One of the most interesting blogs is Rigorous Intuition.
The author there looks for ambivalencies and weirdness that is found in the news, the internet and other sources (books, articles, etc.). His knack is to put things that seemingly are not connected together.His masterpiece is undoubtly this:
The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11
I will pay homage to the great man himself and copy a few choice tidbits from this guide. If they pickle your curiosity, by all means click the link above! In fact, fuck it, I will post the whole entry here (and copy it to my harddrive, juuuuuuust in case).
The post is organized as if it begins with the following phrase: It is certainly a coincidence...
That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.
That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and
narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but
the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!
That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank
has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a
US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still
no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.
That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security
to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means
nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for
themselves.
That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the
investment of Osama’s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier
Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.
That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.
That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.
The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas
to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United
States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making
such wild accusations.
That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001,
was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were
positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps,
even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves
that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy
task.
That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.
That the company PTECH,
founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List
in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two
years before the 9/11 attack, means he must not have been such a threat
after all.
That whistleblower Indira Singh
was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she
took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities,
suggests she lacked the big picture. And that the Chief Auditor for JP
Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who
supplied her with what information, that "that person should be
killed," suggests he should take an anger management seminar.
That on May 8, 2001,
Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to
domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s
energy policy which bore implications
for America's military, circumventing the established infrastructure
and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely
shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.
That the standing order which covered the shooting down
of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion
away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the
Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing.
Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded
shortly after 9/11.
That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI, proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.
That Dave Frasca
of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after
quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda
assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on
the surface odd, but undoubtedly there's a good reason for it, quite
possibly classified.
That FBI informant Randy Glass,
working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence
operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and
that his repeated warnings
which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention
of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities, is
simply one of the many "What Ifs" of that tragic day.
That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings
from foreign intelligence agencies and governments - including those of
Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco,
Afghanistan and others - of impending terror attacks using hijacked
aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new
Intelligence Czar.
That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft
in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do
with warnings regarding September 11, because he said so to the 9/11
Commission.
That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers
says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d
learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even
naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and
that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened,
proves nothing but David Schipper’s pathetic need for attention.
That Garth Nicolson
received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and
one from a North African head of state, which included specific site,
date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the
Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no
effect, clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever
heard of him.
That in the months prior to September 11, self-described US intelligence operative Delmart Vreeland
sought, from a Toronto jail cell, to get US and Canadian authorities to
heed his warning of his accidental discovery of impending catastrophic
attacks is worthless, since Vreeland was a dubious character, notwithstanding the fact that many of his claims have since been proven true.
That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright
claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect
terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down
his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a
money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism, sounds like
yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.
That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.
The suggestion that securing a pipeline
across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as
ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in
Iraq.
That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.
Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta
days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington
officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about
him in the official report.
That Porter Goss met with Ahmed
the morning of September 11 in his capacity as Chairman of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has no bearing whatsoever
upon his recent selection by the White House to head the Central
Intelligence Agency.
That Goss's congressional seat encompasses the 9/11 hijackers' Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid a conspiracy theorist would bring up.
It's true that George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of
September 10 alone in the Oval Office, but what's wrong with old
colleagues catching up? And it's true that George HW Bush and Shafig
bin Laden, Osama's brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family.
That FEMA arrived
in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and
had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped
than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, was a lucky twist
of fate.
Newsweek’s report
that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the
following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy
because of what happened the following morning.
That George Bush's telephone logs for September 11 do not exist should surprise no one, given the confusion of the day.
That Mohamed Atta attended
the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that
Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical
School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in
Monterey merely shows it is a small world, after all.
That Lt Col Steve Butler, Vice Chancellor for student affairs of the Defense Language Institute during Alghamdi's terms, was disciplined,
removed from his post and threatened with court martial when he wrote
"Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn
the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What
is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the
American people what he knows for political gain," is the least that
should have happened for such disrespect shown his Commander in Chief.
That Mohammed Atta
dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was
already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops,
drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in
Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email
list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.
That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard,
the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled
– the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just bad luck. That Hilliard was not charged shows how specious the claims for conspiracy truly are.
That Hilliard’s plane
had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who
always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug
smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.
Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so the windfall profit-taking was merely, as ever, coincidental.
That heightened security for the World Trade Centre was lifted immediately prior to the attacks illustrates that it always happens when you least expect it.
That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent
he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a
767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level
impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was
virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack,
merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set
their minds to it.
That none
of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable even though
they were located in the tail sections, and that until 9/11, no
solid-state recorder in a catastrophic crash had been unrecoverable,
shows how there's a first time for everything.
That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, a Koran, his driver's license and a "how to fly planes" video in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.
The mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, of an Israeli espionage ring surveiling DEA and defense installations and trailing
the hijackers, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the
Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, does not
deserve a response. That the stories also appeared in publications such
as Ha'aretz and Forward is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Israeli media.
That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings
– and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and
confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and
which was a hoax, was a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.
That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a rookie substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.
That a recording
made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ describing what they had
witnessed, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand,
cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash
cans around the building, is something no doubt that overzealous
official wishes he could undo.
That the FBI knew precisely which
Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should
make every American feel safer knowing their federal agents are on the
ball.
That a former flight school executive
believes the hijackers were "double agents," and says about Atta and
associates, "Early on I gleaned that these guys had government
protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose,"
and was visited by the FBI just four hours after the attacks to
intimidate him into silence, proves he's an unreliable witness, for the
simple reason there is no conspiracy.
That Jeb Bush was on board
an aircraft that removed flight school records to Washington in the
middle of the night on Sept 12th demonstrates how seriously the
governor takes the issue of national security.
To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.
Le Figaro’s report
in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence,
that the CIA met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001,
proves again the perfidy of the French.
That the tape
in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released
by the State Department after having been found providentially by US
forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face
and a flatter nose, proves Osama, and Osama alone, masterminded 9/11.
That at the battle of Tora Bora, where bin Laden was surrounded on three sides, Special Forces received no order to advance and capture him and were forced to stand and watch as two Russian-made helicopters
flew into the area where bin Laden was believed hiding, loaded up
passengers and returned to Pakistan, demonstrates how confusing the
modern battlefield can be.
That upon returning to Fort Bragg from Tora Bora, the same Special
Operations troops who had been stood down from capturing bin Laden,
suffered a unusual spree of murder/suicides, is nothing more than a series of senseless tragedies.
Reports that bin Laden is currently receiving periodic dialysis treatment in a Pakistani medical hospital are simply too incredible to be true.
That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.
That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.
That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act shows only that appearances can be deceiving.
That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick,
and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine,
underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue
without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.
That Republican guru Grover Norquist has been found to have aided financiers
and supporters of Islamic terror to gain access to the Bush White
House, and is a founder of the Islamic Institute, which the Treasury
Department believes to be a source of funding for al Qaeda, suggests
Norquist is at worst, naive, and at best, needs a wider circle of
friends.
That the Department of Justice consistently chooses to see accused 9/11 plotters go free rather than permit the courtroom testimony of al Qaeda leaders in American custody looks bad, but only because we don't have all the facts.
That the White House balked at any inquiry into the events of 9/11, then starved it of funds and stonewalled it, was unfortunate, but since the commission didn't find for conspiracy it's all a non issue anyway.
That the 9/11 commission's executive director and "gatekeeper,"
Philip Zelikow, was so closely involved in the events under
investigation that he testified before the the commission as part of the inquiry, shows only an apparent conflict of interest.
That commission chair Thomas Kean is, like George Bush, a Texas oil executive who had business dealings with reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mafouz, suggests Texas is smaller than they say it is.
That co-chair Lee Hamilton has a history as a Bush family "fixer,"
including clearing Bush Sr of the claims arising from the 1980 "October Surprise", is of no concern, since only conspiracists believe there was such a thing as an October Surprise.
That FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department, and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official infrastructure of money-laundering and narcotics trade
behind the attacks, is of no account, since John Ashcroft has gagged
her with the rare invocation of "State Secrets Privilege," and
retroactively classified her public testimony. For the sake of national
security, let us speak no more of her.
That, when commenting on Edmond's case, Daniel Ellsberg
remarked that Ashcroft could go to prison for his part in a cover-up,
suggests Ellsberg is giving comfort to the terrorists, and could, if he
doesn't wise up, find himself declared an enemy combatant.
I could go on. And on and on. But I trust you get the point.
Which is simply this: there are no secrets, an American government
would never accept civilian casualties for geostrategic gain, and
conspiracies are for the weak-minded and gullible.
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