"We are apt to close our eyes against a painful truth...For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it."
Patrick Henry
From
Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up
A Failure to "Integrate and Understand," or a Thin Tissue of Lies
by Tom Burghardt
January 13, 2010
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16888]
While the President may be "standing by" his national security advisers, the question is, are the denizens of America's secret state standing by him? One well-connected Washington insider, MSNBC pundit Richard Wolffe, isn't so sure.
Wolffe, the author of a flattering portrait of Obama, Renegade: The Making of a President, when asked on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann January 4 what is the White House "focus here right now?" Wolffe's startling reply: "Is this conspiracy or cock up? It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda." (emphasis added)
"I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect" the President said, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged."
The question is why? And more pertinently from a parapolitical perspective, what "alternative agenda" is playing out here that would put the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk?
Conclusion
As of this writing, it is not yet possible to provide a comprehensive answer as to why these events unfolded as they did. I am however, certain of one thing: the Obama administration, the security agencies presumably under its control and the corporate media, johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to covering-up imperialism's multitude of crimes, are lying to the American people.
There are however, several preliminary hypotheses which can be advanced, all of which raise further troubling questions worthy of additional investigation.
Were the Christmas Day events a pretext to expand the "War on Terror" into yet another strategic petroleum chokepoint as analyst F. William Engdahl suggests in an excellent piece published by Global Research?
Nor can we dismiss out of hand the analysis offered by the World Socialist Web Site that the failed Christmas Day airline plot was a maneuver by extreme right-wing elements deeply embedded in the U.S. National Security State "to destabilize and undermine the Obama administration." To this can be added Richard Wolffe's provocative statement that factions within the secret state may have had their own "alternative agenda," and thus failed to act.
Add to the mix, the systematic outsourcing of intelligence and security functions to a host of giant defense firms, outside of democratic control; in other words, rightist grifters who answer to shareholders and not the American people, and suddenly another piece of Wolffe's "alternative agenda" comes into sharp focus.
Chock-a-block with ex-CIA officers, NSA analysts, FBI agents and U.S. Special Forces veterans of America's dirty wars who now staff the privatized U.S. security complex, in other words well-paid mercenaries who know a thing or two on how to run a clandestine operation, and we just might have another plausible theory why a "dot" or two was ignored Christmas Day.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
***
What in the doggone world is going on?
The Central Intelligence Agency KNEW that a suicide bomber (with or without his nail clippers) was going to blow up an airplane, and yet the C.I.A. sat on this intel.
The C.I.A. buried this information.
At least George W. Bush, while on his vacation at Crawford, could tell a messenger that he had covered up his own ass after delivering the message about what was going to take place on September 11th.
The Decider decided to just ignore this warning, and, because he had repeatedly shown us that he was just a happy-go-lucky, bungling cowboy, the world would conclude, “Well, he’s just not that bright, and so it's understandable why America was vulnerable to an attack.”
No.
Wrong.
George W. Bush merely let the attack run its course.
I believe that President Obama would have immediately taken some action during his vacation in Hawaii had a messenger from the C.I.A. or any other agency told him about this terrorist who was going to blow up a plane.
This is scary!
When it looks like one…
Talks like one…
And walks like one…
IT COULD BE A COUP.
Who is “running the country”?
WHO’S REALLY IN CHARGE OF THE Homeland and its NATIONAL SECURITY?
(What has Dr. Kissinger been up to lately?
Does Dick Cheney still plan to run for President?)
THERE IS NO MYSTERY PLANE HERE.
The cat is coming out of the bag, and it is up to the Fourth Estate and the American people to truly take America back, and to stop the hidden agendas of others who value their
money and power
above
Liberty
Truth
&
Justice.
The Pursuit of Happiness will have to take a back seat until we have gotten to the bottom of this
NEST OF VIPERS.
***
DETROIT BOMBER INCIDENT: PLAYING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AGAIN
By: Devvy
January 1, 2010
© 2009 - NewsWithViews.com
Terrorism is serious. No question we're all deeply concerned about terrorists coming across our borders while Congress and the last five presidents have sat on their backsides, making half-baked efforts to seal up the borders, hunt down the illegals and get them out of our country. America has paid a terrible price from the slaughter of our citizens by illegal aliens. All we have seen is Band Aids since Ronald Reagan opened the flood gates and our brave U.S. Border Patrol agents treated as nothing but political pawns.
Much has been written about Northwest Flight 253 originating in Amsterdam. It became immediately obvious to many there was something wrong with the story. William Norman Grigg, one of my favorite columnists, wrote an excellent piece, The Old 'False Flag Trick'[1] In that column, William reminds Americans that the FBI was running a dangerous operation in NYC which resulted in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Oh, yes, they did and six people died. Not a single FBI personnel was ever held accountable for murder:
"The New York Times later reports on Emad Salem, an undercover agent who will be the key government witness in the trial against Yousef. Salem testifies that the FBI knew about the attack beforehand and told him they would thwart it by substituting a harmless powder for the explosives. However, an FBI supervisor called off this plan, and the bombing was not stopped. [New York Times, 10/28/1993]
"Other suspects were ineptly investigated before the bombing as early as 1990. Several of the bombers were trained by the CIA to fight in the Afghan war, and the CIA later concludes, in internal documents, that it was “partly culpable” for this bombing (see January 24, 1994). [Independent, 11/1/1998] 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is an uncle of Yousef and also has a role in the WTC bombing (see March 20, 1993). [Independent, 6/6/2002; Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] One of the attackers even leaves a message which will later be found by investigators, stating, “Next time, it will be very precise.” [Associated Press, 9/30/2001]"
"This factual accounting of Salem and the sting operation came out during trial and cannot be disputed. What shocked me is that for once, the truth actually appeared in the NY Times, which, unfortunately, has become nothing more than a propaganda rag over the years. At the time, millions of Americans should have demanded not only criminal indictments against the FBI personnel involved, but the removal of the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General for allowing this act of terrorism to happen. It didn't happen, either because Americans didn't know or didn't care."[2]
At that time, the Butcher of Waco, Janet Reno, conducted the investigation into her own people. Now, another equally inept political animal, Janet Napolitano, is vowing to "fix it."
One of the things that struck me most odd was the photo ABC News put out regarding the would be bomber's under wear. Here's this guy sitting on what is alleged to be a bomb that would blow his backside to the 72 Virgins in the sky playground. He's hidden the bomb in his under wear with a built in panty pouch, but that pouch where the bomb caught fire, is still quite visible and clean looking.[3] Additionally, as I wrote in a short note for my email alert list:
"But, this latest incident reads eerily similar to an episode of Law & Order where a young man had problems with girls. The character was also in emotional turmoil over seeking God and peace for himself. Ripe for the picking. In that episode, the script is quite similar to the one on Christmas Day. Both young men. Both socially inept. Both seeking God. Both embrace Islam. Both turn to terrorism."
In mid-December 2009, the outlaws in the U.S. House of Representatives voted a 60-day extension on three provisions of the anti-Bill of Rights "Patriot" Act. A new act of terrorism on an incoming flight to an American airport should seal the deal when it comes up for a vote soon.
Grigg points out in his column: "Owing to what must have been an anguished report from his father, Umar Abdulmutallab was known to the CIA and the State Department as a potential terrorist. Umar Abdulmutallab the elder, a banking official from Nigeria, met personally with CIA officials to express concerns that his son – who had gone to Yemen for the supposed purpose of studying Arabic – was falling into the company of suspected terrorists."
Certainly, the question begs to be answered: Why wasn't this guy's name and face plastered all over airport security offices? Why didn't the CIA put out a world wide bulletin to all airports that Abdulmutallab's own father considered him so dangerous, he took the time to meet with CIA officials and warn them? Reminds me of another "failure." John Ashcroft rejecting warnings in the strongest language of a terrorist attack in the summer of 2001- 'Ashcroft Personally Rejected Specific Warnings of Impending Terrorist Attacks During Summer of 2001'. Patrick Briley, one of the most respected researchers in this country on the OKC bombing wrote that piece and it should be read by everyone. [4]
Who is to be held accountable? The government of The Netherlands as well as the airport officials at the Amsterdam airport. But, wait! Supposedly, allegedly, the U.S. somehow "...prevented Dutch authorities from installing full body scanners before the suspected Christmas Day bomb plotter passed through security at Amsterdam's airport, the Dutch government claimed today." [5] How is it that the U.S. government can dictate to another foreign government what they can and cannot install at their own airports?
Grigg reprints an important interview from an eyewitness to Abdulmutallab's boarding on that flight. The one who should be tracked down and questioned is the "well-dressed, official looking fellow from India." He was so obviously Abdulutallab's handler.
Moving the herds in the desired direction
Yesterday on FOX News Network, one of their simple minded hosts, Dave Briggs, blurted out: Get those full body scanners in all airports. If it means getting naked in front of them to make my family safe, then I say do it! Briggs has already given his consent to get down on his knees and fitted with chains of bondage. Not to mention how dangerous those scanners are to your health: Full-Body Scanners to Fry Travelers With Radiation. Why do you think the dentist puts a protective cover over your body when they do x-rays of your mouth?
Those scanners are not going stop these zealots. Making sure every pilot is armed, as was routine only two months prior to 9/11 [6], will send a clear signal: Try it and we will shoot your ass dead and sort out the legal details later. Adopt the same procedures as El Al, the Israeli airline system that has not had an attack on their planes in 30 years. [7]
I submit to you that there is a deeper, darker agenda at work here. It will be some time before any journalist will be able to get ahold of the FBI lab reports on the explosive and amount inside Abdulutallab's underwear via a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). Perhaps never if the feds don't want us to see it; the old "national security" exemption.
I am truly thankful that no one was injured or killed on that flight. But, after 20 years of watching what has gone on in this country and a zillion hours of research, I firmly believe that very disturbed man was a patsy from the get go.
In order to advance the agenda for complete control, it is necessary to continue using fear and the specter of mass terror to get Americans to give up more and more of their freedoms for the illusion of "being kept safe." If you don't know how the game is played, the game will play you.
Jeri Lynn Ball is a gifted writer and determined researcher. Like so many other dedicated Americans who love this country, she has written about the plans and methods being used to create the "new Soviet man." Her books (Masters of Seduction, The Great Communitarian Hoax and others) are out of print and difficult to find. She has never been given the credit so richly deserves for all her hard work over the years. One has to understand how propaganda is being used and the ultimate goal. Jeri explains it so succinctly here:
The Totalitarian Vision of “Human Reconstruction”
"The same year they wrote “The Program,” Communist architects and social engineers began to implement their plans for the globalist, communistic New World Order, commencing with the transformation of all humans into supporters of totalitarianism. Nikolai Bukharin had previously written “that the revolution's principle task was to ‘alter people's actual psychology.’”
"In 1928 Bukharin stated that “one of the first priorities is the question of the systematic preparation of new men, the builders of [totalitarian] socialism.” In his book, Soviet Civilization, Andrei Sinyavsky states that the “idea of the new man is the cornerstone of Soviet civilization.” The “new man” is in fact the indispensable, fundamental basis of all totalitarian societies. Totalitarianism requires the support, approval, and fearful veneration of the masses; if the “new men and women” had not been created, totalitarianism would not exist today.
"The Communists planned to create not only a new way of life, but new human beings. They sought to achieve not only the reconstruction of social and cultural institutions, but reconstruction of human beings. Communist totalitarianism has undergone tremendous growth over the past century only because it has “the support of a man of a new social and psychological type”—the “new communitarian (Communist) man.” A communitarian is a member of a communistic community. A communitarian adopts and advocates communistic concepts, such as a spirit of community, selfless commitment to community service, and the duty to work for “the common good.” The terms “Communist” and “communitarian” are synonyms and are interchangeable, but the word “communitarian” connotes a sense of community and a spirit of collectivism."
Please take the time to read these few pages from Jeri's book, The Clash of Civilizations: The U.S. and Communist Ruling Elites.
Americans must take the time to learn what the communitarian philosophy is so they can understand the agenda. The communist Chinese, the U.S. government and the Soviets are in league together to bring about a horrific, brutal one world government. The communitarian philosophy (communist morality) is taught to vulnerable young Americans in several universities in this country. Please take the time to learn and understand what communitarian means because it is an ideology that is being inculcated into the minds of the American people who are in effect, becoming active players in destroying our republic. See: The Historical Evolution of Communitarian Thinking
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it." Patrick Henry
Don't let "progressives" (socialists and communists) or the blood thirsty, war mongering neo-cons keep you from learning the truth. Marxist Obama/Soetoro has simply picked up where Bush left off. [8] Research takes time, but it's the only way to learn the methods being used to destroy us and defeat them. This weekend, no college or NFL football game, trip to the mall or movie theater is more important than becoming educated on how Americans are being manipulated and unifying against these masters of evil. Open your eyes, America. The painful truth is right there to see.
What has been the reaction of the American people over the Northwest Flight 253 incident? The polls are showing between 72-76% of Americans are ready to line up, allow themselves to be stripped naked in front of a scanner and exposed to ionizing radiation. Operation Abdulmutallab can be considered a success - unless millions refuse to fly. Congress and the airlines will get the message loud and clear.
December 30, 2009 Not Just Paranoia
Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
By RAY McGOVERN
In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors — the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”
Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.
Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors. With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”
That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”
Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”
Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.
Not Just Paranoia
In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly. Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy. Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.”
What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.
Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help. But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.
In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.
The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?
Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”
The Truman Papers
Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it. With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.
Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower. When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.
Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces. In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”
Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”
“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States…
“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.
“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.
The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction. Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.
In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned: “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.
Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”
Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”
Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day. For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.
That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate. Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate? Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.
Fox Guarding Henhouse?
In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.
No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”
No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.
A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”
Dulles and Dallas
Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction. My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.
Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud. The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.
As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.
Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.
SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern12302009.html
Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
***
P.S.
It was Wolfowitz and his boss, DoD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had proposed an immediate attack on Iraq at an emergency National Security Council meeting on the day after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
