Get over the phoney war on terror and wake up...
(and bring our soldiers home now!)
from fromthewilderness.com
NOT ONE NIGHT'S SLEEP
9/11 Second-Anniversary Events in Germany and New York City Reveal Growing Strength, Credibility of Movement
Many Government Critics Take Center Stage
Is McKinney Running Again?
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
Sept 17 , 2003 1400 PDT (FTW), BERLIN, NEW YORK CITY-- Events marking the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks held in Berlin, Germany and Manhattan featuring former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, this writer, and more than a dozen experts highlighted an estimated fifty conferences, screenings and protests around the US and the world, revealing growing popular support for the position that the US government was complicit in those attacks. In a few short words I will try to describe some of the biggest recent developments in a climate that has changed dramatically since disclosure that the US and British governments falsified and misrepresented intelligence to justify a now-failing occupation of Iraq. Those frauds, constituting impeachable offenses offered as a justification for war, have solidly returned 9/11 to the table for debate. Unresolved questions about the attacks are now also drawing attention from the major media and they will most certainly become an issue in the 2004 presidential race. As this opportunity presented itself, a great many courageous people---active for two, long years---were there to seize the moment and they did so powerfully, with an effectiveness made possible by two years of sometimes bitter experience and struggle.
It is difficult to sit and write a comprehensive story in the few hours I have since my return from New York before I board another plane for Seattle and the production of a new CD covering the extraordinary developments of the last year. But I have acquired a new and important perspective since leaving for Berlin on September 3.
If I leave out a few names or neglect to give credit where credit is due, it is not for any other reason than the fact that there are so many who deserve credit, in so many places, that neither my pen nor my tape recorder can capture them all. Yet it is critical to note that many of these events, especially the ones in Berlin, happened only as a result of the opened pockets of private individuals and the tireless labor of unpaid volunteers. One German, Mr. Ronald Thoden, was responsible for the airfare that brought McKinney, American journalist Daniel Hopsicker, British author Nafeez Ahmed and me to that historic city. He paid for our hotel rooms, the rental of the halls and equipment, and the forum that made Germany and the world listen. He stands as a shining representative of all the people who have, in virtual anonymity, voted with their money to keep freedom and dissent alive. In New York, the sponsorship of radio station WBAI was augmented by organization from Unanswered Questions and 911 Citizen'sWatch along with the efforts of dozens of volunteers to effectively demonstrate that a sizeable segment of the American population are, in spite of media claims to the contrary, willing to aggressively fight to make 9/11 an issue for as long as is necessary to prove and address the crime. For it is September 11, 2001 that has been the singular defining moment of the 21st century.
BERLIN
9/11 has a special significance in Germany for many reasons. Mohammed Atta and members of his cell were recruited and operated for some time in Hamburg. Dan Hopsicker (http://www.madcowprod.com/) has done a masterful job of investigating and deconstructing the official legend of Mohammed Atta and the members of his cell. They banked at German banking giant Deustchebank.
Immediately after 9/11, Ernst Welteke the President of Germany's state bank, the Bundesbank, confirmed that massive insider trading across the world's financial markets had occurred right before 9/11, in stocks that were devastated by the attacks. Then German cabinet minister Andreas von Bulow declared shortly thereafter that the global value of insider trading had possibly exceeded $100 billion and that the US government had deliberately allowed the attacks to happen as a pretext for conquest of the oil-rich territories of the Caspian basin and the Middle East. Von Bulow was qualified to speak on this issue. His portfolio had included supervision of the German intelligence service -- the BND -- which had issued a number of strong and very clear warnings to the CIA that hijacked airliners were going to be crashed into the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th.
Also in Germany, and visible from my hotel, was the German Reichstag, the 1933 burning of which had given Adolf Hitler grounds to seize unprecedented power. Not for one second did any German or foreign participant in these 9/11 events forget that this symbolism was close at hand.
On September 5 th , Cynthia McKinney and I held a press conference in downtown Berlin that was attended by some of the largest media outlets in Germany including German national television, Reuters, major Berlin newspapers and radio stations. We were treated with respect and the questions posed were intelligent and showed that the reporters had done their homework. Though we did not see much air time or ink as a result, it was clear that posing questions about 9/11 was no longer in the same category as discussions of a flat earth or Elvis sightings. We were being taken seriously.
That night we spoke together at the Neurotitan gallery, a dark and unfinished place located behind a "radical alternative bookstore where floors of bare cement, littered with the debris of artwork intersected with unfinished plaster walls, glazed windows, dim lights, dark corners and the faint smell of revolutionary thought and passion." Many in the cramped audience of about 100 were pierced, tattooed and leathered while others were dressed in the upscale casual attire of middle class professionals. There, after opening remarks from McKinney remembering darker days of American history in which much greater figures like Martin Luther King struggled to bring a cause to life, I presented a 90 minute updated version of my lecture, The Truth and Lies of 9/11. As with all of my previous lectures, more than 30 in six countries, the reception was very enthusiastic and little different from the responses I had previously received in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the US, or in Paris where I discussed FTW's research with politicians and energy experts last May.
On the 6th, I collaborated with Nicholas Levis of Berlin and New York, the emcee and wrangler for our Berlin events, Dan Hopsicker, German author Mathias Bröcker and three German researchers. Together we prepared a list of witnesses and documents that needed to be thoroughly examined to resolve the glaring inconsistencies in the Bush administration's story. On September 11th -- as I was preparing to speak in New York -- the German 911 Truth Alliance and The German 9/11 Research Network (www.911truth.org) presented formal letters to the government asking for responses. This made news throughout the country and the letter's contents were published in detail.
Throughout our collaborations that day, and in the public events that followed in both Germany and New York, all the experts gave praise to professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa for his many contributions to our collective knowledge. Of particular significance was his detailed work on direct links between the Pakistani intelligence service, Mohammed Atta and key figures in the US like DCI George Tenet, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the heads of both US congressional intelligence committees.
September 6th also brought an early Christmas present. Britain's The Guardian published an op-ed by former British Minister for the Environment Michael Meacher. Meacher had resigned months ago over the Blair government's fraudulent "sexed up" intelligence, and its obsequious backing of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Powell. Titled "The War on Terrorism is Bogus", Meacher's full-page missive stated that the US government had facilitated the 9/11 attacks, refused to respond to detailed, credible warnings, and went further by adding that the motive was to control diminishing world oil supplies. Had Mr. Meacher asked me to write an article for him I could not have written it better or said more. As McKinney and I read the essay, we realized that we had indeed come a long way.
On September 7th, a capacity crowd of approximately 700 people showed up for the main event at Berlin's Tempodrome amphitheater. Nafeez Ahmed, author of the book "The War on Freedom" flew in from London, and Italian prosecuting magistrate Guido Salvini, who had previously proven US intelligence connections to alleged terror attacks in Italy, joined us. Experts from four countries had come together over 9/11 and a second press conference was filled with reporters from all over Germany and included the German Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal.
Presentations in smaller conference rooms were filled to capacity. Panels in the main hall, where I again delivered a 90-minute slide presentation on 9/11, were also jammed and interest remained intense throughout the nine-hour event. In her keynote address, Cynthia McKinney again harkened back to the turbulent days of the 1960s as civil rights and the Vietnam War roused an activist spirit throughout America and the world. She told the German audience that it was of vital importance for everyone to ask questions and to not be satisfied with pat answers. Most importantly, she said, it was imperative that diverse groups come together to form alliances from all over the world because this was truly what made change possible.
New York would make her very happy indeed.
NEW YORK
I arrived in New York late in the afternoon of September 10th. There was time to eat, sleep a little at the home of volunteer Michael Kane and his family, and then prepare for the big day. The first stop was the Walker Stage near Ground Zero where McKinney and I taped an interview moderated by Kyle Hence of Unanswered Questions. Neither she nor I minced any words. McKinney's focus was what had happened to the country in terms of civil rights and the climate that had come to dominate American politics since the 2000 presidential election. She expressed strong concern for a new generation of wounded veterans; mistreated, misled, and abused as well as for the innocent non-combatants who were dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in lesser-acknowledged conflicts around the world. She repeated her public questions about 9/11 which had caused such a furor a year and a half ago. It was those questions that had mobilized a massive campaign by Republican Party operatives and pro-Israeli financial interests (as acknowledged by The Washington Post) to unseat her. I forcefully repeated all of the arguments we have so painstakingly documented at FTW showing that the Bush administration had been criminally complicit in facilitating the attacks two years ago and I emphasized the fact that Peak Oil and its effects were becoming harder and harder to hide as witnessed by the massive blackout that has recently crippled that great city.
There to film me at the Walker Stage was an A Team production crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Company, well into work on a major documentary about 9/11. I had spoken with the producer, Bruce Livesey, several times from California and had been surprised to hear him acknowledge the accuracy of my research. He had also found material that corroborated my controversial work in the case of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland. Vreeland, who had claimed to be a US Naval officer, while incarcerated in a Canadian jail, had written a note warning of the attacks a month before they took place. He had also provided startlingly accurate details about the murder of Canadian intelligence operative Mark Bastien even before the facts were known to the Canadian government. Bastien's murder occurred well after Vreeland had left Moscow in 2000.
I will be eager to see their finished product.
Another gratifying moment came when the CBC took me to Ground Zero to shoot footage of me looking at a place I had visited twice before. As I was leaning over a railing, looking down into the still-stark ruins with the CBC crew filming me, a New Yorker leaned over and asked me who I was. I told him and I told him what I thought had happened. Without hesitation, the man, who had been there on that fateful day, said that he absolutely believed my analysis and thanked me for being there.
Times have indeed changed.
We next went to the Radisson Hotel where the CBC crew filmed an hour and a half interview with me. After that, it was off to the Riverside Church where Dick Cheney had, just hours before, spoken at an event sponsored by the New York City Port Authority. The network vans were packing up to leave as we arrived. They had no interest in what was planned for later that night. It was their loss. As it turned out, press from several countries including Greece was there, along with the CBC and representatives from influential magazines likes Harper's.
Estimates of the crowd size varied from 950 to over 1,200. Not a single seat was available in the main hall. An overflow room held another 200. Cameras were everywhere and a kind of energy, eager for expression, that I had not experienced before was thick in the crowd. Prayers were offered by Rabbi Michael Feinberg; Muslim Imam Dr. Faiz Khan who, as an Emergency Room physician in Brooklyn, had treated many victims on that deadly day; and the Pastor of the Riverside Church, Reverend James Fitzgerald.
It was a busy night. Again, the workhorse Kyle Hence, who has worked closely with victim families acted as moderator for films by (among others) veteran Canadian journalist and commentator Barrie Zwicker and multiple Emmy award winner Danny Schechter. The now-infamous Guerilla News Network production "Aftermath" aroused the crowd and prepped it for the panel discussion that all had come to see.
Showtime
The main event was a panel of experts including McKinney, retired veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, veteran activist and researcher John Judge, Schechter, and me. It was not important that each of us agreed totally with the analyses and work of the others. No one was asked, nor expected, to compromise their positions and the event made no attempt to forge a perfect consensus. To have done that would have been to destroy the perfection of the consensus that already existed. What had brought us there together was a shared belief and commitment that the government of the United States was totally out of control and that it had, in just three years, brought the nation and the planet itself to the brink of disintegration and chaos.
Many were surprised that I sat next to a veteran CIA official, I who have spent twenty-five years opposing the CIA. Even as I have written that I believe that the CIA is fighting back, for motives other than a complete rectification of the ills which now eat at the world like a bioweapon gone mad. It was not a surprise to me, however. I have always recognized and praised honorable behavior whether among criminals, soldiers, government officials, journalists or private citizens. Everyone has a constituency and none of us are ever divorced from our roots. McGovern's scathing, penetrating, and meticulous deflowering of the neocon modus operandi vis a vis Iraq was a wonderful start. And just recently, he has written in some detail about the pre-9/11 briefings given to George W. Bush that have been classified and censored.
McGovern went further than ever when he spoke about the administration's exploitation of 9/11. While not saying outright that the administration knew about the attacks and allowed them to happen, even facilitating them, he implied it. The administration has a lot to hide, he said. He went on to say that Dick Cheney had a lot of chutzpah to show up at the Riverside Church calling him a "Meister of cover up and pointing out that he had turned the FBI loose to intimidate and silence the congressional committees charged with FBI oversight. He labeled the explanation that incompetence within the government had allowed the attacks to succeed as "charitable."
John Judge elaborated of his lifetime of experience in and around the Pentagon; his first-hand knowledge of surface to air missiles installed within the building and spoke of his work in researching the million holes in the government's position. He brought belly laughs to the crowd when he observed, "We're spending a lot of money trying to develop a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just send them ours? It's a good one and we aren't using it anymore."
When it was my turn to speak I made it clear that I would always be the "pit bull" on 9/11, and that I would never be satisfied with any explanation that fell short of complete government foreknowledge, criminal involvement and full participation as an accomplice and principal in those attacks. This brought one of the largest ovations of the night, but not the largest. I held up an original page from Britain's The Guardian containing the Meacher essay, and then dryly observed that in the case of Meacher, as it had been with Andreas von Bulow in Germany, the organs of government were quick to state that these cabinet ministers were unbalanced. Then I noted that we had all gathered that night because of some other cabinet ministers who were unbalanced, and that their names were Powell, Cheney and Ashcroft.
The biggest thunder came as I paid homage to and introduced Cynthia McKinney. Because it was she who had opened her mouth to ask questions, who had taken the best shots the government and the press could throw and yet not only was she still standing, she had become a recognized world leader of a protest movement. Before getting up to speak, I leaned over to her and ask her permission to say something special. She said go ahead.
At the end of my remarks I said, "It is my great privilege and a very special pleasure to introduce someone who is not only a friend but a great leader who has inspired us all, the former, and the next , representative from the 4th district of Georgia, the honorable Cynthia McKinney."
The building vibrated with cheers as the sound meters on TV and radio recording equipment blasted into the red. A thousand people leapt to their feet and the cheering did not subside for several minutes.
McKinney was gracious and powerful in her remarks. She laughingly blamed me, and From The Wilderness, for getting her into trouble. She thanked John Judge for his past assistance and support in her investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King. She praised Ray McGovern and everyone who had worked so hard to force 9/11 into the public consciousness. She thanked WBAI for sponsoring the event and Kyle Hence for organizing it. She acknowledged the foreign press and the incredible support she felt whenever she was in New York. And even though she did not announce her candidacy, she subtly reminded all of us that it would take all of us to get her back into Congress. Then she left no doubt about what she would do when she got back there.
The significance of this unity between varying organizations and groups with sometimes differing positions and which had sometimes competed was important to her. She remembers well the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s and 1970s, which was run by the government to create divisiveness among groups that could challenge the elites if united. She knows that the number-one priority of the FBI then was to prevent any alliance between blacks and whites or any unity between various elements that are most-often labeled as progressive.
She concluded her remarks by saying, "The nightmare of the people who are in power is that we could come together like this. Let's not let them have one night's sleep, not one night's sleep until we have thrown them out, until we have gotten our answers and until we have won the victory."
There was a remarkable lesson in that. It is time for all of us who have worked on 9/11 to see that something powerful has changed. Events following the 9/11 anniversary featuring McKinney, Wayne Madsen, Greg Palast, and Catherine Austin Fitts continued for three days.
Probably fifty researchers, writers, and activists have published and spoken out about 9/11. We all started from the same starting line. On September 11, 2001, FTW had 900 subscribers. Today we have 10,000. What has happened is that each of these people made a number of choices about what evidence was most important; how to present it; what would resonate as effective issues in the mind of the general public; and what future events would bring. With varying degrees of accuracy, professionalism and skill; with differing measures of commitment, intelligence, endurance and fortitude they have, like primary contenders in a presidential election year, weeded themselves, honed their skills, toughened themselves, learned and improved. The cream has risen to the top.
I could take great pride in being labeled "The Godfather of the 9/11 movement" by Guerilla News Network but that would miss the most important point entirely. The question now is not about one point of view being co-opted or muted, or about the supremacy of any one individual or group. The real issue is whether the likes of Michel Chossudovsky, Nafeez Ahmed, Dan Hopsicker, John Judge, Mathias Bröcker, Ray McGovern, Kyle Hence, Wayne Madsen, Cynthia McKinney and I can continue the fight together in a way that guarantees that the Bush administration, and any administration that follows it, will not sleep soundly for one minute until they give the American people and the people of the world the truth and are held accountable for their actions.
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from fromthewilderness.com
NOT ONE NIGHT'S SLEEP
9/11 Second-Anniversary Events in Germany and New York City Reveal Growing Strength, Credibility of Movement
Many Government Critics Take Center Stage
Is McKinney Running Again?
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
Sept 17 , 2003 1400 PDT (FTW), BERLIN, NEW YORK CITY-- Events marking the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks held in Berlin, Germany and Manhattan featuring former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, this writer, and more than a dozen experts highlighted an estimated fifty conferences, screenings and protests around the US and the world, revealing growing popular support for the position that the US government was complicit in those attacks. In a few short words I will try to describe some of the biggest recent developments in a climate that has changed dramatically since disclosure that the US and British governments falsified and misrepresented intelligence to justify a now-failing occupation of Iraq. Those frauds, constituting impeachable offenses offered as a justification for war, have solidly returned 9/11 to the table for debate. Unresolved questions about the attacks are now also drawing attention from the major media and they will most certainly become an issue in the 2004 presidential race. As this opportunity presented itself, a great many courageous people---active for two, long years---were there to seize the moment and they did so powerfully, with an effectiveness made possible by two years of sometimes bitter experience and struggle.
It is difficult to sit and write a comprehensive story in the few hours I have since my return from New York before I board another plane for Seattle and the production of a new CD covering the extraordinary developments of the last year. But I have acquired a new and important perspective since leaving for Berlin on September 3.
If I leave out a few names or neglect to give credit where credit is due, it is not for any other reason than the fact that there are so many who deserve credit, in so many places, that neither my pen nor my tape recorder can capture them all. Yet it is critical to note that many of these events, especially the ones in Berlin, happened only as a result of the opened pockets of private individuals and the tireless labor of unpaid volunteers. One German, Mr. Ronald Thoden, was responsible for the airfare that brought McKinney, American journalist Daniel Hopsicker, British author Nafeez Ahmed and me to that historic city. He paid for our hotel rooms, the rental of the halls and equipment, and the forum that made Germany and the world listen. He stands as a shining representative of all the people who have, in virtual anonymity, voted with their money to keep freedom and dissent alive. In New York, the sponsorship of radio station WBAI was augmented by organization from Unanswered Questions and 911 Citizen'sWatch along with the efforts of dozens of volunteers to effectively demonstrate that a sizeable segment of the American population are, in spite of media claims to the contrary, willing to aggressively fight to make 9/11 an issue for as long as is necessary to prove and address the crime. For it is September 11, 2001 that has been the singular defining moment of the 21st century.
BERLIN
9/11 has a special significance in Germany for many reasons. Mohammed Atta and members of his cell were recruited and operated for some time in Hamburg. Dan Hopsicker (http://www.madcowprod.com/) has done a masterful job of investigating and deconstructing the official legend of Mohammed Atta and the members of his cell. They banked at German banking giant Deustchebank.
Immediately after 9/11, Ernst Welteke the President of Germany's state bank, the Bundesbank, confirmed that massive insider trading across the world's financial markets had occurred right before 9/11, in stocks that were devastated by the attacks. Then German cabinet minister Andreas von Bulow declared shortly thereafter that the global value of insider trading had possibly exceeded $100 billion and that the US government had deliberately allowed the attacks to happen as a pretext for conquest of the oil-rich territories of the Caspian basin and the Middle East. Von Bulow was qualified to speak on this issue. His portfolio had included supervision of the German intelligence service -- the BND -- which had issued a number of strong and very clear warnings to the CIA that hijacked airliners were going to be crashed into the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th.
Also in Germany, and visible from my hotel, was the German Reichstag, the 1933 burning of which had given Adolf Hitler grounds to seize unprecedented power. Not for one second did any German or foreign participant in these 9/11 events forget that this symbolism was close at hand.
On September 5 th , Cynthia McKinney and I held a press conference in downtown Berlin that was attended by some of the largest media outlets in Germany including German national television, Reuters, major Berlin newspapers and radio stations. We were treated with respect and the questions posed were intelligent and showed that the reporters had done their homework. Though we did not see much air time or ink as a result, it was clear that posing questions about 9/11 was no longer in the same category as discussions of a flat earth or Elvis sightings. We were being taken seriously.
That night we spoke together at the Neurotitan gallery, a dark and unfinished place located behind a "radical alternative bookstore where floors of bare cement, littered with the debris of artwork intersected with unfinished plaster walls, glazed windows, dim lights, dark corners and the faint smell of revolutionary thought and passion." Many in the cramped audience of about 100 were pierced, tattooed and leathered while others were dressed in the upscale casual attire of middle class professionals. There, after opening remarks from McKinney remembering darker days of American history in which much greater figures like Martin Luther King struggled to bring a cause to life, I presented a 90 minute updated version of my lecture, The Truth and Lies of 9/11. As with all of my previous lectures, more than 30 in six countries, the reception was very enthusiastic and little different from the responses I had previously received in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the US, or in Paris where I discussed FTW's research with politicians and energy experts last May.
On the 6th, I collaborated with Nicholas Levis of Berlin and New York, the emcee and wrangler for our Berlin events, Dan Hopsicker, German author Mathias Bröcker and three German researchers. Together we prepared a list of witnesses and documents that needed to be thoroughly examined to resolve the glaring inconsistencies in the Bush administration's story. On September 11th -- as I was preparing to speak in New York -- the German 911 Truth Alliance and The German 9/11 Research Network (www.911truth.org) presented formal letters to the government asking for responses. This made news throughout the country and the letter's contents were published in detail.
Throughout our collaborations that day, and in the public events that followed in both Germany and New York, all the experts gave praise to professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa for his many contributions to our collective knowledge. Of particular significance was his detailed work on direct links between the Pakistani intelligence service, Mohammed Atta and key figures in the US like DCI George Tenet, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the heads of both US congressional intelligence committees.
September 6th also brought an early Christmas present. Britain's The Guardian published an op-ed by former British Minister for the Environment Michael Meacher. Meacher had resigned months ago over the Blair government's fraudulent "sexed up" intelligence, and its obsequious backing of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Powell. Titled "The War on Terrorism is Bogus", Meacher's full-page missive stated that the US government had facilitated the 9/11 attacks, refused to respond to detailed, credible warnings, and went further by adding that the motive was to control diminishing world oil supplies. Had Mr. Meacher asked me to write an article for him I could not have written it better or said more. As McKinney and I read the essay, we realized that we had indeed come a long way.
On September 7th, a capacity crowd of approximately 700 people showed up for the main event at Berlin's Tempodrome amphitheater. Nafeez Ahmed, author of the book "The War on Freedom" flew in from London, and Italian prosecuting magistrate Guido Salvini, who had previously proven US intelligence connections to alleged terror attacks in Italy, joined us. Experts from four countries had come together over 9/11 and a second press conference was filled with reporters from all over Germany and included the German Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal.
Presentations in smaller conference rooms were filled to capacity. Panels in the main hall, where I again delivered a 90-minute slide presentation on 9/11, were also jammed and interest remained intense throughout the nine-hour event. In her keynote address, Cynthia McKinney again harkened back to the turbulent days of the 1960s as civil rights and the Vietnam War roused an activist spirit throughout America and the world. She told the German audience that it was of vital importance for everyone to ask questions and to not be satisfied with pat answers. Most importantly, she said, it was imperative that diverse groups come together to form alliances from all over the world because this was truly what made change possible.
New York would make her very happy indeed.
NEW YORK
I arrived in New York late in the afternoon of September 10th. There was time to eat, sleep a little at the home of volunteer Michael Kane and his family, and then prepare for the big day. The first stop was the Walker Stage near Ground Zero where McKinney and I taped an interview moderated by Kyle Hence of Unanswered Questions. Neither she nor I minced any words. McKinney's focus was what had happened to the country in terms of civil rights and the climate that had come to dominate American politics since the 2000 presidential election. She expressed strong concern for a new generation of wounded veterans; mistreated, misled, and abused as well as for the innocent non-combatants who were dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in lesser-acknowledged conflicts around the world. She repeated her public questions about 9/11 which had caused such a furor a year and a half ago. It was those questions that had mobilized a massive campaign by Republican Party operatives and pro-Israeli financial interests (as acknowledged by The Washington Post) to unseat her. I forcefully repeated all of the arguments we have so painstakingly documented at FTW showing that the Bush administration had been criminally complicit in facilitating the attacks two years ago and I emphasized the fact that Peak Oil and its effects were becoming harder and harder to hide as witnessed by the massive blackout that has recently crippled that great city.
There to film me at the Walker Stage was an A Team production crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Company, well into work on a major documentary about 9/11. I had spoken with the producer, Bruce Livesey, several times from California and had been surprised to hear him acknowledge the accuracy of my research. He had also found material that corroborated my controversial work in the case of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland. Vreeland, who had claimed to be a US Naval officer, while incarcerated in a Canadian jail, had written a note warning of the attacks a month before they took place. He had also provided startlingly accurate details about the murder of Canadian intelligence operative Mark Bastien even before the facts were known to the Canadian government. Bastien's murder occurred well after Vreeland had left Moscow in 2000.
I will be eager to see their finished product.
Another gratifying moment came when the CBC took me to Ground Zero to shoot footage of me looking at a place I had visited twice before. As I was leaning over a railing, looking down into the still-stark ruins with the CBC crew filming me, a New Yorker leaned over and asked me who I was. I told him and I told him what I thought had happened. Without hesitation, the man, who had been there on that fateful day, said that he absolutely believed my analysis and thanked me for being there.
Times have indeed changed.
We next went to the Radisson Hotel where the CBC crew filmed an hour and a half interview with me. After that, it was off to the Riverside Church where Dick Cheney had, just hours before, spoken at an event sponsored by the New York City Port Authority. The network vans were packing up to leave as we arrived. They had no interest in what was planned for later that night. It was their loss. As it turned out, press from several countries including Greece was there, along with the CBC and representatives from influential magazines likes Harper's.
Estimates of the crowd size varied from 950 to over 1,200. Not a single seat was available in the main hall. An overflow room held another 200. Cameras were everywhere and a kind of energy, eager for expression, that I had not experienced before was thick in the crowd. Prayers were offered by Rabbi Michael Feinberg; Muslim Imam Dr. Faiz Khan who, as an Emergency Room physician in Brooklyn, had treated many victims on that deadly day; and the Pastor of the Riverside Church, Reverend James Fitzgerald.
It was a busy night. Again, the workhorse Kyle Hence, who has worked closely with victim families acted as moderator for films by (among others) veteran Canadian journalist and commentator Barrie Zwicker and multiple Emmy award winner Danny Schechter. The now-infamous Guerilla News Network production "Aftermath" aroused the crowd and prepped it for the panel discussion that all had come to see.
Showtime
The main event was a panel of experts including McKinney, retired veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, veteran activist and researcher John Judge, Schechter, and me. It was not important that each of us agreed totally with the analyses and work of the others. No one was asked, nor expected, to compromise their positions and the event made no attempt to forge a perfect consensus. To have done that would have been to destroy the perfection of the consensus that already existed. What had brought us there together was a shared belief and commitment that the government of the United States was totally out of control and that it had, in just three years, brought the nation and the planet itself to the brink of disintegration and chaos.
Many were surprised that I sat next to a veteran CIA official, I who have spent twenty-five years opposing the CIA. Even as I have written that I believe that the CIA is fighting back, for motives other than a complete rectification of the ills which now eat at the world like a bioweapon gone mad. It was not a surprise to me, however. I have always recognized and praised honorable behavior whether among criminals, soldiers, government officials, journalists or private citizens. Everyone has a constituency and none of us are ever divorced from our roots. McGovern's scathing, penetrating, and meticulous deflowering of the neocon modus operandi vis a vis Iraq was a wonderful start. And just recently, he has written in some detail about the pre-9/11 briefings given to George W. Bush that have been classified and censored.
McGovern went further than ever when he spoke about the administration's exploitation of 9/11. While not saying outright that the administration knew about the attacks and allowed them to happen, even facilitating them, he implied it. The administration has a lot to hide, he said. He went on to say that Dick Cheney had a lot of chutzpah to show up at the Riverside Church calling him a "Meister of cover up and pointing out that he had turned the FBI loose to intimidate and silence the congressional committees charged with FBI oversight. He labeled the explanation that incompetence within the government had allowed the attacks to succeed as "charitable."
John Judge elaborated of his lifetime of experience in and around the Pentagon; his first-hand knowledge of surface to air missiles installed within the building and spoke of his work in researching the million holes in the government's position. He brought belly laughs to the crowd when he observed, "We're spending a lot of money trying to develop a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just send them ours? It's a good one and we aren't using it anymore."
When it was my turn to speak I made it clear that I would always be the "pit bull" on 9/11, and that I would never be satisfied with any explanation that fell short of complete government foreknowledge, criminal involvement and full participation as an accomplice and principal in those attacks. This brought one of the largest ovations of the night, but not the largest. I held up an original page from Britain's The Guardian containing the Meacher essay, and then dryly observed that in the case of Meacher, as it had been with Andreas von Bulow in Germany, the organs of government were quick to state that these cabinet ministers were unbalanced. Then I noted that we had all gathered that night because of some other cabinet ministers who were unbalanced, and that their names were Powell, Cheney and Ashcroft.
The biggest thunder came as I paid homage to and introduced Cynthia McKinney. Because it was she who had opened her mouth to ask questions, who had taken the best shots the government and the press could throw and yet not only was she still standing, she had become a recognized world leader of a protest movement. Before getting up to speak, I leaned over to her and ask her permission to say something special. She said go ahead.
At the end of my remarks I said, "It is my great privilege and a very special pleasure to introduce someone who is not only a friend but a great leader who has inspired us all, the former, and the next , representative from the 4th district of Georgia, the honorable Cynthia McKinney."
The building vibrated with cheers as the sound meters on TV and radio recording equipment blasted into the red. A thousand people leapt to their feet and the cheering did not subside for several minutes.
McKinney was gracious and powerful in her remarks. She laughingly blamed me, and From The Wilderness, for getting her into trouble. She thanked John Judge for his past assistance and support in her investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King. She praised Ray McGovern and everyone who had worked so hard to force 9/11 into the public consciousness. She thanked WBAI for sponsoring the event and Kyle Hence for organizing it. She acknowledged the foreign press and the incredible support she felt whenever she was in New York. And even though she did not announce her candidacy, she subtly reminded all of us that it would take all of us to get her back into Congress. Then she left no doubt about what she would do when she got back there.
The significance of this unity between varying organizations and groups with sometimes differing positions and which had sometimes competed was important to her. She remembers well the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s and 1970s, which was run by the government to create divisiveness among groups that could challenge the elites if united. She knows that the number-one priority of the FBI then was to prevent any alliance between blacks and whites or any unity between various elements that are most-often labeled as progressive.
She concluded her remarks by saying, "The nightmare of the people who are in power is that we could come together like this. Let's not let them have one night's sleep, not one night's sleep until we have thrown them out, until we have gotten our answers and until we have won the victory."
There was a remarkable lesson in that. It is time for all of us who have worked on 9/11 to see that something powerful has changed. Events following the 9/11 anniversary featuring McKinney, Wayne Madsen, Greg Palast, and Catherine Austin Fitts continued for three days.
Probably fifty researchers, writers, and activists have published and spoken out about 9/11. We all started from the same starting line. On September 11, 2001, FTW had 900 subscribers. Today we have 10,000. What has happened is that each of these people made a number of choices about what evidence was most important; how to present it; what would resonate as effective issues in the mind of the general public; and what future events would bring. With varying degrees of accuracy, professionalism and skill; with differing measures of commitment, intelligence, endurance and fortitude they have, like primary contenders in a presidential election year, weeded themselves, honed their skills, toughened themselves, learned and improved. The cream has risen to the top.
I could take great pride in being labeled "The Godfather of the 9/11 movement" by Guerilla News Network but that would miss the most important point entirely. The question now is not about one point of view being co-opted or muted, or about the supremacy of any one individual or group. The real issue is whether the likes of Michel Chossudovsky, Nafeez Ahmed, Dan Hopsicker, John Judge, Mathias Bröcker, Ray McGovern, Kyle Hence, Wayne Madsen, Cynthia McKinney and I can continue the fight together in a way that guarantees that the Bush administration, and any administration that follows it, will not sleep soundly for one minute until they give the American people and the people of the world the truth and are held accountable for their actions.
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