Serpent and Savior | Links

1Green is the traditional color of Islam, but it was a special color for Gaddafi, being the color of his political movement, his philosophical treatise (The Green Book), and the name of the main square in Libya’s capital, Tripoli.
2Abu Abdallah is the nom de guerre of Abdelhakim Belhadj, the leader of the Belhaj brigade during the Libyan civil war.
3The “surge” in Iraq involved the temporary insertion of twenty thousand U.S. troops to fight the Sunni insurgency. While the overall level of violence in Iraq decreased during the three years the surge was in effect, there were many other reasons for that and experts remain divided on whether it was effective or not:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2010/04/3-years-later-did-the-iraq-surge-work/24912. It did temporarily elicit a somewhat favorable reaction from the American public in the spring and summer of 2008: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007.
4Tensions were high among reporters when they were holed up in the Rixos in the last days
before the fall of Tripoli. It has been alleged that independent journalist
Mahdi Nazemroaya, in particular, was threatened by CNN staffers there: href="http://mathaba.net/news/?x=628171">http://mathaba.net/news/?x=628171.
5The NTC, or the National Transitional Council, was installed after the NATO-led invasion of
Tripoli.
6Rachel Corrie was an American woman who went to Palestine on an independent studies
program and was killed while trying to prevent Palestinian houses from being
demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). A controversial Israeli
investigation found no negligence on the part of the IDF. Although a resolution
that called for an independent U.S. investigation of her death was submitted by
Rep. Brian Baird before the U.S. House of Representatives, the resolution never
even came up for a vote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie.
7It is estimated that over 1,500 migrants died at sea trying to escape the civil war
in Libya, many of them when NATO ships refused to help them at sea: href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17548410">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17548410.
8Natalie Holloway was a young woman from Alabama who disappeared in Aruba in 2005 and
was presumed to have died, possibly even murdered. Her disappearance created a
media sensation that lasted for months.
9Her disappearance created a media sensation that lasted for months.
Mohammed Salah and Mohanned Magam were actual people: href="http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=628454?rss">http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=628454?rss, href="http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/29-08-2011/118894-mohanned_magam-0/">http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/29-08-2011/118894-mohanned_magam-0/
10http://www.leightonbuzzardonline.co.uk/lifestyle/leisure/reviews/i-ve-lost-my-addiction-to-war-reporting-1-987864
11Libya subsidized food and housing as well as offered free education (even through the
university level) and free health care: href="http://countrystudies.us/libya/55.htm">http://countrystudies.us/libya/55.htm.
This led it to be ranked fifty-third in the world in terms of human development
by the United Nations, higher than all of Africa and many nations of Europe: href="http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/LBY.pdf">http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/LBY.pdf.
In fact, Gaddafi refused to allow his parents have a house of their own until
every family in Libya had one: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIiRvbC3Tb4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIiRvbC3Tb4.
12Although a Predator drone didn’t actually kill Gaddafi, it did stop his convoy that was
fleeing Sirte on October 20, 2012: href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/20/obama-qaddafi-death-ends-long-and-painful-chapter-in-libya">http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/20/obama-qaddafi-death-ends-long-and-painful-chapter-in-libya.
A direct Predator hit was believed to have killed his son, Khamis, who was the
commander of Libya’s most elite militia unit, the Khamis Brigade.
13The OPEC, or Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, was founded in 1960. It
wasn’t until 1973, under Gaddafi’s leadership, that OPEC started to demonstrate
its political clout.
14Gen. Albarrani Shkal was the leader of the Libyan defense forces and defected to
NATO in late August 2011, ordering his nearly four-thousand-strong division to
disperse during the battle for Tripoli. General Shkal was later assassinated in
May 2012: http://www.voltairenet.org/Libyan-settling-of-scores.
15CBS reporter Lara Logan was reportedly sexually assaulted and beaten during her
coverage of events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in February 2011: href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/lara-logan-hospitalized-sexually-attacked-egypt-protesters-celebration/story?id=12925235#.UVc_QTfKRLM">http://abcnews.go.com/US/lara-logan-hospitalized-sexually-attacked-egypt-protesters-celebration/story?id=12925235#.UVc_QTfKRLM.
16Press TV is the official news agency of Iran.
17Matthew VanDyke posed as a freelance filmmaker who was caught working with the Libyan
rebels and spent 161 days in Libyan prisons before being freed when Tripoli
fell. http://cpj.org/blog/2011/11/vandykes-deception-increases-risks-for-conflict-jo.php
18Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was one of the most influential Arab politicians of the
twentieth century, serving as president of Egypt from 1956 to 1970. Among his
many accomplishments was the overthrow of the monarchies of Egypt and Sudan,
the expulsion of British forces from Egypt, and the formation of the modern
Egyptian state.
19http://carnegieendowment.org/2007/03/01/shia-sunni-divide-myths-and-reality/1co
20One of the most intriguing aspects of the September 11 attacks was the large number of
cryptic predictions of it, especially in reference to the surprise attack on
the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1942. One of the most
chilling occurred a few months before at the United States Military Academy
graduation ceremonies where Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz talked of
a new Pearl Harbor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcxI5wpDueE.
All of this led David Griffin’s original book on the September 11 events to be
entitled The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing
Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11
(Interlink Pub Group,
2004).
21The special operations organization known as the Navy SEALs were an outgrowth of the navy’s
Underwater Demolition Teams in World War Two. SEAL stands for “Sea, Air, and
Land” and BUD/T stands for “Basic Underwater Demolition Training.” The climax
of the training is a grueling one-week set of challenges comprising Hell Week.
22Operation Iraqi Freedom was the name of the U.S. military operation that invaded Iraq in
2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein.
23This situation was described in an Los Angeles
Times
article: href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/31/world/la-fg-afghanistan-civilians31-2009dec31">http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/31/world/la-fg-afghanistan-civilians31-2009dec31.
24Because of what he perceived to be excessive civilian casualties, a senior British
commander asked that American special forces be removed from Helmand Province,
which was under his control: href="http://www.paktribune.com/news/print.php?id=186535">http://www.paktribune.com/news/print.php?id=186535.
In February 2013, Afghan President Karzai banned U.S. special forces from a
strategic eastern province of his country for the same reason: href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/24/afghanistan-us-special-forces-civilian-death">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/24/afghanistan-us-special-forces-civilian-death.
25The Special Activities Division (SAD) of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) performs the clandestine activities of the agency. It is comprised of two
sections: the Political Action Group (PAG) and the Special Operations Group
(SOG).
26The links between the British media and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) are
very close: seehttp://www.bilderberg.org/mi5bbc.html
and also Richard Tomlinson, The Big
Breach
(Cutting Edge Press, 2001). Two of the BBC governors—Dame
Pauline Neville Jones and Baroness Parks—were previously high-ranking
British intelligence officials: href="http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/journalist-paul-conroy-is-mi6-operative.html">http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/journalist-paul-conroy-is-mi6-operative.html.
The BBC has been accused of actively engaging in regime destabilization in
various nations, including Iran: href="http://counterpsyops.com/2013/03/14/iran-foils-new-sedition-ploy-hatched-by-bbc-affiliated-network">http://counterpsyops.com/2013/03/14/iran-foils-new-sedition-ploy-hatched-by-bbc-affiliated-network.
27http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php;
the official name of the Senate committee, headed by Sen. Frank Church of
Idaho, was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities
. Its report can be found at:
http://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel06unit.
28http://www.commondreams.org/views/032300-107.htm
29http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg17802.html
30http://wonkette.com/198892/anderson-cooper-comes-in-from-the-cold
31http://intelnews.org/2011/09/21/01-828
32http://www.consciousape.com/2012/05/03/google-bankrolled-by-the-cia;
one of many examples of this was Google’s
repeated blacking out of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) website during the
Syrian Civil War: href="http://fondation-princesse-de-croy.skynetblogs.be/archive/2012/12/01/american-war-propaganda-syrian-news-still-censored.html">http://fondation-princesse-de-croy.skynetblogs.be/archive/2012/12/01/american-war-propaganda-syrian-news-still-censored.html.
A set of massive and top-secret data-mining and domestic surveillance efforts
involving the National Security Agency and tech giants such as style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Google and Facebook was revealed in June 2013: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.
33Using special software created to determine Wikipedia
addresses by Virgil Griffith, a graduate student at the California
Institute of Technology, it was revealed that a very large number of entries
and edits on Wikipedia are routinely
made from CIA computers: href="http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker?currentPage=all">http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker?currentPage=all.
34For an exposé of the recent links between CNN and the U.S. government: href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2000/03/26/cnn-and-psyops">http://www.counterpunch.org/2000/03/26/cnn-and-psyops.
35There remains controversy whether Amb. April Glaspie in 1990 gave Saddam the green light to enter Kuwait. The official document
disclosed by WikiLeaks ( href="http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/glaspie.html">http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/glaspie.html),
quotes Glaspie’s reply to Saddam, in reference to the Iraqi invasion, that “The
instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on
this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. [Secretary of
State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this
instruction.” Although she has often been quoted as hoping that the matter
would be resolved peacefully, Glaspie’s exact words at that point were “All
that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly” (italics added). In view of the later American lie to the
Saudis that Hussein had marshaled 250,000 troops along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border
with Saudi Arabia—which frightened King Fahd into allowing the stationing
of over five hundred thousand troops on his soil and allowed for the defeat of
Hussein’s forces in the First Gulf War—there has remained suspicion ever
since that the United States was luring Saddam into a trap: href="http://www.whodies.com/lies_gulf_war.html">http://www.whodies.com/lies_gulf_war.html.
36Nouri al-Maliki was returned to power after over six months of political deadlock in
which the secular coalition of Ayad Allawi tried to form a governing majority
after its plurality victory in the parliamentary elections of March 2010.
37The PTSD estimate is based on the total number of American solders who served in the
Middle East (over two million, 1.2 million from 2001 to 2006 alone) times the
estimated 20 percent prevalence (probably too low) of PTSD among them: href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/6/1720.full">http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/6/1720.full.
38http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/qassem-suleimani-iran-iraq-influence
39http://www.rt.com/news/arab-spring-divide-conquer-559
40The collusion between Western militaries and Western correspondents was especially
glaring during the Libya operation, in which NATO Commander General Bouchard
actually thanked them for their information: href="http://www.voltairenet.org/General-Bouchard-acknowledges-that">http://www.voltairenet.org/General-Bouchard-acknowledges-that.
For the original interview in French, see href="http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/desautels/2011-2012/chronique.asp?idChronique=182728">http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/desautels/2011-2012/chronique.asp?idChronique=182728.
41One egregious example of this was the reporting of Amber Lyon for CNN on the unrest
in Bahrain in March 2011. Despite producing an award-winning documentary on the
repression by the Western-backed government there, CNN International refused to
air the documentary over the protests of Ms. Lyons, which was later released by
CNN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu8pgP2nWZs.
Lyons also reputedly later claimed that CNN ordered her to slant her news
coverage against Iran and Syria: href="http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2013/03/ex-cnn-reporter-i-received-orders-to-manipulate-news-to-demonize-syria-and-iran-2505386.html">http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2013/03/ex-cnn-reporter-i-received-orders-to-manipulate-news-to-demonize-syria-and-iran-2505386.html.
 The overall western reporting in
Syria came under especially scathing criticism for its “dangerous inaccuracy”
by Patrick Cockburn of The Independent:
  href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/foreign-media-portrayals-of-the-conflict-in-syria-are-dangerously-inaccurate-8679937.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/foreign-media-portrayals-of-the-conflict-in-syria-are-dangerously-inaccurate-8679937.html
42See Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the
World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
(MJF Books, New York, chap. 10).
43One especially egregious example of this was the photo from Iraq in 2003 used by
BBC to “document” the 2012 Houla massacre in Syria that caused the deaths of
108 civilians: href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html.
44For example, CNN’s Arwa Damon has been repeatedly accused of staging events in the
Middle East, particularly Libya and Syria: href="http://nsnbc.me/2012/02/23/cnns-arwa-damon-is-at-it-again-filing-fake-reports-about-syria">http://nsnbc.me/2012/02/23/cnns-arwa-damon-is-at-it-again-filing-fake-reports-about-syria.
Her possible involvement in a staged explosion in Syria covered by CNN is shown
in href="http://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/cnn-crew-linked-with-homs-bombings">http://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/cnn-crew-linked-with-homs-bombings.
Anderson Cooper has also been accused of staging interviews, the most infamous
being that with “Syrian Danny”: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXK83FJzLYc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXK83FJzLYc.
45The CIA links to Al-Jazeera, which trumpeted both the wars against Libya and Syria,
were exposed by Wikileaks: href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/arab-world-julian-assange-arab-leaders-cia-conspiracy-spies-wikileaks-al-jazeera.html">http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/arab-world-julian-assange-arab-leaders-cia-conspiracy-spies-wikileaks-al-jazeera.html.
Between late 2011 and early 2012, there was a mass exodus of Al-Jazeera
reporters over its biased coverage in Libya and Syria: href="http://socialmediachimps.com/news/al-jazeeras-unbiased-legacy-coming-end">http://socialmediachimps.com/news/al-jazeeras-unbiased-legacy-coming-end.
46According to some accounts, the planning for the regime changes in Libya and Syria
started years before the actual uprisings: href="http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/04/globalists-coming-full-circle.html">http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/04/globalists-coming-full-circle.html.
The official manual for regime change involving U.S. special forces and
intelligence assets working with internal resistance groups is Training
Circular 18-01 ( href="http://nsnbc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/special-forces-uw-tc-18-01.pdf">http://nsnbc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/special-forces-uw-tc-18-01.pdf
) and includes operations involving psychological warfare, destruction of
infrastructure such as power plants, and political violence. It should be noted
that the triangulation of British, French, and American forces in Libya was
paralleled in Syria, where the British operated primarily out of Turkey, the
French out of Lebanon, and the Americans out of Jordan: href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-intelligence-training-syrians-rebels-in-jordan">http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-intelligence-training-syrians-rebels-in-jordan;
href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9frzrCYuMpxC54hYGe3sO3Caw6Q">http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9frzrCYuMpxC54hYGe3sO3Caw6Q;
http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=1647.
47Mohamed Bouazizi was involved in an altercation with a municipal official in a small rural town in Tunisia on December,
17, 2010, and in protest of the confiscation of his property lit himself on
fire.  Major protests against the
government occurred after his death in January 2011.
48http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Misrata
49http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/31/the-top-ten-myths-in-the-war-against-libya
50This doctrine is a very controversial and legally dubious one (see Francis Boyle’s style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Destroying Libya and World Order: The
Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution [Clarity
Press, 2013]), since it could be easily used to violate a nation’s sovereignty
by destabilizing the country, provoking a legitimate government crackdown, and
then justifying UN-led invasions in the name of protection. Literally, dozens
of countries at a minimum could have had their sovereignty fall prey to this
doctrine in recent years, but until Libya, it had never been implemented.
51http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya
52http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15528984
53http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/06/07/going-rogue-natos-war-crimes-in-libya.
For a perpetrator testimony to the rapes and mutilation, see href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9enoa4AzvYM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9enoa4AzvYM.
54http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16265&Itemid=66
55One banner is believed to have extended almost five kilometers in length: href="http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/07/one-third-of-libya-turns-out-to-support-qaddafi-in-worlds-largest-march-ever/">http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/07/one-third-of-libya-turns-out-to-support-qaddafi-in-worlds-largest-march-ever/.
56The exact size of the crowd has been disputed, but from videos and photos, it was certainly in the hundreds of thousands at least and represented one of the larger political rallies in the history of the world. The massive rally was either ignored or underplayed by the entire Western media, and CNN’s brief report made no mention of the size of the crowd: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/07/01/libya.war/index.html
57http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-01/world/libya.war_1_moammar-gadhafi-nato-ground-invasion?_s=PM:WORLD
58The precise number of those killed during the NATO-backed rebel takeover of Tripoli remains
unknown. Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim reported one thousand three
hundred dead and over five thousand injured on the bloodiest day of fighting in
the city (August 21, 2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBuleoJgCFk.
59Many examples of the mindset of the Islamic jihadists who have fought to topple the Libyan and Syrian governments and contained in the documentary The Syrian Diary: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-VCQMR009U">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-VCQMR009U.
Even the Western media is now rife with accounts of “religiously justified” rape, cannibalism, public beheadings, and other jihadist actions in Syria and elsewhere.
60Abdelhakim Belhadj was perhaps the most mysterious of all of the Libyan rebels. He fought
for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, was allegedly involved in the Madrid
terrorist bombings of 2004 (http://larouchepac.com/node/25018),
and was then detained by Western intelligence, but he ended up spearheading
Western-backed efforts to topple the Libyan government in 2011 and the Syrian
government in 2012. Some believe that Belhadj—nicknamed the “butcher of
Tripoli” (http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=33101)—was
a Western intelligence asset all along. The support for Al Qaeda elements by
NATO during the Libyan campaign so disgusted Royal Canadian Air Force pilots
that many of them referred to themselves as “Al Qaeda’s Air Force”: href="http://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/al-qaedas-air-force">http://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/al-qaedas-air-force.
61National Security Adviser Samantha Power, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice all argued vehemently for the Libya
operation, even when many of the key “facts” used to justify the NATO operation
were later discredited: href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/americas-foreign-policy-valkyries-hillary-clinton-samantha-p-5047">http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/americas-foreign-policy-valkyries-hillary-clinton-samantha-p-5047.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (see following footnote) and Adm. Michael
Mullen both showed little enthusiasm for the Libyan involvement: href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iOW6Zcu1z41QgPDaItXos-WNc5jw">http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iOW6Zcu1z41QgPDaItXos-WNc5jw.
62U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made many statements that seemed to directly
undercut President Obama’s decision to attack Libya, including that Libyan
troops had not fired on protesters, that there was no need for a no-fly zone
and that Libya was not a vital U.S. interest. His disagreements may have
ultimately been behind his decision to retire shortly after the start of the
NATO campaign: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/time-for-secretary-for-defense-robert-gates-to-leave--or-be-fired/2011/03/29/AFPoE9CC_blog.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/time-for-secretary-for-defense-robert-gates-to-leave--or-be-fired/2011/03/29/AFPoE9CC_blog.html.
63Susan Lindauer and Robert Scheuer are both outspoken former CIA agents who opposed
American States intervention in Libya and elsewhere.
64Two examples of how the NATO campaign used judicial and human rights bodies to
spearhead the attack against Libya involved Amnesty International and the
International Criminal Court (ICC). Amnesty International officials claimed
that Libya was using black mercenaries to attack civilians, which was untrue ( href="http://libyanfreepress.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/amnesty-international-disinformation-the-gaddafi-mercenaries-and-the-division-of-africa">http://libyanfreepress.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/amnesty-international-disinformation-the-gaddafi-mercenaries-and-the-division-of-africa),
as was the claim of the ICC that Libyan troops had been ordered to engage in
mass rapes: http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=6155.
Amnesty International also spread the false story of Kuwaiti babies pulled from
incubators during the First Gulf War—see Craig Unger’s style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 137,
(Scribners, 2004). The most serious lie of all was the claim that the Libyan
Air Force was firing on protestors, which led the UN to adopt the no-fly zone: href="http://www.rt.com/news/airstrikes-libya-russian-military">http://www.rt.com/news/airstrikes-libya-russian-military.
65Indeed, within two years of the beginning of the unrest, the Russian oil firm Taftnet
was back doing business in Libya: href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2013/03/29/Russian-oil-company-Tatneft-back-in-Libya/UPI-69701364551069">http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2013/03/29/Russian-oil-company-Tatneft-back-in-Libya/UPI-69701364551069.
66http://www.wikileaks-forum.com/index.php?topic=8510.0
67The U.S. Fifth Fleet is harbored in Manama, Bahrain, and the forward operating command
center for U.S. Central Command is located at Udeid Air Base outside Doha,
Qatar, and is home to ten thousand permanently stationed soldiers.
68Many leading media organizations were criticized for their racially charged coverage
of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old from Florida, by George
Zimmerman near Orlando, Florida, in February 2012. Both CNN and MSNBC
backtracked and/or apologized for some of their earlier claims about
Zimmerman’s racism: href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/04/06/cnn-walks-it-back-oops-zimmerman-didnt-say-coon-he-said-it-was-cold">http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/04/06/cnn-walks-it-back-oops-zimmerman-didnt-say-coon-he-said-it-was-cold; href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/04/03/trayvon-martin-case-leads-to-multiple-embarrassments-for-nbc-msnbc/">http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/04/03/trayvon-martin-case-leads-to-multiple-embarrassments-for-nbc-msnbc/
 Zimmerman was later acquitted of
all charges in July 2013.
69See http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/16/further-decline-in-credibility-ratings-for-most-news-organizations.
In a recent survey, PBS at 52 percent was the only national broadcast network
that received a “trust” rating over 41 percent: href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_206.pdf">http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_206.pdf.
70In February 2012, there was a leak of a NATO memo that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan was
“inevitable”: href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/nato-report-taliban-afghanistan-damaging">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/nato-report-taliban-afghanistan-damaging.
71Vermont senator George Aiken is credited with the statement that rather than needlessly
prolonging the Vietnam conflict, the United States could essentially “declare
victory and go home,” although those were not his exact words.
72This phrase, making reference to the innumerable sightings of the entertainer Elvis Presley who died in 1977, was used by Angelo
Codevilla in 2009: href="http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/13/osama-bin-elvis">http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/13/osama-bin-elvis.
It is widely accepted (including by three Pakistani presidents) that Osama bin
Laden died not long after the United States’ attack on Afghanistan, probably
from complications stemming from kidney disease. One thing that the
“Osama-died” camp points to is that post-9/11 videos of the originally
left-handed Bin Laden show him exclusively as right-handed in both writing and gesticulations and wearing rings
(contrary to Sunni religious dictates and all of his pre-2001 photos). Even
more striking is the fact that the Osama bin Laden in the video captured in the
SEAL raid has an outer ear formation radically different from that of the real
Osama bin Laden, which clearly points to two different men since the outer ear
is an even more distinguishing biometric than fingerprints (99.6 percent
identification accuracy, according to Dr. Mark Nixon of the University of
Southampton: href="http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bin_laden_death.html">http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bin_laden_death.html).
For these various refutations, see David Ray Griffin’s Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (The Armchair Traveler, 2009) and href="http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bin_laden_death.html">http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bin_laden_death.html.
73Usay and Uday Hussein were the two eldest sons of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, both killed in
a shootout with U.S. troops in Mosul, Iraq, on July 31, 2003.
74Marie Colvin was a journalist for the Sunday
Times
who was killed in Homs, Syria, in 2012 by either shelling or an
improvised explosive device. While there is no proof that Colvin was actually
working for MI6, her close colleague Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times, who was seriously injured in the same attack that
killed Colvin and a French photographer, worked closely with Abdelhakim Belhadj
and other members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that was allegedly
funded by MI6 for many years: href="http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/journalist-paul-conroy-is-mi6-operative.html">http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/journalist-paul-conroy-is-mi6-operative.html.
75Novus Ordo Seclorem actually translates
to “New Order for the Ages.”
76See Anthony Sutton’s America’s Secret Establishment
(TrineDay, 2002) for a history of the Skull and Bones society and its
relationships to the Trilateralists and Bilderbergers.
77Chase Manhattan Bank later merged with J. P. Morgan to become JPMorgan Chase.
78See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Brothers_Harriman_%26_Co
for a brief account of Brown Brothers Harriman. Averell Harriman was one of the
most influential U.S. officials of the twentieth century, having served as
secretary of commerce, governor of New York, and ambassador to the Soviet Union
and Great Britain and as a key advisor to many American presidents. Prescott
Bush became a U.S. senator and father to one U.S president and grandfather to a
second. Alan Greenspan was the very powerful chairman of the Federal Reserve
Bank for almost twenty years, beginning in the late 1980s. For the financial
assets of the company, see its 2011 annual report: href="http://www.bbh.com/wps/wcm/connect/5d600c804b4a5f0b9f52bfb948755ea2/BBH_Annual_Report2011.pdf?MOD=AJPERES">http://www.bbh.com/wps/wcm/connect/5d600c804b4a5f0b9f52bfb948755ea2/BBH_Annual_Report2011.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
79Wilson wrote that “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.
Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation,
therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men . . . [W]e have
come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and
dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by
free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the
majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of
dominant men,” The New Freedom: A Call
for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People
(1913, pp. 185
and 201). There is no evidence that the supposed preface to this quote—“I
am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.”—was ever
uttered.
80The only control exerted by the United States Congress over the Federal Reserve is the
approval of its board of governors and chief and their salaries.
81The estimates for the value of the secret loans made by Fed Chief Ben Bernanke
beginning in 2008 range from $1.5 trillion to $29 trillion: href="http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/12/09/bernanke%E2%80%99s-obfuscation-continues-the-fed%E2%80%99s-29-trillion-bail-out-of-wall-street/">http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/12/09/bernanke%E2%80%99s-obfuscation-continues-the-fed%E2%80%99s-29-trillion-bail-out-of-wall-street/.
The most widely accepted estimate is that provided by Bloomberg—$8
trillion.
82The stories of German atrocities against children that shocked the American public and
helped build support for our involvement in World War turned out to be total
fabrications: http://www.mujahidkamran.com/articles.php?id=36.
Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer in the Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee,
offered $100 (equivalent to about US$2,000 today) to anyone who could produce a
single child who was mutilated by the Germans, and he didn’t lose a penny.
These tactics were repeated by the false claims against Libya’s Saddam Hussein
in 1990 and later Syria’s Bashir al-Assad in 2011 of pulling babies from
incubators—see Unger, op cit.,
pp. 136–139; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r23iSQ_gjXk.
83Sutton, op cit., p.159.
84http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_Copper
85See David Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man
, p. xii (Plume, 2004).
86http://web.archive.org/web/20080517135703/http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85
87http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/the-price-of-argentinas-default/246938/
88Perkins, op cit., pp. xxv. The CIA originated in
concert with leading Bilderberger bankers immediately after World War Two: href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30605.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30605.htm.
The close link between the Bilderbergers and the CIA was cemented by the
appointment in 1953 of Allen Dulles—one of the founding members of the
Council on Foreign Relations—to be the first and what turned out to be
the longest-serving civilian director of the CIA. Dulles also became arguably
the most influential person on the commission that investigated the assassination
of President Kennedy, even though Kennedy had fired him earlier. More recently,
the use of mercenary armies around the world in destabilizing operations was
highlighted by Scagill, op cit. President
Truman later realized that he had been duped into creating an agency that
became far removed from its original goal of intelligence gathering: href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30605.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30605.htm.
President Kennedy was even more disturbed than Truman over the mushrooming of
the CIA’s unauthorized covert activities, vowing shortly before his
assassination to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the
wind” (Wicker et al., “CIA: Maker of policy or tool?” New York Times, Apr 24, 1966, p. 22) href="http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/Item03.pdf">http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/Item03.pdf.
89Winston Lord, a high-ranking American government official in various administrations
and former head of the Council of Foreign Relations, is quoted as saying, “The
Trilateral Commission doesn’t secretly run the world. The Council on Foreign
Relations does that,” Estulin, op cit.,
p. 64.
90See James Perloff’s The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and The American
Decline
(Western Islands, 1988).
91The Great Man-made River, completed in 1996, was a project to pump water from the Nubian
sandstone aquifer in Southern Libya to the coastal cities and represented one
of the great engineering feats of the twentieth century: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River.
92Libya’s gold reserves at the time of the NATO invasion were estimated at around 150
tons, which would have been valued at ~$75 billion at the time of the Libyan
uprising, and any monetary system based on them was considered a major threat
by Western leaders to the IMF and World Bank: href="http://originaldialogue.blogspot.com/2011/11/qaddafis-african-gold-dinar-mortal.html">http://originaldialogue.blogspot.com/2011/11/qaddafis-african-gold-dinar-mortal.html.
93For a history of U.S. antagonism toward Gaddafi and the motivation behind NATO’s
toppling of his government, see Boyle (2013, op. cit.)
94The bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was attributed to Libya,
and a trial by a panel of three Scottish judges resulted in the conviction of
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan security official. The only two pieces of
evidence linking Al-Megrahi to the bombing were testimony by a Maltese shop
owner of a specific shirt purchase years before that was supposedly placed in
the same suitcase as the timer that set off the bomb. But the testimony, for
which he was paid $2 million by the CIA, was factually suspect (the shop owner
wrongly testified that there were no Christmas tree lights turned on even
though it was the holiday season during the time of purchase) and there was in
any case no suitcase from Malta that ever officially made it on to the plane.
The other piece of evidence was testimony that the timer used to set off the
bomb in the aircraft came from a set that had only been sold to Libya, which an
employee who testified at the trial later recanted in a sworn affidavit. An outside
United Nations observer of the trial called it a “gross miscarriage of justice.”
For a review of the evidence concerning the Lockerbie crash, see James Ashton’s
Megrahi: You Are My Jury: The Lockerbie
Evidence
(Birlinn, Ltd., 2012).
95Intelligence estimates placed Gaddafi’s popular support in Tripoli and its environs at around 70 percent, shortly before his defeat: href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/12/us-libya-officer-idUSTRE77B2AJ20110812">http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/12/us-libya-officer-idUSTRE77B2AJ20110812.
96Boyle (2013, op. cit.) notes that, since
Libya was not a party to the ICC—known derisively as the “White Man’s
Court” since it has almost exclusively prosecuted African leaders—the ICC
had dubious legal justification for prosecuting anyone in the Libyan
government.
97For the actual report, see href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A-HRC-16-15.pdf">http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A-HRC-16-15.pdf.
98Before the discovery of oil in 1932, Bahrain’s leading export was pearls, considered among
the most beautiful in the world.
99https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahraini_uprising_%282011%E2%80%93present%29

100http://www.worldtribune.com/2012/05/14/saudi-bahrain-plan-merger-culminating-in-gulf-confederation-to-counter-iran
101http://intelnews.org/2011/09/21/01-828/;
see http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/10/05DOHA1765.html
for an actual memo in which Al-Jazeera is shown to be complicit with U.S.
government requests for more favorable coverage.
102http://thesecrettruth.co.uk/wordpress/?p=1883;
the mock-up in Doha (upper left panel in photos) was missing several important
details, including the large inscription on the wall above the small arch.
103http://www.globalresearch.ca/breaking-qatar-military-coup-rumours-stir-bad-blood-with-house-of-saud/30371;
http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/04/17/attempted-coup-in-qatar
  In June 2013, Hamad
bin-Khalifa al-Thani resigned and his son Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani became the
new Emir.
104 href="http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/04/17/attempted-coup-in-qatar">http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/04/17/attempted-coup-in-qatar
105The Persian Gulf monarchies are known to force dissidents into exile by taking away their passports: href="http://arabiadeserta.com/2012/07/20/uae-searching-for-its-paid-saint-helena.aspx">http://arabiadeserta.com/2012/07/20/uae-searching-for-its-paid-saint-helena.aspx.
106The most authoritative documentation to date of the savage massacre at Houla, Syria, was that of Rainer Hermann of the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung
, who concluded the Western-backed Free Syrian Army was
responsible for the slaughter of almost all of the civilians, eighty-three of
whom were women and children: href="http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/11029-news-alternative-account-attributes-houla-massacre-to-anti-assad-militants.html">http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/11029-news-alternative-account-attributes-houla-massacre-to-anti-assad-militants.html.
107http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LTdx1nPu3k
108A recent comprehensive study of the Iraq War by Brown University researchers
concluded that it resulted in a total of around two hundred thousand direct
deaths, not counting indirect deaths from disease and other factors: href="http://www.golocalprov.com/news/brown-researchers-say-iraq-war-has-killed-190k-cost-2.2-trillion">http://www.golocalprov.com/news/brown-researchers-say-iraq-war-has-killed-190k-cost-2.2-trillion.
Included among these are almost nine thousand American soldiers and
contractors, but the official estimate of almost thirty-four thousand Americans
wounded undoubtedly underestimates the number of soldiers who suffered at least
mild traumatic brain injury: www.antiwar.com/casualties.
The Brown study further concluded that the Iraq War incurred $2.2 trillion in
direct costs and perhaps double that amount in long-term interest payments and
veterans care costs.
109Gen. Michel Aoun, the leader of Christian forces during the 1980s Lebanese civil
war, later switched sides and became and ally of Hezbollah from 2006 on and
eventually enabled Hezbollah control over the Lebanese government: href="http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2006/02/full_english_te.php">http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2006/02/full_english_te.php.
110http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
111http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Perle_Richard
112Elliott Abrams was assistant secretary of state during Reagan’s presidency and
was convicted of perjury in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s but later
pardoned by Pres. George H. W. Bush; Douglas Feith was an undersecretary of
defense under George W. Bush, and his office is believed to have created the
forged document alleging Saddam Hussein was still pursuing a nuclear program: href="http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Tape_Top_CIA_officer_confesses_order_0808.html">http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Tape_Top_CIA_officer_confesses_order_0808.html.
Paul Wolfowitz was deputy secretary of defense under George W. Bush and later
became president of the World Bank.
113For more details on the Iran hostage deal: href="http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html">http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html.
114Clinton’s speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, nominating
Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, was so long that he scrapped several
pages of it to the applause of the assembled delegates. The Perot candidacy is
one of the most bizarre episodes in American politics. H. Ross Perot, a
self-made billionaire, entered the 1992 presidential race and actually led in
the polls before dropping out because of alleged threats by the Bushes to
disrupt his daughter’s wedding. By September, he had rejoined the race but
ended up getting only 19 percent of the vote. Some theorists maintain that the
entire purpose of Perot’s candidacy was to siphon votes away from Bush and that
he had to drop out because he had become so popular he actually style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>had a chance of winning the presidency.
Indeed, in early June, he was preferred by voters in both the Democratic and
Republican primaries by huge margins: href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-06-03/news/mn-648_1_exit-poll">http://articles.latimes.com/1992-06-03/news/mn-648_1_exit-poll.
The use of third parties to conveniently sway U.S. presidential elections has
many precedents—for example, the candidacy of John Anderson (a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations) had no chance of success but did prove
crucial in ensuring Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.
115http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/evidence_mounts_ayers_cowrote.html
116These facts are substantiated in photographs and documents contained in Wayne
Madsen’s The Manufacturing of a President
(2012); see also Webster Tarpley’s
Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate,
Progressive
Press, 2008.
117The Manchurian Candidate, a movie
released in 1962, was about a right-wing presidential candidate who was
actually controlled by communist agents and has ever since become synonymous
with a political figure who fronts as the opposite of this true identity.
118http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover;
a similar quote was made by Marshall McLuhan, the famous futurist of the
twentieth century: “Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones
are kept secret by pubic incredulity,” href="http://www.1-famous-quotes.com/quote/558390">http://www.1-famous-quotes.com/quote/558390.
119A CBS News poll in 2009 showed that only 13 percent of the American public
believes Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone: href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-215_162-23166.html">http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-215_162-23166.html.
120http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory
121http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory
122See Richard Lockwood Mills’s Conscience
of a Conspiracy Theorist
, p. 147 (Agora
Publishing, 2011). FBI Director Hoover is claimed to have said “If I told you
everything I knew [about the Kennedy assassination], it would be very dangerous
to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted,” Mills, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op cit., p. 147.
123Kennedy was but one of a long list of world figures who have allegedly been
killed during the past fifty years under mysterious circumstances after
opposing major Western financial, industrial, or military interests. Some of
the other notables include presidential candidate Jorge Gaitain of Columbia in
1948 (assassinated); Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in 1961
(firing squad); UN Secretary Dag Hammerskold, who had supported Lumumba (plane
crash, also in 1961); Pres. Salvatore Allende of Chile in 1973 (presidential
palace coup); Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh in 1975
(assassination); Prime Minister Aldo Moro of Italy in 1978 (assassination);
Pres. Jaime Roldos of Ecuador in 1981 (plane crash); Pres. Omar Torrijos of
Panama in 1981 (plane crash); Thomas Sankara of Burkino Faso in 1987
(assassination following coup); and of course, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. It has
also been alleged that popular Pres. Sa Carneiro of Portugal died in a plane
bombing because he and his defense minister had documents that would have
exposed Portugal’s role in the Iran-hostage deal of 1980 that allegedly
sabotaged Carter’s presidency.
124David Rockefeller once said, “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal
working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my
family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the
world . . . If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Estulin, op cit., p. 129.
125Estulin, op cit., p. 11.
126For links between Belhadj and his Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, see href="http://larouchepac.com/node/25018">http://larouchepac.com/node/25018
and http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291316/islamist-plot-untold-story-libyan-rebellion-john-rosenthal.
Pepe Escobar of Asia Times described
how Abu-Masab Zarqawi, the Jordanian Al Qaeda leader, served as the ultimate
bogeyman for the Iraq invasion of 2003. Zarqawi was supposed to have met with Saddam Hussein, which provided the
impetus for the now-discredited claim that Hussein was linked to the September
11 attacks. Later, he and his Al Qaeda for Iraq organization style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>supposedly carried out a series of
brutal attacks on civilians in Iraq—including the supposed beheading of Kenneth Bigley, Jack Hensley, and Eugene
Armstrong—that led the Sunni tribal leaders to turn to the U.S. as part
of the ‘surge” campaign in 2006. But Escobar presents evidence that this
one-man killing gang may have been mostly fictional: href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html">http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html.
127For Belhadj’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group links to the London terror bombings
of 2005: href="http://www.infowars.com/libyan-rebel-leader-admits-connection-to-cia-al-qaeda-asset-in-iraq">http://www.infowars.com/libyan-rebel-leader-admits-connection-to-cia-al-qaeda-asset-in-iraq.
For its links to the Madrid terror bombings, see: href="http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-evidence-of-al-qaidas-role-in-the-2004-madrid-attack">http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-evidence-of-al-qaidas-role-in-the-2004-madrid-attack.
For its role in attempting to topple the Syrian government: href="http://www.islamtimes.org/vdcaoan6y49n6a1.tgk4.html">http://www.islamtimes.org/vdcaoan6y49n6a1.tgk4.html.
128The Mavi Marmara was a a vessel owned
by the nongovernmental organization IHH and part of a flotilla to bring aid to
the blockaged port of Gaza.  It was
stopped and boarded in international waters by the Israeli Navy on May 30, 2013,
and in the ensuing fight nine activists were killed:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Mavi_Marmara
129http://www.scribd.com/doc/12834177/How-Jimmy-Carter-and-I-Started-the-Mujahideen
130Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote in the Guardian shortly before his untimely death that “Bin Laden was . .
. a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies.
Throughout the 80s,
he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the
Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, literally ‘the database,’ was
originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahedeen who were recruited
and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.” See href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development.
131In arguing for the secret plan to fund the mujahedeen in Afghanistan at least
six months before the Soviet invasion, Brzezinsky claimed he told President
Carter, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam
War,” href="http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen">http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen.
When asked in that same 1996 French interview whether he had any “regrets”
about the arming of the mujahedeen and the subsequent costs of the Afghan war,
which took over one million lives (not counting the hundreds of thousands
killed in the two decades of continuing strife since the end of the Soviet
occupation), Brzezinsky stated, “What is most important to the history of the
world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end
of the Cold War?”
132One of the most interesting aspects of the fall of the Soviet Union was what
happened to its once-massive gold reserves. The Soviet Union was believed to
have accumulated anywhere from two to three thousand tons of gold but in 1991,
immediately after Soviet Union’s political demise, Victor Geraschenko, head of
the Russian Central Bank, stunned the nation when he admitted all of the
bullion reserves were gone: href="http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=4679">http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=4679.
133It is well documented that the CIA and MI6 were intimately involved in the
Balkan conflicts of the 1980s through a direct presence, use of private
security firms, secret funding of groups, such as the Kosovo Liberation Front,
and use of Al Qaeda assets: href="http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=/content/balkans/kosovo_metohija/articles/kam01.incl">http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=/content/balkans/kosovo_metohija/articles/kam01.incl;
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-behind-terrorist-assaults-in-macedonia">http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-behind-terrorist-assaults-in-macedonia.
For a discussion of how the CIA used Al Qaeda in Lebanon and elsewhere in the
Middle East, see href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all.
For a discussion of the CIA’s role in funding anti-Russian jihadists in the
Caucasus region, see href="http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/22/bfp-exclusive-us-nato-chechen-militia-joint-operations-base">http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/22/bfp-exclusive-us-nato-chechen-militia-joint-operations-base.
134http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/08/08/255180/alqaeda-a-tool-in-us-hands
135http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khobar_Towers_bombing
136http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC111B.html
137Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar for the Clinton and Bush
administrations, was asked in 2011 if anyone in the Bush administration was
capable of creating an incident like the attacks on September 11 2001, and he
reportedly replied, “Some of them were,” href=" http://911truthnews.com/the-facts-speak-for-themselves/"> http://911truthnews.com/the-facts-speak-for-themselves/.
138For a review of Gladio and other Western European secret operations: href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-warfare-operation-gladio-and-natos-stay-behind-armies/5303061">http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-warfare-operation-gladio-and-natos-stay-behind-armies/5303061.
139The top-secret Operation Northwoods plan is contained in a memo dated March 13,
1962: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods.
140http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/apr/10/philipwillan
141Estulin, op cit., p. 51. Kissinger
has also been implicated in the fatal coups against Mujibur Rahman of
Bangladesh in 1975 ( href="http://www.bangabandhu.com.bd/2011/12/11/%E2%80%98cia-involved-in-1975-bangla-military-coup%E2%80%99">http://www.bangabandhu.com.bd/2011/12/11/%E2%80%98cia-involved-in-1975-bangla-military-coup%E2%80%99)
and Pres. Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973 ( href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/KissingerTranscriptsChile.html">http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/KissingerTranscriptsChile.html).
For a general condemnation of Kissinger’s various roles in international
intrigue and violence, see Christopher Hitchen’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso, 2002).
142For example, when Oswald was handing out pamphlets in New Orleans for the “Fair
Play for Cuba” group, he was actually operating out of the office of Guy Banister,
who worked for the FBI and was avidly anticommunist and anti-Castro in
particular: http://oswaldpatsy.tripod.com.
Banister was a key liaison for American-sponsored anticommunist activities in
Latin America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Banister#cite_note-2.
143For a general introduction to the massive number of contradictions to the
“official conspiracy” theory of September 11, see David Ray Griffin’s style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes
Against Democracy Succeed (Olive Branch Press, 2011); the documentary style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Zero: An investigation into 9/11, href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFx1WaK54Vo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFx1WaK54Vo;
or an even more provocative and entertaining account by “Ace Baker” entitled style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>911- The Great American PsyOpera: href="http://www.youtube.com/user/CollinAlexander?feature=mhee">http://www.youtube.com/user/CollinAlexander?feature=mhee.
144http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104easilywithstood.htm
145http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/655-faq-9-were-the-twin-towers-designed-to-survive-the-impact-of-the-airplanes.html
146http://killtown.blogspot.com/2006/01/real-reason-wtc-was-targeted.html
147“Gulf War Syndrome” consists of various symptoms ranging from fatigue and
chronic pain to rashes and cognitive impairment that afflicted 250,000 American
veterans of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, whose goal was the
removal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The symptoms are most likely related to
the chronic use of cholinergic agents used as protection against nerve-gas
attacks and as pesticides: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome.
148Until the events of September 11, the Japanese attack on the American Naval
Base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, had been the
worst attack on American soil, killing over 2,400 Americans. See the following
for some of the many allusions to Pearl Harbor shortly before September 11,
2001: href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bf6197a44d">http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bf6197a44d;
href="http://www.newsofinterest.tv/video_pages_flash/politics/misc_neocon_globalist/wolfowitz_pnac_nph.php">http://www.newsofinterest.tv/video_pages_flash/politics/misc_neocon_globalist/wolfowitz_pnac_nph.php.
149http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090813150853871;
it should be noted that Stratosec was known as Securacom on September 11, 2001.
There have been many reports and allegations of suspicious activity in the towers
1 and 2 in the weeks prior to September 11, ranging from mysterious vans in the
early morning hours ( href="http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/01/127327">http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/01/127327)
to a janitor’s testimony about men entering the buildings dressed in hazard
suits: href="http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/10/%E2%80%9Clast-man-out-makes-shocking-911-disclosure">http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/10/%E2%80%9Clast-man-out-makes-shocking-911-disclosure.
150The change to existing NORAD procedures requiring secretary of defense approval
before interception of aircraft was contained in Instruction style='font-family:sans-serif'>JCSI 3610.01A, adopted in June 2001 and rescinded
on September 12, 2001: http://rense.com/general50/fdd.htm.
The role of at least five war games—some of which were moved to September
11—led to the insertion of multiple “hijacked” airplanes into the
National Airspace, in what is universally agreed was a very confusing Air
Traffic Control situation on that day: href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2004/080904wargamescover.htm">http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2004/080904wargamescover.htm.
The insertion of duplicate flights is believed to have occurred for several
flights, the most compelling evidence being for UA175 at Boston’s Logan
Airport: href="http://911woodybox.blogspot.com/2008/12/two-flight-175-taking-off-from-boston.html">http://911woodybox.blogspot.com/2008/12/two-flight-175-taking-off-from-boston.html.
151http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/was-america-attacked-by-muslims-on-911;
as Griffin points out, no hijacker or even Arab names were even listed on the
passenger manifests, and many of them later turned up alive.
152There was much chatter and some official warnings
about the planned use of hijacked commercial airliners to attack the United
States, but reports from field agents reporting unusual flight training by
Middle Eastern students met with total disinterest by FBI counterterrorism
heads. In a scathing memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller in May 2002 ( href="http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_whistleblower1.htm">http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_whistleblower1.htm), field agent
Colleen Rowley mentioned how the FBI field agents in Minneapolis actually joked
about how the seemingly unconcerned FBI headquarters brass must have been
“working for Al Qaeda.” FBI translator Sibel Edmonds also uncovered pre-9/11
transcripts of FBI headquarters totally ignoring field agents trying to warn it
about the Al Qaeda plan to hijack commercial airliners ( href="http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/02/01/the-fbi-%E2%80%9Ckamikaze-pilots%E2%80%9D-case">http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/02/01/the-fbi-%E2%80%9Ckamikaze-pilots%E2%80%9D-case)
and was later fired for her revelations.
153“Able Danger” was a joint program of the Department of Defense’s Special
Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Command, which allegedly
monitored many of the eventual 9/11 “hijackers.” There have been many claims
and counterclaims, but leading members of the group continue to stick by their
claim that the program had closely monitored Mohammed Atta and other hijackers
for months leading up to September 11. “Able Danger” was considered so
sensitive that the only book ever written from the inside–by Lt. Col.
Tony Shaffer—enjoyed only a single run, with the Department of Defense
purchasing all ten thousand copies and destroying them to keep the public from
viewing the material. “Able Danger” was never mentioned in the style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>9/11 Commission Report,, and all files related to it were allegedly shredded in
2001, under orders from the chief counsel for the Army Intelligence and
Security Command: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger.
154Dr. Judy Wood of Clemson University showed that had one floor of the towers
fell upon the next and caused a chain reaction of “pancaking”—the
“billiard-ball” hypothesis, as concluded in the official government
analyses—each tower should have taken almost ninety seconds to fall,
whereas in reality, they fell in less than ten seconds: href="http://drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html">http://drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html.
Of course, the entire notion that the much stronger and undamaged lower-floor
trusses could not support the slowly collapsing upper floors neglects the
obvious—the total mass of the
collapsing upper floors would not have changed and should have remained easily
supported.  In reality, there were
many reports of explosions throughout the buildings prior to their collapse, none
of which were allowed in the 9/11 Commission
Report
.(See Zero: An investigation
into 9/11, op cit, beginning 25:30.)
155Baker, op cit., segments 6 and 7
156The existence and fate of the mysteriously
interconnected passengers on the four planes is one of the strangest and most
controversial of all of the events on September 11 and could itself
be the topic of a very large stand-alone book. What is incontrovertible are
that the planes were remarkably empty that day (< 30 percent) and that a
negligible number of passengers’ families (5 percent as opposed to almost all
of the tower victims) filed claims against the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund:
http://letsrollforums.com/only-13-plane-victims-t20583.html.
Moreover, there is the strange case of some passengers’ photos in their 9/11 obituaries
being time-stamped prior to September
11: http://letsrollforums.com/flight-77-fraud-dora-t22428.html;
for a host of links related to the “hijacked” passengers, see href="http://letsrollforums.com/many-alleged-plane-victims-t20546.html">http://letsrollforums.com/many-alleged-plane-victims-t20546.html.
157http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/was-america-attacked-by-muslims-on-911
158See segments 6 and 7 of Baker, op cit.,
for a discussion of the video compositing that allowed computer-generated
frames of planes to be superimposed on live video footage.
159http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/was-america-attacked-by-muslims-on-911. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  That passports would have even been
carried on to the flights is absurd in that the four “hijacked” flights on
September 11 were all domestic ones, and no photo identification was required
for domestic flights before 9/11; moreover, there would have been no need to
carry a passport afterwards if the hijackers didn’t plan on surviving the
crashes.
160All of flight UA175’s fuselage conveniently ended up being found on the roof of
World Trade Center 5, but long after the crash since videos in the first
minutes after the second tower explosion showed no evidence of any aircraft
debris on its roof: href="http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=21357">http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=21357.
Moreover, none of the four “black boxes” from either aircraft that allegedly
hit the twin towers was recovered—a first for a domestic U.S. air crash.
And not a single clearly identifiable part complete with serial numbers from
any of the four planes that allegedly crashed on September 11 was ever found.
161The live network news coverage of UA175 hitting the World Trade Center 2 showed
major discrepancies and flaws in its motion—for example, one trajectory
showed a downward trajectory of twenty-six degrees, and the estimated airspeed
of the video planes before they hit the second tower ranged from 500 to 590
miles per hour (http://www.911research.dsl.pipex.com/ggua175/speed),
almost Mach 1 and at least one hundred miles per hour greater than a 767
aircraft at that low an altitude could have flown, safely or not. In some
footage, the plane pops out of nowhere, and in some of the most bizarre images
the aircraft passes through the steel tower intact or is simply swallowed up by
the building without any deceleration
or damage, even to a single pane of
glass. (The lack of damage to a lightweight aluminum fuselage wing after
hitting the massive steel pillars of the towers at high airspeed contrasts with
the complete slicing of wings at moderate airspeed by wooden telephone poles: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zt1oTYhcgo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zt1oTYhcgo.
For a discussion and explanation of the many video mistakes, see Baker, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op cit., segments 6 and 7.
162http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJkO26ZGNZY
163Even the government’s own analysis showed that the forty-seven-story World
Trade Center 7 was in free fall—which could have only occurred if it
exploded from below. The demolition of World Trade Center 7, which was not hit
by an aircraft and was over one block away from the twin towers, was one of
several glaring omissions in the 9/11 Commission
Report.
The collapse of the building has been attributed to a controlled
demolition by over 1,600 leading architects and engineers, including the late Danny
Jowenko, one of the world’s leading explosives experts: href="http://vimeo.com/28023241">http://vimeo.com/28023241; href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I.
The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is one of many 9/11 “Truth”
organizations representing firefighters, intelligence officers, veterans,
pilots, media professionals, medical professionals, lawyers, religious leaders,
actors and artists, political leaders, and scholars.
164Aside from the fuselage found on WTC5, there were only two pieces of “identifiable”
debris that landed on the street from UA175, one of which was a CFM56 engine
that supposedly came from UA175 but which no Boeing 767 flew because of its
insufficient power: http://rense.com/general63/wtcc.htm.
165http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/was-america-attacked-by-muslims-on-911
166According to statements by 117 eyewitnesses at
the World Trade Center, only eight
claimed to have both seen and heard a plane hit the second tower before the
explosions, http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=134&Itemid=60,
and many of those accounts were widely discrepant. Assuming they did not come
from “plants,” the positive eyewitness reports may partly be attributed to
contamination by exposure to media reports of the “crashes” in a
well-documented phenomenon known as “constructive memory” href="http://cogprints.org/599/1/199802009.html">http://cogprints.org/599/1/199802009.html
. Most people’s memory for the events of 9/11 has conclusively been shown to be at least partly
“reconstructed” (Pezdek, 2003, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 1033–1045). This is especially true of the first
plane strike, since there are no real-time videos of AA11 hitting World Trade Center 1 and only one eyewitness out of five hundred who claimed to have both
seen and heard that plane’s impact.
167http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/was-america-attacked-by-muslims-on-911;
conclusive evidence shows that one of the most important aircraft calls on
9/11—from Barbara Olsen, allegedly on AA77 that hit the
Pentagon—never was made from an aircraft phone or a cell phone. Many of
the alleged phone calls were confirmed to have continued for hours after the
planes had allegedly crashed (Griffin, 2011, op cit., chap. 5); the cell phone of Todd Beamer from UA93 even
made up to twelve hours after the
“crash” of UA93 in Western
Pennsylvania: href="http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2001-09-29-FBI-phone-records.pdf">http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2001-09-29-FBI-phone-records.pdf.
And many of the calls from UA93 appeared scripted, such as Mark Bingham’s to
his mother (“Mom, it’s your son, Mark Bingham . . .”) and the congratulations
offered to flight attendant Lyles as she hung up after her call (“You did
great.”): http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c75_1311403707.
This suggests that UA93 at least may have been part of the war games.
168Official Bureau of Transportation Statistics records prove that AA77 or AA11
never took off from their respective airports, respectively: href="http://www.serendipity.li/wot/aa_flts/aa_flts.htm">http://www.serendipity.li/wot/aa_flts/aa_flts.htm.
Finally, long after their alleged “crashes,” electronic messaging data (known
as ACARS) proved that both UA 93 (which is alleged to have crashed in Western
Pennsylvania) and UA175 were still operational ( href="http://pilotsfor911truth.org/ACARS-CONFIRMED-911-AIRCRAFT-AIRBORNE-LONG-AFTER-CRASH.html">http://pilotsfor911truth.org/ACARS-CONFIRMED-911-AIRCRAFT-AIRBORNE-LONG-AFTER-CRASH.html),
and UA175 also remained “flying” in the Federal Aviation Administration’s radar
system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&v=-fNloyNL88w&hl=en-GB
(pause at 3:00 or 3:11). The “crash” of UA93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
became even stranger when the coroner of Somerset County and other first
responders and reporters rushed to the scene and found no plane wreckage, bodies,
or blood around the impact crater: href="http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3152:the-crash-site-at-somerset-county-pennsylvania&catid=102:ua93-crash&Itemid=333">http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3152:the-crash-site-at-somerset-county-pennsylvania&catid=102:ua93-crash&Itemid=333.
169See Baker, op cit., segment 7. One
interesting fact about the supposed “amateur videos” of the second tower being
hit was that over 90 percent of them can be traced to individuals who worked in
the video, film, or news media industry, including many who were experts in
video compositing: http://septemberclues.info/faq_2.htm.
170http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/ManifestRaisesQues.htm;
http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=14289
171Sen. Robert Graham and Cong. Porter Goss—both of Florida—were heads
of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. They met with Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed of Pakistani Intelligence—who
was believed to have routed $100,000 to Saeed Sheikh for payment to Mohammed
Atta on
the very day of the attacks: href="http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html">http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html.
A detailed account of the Pakistani intelligence links to Atta was
forwarded directly to the 9/11 commission but totally ignored in its final
report: href="http://911truthnews.com/death-of-bin-laden-may-distract-from-a-more-disturbing-story">http://911truthnews.com/death-of-bin-laden-may-distract-from-a-more-disturbing-story.
It should be noted that Porter Goss was a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and later became head of the CIA.
172Phillip Zelikow, the principal author of the 9/11 Commission Report, was a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and an attendee at Bilderberger meetings (Estulin, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op cit., p. 271) and the coauthor of an
article in Foreign Affairs invoking
the same Pearl Harbor theme as used by many other Bilderbergers: href="http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/652/catastrophic_terrorism.html">http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/652/catastrophic_terrorism.html.
173Many of the initial reports by reporters and anchors simply referred to
explosions, and some reports dismissed the involvement of planes altogether.
For example, a CNN report (aired only once) that closely examined the immediate
Pentagon scene after the explosion positively concluded no aircraft hit the
building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFz7gLz7CVk.
174The notion that at least some major media sources were advised in advance of
what would occur is supported by the premature announcements of many news
organizations, including the BBC (twice) and Fox News, that World Trade Center 7 had collapsed: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFdcPv3XXI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFdcPv3XXI;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D_gzUGZmOc.
175Not only have the mainstream media been remarkably silent in investigating the
various claims against the official government conspiracy theory, but also some
like the Huffington Post have
specifically endorsed an editorial policy that refuses to publish any 9/11
conspiracy theory—excepting the governments’ own (Griffin, 2011, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op. cit., p.53).
176This figure is based on a New York Times/CBS
News poll, conducted in 2006: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories.
177Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblevine is the highest-ranking United States military
official to claim that the official 9/11 story was fraudulent: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E.
However, there are many other high-ranking government officials who have argued
against the “official” government conspiracy theory: href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/050908insidejob911">http://www.wanttoknow.info/050908insidejob911.
178Andreas Bulow wrote a book entitled Die
CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der
Geheimdienste
(Piper Verlag GmbH, München 2003). A synopsis is provided in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_CIA_and_September_11_%28book%29.
179Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia was a popular five-term congresswoman who
suggested the Bush administration knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance and was
subsequently defeated after her seat was redistricted in 2002. Although many
leading politicians have been critical of the 9/11 Commission Report,
she is to this day the only American political leader in office who has ever
suggested advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks by the American
government.
180For some of the American general officers involved in the events of September
11 and quickly promoted afterwards, see Zero:
An investigation into 9/11, op cit, beginning at 57:22.
The Medal of
Freedom was awarded to CIA Director George Tenet in 2004, although he was the
nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official and arguably one of the people
most responsible for the intelligence community’s failure to expose and prevent
the September 11 attacks: href="http://doyoueverwonderblog.wordpress.com/911/cia-director-george-tenet-on-911">http://doyoueverwonderblog.wordpress.com/911/cia-director-george-tenet-on-911.
Dave Frasca, the chief of counterterrorism at the FBI who ignored all of the
field agents’ “hijacker” warnings was later promoted ( href="http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/02/43525.shtml">http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/02/43525.shtml),
and Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI just prior to 911, ended up becoming the
personal attorney to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia (the patron of some of the
9/11 “hijackers” in the United States) on lucrative and controversial covert
arms sales to Saudi Arabia: href="http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/louis-freeh-interview.html">http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/louis-freeh-interview.html.
181Many psychologists who have treated patients for the “9/11 Denial Syndrome”
have commented on how Americans in particular cannot examine the truths about
September 11 because of psychological issues such as posttraumatic stress and
cognitive dissonance: href="http://consciouslifenews.com/psychologists-explain-911-denial-despite-hard-scientific-evidence/1122104">http://consciouslifenews.com/psychologists-explain-911-denial-despite-hard-scientific-evidence/1122104.
182For the denial for Obama’s Bilderberger meeting attendance in 2008, see: href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIPik872K64">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIPik872K64.
183Indeed, Zakaria was accused of plagiarism and briefly suspended by CNN: href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/time-and-cnn-lift-fareed-zakaria-s-suspension-112081700104_1.html">http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/time-and-cnn-lift-fareed-zakaria-s-suspension-112081700104_1.html.
184In the end, only four nations of the UN Security Council were in support of the
resolution to invade Iraq and the motion was never brought to a vote: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War.
185Both of these are described in Estulin, op
cit.
186A description of Lewis’s “arc of crisis” proposal at the 1979 Bilderberg
meeting and his subsequent 1992 article in Foreign
Affairs
are described by Andrew Gavin Marshall: href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11313">www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11313.
187http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28iht-edharrison.html
  The Bilderbeger mainstay Henry
Kissinger argued as recently as June 28 2013 that the best option in Syria
would be to break it up into separate ethnic enclaves: href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/kissinger-syria_n_3512659.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/kissinger-syria_n_3512659.html
(beginning at 19:30 of the video).
188Mark Thatcher, son of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was allegedly
the leader of a coup attempt—believed to be backed by MI6—against
President Nguema of Equatorial Guinea in 2004. Thatcher was allowed to leave
South Africa after paying a large fine and admitting involvement with the
plotters: href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8830120/MI6-knew-about-Equatorial-Guinea-coup-plot-leader-claims.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8830120/MI6-knew-about-Equatorial-Guinea-coup-plot-leader-claims.html.
189Immediately after Gaddafi’s death, Clinton paraphrased Julius Caesar’s famous
“Veni, Vidi, Vici” by saying “We came, we saw, he died!” and then releasing a
chuckle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y.
Two days earlier, she had told her Libyan hosts that it was time Gaddafi was
captured “dead or alive”: href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/libyan-forces-searching-gaddafi-stronghold/story-e6frf7lf-1226170352255">http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/libyan-forces-searching-gaddafi-stronghold/story-e6frf7lf-1226170352255.
190One of the first efforts of the NATO-backed National Transitional Council was
to restore polygamy to Libya, which Gaddafi’s government had tried to abolish: href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/libyas-new-regime-lifts-ban-on-polygamy-announces-ban-on-interest.html">http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/10/libyas-new-regime-lifts-ban-on-polygamy-announces-ban-on-interest.html.
Regular harassments of women and even public lashings were carried out Islamist
groups, acting with virtual impunity after the civil war: href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/libya-islamists-gaining-strength-libyans-concerned-by-sectarian-violence_n_2909693.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/libya-islamists-gaining-strength-libyans-concerned-by-sectarian-violence_n_2909693.html.
191The exact de Stael Napoleon reference was to “A chess-master whose opponents
happen to be the rest of humanity . . . neither pity nor attraction, nor
religion nor attachment would ever divert him from his ends,” Paul Johnson, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Napoleon, p. 115 (Viking Penguin, 2002).
192It has been estimated by John Stockwell, a former high-ranking CIA official, that
the various wars instigated by the CIA had, from the time of its inception to
the mid-1980s, led to the deaths of a minimum of six million people worldwide: href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm.
193See Fred Previc, The Dopaminergic Mind in
Human History and Evolution
, chap. 6 (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
194Dr. Martha Farah, head of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the
University of Pennsylvania, actually attended the 2008 meeting of the
Bilderberg Group in Chantilly, Virginia (Estulin, op. cit., p. ix). There are hundreds of academicians who are
associated peripherally with Bilderberger organizations such as the Council on
Foreign Relations and are not involved or necessarily even aware of their
darker purposes. On the other hand, the Bilderbergers and their CIA arm have
long maintained an interest in the brain and mind control, allegedly through
various research institutes (see Estulin, op
cit.,
chap. 14). The most famous of the mind-control programs was the
notorious MK-ULTRA, which was in existence for twenty years before “officially”
terminated in 1973: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra.
195See Unger, op cit., p. 86.
196One example of this was the belief of a leading Wahhabi imam that the Earth was
flat; only in 1985 was the curvature of the Earth accepted (see Unger, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op cit., p. 85).
197Public amputations and executions remain a feature of modern Saudi society,
with a special place set aside for them in Riyadh colloquially referred to as
Chop Chop Square.
198On his private holidays, King Fahd is reputed to have brought as many as eight
planes, twenty-five Rolls-Royces and limos, and four hundred retainers and once
lost $8 million in a single night of gambling in Monte Carlo (Unger, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>op cit.).
199Later examination of satellite imagery proved that no Iraqi troop buildup had
occurred (Unger, op cit., p. 140).
200The Yom Kippur War began on October 6, 1973, with an Egyptian attempt to retake
the Sinai Peninsula, then occupied by Israel, and with a coordinated attack by
Syria on the Golan Heights. In response to Western support for Israel, Saudi
Arabia cut its oil exports to the U.S. and other Western nations.
201Perkins, op cit., chap. 15
202Matthew Simmons in Twilight in The
Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and The World Economy
(Wiley & Sons,
2004) estimated that the Saudi reserves were vastly overstated. A style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>WikiLeaks memo in 2011 showed that the
former head of the Saudi oil monopoly ARAMCO believed that proven reserves may
be only a little more than half of stated values: href="http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2011/02/201129171520279835.html">http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2011/02/201129171520279835.html.
203Indeed, this is exactly what many leading experts are predicting: href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100019812/saudi-oil-well-dries-up">http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100019812/saudi-oil-well-dries-up.
204Simmons, op. cit., chap. 7
205The improbability of extracting the oil from inside solid shale in the Green
River Formation straddling Wyoming and Colorado is discussed in href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-12-04/illusive-bonanza-oil-shale-colorado">http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-12-04/illusive-bonanza-oil-shale-colorado.
206http://www.bp.com/assets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2011/STAGING/local_assets/pdf/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_2012.pdf
207Indeed, several Middle Eastern private aircraft companies reported good sales
after the Arab Spring, in contrast to the overall decline in the worldwide
general aviation market: href="http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/aviation/royal-jet-crowns-a-glittering-year">http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/aviation/royal-jet-crowns-a-glittering-year.
208MI6 stands for Military Intelligence, Section 6. It was one of many British
military sections during World War Two. The only other one that has kept its
identity is MI5, which is similar to the FBI in the United States.
209http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
210According to a recent account, England during the past
millennium has invaded over 90 percent of the nations of the world: href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html.
211The Dakar Rally is a mostly off-road race that in its early days went from
Paris to Dakar, Senegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakar_Rally.
Because of trouble in the Sahara, the race switched to South America beginning
in 2009.
212“The Fort” refers to Fort Monckton on the Gosport Peninsula next to Portsmouth.
It is the site of most IONEC training for MI6.
213Richard Tomlinson, op cit.
214According to WikiLeaks, China was
suspected of trying to undermine the dollar by massive purchases of gold and
silver bullion, pushing the price at one point to over $1,800/ounce in 2011: href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wikileaks-discloses-reasons-behind-chinas-shadow-gold-buying-spree">http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wikileaks-discloses-reasons-behind-chinas-shadow-gold-buying-spree.
215There have been many calls for the indictment of Pres. George W. Bush and Prime
Minister Tony Blair for their roles in the Iraq War, the most prominent coming
from Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa: href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu">http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu.
216http://midnightwatcher.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/egyptian-cleric-christian-women-who-refuse-to-dress-like-islamic-women-should-get-raped
217Some believe Morsi to be more than a token—an actual puppet of the
Egyptian military and the United States. The leading Muslim Brotherhood
candidate for the post-Mubarak presidency, Khairat el-Shater, along with other
anti-American candidates were disqualified, while Morsi was allowed to run and
was “narrowly” elected: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-disqualified-presidential-candidate-says-military-rulers-have-no-intention-of-handing-over-rule/2012/04/18/gIQAt95UQT_story.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-disqualified-presidential-candidate-says-military-rulers-have-no-intention-of-handing-over-rule/2012/04/18/gIQAt95UQT_story.html.
But Morsi—who spent decades living in the United States—did not
protest the nullification of the parliamentary elections and, in fact,
appointed a member of the former regime as his prime minister: href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/26/mohamed-morsi-prime-minister-egyptian">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/26/mohamed-morsi-prime-minister-egyptian.
 By July 2013, however, Morsi’s
support from the Egyptian military had crumbled and he was replaced in a military
coup.
218Shale-oil well depletion rates of 80 percent or more are typical, leading many
experts to question the long-term viability of those resources: href="http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2012/12/future_producti.html">http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2012/12/future_producti.html.
219George Soros is a Hungarian American investor and currency and bullion
speculator who, in 1992, spectacularly borrowed massive quantities of British
pounds and traded them for marks, just before the pound started crashing
against the mark. The total amount of his bet was believed to be around $10
billion US dollars, which led him to be called “the man who broke the Bank of
England”: href="http://olesiafx.com/Kathy-Lien-Day-Trading-The-Currency-Market/George-Soros-the-Man-Who-Broke-The-Bank-Of-England.html">http://olesiafx.com/Kathy-Lien-Day-Trading-The-Currency-Market/George-Soros-the-Man-Who-Broke-The-Bank-Of-England.html.
220Ironically, the New River is believed to be the second-oldest river in the
world after the Nile River.
221For evidence that the gold at Fort Knox cannot be commercially sold, see: href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/weber-c1.1.1.html">http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/weber-c1.1.1.html.
222This fictional financial attack scenario has been actually tested in Pentagon
strategic planning simulations, as outlined in James Rickard’s style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global
Crisis (Portfolio Hardcover, 2011).
223The latest instance of this was the case of Gareth Williams, a code-breaking
prodigy for MI6, who supposedly killed himself in a bizarre self-sex ritual
that investigators later linked to MI6 involvement: href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17922388">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17922388.
224http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2088955/UK-total-borrowing-stands-500-national-income--McKinsey.html
225http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/pentagon-new-generation-military-bases-tom-dispatch
226Control over the Internet has since its inception been an extremely contentious
issue, with the United States determined to maintain the controlling influence
over it: href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/us-house-passes-resolution-to-keep-internet-out-of-un-control/articleshow/17503545.cms">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/us-house-passes-resolution-to-keep-internet-out-of-un-control/articleshow/17503545.cms.
227In a dispute over Taiwan, the United States sent the USS Independence and USS Nimitz carriers
through the Taiwan Straits off the coast of China in a show of force.
228http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/pentagon-challenges-chinese-monopoly-on-rare-earths-commodities.html
229What Chandler hallucinated was a variation of the ouroborros, one of the classic archetypes that form what the
famous psychologist Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious” and which
have appeared throughout the world during dreams and other altered states of
consciousness. The most famous appearance was in a dream by the chemist
Friedrich Kekule who, after months of struggling with the conformation of the
benzene molecule, dreamed the image of the ouroborros and then promptly derived
the insight that benzene was formed by a hexagonal ring of double-bonded carbon
molecules.
230The deception of Churchill as regards the defense of Singapore is revealed in
David Day’s The Great Betrayal
(Norton, 1998).
231The Allied invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on the Dardanelle Straits in
Northwest Turkey in 1915 was spurred by Churchill and led to the deaths of over
120,000 soldiers and a disastrous loss for the Allies. His support for the use
of poison gas is documented at href="http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html">http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html
and his contribution to the famine that killed up to four million in Bengal in
1943 was documented by Mukerjee in her 2010 book Churchill’s Secret War: href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html.