The Hidden Face of Terrorism

Terrorism does not emerge by accident but is usually sponsored by the state to serve the demands of a powerful elite, as can be seen in the creation of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 3 (April-May 2003)
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The following is an edited extract from The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11, by Paul David Collins.

In our modern world, discomforting truths are usually discarded in favour of fictions. One such fiction is the idea that terrorists are disenfranchised dissidents who independently generate the wealth and resources necessary for their heinous acts. Such is the contention of Professor Mark Juergensmeyer. In his article, "Understanding the New Terrorism", he says that modern terrorism "appears pointless since it does not lead directly to any strategic goal" (p. 158).

Juergensmeyer arrives at this conclusion because he restricts his examination to the visible perpetrators, whose motives may be, in fact, irrational. However, he does not examine the patrons of terrorism. Given the exceptional subtlety and discretion of terrorism's shadowy sponsors, Professor Juergensmeyer may just be oblivious to their existence. On the other hand, he could simply be parroting his fellow academicians in order to maintain the status quo.

Whatever the case may be, this contention seems to be the overall view held by the orthodoxy of academia. With such a view vigorously promulgated by the arbiters of the dominant national paradigm, few can recognise those shady individuals who stand to profit from terrorist acts.

To understand terrorism, one must discard the view that arbitrarily characterises it as "a resort to violence or a threat of violence on the part of a group seeking to accomplish a purpose against the opposition of constituted authority" (Adler, Mueller & Laufer, p. 309). Such an impotent notion is predicated upon the hopelessly flawed accidentalist perspective of history. It relegates terrorism, which is the product of conscious effort and design, to the realm of circumstantial spontaneity. In other words, a contrived act suddenly becomes an inexplicable social phenomenon.

In November 1989, Father Ignacio Martín-Baró, a social psychologist, delivered a speech in California on "The Psychological Consequences of Political Terror". In his speech, Martín-Baró gave a much more precise definition of terrorism, one that is ignored only at great peril. Noam Chomsky provides a synopsis of this speech (p. 386):

He [Martín-Baró] stressed several relevant points. First, the most significant form of terrorism, by a large measure, is state terrorism--that is, "terrorizing the whole population through systematic actions carried out by the forces of the state". Second, such terrorism is an essential part of a "government-imposed sociopolitical project" designed for the needs of the privileged.

Disturbing though it may be, Martín-Baró's definition is one validated by history. The majority of terrorism throughout history has found its sponsors in the hallowed halls of officialdom, in the entity known as government. Terrorism is surrogate warfare, a manufactured crisis designed to induce social change. Its combatants consciously or unconsciously wage the war on behalf of higher powers with higher agendas. Whether its adherents are aware of it or not, terrorism always serves the ambitions of another.

In his article, "Fake Terror: The Road to Dictatorship", Michael Rivero states that "It's the oldest trick in the book, dating back to Roman times: creating the enemies you need" (p. 1). The strategy is quite simple: individuals create a crisis so that they can then introduce their desired solution.

Are there recent, modern examples of state-sponsored terrorism? Unfortunately, the answer to that question seems to be "Yes".

Operation Northwoods

The first example is in 1962. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and his fellow JCS members wanted to remove Castro from Cuba. Exactly what interests Lemnitzer and his fellow warhawks represented are unclear. However, one thing is apparent: these military men considered Castro an impediment to be expunged by means of overt war.

According to James Bamford, former Washington investigative producer for ABC, the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned to engineer several terrorist acts to instigate war (p. 82):

According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government. In the name of anticommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.

Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, DC, Miami and elsewhere.

People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.

Northwoods even called for the military to turn on itself (p. 84):

Among the actions recommended was "a series of well-coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the US Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations".

Operation Northwoods would draw upon history as well, using the 1898 explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbour as inspiration (p. 84):

"We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

The attempt to create a Cuban terrorist threat makes it clear that the US government has no reservations about using state-sponsored terrorism to achieve its ends.

American Imperialism and the Terrorist Threat

However, it is in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 that one sees the tangible enactment of modern-day state-sponsored terrorism. Many Americans have been taught that loners Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, fuelled by militia-inspired conspiracy theories and white supremacist propaganda, perpetrated one of the worst terrorist acts in American history all by themselves.

What came out of the Oklahoma City bombing? Former Czechoslovakian Communist Party Secretariat member Jan Kozak's "pressure from above" went to work and passed oppressive legislation: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. This Act made no one safer and threw the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution into the wastebasket. The pincers clamped down a little bit harder on the American people.

Presently, America finds itself in the midst of a tumultuous conflict because of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. This begs the obvious question: was this attack state-sponsored? Remember the earlier contention that the majority of terrorism is state-sponsored. Terrorists just do not have the resources, the money or the expertise without the aid of a government or factions within a government. It is still too early to know all of the facts and details surrounding the events of September 11. However, there is evidence suggesting that the attack was no exception to the rule. The investigation of government complicity begins with an examination of the evidence for government foreknowledge. Warnings were received at the highest levels of government.

These and other eye-opening revelations have many people asking why the US government did not move to stop bin Laden and al-Qa'ida. This question can be answered with a question: why move against bin Laden and al-Qa'ida if they are your assets?

The story of the dreaded al-Qa'ida terrorist network begins with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor. In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Geostrategic Objectives, Brzezinski provides readers with the motivation for the creation of a terrorist threat. He begins (p. xii):

The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power ...

Brzezinski celebrates the fact that America is being transformed into a world empire. However, he identifies a distinct threat to America's ascendancy to the position of sole global power: "The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent" (p. 24). Apparently, the citizenry's aversion towards imperialistic policies, which Brzezinski euphemistically interprets as ambivalence, is an obstacle to the empire's expansion. After all, there are still plenty of patriots who understand that Brzezinski's expansionistic "geostrategy" is irreconcilable with the tenets of Americanism.

This sense of awareness has been a major obstacle to the foreign policy elites that Brzezinski represents. Thus far, enough patriots know that none of the "Freedom Documents" (i.e., the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc.) makes concessions for the arbitrary extension of America's authority through brutish military expeditions. As a sovereign nation itself, America is supposed to honour the autonomy of other countries and is not to initiate militaristic campaigns unless she is threatened. Yet, Brzezinski believes that adherence to such principles could provoke worldwide social upheaval (p. 30):

America's withdrawal from the world, or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival, would produce massive international instability. It would promote global anarchy.

Brzezinski continues further on in hyperbolic fashion (p. 194):

Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene.

In other words, the promotion and practice of representative government amongst other nations would lead to doomsday itself. In such statements, the former National Security Advisor reveals the authoritarian features of his bizarre eschatology. According to Brzezinski's Weltanschauung, those who cherish individual liberties and the sovereignty of their respective nations constitute the "forces of global disorder"; these forces must be defeated or they will invariably cause the apocalypse--so public opinion must be altered. (Brzezinski fails to mention that such a doomsday will only mean the end for him and his elitist comrades.) Brzezinski cites a very interesting historical example (p. 25):

The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ah, an option presents itself! Mass consensus could be facilitated through mass trauma. In fact, the engineering of widespread compliance is an essential constituent in the implementation of Brzezinski's foreign policy. In an exemplary moment of self-incrimination so endemic to elitist tracts, Brzezinski pens a damning confession (p. 211):

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.

A readily exploitable menace, whether genuine or promulgated, is the solution.

Brzezinski began the construction of his "direct external threat" years before he wrote The Grand Chessboard. In an interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, the former national security adviser made a stunning confession that will change the history books forever (Blum, p. 1):

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows] that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Re-education and the Creation of the Taliban

Having encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, Brzezinski now had a pretext for radicalising and arming a population that would be used at a future date as a "direct external threat" to the United States.

Part of the radicalisation process included the brainwashing of children under the guise of education. The Washington Post's Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway report (pp. 1-2):

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The "Primers", which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.

Stephens and Ottaway identify the governmental and educational organisations involved in development of the textbooks (p. 4):

Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID [Agency for International Development] grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.

Under this project, the images and talk of violence were craftily intermingled with legitimate education (p. 4):
Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited US interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.

An examination of a textbook produced shocking results (p. 5):
An aid-worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.

The writers of the Washington Post story go on to provide a specific example of the material that is nothing less than appalling (pp. 5-6):

One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier's head is missing.

Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin [sic], who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.

This social engineering project successfully transformed Muslim children into conscienceless killing machines. Many would go on to join al-Qa'ida, the terrorist network headed up by Osama bin Laden.

An heir to a Saudi construction fortune, bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1979 to fight the Soviets. Bin Laden eventually came to head the Maktab al-Khidamar, also known as the MAK. It was through this front organisation that money, arms and fighters were supplied to the Afghan war. However, according to MSNBC's Michael Moran, there is more to the story (p. 2):
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.

Even after the war, bin Laden was on good terms with the CIA (p. 3):
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante--a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.

Bin Laden would later receive three necessary provisions from factions of government. These essentials would allow him and al- Qa'ida to conduct one of the worst terrorist attacks ever conceived. These constituents were: (1) protection courtesy of highly influential, well-placed shepherds in government; (2) government funding; and (3) government training. Without a beat, individuals in positions of authority delivered.

Both Democrat and Republican administrations protected bin Laden. Undaunted by Osama's attack on the USS Cole and bombings of the embassies, this non-partisan aegis consistently insulated the terrorist and his network. President William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat, shielded bin Laden and company from the hand of justice in Sudan. Mansoor Ijaz revealed this fact in the December 5, 2001, Los Angeles Times (Ijaz, p. 1):

President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year ...

From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton Administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, US National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's President and intelligence chief.

President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton Administration in responding to these offers was deafening.

Sudan offered Bill Clinton the ideal opportunity to apprehend bin Laden and prevent future terrorist attacks. Instead, the US pressured Sudan to make bin Laden leave, "despite their [the Sudanese] feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere" (pp. 1-2). It was off to Afghanistan for bin Laden and his merry, marauding band of cut-throats and murderers (p. 2):

Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him: Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the US to be the chief planner of the September 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for al-Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the US for his role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks. Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban protected bin Laden and his al- Qa'ida network. There is an odd symmetry revealed through this relationship. Both bin Laden and the Taliban were little more than a creation of the CIA. Selig Harrison, a South Asian expert from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, made this known at a conference in London. The Times of India records Harrison's revelations (p. 1):

LONDON -- The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.

"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre [sic] for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia".

To the average American, the Taliban might have been a rogue gallery of maniacs that comprised a fanatical outlaw government and nothing more. However, Harrison makes it clear that the Taliban was a well-coordinated intelligence project (p. 2):

The Taliban are not just recruits from "madrassas" (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government).

A Covert Government Agenda

The government had all the means necessary to detect and prevent the September 11 attacks. Researcher Russ Kick makes a significant statement concerning this point (p. 1):

The US has the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Secret Service, and a host of other intelligence and security agencies. These agencies employ Echelon, which monitors the majority of electronic communication in the world; Carnivore, which intercepts email; Tempest, a technology that can read a computer monitor's display from over a block away; Keyhole satellites that have a resolution of four inches; and other spy technologies, probably most of which we don't know about.

In 2001, the US spent $30 billion on intelligence gathering and an additional $12 billion on counterterrorism. With all these resources, and more, we're supposed to believe that the government didn't have the slightest inkling that terrorists were planning to attack the United States, much less hijack planes and send them careening into major landmarks.

After reviewing the facts, one must consider a more sinister possibility: that certain factions in the United States government created the bin Laden menace and actually desired the attacks. Whether Moran realises it or not, his article, "Bin Laden Comes Home to Roost", reveals evidence that the Agency may have been equipping bin Laden's network for purposes other than fighting the Soviets (p. 4):

The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission", had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military Power" report right up to 1990.

Now, a troubling question arises. Given the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and the inexorable demise of communism, bin Laden's involvement in the crusade against the Soviets seems inconsequential. More succinctly, it is irrelevant. Yet, despite his axiomatic obsolescence in the anti-communist campaign, bin Laden continued to receive funds. Since such financing did not represent an investment in the ongoing war with the Soviets, there must have been ulterior motives for maintaining bin Laden's network.

What was the true agenda that motivated the CIA to support what would later become an international Frankenstein's monster? Former CIA Associate Deputy Director of Operations Theodore Shackley may have already answered this question in his book, The Third Option (p. 17):

Senior intelligence officers like myself, who had experience in paramilitary operations, have always insisted that the United States should also consider the third option: the use of guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency techniques and covert action to achieve policy goals ... Political warfare is very often the stitch in time that eliminates bloodier and more costly alternatives.

It is possible that the September 11 attack represents a tangible enactment of Shackley's third option. Bin Laden's ties to the intelligence community certainly reinforce such a contention. Were al-Qa'ida and bin Laden considered part of a third option to facilitate political and social change in the United States?

Consider a conversation that took place between former DEA agent Michael Levine and a CIA agent. It suggests that the CIA is ready and willing to use the third option in America. This discourse is recorded in The Triangle of Death (Levine, p. 353):

"How can you be so good at what you do and have so little understanding of what really pulls your strings? Don't you realize that there are factions in your government that want this to happen--an emergency situation too hot for a constitutional government to handle."

"To what end?" I asked.

"A suspension of the Constitution, of course. The legislation is already in place. All perfectly legal. Check it out yourself. It's called FEMA. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 'Turn in your guns, you antigovernment rabble-rousers. And who would be king, Michael?"

"CIA," I said.

Terrorism in the United States is one of the methods employed to generate the changes desired by Levine's CIA friend. It has provided a pretext for the introduction of draconian laws and measures previously unthinkable. Representative Henry Gonzalez recognised this fact when he made the following comment (Cuddy, p. 164):

The truth of the matter is that you do have those standby provisions, and the statutory emergency plans are there whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism, apprehend, invoke the military, and arrest Americans and hold them in detention camps.

Add to the list of "statutory emergency plans" the Patriot Act, passed in response to the September 11 attacks. According to Washington Post staff writer Jim McGee (pp 1-2), this law:

... empowers the government to shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence. In addition, the Treasury Department has been charged with building a financial intelligence-gathering system whose data can be accessed by CIA.

Most significantly, the CIA will have the authority for the first time to influence FBI surveillance operations inside the United States and to obtain evidence gathered by federal grand juries and criminal wiretaps.

The Patriot Act is designed to transform America into a surveillance society. Wiretapping has been expanded to invade the privacy of a larger portion of the populace. In the name of fighting terrorism, the prying eyes of the government can now watch those merely deemed "suspicious". Furthermore, wiretaps are no longer just a tool in criminal investigations. Under the Act, they become a means of gathering information on the citizenry. Unfortunately, the surprises do not stop there. The Act also lifts many of the constraints on the CIA's power. McGee writes (p. 4):

The new law also gives the CIA unprecedented access to the most powerful investigative weapon in the federal law enforcement's arsenal: the federal grand jury. The grand juries have nearly unlimited power to gather evidence in secret, including testimony, wiretap transcripts, phone records, business records or medical records ...

The new law permits allow the FBI to give grand jury information to the CIA without a court order, as long as the information concerns foreign intelligence or international terrorism. The information can also be shared widely throughout the national security establishment ...

All of the above points to a very frightening conclusion: there are some factions of government that consider terrorism to be a tool of social engineering. The direction society is being steered by this "tool" is even more frightening.

Terrorism: A Tool of the Ruling Elite

Terrorism is being used to keep the rabble in line on behalf of an elite that wishes to maintain and expand its power. In The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills introduces these powerful individuals (pp. 3-4):

The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organisations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.

Talk of oligarchs might tend to conjure pictures of mediaeval feudal lords. However, a Federal Reserve study points out to elitism being alive, well, and existing in the "Land of the Free", the United States. In his Secrets of the Temple, former Washington Post editor William Greider quotes the study (p. 39):

... 54 percent of the total net financial assets were held by the 2 percent of families with the greatest amount of such assets and 86 percent by the top 10 percent; 55 percent of the families in the sample had zero or negative net worth ...

This concentration of wealth in so few hands certainly suggests that there is a ruling class. It is highly naive to believe that this elite does not wield a great deal of influence over civilisation. In her book, Beyond The Ruling Class: Strategic Elites In Modern Society, Professor Suzanne Keller states (p. 3):

The notion of a stratum elevated above the mass of men may prompt approval, indifference, or despair, but regardless of how men feel about it, the fact remains that their lives, fortunes, and fate are and have long been dependent on what a small number of men in high places think and do.

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency William Colby recognised the existence of a network of bluebloods. When former Nebraska Senator and Vietnam War hero John W. DeCamp was looking into elites' involvement in child abuse, drug running, gun running, and satanic ritual-murder, Colby warned him of the hidden aristocracy and their power (DeCamp, pp. ix-x):

"What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. That is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face. You have done your part. You have tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. It has hurt you terribly. But it has not killed you up to this point. I am telling you, get out of this before it does.

"Sometimes things are just too big for us to deal with, and we have to step aside and let history take its course."

Probably the greatest source of "insider" information comes from Oxford professor (and mentor to former President Bill Clinton) the late Carroll Quigley. After being close to the pro-British, Anglophile faction of the elite, Quigley wrote (p. 950):

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it and to many of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.

I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.

Quigley also informs us that the ruling class has a very low opinion of the common people. He voices this elitist sentiment when he refers to the commoners as "the petty bourgeoisie ... " (pp. 1243-1244).

So why is the great mass of human civilisation unaware of the oligarchs' presence among them? In The Architecture of Modern Political Power, Daniel Pouzzner explains why (p. 16):

The establishment cloaks itself in cultural camouflage, employing tactics for which it almost seamlessly maintains plausible deniability. Subtle, ubiquitous, often implicit propaganda fosters a broad public acceptance and embrace of the authority of the establishment, and of the establishment's definitions of good and evil, preventing the public from seriously contemplating the reality that the establishment is itself quite often evil by its own definition. The establishment reiterates the mantra that the President of the United States is "the leader of the free world", but a free world has no leader. The President of the United States is simply the most obvious spearhead of the authority of the establishment. He gathers strength at the expense of the world's freedom.

Generally, an errant public attributes the results of the establishment's meddlesome actions to happenstance, or to motives viewed as essentially innocuous or virtuous. The design is irrefutably evident only in the pattern of results, or by actually showing proof of meddling. The public has been systemically conditioned to ignore such patterns, and to condemn those who draw attention to them (derisively calling them "conspiracy theorists"). Thus, controlling access to and dissemination of information that constitutes proof of meddling suffices in large part to protect the establishment program from exposure. The compartmentalization of the establishment's covert apparatus assures that those exposures which do transpire cause only limited damage.

Bush/Bin Laden Family Links

Are there any ties between the power elites and the current terrorist network? The answer to that question lies with the Bush dynasty. Neither Bush Senior nor Bush Junior can be described as Presidents in the Lincoln tradition. They do not come from lower class backgrounds and modest upbringings. Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's in-depth investigation of George Senior led them to propose the following in their excellent book, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (p. 9):

One of our basic theses is that George Bush [Senior] is, and considers himself to be, an oligarch.

In an article for the London Daily Mail, Peter Allen points out a connection between George W. Bush and Osama's brother, Salem bin Laden (pp. 1-2):

Incredibly, Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother. In the 1970s, he and George W. Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr Bush's home state of Texas.

As he built his own business empire, Salem bin Laden had an intriguing relationship with the President-to-be. In 1978, he appointed James Bath, a close friend of Mr Bush who served with him in the Air National Guard, as his representative in Houston, Texas. It was in that year that Mr Bath invested $50,000 ... in Mr Bush's company, Arbusto. It was never revealed whether he was investing his own money or somebody else's. There was even speculation that the money might have been from Salem. In the same year, Mr Bath bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of the Saudi Arabian multimillionaire.

Three years ago, Mr Bush said the $50,000 investment in Arbusto was the only financial dealing he had with Mr Bath.

The connection between the bin Ladens and the Bush family does not end with Arbusto Energy.

On the BBC's Newsnight program, Greg Palast stated (p. 5):

Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little-known private company which has, in just a few years of its founding, become one of America's biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid adviser. And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.

These business connections may explain why the Bush Administration frustrated the FBI's efforts to investigate Abdullah and Omar bin Laden. Investigations may have demonstrated that Osama was not the "black sheep" of the family. Instead, they may have shown that terrorism was actually the bin Laden family business. This would have associated the Bush family with terrorists, something the current President could not allow to happen.

For neo-conservatives, the portrait of the Bush family as a criminal syndicate with ties to questionable characters is reprehensible. However, this contention can be based upon a major precedent.

Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin's investigation into former President George Herbert Walker Bush's background led to a startling discovery: that "The President's family fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project" (p. 28).

The Bush dynasty's connections with the bin Ladens suggest that the family's collusion with enemies of the United States has never ceased.

A State-sponsored Sociopolitical Project

Re-examining Martín-Baró's previous contention, that terrorism is part and parcel of a "government-imposed sociopolitical project", one is faced with some very disturbing questions.

What will be the results of this "government-imposed sociopolitical project"? Where exactly is all of this state-sponsored terrorism leading?

Quigley provides a fragmentary glimpse of the outcome in Tragedy and Hope. The Oxford professor reveals that a cognitive elite, arbitrarily dubbed "experts", "will replace the democratic voter in control of the political system" (p. 866).

With representation for the masses removed from the picture, what kind of life can the common man expect to live? Quigley (p. 886) declares that this will be a system where the individual's:

... freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits.

There you have it. George Orwell's 1984, built al-Qa'ida style!

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