9/11, Cause and Effect.  No 1

We begin a search into the actors and reasons for their actions in causing the destruction of the World Trade Center with references to Nafeez Ahmed’s The War on Freedom; How and Why America was Attacked. September 11, 2001.(published in 2002).

Ahmed was Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in Brighton, England. He was a leading political scientist and human rights activist. His book provides a basis for discovering the political motives and exposes the deceptions of the Bush Administration which led to its opposition to any investigation of one of the greatest crimes committed on the nation’s soil.

By asking who benefitted by the attack, Ahmed posits some facts that he developed: (1) Significant elements of U.S. government, military and intelligence agencies had extensive advance warning of the 11th September attacks and were in various ways complicit in those attacks. (2) The war on Afghanistan launched in October 2001 had been planned for at least a year, and in general terms related to regional strategic and economic interests, had actually been rooted in at least four years of strategic planning. . . . All that was required was a trigger for those war plans, which was amply supplied by the tragic events of 11th September.

 (3) The American intelligence community received multiple authoritative warnings, both general and specific, of a terrorist attack  on the U.S. using civilian airliners as bombs, targeting key buildings located in the nation’s capital and New York City and likely to occur around early to mid-September yet no public warnings were given and no appropriate measures were taken. (4) Emergency response systems suffered consistently inexplicable failures on that day, allowing the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to continue without an effective air response. A detailed investigation of the actual chronology of events on 11th September strongly suggests that this sort of massive systematic failure was possible only through wilful obstructions from key U.S. government and military officials. (5) It is a documented fact that the Bush administration systematically blocked investigations of terrorists involved or strongly suspected of being involved—including Osama bin Laden, his family and suspect royals who support him—prior to 11th September. Even after 11th September the Bush administration has continued to misdirect investigations and block pertinent inquiries and sealed any inquiry into the complicity of the ISI (Pakistani intelligence).

Ahmed concludes: the Bush administration used the events to justify the consolidation of elite power and profit within the U.S. and throughout the world by exploiting the murder of thousands of innocent civilians to crack down on domestic freedoms while launching a ruthless bombing campaign on the largely helpless people of Afghanistan, directly resulting in the further killing of almost double the number of civilians who died on 9-11. It facilitated the attacks, protected those responsible, blocked attempts to prevent the attacks and maintained close political, financial, military and intelligence ties to key figures who supported those responsible. The role that the U.S. government has played both historically and currently in key events leading up to and after 11th September, strongly suggests U.S. responsibility for those events.

The world economy, in free fall before 9/11, was rescued with the corporate bail-out by Bush, allowing the corporate elite to escape the worst effects of the recession, which, as a result had no negative impact on Bush & Co. The Bush and Obama administrations gave power and riches to the elite and ignored the working classes sinking into poverty. District Attorney Jim Garrison had warned that the U.S. was slowly eroding into a proto-fascist state. “In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society,” he said years ago. Today, with the threat of losing its democratic way of governing to a proto-fascist autocracy led by Donald Trump, his prophetic words impel us to trace the trail that led us here. “I’ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office,” Garrison added. He experienced the hypocrisy and opposition of the government when investigating the John F. Kennedy assassination. Younger citizens may consider the 9/11 tragedy as the root of the nation’s decline. Older citizens may blame the government leaders who cast the nation into the Vietnam War with all its lies and disinformation. The many books that I shall refer to will trace that road to perdition by the grace of intelligent, fearless investigators for whom truth is indispensable for living. At the same time we must take into account that the government can spy on its citizens under new powers given it by the Patriot Act which eliminated the checks and balances that gave courts the opportunity to ensure that these powers were not abused. Also Bush Jr. changed the Executive Order governing the release of Presidential records by drastically restricting public access to them. Governments that hide their doings from the people they serve are criminal in nature and destructive in action.

The Kennedy Assassinations

Laurent Guyenol’s The Unspoken Kennedy Truth (2020, 2023) offers a point of departure for our study. Lyndon Baines Johnson is the prime plotter behind the assassinations — an airtight conclusion that Guyenol makes.

What were Johnson’s motives? Johnson’s dream before entering politics was to become president, which seemed quixotic since he came from Texas, a poor and politically weak state. When Jack Kennedy decided to run on the Democratic ticket for president, he was pressured against his will to take Johnson as Vice-president or he would lose the support of powerful politicians in his party. Johnson saw the vice-presidency as his sole path to the presidency. Nearing the end of his first term in office, Kennedy decided to dump Johnson in favour of a running mate who would not undermine him as Johnson often did. Johnson was facing prosecution for various crimes about to be revealed in court by two of his sidekicks so that it was imperative that he be president to quash those cases. Kennedy wanted to close down the CIA and reform the secret services whose deceit about their attacks on Cuba had brought the nation to the brink of nuclear war with Russia. Kennedy fired Dulles and his aides which earned him their enmity and refused to entertain the war mongers comprising his military advisers such as General LeMay, which earned their hatred. Kennedy and Russian president Khrushchev secretly worked together to rid the world of nuclear weapons, which meant defying the militant forces in their governments which expected to earn riches by their manufacture. Johnson sided with these forces to gain their political support. When Kennedy pressured Israel to stop developing nuclear weapons to maintain his goal of a nuclear-free world, Israel saw him as an enemy to be replaced by Johnson whose Jewish background made him a fierce supporter. Kennedy also angered the organized crime element throughout the nation which answered to the Meyer Lansky Jewish mafia because his brother as attorney-general had prosecuted many mafia in an effort to free the nation of their influence in politics and business. Johnson, however, was allied with these criminal elements and depended on their support to win elections. He relied on their cooperation in getting rid of Kennedy and his brother Bobby. Finally, Kennedy intended to withdraw American troops from Vietnam and shortly before his assassination drew up an order to that effect. To avoid the violent blow-back from the military and weapons-makers who would have sabotaged his re-election, Kennedy would make it public after his re-election. Johnson was on the side of the warriors and, if he knew of the order he would have alerted his allies to encourage their cooperation in the planned assassination.

Kennedy distrusted Johnson and may have known some of Johnson’s murderous past. He probably did not suspect Johnson of murdering him, although he was loath to go to Texas to mend the political antagonisms there, which Johnson insisted that he do. Kennedy did remark to friends about the horrors that would descend on the country if Johnson were president. (See LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip F. Nelson)