$4(3) Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel the Rise of Islamophobia in America

By Faiz Shakir - Posting #164 :o

Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America.

The authors — Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and myself — worked to expose the Islamophobia network in depth, name the major players, connect the dots, and trace the genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda.

The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” lifts the veil behind the hate, follows the money, and identifies the names of foundations who have given money, how much they have given, and who they have given to:

* THE FUNDERS

* THE AMOUNT

* THE RECIPIENTS

1. Donors Capital Fund

$20,768,600

Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), Middle East Forum (MEF), Clarion Fund (Clarion), David Horowitz Freedom Center (Horowitz)

2. Richard Scaife Foundations

$7,875,000

Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation (CTSERF), Center for Security Policy (CSP), Horowitz

3. Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

$5,370,000

MEF, CSP, Horowitz

4. Russell Berrie Foundation

$3,109,016

IPT, CTSERF, MEF

5. Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund

$2,818,229

IPT,CTSERF, MEF, CSP, Clarion, Horowitz

6. Fairbook Foundation

$1,498,450

IPT, MEF, CSP, Jihad Watch, Horowitz, American Congress for Truth

7. Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundations

$1,136,000

IPT, CTSERF, MEF, CSP, Clarion, Horowitz, American Congress for Truth

Total

$42,575,295

The money has flowed into the hands of five key “experts” and “scholars” who comprise the central nervous system of anti-Muslim propaganda:

FRANK GAFFNEY, Center for Security Policy – “A mosque that is used to promote a seditious program, which is what Sharia is…that is not a protected religious practice, that is in fact sedition.” [Source]

DAVID YERUSHALMI, Society of Americans for National Existence: “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…the Muslim peoples,BOLDthose committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” [Source]

DANIEL PIPES, Middle East Forum: “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” [Source]

ROBERT SPENCER, Jihad Watch: “Of course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.” [Source]

STEVEN EMERSON, Investigative Project on Terrorism: “One of the world’s great religions — which has more than 1.4 billion adherents — somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” [Source]

These five “scholars” are assisted in their outreach efforts by Brigitte Gabriel (founder, ACT! for America), Pamela Geller (co-founder, Stop Islamization of America), and David Horowitz (supporter of Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch). As the report details, information is then disseminated through conservative organizations like the Eagle Forum, the religious right, Fox News, and politicians such as Allen West and Newt Gingrich.

Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.

To explain how the Islamophobia network operates, we’ve produced this video to show just one example of how they have mainstreamed the baseless and unfounded fear that Sharia may soon replace American laws:

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Muslims Didn't Do 9/11!

First They Came

Cover Letter - The Ominous Parallels 07.03.07

Who Are The Real Terrorist?: America’s FBI Goes Rogue

The Real Terrorist: The Informants

MUSLIM FOR 30 DAYS part 1

The Wahhabi Movement

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Religious Oppression And Intolerance In China

Peeling the 9/11 Onion: Layers of Plots within Plots

By Jim Fetzer - Posting #163

One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed and nothing can be known… nothing of significance, that is.– E. Martin Schotz, HISTORY WILL NOT ABSOLVE US

9/11 appears to have been a classic “false flag” operation in which an attack is planned by one source but blamed upon another. In this case, the evidence suggests neo-cons in the Department of Defense and their allies in the Mossad were actually responsible for the execution of the atrocities of 9/11. That story was buried, however, in a surfeit of alternative explanations for which the evidence was far more tenuous but which were of much greater political utility. And in each case, qualified experts uncovered evidence that induced sincere but false beliefs that they were “the real deal”.

The situation encountered with regard to 9/11 turns out to be far more sophisticated than the efforts that were made to divert attention from the conspirators in the case of the assassination of JFK, where “Track #1”, as we might call it, implicated Lee Harvey Oswald as “the lone assassin”. Track #2 suggested that he working for Fidel Castro and that Cuba had done it. Track #3 was redirected domestically to encompass the mob, while Track #4 targeted the Soviet Union. But these were superficial distractions for which most of the evidence was flimsy and inconclusive. 9/11 presents a greater challenge to unpack, because in this case, planted evidence was more extensive and appeared to be real.

Deep black covert operations, of course, are by their very nature shrouded in layers of secrecy, protected by the “need to know” and sensitive compartmented information (SCI). Since WWII, however, major covert operations have become increasingly sophisticated and new models have been developed which take full advantage of the extensive national security laws and practices guaranteed under the National Security Acts of 1947 and 1952. The experts who create these plots are specialists in PSYOPS, which entails accessing, stimulating and manipulating the subconscious minds of the target population as a single unit in order to create beliefs and instill motivations in the public mind that are necessary to support of their actions but would normally be viewed as unacceptable.

This is related to Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”. When basic primal survival fears are activated in the “group mind” of the masses, this fear induces the motivation for a population to willingly give up their rights and liberty even for merely the promise of more protection from the boogeymen. This principal is the basis for successful PSYOPS. The use of multi-track intermeshed, deep-black covert operations also creates massive cognitive dissonance among federal investigators, private researchers and the public, which typically eventually results in folks abandoning the issue and going away in “quiet desperation”, which is the actual intended result of those who plan and activate them.

Deep Black/False Flag Ops

The “shroud of secrecy” they afford provides perfect cover to plan and carry out these sophisticated multi-track deep black covert operations and keep them secret–even from those operatives who are involved as well as the government’s own agents who do the investigations. The “national security” cover can be dropped on any matter that is at risk of being disclosed to the public and then can be invoked again at any time. Thus, alphabets who discover what really happened can be silenced and the media can be gagged with the delivery of a “national security letter”.

One of the greatest advances in deep black, false flag/stand-down covert operations has been the development of a new, more complex design, best referred to as “multi-track, enmeshed”. This involves using a complicated design with independent covert operations, each of which could individually do the job if they were actually “taken live”. These operations, however, are designed to be enmeshed at the nexus of the actual target, at which point some are de-activated and one or more taken live.

This can completely confound even the most seasoned investigators, thus creating so much conflict among researchers that these emergent conflicts between them provide the best cover possible for what was actually done and how it was done. Multi-track and interwoven deep black covert operations are therefore designed from the very start to obfuscate the actual operation that is selected and taken live, thereby denying most intel and government officials as well as the public any real knowledge of the actual operational purpose and information about the covert operation or why a particular covert operation was taken live as the predominant op.

As an illustration, when we attempt to peel the 9/11 onion, we discover there are at least five different alternative theories for which evidence has emerged, where each of them has sincere supporters who falsely believe that they have found critical evidence about that happened on 9/11. Each of these is actually one plot of many plots, which were deliberately contrived to creating sufficient confusion that everything about 9/11 turns out to be believable and nothing is knowable. Such deep black cover op designs can thereby provide sufficient “after the fact” cover to keep the truth buried in confusion forever.

Palestinians Did It

Cover Story #1: Palestinians Did It! Efforts were being made before the Twin Towers were destroyed to imply Palestinian responsibility for commandeering those planes and committing those crimes, which may have taken the lives of as many as 3,000 citizens and employees. Those who were watching closely saw archival footage of Palestinians rejoicing on a festive occasion being broadcast as though it were contemporaneous to convey the impression—meant to be indelible—that the Palestinian people had taken pleasure at inflicting misery on America.

An early report from CNN even asserted that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine had claimed responsibility for 9/11—and that was before Flight 175 had hit the South Tower! So during that brief interval between the first hit on the North Tower at 8:46:40 and the second on the South Tower at 9:03:11, a propaganda operation to implicate the Palestinians was well under way. The immediate availability of this report and video footage indicates the direction in which responsibility for these attacks was originally intended to be cast

And that might have become the official cover story, were it not for observant residents near Liberty State Park in New Jersey who watched as five young men, dressed in Arab garb, filmed the destruction of the Twin Towers, cheering and celebrating, which came across as odd behavior, under the circumstances. When they were apprehended in a white van from Urban Moving Systems, the driver would inform the arresting officer that they were not the problem: “We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem.”

They were found to have $4,700 in cash, box cutters, and foreign passports in their possession. Urban Moving Systems would subsequently be identified as a Mossad front. After 71 days of incarceration, the Dancing Israelis would be released and return to Israel, where three of them would go on TV there and explain that their purpose had been to document the destruction of the Twin Towers. Once they had been arrested, however, the story was quietly dropped. It was just too revealing that Israel had been profoundly involved in the events of 9/11.

Arab Hijackers Did It

Cover Story #2: 19 Arab Hijackers Did It. If these attacks could not be blamed on the Palestinians without revealing Israeli complicity, the fall back was effortless. We know “the official account”—that nineteen Islamic terrorists hijacked four commercial carriers, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world and perpetrated these atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan. It would turn out that 15 of the 19 alleged terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and none were from Iraq.

But that would not matter in the grand scheme of things, where Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld would push 9/11 as a justification for attacking Iraq. Not only was the public being fed false information about weapons of mass destruction and collusion with al Qaeda, but the national press was oblivious to the obvious question that remained unaddressed by government officials or the main stream media: If 15 of 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the UAE, one from Lebanon and Egypt, then why were we attacking Iraq?

Even our own FBI would eventually acknowledge that it had no “hard evidence” that Osama bin Laden had had anything to do with 9/11. But the range of evidence that exonerates al Qaeda and implicates the Bush/Cheney administration in these crimes has become as broad as it is deep. Elias Davidsson, for example, has shown that the US government had never produced evidence that the alleged “hijackers” were even aboard those four planes. Muslims. David Ray Griffin, the leading expert on 9/11 in the world today, has shown that the alleged phone calls from those planes were faked, where even our own FBI has confirmed that Barbara Olsen never spoke to her husband, Ted.

Leslie Raphael has offered reason after reason for concluding that the Jules Naudet film was staged. The evidence that no planes crashed in Shanksville or hit the Pentagon is beyond reasonable doubt, where others have shown that the videos of Flight 175 hitting the South Tower are fake, which may have been a brilliant stroke to generate dissension within the 9/11 Truth movement, since the truth of video fakery has proven to be politically divisive. The scientific evidence disproving the official account is also abundant and compelling. Given what we know now, anyone who continues to believe the “official account” of 9/11 is either unfamiliar with the evidence or cognitively impaired.

Pakistan/Turkey/Saudi Arabia

Cover Story #3. The Pakistanis Did It. This track was based upon the supposition that well-financed Pakistani intel were able to buy expensive “K Street” lobbyists and gain influence with high officials in the government and Department of Defense, who had much to gain from a “staged terror attack” such as 9/11. It was the next layer of the onion to be peeled when and if the Arab hijackers story wouldn’t work any longer and was initiated by the revelation that Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, had wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, allegedly the lead hijacker, at the direction General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). As Michael Meecher has observed, it is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. It certainly raises the prospect that the ISI was deeply involved and possibly responsible for the events of 9/11. Even if it were true, however, it cannot begin to account for the causal nexus that brought about 9/11 or identify those who were “pulling the strings”.

“Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers,” Meecher writes, “was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to “retire” by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn’t the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?” Although a number of reasons have been advanced for not taking this story seriously, Meecher mentions a number of sources who have information that might or might not implicate the ISI and expose those who were behind 9/11, the most important of whom appears to be former FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, who has recently been speaking out.

Edmonds, a 33-year-old Turkish-American linguist, who is fluent in both Turkish and Azerbaijani, has tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. While Sibel has been under gag orders forbidding her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or of the countries involved, she has said. “My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information … if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] … and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up”.

Revelations claimed to emerge from her case have been described as being explosive, including “that foreign operatives" who were working in the translation department been tried to recruit her for their operations; that there exists a nuclear spy ring aided and abetted by high ranking US government officials who have been selling America’s nuclear secrets on the black market; that foreign language intelligence directly pertaining to 9/11 was deliberately withheld from FBI agents in the field; that Osama bin Laden had an ‘intimate relationship’ with the United Stages government right up until 9/11.” While most of this is probably true, the theory of the case that she appears to imply—that Turkey (with assistance from actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia) had been using Bin Laden and the Taliban as a proxy terrorist army to promote its own agenda—may be true in its own right, but based upon the totality of what we know now, does not begin to approach an explanation for the stand-down by NORAD, for example, or of how the demolitions were situated or the post-attack cover-ups.

The US “Let it Happen”

Cover Story #4: It was allowed to happen. The distinction between “LIHOP” (let it happen on purpose) and “MIHOP“ (made it happen on purpose) has been powerfully reinforced by the “Able Danger” contretemps. As a highly classified, anti-terrorist intelligence operation, Able Danger fell under Special Operations (SOCOM) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) control. When claims arose that the US had had advanced knowledge of 9/11 and had allowed it to happen, a 16-month investigation by the Senate Intelligence committee reported in December 2006 that there had been no knowledge of the 9/11 attacks by US authorities.

The evidence, however, indicates that was not the case—and, indeed, that the events of 9/11 were orchestrated and staged by elements within the Department of Defense with help from their friends in the Mossad. As the 10th observance of 9/11 approaches, we know that there were a minimum of two independent deep cover covert operations which were operating on dual track, parallel and also interwoven. The first one was the creation and tracking—principally by the Mossad—of some “low tech” terrorist cells, which were set up, financed, and trained by US and other intelligence agencies.

“Able Danger” discovered this low-tech terror cell sub-track, which we can call “Track A”. The operation was designed to be discovered to create false cover, so that when 9/11 succeeded, it could be shown by information discovered by a bona fide intelligence group that this terror cell was responsible. That would be the role played by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, other members of the “Able Danger” team, and Coleen Rowley of the FBI in Minneapolis. Track A, however, was designed to be discovered and then the investigation stopped, creating the image of high-level US incompetence that had allowed this terror cell to succeed in hijacking aircraft with box-cutters and then flying those aircraft into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

When the folks from “Able Danger” swear that they uncovered “a real terrorist cell plot”, they are telling the truth. It was set up this way as a false track. When Coleen Rowley expresses frustration because she could not obtain a search warrant for the hard drive of Zacarias Moussaui because he was involved in this terror cell, she was telling the truth. But Track A was set up as a false track to be terminated before the 9/11 attacks to provide a convincing cover story for the highest levels of US intelligence and make the government appear to be merely hugely incompetent. After all, how could government officials of this incompetence have staged a successful and effective covert operation?

The US “Made it Happen”

Actual Story: The US “Made it Happen”. Track B, by comparison, was a high-tech track designed to use readiness exercises on 9/11, including some 17 anti-terrorist drills on 9/11 that disrupted communication and coordination between NORAD and the FAA, by taking some of them live and substituting high-tech weapons and in order to target the Twin Towers and the Pentagon by that means. Track B involved the use of numerous different demolition means, including incendiaries and multiple modes of destruction, most of which alone would be insufficient cause for the detonation of the Twin Towers, which was arguably used to induce false leads confusing investigators and researchers.

A perfect example turns out to be the “hard science” 9/11 Truth group’s insistence that nanothermite was the principal element used in the demolition of the Twin Towers. This position, which has assumed a status akin to that of a dogma within the 9/11 movement, turns out to be unsustainable in light of research that has established that nanothermite is non-explosive—or, at best, a feeble explosive—and cannot have been responsible for blowing the towers apart, for ejecting massive steel assemblies hundreds of feet, or for the pulverization of concrete or the destruction of steel by means of shockwaves. To a bona fide explosives expert, the claim that nanothermite provided the explosive energy or enough shockwave velocity to perform these tasks had to be an obvious deception. If it was deliberately planted to divert research on 9/11 along an ultimately unproductive line, it may have succeeded beyond the wildest intel dreams as a classic “red herring”.

Another example, surprisingly, is the Pentagon attack, where some of those within the 9/11 community have argued strenuously for not going there, because the Department of Defense might spring a new video on the public that proves a Boeing 757 actually did hit the building. The evidence contradicting that contention is abundant and compelling, however, including the expert assessment of Major General Albert N. Stubblebine, USA (ret.), perhaps the world’s leading expert on image analysis and interpretation, who has concluded that no plane hit the Pentagon. When you take all the evidence into account, the case against a plane is staggering, but internal dissension has precluding using it— and other powerful proofs of governmental fakery —and has taken this evidence out of the public domain:

“From the photographs I have analyzed very, very carefully,” Stubblebine has explained, “it was not an airplane.” During an interview in Germany, he explained that there should have been wing marks on the façade of the Pentagon. “If it had wings, it would have left wing marks. [There are] those who claim that the plane tilted and hit the ground first and lost a wing. But airplanes have two wings, and he could not find indications of any wing in any of those photographs.” Regarding the Twin Towers, he added, “Look at the buildings falling—they didn”t fall down because of an airplane hit them. They fell down because explosives went off inside. Demolition. Look at Building 7, for God’s sake.”

Whistleblowing as Deception

The politics of 9/11, however, are far more murky than the science. So when folks from Able Danger swear that they uncovered a real terror cell plot, they are telling the truth. It was set up this way as a false track. When a Colleen Rowley expresses frustration because she could not get a search warrant for Moussaui’s hard-drive because he was involved in this terror cell, she is telling the truth. When a Sibel Edmonds is gagged by court order and tries to tell how certain how administration officials were communicating with this terror cell, she is telling the truth. Indeed, the effort to mislead our own experts even extended to Richard Clarke, who has explained that he himself had been given the false impression that, apart from a few analysts, the CIA had been unaware of what was going on prior to 9/11, which was intended to support the theory of US incompetence.

Clarke, who was the nation’s leading anti-terrorism expert, recently observed, “It’s not as I originally thought, which was that one lonely CIA analyst got this information and didn’t somehow recognize the significance of it,” Clarke said during an interview. “No, fifty, 5-0, CIA personnel knew about this. Among the fifty people in CIA who knew these guys were in the country was the CIA director. … We therefore conclude that there was a high-level decision inside CIA ordering people not to share that information. … It is also possible, as some FBI investigators suspect, the CIA was running a joint venture with Saudi intelligence in order to get around that restriction … These are only theories about the CIA’s failures to communicate vital information to the bureau … Perhaps the agency decided that Saudi intelligence would have a better chance of recruiting these men than the Americans. That would leave no CIA fingerprints on the operation as well.”

Indeed, as Ian Henshall has observed, if you substitute the Mossad for the Saudis, you have the explanation for the dancing Israelis, who were apprehended for filming and celebrating during the destruction of the Twin Towers and were released later under orders from Michael Chertoff, then an advisor Attorney General John Ashcroft and a dual US-Israel citizen, who would become Director of the new Department of Homeland Security—which leads directly to reports like those from Dr. Steve Pieczenik that 9/11 was indeed “an inside job” and studies like those from Alan Sabrosky, Ph.D., who has explain that 9/11 involved complicity between neo-con Zionists in the Department of Defense and the Mossad, where Israel had very powerful motives for 9/11 and, along with the Bush/Cheney administration, has been its primary beneficiary.

But Israel cannot have done this alone. The NORAD “stand down” and the attack on the Pentagon required complicity at the highest levels of the Department of Defense. And the benefits to the Bush/Cheney administration have likewise been enormous. As Patrick Martin has observed, “Without 9/11, there would be no US occupation of Iraq, putting an American army squarely at the center of the world’s largest pool of oil. Without 9/11, there would be no US bases across Central Asia, guarding the second largest source of oil and gas. And without 9/11, the Bush administration would have been unable to sustain itself politically, faced with a deteriorating economy and widespread opposition to its tax cuts for millionaires and social measures to appease the fundamentalist Christian Right.”

The Fourth Reich

Indeed, the extreme motivation of a small number of radical Israelis and their lobbies like AIPAC to manipulate US foreign policy in the Mideast may have created huge future trap for them in their role as “classic cutouts”, which can be later exposed in a limited hangout admission in order to direct blame toward the Mossad and the small number of radical Jews involved, who do not represent most Jewish folks at all, thus directing blame away from from those who used them in their cutout role and who were actually at the top of the command structure. This limited hangout disclosure could then later be used to blame all Jews and add them to the large and growing Homeland Security watch-list list of possible domestic terrorists such as Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, returning veterans, Ron Paul supporters, Constitutionalists and tax protestors, and member of any current social group that is trying to gain exposure and cessation of rampant government corruption and creeping tyranny of the government at all levels, which of course encompasses those dedicated to 9/11 Truth.

Attn: Jon Gold - [by Jpass on Mon, 2009-04-13: 'FOOTNOTE 44' - More Fake Truth?]

theepitbull@ August 13th, 2011 at 7:33 pm [Censored Comment]

1. Submitted by gretavo on Wed, 2009-04-15 19:38.: Breitweiser focuses on Footnote 44 of the Commission report, which "proved that the CIA deliberately withheld information from the FBI about two of the terrorists who would go on to become 9/11 hijackers." The footnote indicates a CIA desk officer instructed an FBI agent not to send a cable with information about Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi to his colleagues at FBI headquarters.

2. Submitted by gretavo on Wed, 2009-04-15 19:46.: I'd like to give Ms. Breitweiser the benefit of the doubt, but she needs to make clear that what Footnote 44 is most likely concealing is the fact that the arabs in question were being "saved for later" when they would be falsely accused. NOT that they were being helped to carry out their "real mission" of "hijacking commercial aircraft on 9/11", which is simply put an unproven and highly suspect allegation.

3. Submitted by theepitbull@ August 13th, 2011 at 7:33 pm : For emphasis, this latest revelation thread spreads the "meme" that the FBI didn't know, puts in place a "false" paradigm of blame between the CIA and FBI and sensationalizes this latest revelation for other purposes than just truth.

Sorry, but, I ain't buying it!

In my humble opinion

(((3)))

PS: Link of the week: http://www.positivelypresent.com/2010/06/start-thinking-clearly.html

It does not take a PSYOPS expert to discern the pattern here when Richard Clarke resuscitates the incompetence theory, according to which the US “let 9/11 happen”. Even on the assumption that he is sincere, we have a fall-back position intended to minimize concern for complicity by the Bush/Cheney administration and its friends in the Mossad—who, moreover, do not necessarily represent the highest level of control over the atrocities of 9/11.

"Because Clarke was in the crucial position of being the nation’s anti-terrorism czar, his affirmations about incompetence between agencies, such as the CIA and the FBI, come across to the public and can be widely promoted as admirable and courageous acts of whistle blowing, when their role in deceiving the public drowns amidst the anguish and concern that “if only we had done better” and “we must not let this happen again”, oblivious of the role that his reports are playing in burying the truth about 9/11".

We have now reached the point in America where any citizen or group wanting to obtain needed social justice, or the cessation of undeclared, unprovoked, and unConstitutional wars, in violation of international law and the UN Charter, are now placed on a secret watch list and considered as “potential domestic terrorists” by Homeland Security, which some—with ample justification—view as “The New American Gestapo.” If the US has been hijacked by offshore corporate and banking interests, which have their own anti-American agenda and are now in the process of Nazifying America, as some astute researchers have suggested, then certainly this could lead to a “Fourth Reich” run by offshore banks and large international corporations and we could see a replay of the unlimited persecution of minorities and special scapegoats such as specific groups such as Muslims, Jews and Christians who dissent from The New Tyranny.

So If you have wondered why covert operations like 9/11 are so difficult to unravel or why it is all but impossible to convince the feds who investigated it that this was actually a US false flag/stand-down/inside-job, deep-black covert operation, the answer to that question appears to be that the plan was designed from conception to obfuscate what happened, not only regarding the public but also the government’s own experts, who would be assigned to investigate them—and even to keep most of those who had an actual part in those operations in the dark, so only those at the highest levels of the government knew what happened and, even among them, only a few probably knew the full dimensions of the plan. The objective throughout, accordingly, has always been to keep the public in a state of uncertainly, where everything about these events is believable and nothing is knowable—which is the ultimate objective of disinformation.

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a former Marine Corps officer and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Preston James is the pseudonym of a Ph.D. in social psychology, who has become an expert on psy-ops, “false flag” and covert operations by the US government.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: 9/11 Unveiled (part 1 of 10): Attack, Response

9/11: The Clarke/Tenet Deception Gambit :o

Able Danger

Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11 :o

There is no evidence that Muslims committed the crime of 9/11

Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners

Jules Naudet's 9/11 Film was Staged

Inside Job: Seven Questions About 9/11

New Proof of Video Fakery on 9/11

Overview of New 9/11 Research

Inside Job: More Proof of 9/11 Duplicity

Pakistan's ISI Link to 9/11 Funding

FBI Translator Access to Wiretaps of Surveillance Targets with Whom She Has Links

FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Invited by Co-Worker to Become Member of Group that Is Under Federal Investigation

US State Dept Official Helped Pass Nuclear Secrets to Turkey, Pakistan, Israel

Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery :o

Translator Alleges FBI Agent Is Deliberately Deceived Regarding Skyscraper Warning

A Sibel Edmonds 'Bombshell' - Bin Laden Worked for U.S. Until 9/11 :o

Is “9/11 Truth” Based Upon a False Theory?

Major General Albert Stubblebine: Towers Fell Down Because of Explosives

White House Whistleblower Richard Clarke - PsyOps 101

More Evidence of Government Complicity in 9/11 Attacks :o

Clarke Airs Suspicions Over Sept. 11 Intel Failures - PsyOps 101

" Arbeit Macht Frei " Jailing Immigrant$ I$ Big Busine$$

By Gabriel Lerner - Posting #162

LOS ANGELES -- At dawn on July 19, nearly 40 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Immigration (HSI) agents burst into the home home of Carmen Bonilla, 44. The agents were searching for "Robert" an alleged drug dealer, but ended up terrifying Bonilla and her son Michael, 16, daughter Josefina, 23, daughter-in-law Leticia, 28, and her granddaughters.

According to Jessica Dominguez, the family's lawyer, and Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesperson of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the family was subjected to "different levels of physical and verbal abuse," including screaming, "kicking, beating and aggression." Their treatment was documented last week by HuffPost LatinoVoices' Jorge Luis Macías.

What happened to the Bonillas has happened to thousands of immigrant families. Immigration authorities -- both local police and federal ICE agents -- have embarked on a program to seek out "criminal illegal aliens" and, whether they find them or not, have often rounded up entire families for deportation.

Even though the Bonilla family members do not have criminal records, they face removal proceedings before an immigration judge. The family was able to find legal representation and general public support, enabling their release from ICE custody, but undocumented immigrants who are less lucky are routinely sent to prisons and detention centers where ICE will process their paperwork and decide whether they may be released.

"If they have a criminal record, particularly a drug or security-related conviction, or a felony or violent crime, or crime of moral turpitude, they will likely have to remain in custody until their trial before the [immigration judge]," explained Aggie R. Hoffman, an immigration attorney.

The Department of Homeland Security pays between $50 to $200 per day per person to local, county and state prisons to house apprehended aliens. A few years ago, a series I wrote for La Opinión showed how prisons in general, and California's prisons in particular, benefit from the largesse of the federal government and vie for a piece of this lucrative business. At that time, I visited a detention center in Lancaster, Calif., run by the Sheriff of Los Angeles, where immigrants rounded up in raids were housed until their deportation or legal proceedings. The process is supposed to take just a few days, but some of the detainees rushed to tell me that they had been kept there for more than two years.

"This happens frequently because the courts are so backlogged; not enough judges to hear the cases of those being held", explained Hoffman.

But the incarceration trend is not limited to public prisons. Thanks to a concerted lobbying push from the corrections industry, growing numbers of undocumented immigrants could end up in private detention facilities.

Over the past three years, immigration politics has seen more restrictive legislation at the state level and the unprecedented enforcement of current laws by the Obama administration. Together, the laws and the stepped up enforcement have the potential to bring tens of thousands of individuals into for-profit jails.

The recent animated video "Immigrants for Sale" by the activist group Cuéntame illustrates some facts behind the connection between the ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration and the for-profit corrections industry.

The video follows the trail of money and political power behind this piece of the national immigration debate. Its creators say it's an attempt to uncover what lies behind the positions and ideologies in a discussion in which statements and accusations made at maximum volume have long replaced the open exchange of ideas and opinions.

"Cuéntame means 'tell me your story,'" said the group's founder, producer/director Axel Woolfolk Caballero. He said the organization works to make an impact through short videos, docu-series, media campaigns and "interviews from the street or in our studio or sent to us by others." Cuéntame is part of the Brave New Foundation, which focuses on social justice media.

The video states that behind the words and laws, there is an alliance of businesses and politicians called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Some of ALEC's members are both the most ardent proponents of anti-immigration laws and representatives of the industries that will benefit directly from having more people behind bars. At least 12 companies involved in the corrections industry are members of the alliance.

ALEC was created in 1978 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. According to the group's mission statement, it is "a non-profit, private organization dedicated to principles of free markets, limited government, federalism (the proper balance of federal and state government), and individual liberty." ALEC achieves these aims through a exchange of ideas between state politicians and business leaders, facilitating the legislative process around certain causes dear to the latter. Through one of ALEC’s eight committees, lawyers and business experts actually write laws that are later enacted almost verbatim.

Each year, ALEC produces approximately 1000 legislative proposals, 20 percent of which eventually become laws, according to the group. The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch reports: "98% of ALEC's funding comes from corporations like Exxon Mobil, corporate 'foundations' like the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, or trade associations like the pharmaceutical industry's PhRMA."

Cuéntame focuses on ALEC members' use of political pressure to achieve more restrictive immigration laws, which require longer detentions and a larger number of detainees.

Some of ALEC's model bills include the "three Strikes" law, changes in mandatory minimum sentences and "truth-in-sentencing," which would further eliminate the possibility of parole for many inmates.

Yet ALEC rejects the idea that it promotes increased construction of private prisons. In a statement last October, the group said, "ALEC’s position on prison overcrowding ... is to reduce the non-violent prison population in order to save taxpayer costs."

One of the best known legislative members of ALEC is State Senator Russell Pearce, a proponent of Arizona's very restrictive immigration law, SB 1070. According to an investigation by NPR, Pearce took his version of the legislation to an ALEC meeting, where it was then revised and adapted by members of the corrections industry, obtaining their unqualified support.

SB 1070 has been imitated by similar laws -- some even stricter and more encompassing -- in at least five other states. These include HB 56 in Alabama, Utah's Compact / HB 497, Indiana's SB 590, Georgia's HB 87 and South Carolina's S 20.

ALEC is now working on a series of laws concerning prisons, including The Housing Out-of-State Prisoners in a Private Prison Act; The Prison Industries Act; The Inmate Labor Disclosure Act; A Resolution on Prison Expenditures; a Model State Bill Prohibiting Wireless Handsets in Prisons; the Targeted Contracting for Certain Correctional Facilities and Services Act; and the Prevention of Illegal Payments to Inmates Incentives Act, details of which are restricted to ALEC members only.

One of ALEC's members is Corrections Corporation of America, the country's largest for-profit prison company, founded in 1983. CCA designs, builds, manages and operates correctional facilities and detention centers on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Marshal Service in nearly half of all states, according to the company's website.

According to Cuéntame, CCA houses about 60 percent of the almost 100,000 -- up from 14,000 in 2006 -- immigrant detainees at any given time.

In 2008, the New Yorker published an expose drawing attention businesses involved in the imprisonment of families with children in the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Texas, a CCA facility.

CCA, together with other prison companies GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation, owns more than 200 private prisons with 150,000 beds and makes an annual profit of $5 billion, Cuéntame found.

"Private prisons profit like a hotel," the video states. "The more occupants they can throw in, the more money comes out."

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit Thanks Senator For This:)

Prison-industrial complex [The MotherLoad]

Privatized Prisons...Criminal in a Democracy

How Prisons Imperil Black Voting Power in Post-Katrina Louisiana

HoW CoMpAnIe$ MaKe MoNeY OfF PrI$OnEr$ - " ArBeIt MaChT FrEi "

The Prison Industrial Complex Part I

The Prison Industrial Complex – Part II

Google Hands Over European User Data to US Intelligence Agencies

By Softpedia - Posting #161

Google has admitted complying with requests from US intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers, most likely in violation of European Union data protection laws.

Gordon Frazer, Microsoft UK's managing director, made news headlines some weeks ago when he admitted that Microsoft can be compelled to share data with the US government regardless of where it is hosted in the world.

At the center of this problem is the USA PATRIOT ACT, which states that companies incorporated in the United States must hand over data administered by their foreign subsidiaries if requested.

Not only that, but they can be forced to keep quiet about it in order to avoid exposing active investigations and alert those targeted by the probes.

This situation poses a serious problem for companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon, which offer cloud services around the world, because their subsidiaries must also respect local laws.

For example, European Union legislation requires companies to protect the personal information of EU citizens and this is clearly not something that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or any of their EU customers can do.

This is not only a theoretical problem. According to German-language magazine WirtschaftsWoche [Google translate], a Google spokesperson confirmed that the company has complied with requests from US intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers.

The situation is likely to spark an official inquiry from the European Commission, with some members of the European Parliament already reacting to the stories. It's hard to foresee what kind of solution can be found at this point, but one thing's clear - US-based cloud providers operating in EU can be forced to break the law. European companies and government agencies that are using their services are also in a tough position.

Update August 13, 2011: We have been contacted by a Google spokesperson who wished to clarify that the company did not confirm receiving requests for European data from U.S. intelligence agencies. The original statement was apparently misunderstood by the German publication WirtschaftsWoche.

Of course, this does not mean that the company didn't actually receive or comply with such requests. It just doesn't confirm it. We have requested more clarifications and will post them here when and if we receive them.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

U.$./NWO CoNtRoL mAtRiX - $yNtHeTiC eNViRoNmEnT $iMuLaTiOn$ ($w$)

GoOgLeCiAN$Ahole$ ChArGe$ $25 A PeRsoN FoR $uRVeiLlAnCe

GoOgLe: We DiDn'T hElP tHe NSA (Or dId wE?) - "TeMpUs OmNiA ReVeLaT"

GoOgLe/NsAholes/FaCiAeBoOk' PrIvAcY IlLuSiOn - PrIvAcY aNd CoNtRoL

[RECAP] - "RoGuE HaCkEr" aNd BlAcK Op$ - BeHiNd The CyBeRaTtaCk$ oN AmErIcA

ThE Ma$teR MaGiCiAn$-FuNdInG CoVeRt GoVeRnMeNt PrOjEct$

US GoVt SpY PrOgrAm - HiTtInG MaIn CoRe On ThE HeAd!!!

NSA CoNdUcTiNg ElEcTrOnIc WaRfArE On AmErIcAnS

PeRsOnAlItY PrOfIlInG and SiMuLaTiOn - BrAiNWaShInG AmErIcA

CoNtRoLlInG ThE MiNdS oF ThE mAsSeS - OnE wAy ItS dOnE - OnLy In AmErIkA!!!

CoGnItIvE ScIeNcEs LaBoRaToRy - ReSeArCh FoR ThE FuTuRe - OnLy In AmErIkA!!!

Lest We Forget - The Big Picture Beyond U.S. Propaganda

By William Burr - Email: wburr@gwu.edu - Posting #160

The Making of the Cheney Regional Defense Strategy, 1991-1992

Declassified Studies from Cheney Pentagon Show Push for U.S. Military Predominance and a Strategy to "Prevent the Reemergence of a New Rival"

Washington, D.C., February 26, 2008 - The United States should use its power to "prevent the reemergence of a new rival" either on former Soviet territory or elsewhere, declared a controversial draft of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) prepared by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney's Pentagon and leaked to The New York Times in March 1992. Published in declassified form for the first time on the National Security Archive Web site, this draft, along with related working papers, shows how defense officials during the administration of George H. W. Bush, under the direction of Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Resources I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby tried to develop a strategy for maintaining U.S. preponderance in the new post-Cold War, post-Soviet era.

Remarkably, these new releases censor a half dozen large sections of text that The New York Times printed on March 8, 1992, as well as a number of phrases that were officially published by the Pentagon in January 1993. "On close inspection none of those deleted passages actually meet the standards for classification because embarrassment is not a legal basis for secrecy," remarked Tom Blanton, director of the Archive." The language that the Times publicized can be seen side-by-side with the relevant portions of the February 18, 1992 draft (see document 3 below) that was the subject of the leak.

In its initial response to the Archive's mandatory review request, the Department of Defense exempted from declassification all of the documents in this case on the grounds that they were "pre-decisional" in nature. When the Archive appealed the denials, we sent copies of The New York Times coverage of the leaked DPG, including the extensive excerpts from the February 18, 1992 draft. The appeal was successful because the Defense Department released considerable material on the Defense Planning Guidance; nevertheless Pentagon officials blacked out information that the Times had already published. (see sidebar).

The documents recently declassified by the Defense Department in response to the Archive's appeal provide an inside view of the making of the Defense Planning Guidance from September 1991 to May 1992, when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz approved it. Writing in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the group of Republican-oriented officials that produced the Guidance wanted to preserve the unique position of American predominance that was emerging. With the leak of a draft in March 1992 and the resulting public controversy over the language about preventing a "new rival," "Scooter" Libby and his colleagues recast the document so that it would pass public scrutiny while meeting Richard Cheney's requirements for a strategy of military supremacy. Believing that military spending at Cold War levels was no longer possible, Cheney and his advisers wanted to develop lower-cost strategies and plans to prevent future global threats to American power and interests. To protect U.S. territory, citizens, and military forces from attack, to back up security guarantees to allies, and to "preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests," the authors of the Guidance argued that the United States had to:

▪ Pursue the "military-technological revolution" to preserve its superiority in the latest weapons systems (e.g., smart munitions)

▪ Sustain the "forward" presence of U.S. ground, air, and naval forces in strategically important areas, to validate commitments, and to provide a capability to respond to crises affecting significant interests, such as freedom of the seas and access to markets and energy supplies

▪ Preserve a smaller but diverse "mix" of survivable nuclear forces to support a global role, validate security guarantees, and deter Russian nuclear forces

▪ Field a missile defense system as a shield against accidental missile launches or limited missile strikes by "international outlaws"

▪ Maintain a capability to reconstitute military forces in the event a regional hegemon threatens to become a global threat

▪ Find ways to integrate the "new democracies" of the former Soviet bloc into the U.S.-led system

▪ Work with allies in NATO Europe and elsewhere but be ready to act unilaterally or with only a few other nations when multilateral and cooperative action proves too "sluggish" to protect vital interests.

The word "preempt" does not appear in the declassified language, but Document 10 includes wording about "disarming capabilities to destroy" which is followed by several excised words. This suggests that some of the heavily excised pages in the still-classified DPG drafts may include some discussion of preventive action against threatening nuclear and other WMD programs. The excisions are currently under appeal at the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP).

The drafts of the Defense Planning Guidance released by the Defense Department show the involvement of a number of senior and mid-level officials in the preparation of the document, some of whom have become well-known as figures in the "neo-conservative" movement. (Note 1) As mentioned earlier, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby played a significant role in the writing process, especially in the final stages. One of the drafters in the early stages was Abram N. Shulsky, a career Pentagon intelligence official, who later became notorious for his association with the Office of Special Plans during the run-up to the Iraq War. Although his name appears rarely in the recent release, a major figure in the writing was Zalmay Khalilzad, director of the Policy Planning Staff in Libby's office. Finally, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz was less involved in preparing the DPG, but had to approve its contents. Nevertheless, the DPG was written for a Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, who was more nationalist than "neo-con," although his thinking dovetails with elements of the neo-conservative outlook. In particular, the documents show (see Documents 6a and 6b) that he was closely involved in overseeing the process, and that Wolfowitz and Libby were careful to ensure that the language, such as on unilateral options, reflected his preferences.

Those who produced the DPG believed it would eventually become a public document that could be used to develop support for the Bush administration's military policy. Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 prevented that discussion. Despite the heavy excisions of these drafts, enough has been declassified to fuel a broader discussion of their meaning—for example, the relationship between the Guidance and neo-conservative ideology, or the extent to which ideas in the documents show continuity with U.S. national security policy, past and present. With respect to the continuity issue, some may argue that the pursuit of military superiority crystallized in the DPG resonates with the concept of national security which developed during the 1940s and which assumed the need for a "preponderance" of American power. (Note 2) Others may argue that the Clinton administration tacitly followed the thrust of the Cheney strategy, and that the emphasis on precluding rivals presages the preemptive doctrine that George W. Bush has tried to turn into an axiom of U.S. policy. (Note 3) According to James Mann, the Guidance helped provide the "rationale" for the policies that the Bush administration has followed since 2001. As Mann wrote in March 2004, the Iraq war "was carried out in pursuit of a larger vision of using America's overwhelming military power to shape the future." (Note 4) The documents raise other questions worth exploring, such as over the role of independent or unilateral action, the relationship between military and political power, and the extent to which superpower status confers diplomatic influence. If ISCAP releases more information from the documents, even more questions may be raised.

Documents

Document 1: Slides for "USDP [Under Secretary of Defense for Policy] Brief to DPRB [Defense Planning Resources Board] on June 5, 1991," Secret

Briefing slides prepared for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz to be used in a presentation to the Defense Planning Resources Board, chaired by Deputy Secretary Donald J. Atwood, provide an overview of the process for preparing the DPG for fiscal years 1994-1998. Designed to take into account the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War, developments in the Soviet Union, and other "regional security challenges," and the implications of the "military-technological revolution" (e.g., emergence of "smart munitions"), the DPG would explain policy goals and military spending priorities for the years ahead. The slides optimistically forecast the completion of the Guidance in December 1991.

Document 2: Memo from Dale A. Vesser to Scooter, "First Draft of DPG," September 3, 1991, Secret, Excised Copy

Retired Army general Dale A. Vesser, who served as Assistant to Principle Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Strategy and Resources) "Scooter" Libby, played a key role in coordinating the DPG writing. As Vesser suggested, the first draft was "uneven," somewhat of a cut and paste job. It included contributions from a variety of working level defense officials, including an overview section prepared by Abram N. Shulsky. Paul Kozemchak, a career official at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was another major contributor. Andrew R. Hoehn, a staffer at Wolfowitz's office (and more recently a vice-president at the RAND Corporation), prepared the section on "The New Defense Strategy" at the end.

Composed in a world where the Soviet Union still existed, although not for long, the opening pages prepared by Shulsky declared that, with the Soviet Union's "internal economic crisis and political collapse," the United States "may be said to be the world's sole superpower." As such, it could not be the policeman of the world, but it would have "preeminent responsibility for addressing those wrongs which threaten not only its interests, but those of its allies and friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations." To preserve its preponderant position, the United States would have to curb regional challenges that—although not as dangerous as the former Soviet threat—could become "more likely." Above all, the United States would have to maintain technological superiority by staying a "generation ahead" in new weapons technology. According to Shulsky, that could mean reduced reliance on nuclear weapons by "developing new, more effective, conventional weapons systems."

The new policy would support alliances and multilateralism, but unilateral action remained a possibility. While the United States would continue to value alliances and working with allies, crises could "develop in areas outside of existing alliance commitments." Washington would try to work through the United Nations to the extent possible, but would retain "the responsibility to act on its own if the situation warrants."

The prospect that the Soviet Union or some other country could someday emerge as a global threat meant that the United States needed to maintain organizational and material resources to reconstitute military forces to "designated level of … capabilities." It was this requirement that led Andrew Hoehn to name the new strategy: "Crisis Response/Reconstitution Strategy." So that regional threats did not become global problems, Hoehn emphasized the importance of strategic nuclear deterrence based on a "diverse mix of survivable forces," a U.S. "forward" military presence at "reduced levels," and a capability to respond to regional crises "on very short notice."

As in the other draft DPGs included in this release, the sections on regional situations, such as Western Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America, are heavily excised.

Document 3: Dale A. Vesser to Secretaries of the Military Departments, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation, and Comptroller of the Department of Defense, "FY 94-98 Defense Planning Guidance Sections for Comment," February 18, 1992, Secret, Excised Copy

[Excerpts from the leaked Defense Planning Guidance that The New York Times published on March 8, 1992, can be compared here with the excised version recently released by the Department of Defense through the National Security Archive’s mandatory review request.]

Drafting continued, but it was not until mid-February that the DPG had reached the point where Vesser was ready to distribute it to senior civilian and military officials at the Pentagon. Although the draft does not credit anyone for writing it, so far Khazilzad has received the most credit, although plainly his draft drew on the earlier work of Shulsky and Kozemchak, among others. While the draft was tighter and shorter, it was in the same conceptual universe. Now, however, it was called a "regional defense strategy" instead of a "Crisis/Response/Reconstitution Strategy." Like the earlier drafts, the possibility of "regional challenges" and the need for strategic deterrence, forward presence, crisis response, technological superiority, and reconstitution were central concepts. The draft, however, put more emphasis on the danger of WMD proliferation.

With the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a "fundamentally new situation," the drafters were preoccupied with identifying and articulating the mix of policies that would preserve the U.S.'s status as the sole superpower. In this respect, the Guidance posited two major policy goals. The first was "to prevent the reemergence of a new rival" for world power, which meant that Washington had to develop a "new order" that met the security, political, and economic interests of potential competitors, including Japan and Western Europe, so they would not feel the need to challenge U.S. "leadership." Moreover, the United States had to develop "mechanisms," such as a reconstitution capability, to deter potential competitors for military predominance. The second objective was to "address sources of regional conflict and instability" that could "unsettle international relations" by threatening U.S. interests or those of allies. The United States would have "preeminent responsibility" in checking threats that could involve proliferation, terrorism, or energy and raw materials sources. While Washington alliances would remain central to U.S. policy, the "United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated" or when a larger collective response needs jump-starting by an "immediate" U.S. response.

A long section of the document, beginning on page 30, details the "minimum military capabilities" that would be needed to support the regional strategy, including appropriate readiness levels, prepositioned supplies, war reserve inventories, strategic deterrence forces, and high priority areas for critical investments in conventional forces.

It was this draft that one of the recipients leaked to New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler sometime before March 7. The next day the Times ran a front-page story, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop." (Note 5) According to Tyler's account, the leaker "believes that this post-Cold War debate should be carried out in the public domain." Because Tyler had the entire document, his story in the Times and an accompanying side-bar included quotations and long passages which the Defense Department has excised in the recent release. Some examples: U.S. nuclear strategy must target "those assets and capabilities that current – and future – Russian leaders or other nuclear adversaries value most." Moreover, "to buttress the vital political and economic relationships we have along the Pacific rim, we must maintain our status as a military power of the first magnitude there." "While the United States supports the goal of European integration, we must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO."

Document 4: "Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999," February 29, 1992, Revised Draft for Scooter Libby, Secret, Excised Copy

This annotated but incomplete draft shows the impact of more editing, but the basic objectives and method, e.g., no "new rival" and the regional strategy, remained the same. This draft, however, introduced language about "strategic depth" that would survive further re-writing. The United States' success in pushing back former global threats, such as the Soviet Union, meant that a new strategic relationship with Eastern Europe and Eurasia was possible. That Washington faced no hostile alliances and that "no region of the world critical to our interests is under hostile non-democratic domination" meant that the United States had "great depth for our strategic position." Through a regional defense strategy, the United States could "take advantage of this position and preserve capabilities needed to keep threats small."

Document 5: Dale A. Vesser to Mr. Libby, "Comments Received on Draft DPG – Potential Issues," March 17, 1992, Secret, Excised Copy

This post-leak draft, with comments from a variety of Pentagon offices, showed the impact of disclosure and controversy, which had unfolded during the previous nine days. White House and State Department officials had called the DPG "dumb," Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams disavowed some of the language, Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) criticized its "Pax Americana" thinking, and some foreign policy analysts observed that the report's "chauvinistic tone" might encourage other powers to try to catch up by procuring advanced weapons systems. (Note 6) Under the weight of the criticism, the wording about preventing a "new rival" disappeared, but, as James Mann has noted, the version worked out by Libby and his associates "contained most of the same ideas as the original" by coming up with "euphemisms in order to make the wording sound less confrontational." For example, instead of "preeminent responsibility," the new version used terms like "U.S. leadership," and "hostile power" instead of "rival."

The section on nuclear deterrence continued to focus on the need for a "hedge" against the emergence of a major threat, but it had a new emphasis on the necessity of missile defenses against the threat of global missile proliferation and the danger of an "accidental or unauthorized missile launch." Broaching the possibility of junking the ABM treaty, Libby's draft raised the prospect of a "day when defenses will protect the community of nations embracing liberal democratic values from international outlaws armed with ballistic missiles."

Document 6a: "Scooter" to Mr. Secretary, circa March 20, 1992, enclosing Libby memorandum to Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, "Draft Defense Planning Guidance," 20 March 1992, enclosing "Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999," Secret, Excised copy

Document 6b: Lewis Libby memorandum for the Secretary through the Undersecretary of Defense (Policy), March 26, 1992, enclosing "Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999," Secret, Excised copy

The draft Guidance that was under discussion during March 1992 was getting closer to the version that would ultimately be released by the Defense Department, with the section on minimum military capabilities shorn off. As Libby explained to Cheney in a detailed cover memorandum on March 20, the draft was as "near to an unclassified text as possible in this stage of drafting." According to the memorandum, "Tab A" was the latest draft of the DPG, while Tabs "B" and "C" were unclassified and classified versions of the secret programming guidance. Neither was attached in the version received by the Archive; instead, Tab "B" was the material sent by Libby to Cheney on March 26 (see "6b" above).

In Libby's personal cover memo to Cheney (see 6a above) he alluded to the criticism that the February 18 draft stood for unilateralism. To counter this, he and Wolfowitz had come up with "more defensible" language found on page 12: "America must plan forces for major contingencies that would enable us to act where prudent and practical even ‘where very few others are with us,' and ‘with only limited additional help.'" Libby argued that there were "no major contingencies" where "we would not have at least political support from some limited number of countries."

The DPG draft that Libby sent Cheney on March 26 responded "more fully" to the Secretary's "guidance," including making the opening pages "sharper and tighter." Perhaps in response to Cheney's comments, the section on "Continued U.S. Leadership" included new wording about working with allies, but left open in explicit language the possibility of unilateral action (as earlier drafts had): "A future U.S. president will need to have options that will allow him to lead, and where the international reaction proves sluggish, or inadequate, to act to protect our critical interests." Further, "we will not ignore the need to be prepared to protect our critical interests and honor our commitments with only limited additional help, or even alone, if necessary." Such language would survive in later drafts.

Document 7: Dale A. Vesser to Mr. Libby, "Extracts from 18 Feb 92 DPG Draft," March 26, 1992, Secret, Excised copy
Believing that despite the controversy some of the February 18 draft still had value, Vesser suggested, first, points that should be reconsidered for including in the final draft, and second, points that were "properly deleted" or recast. One subject that Vesser thought was important was the definition of a "critical region": one "whose resources [and population] could, under consolidated control, generate global power." According to Vesser, that wording is "as thorough and concise as any." Vessey also made suggestions about earlier language on arms control, forward basing, crisis response strategy, and NATO. For example, he recommended reinstatement of the section on arms control, which argued that arms control "will take on new forms in this post-Cold War era," such as "regionally focused initiatives," and other "innovations in approach" to address the problem of WMD proliferation.

Document 8: Dave [David Shilling, Director of Plans] to Mr. Libby, "New Policy Directions in DPG," enclosing paper "New Policy Directions Noted in Draft Defense Planning Guidance," March 24, 1992, Prepared by Andrew Hoehn and Rod Fabrycky, Secret, Excised copy

Possibly used for briefing Cheney or some other senior official, this document provides some of the highlights of recent DPG drafts. Most of the language may be found in the versions cited above, but a few new points appear—for example, that a 7- 8 year "warning time" for the emergence of a major threat would kick in military reconstitution activities.

Document 9: Dale A. Vesser to Mr. Libby, "Abbreviated Scenarios for Inclusion in DPG – Issues?" circa April 11, 1992, Secret, Excised copy

An important element in the DPG process was the development of a scenarios paper that envisioned a number of possible regional crises that posed security threats to the interests of the U.S. and its allies, and the possible U.S. military response to those contingencies. Prepared for "illustrative" purposes, they depicted "plausible future events illustrating the type of circumstances in which the application of U.S. military power might be required." While speculative in nature, the group of scenarios would be used as an "analytic tool for the formulation and assessment of defense programs" and the sizing of "appropriate levels of combat power, mobility, readiness, and sustainment [sic]."

This document is massively excised, but an earlier version was the subject of a leak to New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler, even before that of the February 18 DPG draft. On February 16, 1992, Tyler published a story that showed that there were seven scenarios, including regional wars against Iraq and North Korea and a major campaign in Europe against a "resurgent Russia." In addition, U.S. forces were to be ready to respond to possible coups and instability in countries such as Panama or the Philippines.

According to Tyler's story, the source of the leak "wished to call attention to what he considered vigorous attempts within the military establishment to invent a series of alarming scenarios that can be used by the Pentagon to prevent further reductions in forces or cancellations of new weapons systems." (Note 7)

Document 10: "Issues in the Policy and Strategy Section," April 14, 1992, Secret, Excised copy

Reflecting the contention over the DPG, this paper highlights some of the more controversial points, such as the balance between unilateral and multilateral action and the role of allies, as well as whether to extend alliances to Eastern Europe. An interesting point on the bottom of the first page is excised, but the surviving language on "disarming capabilities" probably relates to the controversial notion of "preemptive" action against weapons of mass destruction held by adversaries.

Document 11: Distribution Memos, Secret

By April 16, the drafting process had reached the point where the DPG could be distributed somewhat more widely inside the Pentagon for comment on an "eyes only" basis. Among the outside recipients were Admiral Donald Pilling of the National Security Council staff and State Department Policy Planning Staff director Dennis Ross.

Document 12: Memo from Don Pilling, National Security Council, to Larry [Libby's assistant, Capt. Lawrence Seaquist], April 23, enclosing NSC comments
The April 16 DPG draft was not part of the recent release, but a significant chunk of it appears here with the NSC's editorial suggestions. This version is close to what Cheney ultimately approved for public dissemination in the last weeks of the Bush administration. The language showed continued reworking from the drafts that Libby had sent Cheney in March. For example, the section on "Defense Policy Goals" included language about the importance of a reconstitution capability as a signal "that no potential rival could quickly or easily gain a predominant military position." Perhaps the drafters believed that, despite the controversy, it was permissible and necessary to use language about precluding new rivals, certainly in a classified version. It is worth noting that wording excised from this document—such as Korean peninsula, Taiwan, India and Pakistan—appears in the version that Cheney publicly released in January 1993 (see Document 15).

As Pilling noted in his memo, some of the editorial suggestions were language designed to conform to scheduled speeches by President Bush. Some wording suggestions add to the discussion of the relationship between U.S. leadership and multilateral action, while others touch upon the flow of oil and regional arms control. As indicated on Pilling's memo, copies of the changes went to others on Libby's staff, including Khazilzad and Vesser.

Declassification Anomalies: This document is a near-final draft of the April 16, 1992, Defense Planning Guidance that Secretary Cheney issued in January 1993 in declassified form as the "Regional Defense Strategy" (see Document 15). Much of the language in the two documents is identical or nearly so. Nevertheless, the version of the April 16 draft as released by the Defense Department included excised words and phrases—such as Israel, Japan, India, Pakistan, and North Korean nuclear program—that later appeared in the unclassified strategy document. To illustrate this, the Archive has produced an edited version of Document 12, with the excised language filled in. Not all of the words and phrases that we have added are exact matches to the excised portions, but they are very close. These examples demonstrate the subjectivity of the declassification review process; that the country names appeared in a classified document made it look like the information was still sensitive, even though it was not.

Document 13: Annex A "Illustrative Planning Scenarios," Secret, Excised copy

Drafting and redrafting work on the planning scenarios continued as is evident from the four versions of the preface—with marginal comments excised in their entirety—in which drafters tried to be more and more concise about the role of the scenarios as "yardsticks" for formulating military programs.

Document 14: Wolfowitz to Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense, "Approval Draft of the Defense Planning Guidance – Action Memorandum," circa May 19, with attached memoranda on "Defense Planning Guidance – Major Comments Received," dated May 5 and May 13, 1992, Secret, Excised copy

By around May 19, 1992, work on the Guidance was finished. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell signed off on it and Paul Wolfowitz sent the document to Cheney and Atwood. Earlier in the month, Wolfowitz had sent them memos transmitting the DPG and the annex on "Illustrative Planning Scenarios," highlighting the problems that remained under discussion. In both versions, Wolfowitz observed that the current draft of the DPG "is still a rather hard-hitting document which retains the substance you liked in the February 18th draft." The drafts that Secretary of Defense Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Atwood received included footnotes indicating the concerns of various offices and individuals at the Pentagon on a number of issues, including missile defense, propositioning of supplies to help counter possible threats in Southwest Asia (SWA), and the extent to which a "major contingency in Europe" was plausible enough to be factored into the military planning. Wolfowitz's memorandum of May 13 mentions that he had received comments from David Addington, who was Cheney's special assistant and would work with him in the years to come (currently as Chief of Staff and Counsel to the Vice President).

Document 15: "Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy," Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, January 1993

Perhaps in light of George H. W. Bush's drive for re-election in the fall of 1992 and the need to avoid controversy, the thought of declassifying and publishing the Guidance must have become a low priority. Nevertheless, it happened in the administration's last month. The declassified version was not called the "Defense Planning Guidance," but it is very close to what is available of the April 16 version (see Document 12). As with the earlier drafts of the Guidance, Cheney's statement stressed strategic depth, technological superiority, strategic deterrence, forward presence, and reconstitution, all in the name of maintaining capabilities to check regional crises before they turned into more serious threats to U.S. security interests. While developing a "collective" response to threats had preference, as Libby had written before, "a future U.S. president will need options allowing him to lead and, where the international reaction proves sluggish or inadequate, to act independently to protect our critical interests." Moreover, the statement retained the language about the importance of a reconstitution capability to check a future "rival." The statement's release coincided with the approaching inauguration of the Clinton administration, which gave it no significant press coverage in January 1993, a stark contrast with the controversy over the DPG draft in March 1992.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: New Documents Detail America's Strategic Response to 9/11

1. For the most detailed account of how the DPG was prepared, see James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 208-215. For studies of neo-conservatism from different perspectives, see Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2004); Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neo-Cons (New York: Doubleday, 2008); and John Ehrman The Rise of Neo-Conservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1995 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

2. For "preponderance" and the Truman administration, see Melvyn P. Leffer, A Preponderance of Power: The Truman Administration and National Security Policy (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992).

3. Also worth keeping in mind is the connection between the Defense Planning Guidance and the September 2000 report, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century," produced by the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century. Its authors include Libby, Shulsky, and Wolfowitz, and the report explicitly discusses the Planning Guidance.

4. James Mann, "The True Rationale: It's A Decade Old," The Washington Post, March 7, 2004. (Article used with the permission of the author and The Washington Post.) See also David Armstrong, "Dick Cheney's Song of America: Drafting a plan for global dominance," Harper's, January 2003.

5. Barton Gellman, another recipient of the leaked DPG, wrote a story a few days later: "Keeping U.S. First: Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower." The Washington Post, March 11, 1992.

6. "Senior U.S. Officials Assail Lone-Superpower Policy," and "Lone Superpower Plan: Ammunition for Critics," The New York Times, March 11 and 12, 1992. Patrick E. Tyler wrote both articles.

7. "Pentagon Imagines New Enemies to Fight in Post-Cold-War Era," The New York Times, February 17, 1992.