2003 Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference ,,THE PRESIDENT: ,.Colin Powell, in an eloquent address to the United Nations, described some of the information we were at liberty of talking about. He mentioned a man named Al Zarqawi, who was in charge of the poison network. He's a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. There is a poison plant in Northeast Iraq. To assume that Saddam Hussein knew none of this was going on is not to really understand the nature of the Iraqi society... http://web.archive.org/web/20071208080709/...8/20060821.html Office of the Press Secretary August 21, 2006 ..Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that? THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.... http://web.archive.org/web/20071208035033/...9/20060910.html Office of the Vice President September 10, 2006 Interview of the Vice President by Tim Russert, NBC News, Meet the Press... ...Q But let's look at what you told me on that morning of September 16, 2001, when I asked you about Saddam Hussein. Let's watch. (Video clip is played.) THE VICE PRESIDENT: At this stage, the focus is over here on al Qaeda and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein's bottled up at this point. (Video clip concludes.) Q Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. Q You said Saddam Hussein was bottled up, and he was not linked in any way to September 11th. THE VICE PRESIDENT: To 9/11. Q And now we have the select committee on intelligence coming out with a report on Friday that says here: "A declassified report released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq." You said here it was pretty well confirmed that Atta may have had a meeting in Prague -- that, that was credible. All the while, according to the Senate intelligence committee, in January and in June and in September, the CIA was saying that wasn't the case. And then the President -- ... ...Q But the President said they were working in concert, giving the strong suggestion to the American people that they were involved in September 11th. THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, they are -- there are two totally different propositions here. And people have consistently tried to confuse them. And it's important, I think -- there's a third proposition, as well, too, and that is Iraq's traditional position as a strong sponsor of terror. So you've got Iraq and 9/11: no evidence that there's a connection. You've got Iraq and al Qaeda: testimony from the Director of CIA that there was, indeed, a relationship; Zarqawi in Baghdad, et cetera. Then the -- Q The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact, Saddam -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I haven't seen the report. I haven't had a chance to read it yet -- Q But, Mr. Vice President, the bottom line is -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- but the fact is, we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02, and was there from then basically until the time we launched into Iraq. .... ....Q In September 11th, okay? And the CIA said leading up to the war that the possibility of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction was "low." It appears that there was a deliberate attempt made by the administration to link al Qaeda in Iraq in the minds of the American people and use it as a rationale to go into Iraq. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Tim, I guess -- I'm not sure what part you don't understand here.... Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda.... http://web.archive.org/web/20071207234931/...20060912-2.html Office of the Press Secretary September 12, 2006 Press Briefing by Tony Snow White House Conference Center Briefing Room .....Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion? MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq. Q There was a link -- MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. Zarqawi, for instance, directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. But they did they have a corner office at the Mukhabarat? No. Were they getting a line item in Saddam's budget? No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship. Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship? MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it. .... http://web.archive.org/web/20071208035045/...20060915-2.html Press Conference by the President September 15, 2006 ....Martha. Q Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And, yet, a month ago you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that? THE PRESIDENT: The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. I never said there was an operational relationship. ..... http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1 Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab By John McWethy W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002) President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to administration officials.... http://web.archive.org/web/20030401230416/...d=3&pid=371 Capital Games By David Corn Powell's One Good Reason To Bomb Iraq--UPDATED 02/06/2003 @ 12:12am .....But here's the first question that struck me after Powell's presentation: why hasn't the United States bombed the so-called Zarqawi camp shown in the slide? The administration obviously knows where it is, and Powell spoke of it in the present tense. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/world/fg-intel7 Ongoing Iraqi Camp Questioned By Greg Miller February 07, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where Al Qaeda affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons. But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it? Lawmakers who have attended classified briefings on the camp say that they have been stymied for months in their efforts to get an explanation for why the United States has not launched a military strike on the compound near the village of Khurmal. Powell cited its ongoing operation as one of the key reasons for suspecting ties between Baghdad and the Al Qaeda terror network. ....The lawmakers put new pressure on the Bush administration to explain its decision to leave the facility, which it has known about for months, unharmed. "Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?" Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session. "I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said. Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested that the administration has refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq. "This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. "If you take it out, you can't use it as justification for war.".... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9974651/ (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GLORIA BORGER, TV SHOW HOST: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.” CHENEY: No, I never said that. BORGER: OK. CHENEY: I never said that. BORGER: I think that is... CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down. (END VIDEO CLIP) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) December 9, 2001 The Vice President Appears on NBC's Meet the Press CHENEY: It‘s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April. http://web.archive.org/web/20071208093122/...vp20011209.html (END VIDEO CLIP) http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/06/03/020603fa_FACT Seymour M. Hersh, Annals of National Security, "Missed Messages," The New Yorker, June 3, 2002, p. 40 June 3, 2002 Issue ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY about intelligence-community harbingers of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. by Al Qaeda... Mentions that the Bush Administration stated it would release information implicating bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization, but never did so... It is now clear that the White House, for its own reasons, chose to keep secret the extent of the intelligence that was available before and immediately after September 11th.. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/execsummary.pdf The 9/11 Commission Report Page 22 ....To date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks.Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre- 9/11 annual budget estimated at $30 million. If a particular source of funds had dried up, al Qaeda could easily have found enough money elsewhere to fund the attack. ..... http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch5.htm ......To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance. Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding. If a particular funding source had dried up, al Qaeda could have easily tapped a different source or diverted funds from another project to fund an operation that cost $400,000-$500,000 over nearly two years. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/natio...text092301.html Text: ABC's 'This Week' Sunday, Sept. 23, 2001 Following is the transcript of ABC's "This Week," hosted by Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts with correspondents George Will and George Stephanopoulos, and guests Secretary of State Colin Powell; King Abdullah II of Jordan; and General Richard Hawley, former commander of the Air Combat Command. ....DONALDSON: All right. Let me show you something you said the other day, and just see whether you've changed your view on it, concerning proof. You said, "We are assembling the evidence that will tell us, in a way that the world will fully confer with us--concur with us, who is responsible for this." Are we going to present before the world evidence of Osama bin Laden's guilt? POWELL: Yes, and I think his guilt is going to be very obvious to the world. I mean, he has been indicted previously for terror activity against the United States, and so this is a continuing pattern of terrorism, and we are putting all of the information that we have together, the intelligence information, the information being generated by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And I think we will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case that there will be no doubt when that case is presented that it is al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who has been responsible for this terrible tragic (inaudible). DONALDSON: So you're talking about something beyond simple assertions by U.S. leaders. You're talking about assertions backed up by the evidence. POWELL: Yes. DONALDSON: OK.... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/natio...text092301.html Text: NBC's 'Meet the Press' With Tim Russert Sunday, Sept. 23, 2001 ..... RUSSERT: Are you absolutely convinced that Osama bin Laden was responsible for this attack?... ....RUSSERT: Will you release publicly a white paper which links him and his organization to this attack to put people at ease? POWELL: We are hard at work bringing all the information together, intelligence information, law enforcement information. And I think in the near future we will be able to put out a paper, a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking him to this attack. But also, remember, he has been linked to earlier attacks against U.S. interests, and he's already indicted for earlier attacks against United ... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;sq=&st=cse A NATION CHALLENGED: THE PROOF; U.S. to Publish Terror Evidence On bin Laden By JANE PERLEZ AND TIM WEINER Published: September 24, 2001 The Bush administration plans to make public evidence linking Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda network to the terror attacks on the United States in an effort to persuade the world, and particularly Muslim nations, that a military response is justified. The evidence will embrace new information gathered by law enforcement and intelligence agents on the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as material used in indictments against Mr. bin Laden in the bombing of American Embassies in East Africa in 1998, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today. It may also cite leads developed in the investigation of the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen last October. The administration sees the evidence as crucial to the support of friendly Muslim countries -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan -- whose governments fear that punishing military action by the United States against the terrorists will spur widespread popular unrest. In the Saudi port city of Jidda, the foreign ministers of six Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, pledged ''total support and co-operation for international efforts to find the authors of the terrorist acts and bring them to justice.'' But the statement offered no specific military or other assistance. [Page B2.] King Abdullah of Jordan -- which failed to side with the United States in the gulf war -- sounded less equivocal in his support of whatever Washington might do. ''We realize that the start is always going to be difficult, the first step is always going to be a burden,'' the king said on ABC's ''This Week.'' ''But I believe that the steps undertaken by the American armed forces will have the full support of the international community.'' Two reports are expected within days, officials said: a public one from the State Department, and a secret one prepared by United States intelligence agencies and including details from trusted foreign sources. Officials say they are still arguing over how much information to release -- and to which countries..... http://web.archive.org/web/20071207235137/...0010924-13.html For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary September 24, 2001 Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer The James S. Brady Briefing Room .....Q Ari, yesterday Secretary Powell was very precise that he was going to put out a report on what we had on bin Laden that could be reported, and not classified. Today, the President shot him down -- and he's been shot down many, many times by the administration -- you seem to be operating -- he also retreated a question of putting out a report. No, I'm wrong? MR. FLEISCHER: No, I think that there was just a misinterpretation of the exact words the Secretary used on the Sunday shows. And the Secretary talked about that in a period of time -- I think his word was "soon" -- there would be some type of document that could be made available. As you heard the Secretary say today, he said "as we are able," as it unclassifies. Q -- much more emphatic yesterday, I thought. MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I think he said the word "soon," as I was reminded today by a very knowledgeable official at the State Department, that's called "State Department soon." And so it's fully consistent with what the President has been saying and the Secretary said. You know, I mean, look, it shouldn't surprise anybody. As soon as -- Q The American people thought "soon" meant "soon." (Laughter.) Q Is this a sign, Ari, that -- MR. FLEISCHER: Kelly, let me -- I was getting there, I was answering Helen. Helen, what I was saying is, it shouldn't surprise anybody that as soon as the attack on our country took place, the immediate reaction is the investigations begin. They begin with the intelligence agencies, they begin with domestic agencies, they begin with a regular law enforcement authorities. And they start to collect a whole series of information. Some of that information is going to end up in the form of grand jury information, which of course is subject to secrecy laws. Others coming from intelligence services is by definition going to be classified, and will be treated as such. Over the course of time, will there be changes to that, that can lead to some type of declassified document over whatever period of time? That has historically been the pattern, and I think that's what the Secretary was referring to. Q That's 50 years from now, if you're talking about a State Department white paper. MR. FLEISCHER: Well, again, I'm not aware of anybody who said, white paper, and the Secretary didn't say anything about a white paper yesterday. Q Is this a sign, though, that allies, particularly Arab and Muslim allies, really want to see the evidence because they're concerned about any potential action in Afghanistan could lead to instability in the region, so they want to be certain that you have the evidence?... .....Q The point is, what I'm trying to figure out is, is a group of people somewhere being tasked with coming up with a document that can be scrubbed of classified material so that you can lay out the case? Is that an effort that's now underway? Is that just an intention somewhere down the road? MR. FLEISCHER: It remains a classified document; a series of classified documents, to be more precise. Q Ari, do you know if classified documents are being supplied to the grand jury that's looking into this in New York? MR. FLEISCHER: You need to talk to the Justice Department about anything dealing with grand juries...... http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?011008fa_FACT WHAT WENT WRONG The C.I.A. and the failure of American intelligence. by SEYMOUR M. HERSH Issue of 2001-10-08 Posted 2001-10-01 ....On September 23rd, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a television interviewer that "we will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case" showing that bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. But the widely anticipated white paper could not be published, the Justice Department official said, for lack of hard facts. "There was not enough to make a sale." The Administration justified the delay by telling the press that most of the information was classified and could not yet be released.</h3> Last week, however, a senior C.I.A. official confirmed that the intelligence community had not yet developed a significant amount of solid information about the terrorists' operations, financing, and planning. "One day, we'll know, but at the moment we don't know," the official said....... Edited March 18, 2009 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Speaking of “hard evidence” you don’t have any indicating why the Justice Department didn’t indict OBL, all you have is the undocumented claim of a blogger than an FBI agent not directly involved in the investigation told him this..... What indictments did the grand jury, cited as convened after 9/11, in numerous reports, end up filing, Len? USA Today 09/18/2001 - Updated 10:20 PM ET 75 people detained for questioning, 4 arrested ....The government searched for more than 190 people who investigators believe may have information about the attack or who may have assisted the hijackers. The effort was being aided by a grand jury in White Plains, N.Y., and officials said other grand juries would likely be used around the country to issue subpoenas and gather evidence.... Here's one.... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...753C1A9679C8B63 A NATION CHALLENGED: THE COURTS; In Terror Inquiry, Student Is Charged With Perjury By BENJAMIN WEISER and CHRISTOPHER DREW Published: Saturday, October 20, 2001 A Jordanian student was charged yesterday in Manhattan with lying before a federal grand jury investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Federal prosecutors said that the student, Osama Awadallah, had lied about his associations with Khalid al-Midhar, one of the suspected hijackers who helped crash a jetliner into the Pentagon. In court yesterday, a federal magistrate judge, Gabriel W. Gorenstein, ordered Mr. Awadallah, 21, held without bond on two counts of perjury. He could face a total of 10 years in prison if convicted. The judge acted after a prosecutor, Robin L. Baker, said that Mr. Awadallah's lies ''promoted terrorism'' and that if he were released on bail, he might flee. There were no allegations that Mr. Awadallah had any role in the hijackings, and in court, one of his lawyers, Jesse Berman, contended that Mr. Awadallah was exhausted and confused when questioned before the grand jury. ''He had nothing to do with the terrible events of Sept. 11,'' Mr. Berman told the judge... ....After the hearing, Mr. Berman assailed the government's decision to charge his client, saying it was trying to justify the arrests of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims. ''The Justice Department has to come up with defendants,'' Mr. Berman said. ''It's been five weeks since the hijackings. The public wants someone to be drawn and quartered. We've got 6,000 bodies. They've got to justify doing their job.'' Mr. Awadallah had been held as a material witness in Manhattan since his arrest about a month ago in San Diego, where he attended college. The United States attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White, said yesterday: ''Every witness brought before a grand jury as part of the investigation of the horrific attacks on Sept. 11 -- indeed, as part of any investigation -- has an absolute obligation to tell the truth throughout his or her testimony.'' Her office had no comment on Mr. Berman's criticism..... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/nyregion/18immigrant.html Acquaintance of 2 Hijackers Is Acquitted By RAY RIVERA and MATTHEW SWEENEY Published: November 18, 2006 Yes several grand juries looked into aspects of 9/11 most (if not all) including the ones you cited investigated people living in the US, why you think this was relevant to the failure to indict someone living in a remote location in Afghanistan escapes me. Most here would accept this as "documentation".... published on a government owned, Canadian Radio web page: (You predictably won't accept it as such, Len, but consider the probability that most here will....especially since Haas's report was widespread, probably triggered the Washington Post article, and likely too, the KSLA inquiry quoted below, and the FBI never challenged the veracity of Haas's June 6, 2006 quotes attributed to Rex Tomb, and neither has Tomb himself.) http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...%3Doff%26sa%3DN http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Inter...uestion-5.shtml 11 Questions How is it that the FBI file on Osama bin Laden does not mention that he is wanted for the events of September 11? - Éric Beauchamp, de Mascouche - Eric Beauchamp, Mascouche .....This omission has been widely circulated on the Internet in spring 2006. Un article du « Muckraker Report », en juin 2006, indiquait qu'un porte-parole du FBI, Rex Tomb, lui avait avoué que le FBI ne détenait aucune preuve tangible reliant Oussama ben Laden aux attentats du 11 septembre. An article in the "Muckraker Report, June 2006, indicated that a spokesman for the FBI, Rex Tomb, had confessed that the FBI had no evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks of September 11. En entrevue, M. Tomb, chef des communications d'enquête, Section des affaires publiques du FBI, nous a plutôt parlé d'un « grand malentendu » et a affirmé qu'il n'avait aucunement l'intention de donner cette impression. In an interview, Mr. Tomb, Chief of Communications of Inquiry, Public Affairs Section of the FBI, we instead talked about a "great misunderstanding" and said he had no intention to give that impression. En fait, si la fiche du FBI exclut toute référence aux attentats du 11 septembre, c'est tout simplement parce qu'il se conforme aux dossiers du département de la Justice des États-Unis. In fact, if the FBI does not form any reference to the attacks of 11 September, simply because it conforms to the files of the Department of Justice of the United States. Or, le département n'a porté aucune accusation formelle contre Ben Laden dans cette affaire. However, the Department has brought no formal charges against bin Laden in this case. M. Tomb nous a donc invités à nous adresser au département de la Justice américain, ce que nous avons fait. Mr. Tomb has therefore invited to contact the Department of Justice, what we have done. La porte-parole du ministère a répété qu'il était « le terroriste le plus recherché », mais a affirmé « ne pas pouvoir commenter » cette omission. The spokesperson of the Ministry repeated that it was "the most wanted terrorist," but said "not able to comment" this omission. Du côté du FBI, on nous dit que cela n'est pas inhabituel. The side of the FBI, we are told that this is not unusual....... The backlash from Ed Haas's reporting of what Rex Tomb said on June , 2006, caused Tomb to "revise" his statements to Haas. He does not deny that he told Haas "there was no evidence". Instead, he is quoted as "he had no intention to give that impression". Is Radio Canada, "lying", too, Len? KSLA offers a similar report. If you were the FBI spokesperson, and you had weeks to take in the reaction to your "no evidence" statement, would you back pedal, if you hadn't said it, or would you accuse Haas of making it up? Rex Tomb is quoted as back pedaling, not denying he said it to Haas... Tomb’s comments to Radio Canada were too vague to draw any concrete solutions especially since they had been translated and were made over 2 years after his comments to Haas. Your interpretation of them is shaped by views just as mine are by mine. Not wanting “to give the impression” of something precludes saying it. Even IF Tomb said what Haas claimed he did it proves nothing -He did not work for either of the prosecutors (originally) charged with prosecuting such cases (Wash. D.C. and southern district NY) or even directly for the DoJ, he didn’t even work with the part of the FBI investigating 9/11, rather he ran the “Most Wanted” websites. -As I pointed out in my previous post prosecuting “enemy combatants” was taken out of the DoJ’s hands and entrusted to the DoD Nov. 6 2001 -As I also pointed out in my previous post there was more than enough evidence against OBL to indict him for 9/11. I looked at The Looming Tower again, one of OBL personal bodyguards IDed Atta and 6 other hijackers as being AQ members. (Pg 413, Vintage edition) I didn’t reply to the rest of your post because its relevance completely eluded me, KSLA didn't speak to Tomb but rather a New Orleans agent the rest had nothing to do with the lack of an indictment of OBL for 9/11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Williams Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Multiple points to be made here, even on a broad, shallow understanding of the facts like mine, as I've heard this line all too often , and eloquent though it may be , it just dont' hold any water really: People who think the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 or in the JFK assassination sometimes complain that those who dismiss them as “conspiracy theorists” are guilty of inconsistency. For don’t the defenders of the “official story” behind 9/11 themselves believe in a conspiracy, namely one masterminded by Osama bin Laden? Don’t they acknowledge the existence of conspiracies like Watergate, as well as everyday garden variety criminal conspiracies? --kind of a non-issue, as acknowledging that there can ever be a conspiracy anywhere does not suddenly make someone a super-credible sober-as-hell skeptic. The objection is superficial. Critics of the best known “conspiracy theories” don’t deny the possibility of conspiracies per se. Rather they deny the possibility, or at least the plausibility, of conspiracies of the scale of those posited by 9/11 and JFK assassination skeptics. One reason for this has to do with considerations about the nature of modern bureaucracies, especially governmental ones. They are notoriously sclerotic and risk-averse, structurally incapable of implementing any decision without reams of paperwork and committee oversight, and dominated by ass-covering careerists concerned above all with job security. The personnel who comprise them largely preexist and outlast the particular administrations that are voted in and out every few years, and have interests and attitudes that often conflict with those of the politicians they temporarily serve. Like the rest of society, they are staffed by individuals with wildly divergent worldviews that are difficult to harmonize. The lack of market incentives and the power of public employee unions make them extremely inefficient. And so forth. All of this makes the chances of organizing diverse reaches of the bureaucracy (just the right set of people spread across the Army, the Air Force, the FBI, the CIA, the FAA, etc. – not to mention within private firms having their own bureaucracies and diversity of corporate and individual interests) in a short period of time (e.g. the months between Bush’s inauguration and 9/11) to carry out a plot and cover-up of such staggering complexity, close to nil. --This is probably the most true of your post in a literal sense, as it's true that most bureacracies are leaky sieves in terms of both secrecy and efficiency. However, that applies to their moral codes as well. And to an oft overlooked point-there is such a thing as mutual cooperation(either to avoid embarassment/scandal or to massively profit) that doesn't involve an actively organized conspiracy as you define it. Another reason has to do with the nature of liberal democratic societies, and the way in which they differ from totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, whose leaders did conspire to do great evil. The point is not that the leaders of liberal democratic societies are not capable of great evil. Of course they are. But they do not, and cannot, commit evils in the same way that totalitarian leaders do. There are both structural and sociological reasons for this. The structural reasons have to do with the adversarial, checks-and-balances nature of liberal democratic polities, which make it extremely difficult for any faction or interest to impose its agenda by force on the others. In the American context, the courts, the legislature, and the executive branch are all jealous of their power, even when controlled by the same party. The Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, CIA, FBI, etc. are all also notoriously often at odds with one another, as are the various departments within the executive branch. The same is true of private interests – the press, corporations, universities, and the like. All must work through public legal channels, and when they try to do otherwise they risk exposure from competing interests. Unlike traditional societies, in which the various elements of society agree (if only because they’ve never known any alternative) to subordinate their interests to a common end (e.g. a religious end), and totalitarian societies, which openly and brutally force every element to subordinate their interests to a common end (e.g. a utopian or dystopian political end), liberal democratic societies eschew any common end in the interests of allowing each individual and faction to pursue their own often conflicting ends as far as possible. --I would disagree most heartily here, while they are jealous of their power towards each other in times of relative prosperity, in times of possible political financial or otherwise destruction I'd imagine they scramble to pick up the pieces and scratch each other's backs like any other group of politicians or businessmen. Now I do not claim that liberal democratic societies in fact perfectly realize this ideal of eschewing any common end. Far from it. The liberal democratic ethos inevitably becomes an end in itself, and all factions that refuse to incorporate it are ultimately pushed to the margins or even persecuted. (John Rawls’s so-called “political liberalism” is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to rationalize this “soft totalitarianism.”) But that does not affect my point. The imposition of the liberal ethos may involve an occasional bold power grab on the part of one faction (as Roe v. Wade did in the case of the Supreme Court). It may involve attempts culturally to marginalize the opposition (as in the universities and entertainment industry). But the other factions know about these efforts – they are hardly carried out unobserved in smoke-filled rooms – and never roll over and play dead, as they would in a totalitarian society. Liberal ideologues must work through the very adversarial institutions that their ideology calls for, which is why these alleged arch-democrats are constantly complaining about the choices their fellow citizens democratically make (electing Bush, voting for Prop 8, opposing gun control, supporting capital punishment, etc.). For them to impose their egalitarian ethos on everyone else through force of law takes generations, and a series of public battles, before the other side is gradually ground down. The evil that results is typically the result of a slowly and gradually evolving public consensus to do, or at least to give in to, evil – not a sudden and secret conspiratorial act. --?? So, now you're claiming a liberal conspiracy that failed, or what?? So, structurally, there is just no plausible way for an “inside job” conspiracy of the JFK assassination or 9/11 type to work. There is simply not enough harmony between the different institutions that would have to be involved, either of a natural sort or the type imposed by force. And this brings me to the sociological point that the liberal ethos itself, precisely because it tends so deeply to permeate the thinking even of the professedly conservative elements of liberal democratic societies, makes a conspiracy of the sort in question impossible to carry out. “Freedom,” “tolerance,” “democracy,” “majority rule,” and the like are as much the watchwords of contemporary American conservatives as they are of American liberals. Indeed, contemporary conservatives tend to defend their own positions precisely in these terms, and are uncomfortable with any suggestion that there might be something in conservatism inconsistent with them. The good side of this is that contemporary American conservatives will have absolutely no truck with the likes of Tim McVeigh, and will condemn right-wing political violence as loudly as any liberal would. The bad side is that some of them also seem willing to tolerate almost any evil as long as there is a consensus in favor of it and it is done legally. (Same-sex marriage? Well, the courts imposed it without voter approval. But what if the voters do someday approve it? Will conservatives then decide that it’s OK after all? Some of them already have.) --This is the most patently false statement in your post. First of all, most mouthpieces of any of those values are exactly the polar opposites of their implementation, and only use them as a vote-getting tool. Second, it's actually easily possible, as every single side to those arguments has amply demonstrated that even in the most morally-upright and law-abiding seeming institutions we have, there are constantly those with secret or special privileges that other members do not seem to possess. Think of it like being the only tiny group of immigrants with a green card, you are exempt from being persecuted, while they are not. The point, in any event, is that just as the structure of a liberal democratic society differs from that of totalitarian states, so too does the ethos of its leaders. They generally like to do their evil in legal and political ways, through demagoguery, getting evil laws passed, destroying reputations, and other generally bloodless means. Occasionally they’ll resort also to ballot-box stuffing, and maybe the odd piece of union thuggery or police brutality. But outright murder is extremely rare, and usually folded into some legitimate context so as to make it seem justifiable (e.g. My Lai or the firebombing of Dresden, atrocities committed in the course of otherwise just wars). Do ideologically motivated sociopaths like General Jack D. Ripper of Dr. Strangelove fame sometimes exist even in liberal democratic societies? Sure. But hundreds or even just dozens of Jack D. Rippers, occupying just the right positions at just the right times in the executive branch, the FBI, the FAA, the NYPD, the FDNY, the Air Force, American Airlines, United Airlines, Larry Silverstein’s office, CNN, NBC, Fox News, The New York Times, etc. etc., never accidentally tipping off hostile co-workers or fatally screwing up in other ways? All happily risking their careers and reputations, indeed maybe even their lives, in the interests of the Zionist cause, or Big Oil, or whatever? Not a chance. Indeed, the very idea is ludicrous. --This is mostly true, I think. One, murder and such are generally way more troublesome than they're worth, especially when shaming and scandal seems to work just as well in politics, and I highly doubt there was much "higher cause" motivating all of the conspirators above their own gains. Of course, some conspiracy theorists will insist that the adversarial, checks-and-balances nature of liberal democracies and their tolerant ethos are themselves just part of the illusion created by the conspirators. Somehow, even the fact that conspiracy theorists are perfectly free to publish their books, organize rallies, etc. in a way they would not for a moment be able to do in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia is nevertheless just part of a more subtle and diabolical form of police state. --In the same way you just mentioned, would it not be simpler to just marginalize and "fringe" any true finds they come up with as outright lunacy that casts your sanity into to question to even be believed than to attempt suppression in an open internet world?? Here we’ve gone through the looking glass indeed, and come to a third and more philosophically interesting problem with conspiracy theories, one that can be understood on the basis of an analogy with philosophical skepticism and its differences from ordinary skepticism. Doubting whether you really saw your cousin walking across the bridge, or just a lookalike, can be perfectly reasonable. Doubting whether cousins or bridges really exist in the first place – maybe you’re only dreaming they exist, or maybe there’s a Cartesian demon deceiving you, or maybe you’re trapped in The Matrix – is not reasonable. It only seems reasonable when one is beholden to a misguided theory of knowledge, a theory that effectively undermines the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever. The difference here is sometimes described as a difference between "local" doubt and "global" doubt. Local doubts arise on the basis of other beliefs taken to be secure. You know that you are nearsighted or that your glasses are dirty, so you doubt whether you really saw your cousin. Global doubts have a tendency to undermine all beliefs, or at least all beliefs within a certain domain. You know that your senses have sometimes deceived you about some things, and being a philosopher you start to wonder whether they are always deceiving you about everything. --Matter of opinion I suppose, there's no real right or wrong side to debate here. Notice that unlike local doubt, global doubt tends to undermine even the evidence that led to the doubt in the first place. Doubting that you really saw your cousin doesn’t lead you to think that your belief that you are nearsighted or that your glasses are dirty might also be false. But suppose your belief that you sometimes have been fooled by visual illusions leads you to doubt your senses in general. You came to believe that your perceptual experience of a bent stick in the water was illusory because you also believed that your experience of seeing the stick as straight when removed from the water was not illusory. But you end up with the view that maybe that experience, and all experience, is illusory after all. You came to believe that you might be dreaming right now because in the past you’ve had vivid dreams from which you woke up. You end up with the view that maybe even the experience of waking up was itself a dream, so that you’ve never really been awake at all. Again, the doubt tends to swallow up even the evidence that led to the doubt. (Philosophers like J. L. Austin have suggested that this shows that philosophical skepticism is not even conceptually coherent, but we needn’t commit ourselves to that claim to make the point that it does at least tend to undermine the very evidence that leads to it.) I suggest that the distinction between ordinary, everyday conspiracies (among mobsters, or Watergate conspirators, or whatever) and vast conspiracies of the sort alleged by 9/11 and JFK assassination skeptics, parallels the scenarios described by commonsense or “local” forms of doubt and philosophical or “global” forms of doubt, respectively. We know that the former sorts of conspiracies occur because we trust the sources that tell us about them – news accounts, history books, reports issued by government commissions, eyewitnesses, and so forth. And there is nothing in the nature of those conspiracies that would lead us to doubt these sources. But conspiracies of the latter sort, if they were real, would undermine all such sources. And yet it is only through such sources that conspiracy theorists defend their theories in the first place. They point to isolated statements from this or that history book or government document (the Warren Report, say), to this or that allegedly anomalous claim made in a newspaper story or by an eyewitness, and build their case on a collection of such sources. But the conspiracy they posit is one so vast that they end up claiming that all such sources are suspect wherever they conflict with the conspiracy theory. Indeed, even some sources apparently supportive of the conspiracy theory are sometimes suspected of being plants subtly insinuated by the conspirators themselves, so that they might later be discredited, thereby discrediting conspiracy theorists generally. Overall, the history books, news sources, government commissions, and eyewitnesses are all taken to be in some way subject to the power of the conspirators (out of sympathy, or because of threats, or because the sources are themselves being lied to). Nothing is certain. But in that case the grounds for believing in the conspiracy in the first place are themselves uncertain. At the very least, the decision to accept some source claims and not others inevitably becomes arbitrary and question-begging, driven by belief in the conspiracy rather than providing independent support for believing in it. --Yes, paranoia does seem to run rampant amongst the theorists. Now, while “global” forms of skepticism might be fun to think about and pose interesting philosophical puzzles, it would hardly be rational to think for a moment that they might be true. Seriously to wonder whether one is a “brain in a vat,” or trapped in The Matrix, or always asleep and dreaming – not as a fantasy, not in the course of a late-night dorm room bull session, but as a live option – would be lunacy. Certainly it would make almost any further rational thought nearly impossible, because it would strip almost any inference of any rational foundation. But something similar seems to be true of conspiracy theories of the sort in question. The reason their adherents often seem to others to be paranoid and delusional is because they are committed to an epistemological position which inherently tends toward paranoia and delusion, just as a serious belief in Cartesian demons or omnipotent matrix-building mad scientists or supercomputers would. Their skepticism about the social order is so radical that it precludes the possibility of coming to any stable or justified beliefs about the social order. --MOP again. Am I saying that news organizations, government commissions, and the like never lie? Of course not. I am saying that it is at the very least improbable in the extreme that they do lie or even could lie on the vast scale and in the manner in which conspiracy theorists say they do, and that it is hard to see how the belief that they do so could ever be rationally justified. But what about government agencies and news sources in totalitarian countries? Doesn’t the fact of their existence refute this claim of mine? Not at all. For citizens in totalitarian countries generally do not trust these sources in the first place. Indeed, they often treat them as something of a joke, and though they might believe some of what they are told by these sources, they are also constantly seeking out more reliable alternative sources from outside. Moreover, these citizens already know full well that their governments are doing horrible things, and many of these things are done openly anyway. Hence, we don’t have in this case anything close to a parallel to what conspiracy theorists claim happens in liberal democracies: evil things done by governments on a massive scale, of which the general population has no inkling because they generally trust the news sources and government agencies from which they get their information, and where these sources and agencies purport to be, and are generally perceived to be, independent. --Mostly true. I think most corruption is attainable legally today anyways, so many conspiracy problems have now become "oh wait theyre just legalizing it now" problems, such as the Patriot Act. On such general epistemological and social-scientific grounds, then, I maintain that conspiracy theories of the sort in question are so a priori improbable that they are not worth taking seriously. That does not mean that the specific empirical claims made by conspiracy theorists are never significant. In my college days I read a great deal about the JFK assassination case, and was even convinced for a time that there was a conspiracy involving the government. While I no longer believe that – I believe that Oswald killed Kennedy, and acted alone – I concede that there are certain pieces of evidence (e.g. the backward movement of Kennedy’s head, Ruby’s assassination of Oswald) that might lead a reasonable person who hasn’t investigated the case very deeply to doubt the “official story.” (I’ve also examined a fair amount of the 9/11 conspiracy theory material, though I must say that in this case this has only made the whole idea seem to me even more preposterous than it did initially, if that is possible. They don’t make conspiracy theorists like they used to.) But in my judgment, in the vast majority of cases the alleged “evidence” of falsehood in the “official story” is nothing of the kind, and where it is it can easily and most plausibly be accounted for in terms of the sort of bureaucratic ass-covering, incompetence, or just honest error that is common to investigations in general (whether by police, insurance companies, or whatever). --no, there you are wrong. "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." -Adolf Hitler If one is going to claim more than this, then just as in these other sorts of investigations, one needs to provide some plausible alternative explanation. The “I’m just raising questions” shtick is not intellectually or morally serious, certainly not when you’re accusing people of mass murder. And given the considerations raised above, it is hard to see how conspiracy theories of the sort in question could ever be plausible alternatives. --Dead Wrong. And yes, yes it is. That is in fact just the right attitude. Whereas, most conspiracy theorists go with "I asked questions, and now I know the exact truth just as it happened" and that is also wrong. Any time anyone claims that asking questions or even suggesting conspiracies is wrong, it merely feeds the paranoia you pointed out above, whatever your personal beliefs or motives, not to mention being a load of bullcrap. Why, then, do people fall for these theories? Largely out of simple intellectual error. But what makes someone susceptible of this particular kind of error? That is a question I have addressed before, in a TCS Daily article which suggested that the answer has something to do with the (false) post-Enlightenment notion that science and critical thinking are of their nature in the business of unmasking received ideas, popular opinion, and common sense in general. Some readers of that article asked a good question: How does this suggestion account for the existence of conspiracy theories on the Right, which generally sees itself as upholding received ideas and common sense? I would make two points in response. First, consider some standard examples of such right-wing conspiracy theories, such as those involving Freemasons or Communists. These can be understood in two ways. On one interpretation, the idea would be that Freemasons, Communists, or whomever, given their ideological commitments, have actively sought to get themselves and their sympathizers into positions of power and influence so as to promote and implement their ideas, and that they have done so subtly and by using duplicity. But there is nothing in this idea that conflicts with anything I’ve been saying. In particular, there is nothing in it that entails that any single massively complex event was engineered in detail by a small elite manipulating, with precision, dozens or hundreds of actors across a bewildering variety of conflicting institutions and agencies in the context of a society that is to all appearances reasonably open, all the while skillfully covering their tracks to hide their actions to all but the most devoted conspiracy theory adepts. Rather, it just involves like-minded people working systematically and deviously to further their common interests in a general way over the course of a long period of time – a phenomenon that is well-known from everyday life, and does not require belief in any radical gap between appearance and reality in the social and political worlds. In short, it does not involve belief in any “conspiracy theory” of the specific sort I’ve been criticizing. --Right Wing or Left Wing, This is mostly true. The alternative interpretation would be that Freemasons, Communists, and the like have done more than this, that they have indeed conspired to produce individual events of the sort in question, in just the manner in question – that they conspired across national boundaries and bureaucracies to engineer World War I, say, or various stock market crashes, or whatever. Here the right-wing sort of conspiracy theory does indeed run into the problems I have been identifying, and is as a consequence just as irrational as its left-wing counterparts. And this brings me to my second point. As I said earlier, given the hegemony of liberal, post-Enlightenment ideas in modern Western society, even many conservatives can find themselves taking some of them for granted. Ironically, this sometimes includes even those conservatives most self-consciously hostile to liberal and Enlightenment ideas, namely paleoconservatives (the sort, not coincidentally, who are most likely to be drawn to conspiracy theories). And it does so, even more ironically, precisely because of their awareness of this hegemony. Because they quite understandably feel besieged on all sides by modernity, and utterly shut out of its ruling institutions, they are tempted by at least one modern, post-Enlightenment, left-wing illusion, and the most beguiling one at that: that all authority is a manifestation of a smothering, omnipotent malevolence. Like the Marxist or anarchist, they find themselves shaking their fist at the entire social order as nothing more than a mask for hidden forces of evil, and even the most absurd conspiracy theories come to seem to them to be a priori plausible. --This has shown to be true sometimes though, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Even if not by specific color-by-numbers blueprints, events are sometimes manipulated to serve other purposes than their face value by groups of like-minded conspirators. The overall result is something eerily like the old Gnostic heresy, on which the apparently benign world of our experience is really the creation of an evil demiurge, and where this dark and hidden truth is known only to those few insiders acquainted with a special gnosis. (Into the bargain, the demiurge was often identified by the Gnostics with the God of the Jews.) For “world” read modern Western society, for “demiurge” read Freemasons, Communists, or Zionists, and for “gnosis” read the vast labyrinth of conspiracy theory literature. Alternatively, it is like the Cartesian fantasy of a malin genie who deceives us with a world of appearances that masks a hidden reality. Certainly these similarities should give any traditionalist pause; and the conspiracy theory mindset is in any event a very odd thing to try to combine with the traditional Christian anti-Gnostic emphasis on the public and open nature of truth, and the Aristotelian-Thomistic rejection of any radical Cartesian appearance/reality distinction in favor of moderation and common sense. --Yes, and??? Anyway, if the question is how, given that (as I argue in the TCS Daily article) conspiracy theories are essentially an artifact of certain key modern, post-Enlightenment attitudes and assumptions, right-wingers could ever accept them, the answer is that here, as elsewhere, conservatives and traditionalists are too often not conservative and traditional enough. --Ok. That clears up nothing, thanks. While I think we all appreciate your stance as being a conservative, traditional Right-Winger(of which, there doesn't seem to be really any in high office anymore), your arguments, at being conclusive or using the hammer of deconstructive logic to disassemble "our wild fantasies of conspiracy"{paraphrased}=EPIC FAIL, to put it in net speak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 --This is probably the most true of your post in a literal sense, --?? So, now you're claiming a liberal conspiracy that failed, or what?? --This is the most patently false statement in your post. --In the same way you just mentioned, would it not be simpler to just marginalize and "fringe" any true finds they come up with as outright lunacy that casts your sanity into to question to even be believed than to attempt suppression in an open internet world?? --no, there you are wrong. "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." -Adolf Hitler It seem like you were expecting Feser to read and perhaps respond to your post but the wait is likely to be a long one since he isn’t a member here, take a look at his blog there might be a place to leave comments there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 (edited) Tomb’s comments to Radio Canada were too vague to draw any concrete solutions especially since they had been translated and were made over 2 years after his comments to Haas. Your interpretation of them is shaped by views just as mine are by mine. Not wanting “to give the impression” of something precludes saying it. Even IF Tomb said what Haas claimed he did it proves nothing -He did not work for either of the prosecutors (originally) charged with prosecuting such cases (Wash. D.C. and southern district NY) or even directly for the DoJ, he didn’t even work with the part of the FBI investigating 9/11, rather he ran the “Most Wanted” websites. -As I pointed out in my previous post prosecuting “enemy combatants” was taken out of the DoJ’s hands and entrusted to the DoD Nov. 6 2001 -As I also pointed out in my previous post there was more than enough evidence against OBL to indict him for 9/11. I looked at The Looming Tower again, one of OBL personal bodyguards IDed Atta and 6 other hijackers as being AQ members. (Pg 413, Vintage edition) I didn’t reply to the rest of your post because its relevance completely eluded me, KSLA didn't speak to Tomb but rather a New Orleans agent the rest had nothing to do with the lack of an indictment of OBL for 9/11. Len, Rex Tomb's comments were published by Radio Canada less than three months after Ed Haas's claimed June 5, 2006 interview of Rex Tombs. The date is displayed in the link I posted to the Radio Canada web page: http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Inter...uestion-5.shtml http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22...ed=us&hl=en Ben Laden et le FBI Radio-Canada - Sep 1, 2006 Comment se fait-il que la fiche du FBI sur Oussama ben Laden ne mentionne pas qu'il est recherché pour les événements du 11 septembre? ... You're not going to accept that Ed Haas spoke to Rex Tomb on June 5, 2006, and Tomb told Haas that there was not enough evidence to convince a grand jury to indict Bin Laden for involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Note that two of your challenges to Ed Haas's version of his conversation with Rex Tomb are now gone....the one you said was the "...the undocumented claim of a blogger than an FBI agent not directly involved in the investigation told him this...", and the most recent is your point in objection; "....Tomb’s comments to Radio Canada were too vague to draw any concrete solutions especially since they had been translated and were made over 2 years after his comments to Haas...." Edited March 20, 2009 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Jeffries Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Ian, I think your view of our fearless leaders is very naive. There are definitely not "widely divergent worldviews" found within any powerful institution, be it Congress, the Supreme Court or the board of any major corporation (including any mainstream media organization). If you believe these "diverse" views exist, please present some examples of members of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, present or ex-CEOs of any large corporation, present or ex-presidents of any large union, or any reporter, past or present, for a television network, major newspaper or magazine that has publicly expressed a beilef in any major conspiracy theory. Also try to find a single example anywhere of a person in a similar position of power ever espousing the Huey Long view about "sharing the wealth." The recent example of the AIG banksters taking off with their millions of "bonuses" culled from their taxpayer "bailout" is a perfect illustration of this. The economic system is collapsing, millions are struggling financially, yet these clueless plutocrats grab more millions of taxpayer "bailout" funds for their own benefit. And then the unprincipled politicians strut and crow about how horrible this is, when they approved the whole sordid mess, without ever placing any restrictions upon these impoverished multi-millionaires. My point is, our financial problems revolve around the giant elephant in the room which is the tremendous disparity of wealth in our society. Anyone who has had direct experience with Congress, the mainstream press, our court system, etc. will disagree with your rather rosy assessment of our society's leadership. They are not diverse in opinion, even when they are diverse in appearance. They are very good at keeping secrets and covering up for each other, as any would be whistleblower could tell you. This was exactly why Kennedy was so dangerous to so many powerful forces; he was "different" enough to frighten them into thinking that perhaps he could produce at least some change for the better. There is the conventional view of history, which you share with the majority of people. Then there is the conspiracy view of history, which an increasing number of us subscribe to. I think that recent history alone should cause every thinking American to have a very dim view of our leaders, both in government and business. It's hard to escape the belief that there is corruption everywhere, and few if any truly principled and moral people in positions of authority. Conspiracy "theories" are born because of this well-founded suspicion, which grows daily thanks to the uncensored nature of the internet. However, hold on to your skepticism towards "conspiracies" and continue to remain unskeptical towards our leaders and institutions- you will make a great many friends in that "wildly divergent" crowd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Tomb's comments to Radio Canada were too vague to draw any concrete solutions especially since they had been translated and were made over 2 years after his comments to Haas. Your interpretation of them is shaped by views just as mine are by mine. Not wanting "to give the impression" of something precludes saying it. Even IF Tomb said what Haas claimed he did it proves nothing -He did not work for either of the prosecutors (originally) charged with prosecuting such cases (Wash. D.C. and southern district NY) or even directly for the DoJ, he didn't even work with the part of the FBI investigating 9/11, rather he ran the "Most Wanted" websites. -As I pointed out in my previous post prosecuting "enemy combatants" was taken out of the DoJ's hands and entrusted to the DoD Nov. 6 2001 -As I also pointed out in my previous post there was more than enough evidence against OBL to indict him for 9/11. I looked at The Looming Tower again, one of OBL personal bodyguards IDed Atta and 6 other hijackers as being AQ members. (Pg 413, Vintage edition) I didn't reply to the rest of your post because its relevance completely eluded me, KSLA didn't speak to Tomb but rather a New Orleans agent the rest had nothing to do with the lack of an indictment of OBL for 9/11. Len, Rex Tomb's comments were published by Radio Canada less than three months after Ed Haas's claimed June 5, 2006 interview of Rex Tombs. The date is displayed in the link I posted to the Radio Canada web page: http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Inter...uestion-5.shtml Len, Rex Tomb's comments were published by Radio Canada less than three months after Ed Haas's claimed June 5, 2006 interview of Rex Tombs. The date is displayed in the link I posted to the Radio Canada web page: http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Inter...uestion-5.shtml ://http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle...estion-5.shtml ://http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle...estion-5.shtml The date displayed on the page itself is "7 août 2008" but you are correct the URL and Google news link indicate it was from Sept. 1 2006. Odd though that the article makes references to "spring 2006" and "June 2006" as if it were written in a later year, one wouldn't write that way in English (or Portuguese) in 2006 I guess it's a French thing. http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22...ed=us&hl=en Ben Laden et le FBI Radio-Canada - Sep 1, 2006 Comment se fait-il que la fiche du FBI sur Oussama ben Laden ne mentionne pas qu'il est recherché pour les événements du 11 septembre? ... You're not going to accept that Ed Haas spoke to Rex Tomb on June 5, 2006, and Tomb told Haas that there was not enough evidence to convince a grand jury to indict Bin Laden for involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Note that two of your challenges to Ed Haas's version of his conversation with Rex Tomb are now gone....the one you said was the "...the undocumented claim of a blogger than an FBI agent not directly involved in the investigation told him this...", and the most recent is your point in objection; "....Tomb's comments to Radio Canada were too vague to draw any concrete solutions especially since they had been translated and were made over 2 years after his comments to Haas...." Actually only part of one my "challenges to Ed Haas's version of his conversation with Rex Tomb [is] now gone" Radio Canada spoke to Tomb only a few months not 2 years later, the comments are still vague, the still were translated from English to French, they still seem to contain a denial, the claim is still undocumented and Tomb wasn't "directly involved in the investigation". I never denied that Hass spoke to Tomb, but as I have pointed out in my last 2 posts, IF he said this he misspoke. I'll make it simple for you 1) In late September 2001 Tomb said "There's going to be a considerable amount of time before anyone associated with the attacks is actually charged," 6 – 7 weeks later the Bush administration transferred prosecution of such offenses to the military and claimed this circumvented the need for indictments. 2) Getting an indictment is a low hurdle and there was more than enough evidence to indict OBL. I detailed this in my previous posts but among others, the NSA had intercepts of KSM and Atta from Sept. 10 talking about the big events "tomorrow", one of OBL's bodyguards IDed Atta and 6 other hijackers as being AQ operatives and agreed his boss must have perpetrated the attacks, a videotape was found in Afghanistan in which OBL, al-Zawahiri at his side told another sheik about how he planned the attacks. You can claim the evidence was all fake, that isn't relevant because there would have been no one to raise such doubts or present any evidence contrary to the prosecutor's view. The prosecutor wouldn't have to prove anything only to show that there was "reasonable cause" to bring OBL to trial and even then he (or she) wouldn't have to convince all the jurors only 12 out of 16 – 23 (the supervising judge chooses the exact number). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 (edited) I think your view of our fearless leaders is very naive. There are definitely not "widely divergent worldviews" found within any powerful institution, be it Congress, the Supreme Court or the board of any major corporation (including any mainstream media organization). If you believe these "diverse" views exist, please present some examples of members of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, present or ex-CEOs of any large corporation, present or ex-presidents of any large union, or any reporter, past or present, for a television network, major newspaper or magazine that has publicly expressed a beilef in any major conspiracy theory. Just off the top of my head we have Liz Smith's support of Lamar Waldron, Glenn Beck frothing on about "FEMA detention camps", Rosie's views on 9/11 and the financial guy at CNN whose name escapes me right now going on about "the North-American Union" and "Amero" and of course the HSCA concluded JFK's assassination was a conspiracy. Edited March 20, 2009 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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