Ghost Riders in the Sky (Release
1.2)
The Alternative Scenario March
22/02
A. K. Dewdney
The morning of September 11 dawned bright and clear over
As they walked through the lounge, Ogonowski casually scanned the
waiting passengers, a longtime habit.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
In the cockpit, he and McGuinness worked through the long
checklist and, when they came to engine start-up, the two giant General
Electric turbofan engines roared into life.
The weather reports were good all the way to Los Angeles. It would be a routine flight.
At 7:45 the flight crew closed the cabin doors and the 767 began
to taxi out to the runway. Clearance
came minutes later and, at 7:59, the engines opened to full throttle and the
767 became airborne. It climbed into
clear blue skies, leveled at 25,000 feet, and headed west toward Los
Angeles. Ogonowski called up the
coordinates for
The flight continued normally until 8:27, nearly half an hour into
the trip. At that point, Ogonowski’s
chest felt tight and he experienced difficulty breathing. Was it a heart attack? He glanced nervously at McGuiness, thinking
that if the symptoms got worse, he should warn the co-pilot that he was having a
medical problem. But McGuiness’ face was
white and he appeared to be gasping for air.
Then he vomited. “We have a
situation,” declared Ogonowski, trying desperately to think. There were screams coming from the passenger
compartment behind the closed cockpit doors.
His mind seemed to be clouding over and breathing was now impossible. He managed to say, “Call the flight
attendants,” before passing out.
McGuiness’ head was already lolling to one side.
Back in the passenger area, the last flight attendant to lose consciousness,
sank slowly to her knees before passing out in the aisle. The aircraft smelled of vomit and feces. Except for one or two passengers lying in the
aisles, most remained in their seats.
They appeared to have all fallen asleep, but hey were dead. Everybody in the aircraft was dead.
Back in the cockpit, pilot and copilot sat dead in their seats,
eyes staring blackly at the deep blue sky above the cockpit windows. The aircraft continued to fly normally when
suddenly the numbers on the inertial navigation system display changed. Instead of the coordinates for Los Angeles
airspace, new numbers jumped into place.
The aircraft banked steeply to the left and began a slow descent, adding
another 100 mph to the airspeed.
In the distance, the New York skyline was growing steadily larger
through the cockpit windows. The
aircraft was still descending and seemed to be heading for lower
Manhattan.
By the time the 767 crossed the East River, it was all too clear
where the aircraft was headed. The World
Trade Center Towers loomed steadily larger, dead ahead through the cockpit
windows. At 8:45, the Boeing 767 slammed
into the North Tower. A huge ball of
flame, burning jet fuel, blossomed from the southeast side of the North Tower. The passengers and crew of Flight 11, having
been gassed, were now cremated, along with hundreds of office workers in the
North Tower.
At 9:03, 18 minutes later, even as thousands of New Yorkers gaped
upward in astonishment and dismay at the burning North Tower, another Boeing
767, approaching from the southwest, crashed into the South Tower. United Airlines Flight 175 had also departed
from Boston Logan that morning at 8:15.
At 9:45 another passenger liner crashed into one corner of the
Pentagon building. At 10:00 am, a fourth
aircraft crashed in a field near Pittsburgh, apparently unable to complete its
mission.
Within minutes of the first crash, major networks carried the
developing story. Four apparent suicide
attacks involving large passenger aircraft had just struck two of America’s
most important landmarks. Asked for
their impressions, people on the street described it as “unreal.” The scale was unprecedented. The drama swept away the debris of ordinary
life, shocking Americans into numbness, then anger.
In the days that followed, the story of four cells of Arab
terrorists emerged with unprecedented speed.
The names of the hijackers were revealed, along with their affiliation
or “links” to al Qaida and the dreaded Osama bin Laden. Soon, Bush would declare his “war on
terrorism.” Soon American forces would
be heading for Afghanistan.
The September attacks acquired, almost from the start, an
apocalyptic dimension, as if the hijackers stood proxy for the Four Horsemen
themselves.
This analysis explores the possibility that the aircraft were
hijacked electronically from the ground, and not physically from the
cockpit. In such a case, there would be
no Horsemen, only “ghost riders,” recalling the American ballad, Ghost Riders
in the Sky.
Analyzing the Terror Attacks
The discrepancy between the account I have just given of the
hijackings and the one reported in the media is obvious and, to many, highly
improbable. How could anyone question
such an open-and-shut case? There had
been the decisive (and all-too-rapid) unfolding of the FBI investigation, the
steady stream of timed press releases and Pentagon briefings, the disclosure of
a war plan by the White House within days of the attacks. What could they be but the work of a
well-prepared government? Besides,
people who have only just begun adjusting to the “new reality” will hardly be
in a mood to exchange it for something far worse. Nevertheless, the “unreality” of the attacks
themselves would seem to join seamlessly with the unreality of the subsequent
drama.
Perhaps the script was written long before September 11,
2001.
In a following section I will examine the technical feasibility of
hijacking large commercial aircraft electronically, as described in the opening
scenario. I do not claim that is
actually what happened on September 11, nor do I claim that any other method
was used. Nor do I claim that the
attacks were planned and carried out by “Arab terrorists.”
I claim only that the method described below amounts to one of
several genuine possibilities, albeit among the most efficient methods. I must therefore also claim that the rush to
judgment following September 11 was, at best, foolhardy on the part of the Bush
administration and, at worst, disastrous for America. In that event, the evidence compiled here
points to elements within the power structure of the US government and it can
only be concluded that the United States itself has been hijacked.
Before explaining how electronic hijacking might be feasible, it
would be appropriate to disclose some findings related to the attacks for clues
they may contain that something quite different from hijackings by “Arab
terrorists” was in progress that day.
The historical context:
First and most important, no attack by any so-called “terrorist” group,
whether Palestinian, Basque separatist, Irish nationalist, American “Christian
fundamentalist,” Tamil Tiger, Red Army brigade, or what have you, was ever
carried out without the group responsible claiming responsibility. The whole point of the attack is to publicize
a cause. The only exception to this rule
in the history of terrorism is the mysterious Al Qaida, led by the equally
mysterious Osama bin Laden. Robert Fisk,
the well-known British reporter, gave voice to the same opinion: “They left no message behind. They left just silence.”1 In Fisk’s
opinion, this was quite out of character for any terrorist organization.
If Al Qaida was responsible for the attacks, what possible
reason would bin Laden have for not claiming responsibility? The White House claim that Al Qaida’s purpose
was to inflict “nameless terror” on America is deeply contradictory. The only other terrorist acts for which none
of the “regular” organizations took responsibility, namely, the bombing of the
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, as well as the attack on the USS
Cole in 2000, were also blamed on Al Qaida.
What reason would bin Laden have for imagining that the terror inflicted
by Al Qaida on September 11 would be blamed on anyone but Al Qaida, let alone
be “nameless?” It simply fails to make
sense. Worse yet, bin Laden has
repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks.
These denials, to the author's knowledge, have never been made public in
"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11
September attacks in the
Nevertheless, the White House claimed to have “links” between Al
Qaida and the September 11 attacks, secret information that, for reasons of
“national security,” could not be disclosed to the public.
Intelligence leaks:
Another discrepancy in the September 11 attacks is apparent to anyone
who has followed the history of ‘terrorism.”
The sheer size of the operation as outlined by the White House, the high
degree of coordination involved, and the need for absolute secrecy, is not one,
but two, orders of magnitude greater in scale than anything previously
attempted by any terrorist group.
Indeed, even the previous attacks blamed on Al Qaida were relatively
simple operations involving the clandestine transport of explosive materials
(by boat or car) to the target site. In
the large-scale operation of September 11, the requirement of secrecy was
especially important.
The scale of the operation was more suited to a large,
well-organized intelligence agency, with as many as 50 agents involved, each
privy to one or more aspects of the plan.
With such a large operation, leaks are inevitable. The two cited below both point to a very
different source.
According to Ha'aretz (Israel’s largest daily newspaper), two
employees of Odigo, an Israel-based messaging service in one of the WTC towers,
received email warnings3 of
the attack two hours before impact on September 11. The employees immediately informed the
company, which cooperated with Israeli security services, as well as American
law enforcement agencies, giving them the source of the message. No follow-up on this story has been made available,
which leads one to believe that the message did not come from a “terrorist”
source: If such a source had been
suspected (much less proved) the administration would not have hesitated to use
the item in its “war on terrorism.”
An interesting report of another leak4 alleges that “A US military intelligence report
revealed details of an internal intelligence memo linking Mossad to the WTC and
Pentagon attacks. The memo was in
circulation three weeks before the attacks.
It pointed to a threat that Mossad was planning a covert operation on US
soil to turn public opinion against the Arabs.”
David Stern, an expert on Israeli intelligence operations, stated, “This
attack required a high level of military precision and the resources of an
advanced intelligence agency. In
addition, the attackers would have needed to be extremely familiar with both
Air Force One flight operations, civil airline flight paths, and aerial assault
tactics on sensitive
The virtual celebration:
A highly suspicious occurrence was the airing of a videotape supposedly
shot in
Since the tape is unquestionably a fake, shot at some other time
and on some other occasion of celebration, it must be asked how it got into the
hands of the American media (via an “independent producer”) so quickly, unless
it had been prepared in advance of the attacks.
There is no other explanation for this anomaly.
Planted evidence: Another
difficulty arises in the matter of evidence discovered by FBI investigators in
the parking lots of airports used by the hijackers. In more than one rental vehicle, field
officers recovered copies of the Qur’an and aircraft flight manuals. In a context where the White House was
stressing the “sophistication” of the attackers, as well as the high state of
organization and coordination necessary to carry them out, it would seem
reasonable to assume that all operatives would have been extensively briefed on
the importance of leaving no trace of themselves or their mission (in pursuit
of “nameless terror”). Such a briefing
would certainly include all personal possessions, religious documents, flight
manuals, and so on. The rental vehicles
would be left as clean as they were when they were rented. No Muslim, (especially, one supposes, a
“fanatic”) would ever leave a Qur’an in a rented vehicle,
especially if he knew he would not be returning to it. Again, there is a very serious discrepancy
between the facts as reported and on-the-ground realities.
The Lebanese playboy:
Ziad Jarrah, the alleged pilot of United Airlines Flight 93 (which
crashed in
Jarrah loved the good life but had one over-riding passion, to
study aeronautical engineering and (probably) to learn how to fly. He went to Hamburg to study and it was there,
according to his landlady, that he began making mysterious evening trips to Harburg,
sometimes not returning until dawn.
Harburg was the address of Mohammed Atta, one of the most notorious of
the alleged hijackers, and the person who, MacIntyre opines, probably recruited
Jarrah for a special mission. If this is
true, although we do not know what Atta may have told Jarrah, June of 2000
finds him in Florida, taking flying lessons (light aircraft only) and
discussing what it would be like to fly a large commercial aircraft with his
room-mate (also interviewed for the program).
Anyone with a reasonably active imagination can come up with
several different stories that may have been fed to Jarrah (apart from the
standard Al Qaida recruitment scenario) causing him to take flying lessons in
Florida. For example, Jarrah might have
been told that he was being considered for a position as private pilot to a
wealthy Middle Eastern businessman currently living in Florida.
On September 9, just two days before the attacks, Jarrah
telephoned his uncle in Lebanon. He
sounded normal and reasonably happy, according to the uncle. He stated that he would be flying back to
Lebanon in two weeks for a party which his family had planned. A new Mercedes awaited Jarrah, an
anticipatory wedding gift which his father had purchased for him. MacIntyre professed no little puzzlement over
the discrepancies. “It becomes more
perplexing as each layer of the mystery peels away.”
The 1993
On February 26, 1993, at 12:18 pm, a powerful explosion,
originating in parking level ‘B’ beneath the WTC twin towers shook the
buildings, killing seven people and trapping thousands of workers inside for
hours, forcing them to breathe heavy smoke.
Within a week, the FBI had arrested Mohammed A. Salameh, along with a
friend, Nidal Ayyad, as prime suspects in the blast. Salameh had been traced through a fragment of
metal found in the WTC parking garage.
It bore the serial number of a Ford Econoline van belonging to a Ryder
rental agency in Jersey City.
Salameh, it turned out, had certainly rented the van in
question. Unlike most terrorists who
rent vans to blow up large buildings, he reported the van stolen to Jersey City
police on February 25 (the day before the blast). Unfortunately, he was unable
to supply the license number, having left the rental documents in the stolen
vehicle. He also reported the theft to
the rental agency, attempting in the process to retrieve his $400 deposit on
the vehicle. On the next day, even as
everyone learned of the WTC bombing, Salameh again telephoned Ryder, obtaining
the plate number and filing a second report to the police, this time with the
correct number. On the face of things,
the youth was behaving just like someone who had no idea that his missing van
had been used in the World Trade Center bombing.
This case gets even stranger.
Salameh and Ayyad attended a small mosque on the second floor of a
building in downtown Jersey City. The Imam was Shaikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. The
shaikh was also arrested and brought to trial in separate, closed
proceedings. A police search of the
mosque revealed no hidden bomb-making or related material. A search of
Salameh’s apartment had the same negative result.
On the day before the bombing, a “friend” of Salameh’s in Jersey
City, one Josie Hadas, had hired him to rent a van to move a certain
cargo. Police did, however, discover
bomb-related wiring, instruction sheets and traces of explosives in Hadas’
apartment. Hadas, an Israeli citizen,
was taken into custody by police, but was soon sent back to Israel and
(apparently) cannot be found to this day5.
The main source of damaging testimony at the trial was delivered
by FBI informant Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer, who had become
close to Shaikh Abdel Rahman and his circle of friends, infiltrating the group
on behalf of the FBI. He testified that
he had been involved in assisting with the bomb. The jury found the pair guilty of the blast,
with Abdel-Rahman being tried in separate proceedings. The verdict was based on circumstantial evidence
of a conspiracy; none of the suspects ever being placed by witnesses, or
forensic evidence, at the scene of the crime6.
After the trial,
Those who are unfamiliar with the activities of large intelligence
operations8
should be aware that frame-ups and other “dirty tricks” are part of regular
operations. They are relatively easy to
carry out, for the most part. For
example, in the present case, Salameh could have been directed by Hadas to
deliver the goods (innocuous items) to an address somewhere in Jersey City,
where he would have to enter a building to report the delivery. While he was inside, the van would be stolen,
then driven to another location to be prepared for its ultimate mission.
The missing passengers:
In most of the web sources9,10,11 for
passenger lists, the names of the hijackers do not appear. There are, of course, a number of reasons why
we might not see the names of the hijackers.
One is that the airlines all decided, in releasing the lists to the
media, to delete the names of the hijackers from the lists so as not to
dishonor the dead, reproducing the lists as consisting of “victims” only. No statement to this effect appears in
conjunction with any of the lists.
Another reason is that the hijackers may have used phony names. Yet the passengers are usually identified not
only by name on the lists, but their place of residence and occupations are
also included. None of the entries give
“terrorist” as occupation. It may be a
bit of a stretch, but it is just possible that the hijackers’ names do not
appear on the passenger lists because they were not aboard the aircraft in the
first place.
The missing black boxes:
Each of the Boeing aircraft involved in the September 11 attacks was
equipped with the standard “black boxes,” a flight data recorder (FDR) and a
cockpit voice recorder (CVR). There is
no known instance, prior to September 11, 2001, of a terrestrial airplane crash
from which the essential flight and voice data were not ultimately recovered.
Only one of the eight black boxes was ever recovered, namely the
CVR of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. According to ABC News, “The voice recorder
was said to be heavily damaged and the manufacturer was being asked to help
with further analysis. The plane that
crashed in Pennsylvania was reported to have hit the ground in excess of 500
miles an hour.”
Black boxes are built to withstand g-forces of up to 3400 Gs,
generated by a deceleration of 108,800 f/sec/sec. An aircraft traveling at 500 mph that crashes
into the ground or a building will have all motion arrested within one-tenth of
a second, yielding an average deceleration of 7,330 f/sec/sec, about 7 percent
of the rated maximum. Heat resistance
for the units is 1100 degrees Celsius over a thirty minute period.12 Temperature would not have been a factor in the
Pennsylvania crash, but even the fireball resulting from the WTC impacts had a
temperature no greater than 1000 degrees Celsius.12 The heat lasted
no longer than the jet fuel and temperatures may not have reached half that
value in the insulated confines of the black box housings. In any event, the buildings each collapsed in
less than half an hour from impact.
There can be little doubt that had the black boxes been recovered,
they would have all the information necessary to confirm that hijackers did,
indeed, commandeer the four aircraft on September 11. There have been no further reports in the
media about the contents of the Flight 93 CVR. The FBI, apparently, has refused
to release the tape taken from it.14
The missing interceptors: It has been standard air force
policy for many years to intercept any aircraft within minutes of it being
reported off course. New York and
Washington are among the most heavily guarded places in the United States. For the first time in the history of this
policy being implemented, no interceptors were sent up, in spite of the fact
that not one but four aircraft were involved.
It would have taken approximately five minutes for any fighter
from, Andrews Air force Base to intercept the aircraft that struck the
Pentagon, for example. Aircraft were on
standby on the morning of September 11, according to the official air force
website, although the contents of the site were changed two days after the
attacks to say that no aircraft were available that morning (a strange
circumstance, considering the sensitivity of the area and the number of fighter
stationed there).23
The air force had not five minutes but up to an hour to carry out
interceptions.
Virtual hijacking
The natural assumption of every single viewer of the September 11
attacks was that human beings were at the controls of the aircraft. What could they be but hijackers? Since they were also committing suicide, what
could they be but terrorists? But what
at first sight seems impossible sometimes turns out to be not only possible,
but the actual explanation of events.
Although I shall be using an in-principle argument, it must be
recognized that the “devil is in the details” and that certain features of the
scheme I have worked out might have to be implemented in another way. About the main conclusion, however, there can
be little doubt. The thing is do-able.
As already implied, an electronic hijacking involves someone on
the ground gaining control of an aircraft.
In a modern commercial airliner like the Boeing 757 or 767, all control
signals from the pilot and co-pilot go through the flight control system (FCS)15,16. The heart of
the system is a computer with three processors (to ensure reliability of
operation). Each processor is able to
run separate versions of what is essentially the same software. Only one processor runs at a time, but the
pilot can switch from one processor to another if he suspects a
malfunction. Each processor, like any
multi-mission computer, has an operating system.
If something goes wrong with the computers or with the flight
control system generally, a manual override is initiated by the pilot. This allows the pilot to fly the aircraft
manually -- unless he is dead.
The simplest possible scheme for hijacking a modern commercial
jetliner involves two elements: a) two small canisters of lethal gas hidden in
the aircraft’s ventilation ducts and triggered either by a timer or by radio
signal, b) a small information implant (three numbers) in the flight control
system and a means to trigger it.
The agent of choice for part a) would probably be fast-acting
sarin, a lethal nerve gas that, at the dose levels to be used in a hijacking,
would incapacitate every human being in the aircraft within a minute of first
breathing the gas. Should the oxygen
masks all pop out of the ceiling, it would make no difference to the
outcome. Only one breaths would be
required. The symptoms described in the
alternative scenario are all typical of sarin poisoning.
The information implant mentioned in part b) would be new
coordinates (latitude, longitude and altitude) in a form used by the inertial navigation
system (INS), which is part of the aircraft’s flight control system (FCS). The central problem of this analysis is to
determine which of two ways of achieving this goal is most efficient. In what I call the “custom job,” a
pre-installed virus-like code implant in the flight control computer(s),
triggered like the gas canisters (either by timer or by radio signal), sends
new coordinates to the INS. No more than
a few lines of code would be required: there would be a time/signal check
followed by an instruction to replace the Los Angeles coordinates by the ones
stored in location so-and-so. In the
“installed base” method16,
the software already exists in the FCC operating system, awaiting its use
(presumably) as a counter-hijacking facility.
This software would be able to read the new coordinates directly by
radio from the ground.
Installation of the unfriendly software and hardware would be
carried out on selected aircraft during routine maintenance periods. The agents carrying out the installation
might pose as mechanics or even cabin cleaners.
In the cockpit they would install the special software patch (if
necessary) in all three FCS processors.
In a maintenance port of the plane’s air supply system, they would
install two custom-made sarin gas canisters, each with its trigger. Such installations are actually the easy part
of the overall operation, depending on how much “cooperation” the organization
receives. Although it would not be
crucial, access to aircraft maintenance and location schedules would be very
useful to the agents, giving them more time for installation on specific
aircraft, instead of having to make the installation on additional aircraft,
which might or might not be used.
The components of the FCS that concern us here are the flight
control computer, the INS, and the autopilot.
During most commercial flights, the pilot places the aircraft on
autopilot, as guided by the INS. The
autopilot manages the aircraft’s control surfaces to guarantee a smooth, level
flight, automatically compensating for various forms of disturbance such as
turbulence and other factors. Autopilots
have been around for over fifty years and have grown increasingly sophisticated
with time. They do a superb job of what
might be called “local control,” keeping the aircraft on its present heading,
altitude, and so on. However, autopilots
have no idea where they’re going, so to speak.
That information must come from the INS.
The destination coordinates, stored in the FCC, may be called up by the pilot
and sent to the INS. Routinely,
commercial pilots engage the INS and autopilot together, the INS continually
sending new directions to the autopilot to keep it on course.
Inertial navigation systems have been around for approximately
thirty years and, like autopilots, have been the subject of tremendous
development and sophistication.
According to Edward Safford, dean of American avionics experts, “The
plane can fly any course in the world without the need for a navigator or
external navaids.”15 Present INS capabilities are, if anything,
even more sophisticated, positioning an aircraft over the center of a runway
hundreds of miles from the point of insertion.
Such accuracy is adequate to accommodate the precise three-dimensional
coordinates of the impact sites of the WTC towers and the Pentagon.
The agency carrying out the attacks would, after clandestine
installation of software implants of the kind outlined above, simply trigger
the whole operation when it was determined that the target aircraft was flying
in INS/autopilot mode. The flight
control computer would then engage the INS, feeding the new coordinates to the
INS. The flight would be managed
smoothly, the direction being changed as soon as the new destination
coordinates were received. The changes
in direction that took place on September 11 would be visible on ground radar
(transponders or no transponders) as a “hard left” or a “hard right.”
However an electronic hijacking might be managed, the organization
responsible would also be sure to add other elements to the basic plan, not
only developing lists of ghost riders, but sending fake cell phone calls from a
handful of the passengers.
Significantly, it would seem, most of the alleged calls. like the one to
Lisa Jefferson, a 911 operator, were made to persons unknown to the
caller. It was Jefferson who received
the famous “Let’s roll” call from an unidentified passenger on Flight 93, an
“audio scene” that required nothing more than a sound studio to
manufacture. All calls were obviously
hurried, involving a minimum of chit-chat that would serve to identify the
caller.
The most detailed message of all came from a well-known television
personality, whose voice could readily be imitated. Her message included a plea not to interrupt,
as there was not much time. Suffice it
to say that any sophisticated intelligence organization can duplicate any voice
type. For example, Mossad, the Israeli
spy agency, has extensive video and audio archives which it can use as a source
for fake images and voice messages.8
It would also be crucial, once such an “automated” hijacking is in
progress, that air force fighters not be deployed anywhere in the vicinity of
the aircraft. As part of operating
procedure, pilots are instructed to inspect the aircraft visually, including a
look into the cockpit. Has the aircraft
been hijacked? In this particular case,
the pilot would see the flying officers slumped over their seats -- and no guys
with dark beards.
Who benefited?
If the September 11 attacks are regarded as an unsolved crime, the
most reasonable approach is to follow standard criminal investigation
technique, asking in effect, “Who benefitted?” Assuming for the moment that Al
Qaida is not the perpetrator, the finger of suspicion automatically swings 180
degrees. Ehud Sprinzak, an Israeli
expert on terrorism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, referred to the
attacks as follows: “From the perspective of Jews, it is the most important
public relations act ever committed in our favor.”18 This observation ties in with a news report that was
nearly lost in the post-September 11 shuffle.
Within an hour of the attacks on the WTC towers, five Israelis
were spotted filming the burning buildings from the rooftop of a nearby
building. The person who spotted them
from an adjoining building reported their strange behaviour to the FBI
immediately. They were “shouting in what was interpreted as cries of
joy and mockery.”19 This apparently real celebration provides an
ironic contrast with the faked Palestinian one.
Certain elements in the United States also stand to benefit. First, there was an immediate excuse to
engage in a lengthy military exercise that would involve the expenditure of
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of munitions, a plus for the arms
industry. Strategically, the United
States would also benefit from the ensuing “war on terrorism” because it
promises to secure American control of the Middle East even more securely,
cutting Russia off from the Persian Gulf, en passant. There will be an oil pipeline, tapping the
rich oil fields of central Asia, through the very country where Al Qaida is
alleged to have its base of operations, Afghanistan.
If the United States and Israel are jointly culpable of this
crime, it would not be unfair to ask what role each played in the
disaster. Under the alternative
scenario, it would seem likely that by secret arrangement Israel’s Mossad took
care of the aircraft attacks under a separate (and purely oral)
“contract.” This way, the right hand
would not know what the left hand was doing, except in the most general terms;
elements in the US government would have known that some kind of attack was
coming.
In one of many ironic twists that accompany this scenario, the
declaration by the US Department of State that they had definite information
that Al Qaida was responsible may actually have been true.
Implications of the alternative scenario
If the September 11 attacks were planned and executed as a
combined clandestine operation between Mossad and some US agencies such as the
CIA and NSA (with God knows what involvement by the Joint Chiefs and the White
House), it can be reliably inferred that other attacks blamed on Al Qaida are
also fakes or “dirty tricks” in CIA parlance.
These would include the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania on August 7, 1998, as well as the attack on the USS Cole on October
12, 2000, in the port of Aden, Yemen.
Self-attack is the theme of some scandalous proposals of the Joint
Chiefs and the National Security Agency to launch attacks on American targets,
blaming them on Cuban terrorists some decades ago.20 The scheme code-named “Operation Northwoods” and
“Operation Mongoose” both involved terror attacks, mostly on US soil. The attacks included blowing up a ship at the
US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, sinking boatloads of refugees, mounting a
“communist” terror campaign in Miami which included bombings and the
assassination of prominent Cuban exiles, etc.
It would consequently be fair to assume that Al Qaida itself is
not exactly your run-of-the-mill terrorist operation. The possibility emerges that Al Qaida is a
front under joint Israel-US control.
Links between bin Laden and the CIA, as well as between the bin Laden
and Bush families are well-known. With
“Al Qaida” performing the necessary terrorist services, the United States gets
a free hand to engage in whatever military operations it likes, while Israel
gets a free hand on the West Bank. This
in no way precludes the possibility that some members of Al-Qaida may think
they belong to a genuine terrorist organization, including bin Laden
himself. (The whole operation becomes
increasingly reminiscent of Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch-22, wherein Milo
Finderbinder sells US Air Force bombing services to the Germans.)
Unfortunately, we are not living in a novel or a movie. However, the surreal quality of the September
11 attacks, noted by many observers, may be an unwitting, grassroots comment on
the overly-dramatic, near-cinematic quality of the attacks. What might be called “Hollywood evil” (rather
than the “banal evil” thought to lie behind the Jewish Holocaust, for example)
has been invoked in the form of a terrorist who has no real cause, who, having
being made insane by his religion, simply loves to kill people and looks
forward to martyrdom. Such imagery has
played a key role in media reporting on the Middle East since well before the
September 11 attacks.
Why now?
Under the alternative scenario, the timing of the September 11
terror attacks can be directly related to Israel’s discomfiture, one should say
extreme discomfiture, with a slow turning of the tide of public opinion in the
west against Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. The change is more
noticeable in Europe than in North America, but Israel has feared that as time
went on, more and more Americans would become disillusioned with Israel and
there would be increasing political pressure on elected officials to begin
changing America’s relationship with Israel.
This was not to be tolerated, as more than $100 billion dollars
(probably a conservative estimate) has been sent from the United States to
Israel since the 1950s. With this money and only with this money, most of it
“foreign aid,” much of it in donations, Israel has been able to survive
economically. Much of the foreign aid money goes right back to the United
States, being spent on American arms.
Among the pressure items prompting Israel to act now was the UN
conference on racism in Durban which addressed, among other matters, the issue
of Israeli state racism. American and
Israeli delegates walked out of the conference as soon as the item was raised.
Another pressure item was the filing by Palestinian complainants
of a brief
to the Belgian Court of International Law on the June 18 200121. The
Palestinians were survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in
1982. Their brief singled out Ariel Sharon and other Israelis. It came just one day after a BBC documentary
concluded that Sharon was indictable for war crimes and crimes against
humanity. Thought to constitute a strong legal challenge, the complaint is
likely to lead to trial. Sharon would be charged under the 1993 Law for the
Repression of Grave Breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of
additional Protocols I and II. Sharon has taken the prospects of a trial
seriously enough to hire a Belgian lawyer Michele Hirsch to derail the
proceedings.
American policy in the Middle East, broadly conceived, has come to
resemble Israel’s policy on the West Bank and in relation to neighbouring Arab
states. Israel, which has been using the
word “terrorist” for several decades, urging it upon the US media at every
opportunity, uses the label to obscure the roots of “terrorism” in its own
policies in the West Bank, Gaza, and in neighbouring Arab states. Its continuing response to Palestinian
militancy seems calculated to guarantee a continuing source of violence that
permits Israel to pose as a victim, rather than a perpetrator.
In this context, some identifiable techniques emerge, general
principles which can be relied upon to predict future actions, either by Israel
or the US in relation to events in the Middle East. Here is one of them.
The straw man
Use of the word “terrorist” has given closet racists a green light
to indulge themselves in hatred, whether in small ways or large. The combined effect of their attitudes and
actions amounts to the leading edge of public support for the “war on
terrorism.” Of their profound ignorance
of the underlying realities one needs only to cite instances like the arson
attack on a Hindu temple in Canada within days of September 11. The perpetrators evidently though it was a
mosque!
In order to cultivate this racism and to use it for political and
military purposes, it has been the practice in the United States in recent
decades to single out an individual who could be called the “straw man.” This individual becomes the incarnation of
evil and a token for the race he represents.
The exposure is often accompanied by reassuring statements that, of
course, most Arabs are not like that.
Because the straw man becomes, inevitably, a propaganda asset, his
continued existence is guaranteed, despite assurances that the US is out to get
him at all costs. The family of Moammar
Khaddafi was bombed in 1986 but, strangely enough, Khaddafi himself was away at
the time. In 1990 Sadddam Hussein’s Iraq
was bombed into near-oblivion, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 Iraqi
civilians, many of them children, yet Saddam, strangely enough, survived. At the present time, they are still looking
for the wily bin Laden. If they ever
find him, according to this analysis, it will be a) a fleeting appearance and
b) near the next planned scene of American military operations. One event that would confirm the predictive
power of this theory, for example, would be alarming reports that bin Laden has
been spotted somewhere near Pakistan’s arsenal of 30-odd nuclear weapons. Israel, one supposes, would love to see them
placed in quarantine by US forces.
In any event, under the scenario proposed here, we may be sure
that whatever we hear about bin Laden or Al Qaida in the future, the
information will always come from one source, even if it pretends others.
The media
Sadly, ever since the Gulf War, the US media, particularly
television news operations, have been under strict control of the Pentagon in
any and all matters relating to military reporting.22 Gone are the
days of the independent reporter roaming the war zone, as was the case in
Vietnam. Reporters who do not toe the
Pentagon line, adopting its interpretation of events, are simply not invited to
press briefings. The media have,
furthermore, been subtly influenced into adopting the “terrorist” spin urged
upon it by parties with an interest in promoting hatred of Arabs and/or
Muslims.
In this context the American news media have become enthusiastic
partners in the war on terrorism, serving narrow interests that it interprets
as “American.” Under the scenario
developed in this report, it can be reasonably be suggested that had the media
not allowed its own best interests to be undermined in this way over the last
two decades, the September 11 attacks would not have taken place. For without the guarantee of a news media
already programmed to fall instantly into line with the “terrorism” spin urged
upon it by the Pentagon, the planners of this tragedy would surely have thought
twice.
By allowing the “terrorist” to become a separate, amorphous
entity, straight out of Central Casting, the media have guaranteed that
legitimate struggles for self-determination, driven as they sometimes are to
violent expression, will result in more “terrorists,” involving American forces
in a never-ending search for the boogey-man of the new millennium:
“So cowboy change
your ways to-day or with us you will ride
chasing this devil
herd across these endless skies.”
Recommendations:
The mere possibility that the September 11 attacks had a quite
different source demands two responses:
1. An open, public inquiry into the attacks should be set up under
an independent judicial body.
Investigations currently under way in the US Congress may well be
compromised by the attempts of Bush and Cheney to limit their scope, itself a
suspicious circumstance.
2. The evidence presented in the trials of Salameh, Ayyad and
others in relation to the 1993 Trade Center bombing should be re-examined by an
independent judicial body in open hearings.
About the author: A.
K. Dewdney is a Professor of Computer Science,
a
science writer, a student of Middle Eastern
affairs,
and a supporter of human rights.
Note: This document has been given a Release Number and date,
reflecting an ongoing process of inquiry.
If you have information about any of the items in this analysis, please
contact the author. Documented
information will be most useful in producing improved versions of this
report. The author can be reached by
email at <akd@uwo.ca>.
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History of Releases:
This document is undergoing successive revisions as more information
about the September 11 attacks comes to light.
Thoughtful comments by knowledgeable readers has made this succession of
increasingly feasible scenarios possible.
Future releases will refine the details, but the author already has the
distinct impression of converging on the simplest and most “practical”
alternative scenario.
Release 1.0:
by an intelligence agency.
Release 1.1: February 4, 2002: In this scenario, the use of hijackers
was
assumed to be too risky and two
all-electronic hijacking
operations were explored.
Release 1.2: March 8, 2002: after expert criticism relating to
impossibility
of disabling manual control, a new approach
developed. If
the passengers and crew of the aircraft are
gassed first, the
whole operation becomes an order of magnitude simpler.