Wednesday, April 18, 2007

THE LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN

INSTANT POWDERED TERROR - PART I
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
Posted April 18 2007


After the day of 9/11 with its climate of nationwide crisis, confused reports of a dozen hijackings, thwarted attacks elsewhere, the scope and scale of the threat unclear, came a sequence of vulnerable days. The US was still reeling as the death toll solidified, and waiting for a possible second phase of attacks, with experts warning it could be perhaps even deadlier, involving chemical, radiological, or biological weapons But in the weeks after September 11th, nothing that wicked our way came. Things kept making more and more sense, the stock market re-opened, and the fear subsided to a manageable level. As the leaves turned to rusty hues, Americans had just enough time to feel that all was under control if on high alert, the expected retaliation was imminent over Afghanistan, and we had that special post-9/11 familial unity to fill in the gaps and bind the wounds that were just beginning to heal.

Yet it was only days after the devastating attacks that someone somewhere decided it was time to raise the fear level again, and set a chain reaction in motion by dropping deadly samples of weaponized Ames-strain anthrax into several envelopes and sending them through the mail to targets all along the East Coast. The first letter was post-marked September 18, the last, September 25, all headed “9-11-01,” an obvious reference to the days-old attack.

On October 2nd the first victim of the ‘thrax, a photo editor for American Media Inc. named Robert Stevens, was hospitalized in Boca Raton, Florida, his symptoms unknown. (American Media, Inc. is the nation’s leading tabloid publisher, responsible for the National Enquirer, the National Examiner, the Sun, the Star, and Stevens’ paper the Globe.) His diagnosis of inhalation anthrax was made public the following day, and he died on the fifth. As the Florida-shaped “Terrorland” map grew another dot of oddity, the nation at large gasped – no one had died in the U.S. from anthrax in over twenty years.

The cause was uncertain, and the CDC seemed baffled, but less than a month after Al Qaeda’s masterpiece, it didn’t look good. There was speculation as to whether al Qaeda was involved, and investigators checked “materials left behind” by the 9/11 hijackers for traces of Anthrax. (We’ll retirn to hijacker/Anthrax crossover evidence in another post and after some more research). While no such direct link was reported, it was noted by CNN that “Stevens lived about a mile from an air strip where Mohamed Atta […] rented planes,” with the vague implication that he was perhaps exposed to anthrax through his glancing proximity to the plot’s ringleader and lead pilot. [1] Perhaps his living near Atta’s airfield was a factor in his demise and not simply a bizarre coincidence. There are certainly some things that “inquiring minds want to know” that the either the hijackers or the powers behind Shadow 9/11 don’t want them to know. As much of a stretch as that is, If the 9/11 hijackers had been messing with anthrax too, people reasoned, that was scary. It was later proven that Stevens was instead exposed in his workplace, through a piece of mail that would soon be just a point in the emerging pattern of attacks.

From Boca Raton, the chaos rapidly spread to the more reputable media, with anthrax turning up in the offices of CBS News, where an assistant to Dan Rather was exposed. Spores turned up at ABC News, where an employee’s baby was infected, but treated early. Anthrax was sent to NBC News, where an intern for Tom Brokaw was infected. Brokaw was composed but visibly quite pissed on the news that night. The press was targeted also; spores turned up at the Washington Post and the New York Post.

In all several dozen were infected or exposed, and five people in the general public died; Stevens in Florida, a New York hospital worker, an elderly woman in Connecticut, and two Washington-area letter carriers. As October wore on, with these deaths along with dozens of infections reported one by one, Cipro became a household word, anthrax a nation-wide concern – every white powder or any unknown substance at all was suddenly reason for a 911 call. Susan Watts, science editor for the BBC program Newsnight, summed it up that the anthrax attack “was second only to that on the Twin Towers in the degree of shock and anxiety it caused...Some even say the anthrax letters triggered sub-clinical hysteria in the American people.” [2]

The attack also hit home in Congress. On October 15, Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat recently named Senate Majority Leader, received a crudely written letter packed with white powder that tested positive for anthrax. One of his staffers was exposed, but not infected. Daschle’s letter had announced an anthrax attack on the Senate, the only part of the government no longer under Republican control. Parts of eight floors of the Hart Senate office building were evacuated for cleanup. A government source told CNN the anthrax in Daschle’s letter was "high grade, very virulent and sophisticated." [3] These sophisticated terrorists then wrote, apparently in Cray-on, “9-11-01. YOU CANNOT STOP US. WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. ARE YOU AFRAID?” The crudely-written, caps-locked letter closed with the lines “DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT.” “Clearly, they were trying to kill somebody,” Daschle told CNN of the unknown sender(s). “What this says to me is that there is an orchestrated effort under way, and that it may hit again. So we need to be ready for it.” [4] Mail in the Senate mail room was sequestered in barrels for inspection, which eventually turned up a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, another Democratic powerbroker, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in charge of approving the President’s judicial nominees. The anthrax in it, the handwriting (TAKE PENACILIN NOW), the closing, and the return address (Greendale School 4th Grade) were identical to the Daschle letter.

The letter to Leahy (D-VT)
The House of Representatives closed its doors on October 17th for a precautionary environmental inspection. Two days later, the Senate closed its doors also. Everyone was evacuated out of their familiar surroundings, as Representative “Butch” Otter (R-Idaho) described it, and the House completely suspended proceedings for this time. It was an unexpected and unsettling, half-week vacation that gave them perhaps a unique perspective on the next task on their agenda.

The Congress came back in when the House and Senate buildings were deemed safe and re-opened on October 22nd. The USA PATRIOT Act was first proposed by Rep James Sensenbrenner the following day. Under fear of germ death, the Congress quickly and overwhelmingly approved the sweeping grant of power to the Justice Department the same day. Objections were lodged, but overruled and passed by yhe House of the 24th, the Senate on the 25th, and was signed into law by President Bush on the 26th. The New York Times reported that “members rose to say that almost no one had read the new bill, and pleaded for more time and more deliberation.... the chairman of the Rules Committee, Representative David Dreier (R – CA) replied jokingly that voting out of ignorance was “not unprecedented.” [5] The vote stood, just a month and a half after 9/11.

It’s clear, then, who benefited from the anthrax attack on the congressional end, but the obvious conclusion was simply too dark to look at. So speculation began, its breathless intensity compensating for its lack of logic.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

FAA: FEDERAL ATTACK ASSISTANCE? {masterlist}

This post is to organize those sub-posts, both up and coming, detailing aspects of the role of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the 9/11 attack carried out in their system.
(last Updated 3/22/07)

Active ATS threads on the FAA/phantom Flight 11/etc., from which I started this research:
"Evidence of a Cover-Up"
"Coverup of FAA role in gutting Pentagon Defense"

- FAA 1:The cover-up on page 34: the 9/11 Commission draws attention quietly to "incorrect" NORAD testimony on their links with FAA and the defense.

- FAA 2: The Phantom Flight 11: A quick look at the "mistaken FAA information" that AA 11 was headed to the capital, eclipsing all real threats.

- FAA 3: Mistaken FAA Info; Some or The? A fascinating look at the plane given a second chance, a half-hour after it ended, to distract defenders further south. I may have found the "smoking gun" memo (with a smoking gun in it) that put flight 11 back on the map.

- FAA 4: Authority: Unlimited but unsure: Ben Sliney's odd initiation
See also: First Day Jitters): FAA operations manager and NMCC director, besides JCS chairman, all first-day rookies on 9/11. Coincidence?

- FAA 5: Deserted Towers - coming eventually ...

- FAA 6: The Gutted defense of Washington (coming soon): The effect of this phantom flight and its part in the general failure of defense over the capital - see Failed Air Defense {masterlist} for existing analysis

- FAA 7: Human Error? (coming soon - clue: it's an inadequate excuse)

Additional, circumstantial evidence of odd FAA policy proposals in the months before 9/11 - shutting off radar and disarming pilots - two posts coming soon...

Sunday, April 1, 2007

DISARMING PILOTS

Safety or Disempowerment of the Cockpit?
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns
April 9 2007


When looking at the failure of the world’s mightiest Air Force to shoot down four hijacked airliners during an attack that lasted nearly two hours, it is important to remember that the far better option would have been to prevent the hijackings in the first place. The situation didn’t have to get to the point where orders to shoot down a planeload of innocents was necessary. Of course, stopping the men at the airport or before, preventing them even boarding, was the best sort of outcome with no possibility of a 9/11 size disaster. But even if these lines of defense failed (as was, of course, the case), there was still a possible last line of defense short of an air-to-air missile - the passengers, crews, and pilots aboard the planes themselves. If the numerous warnings of suicide hijackings the government had received in the months before the attack had been passed on to the airlines or the public, they may have known what was at stake and fought back, as the passengers on Flight 93 are believed to have successfully done once they learned the stakes.

It was soon noted that against terrorists armed only with box cutters, and alerted to the possibility of suicide hijackings, an armed pilot who knew the stakes may have been able, with the speed of a single bullet, to prevent his plane being turned into a missile. After September 11th, many voices went up asking that pilots be armed to meet future threats. Captain Stephen Luckey, Chairman of the National Flight Security Committee of the Airline Pilots Association, addressed this issue in testimony before a House Subcommittee on May 2nd, 2002. Luckey maintained that this drive to arm pilots was actually a question of re-arming them, as airline pilots indeed had been, quietly, allowed to carry guns onboard until… right before 9/11.

Luckey put it in context; “in 1961, the FAA amended federal aviation regulations, with Congressional support, to permit pilots to be armed with the consent of their airline – the agency removed that regulatory language in July 2001.” [1] That was quick – now for an instant replay: “the agency removed that regulatory language in July, 2001.” In 1961, in response to the Cuban missile Crisis and a spate of Cuban hijackings, the FAA enacted a rule that allowed pilots to carry guns on commercial flights with the purpose of stopping hijackings early. For forty years the rule stood, but in July 2001, the FAA rescinded it.

According to the conservative WorldNet Daily, the gun ban was set to take effect on an unspecified date in September. [2] In another article, WorldNet also reported that this decision was made despite a specific warning to FAA and other government officials from the ubiquitous Richard Clarke. On July 5, the nation’s top counter-terrorism agent reportedly told FAA representatives and others at a meeting in the White House that “something really spectacular is going to happen here and it’s going to happen soon.” [3]

An FAA spokesman downplayed the impact of the gun ban, saying “in the past, FAA regulations permitted pilots to carry firearms in the cockpit” but that “that was never put into effect because no requests… were ever made.” [4] Apparently, in forty years, there was not one request from an airline pilot to be armed. There must have been no successful drives to increase awareness of the policy. Were the pilots ever even aware of the policy? This rule stood, allegedly unused, for decades; if it was never used, why bother rescinding it after it had sat for so long? What was suddenly so different that mandated the change? The only thing I see different is the hijacking threat – if ever there was a time pilots would start asking for permission to carry guns, the summer and fall of 2001 would have, should have, been it.

It’s not likely that any of the pilots involved had been disarmed by this decision, and so it likely had no effect on the attack. But once again, the timing of this decision is strange, perhaps indicating a better safe than sorry mentality, a fear that some pilots might try to use that old rule in light of the threat and thus spoil a perfectly useful attack. The reasoning has been explained as eliminating redundancy, but on the question of timing, FAA officials referred WorldNet to the Department of Transportation, who refused to return calls. [5] If no pilots had ever asked for guns, or, as I argue in other posts, there were to be no hijackers to shoot, then the FAA’s decision served no tactical purpose, and yet its timing still seems at the far edge of coincidence territory to say the least.

Back to Federal Attack Assistance Masterlist
Sources:
[1] Luckey, Stephen. “Arming Flight Crews Against Terrorist Acts. Statement before Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C. May 2, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.house.gov/transportation/aviation/05-02-02/luckey.html
[2], [5] Dougherty, John. “Homeland Insecurity: FAA began disarming pilots in ’87.” Worldnet Daily. May 29, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27765
[3]Vulliami, Ed. “A Bad Call?” The Guardian. May 19, 2002. Accessed November 18, 2004 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,718267,00.html
[4] Dougherty, John. “Armed-pilot rule nixed after hijack briefing.” Worldnet Daily. May 18, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27672

SCENARIO 12-D: ANOTHER X-FILE

WARNING: PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!

Remote controlled airliners as weapons of an inside job seemed plausible enough to the writers of a TV program aired, strangely, just six months before September 11. Stranger still, it was aired on Rupert Murdoch’s FOX network, widely suspected of being an appendage of the Republican Party. On March 4, the pilot episode of the short-lived X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen aired. It had been filmed a year prior, and was apparently late getting on-screen just weeks after Bush’s inauguration.

John Byers, one of the Lone Gunnmen (a geeky crew of three conspiracy nuts who foil all kinds of top-secret crimes) found out his father, a CIA agent, was killed when his car ran off the road. After the funeral, a senior Air Force officer named Ray Helm told Byers that his father was murdered, “which is exactly the way these people manage things. People your father and I worked for […] He was a good man. He had a conscience. Sometimes that's a problem in our line of work.

Byers found that his father’s car was crashed by remote control because he knew about something he wasn’t supposed to. He suspected it had something to do with a trace on his dad’s wiped computer of a DoD file labeled “Scenario 12-D.” Helm gave Byers the password for the Pentagon’s computer network – “Overlord.” The Gunmen hacked in and located 12-D on “some government think-tank's upload directory,” but the download failed.

Byers then returned to his father’s house, suspecting the old man was actually alive. Indeed, Bert was alive, and he was there at his house. Reunited, Byers immediately asked about the mystery scenario:

Byers: “We know it’s a war game scenario – it has to do with airline counter-terrorism. But why was it important enough to kill for?”
Byers Snr: “Because it’s no longer a game.”
Byers: “If some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario, why target you for assassination?”
Byers Snr: “Depends on who your terrorists are.”
Byers: “…The men who conceived of it in the first place. You’re saying our government plans to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airliner?”
Byers Snr: “There you go, blaming the entire government as usual. It’s a faction, a small faction.”
Byers: “For what possible gain?”
Byers Snr: “The Cold War’s over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market’s flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City, and you’ll find a dozen tin pot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart bombed.”


“Bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City” – hmmm… It was a 727 that Raytheon would soon prove that JPALS remote control worked on. Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if Rumsfeld, “General Star Wars,” watches FOX and digs the X-Files. I can visualize the old goat muttering something to himself when he saw this, crossing-out “12-D” and replacing it with “12-E… 757, 767,777? Go massive. Hit self as well.”

Left: Bert Byers gaze from the cockpit as his doomed airliner speeds toward the WTC. Right: The Pilot's view. (stills from the Lone Gunmen)

Anyway, father and son then boarded the plane slated for destruction that very night, hoping to foil the plot. When Byers found no bomb on board, he asked his dad “How are they going to bring it down?” Bert replied “the same way a dead man can drive a car.” Byers’ cohorts on the ground tracked the flight path with their computers and informed him the plane was under “remote access, someone on the ground’s flying your plane.” They warned him “you’ll be making an unexpected stop” in 22 minutes, at the “Corner of Liberty and Washington, lower Manhattan.” Byers was stunned, whispering to his dad “they’re going to crash the plane into the World Trade Center.”

The pilots couldn’t gain control of the plane, having been locked-out by the remote control system, just as Home Run is supposed to do, just as JPALS, at least in the (dubious) Der Spiegel version, is supposed to do. The captain informed the passengers of technical difficulties and asked them to return to their seats, with Bert muttering “and kiss your asses goodbye.”

Of course the gunmen finally broke the code, using their trusty computers and anagram skills as always, and foiled the plot. The pilots were finally given the ability to manually override the doomed flight plan just in time for the plane to veer sharply upward, zipping past the windows of the WTC and barely clearing the top. It seemed silly at the time, but many would prefer this to the similar but more depressing script that unfolded six months later in the real world…

This is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in my research, deserving of an X-File of its own. I still cannot believe the timing of this was an accident, but I also have no great insights into what sort of conscious design would have had this released in the months before Shadow 9-11 may have brought it to life on a larger scale. Was this a warning from a disgruntled insider, an experiment in pre-conditioning, or just a very bizarre coincidence?

This prediction was written, remember, at least a year before it was aired, so probably in early 2000. The episode’s writers were Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban (who work together so often, in fact, that they often compress their names into the singular “John Gilnitz,” as I will in referring to them collectively. Spotnitz later told reporters in mid-2002, when people finally noticed the parallel and asked him about it:

“I woke up on Sept. 11th and saw it on TV, and the first thing I thought of was The Lone Gunmen. But then in the weeks and months that followed, almost no one noticed the connection [or wanted to – ed]. What's disturbing about it to me is, you think as a fiction writer that if you can imagine this scenario, then the people in power in the government who are there to imagine disaster scenarios can imagine it, too.”

And the people who propose special distribution documents can imagine it as well. The fact that it took months for anyone to notice the parallel, as TV Guide reported in June 2002, “seems to be collective amnesia of the highest order.”

Actor Dean Haglund, who played Gunman Richard “Ringo” Langley on the show, was freaked out by the comparison too. He didn’t indicate any knowledge of how the script was arrived at, but had doubts about the script played out on 9-11. With the advantage of three years hindsight, Haglund told the amazing and annoying Alex Jones in a 2004 interview “I think it was staged, and uh… it’s America’s Reichstag Fire.” [3]

But no matter the views of those involved, this evidence of the conceivability of a plane being used as a remote-controlled weapon of empire was shown on the fringe venue of prime time network television, and a virtual outline of Shadow 9-11 was somehow branded an X-Files conspiracy theory six months before the attack that cast that shadow even came to be. All thanks to John Gilnitz and the folks at FOX.

The episode’s closing dialog is also, I believe, relevant here. If this was indeed a warning from an insider, they wanted us to know that now we’re on our own:

“Byers: “If we can't get the FBI we'll go public. With your testimony, we can break this conspiracy wide open. Bring Overlord down. The whole operation.
Byers Snr: God, I see myself in you. The same youthful enthusiasm, idealism. I was so angry at you for so long because I didn't want you to waste your life tilting at windmills. But I can see now, you've got something I never had. You're a brave man, John.
Byers: You're not going to testify. You're going to let them cover this up.
Byers Snr: They almost killed me twice. They won't fail a third time. My silence will keep me alive. (he puts his hand on BYERS' shoulder) And you. I know you and your friends are fighting for the American dream. (Pause) Just don't expect to win. (the elder Byers walks away in silence).


Sources:
The Lone Gunmen, pilot episode. Aired on FOX TV March 4 2001. Info available at: http://www.prisonplanet.com/The_Lone_Gunmen_Realm_Pilot_Episode.htm
“Gunmen Foreshadowed 9/11.” SciFi Wire. June 21, 2002.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-tv.html?2002-06/21/10.00.tv
Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. Page 31.
Alex Jones interviews Dean Haglund. Prison Planet. January 2005. Video viewable at: http://www.prisonplanet.tv/articles/january2005/120105haglund.htm