Why America needed 911

Circling in Air Force One high above Florida a panicked George Bush called the White House to see what the hell was going on in New York and at the Pentagon. Vice-President Dick Cheney told the President not to return to Washington. It wasn’t safe. And so, effectively and simply, Vice-President Cheney had taken over the country.

The plan for 911 stretched back to 1995 when Philippines police made a major bust of Al Qa’ida agents who were plotting to blow up the Pope when he came to visit Manila. Discovered along with substantial bomb making supplies was a plan titled “Bojinka.”

Serbo-Croat for “the big explosion” Bojinka detailed a plot to detonate explosives aboard a dozen American passenger jets over the Pacific Ocean. That part of the plan had already entered it’s testing phase. One jet had been attacked, but the pilot’s skill and heroism had brought his damaged jet in to Tokyo in one piece.
There was however another part of the Bojinka plot which was even more sinister; the terrorists had already begun thinking about flying planes into American buildings, including nuclear power plants.

The Philippines police handed over the captured Al Qa’ida agent and all the plans and computers to an FBI field officer, and that was the last that was ever heard of Bojinka.

Until the morning of 911.

With the end of the Cold War the neo-conservatives seized upon the notion of global dominance as outlined in the leaked Defense Planning Guidance report drafted by Paul Wolfowitz in 1991 for his boss, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Here in stark terms was the neo-con agenda laid bare for all to see. Perhaps a little too bare, for after the New York Times and Washington Post ran excerpts of the document the Bush administration called for an immediate redrafting of the document with an emphasis on toning down the Imperial hubris.

Throughout the Clinton years the neo-cons continued their shadowy plotting, and by 1998 had created The Project for a New American Century, which was in essence, the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance enlarged and accepted as scripture, and taking for their masthead the title of Henry’s Luces famous Life magazine editorial “The American Century.” In that original work by Luce a manifesto for American supremacy was outlined. The brilliance of American sunshine would be beamed into every dark and squalid corner of the globe. The world would become American.

The men who signed off on the statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century now occupy top positions within the Bush Administration. They are also the frequent talking head guests on news programmes. They are also the frequent targets of House and Senate raised eyebrows.

During the fifty years of the Cold War never once did the Soviet Union or Red China attack the United States. Even as American foreign policy failed to win support in nation after nation, even as country after country “fell” to Communism, the American economy continued to grow.

The Second World War had shown American business leaders that war can actually be good for business. While it bankrupted Britain, America prospered. And America’s prosperity was all that mattered.

So throughout the nineteen fifties and sixties the CIA and the American military fought sneaky dirty little wars in a dozen countries or more. They toppled leaders, installed puppets, backed oppressive regimes and laid waste to whole nations. In the end though, Nationalism always won out. The Americans let Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam slip through their fingers. Cuba, Iraq, and Iran went as well.

The only response from the Pentagon and the White House, through successive administrations, was to spend more on defense. Always more.

Then came the Reagan years, and America suddenly entered a bizarre military surge in spending that effectively bankrupted the nation and has kept America in the red ever since.

What threat did the Soviet Union ever actually pose to the United States? There was a missile gap all right; it greatly favoured the United States. The Soviet Union would have been obliterated if they had ever tried to launch a sneak attack. But why would the USSR ever need to have attacked America? They were winning in country after country. There was no need.

So it can be argued now that the reason for creating a threat as massive as the USSR was to convince the American public that they needed to continually support a massive armaments industry.

The fall of the Berlin wall meant that the neo-conservatives needed a replacement enemy. The Soviet Union was no longer a menace. Without menace, there no longer any need for the weight and focus of the entire nation to support a bloated defense build-up.

Therefore a new enemy had to be created.

Luckily there was one ready to go. Operation Bojinka.

In January of 2001 a new Fox sci-fi series debuted called “The Lone Gunmen.” It was a spin-off from the highly successful cult hit The X-Files. The Lone Gunmen were a group of conspiracy busters who cracked open the shadowy doings of sinister plots. In the premier episode the plot was this; the cold war was over, the Pentagon needed money, and therefore a new arch-enemy was needed. In absence of any state actors, the Pentagon settled on international terrorists, and to put their plan into operation they rigged a commercial airliner with a remote control device to fly straight into the World Trade Center.


The problem with shadowy characters like Al Qa’ida is that they aren’t that big a threat, and they do all their hits far, far away, from America. They blew up two embassies in Africa. They may have done the USS Cole. They may have done the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

How on earth can these amateur villains be magnified into a global menace so terrifying in their power that once more America must stand as the vanguard against the enemies’ unholy mendacity?

Well, that was a simple one for the Neo-Conservatives. Operation Bojinka.

Did Bojinka get reworked into 911? Did the Neo-Conservatives actively enlist Al Qa’ida operatives in the plan? Is there a direct connection between the American intelligence establishment and Al Qa’ida?

The answers are yes, yes, and yes.


The plan was staggeringly simple.

The CIA had been involved in Islamic radicalism in Pakistan and Afghanistan since at least 1979. Billions of dollars had flowed into Pakistan to arm, train, and provide logistical support to the Muhajadin fighters who were flowing over the Pakistani border into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, in cooperation with the CIA funded the madrassahs that would train the Muhajadin fighters which would ultimately give rise to the Taliban and the thousands of fighters that Pakistan poured into the contested provinces of Jumma and Kashmir.

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the ISI and Pakistani leadership were loathe to see any kind of government in Kabul that could be overly independent of Pakistan’s influence. The Taliban were injected into Afghanistan to fight against the so-called Northern Alliance, an association of rapists, murderers, kidnappers and thugs. Years of fighting virtually destroyed Kabul, but the Taliban eventually succeeded in creating a zone of influence within the southern part of the country, and implemented strict Islamic law. At the time, many Afghanis’ saw the victory of the Taliban as a mercy from the ravages of the lawless Northern Alliance.

Meanwhile, wealthy Saudi expatriate Osama bin Laden had been fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and following those successes began to organise a base of operations to counter the influence of Western backed powers across the Islamic world.

Arabic for “The Base”, Al Qa’ida began apparently as a logistical support organisation providing the transportation and base facilities for Jihad warriors across the world. Later analysis suggests that Al Qa’ida grew into an elaborate corporate structure. One half is responsible for tactical and strategic planning. The other half is accountable for providing religious justification for actions.

The captured Al Qa’ida manual provides a chilling insight into the workings of the corporate entity. It is both a mixture of philosophy and political propaganda, and then a precise and well thought through training manual in the theory and practice of kidnapping, assassination, and resistance to interrogation.

It roughly parallels the strategy of other ideologically based guerrilla movements suggested by Mao Tse Tung’s “On Guerrilla Warfare” which details the structure of the guerrilla fighting group as being separated into distinct parts which focus on political propaganda and on fighting and tactics.

The ascendancy of Al Qa’ida as a force opposed to the United States provided the Neo-Conservatives with the ideal “false flag” operation to use to justify the Global War on Terror.

The Neo-Conservatives count amongst their members Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, former CIA director James Woolsey, Richard Perle, who until the debacle in Iraq was the chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, current Deputy-Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the Vice-President of the United States Dick Cheney.

Contacts within the various intelligence groups loyal to the cause of the Neo-Conservatives allowed the 911 attackers to enter the United States and begin their training in Florida.

This much is fact; the ringleaders of the 911 plot were well known agitators who had lived in Germany for some time. They were known to the German authorities. Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None were from Iraq or Iran. Those that came directly from Saudi Arabia to the US obtained visas through the US embassy in Jeddah, where the consulate staff person responsible for green-lighting visa applications attempted to raise concerns with his superiors over some of the visas he was being asked to allow. He was told by his superiors to just rubber stamp the visas. Let them all through.

Although several FBI agents were contacting their superiors to alert them of Al Qa’ida operatives in the United States, the warnings went unheeded.

The plot had to be allowed to play itself out.
As is now known the 911 attackers had completed their training months before 911 and were in a holding pattern waiting for the “off.” When would it come?
Would it come while President Bush spent the summer relaxing at his Crawford Ranch? Or would they wait until he returned to the White House?

It is a fact, as widely reported, that the United States had been planning an October attack on Afghanistan.

It is also a fact that the White House had announced a competition for schools across the country to host the President for a live-televised event in which he would spend time with pupils, and then deliver a speech about his “no child left behind” programme.

Emma Booker Elementary School in Florida won the competition. The plan was now weeks away from going into action.

Secret service officers descended on Emma Booker to prepare the school for the president’s visit. Security had to be in place, as well as extra electricity to be made available for the news media. Extra parking had to be arranged. A visit from the President entails a lot of pre-planning and logistical preparation.

Meanwhile the head of Pakistan’s ISI had wired Mohamed Atta, the alleged 911 ringleader, $100,000. Why? No one knows.

The puzzle was now almost complete. Al Qa’ida was going to take the wrap for this attack.

On the day of the attacks Dick Cheney would be in the White House along with the National Security Adviser. Donald Rumsfeld would be in his office at the Pentagon. The President however would be in Florida, and the Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, was in Peru.

The attacks were planned to occur in the early morning to ensure that the World Trade Center would not be fully occupied. Up to fifty thousand people normally worked in the twin towers.

The attacks would occur in time to catch the morning television audiences on both coasts in order to capitalize on the dramatic images which would follow. Also, critical to the success of the mission, timed to coincide with the President’s live appearance in Florida.

It is a fact that President Bush was alerted to the first attack before he left his hotel to travel to Emma Booker Elementary school. In post-911 appearances the President has twice said, on the record, that he watched on television the first plane striking the World Trade Center which was impossible, as tape of the first crash did not appear until the next day.

When Andy Card whispered in the President’s ear at Emma Booker that America was under attack the President remained with the students for a further seven minutes before delivering his speech which was to go out at precisely 9:30am. Nothing, not a sneak attack by unknown enemies, not the sudden deaths of thousands of Americans, was going to stop the slow motion pace of pre-planned events. The television feeds that were scheduled for 9:30am had been booked weeks earlier, nothing was going to interfere with the schedule. At precisely 9:30am Bush went on live television to announce that he was going to get the “folks” responsible.

He was then, finally, hustled to Air Force One, which according to eyewitnesses, and the journalists on board, stood on its tail as it took off. At last the reality of the situation was beginning to affect the performance of those closest to the President.

Remember too that one of the military officers who accompany the President is responsible for carrying the so-called “football”, an electronic briefcase which contains the “go-codes” and other key elements of America’s defense apparatus should a sneak attack occur when the President is on tour. Nothing it seems was done that morning to get the football to the President.

After Air Force One was airborne it simply circled over Florida for almost an hour, and during that time no sky-cap was sent up to protect the Presidents jet. In frantic telephone calls to the White House President Bush was repeatedly told by the Vice-President not to return to Washington.

Bush then spent the rest of the day hopping down rabbit holes at air force bases before finally returning to Washington that evening.

The plan had worked flawlessly.

The back up hijacked jet, ready to go if anything failed with the first three, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, and a cover-up story was released speaking of the heroism of the passengers wrestling the controls away from the hijackers and sending the plane into a fatal nose dive.

It was not a new plan by any means. The idea had sprung from the 1961 plan “Operation Northwoods” which called for the faked hijacking of US passenger airliners in an attempt to create a reason to go to war with Cuba.

Within a month the War on Terror had begun as US tomahawk cruise missiles screamed into Afghanistan.

By then America was flooded with images and videos of Osama bin Ladin. Delivering his trademark quiet and deliberate messages.

After Afghanistan was securely in American hands, the first phase of the plan was complete.
The second stage of the plan now called for the invasion of Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq would accomplish a multitude of goals. It would principally secure Israel’s back door. But it would also isolate Iran. The Bush administration concluded basing deals with despotic regimes throughout the neighbourhood, and then launched an unprovoked attack against a weak and thoroughly bankrupted Iraq.

Iran now is wedged between American forces.

Israel now has a free hand to do whatever it wants to the Palestinians, and to terrorize it’s neighbours in Syria and Lebanon.

The next stage for the neo-cons will be the January assault on Iran. It could come sooner if the Iranians behave as unpredictably as some suggest they might. But, Iran has never attacked any of its neighbours, so it is interesting to see how the Americans are attempting to goad the Iranians into action by the attack on the holy Imam Ali shrine in An Najaf.

Notice that in the past year we have heard very little from Osama bin Laden. His messages have disappeared. He is no longer a useful tool to terrorize the American public.

He has been replaced in Iraq at least by the shadowy “al Zarqawi.”

And in recent weeks the Bush Administration has blown the cover of a deep-cover agent working for the west who had infiltrated Al Qa’ida.

Nothing can be done to stop the golden goose from laying. Al Qa’ida can be used for years to come to terrorize the American public into surrendering more and more of their basic rights, and into fomenting a truly Global War against Islam.

For the Neo-Cons; mission accomplished. The economy may be in tatters, but defense spending is way up, and the ridiculous missile defense shield programme is finally becoming a reality.

Trillions more dollars will be spent on totally futile efforts to defend America. History proves that no wall, no barrier, has ever succeeded in deterring a determined attacker.

But, you see, that isn’t the point. The point is the mixture of big money, Christian fundamentalism, oil, and the security of the present form of the State of Israel.

911 was the horrible catalyst for all of this. It was the neo-cons Reichstag Fire. It delivered the ultimate message to America on American soil. Clever? Absolutely. Diabolical? Undoubtedly.