CIA letter supports assertion that OBL “confession video” was a sting operation

[kpete]

Ed Haas
CIA letter supports assertion that OBL “confession video” was a sting operation


June 11, 2007 – How many times has the now infamous Osama bin Laden “confession video” played in the corporate media after its release on December 13, 2001? How many newspapers carried the story of Osama bin Laden, confessing to his prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, in their December 14, 2001 editions? How about worldwide? Combined, how many television stations, radio broadcasts, and newspapers do you think ran segments and stories about the content of this video?

.............

The FBI most likely now has full knowledge of the CIA sting as indicated by its claim that it is exempt from releasing the documents because they were secured for law enforcement purposes. What law enforcement purposes? The video played millions of times. There should be no law enforcement purposes remaining whatsoever. Once introduced into the public domain by the U.S. government there should be nothing but full disclosure.

Clearly, the FBI is concealing what it knows about the CIA and the sting operation that unfolded most likely on September 26, 2001. The mistake the FBI made was to not simply respond to my FOIA request initially by stating that it could locate no records responsive to my request. By providing the first exemption, and then after appeal, claim it can find no records responsive to my request, is highly suspicious. It is my belief that the first response reveals that the FBI knows something about the videotape that should not exist if what the U.S. government has told the public about the discovery of the video was true.

..................

Many in the controlled and censored corporate news media continue to reference this video as proof and evidence against Osama bin Laden. What they have failed to investigate or admit is that it is also an indictment of treason against the Bush Administration and other elements of the federal government because the videotape was filmed prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as the result of a CIA sting operation. The CIA had Osama bin Laden in its sights, camera and rifle, on or about September 26, 2001 and failed to capture or kill him in favor of gaining a videotape confession of sorts to support the Bush Administration’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. If Osama bin Laden had been captured or killed on or about September 26, 2001 – there would have been no international support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

much more at:
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=37057

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. If this references the video where OBL and 2 or 3 others were jokingly discussing how successful

9/11 was - at one point saying how they were pleased it was so effective in that the towers fell, etc, I have always found that to be just simply too convenient. The perfect video so conveniently left behind to be found "proving" OBL was involved.

I don't know....just seems to reek to high heaven of a mackerel left in the sun for 3 days.

[PDJane]

2. Especially since OBL

Appears to have gotten shorter, gained weight, and suddenly become right handed........

Bizzzzzzzzarrrrrrrre baby.

[jberryhill]

6. The video format used in Pakistan

...has more horizontal lines than the NTSC system used here.

Guess what is a common way to convert that video format to NTSC? - remove some of the horizontal scan lines.

Guess what happens to the image when you do that? - everything gets shorter and fatter.

http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id372.html

While reading some of the coverage and investigation done by Maher Osseiran on the bin Laden confession tape, and his assertion that the tape is likely actually a tape of bin Laden himself, it occurred to me that since the tape was recorded in the Pakistan region, it was likely recorded in PAL video format. In the United States, we use the NTSC format. The difference is primarily that the standard PAL format has the same spatial resolution horizontally, but vertically it has a higher spatial resolution (720 x 576 for PAL – 720 x 480 for NTSC) than doe NTSC. Many PAL and NTSC converters simply eliminate the extra horizontal lines from the PAL format in order to conform to the NTSC format. This results in an image that appears to be ‘squashed’ along the vertical axis…making people and objects look fatter after the conversion.

[hootinholler]

8. There is also a color shift, which is why NTSC stands for

Nearly The Same Color.

-Hoot

[jberryhill]

19. Actually it's "Never the same color" /nt

I don't mind it when something is susceptible of different perceptions. The whole "fat osama" thing, however, required a conscious selection of the most distorted frames in order to cook up.

[Canuckistanian]

25. Never Twice the Same Color

Is how I've heard it.
:eyes:

[gmaki]

30. Agreed, I've been in video post production for over 20 years

NTSC = Never Twice the Same Color

SECAM = "Something Essentially Contrary to the American Method"

PAL = "Phase Alternating Line" (I guess no one ever made a joke out of PAL)

[Clark2008]

26. Does is also make one right-handed when they're left-handed?

I realize that in Muslim culture, men do not eat or point with their left hand as that is considered the "unclean" hand (the hand they use to wash their privates with, for example), but it doesn't change the fact that someone who is born favoring the left hand would still write with it. In these tapes, "Osama" is showing briefly writing with his right hand.

[gmaki]

31. Muckraker has it exactly backwards

If you simply removed lines from the top and bottom, then stretched the remaining lines vertically to fill the same 4 X 3 aspect ratio, objects would then appear taller and skinnier.

[bleever]

3. The author contends it's the real bin Laden, but that

the creation of the tape itself was a CIA sting operation, and that they chose taping over capturing or killing him.

[kpete]

4. that is how I read it too, Bleever

PR over everything else

[EFerrari]

10. That's makes no sense, does it? "Let's get him on tape"

is usually not a higher law enforcement priority than "Let's get the bad guy". :shrug:

[jberryhill]

21. Surely you jest...

Lots of bad guys are "gotten" because they were first recorded doing or saying something incriminating.

Kinda odd that you are upset by that, given that classic truther arguments are (a) Osama never claimed credit and/or (b) the recording of him doing so is a fake.

Your problem isn't that it was thought a priority to "get him on tape". Your problem is that you don't think they got a good enough tape.

[EFerrari]

22. Last time I looked, we don't have bin Laden at all.

We have some tape of dubious origin by an agency that has consistently LIED to us.

[bonito]

5. In absence of an investigation 911 will always raise a red flag

Way I see it.

[EVDebs]

7. kpete, 'When seeing hearing isn't believing' by Wm Arkin should clear things up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

"Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy.

For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.

"Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare. "

[Rex]

9. That would explain why he initially denied doing 911.

[EFerrari]

11. Could you say more, because I don't think I understand what you mean. nt

[Rex]

14. When reports first came out about the towers coming down

OBL told the world he had nothing to do with the attack, then changed his story a few hours later. They left out, evidently, the information about a sting operation. Makes sense now.

[EFerrari]

15. How does it make sense now? n/t

[Rex]

16. They set him up.

I'm not saying he had nothing to do with 911, just that he couldn't lie about it because they had it on tape that he did.

[EFerrari]

17. Thanks, Rex. I see what you mean now.

I guess I don't believe him or them because I've known too many Spaniards.

They can set him up but that doesn't mean that the tape they circulate is true, it just means they got the tape they wanted? And, he's been in bed with them too long for me to believe anything he says, either.

I guess I've reached that point of cynicism where I just think they're jerking us around just enough to make us dizzy and distract us while they rip us off.

[Rex]

18. np

I think the CIA has decades of explaining to do.

[EFerrari]

20. No kidding. From its inception. n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

29. Like maybe some of the stuff on this video.

The CIA, Drugs and the US Economy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Bd6lmpIFI

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

12. Jesus. That Was On December 13th Too? Same Day As Saddam Being Captured?

Didn't realize that before. That's weird.

And I only care cause my birthday is December 13th LOL

I got to read more about this whole CIA sting operation thing though. I've heard all the theories about the tape not being real and it not really being OBL, but I've never heard of the CIA sting thing.

[sandnsea]

13. Ali Saeed al-Ghamdi

December 16, 2001

"Al-Ghamdi, who is known to Saudi intelligence services, is a marginal figure who tried to make a name for himself through inflammatory anti-Western speeches before being banned from preaching in 1994, one Saudi close to the government said. In the late Nineties he preached in obscure mosques along the highway leading from the port city of Jedda - where bin Laden grew up - to the holy city of Mecca, but his firebrand oratory drew only small audiences.

Senior Saudi government figures and religious scholars tend to dismiss such men as insignificant. 'They are not big-time and they don't have the legitimacy and the religious scholarship that the big guys have,' said Nawaf Obeid, a Saudi security analyst. 'They make a name for themselves with how extreme they are. They aggrandise themselves by claiming they are with bin Laden.'

Security sources stress that, despite his Islamist credentials, al-Ghamdi would still be a potential point of contact for Pakistani, Saudi or Egyptian intelligence.

'He was known because he was suspected of being involved in the gathering of international finance for al-Qaeda. He is a peripheral figure who wants to be something bigger and is frustrated. It's a classic profile. They could have turned him,' one security official for a Gulf intelligence agency contacted in Peshawar said. Experts told The Observer that the tape bears a marked resemblance to secretly filmed evidence used by the FBI against major American Mafia figures in recent years."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,619480,00.html

[Joanne98]

23. If this is true it's a bombshell!

if it was a sting operation, they're screwed, if it was a double, they're screwed.

[SpiralHawk]

24. Have the republicon cronies ever produced any real evidence that Osama

was behind 9/11?

I think not

The republicon cabal of chickenhawks has never shown the American public any real evidence of anything

We know that the Bush family's intimate cronies, the Saudis, got royal special first-class treatment after the WTC towers came down -- even though 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis

We also know that Commander AWOL's Pentagon had about one hour to respond after the New York attacks, yet could not even muster a pea shooter to defend America's capital city, or itself

Mighty queer

So why did we attack Iraq? Not one hijacker was from Iraq

Why not attack the Saudis?

Commander AWOL and Dickie "Five Military Deferments" Cheney -- the republicon "war" heroes" would lose thier intimate oil cronies

Republicons & their oil cronies = traitors to the United States of America



In this undoctored photo, republicon Commander AWOL smooches his intimate Saudi oil crony

[Alpharetta]

27. Where's Omar?

The video was wierd and I don't trust it. But still I think Osama and Al Qaeda did 9/11.

I think the purpose of the video was to misdirect us away from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and even Taliban government of Afghanistan.

By focusing us on Osama, they got us off the government "states" which protect Al Qaeda. Mullah Omar is still free. Musharraf still operates Pakistan. The royals still bleed Saudi Arabia.

[JohnyCanuck]

28. FBI: "no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11"

Why is the establishment media so out of touch on 9/11?

SNIP

For instance, take the case of Joe Conason. After Mr. Luntz had turned the question on the questioner, Mr. Conason chimed in saying, “Oh, by the way, as far as I know, bin Laden confessed to being responsible for 9/11, which is why I supported the war in Afghanistan.” Now, it is true that Bin Laden mentions his involvement in the attacks in the so-called “confession” video released by the U.S. government on December 13, 2001, but what Joe Conason doesn’t mention is what Muckraker Report editor Ed Haas learned when he phoned the FBI last June: that apparently there’s no “hard evidence” linking Osama bin Laden to 9/11 and that the U.S. Justice Department has never formally indicted bin Laden for the attacks, as Ed Haas reported in his article “FBI: ‘no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,’” which was recently selected by Project Censored as one of the top 25 news stories censored by the corporate media. A good journalist might have asked the questions Ed asked in that article, such as:

So why doesn’t the FBI view the “confession video” as hard evidence? After all, if the FBI is investigating a crime such as drug trafficking, and it discovers a video of members of a drug cartel openly talking about a successful distribution operation in the United States, that video would be presented to a federal grand jury. The identified participants of the video would be indicted, and if captured, the video alone would serve as sufficient evidence to net a conviction in a federal court. So why is the Bin Laden “confession video” not carrying the same weight with the FBI?

Or a good journalist might have brought up what Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker in October of 2001, that prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan there were a number of intelligence officials who expressed doubts about Osama bin Laden’s capabilities. “This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he’s running this entire operation?” said one CIA official. “It’s so huge. He couldn’t have done it alone.” Or a good journalist might have pointed out that on September 23, 2001 Secretary of State Colin Powell told a television interviewer that “we will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case” showing that bin Laden was responsible for the attacks, and a good journalist would have reminded his audience that, actually, that persuasive case was never made, and it wouldn’t be until mid-December that the Bin Laden confession tape appeared, which means we invaded Afghanistan in early October on pretences that amounted to little more than a hunch.

http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id422.html

FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

SNIP

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, [phone], to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”

It shouldn’t take long before the full meaning of these FBI statements start to prick your brain and raise your blood pressure. If you think the way I think, in quick order you will be wrestling with a barrage of very powerful questions that must be answered. First and foremost, if the U.S. government does not have enough hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, how is it possible that it had enough evidence to invade Afghanistan to “smoke him out of his cave?” The federal government claims to have invaded Afghanistan to “root out” Bin Laden and the Taliban. Through the talking heads in the mainstream media, the Bush Administration told the American people that Usama Bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One and responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on September 11, 2001. Yet nearly five years later, the FBI says that it has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.

http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id267.html

[MissWaverly]

32. never believed the fat Osama video

tall thin men do not turn into short, pudgy men with small noses, he was also wearing a gold ring which is forbidden in the Koran.

[NNN0LHI]

33. If this was an FBI sting operation I wonder why the FBI...

...hired a guy who looked more like a fat Fidel Castro than bin Laden to play Osama? And why in the hell did the FBI spread so much vaseline on the camera lens that it was near impossible to view. My eyes start hurting just thinking about trying to watch it.

Don