Not Important? Think Again - 4 June 2002

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chris Sanders of Sanders Research, a London based investment advisory service has kindly granted Scoop permission to reprint his series of occasional news bulletins. Each edition of "Not Important? Think Again" highlights news items, (occasionally providing links) which are important to the investing community which have been receiving less than their fair share of play in the mainstream media.

911 and All That

Today the US Congress begins formal hearings into the intelligence mishaps that preceded the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center last year. They say that a week is a lifetime in politics. If that is true, then George W. Bush and his administration have already used up several of theirs.

Last autumn in our October 8 Commentary we asked the question that Congress and the mainstream press should have been asking, “Who stood down?” It was obvious then and it is obvious now that something besides the brilliance of a band of terrorists or the incompetence of America’s security apparatus was responsible for the disaster of 911. Instead Congress, in one of the saddest moments of its history, passed the infamous Patriot Act, in a stroke depriving Americans of what is arguably the only reason to want to be an American, the guarantee of civil liberties against the abuse of state power.

Today all this is unravelling fast. Next Monday, the 10th, a press conference hosted by www.UnansweredQuestions.org will be held at the National Press Club in Washington DC. (Links to their site are now on our home page and the Links section of this web site.) This is a citizens’ effort, for the simple reason that the people who lead them in Congress and the Executive have failed in their duty. The list of questions that are there for the asking is very, very long, but we offer some of ours here:

1: Why did the FAA and the Air Force not follow standard operating procedure and scramble interceptors when four commercial airliners disappeared off radar?

2: Is there a connection between documented Israeli intelligence activity before 911 and those events?

3: It has been reported that the French, German, Russian, Moroccan, Egyptian, Israeli and Jordanian intelligence services issued warnings to the US before the attacks, to a level of specificity identifying aircraft as a target. Attorney General John Ashcroft took these warnings seriously enough to stop flying commercial aircraft during the summer. Yet no action was taken to improve security. Why?

4: On September the 10th, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made a statement to the effect that government “waste” is a bigger danger to American national security than terrorism. He ought to know since his department cannot account for more than $2.1 trillion since fiscal year 1997. Since 911 the government has launched the biggest defence build-up since the first Reagan administration, most of the increased spending going to projects unrelated in any way to the so-called “War on Terror.” Why?

5: In the normal course of things one would have expected Congressional budget hearings during the autumn to focus on this “waste” since it was by then a matter of public record that the federal government as a whole cannot account for more than $3.3 trillion since fiscal year 1997 according to the General Accounting Office. With 911 and the urgency accorded by Congress and the administration to pass the so-called Patriot Act, this did not happen. Why, if this is indeed a bigger threat than terrorism?

6: Since his original call for $50 billion in supplemental spending for the “War on Terror” President Bush has “requested” and received nearly $150 billion more in supplemental spending. Where is this money going and for what?

7: In this regard, no one in the US government has resigned (although as of this writing it looks as though FBI Director Mueller will not last) over the failure to respond to 911. Instead, those responsible such as Director Tenet at the CIA are being given more responsibility and more money. Why, especially since the intelligence budget pre-911 was a whopping $70 billion? (To put that figure in perspective, the US was spending more on intelligence alone than any other nation on earth was spending on their entire military establishment.)

8: It is not widely understood by the financial markets, to say nothing of the general public, that much of the computer hardware, software, accounting, and financial control functions of government are now performed by private contractors. For instance, Lockheed Martin is a major supplier of these services to the Pentagon and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Coincidentally, these government agencies are also those that are “missing” the lion’s share of the $3.3 trillion mentioned above. Lockheed, which as one of the biggest arms and “security” firms in the world, is also a major beneficiary of the “War on Terror.”
Is there a connection?

9: Another contractor providing such services is AMS of northern Virginia, which as the contractor running IT for HUD has also allowed more than $40 billion to go “missing” from that agency. John Rossotti, founder of AMS was appointed Commissioner of the IRS by then president Clinton. Rossotti’s AMS has been sued by other public sector clients for, in effect, not being able to deliver the goods. In spite of this, AMS has been retained by the US Treasury. Rossotti still owns his AMS stock. As we reported on May 29 (see below), there are four holdovers from the Clinton administration running strategically vital centres of American government power: CIA, IRS, GAO and the Comptroller General of the Currency. Intelligence, tax, audit, and payment systems; is there a connection?

10: The international theatres of the War on Terror without exception are coincidentally also strategic nodes in the world’s supply and distribution system for oil and natural gas. Coincidentally too this administration is top heavy with executives with energy sector backgrounds. Coincidentally executives from the now failed Enron Corporation were deeply involved in the administration’s energy policy planning group headed by Vice President Cheney. Coincidentally Enron’s share price peaked not long before 911 and the company filed for bankruptcy within two months of 911. The energy-trading arm of Enron where most of the “irregularities” occurred was sold to UBS in the immediate aftermath of the firm’s collapse, effectively removing it from US jurisdiction. Are these coincidences or are they related?

(In another coincidence, Vice President Cheney’s old firm Halliburton is being investigated for accounting irregularities. Halliburton is also a major beneficiary of the War on Terror thanks to the award of forward base construction contracts.)

11: In the aftermath of the attacks of 911, envelopes containing anthrax spores were received through the US mail by a number of targets, including Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle. As we have reported in earlier pieces, the evidence strongly suggests that the anthrax attacks were not a “terrorist” operation by anyone connected with Al Qaeda, but rather an inside job using weaponised anthrax form the US military’s own germ warfare program. In the highly charged atmosphere after the aircraft attacks, this significantly increased the sense and image of a nation under attack. Is this just another coincidence? Why has the investigation into the anthrax attacks not focused on a domestic agency, or agent?

12: There is strong evidence that there was a large short derivatives position established in the market against airline and insurance stocks in the days immediately before the attacks of 911. What is the status of that investigation?

Connect the dots: Someone is stealing a lot of taxpayer’s money. This has gone on for a while and across administrations of both democrats and republicans. Someone has made a lot of money (and is making a lot more) from the war on terror. The government had substantial intelligence at hand before the September 11 attacks. No action was taken, either before, or on the day, to prevent them. On the 11th, this went to the extreme of not following established procedure. A foreign intelligence agency was extremely active in the United States in the run up to the 11th. Someone shorted the stocks most likely to be hit as a consequence of the attacks.

Not important? This is the country that prints the world’s reserve currency, and also just happens, on generally accepted accounting principles, to have run a government budget deficit of over $500 billion in 2001 rather than the surplus of over $100 billion that it claimed. The reason? Medical insurance for its military.

Think again.

And elsewhere….

Questions about 911 and all that are becoming more widely covered in the mainstream press. this is exactly the pattern that preceded the fall of the Nixon administration thirty years ago. What is more important, is that this most “conservative” of administrations is alienating those most inclined to support it.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak03.html

Bush admits what the rest of us have known for some time.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=03062002-080238-1563r

…Hillary for President?

Stranger things have happened. For instance, her husband, nominally a liberal democrat, was elected twice, in spite of endorsing and passing a Republican (i.e. Bush) bill creating NAFTA, presiding over the largest increase in America’s prison population, and turning over management of the country’s financial system to a group of Wall Street insiders. Only a Bush could have managed that, and it looks as though his son may just manage to do it again.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/03/hsorensen.DTL

And finally…

It can’t be easy to be an informant, especially when the people that you are informing on may kill you for it. You would think that the Americans, with all their problems in the War on Terror, could find some of their $200 billion ant-terror supplemental budget to help those who help them. Evidently not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/03/national/03WITN.html?todaysheadlines

ENDS

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