 WWW,
2005 (ARCHIVED) - The following is an edited
extract from The Hidden Face of
Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social
Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11,
by Paul David Collins.
Terrorism does not emerge by accident but
is usually sponsored by the state to serve
the demands of a powerful elite, as can be
seen in the creation of Osama bin Laden's
al-Qa'ida.
In our modern world, discomforting truths
are usually discarded in favour of fictions.
One such fiction is the idea that terrorists
are disenfranchised dissidents who
independently generate the wealth and
resources necessary for their heinous acts.
Such is the contention of Professor Mark
Juergensmeyer. In his article,
"Understanding the New Terrorism",
he says that modern terrorism "appears
pointless since it does not lead directly to
any strategic goal" (p. 158).
Juergensmeyer arrives at this conclusion
because he restricts his examination to the
visible perpetrators, whose motives may be,
in fact, irrational. However, he does not
examine the patrons of terrorism. Given the
exceptional subtlety and discretion of
terrorism's shadowy sponsors, Professor
Juergensmeyer may just be oblivious to their
existence. On the other hand, he could
simply be parroting his fellow academicians
in order to maintain the status quo.
Whatever the case may be, this contention
seems to be the overall view held by the
orthodoxy of academia. With such a view
vigorously promulgated by the arbiters of
the dominant national paradigm, few can
recognise those shady individuals who stand
to profit from terrorist acts.
To understand terrorism, one must discard
the view that arbitrarily characterises it
as "a resort to violence or a threat of
violence on the part of a group seeking to
accomplish a purpose against the opposition
of constituted authority" (Adler,
Mueller & Laufer, p. 309). Such an
impotent notion is predicated upon the
hopelessly flawed accidentalist perspective
of history. It relegates terrorism, which is
the product of conscious effort and design,
to the realm of circumstantial spontaneity.
In other words, a contrived act suddenly
becomes an inexplicable social phenomenon.
In November 1989, Father Ignacio Martín-Baró,
a social psychologist, delivered a speech in
California on "The Psychological
Consequences of Political Terror". In
his speech, Martín-Baró gave a much more
precise definition of terrorism, one that is
ignored only at great peril. Noam Chomsky
provides a synopsis of this speech (p. 386):
He [Martín-Baró] stressed several
relevant points. First, the most significant
form of terrorism, by a large measure, is
state terrorism--that is, "terrorizing
the whole population through systematic
actions carried out by the forces of the
state". Second, such terrorism is an
essential part of a "government-imposed
sociopolitical project" designed for
the needs of the privileged.
Disturbing though it may be, Martín-Baró's
definition is one validated by history. The
majority of terrorism throughout history has
found its sponsors in the hallowed halls of
officialdom, in the entity known as
government. Terrorism is surrogate warfare,
a manufactured crisis designed to induce
social change. Its combatants consciously or
unconsciously wage the war on behalf of
higher powers with higher agendas. Whether
its adherents are aware of it or not,
terrorism always serves the ambitions of
another.
In his article, "Fake Terror: The
Road to Dictatorship", Michael Rivero
states that "It's the oldest trick in
the book, dating back to Roman times:
creating the enemies you need" (p. 1).
The strategy is quite simple: individuals
create a crisis so that they can then
introduce their desired solution.
Are there recent, modern examples of
state-sponsored terrorism? Unfortunately,
the answer to that question seems to be
"Yes".
Operation Northwoods The first example is
in 1962. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and his fellow
JCS members wanted to remove Castro from
Cuba. Exactly what interests Lemnitzer and
his fellow warhawks represented are unclear.
However, one thing is apparent: these
military men considered Castro an impediment
to be expunged by means of overt war.
According to James Bamford, former
Washington investigative producer for ABC,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned to
engineer several terrorist acts to instigate
war (p. 82):
According to secret and long-hidden
documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved
plans for what may be the most corrupt plan
ever created by the US government. In the
name of anticommunism, they proposed
launching a secret and bloody war of
terrorism against their own country in order
to trick the American public into supporting
an ill-conceived war they intended to launch
against Cuba.
Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan,
which had the written approval of the
Chairman and every member of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people
to be shot on American streets; for boats
carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on
the high seas; for a wave of violent
terrorism to be launched in Washington, DC,
Miami and elsewhere.
People would be framed for bombings they
did not commit; planes would be hijacked.
Using phony evidence, all of it would be
blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and
his cabal the excuse, as well as the public
and international backing, they needed to
launch their war.
Northwoods even called for the military
to turn on itself (p. 84):
Among the actions recommended was "a
series of well-coordinated incidents to take
place in and around" the US Navy Base
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included
dressing "friendly" Cubans in
Cuban military uniforms and then have them
"start riots near the main gate of the
base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs
inside the base. Ammunition would be blown
up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged,
mortars fired at the base with damage to
installations".
Operation Northwoods would draw upon
history as well, using the 1898 explosion
aboard the battleship Maine in Havana
harbour as inspiration (p. 84):
"We could blow up a US ship in
Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they
proposed; "casualty lists in US
newspapers would cause a helpful wave of
national indignation."
The attempt to create a Cuban terrorist
threat makes it clear that the US government
has no reservations about using
state-sponsored terrorism to achieve its
ends.
American Imperialism and the Terrorist
Threat However, it is in the Oklahoma City
bombing of 1995 that one sees the tangible
enactment of modern-day state-sponsored
terrorism. Many Americans have been taught
that loners Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols, fuelled by militia-inspired
conspiracy theories and white supremacist
propaganda, perpetrated one of the worst
terrorist acts in American history all by
themselves.
What came out of the Oklahoma City
bombing? Former Czechoslovakian Communist
Party Secretariat member Jan Kozak's
"pressure from above" went to work
and passed oppressive legislation: the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act of 1996. This Act made no one safer and
threw the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution into the wastebasket. The
pincers clamped down a little bit harder on
the American people.
Presently, America finds itself in the
midst of a tumultuous conflict because of
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on
the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
This begs the obvious question: was this
attack state-sponsored? Remember the earlier
contention that the majority of terrorism is
state-sponsored. Terrorists just do not have
the resources, the money or the expertise
without the aid of a government or factions
within a government. It is still too early
to know all of the facts and details
surrounding the events of September 11.
However, there is evidence suggesting that
the attack was no exception to the rule. The
investigation of government complicity
begins with an examination of the evidence
for government foreknowledge. Warnings were
received at the highest levels of
government.
These and other eye-opening revelations
have many people asking why the US
government did not move to stop bin Laden
and al-Qa'ida. This question can be answered
with a question: why move against bin Laden
and al-Qa'ida if they are your assets?
The story of the dreaded al-Qa'ida
terrorist network begins with Zbigniew
Brzezinski, President Carter's National
Security Advisor. In his 1997 book, The
Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geostrategic Objectives, Brzezinski provides
readers with the motivation for the creation
of a terrorist threat. He begins (p. xii):
The last decade of the twentieth century
has witnessed a tectonic shift in world
affairs. For the first time ever, a
non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a
key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but
also as the world's paramount. The defeat
and collapse of the Soviet Union was the
final step in the rapid ascendance of a
Western Hemisphere power, the United States,
as the sole and, indeed, the first truly
global power ...
Brzezinski celebrates the fact that
America is being transformed into a world
empire. However, he identifies a distinct
threat to America's ascendancy to the
position of sole global power: "The
attitude of the American public toward the
external projection of American power has
been much more ambivalent" (p. 24).
Apparently, the citizenry's aversion towards
imperialistic policies, which Brzezinski
euphemistically interprets as ambivalence,
is an obstacle to the empire's expansion.
After all, there are still plenty of
patriots who understand that Brzezinski's
expansionistic "geostrategy" is
irreconcilable with the tenets of
Americanism.
This sense of awareness has been a major
obstacle to the foreign policy elites that
Brzezinski represents. Thus far, enough
patriots know that none of the "Freedom
Documents" (i.e., the Constitution,
Bill of Rights, etc.) makes concessions for
the arbitrary extension of America's
authority through brutish military
expeditions. As a sovereign nation itself,
America is supposed to honour the autonomy
of other countries and is not to initiate
militaristic campaigns unless she is
threatened. Yet, Brzezinski believes that
adherence to such principles could provoke
worldwide social upheaval (p. 30):
America's withdrawal from the world, or
because of the sudden emergence of a
successful rival, would produce massive
international instability. It would promote
global anarchy.
Brzezinski continues further on in
hyperbolic fashion (p. 194):
Without sustained and directed American
involvement, before long the forces of
global disorder could come to dominate the
world scene.
In other words, the promotion and
practice of representative government
amongst other nations would lead to doomsday
itself. In such statements, the former
National Security Advisor reveals the
authoritarian features of his bizarre
eschatology. According to Brzezinski's
Weltanschauung, those who cherish individual
liberties and the sovereignty of their
respective nations constitute the
"forces of global disorder"; these
forces must be defeated or they will
invariably cause the apocalypse--so public
opinion must be altered. (Brzezinski fails
to mention that such a doomsday will only
mean the end for him and his elitist
comrades.) Brzezinski cites a very
interesting historical example (p. 25):
The public supported America's engagement
in World War II largely because of the shock
effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor.
Ah, an option presents itself! Mass
consensus could be facilitated through mass
trauma. In fact, the engineering of
widespread compliance is an essential
constituent in the implementation of
Brzezinski's foreign policy. In an exemplary
moment of self-incrimination so endemic to
elitist tracts, Brzezinski pens a damning
confession (p. 211):
Moreover, as America becomes an
increasingly multi-cultural society, it may
find it more difficult to fashion a
consensus on foreign policy issues, except
in the circumstance of a truly massive and
widely perceived direct external threat.
A readily exploitable menace, whether
genuine or promulgated, is the solution.
Brzezinski began the construction of his
"direct external threat" years
before he wrote The Grand Chessboard. In an
interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel
Observateur, the former national security
adviser made a stunning confession that will
change the history books forever (Blum, p.
1):
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert
Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the
Shadows] that American intelligence services
began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan
six months before the Soviet intervention.
In this period you were the national
security adviser to President Carter. You
therefore played a role in this affair. Is
that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the
official version of history, CIA aid to the
Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to
say, after the Soviet Army invaded
Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the
reality, secretly guarded until now, is
completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3,
1979, that President Carter signed the first
directive for secret aid to the opponents of
the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that
very day, I wrote a note to the President in
which I explained to him that in my opinion
this aid was going to induce a Soviet
military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an
advocate of this covert action. But perhaps
you yourself desired this Soviet entry into
war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push
the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly
increased the probability that they would.
Re-education and the Creation of the
Taliban Having encouraged the Soviets to
invade Afghanistan, Brzezinski now had a
pretext for radicalising and arming a
population that would be used at a future
date as a "direct external threat"
to the United States.
Part of the radicalisation process
included the brainwashing of children under
the guise of education. The Washington
Post's Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
report (pp. 1-2):
In the twilight of the Cold War, the
United States spent millions of dollars to
supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks
filled with violent images and militant
Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts
to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The "Primers", which were
filled with talk of jihad and featured
drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and
mines, have served since then as the Afghan
school system's core curriculum. Even the
Taliban used the American-produced books,
though the radical movement scratched out
human faces in keeping with its strict
fundamentalist code.
Stephens and Ottaway identify the
governmental and educational organisations
involved in development of the textbooks (p.
4):
Published in the dominant Afghan
languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks
were developed in the early 1980s under an
AID [Agency for International Development]
grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha
and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The
agency spent $51 million on the university's
education programs in Afghanistan from 1984
to 1994.
Under this project, the images and talk
of violence were craftily intermingled with
legitimate education (p. 4): Children were
taught to count with illustrations showing
tanks, missiles and land mines, agency
officials said. They acknowledged that at
the time it also suited US interests to
stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
An examination of a textbook produced
shocking results (p. 5): An aid-worker in
the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page
book and counted 43 pages containing violent
images or passages.
The writers of the Washington Post story
go on to provide a specific example of the
material that is nothing less than appalling
(pp. 5-6):
One page from the texts of that period
shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier
and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder.
The soldier's head is missing.
Above the soldier is a verse from the
Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the
mujaheddin [sic], who are described as
obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice
their wealth and life itself to impose
Islamic law on the government, the text
says.
This social engineering project
successfully transformed Muslim children
into conscienceless killing machines. Many
would go on to join al-Qa'ida, the terrorist
network headed up by Osama bin Laden.
An heir to a Saudi construction fortune,
bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1979 to
fight the Soviets. Bin Laden eventually came
to head the Maktab al-Khidamar, also known
as the MAK. It was through this front
organisation that money, arms and fighters
were supplied to the Afghan war. However,
according to MSNBC's Michael Moran, there is
more to the story (p. 2): What the CIA bio
conveniently fails to specify (in its
unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK
was nurtured by Pakistan's state security
services, the Inter-Services Intelligence
agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit
for conducting the covert war against
Moscow's occupation.
Even after the war, bin Laden was on good
terms with the CIA (p. 3): Though he has
come to represent all that went wrong with
the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the
end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was
still viewed by the agency as something of a
dilettante--a rich Saudi boy gone to war and
welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so
hated as something of a hero.
Bin Laden would later receive three
necessary provisions from factions of
government. These essentials would allow him
and al- Qa'ida to conduct one of the worst
terrorist attacks ever conceived. These
constituents were: (1) protection courtesy
of highly influential, well-placed shepherds
in government; (2) government funding; and
(3) government training. Without a beat,
individuals in positions of authority
delivered.
Both Democrat and Republican
administrations protected bin Laden.
Undaunted by Osama's attack on the USS Cole
and bombings of the embassies, this
non-partisan aegis consistently insulated
the terrorist and his network. President
William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat,
shielded bin Laden and company from the hand
of justice in Sudan. Mansoor Ijaz revealed
this fact in the December 5, 2001, Los
Angeles Times (Ijaz, p. 1):
President Clinton and his national
security team ignored several opportunities
to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist
associates, including one as late as last
year ...
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial
channels between Sudan and the Clinton
Administration. I met with officials in both
countries, including Clinton, US National
Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy"
Berger and Sudan's President and
intelligence chief.
President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who
wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan
lifted, offered the arrest and extradition
of bin Laden and detailed intelligence data
about the global networks constructed by
Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and
the Palestinian Hamas. Among those in the
networks were the two hijackers who piloted
commercial airliners into the World Trade
Center. The silence of the Clinton
Administration in responding to these offers
was deafening.
Sudan offered Bill Clinton the ideal
opportunity to apprehend bin Laden and
prevent future terrorist attacks. Instead,
the US pressured Sudan to make bin Laden
leave, "despite their [the Sudanese]
feeling that he could be monitored better in
Sudan than elsewhere" (pp. 1-2). It was
off to Afghanistan for bin Laden and his
merry, marauding band of cut-throats and
murderers (p. 2):
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking
with him: Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the
US to be the chief planner of the September
11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who
traveled frequently to Germany to obtain
electronic equipment for al-Qaeda; Wadih
El-Hage, bin Laden's personal secretary and
roving emissary, now serving a life sentence
in the US for his role in the 1998 US
Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also
accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.
Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22
most-wanted terrorists.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban protected bin
Laden and his al- Qa'ida network. There is
an odd symmetry revealed through this
relationship. Both bin Laden and the Taliban
were little more than a creation of the CIA.
Selig Harrison, a South Asian expert from
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, made this known at a conference in
London. The Times of India records
Harrison's revelations (p. 1):
LONDON -- The Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to
create the "monster" that is today
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US
expert on South Asia said here.
"I warned them that we were creating
a monster," Selig Harrison from the
Woodrow Wilson International Centre [sic]
for Scholars said at the conference here
last week on "Terrorism and Regional
Security: Managing the Challenges in
Asia".
To the average American, the Taliban
might have been a rogue gallery of maniacs
that comprised a fanatical outlaw government
and nothing more. However, Harrison makes it
clear that the Taliban was a
well-coordinated intelligence project (p.
2):
The Taliban are not just recruits from
"madrassas" (Muslim theological
schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI
(Inter-Services Intelligence, the
intelligence wing of the Pakistani
government).
A Covert Government Agenda The government
had all the means necessary to detect and
prevent the September 11 attacks. Researcher
Russ Kick makes a significant statement
concerning this point (p. 1):
The US has the Central Intelligence
Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the National Security Agency, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the National
Reconnaissance Office, the Secret Service,
and a host of other intelligence and
security agencies. These agencies employ
Echelon, which monitors the majority of
electronic communication in the world;
Carnivore, which intercepts email; Tempest,
a technology that can read a computer
monitor's display from over a block away;
Keyhole satellites that have a resolution of
four inches; and other spy technologies,
probably most of which we don't know about.
In 2001, the US spent $30 billion on
intelligence gathering and an additional $12
billion on counterterrorism. With all these
resources, and more, we're supposed to
believe that the government didn't have the
slightest inkling that terrorists were
planning to attack the United States, much
less hijack planes and send them careening
into major landmarks.
After reviewing the facts, one must
consider a more sinister possibility: that
certain factions in the United States
government created the bin Laden menace and
actually desired the attacks. Whether Moran
realises it or not, his article, "Bin
Laden Comes Home to Roost", reveals
evidence that the Agency may have been
equipping bin Laden's network for purposes
other than fighting the Soviets (p. 4):
The CIA, ever mindful of the need to
justify its "mission", had
conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the
deepening crisis of infrastructure within
the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy
director Robert Gates acknowledged under
congressional questioning in 1992, had
decided to keep that evidence from President
Reagan and his top advisors and instead
continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet
military and technological capabilities in
its annual "Soviet Military Power"
report right up to 1990.
Now, a troubling question arises. Given
the impending collapse of the Soviet Union
and the inexorable demise of communism, bin
Laden's involvement in the crusade against
the Soviets seems inconsequential. More
succinctly, it is irrelevant. Yet, despite
his axiomatic obsolescence in the
anti-communist campaign, bin Laden continued
to receive funds. Since such financing did
not represent an investment in the ongoing
war with the Soviets, there must have been
ulterior motives for maintaining bin Laden's
network.
What was the true agenda that motivated
the CIA to support what would later become
an international Frankenstein's monster?
Former CIA Associate Deputy Director of
Operations Theodore Shackley may have
already answered this question in his book,
The Third Option (p. 17):
Senior intelligence officers like myself,
who had experience in paramilitary
operations, have always insisted that the
United States should also consider the third
option: the use of guerrilla warfare,
counterinsurgency techniques and covert
action to achieve policy goals ... Political
warfare is very often the stitch in time
that eliminates bloodier and more costly
alternatives.
It is possible that the September 11
attack represents a tangible enactment of
Shackley's third option. Bin Laden's ties to
the intelligence community certainly
reinforce such a contention. Were al-Qa'ida
and bin Laden considered part of a third
option to facilitate political and social
change in the United States?
Consider a conversation that took place
between former DEA agent Michael Levine and
a CIA agent. It suggests that the CIA is
ready and willing to use the third option in
America. This discourse is recorded in The
Triangle of Death (Levine, p. 353):
"How can you be so good at what you
do and have so little understanding of what
really pulls your strings? Don't you realize
that there are factions in your government
that want this to happen--an emergency
situation too hot for a constitutional
government to handle."
"To what end?" I asked.
"A suspension of the Constitution,
of course. The legislation is already in
place. All perfectly legal. Check it out
yourself. It's called FEMA. Federal
Emergency Management Agency. 'Turn in your
guns, you antigovernment rabble-rousers. And
who would be king, Michael?"
"CIA," I said.
Terrorism in the United States is one of
the methods employed to generate the changes
desired by Levine's CIA friend. It has
provided a pretext for the introduction of
draconian laws and measures previously
unthinkable. Representative Henry Gonzalez
recognised this fact when he made the
following comment (Cuddy, p. 164):
The truth of the matter is that you do
have those standby provisions, and the
statutory emergency plans are there whereby
you could, in the name of stopping
terrorism, apprehend, invoke the military,
and arrest Americans and hold them in
detention camps.
Add to the list of "statutory
emergency plans" the Patriot Act,
passed in response to the September 11
attacks. According to Washington Post staff
writer Jim McGee (pp 1-2), this law:
... empowers the government to shift the
primary mission of the FBI from solving
crimes to gathering domestic intelligence.
In addition, the Treasury Department has
been charged with building a financial
intelligence-gathering system whose data can
be accessed by CIA.
Most significantly, the CIA will have the
authority for the first time to influence
FBI surveillance operations inside the
United States and to obtain evidence
gathered by federal grand juries and
criminal wiretaps.
The Patriot Act is designed to transform
America into a surveillance society.
Wiretapping has been expanded to invade the
privacy of a larger portion of the populace.
In the name of fighting terrorism, the
prying eyes of the government can now watch
those merely deemed "suspicious".
Furthermore, wiretaps are no longer just a
tool in criminal investigations. Under the
Act, they become a means of gathering
information on the citizenry. Unfortunately,
the surprises do not stop there. The Act
also lifts many of the constraints on the
CIA's power. McGee writes (p. 4):
The new law also gives the CIA
unprecedented access to the most powerful
investigative weapon in the federal law
enforcement's arsenal: the federal grand
jury. The grand juries have nearly unlimited
power to gather evidence in secret,
including testimony, wiretap transcripts,
phone records, business records or medical
records ...
The new law permits allow the FBI to give
grand jury information to the CIA without a
court order, as long as the information
concerns foreign intelligence or
international terrorism. The information can
also be shared widely throughout the
national security establishment ...
All of the above points to a very
frightening conclusion: there are some
factions of government that consider
terrorism to be a tool of social
engineering. The direction society is being
steered by this "tool" is even
more frightening.
Terrorism: A Tool of the Ruling Elite
Terrorism is being used to keep the rabble
in line on behalf of an elite that wishes to
maintain and expand its power. In The Power
Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills
introduces these powerful individuals (pp.
3-4):
The power elite is composed of men whose
positions enable them to transcend the
ordinary environments of ordinary men and
women; they are in positions to make
decisions having major consequences. Whether
they do or do not make such decisions is
less important than the fact that they do
occupy such pivotal positions: their failure
to act, their failure to make decisions, is
itself an act that is often of greater
consequence than the decisions they do make.
For they are in command of the major
hierarchies and organisations of modern
society. They rule the big corporations.
They run the machinery of the state and
claim its prerogatives. They direct the
military establishment. They occupy the
strategic command posts of the social
structure, in which are now centered the
effective means of the power and the wealth
and the celebrity which they enjoy.
Talk of oligarchs might tend to conjure
pictures of mediaeval feudal lords. However,
a Federal Reserve study points out to
elitism being alive, well, and existing in
the "Land of the Free", the United
States. In his Secrets of the Temple, former
Washington Post editor William Greider
quotes the study (p. 39):
... 54 percent of the total net financial
assets were held by the 2 percent of
families with the greatest amount of such
assets and 86 percent by the top 10 percent;
55 percent of the families in the sample had
zero or negative net worth ...
This concentration of wealth in so few
hands certainly suggests that there is a
ruling class. It is highly naive to believe
that this elite does not wield a great deal
of influence over civilisation. In her book,
Beyond The Ruling Class: Strategic Elites In
Modern Society, Professor Suzanne Keller
states (p. 3):
The notion of a stratum elevated above
the mass of men may prompt approval,
indifference, or despair, but regardless of
how men feel about it, the fact remains that
their lives, fortunes, and fate are and have
long been dependent on what a small number
of men in high places think and do.
Former Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency William Colby recognised
the existence of a network of bluebloods.
When former Nebraska Senator and Vietnam War
hero John W. DeCamp was looking into elites'
involvement in child abuse, drug running,
gun running, and satanic ritual-murder,
Colby warned him of the hidden aristocracy
and their power (DeCamp, pp. ix-x):
"What you have to understand, John,
is that sometimes there are forces and
events too big, too powerful, with so much
at stake for other people or institutions,
that you cannot do anything about them, no
matter how evil or wrong they are and no
matter how dedicated or sincere you are or
how much evidence you have. That is simply
one of the hard facts of life you have to
face. You have done your part. You have
tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. It
has hurt you terribly. But it has not killed
you up to this point. I am telling you, get
out of this before it does.
"Sometimes things are just too big
for us to deal with, and we have to step
aside and let history take its course."
Probably the greatest source of
"insider" information comes from
Oxford professor (and mentor to former
President Bill Clinton) the late Carroll
Quigley. After being close to the
pro-British, Anglophile faction of the
elite, Quigley wrote (p. 950):
There does exist, and has existed for a
generation, an international Anglophile
network which operates, to some extent, in
the way the radical Right believes the
Communists act. In fact, this network, which
we may identify as the Round Table Groups,
has no aversion to cooperating with the
Communists, or any other groups, and
frequently does so. I know of the operations
of this network because I have studied it
for twenty years and was permitted for two
years, in the early 1960s, to examine its
papers and secret records. I have no
aversion to it and to many of its aims and
have, for much of my life, been close to it
and to many of its instruments.
I have objected, both in the past and
recently, to a few of its policies (notably
to its belief that England was an Atlantic
rather than a European Power and must be
allied, or even federated, with the United
States and must remain isolated from
Europe), but in general my chief difference
of opinion is that it wishes to remain
unknown, and I believe its role in history
is significant enough to be known.
Quigley also informs us that the ruling
class has a very low opinion of the common
people. He voices this elitist sentiment
when he refers to the commoners as "the
petty bourgeoisie ... " (pp.
1243-1244).
So why is the great mass of human
civilisation unaware of the oligarchs'
presence among them? In The Architecture of
Modern Political Power, Daniel Pouzzner
explains why (p. 16):
The establishment cloaks itself in
cultural camouflage, employing tactics for
which it almost seamlessly maintains
plausible deniability. Subtle, ubiquitous,
often implicit propaganda fosters a broad
public acceptance and embrace of the
authority of the establishment, and of the
establishment's definitions of good and
evil, preventing the public from seriously
contemplating the reality that the
establishment is itself quite often evil by
its own definition. The establishment
reiterates the mantra that the President of
the United States is "the leader of the
free world", but a free world has no
leader. The President of the United States
is simply the most obvious spearhead of the
authority of the establishment. He gathers
strength at the expense of the world's
freedom.
Generally, an errant public attributes
the results of the establishment's
meddlesome actions to happenstance, or to
motives viewed as essentially innocuous or
virtuous. The design is irrefutably evident
only in the pattern of results, or by
actually showing proof of meddling. The
public has been systemically conditioned to
ignore such patterns, and to condemn those
who draw attention to them (derisively
calling them "conspiracy
theorists"). Thus, controlling access
to and dissemination of information that
constitutes proof of meddling suffices in
large part to protect the establishment
program from exposure. The
compartmentalization of the establishment's
covert apparatus assures that those
exposures which do transpire cause only
limited damage.
Bush/Bin Laden Family Links Are there any
ties between the power elites and the
current terrorist network? The answer to
that question lies with the Bush dynasty.
Neither Bush Senior nor Bush Junior can be
described as Presidents in the Lincoln
tradition. They do not come from lower class
backgrounds and modest upbringings. Webster
Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's in-depth
investigation of George Senior led them to
propose the following in their excellent
book, George Bush: The Unauthorized
Biography (p. 9):
One of our basic theses is that George
Bush [Senior] is, and considers himself to
be, an oligarch.
In an article for the London Daily Mail,
Peter Allen points out a connection between
George W. Bush and Osama's brother, Salem
bin Laden (pp. 1-2):
Incredibly, Salem went on to become a
business partner of the man who is leading
the hunt for his brother. In the 1970s, he
and George W. Bush were founders of the
Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr Bush's home
state of Texas.
As he built his own business empire,
Salem bin Laden had an intriguing
relationship with the President-to-be. In
1978, he appointed James Bath, a close
friend of Mr Bush who served with him in the
Air National Guard, as his representative in
Houston, Texas. It was in that year that Mr
Bath invested $50,000 ... in Mr Bush's
company, Arbusto. It was never revealed
whether he was investing his own money or
somebody else's. There was even speculation
that the money might have been from Salem.
In the same year, Mr Bath bought Houston
Gulf Airport on behalf of the Saudi Arabian
multimillionaire.
Three years ago, Mr Bush said the $50,000
investment in Arbusto was the only financial
dealing he had with Mr Bath.
The connection between the bin Ladens and
the Bush family does not end with Arbusto
Energy.
On the BBC's Newsnight program, Greg
Palast stated (p. 5):
Young George also received fees as
director of a subsidiary of Carlyle
Corporation, a little-known private company
which has, in just a few years of its
founding, become one of America's biggest
defence contractors. His father, Bush
Senior, is also a paid adviser. And what
became embarrassing was the revelation that
the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold
just after September 11.
These business connections may explain
why the Bush Administration frustrated the
FBI's efforts to investigate Abdullah and
Omar bin Laden. Investigations may have
demonstrated that Osama was not the
"black sheep" of the family.
Instead, they may have shown that terrorism
was actually the bin Laden family business.
This would have associated the Bush family
with terrorists, something the current
President could not allow to happen.
For neo-conservatives, the portrait of
the Bush family as a criminal syndicate with
ties to questionable characters is
reprehensible. However, this contention can
be based upon a major precedent.
Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's
investigation into former President George
Herbert Walker Bush's background led to a
startling discovery: that "The
President's family fortune was largely a
result of the Hitler project" (p. 28).
The Bush dynasty's connections with the
bin Ladens suggest that the family's
collusion with enemies of the United States
has never ceased.
A State-sponsored Sociopolitical Project
Re-examining Martín-Baró's previous
contention, that terrorism is part and
parcel of a "government-imposed
sociopolitical project", one is faced
with some very disturbing questions.
What will be the results of this
"government-imposed sociopolitical
project"? Where exactly is all of this
state-sponsored terrorism leading?
Quigley provides a fragmentary glimpse of
the outcome in Tragedy and Hope. The Oxford
professor reveals that a cognitive elite,
arbitrarily dubbed "experts",
"will replace the democratic voter in
control of the political system" (p.
866).
With representation for the masses
removed from the picture, what kind of life
can the common man expect to live? Quigley
(p. 886) declares that this will be a system
where the individual's:
... freedom and choice will be controlled
within very narrow alternatives by the fact
that he will be numbered from birth and
followed, as a number, through his
educational training, his required military
or other public service, his tax
contributions, his health and medical
requirements, and his final retirement and
death benefits.
There you have it. George Orwell's 1984,
built al-Qa'ida style!
References: Adler, Freda, Gerhard
Mueller, William Laufer, Criminology, McGraw
Hill, New York, 2001. Allen, Peter,
"Bin Laden's family link to Bush",
2001,
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/fa
... Bamford, James, Body of Secrets: Anatomy
of the Ultra-Secret National Security
Agency, Doubleday, 2001. Blum, Bill
(translater), "Interview with Zbigniew
Brzezinski", January 15-21, 1998, LINK
. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geostrategic Objectives, Basic Books, 1997.
Chomsky, Noam, Deterring Democracy, Hill
& Wang, New York, 1992. Cuddy, Dennis,
Secret Records Revealed: The Men, The Money,
and The Methods Behind the New World Order,
Hearthstone Publishing, Oklahoma, 1999.
DeCamp, John W., The Franklin Cover-Up:
Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in
Nebraska, AWT Inc., Nebraska, 1996. Greider,
William, Secrets of the Temple: How the
Federal Reserves Runs the Country, Simon
& Schuster, New York, 1987.
Juergensmeyer, Mark, "Understanding the
New Terrorism", Current History, April
2000. Ijaz, Mansoor, "Clinton Let Bin
Laden Slip Away and Metastasize",
December 5, 2001, LINK
. Keller, Suzanne, Beyond The Ruling
Class: Strategic Elites In Modern Society,
Random House, New York, 1963. Kick, Russ,
"September 11, 2001: No Surprise",
2002,
http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/September11.htm.
Levine, Michael and Laura Kavanau, The
Triangle of Death, Delacorte Press, New
York, 1996. McGee, Jim, "An
Intelligence Giant in the Making",
November 4, 2001, LINK
. Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite,
Oxford University Press, London/New York,
1956. Moran, Michael, "Bin Laden comes
home to roost",
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1,
2001. Palast, Gregory, "Has someone
been sitting on the FBI?" 2001, LINK
. Pouzzner, Daniel, The Architecture of
Modern Political Power: The New Feudalism,
2001, http://www.mega.nu:8080. Quigley,
Carroll, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the
World in Our Time, MacMillan Company, New
York, 1966. Rivero, Michael, "Fake
Terror: The Road to Dictatorship",
2001,
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/index.html.
Shackley, Theodore, The Third Option: An
Expert's Provocative Report on an American
View of Counterinsurgency Operations, Dell
Publishing, New York, 1981. Stephens, Joe
and David B. Ottaway, "From the USA,
the ABCs of jihad",
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/728439.asp,2002.
Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin,
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,
Executive Intelligence Review, Washington,
DC, 1992. The Times of India, "CIA
worked in tandem with Pak to create
Taliban", March 7, 2001, LINK
... About the Author: Paul D.
Collins has studied suppressed history and
the shadowy undercurrents of world political
dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999,
he completed his Associate of Arts and
Science degree. He will soon complete his
Bachelor's degree, with a major in
Communications and a minor in Political
Science.
Paul's book, The Hidden Face of
Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social
Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11,
is available online from
www.1stbooks.com/bookview/13401,
http://www.barnesandnoble.com, and also
http://www.amazon.com. It can be purchased
as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in
paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X).
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