Pre-Histories of 911 -- Or, What did they know (and did they do it)?

"Bay" proposal for Ground Zero by Magic Propaganda Mill

First things first. I was at Ground Zero the day the planes hit the World Trade Center. I lived there in a cheap apartment on the Hudson River a few blocks north of the towers. Debates about the planes and "base charges," etc are of no interest to me as I saw what happened and, on general principle despise conspiracy theories. I've been embroiled in several "911 Truth" debates, and I think it very unfortunate that real interrogation of the offical story has been left to, how can I say it... unreliable elements.

All that said, I'm with the half of New Yorkers who believe the official 911 report is a "conspiracy theory" and do not accept the simple story we've been told. There are just too many loose ends, conflicting accounts and political expediency in how Bush has spun the whole story.

Browsing the internet, I found a new blog called DW Vents, an apparently communist blog from right here in the city that took on the Pre-Histories of 911. Because I think this piece avoids the more dubious lines of thought that define dissent of the official 911 story (in particular, the strange alleged conspiracy between a New York real estate magnate and the secret government crowd, anti-Semitic and racist bullshit, right-wing "Illuminati" kookiness), I've posted DW's piece here in its entirety for discussion and debate.

Pre-histories of 9/11
By DW

“Ahistorical - you think this shit just dropped right out of the sky
My analysis: it's time to harvest the crust from your eyes”

—Fugazi, “Bulldog Front,” 1988

The official story of 9/11/01 is a largely ahistorical conspiracy theory. It is a theory in the sense that it has not been proved (or disproved, though legitimate doubts have been cast). The official theory is one of conspiracy in the sense that it involves multiple players working in concert: 19 hijackers (20 if one includes Moussaoui) plus Osama Bin Laden and perhaps others as well. It is largely ahistorical in the sense that it holds both that the attacks came essentially out of nowhere and that “everything changed on 9/11,” explaining everything from Bush’s 2004 victory to Homeland Security to the current Iraq war.

I’m one of the half (49.3%) of New York City residents who say that some US government officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," and I wonder if this in fact understates the case. (1) I recognize that this, too, is a conspiracy theory. It is no more proven fact than the official conspiracy theory. But it is a theory supported by evidence. Some of this is best found by analyzing the events of the day itself. For instance, consider the failure of US military fighter jets to scramble in anything like a timely fashion. (2) Then there’s the unlikely juxtaposition of “black box” airplane cockpit voice recorders that cannot be recovered from the WTC site with the hijacker passport that was (3).

Then there’s the pre-history. Pre-histories, really.

Pre-history #1: larger trends

The US emerged from World War II as the dominant power in the world. Capitalism’s internal contradictions, along with the challenges posed by the socialist bloc and a rising tide of national liberation struggles ultimately led the post-war US economic boom to come to an end in 1973. In 1973, the US elite was suffering blows from the Vietnamese people and facing rebellion in both its military and its home population.
In this context, David Rockefeller and his close friend Zbigniew Brzezinski organized the Trilateral Commission (TLC) using Rockefeller money and a base of ruling class ideologues from Japan, Western Europe, and the US. This group pooled its intellectual resources to represent the likes of oil companies and large banks against the national liberation movements, for economic globalization, and against democracy. Regarding the latter, in 1976, the TLC issued a report that said, "The 1960’s witnessed a dramatic upsurge of democratic fervor in America…. The question necessarily arises, however, whether if a new threat to security should materialize in the future (as it inevitably will at some point), the government will possess the authority to command the resources as well as the sacrifices, which are necessary to meet that threat." The report concluded that there had developed "an excess of democracy," and it suggested "desirable limits to the extension of political democracy." (4)

Pre-history #2: geopolitics

The US elite has had a particular interest in dominating the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. This interest became more active after the 1989-1991 collapse of the Soviet bloc and the corresponding emergence of the US as the sole military superpower. With its powerful rival neutralized, the US elite, particularly the neoconservatives in its ranks, began laying plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. This has been exposed in great detail elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 were not principally reactions to the 9/11 attacks.

Pre-history #3: homeland clampdown

As the TLC had noted in 1976, the Vietnam War provoked a democratic upsurge against it at home, and such an "excess of democracy" interferes with the government’s ability to wage such wars of aggression. So with ruling class planning to reassert imperial control of the Middle East and Central Asia in particular came corresponding planning for government assertion of "desirable limits to the extension of political democracy" at home. In 1997, the first US government mention of "homeland defense" was made by the National Defense Panel, a Pentagon study group. (5)

In May 1998, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 62, entitled "Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Overseas." (6) In October 1998, Frank J. Cilufo of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) testified before the Congressional Committee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice. Said Cilufo, "It may be worthwhile to create a new Commander-in-Chief (CINC) USA…responsible for all Department of Defense-related strategies and activities related to homeland defense issues…" In January 1999, CSIS issued a report called "Defending the Homeland." (7) That month, a New York Times editorial noted, "there have been discussions in the Pentagon, but no decision, about creating a new domestic military command to combat terrorism." (8)

In August 1999, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security and the 20th Century, chartered in July 1998 by the US Secretary of Defense, issues a 25-year plan to address the slow decline of US dominance. Part of this plan is Homeland Defense, to be conducted by the National Guard. (9) In October 1999, President Clinton put Admiral Harold W. Gehman Jr., NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, in charge of "defending the homeland." In 2000, Congress studied the Homeland Security concept. In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission called for the creation of a Homeland Security Agency. (9)

A June 2001 article said "Bush has instructed government offices to coordinate for homeland security and defense, and assigned Vice President Richard Cheney to head a group to draft a national terrorism-response plan by October 1 [2001]." The article also said that the Bush administration was considering forming an Office of Homeland Defense and that Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) of the House Armed Services Committee was in favor of a National Homeland Security Agency. (10) Clearly the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security were not mere reactions to the events of 9/11/01, but are better understood as the products of years of anti-democratic elite planning.

The idea of placing the US population under military command wasn’t limited to the realm of theory, by the way. As these unconstitutional ideas were kicking around, the US Army Delta Force, "operating under its cover name of Combat Applications Group (CAG), was in Seattle a week in advance" of the Nov. 29-Dec. 3, 1999 anti-WTO protests (the "battle of Seattle"). (11)

Pre-history #4: they’ve planned such things before

It’s within the realm of possibility that the events of 9/11/01 took place more or less along the lines of the official story. I’m not setting out to prove otherwise. But it’s notable that the power elite (or elements thereof) had the means, motive, and opportunity to allow, provoke, or stage these events. Also notable, for those who don’t believe such people are capable of such things, is the case of Operation Northwoods. This was a set of proposals delivered to President Kennedy by the military Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. The idea was to commit terrorist crimes against Americans staged in such a way that they would be blamed on the Cuban government and could be used to justify invading Cuba. (12) Kennedy nixed this particular set of proposals, but presidents since may be and may have been less self-restrained.

Pre-history #5: they wanted this

It’s also notable that multiple elite figures, with a certain amount (but not a lot) of subtlety (or plausible deniability), openly discussed the desirability of a dramatic event that could mobilize domestic support for aggressive foreign policy. This was a proposed solution to the problem discussed by the TLC in 1976: the restriction of US war powers by a domestic "excess of democracy" opposed to US wars of aggression. The way in which these various figures began echoing each other’s language—"Pearl Harbor"—suggests the emergence of an elite consensus, at least in certain quarters.

In 1997, some time after going from the TLC to being President Carter’s National Security Advisor (from which post he helped create Al Quaeda as an anti-Soviet force in Afghanistan), Brzezinski wrote The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, which contained the following gems:

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of
American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's
engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor." (pp 24-5)

"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of
states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to
diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)

"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the
concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America
is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is
also likely to be the very last." (p.209)

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it
may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues,
except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct
external threat." (p. 211) (13)

The bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission chimed in in August 1999, saying that should the "distinction between national security policy and domestic security policy" disappear, "if such threats become reality, or even if they merely become more apparent, Americans are likely to abandon their attitude of ‘supportive indifference’ [regarding US foreign policy]…. If the stakes rise in such a fashion, one thing is likely to become vividly clear: The American people will be ready to sacrifice blood and treasure, and come together to do so, if they believe that fundamental interests are imperiled." (14)

Notably it was not just the neoconservatives talking this way. But of course, the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC) echoed Brzezinski in September 2000, writing, "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor." (15) PNAC members like Paul Wolfowitz were in the White House several months later.

Pre-history #6: shady characters

If various stripes of elite strategists wanted such a catalyzing event, it stands to reason that they would either consciously allow or perhaps even set into motion such an event. The transformation of Al Quaeda from Brzezinski’s CIA pawn in Afghanistan to US enemy #1 could be seen as something other than ironic. Especially when one notes that the US has been allied with Al Quaeda in certain conflicts, even after 9/11/01. (16) Then there’s the matter of the Pakistani intelligence chief who had $100,000 wired to terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta and was in Washington meeting with US intelligence officials on 9/11. (17) Atta himself was an interesting character. We are told that his motivation was anti-Americanism and Islamic fundamentalist fanaticism. But he seemed to be engaged in a lifestyle quite inconsistent with this story, such as dating an American stripper. (18)

Pre-history #7: the Hollywood connection?

If elite powerbrokers were in fact setting events into motion to justify aggression abroad and repression at home, then it stands to reason that they might want to do some extra propaganda work to make sure the events are interpreted according to their script and not any other.
The June 18, 2001 article "Preparing for the next Pearl Harbor attack" looks somewhat suspicious in this context. (5) Especially since the magazine it appeared in is Insight on the News, owned by the CIA-linked cult of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

And perhaps it was only a coincidence that the movie Pearl Harbor came out on May 25, 2001, only a few months before 9/11. But for those of us inclined to believe otherwise, the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer produced it gives added weight to our suspicions. Bruckheimer, a first-generation Republican, says Todd Garner of Disney suggested the idea for the Pearl Harbor movie in 1999. Bruckheimer produced at least one good movie, Enemy of the State, which illustrates the intrusive surveillance capabilities of the US government. But he’s also responsible for at least seven foul films completed with the participation and approval of the US Department of Defense. One of these is Pearl Harbor itself. The others are Top Gun (1986), Crimson Tide (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Bad Company (2002). In February 2003, he produced ABC’s Profiles from the Front Line, fawning embedded war coverage referred to as "militainment" by the London Guardian. (19)

The corporate press was likely to follow the Bush administration’s lead in referring to the 9/11/01 attacks as "the new Pearl Harbor" anyway, but the film’s recent run helped ensure that the phrase would have greater resonance, especially among the youth. All the better to get Americans "ready to sacrifice blood and treasure."

Notes:

1. Zogby poll, Aug. 30, 2004, "Poll: 50% of NYC Says U.S. Govt Knew," http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040830120349841
2. Mark R. Elsis, Lovearth.net, September 9, 2002, "911 Timeline: The Most Comprehensive Minute By Minute Timeline On 911," http://www.911timeline.net/ ; Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel, Nov. 14-17, 2001, "Guilty For 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers, Part 1," http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm
3. Sam Yousef, Sep. 21, 2001, "Strange Case Of The Black Box And The Indestructible Passport", http://www.ilaam.net/Sept11/BlackBox.html
4. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1995 edition, pp. 546-549.
5. J. Michael Waller, Jun. 18, 2001, "Preparing for the next Pearl harbor attack," Insight on the News (insightmag.com)
6. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/docs/pdd62.htm
7. www.csis.org
8. editorial, Jan. 23, 1999, New York Times
9. www.nssg.gov
10. Waller, op. cit.
11. Dec. 23, 1999, Seattle Weekly
12. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/
13. Quotes pulled by http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/zbig.html
14. http://web.archive.org/web/20031205071209/www.nssg.gov/NWR_A.pdf Page 130 of document, which is p. 135 of the .pdf.
15. Rebuilding America’s Defenses, http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
16. various articles by Michel Chossudovsky, http://globalresearch.ca/
17. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html
18. Daniel Hopsicker, http://www.madcowprod.com/
19. May 22, 2002, "That’s Militainment," London Guardian

Comments

[you have to be kidding]

Jed Brandt is a major voice in supressing the 911 Truth movement from his perch at NYC Indymedia where all discussion of the topic is banned.

Good to see he's coming along nicely.

[Ground Zero]

The guys at Union Square do not make a good pitch.

It's funny you should mention how guys geek out on this shit. I"ve never seen more than a single woman in any crowd of 911 conspiroids.

Sausage party.

True? Not true?

I don't really care.

[Sander Hicks]

I was pleasantly surprised to see this. The 9/11 Truth Movement DOES need people like Jed to bring in this kind of disciplined materialist historical inquiry.

I wonder now if Jed will publish a public statement in the Indypendent. It seems that something like that is called for. He could explain honestly where he was, and why, and where he's at now, and why, and where he might go with this.

Why does the 9/11 Truth Movement need more scientific rigor? Too many people, including our leading authors, embrace every single idea or theory that comes along. That leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and distraction.

Likewise, the left needs less cynicism. We have to remember that people like Michael Parenti have been brilliant critics of global capital, AND have been able to explain the US government's killing of JFK, in that context.

Bridges can be built here. Between the Left and the national 9/11 Truth Movement. Let's do it.

RE: the accusations that the NY 9/11 Truth Movement is all guys—not true. There are plenty of key female members of the NY 9/11 Truth Movement. I know, I was at the Union Square flyering session in the bitter windy cold 2 weeks ago. Not enough women, true, and not 50%, but this is not an "all male" club, nor is it representative of one political viewpoint, as Jed used to assert earlier. In the words of David Ray Griffin, we need a "big tent" approach in our 9/11 Truth movement. Women are playing a key leadership role, nation-wide. Kansas City's Janice Matthews is a national leader and Carol Brouillet is a cofounder of the No. CA 9/11 Truth Alliance, where she organized a major conference in San Fran. Like me, Carol is running for office this year. She deserves our support.

http://www.carolforcongress.org/

Overall, we should applaud Jed for doing an about-face on this issue, and encourage him to bring his intellectual rigor and skepticism to his coverage of the 9/11 mass movement into NYC IndyMedia and the Indypendent.

[max jones]

Is this Jed Brandt's website? Sorry, I just received the link in an email and don't see his name anywhere.

First things first, I was 10 blocks away and already on a rooftop when I heard the first plane screaming through the air, looked up and saw it pass over my head. I heard an explosion and wondered, "Wow, did that plane just crash?" I then ran to a better vantage point and watched the entire event unfold. I also personally saw Building 7 go down later that day from the West Side Highway where I was posted as a volunteer rescue worker.

I say this not to prove my 9/11 street cred, but to remind people that being in proximity to the event or knowing people who died does not give anyone the right act like they "know" what happened. This seems to be a common phenomenon when I've been out flyering or protesting for 9/11 Truth. It's like people feel we are attacking their personal experience or saying that they didn't see what they saw.

People need to realize how much of their 9/11 consciousness is mediated. You saw the event, either in person or on TV, but how did you come to know what you saw? Who told you what you saw, who constructed the story?

I also applaud Jed's softening on this issue and hope he will at least offer some sort of acknowledgement to the various people who have been censored by Indymedia for simply trying to ask questions or make important information available to their readers.

I first became aware of the (NYC) Indymedia 9/11 Truth policy when trying to post announcements for our 9/11/05 March to End the 9/11 Media Blackout--kind of ironic when you think about it. I was absolutely shocked that a self-styled alternative, activist, open media outlet would be so closed to asking legitimate questions about the most important event of our time.

Discovering that NYC Indymedia also deleted postings that announced an interview with David Ray Griffin in the LA Times and the Cynthia Mckinney hearings on C-SPAN caused me get somewhat livid.

I had a very heated email exchange with Jed, some of which you can see here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x54587
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-nyc-web/2005-August/0827-xm.html

Eventually, I actually went to one of the NYC Indymedia open meetings to discuss it person. Jed and I had an interesting argument/discussion. I was actually surprised that he did acknowledge some of our points (9/11 Truth) and had read "The New Pearl Harbor". It seemed like the basic argument was that they didn't want Indymedia to devolve into a cesspool of fringe conspiracy.

But more importantly, there seemed to be a real blockage in terms of the supposed "anti-semitic" roots of questioning 9/11. This point seemed personal and not rational, as I not once come across a 9/11 Truth activist or researcher who claims that Israel or Mossad are behind it. Jed belligerently accused us of anti-semitism in mentioning Larry "SilverSTEIN's" connection and suspicious "pull it" comments. I can appreciate the personal, sensitive nature of anti-semitism to Jewish people, but that is no excuse not to honestly examine evidence and facts and ask questions. I call bullshit on anyone who dismisses 9/11 Truth on the grounds that it is "anti-Semitic and racist bullshit".

But, once again, thank you Jed for showing some softening on this issue. We've got a legitimate movement here, please don't marginalize us. We don't claim that "Jews did it" and you shouldn't take it personally if some Jews (and some Pakistanis, Anglos, Christian fundamentalists, fascists, etc) were involved.

Finally, a word on the mainstream left's blind spot and/or hostility toward 9/11 Truth. I think the problem for a lot of these people is that they've been working in a certain paradigm (US government may be imperialistic or incompetent but they aren't "evil" or completely whacko, capable of conspiring to kill their own citizens) for so long that 9/11 Truth is so foreign and radical that it sort of makes all their intellectual critiques issue-oriented activism irrelevant--and they just can't make that leap. 9/11 Truth and the wider truth movement are concrete paths toward true democracy and justice. They inherently indict the entire system and call for revolutionary change. Many people, however progressive or liberal they claim to be, still cannot imagine such fundamental change.

[ba'Jesus]

"Go eat shit. Get the picture, you drooling shitheel."

Damn. He called you a drooling shitheel? I can't even picture what that is, but it doesn't sound good.

In context, it makes a little more sense:

"Your 911Truth links to neo-nazi holocaust deniers on YOUR website (rense.com and Infowars). Go eat shit. Get the picture, you drooling shitheel. You stand zero chance of getting your crypto-nazi garbage on the NYC newswire and every effort you make further solidifies this consensus. Since you are too stupid to listen when someone talks to you like a normal person, I am forced to speak like this so you REALLY get the picture."

It is true, it just is, that the 911 skeptics are literally riddled with right-wing conspiroid nonsense. NY 911Trush has, in fact, linked to (insane!) Nazi-supporting websites such as Jeff Rense, and those links aren't just online.

Maybe some people think they are being broad-minded by accepting any support -- but this is not true.

Even when conspiracy theories are deployed by the left, the methodology properly belongs to the right. The conspiracy logic from DePoncins "Freemasonry & Judaism," widely available in NYC at afro-centric book venders to the forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is ALWAYS the myth of national innocence corrupted by a secretive "elite" or "insiders" that infiltrate the institutions of society for their own nefarious ends.

It's fundamentally anti-materialist, and inherently sees scapegoats. Whether the scapegoats are Jewish, as per European tradition both "bankers" and "communists," or in more recent vintage "Saudi sheiks" and "neo-Con." No matter, the logic runs the same.

This is not to say that governmental conspiracies don't exist. Max Jones thinks its that "liberals" can't accept how the government would sacrifice "American lives," but we're not talking about liberals here.

What we're talking about is the denial that there are active subjects in world history who don't neatly follow orders from the so-called "insiders," a term coined by the far-right John Birch Society.

Militant Islamicism is real. It's a potent force with a mass base, institutional support and its own agenda that is generally at odds with US imperialism. I say generally because the history of collusion, specifically against the democratic and communist left is profound. See the Saudi's, Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood, Pakistan's ISI and the mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

Chalmers Johnson's book Blowback was a real eye-opener for me, in terms of how CIA/US "use" of Islamicists and other regional actors can bite the "puppet-masters" right in the ass.

So what all this is saying is that while the PNAC crowd can make hay from 911 -- that doesn't mean they did it. By concentrating on issues of "narrative" in terms of the 911 official story INSTEAD of the systematic nature of imperialism, propaganda manipulation, etc -- we end up obscuring how the SYTEM got us into this mess, not just a rogue crew of neocons ready to be sacrificed as the Court Jews of the 21st Century.

That make sense?

[Bottom Line]

Bottom line is, ain't no proof one way or the other that any section of the US government/ruling elite brought these towers down.

What there is plenty of evidence for is how a "pearl harbor effect" was cultivated from the highest levels of government.

B'Jesus comments mirror much of my own thinking, and general skepticism of the skeptics.

Every great action isn't the doing of "great men." That's not the world we live in and, if memory serves, there was a discussion about the (supposed) sectarian conflicts in Iraq (and by extension much of the world) that acts like everything is a CIA plot.

It's not. Sometimes the CIA gets played lovely. Just like everybody.

The conspiracy theorists are defined by their basic philosophy in an epistemological/ontological sense. Dig far enough and they always seem to find the devil's fingerprints.

There is no devil, and no divine justice.

[the burningman]

I'd prefer if correspondence wasn't posted on the site in the future, mine or anybody's without their permission. Thanks.

[random red]

I think they may well have done it, but I can't prove it. Like the brother said, the problem is the system -- not the personel.

Reichstag fires happen. But the "20th hijacker" is no Dimitrov.