FOOTPRINTS IN THE DUST
Signs of Connections between the CIA and WTC Attack

Sunday, March 10, 2002 @ 08:47:39 EST

By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)

(YellowTimes.org) – One of the most
fascinating snippets on the latest Nixon Watergate-era tape to be
released to the public, the same tape that contains an 18-minute
erasure and anti-Semitic remarks, was a brief, unexplained comment
by Nixon on what a fraud the Warren Commission had been.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but as part of a lifelong interest in history,
I've read most of the worthwhile books analyzing Kennedy's
assassination, and I am left only with the certainty that we've never
been told the whole truth.

I've always believed it to be a ridiculous idea that the CIA had a direct
role in killing President Kennedy. No more ridiculous, mind you, than the
story that gets floated every few years about Castro having been
involved, a story that has the distinct odor of disinformation, and where
disinformation exists, so do motives for generating it.

And of course, Bertrand Russell's famous question has never been
answered. It remains as a powerful indictment of the secrecy that yet
surrounds the case. Lord Russell asked, "If, as we are told, Oswald was
the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?" In other
words, on the Warren Commission's own premise, the assassination
reduces to an ordinary murder, and the facts of a murder case are
supposed to be a matter of public record.

For those who bother plowing through the literature, the conclusion that
the CIA knows far more than it ever has revealed is inescapable. There
are too many suggestive trails and tantalizing bits of evidence. Too
many stories put out. Too few questions answered. Too many important
documents missing.

One of the most potentially explosive is the CIA's photograph of
whoever it was that went to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City shortly
before the assassination claiming to be Oswald - of course, every
person entering or leaving that embassy was routinely photographed.
The photograph the CIA did submit was obviously incorrect since the
person in it could never be confused with Oswald by anyone. And then
there are the recordings of phone calls supposedly made by Oswald at
that time. Again, these phone calls, since they involved the Soviet
embassy, certainly would have been recorded, but the CIA claimed the
tapes had been destroyed.

I've always believed that some CIA operation, likely involving one of
the many unsavory groups it financed in those days trying to topple
Castro, went very sour right under its nose. What other likely
explanation is there for claims of national security over the years? Had
something like this been revealed in the 1960s, the CIA might well have
been destroyed in the middle of the Cold War. It already had been
badly hurt owing to its gross negligence in the Bay of Pigs. Here indeed
was a reason important enough for some very important people to lie.

Anyway, it is beginning to look like events around September 11 may
well offer this generation of Americans a repeat performance. Recent
discoveries concerning those events bring that same sure but murky
sense of the CIA's presence leading up to the attack. Perhaps another
operation gone very sour.

First, there is the former American diplomat's story about the issuing of
visas almost without question to many very questionable people.

Then, there is the strong suspicion that the flight school in Florida where
one of the terrorists, Mr. Mohamed Atta, trained likely had connections
to the CIA.

And then, there is the Saudi connection. As is well known, the Saudis
were important financial contributors to Al Qaida. The use of a country
like Saudi Arabia, that would be credited by others as having its own
motives for contributing, represents the kind of arrangement the CIA
likes to use in channeling financial support abroad. And even were the
CIA not involved in this activity, it is almost impossible that it would
have been unaware of it.

As is also well known, the Saudis have received almost no seriously
hostile attention over this connection. This at a time when the junior
partners of Bush, Ashcroft, von Rumsfeld & Co. stay up late into the
night looking to prosecute the most inconsequential people involved in
sending any money to the Middle East.

And, of course, many of the nineteen who died in the attacks were from
Saudi Arabia, including Mr. Atta. There is even some indication that Mr.
Atta may have been related to the royal family.

We also have the recent arrest and expulsion, although this is officially
denied in Washington, of a large Israeli spy ring, many of whose
members worked out of Florida, the same state as Mr. Atta's flight
school.

Spy rings as large as this one simply do not operate in a place like the
United States without the CIA being aware of them. Apparently, there is
a serious question whether Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, told
the U.S. what it knew before September 11. At any rate, we know the
aftermath of the attack certainly has tipped the balance to favor Mr.
Sharon's bloody-minded way of seeing the world.

All in all, there are some very suggestive footprints in the settled dust of
the World Trade Center, and they tend to point towards Langely,
Virginia. Americans, for a second time, may have been the unintended
victims of their own agency's dirty work.

John Chuckman encourages your comments:
 jchuckman@YellowTimes.org

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