WT...? Was the first WTC bombing LIHOP/MIHOP???

[KansDem]

I ran across this tidbit while researching something else:

From the Wikipedia:

World Trade Center bombing

FBI foreknowledge

In the course of the trial it was revealed that the FBI had an informant, an Egyptian man named Emad Salem, who was involved with the bombing conspiracy. Salem claims to have informed the FBI of the plot to bomb the towers as early as February 6, 1992, information he was privy to possibly because he himself initiated the plot. Salem's role as informant allowed the FBI to quickly pinpoint the conspirators out of the hundreds of possible suspects.

Salem asserts that the original plan was to have the plotters build the bomb using a harmless powder instead of actual explosive, but that an FBI supervisor decided that a real bomb should be constructed instead. He substantiates his claims with hundreds of hours of secretly-recorded conversations with his FBI handlers, made during discussions held after the bombings.

Salem says he wished to complain to FBI headquarters in Washington about the failure to prevent the bombing despite foreknowledge, but was dissuaded from doing so by the New York FBI office. The FBI has not explicitly denied Salem's account.

What's up with this?

Yesterday I posted a thread about the shift from "the threat of communism" to "the threat of terrorism" after the fall of the Berlin Wall and wondered if the neo-Con fascists needed at the time to find another boogey man to keep the masses frightened and their agenda on track. This shift in paradigms occurred in four years and during the Bush I Administration.

[Richard Steele]

1. "an FBI supervisor decided that a real bomb should be constructed instead"

I think you already have the answer to your question.

[KansDem]

2. But why the hell did the FBI decide this?

What would be the advantage of this?

Perhaps we don't have LIHOP or MIHOP but a third category: HIHOP or "Helped It Happen (On Purpose)"

[Media_Lies_Daily]

23. Setting the stage for developing hatred of all Muslim Middle Easterners...

...the NeoCons have been working behind the scenes for quite some time.

[ailsagirl]

11. That's a lovely photo of Andy...

Just wanted to mention that.

:)

[bloom]

3. And some people wonder

how we might suspect the CIA (or whoever) in the London bombing?

Like that is something that is really out there?

I don't get it.

[grace0418]

18. I know!

Why am I made to feel like a loon when BushCo has proven time and time again it will stoop to any level?

[JohnnyBoots]

24. It shows how deep the mindphuck, framed by the neocons and

the media is.

[grace0418]

26. Especially when it's been raging liberals who have

acted like I was crazy to suggest such a thing. I only know a few repukes and I don't even bother talking to them.

[Old and In the Way]

4. This really needs more exposure.

I've read about this in Paul Thompson's timeline, but, in light of yesterday's terrorist attacks, I think this deserve's more exposure.

If this is true, why isn't this front page news everywhere?

Also odd...why build a bomb out of harmless powder? So terrorists want a harmless bomb, FBI wants a real bomb?....pretty bizarre, but certainly deserves more exposure.

Interesting the timing, within weeks of Clinton's inauguration.

[KansDem]

7. I wondered the same thing...

why build a bomb out of harmless powder?--I thought maybe the only person who would actually know the powder was harmless would be the FBI informant. He might have wanted harmless powder to prevent accidental explosion. However, this raises the question of the competency of the terrorists involved. Now, I wouldn't know the difference between harmless powder or the real thing, but I would imagine experienced terrorists might. Perhaps this is why the FBI overuled and requested real powder--in order to not reveal the "sting operation," but it looks like that part of the operation got out of hand. In fact, could this disaster actually have been a sting operation gone bad?

Interesting the timing, within weeks of Clinton's inauguration--and during the Bush I years. I still find it intriguing that both the fall of the Berlin Wall and this event happened so close to each other in history. I remember political pundits at the time of the Berlin Wall fall saying "What will conservatives use now as a basis for their political agenda?" I remember one political cartoon capitalizing on this and combining it with the release of "The Hunt for Red October" (1990). It showed a worried neo-Con on a submarine with the caption "The Hunt for Anything Red Whatsoever." I laughed but didn't think at the time that the new boogieman would be terrorists.


edited for spelling

[whatever4]

5. Now I'll be interested

In who comes on here to tell you how crazy tin foil hat that is. That story, and any story that sounds like it.

I've faced long, well-written and pointed insults over this issue in the past, this, Oklahoma City and 911. Misplaced loyalty or egotism, I can never tell what it is.

I see put downs and insults almost every time, even here on DU, as if no bit of proof is worth looking at, or as if it's unethical to try to do so. In the end, as if it's not possible, that this government would kill people and destroy buildings.

Do it here, that is. It's already being done elsewhere. By this government. But they blow right by that fact.

[Karenina]

10. You might take a peek here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x46709

[dbeach]

6. SOG

Same Ole Gang

King George Bush the second = KGB II

Where da fox is Osama waldo bin bush?

[MrBenchley]

8. Even more curious

is how Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 attack, ended up in Jersey City AFTER he was expelled from Egypt. Rahman, who is blind, got through customs without a hitch and without local law enforcement being notified of his presence.

You'll notice Bill Clinton got Rahman (and his co-conspirators) arrested, tried and convicted in an ordinary American trial. Bill didn't shred the Constitition, blame Poppa Bush publicly, or thump his chest and cry out that he wanted the culprit dead or alive.

[EVDebs]

14. Just more H1B technical visa abuse LOL

My old job got 'Bangalored', but when the gummint needs handy tools to use they just import the labor.

[Carni]

9. If Freeh was in the FBI then

I wouldn't be surprised!

[bananas]

12. mp3 of salem and his handler

If I recall, Salem had been a police officer in Egypt
before he came to America, so we wasn't a typical "informant".
At some point he started taping his conversationw with the FBI,
because he thought they might make him a patsy,
it's an interesting conversation:

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page991.html?theme=light
...
WBAI Salem-Anticev bootleg tape

Who Bombed The World Trade Center? FBI Bomb Builders Exposed

SHORT VERSION: nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/emad%20salem.mp3

LONG VERSION: nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/SalemWBAI.mp3

Two cassette tape recordings, obtained by SHADOW reporter Paul DeRienzo of telephone conversations between FBI informant Emad Salem and his Bureau contacts reveal secret U.S. Government complicity in the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in which six people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.

[KansDem]

13. "...reveal secret U.S. Government complicity..."

Was there ever a reason given for this complicity? Perhaps WTC1 was pulled off but the desired results didn't happen (no PNAC war in middle east; no "collective fear" similar to that of Cold War; Clinton didn't pull a "Bush" and go after wrong man/country creating "endless war" similar to "endless Cold War"), so WTC2 was conceived and executed.

[bananas]

15. I don't know

Here's some more informative articles,
if you have the time maybe you could summarize them for us:
http://pdr.autono.net/wtc_investigation.html

[JohnnyBoots]

25. PNAC est. 1997 right? or is that when they went public???

[Zuni]

16. I think we should read the book

because this is not very complete---there could be a lot of details we are missing that would make more sense.

If this had come out in a trial and was truly as damning as it could be, this would have been world news, front page shit

It obviously isn't secret, since it is on Wikipedia

[mistertrickster]

17. Funny you should mention that, KansDem. Check this out--

I was perusing a book today that I checked out of the library written BEFORE 9-11, 2001 entitled "Bin Laden The Man who Declared War on America" by Yossef Bodansky.

I have it here now. This is not a conspiracy theory--the author is a senior consultant to Depts of Defense and State.

The thesis of the book is that Osama bin Laden went to fight Russians in Afghanistan and led a group of Arab fighters to victory. After the Russians pulled out however, the movement was co-opted by our old friends, the Pakistani ISI.

Disillusioned, OSB returns to Saudi Arabia a hero. He throws down the gauntlet to the House of al-Saud when Saddam attacks Kuwait--"do not allow foreign fighters in. We can protect ourselves." Saudi leaders panic and reject his pleas, paving the way for US troops that "will not be there one minute longer than they have to be," according to lying bastard Sec'ry of Defense, DICK CHENEY.

Actually, the troops didn't even arrive until the war was essentially over, and they were maintained on PERMANENT BASES. This outraged OBL, and the Islamic militants declare that Arabia must be a target of jihad.

Okay, this is where it gets interesting. Page 135, "On Nov 13, 1995, dozens of Americans were eating lunch in the snack bar at the Military Cooperation Program building in Riyadh, (a US training center for Saudi troops). A car bomb . . . blew off one side of the building, destroyed more than forty-five cars, and shattered windows more than a mile away. . . . (It killed) six people, five of them Americans, and wounded more than sixty."

P 138, "Riyadh refused to confront the root causes for the emergence of Islamist terrorism on its soil." This root cause was quite obviously the presence of "Crusader forces" in the land of the holy sites.

P 139, "Final preparations for the November 13 operation had been so intense that there were leaks . . . . Highly knowledgeable Saudis in the Middle East and Western Europe speculated that (administrative security head) Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz LET THE TERRORIST OPERATION TAKE PLACE (italics mine) so that he could capitalize on it for his own personal gain." He was to use fear of terrorism and his hard-line against it as "his ticket to power, acceptability, and ultimately the throne."

*****

Remember, this attack took place six years before the second attack on the WTC and the book was written before that 9-11 attack took place. So it's not like no one had ever thought of profiting from a terrorist attack before.

[KansDem]

21. KICK!

Observations that require further digesting...

:dem:

[JackRiddler]

19. Here's a very good article on "WTC Classic" (excuse my irony, I'm from NY)

The "blind sheikh" of the Muslim Brotherhood, a big recruiter of Egyptians for the Afghan Jihad, was let in to the US by the CIA against FBI (and Egyptian) objections. Things get worse from there...

http://takingaim.info/articles/wtc93.html

Who Bombed the U.S. World Trade Center? — 1993

Growing Evidence Points to Role of FBI Operative

By Ralph Schoenman

(published in Prevailing Winds Magazine, Number 3, 1993)

Simultaneous with the detonation of an explosive bomb at the World Trade Center in New York on February 26 of this year (1993), FBI investigators were en route to New York.

"Even as office workers were trying to pry their way out of stalled elevators or stagger down smoky stairwells in the wake of a devastating explosion last Friday," wrote Ronald J. Ostrow and Robin Wright (Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1993), under the headline "U.S. Tackling Blast Probe on Unprecedented Scale," "a special team of men and women were leaving FBI headquarters here for the next flight to New York."

Not only the FBI was so prompt. "Thousands of people and dozens of agencies here and abroad sprang into action. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything bigger, except maybe the Kennedy Assassination,’ said one counter terrorism official."

Officials declared that the vast scale of their "investigation" notwithstanding, "it will take several months (emphasis added) before the forensic aspects are completed," if only because the bombing "could," according to CIA analyst Graham Fuller, "be an operational decision dating back a year that doesn’t have any relationship with immediate events" (Ibid.).

CONTINUE...

http://takingaim.info/articles/wtc93.html

[hang a left]

20. Do you know who the lead prosecutor was in the WTC1 bombing?

Patrick Fitzgerald. Do you know who recommended him for Fitzgerald's Chicago position? Louis Freeh.

I have always been a little skeptical about Ashcroft's involvement of the selection of a special prosecutor for the Plame outing.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

22. Ashcroft had to recuse himself from the Plame case....

...Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, Jr. named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, as the special counsel in charge of directing the investigation.

Plame Case Timeline
<http://www.rcfp.org/behindthehomefront/search.php?srch=valerie+plame>

QUOTE:

"2003-12-31 SPECIAL COUNSEL WILL INVESTIGATE PLAME LEAK. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself Tuesday from the Justice Department\'s investigation into the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, as a special counsel was appointed to lead the case. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, Jr. named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, as the special counsel in charge of directing the investigation. According to The Washington Post and The New York Times , Ashcroft\'s decision has led some to speculate that the investigation is moving closer to key White House officials, many of whom have close ties to Ashcroft. The investigation began after unidentified senior administration officials revealed Plame\'s identity to columnist Robert Novak, who published her name in a July 2003 column. Plame\'s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, had publicly criticized the Bush administration for asserting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger after he travelled to Africa on a CIA mission in 2002."