You Got a Lotta 'Splaining to Do

A Timeline Surrounding September 11th —

If CIA and the Government Weren't

Involved in the September 11 Attacks

What were they doing?

Bin Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked Away

by Michael C. Ruppert

[Expanded and Revised July 11, 2002 - Evidence of Bush Administration Foreknowledge and complicity is now overwhelming. 13 New Items (noted in RED) Since Our Last Revision!]

November 2, 2001, 12:00 PST -- On October 31 the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official -- presumably the chief of station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and last year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14, 2001 he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet, and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down. In 1985 Oliver North -- the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn't appear to have a hand in the current war -- sent the Navy and commandos after terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography "Under Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas, North wrote, "I used to wonder: how many dead Americans will it take before we do something?" One could look at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have killed before Sept. 11 and ask the same question.

It gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events both before and after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, which have been blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events that have taken place since Sept. 11 are based upon an agenda that has little to do with the attacks. [June 19, 2002] -- As the revelations of Bush Administration foreknowledge have progressed from silence, to trickle, to cascade, the question has now changed from forcing the evidence into the open into one of forcing both the media and the people to avoid denying this information in the hopes that their desire for a sense of "normalcy" can be fulfilled. As many of us have known for years, normalcy went out the window forever when the first plane hit the tower. And what has been revealed will not be resolved with an expensive fact-finding commission, a few firing, or even an impeachment proceeding. What is needed in America -- and in the global economic system -- is an overhaul, not a tune up.

1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines, the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. [Source: "The Price of Oil" by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]

January 1995 - Philippine police investigating a possible attack on the Pope uncover plans for Operation Bojinka, connected to World Trade Center (WTC) bomber Ramsi Youssef. Parts of the plan call for crashing hijacked airliners into civilian targets. Details of the plan are disclosed in Youssef's 1997 trial for the 1993 WTC bombing. [Source: Agence France-Presse, Dec. 7, 2001]

Dec. 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997] Feb. 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca -- later to become a special ambassador to Afghanistan -- testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan, the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.] August 1998 - After the U.S. cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in retaliation for the African embassy bombings, Unocal officially withdraws from participation in the CentGas trans-Afghani gas pipeline project. [Various sources, Unocal]

1998 -- The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an Al Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times Jan. 21, 2001; "See No Evil" by Robert Baer (release date February 2002)]

April 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol, India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]

1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [ Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No. 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy" ]

March 2000 - An FBI agent, reportedly angry over a glitch in Carnivore that has somehow mixed innocent non-targeted emails with those belonging to Al Qaeda, destroys all of the FBI's Denver-based intercepts of bin Laden's colleagues in a terrorist investigation. [Source: The Washington Post, May 29, 2002]

2000 (est.) - The FBI refuses to disclose the date of an internal memo stating that a Middle Eastern nation had been trying to purchase a flight simulator. [Source: Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2002]

August 2000 -- Suspected Al Qaeda operatives wiretapped by Italian police made apparent references to plans for major attacks involving airports, airplanes and the United States according to transcripts obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The Times suggests that the information might not have been passed to U.S. authorities (hard to believe), but it did report that Italian authorities would not comment on the report. The Times also noted that "Italian and U.S. anti-terrorism experts cooperate closely." [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2002]

Oct. 24-26, 2000 - Pentagon officials carry out a "detailed" emergency drill based upon the crashing of a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon. [Source: The Mirror, May 24, 2002]

January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]

Feb. 13, 2001 - UPI terrorism correspondent Richard Sale -- while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Qaeda followers -- reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February, it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.

May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001]

May 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour, while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source: The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001] June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 2001; See http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/f_a_zeitung_story.html]

July 2001 - FBI agents in Arizona write a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Phoenix. The memorandum specifically mentions Osama bin Laden and warns of connections to terrorist activities. [Source: The New York Times, May 14, 2002]

Summer 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002] summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that U.S. Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana." summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief Gen. Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad's direction is Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001.]

Summer 2001 - The online newswire online.ie reports on Sept. 14 that an Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the WTC in the week of Sept. 9. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source: http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=1512332. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/online_ie_story.html ] summer 2001 - Jordanian intelligence, the GID, makes a communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relay it to Washington, probably through the CIA station in Amman.

To make doubly sure the message got through it was passed through an Arab intermediary to a German intelligence agent. The message: A major attack was planned inside the U.S., and aircraft would be used. The code name of the operation was "The Big Wedding."Ê "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush Administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations." This case was authenticated by ABC reporter John K. Cooley. [Source: International Herald Tribune (IHT), May 21, 2002] summer 2001 (est.) - The National Security Agency intercepts telephone conversations between bin Laden aide Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta and does not share the information with any other agencies. [Source: Jonathan Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 6, 2002] June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate' U.S. and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by U.S. and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001] summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for missions involving hijacked airliners. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer. (Note: The story currently on the Izvestia web site has been edited to delete a key paragraph.) [Source: Izvestia, Sept. 12, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/izvestia_story_pic.html]

July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatment for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official, who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15. [Source: Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001] July 15, 2001 - Members of the G8, meeting in Genoa, Italy, discuss the Taliban, pipelines, and the handing over of Osama bin Laden. According to Pakistani representative Ambassador Naiz Naik, the U.S. delegation, led by former Clinton Ambassador to Pakistan Tom Simmons warned of a "military option" if the Taliban did not change position. [Source: Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, "Bin Laden: La Verite Interdite," pp76-7. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

July 2001 - Immediately after the G8 Summit three American officials -- Tom Simmons (former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia) -- meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verite Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001; the BBC, Sept. 18, 2001; The Inter Press Service, Nov. 16, 2001; Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, Feb. 21, 2002] July 2001 - The G8 summit at Genoa, Italy is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, and local airspace is closed off after Italian and Egyptian officials (including President Hosni Mubarak) warn American intelligence that airliners stuffed with explosives might be used to attack President Bush. U.S. officials state that the warnings were "unsubstantiated." (But I wonder if they would have taken away the anti-aircraft artillery?) [Source: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 2001]

July 26, 2001 - CBS News reports that John Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial airlines due a threat assessment. Ashcroft told the press that he didn't know anything about what had caused it.

Aug. 2, 2001 - U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Christine Rocca (a former CIA officer), meets in Islamabad with a Taliban ambassador and demands the extradition of bin Laden. This was the last known meeting on the subject. [Source: Brisard and Dasquie, p 79. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott] August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, Sept. 13, 2001]

Aug. 11 or 12, 2001 â U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer with U.S. naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope, which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]

August 2001 - As reported in the IHT both a French magazine (name not given) and a Moroccan newspaper simultaneously report that a Moroccan agent named Hassan Dabou had penetrated Al Qaeda to the point of getting close to bin Laden, who was "very disappointed" that the 1993 bombing had not toppled the WTC. Dabou was called to the U.S. after reporting this, which curtailed his ability to stay in touch with the organization and gather additional intelligence that might have prevented the attacks. Though not proved beyond a doubt, these stories have been met with a wall of silence. [The IHT, May 21, 2002]

August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MSNBC interview with Putin, Sept. 15, 2001]

August 2001 - President Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. [CBS News; CNN, May 15, 2002] late-August 2001 - Prince Turki, the pro-U.S. head of Saudi intelligence (also known to be close to bin Laden), is replaced by his more neutral half-brother, Prince Nawwaf who is an ally of Crown Prince Abdullah. [Source: Saudi Arabian Information Resource, Aug. 31, 2001; http://www.saudinf.com/ - Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott] August/September 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.

August/September 2001 - According to a detailed 13-page memo written by Minneapolis FBI legal officer Colleen Rowley, FBI headquarters ignores urgent, direct warnings from French intelligence services about pending attacks. In addition, a single Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) in Washington expends extra effort to thwart the field office's investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, in one case rewriting Rowley's affidavit for a search warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop. Rowley's memo uses terms like "deliberately sabotage," "block," "integrity," "omitted," "downplayed," "glossed over," "mis-characterize," "improper political reasons, "deliberately thwarting," "deliberately further undercut," "suppressed," and "not completely honest." These are not terms describing negligent acts but rather, deliberate acts. FBI field agents desperately attempt to get action, but to no avail. One agent speculates that bin Laden might be planning to crash airliners into the WTC, while Rowley ironically noted that the SSA who had committed these deliberate actions had actually been promoted after Sept. 11. [Source: Associated Press, May 21, 2002]

Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MSNBC reports on Sept. 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9-11.

Early-September 2001 - An FBI internal document, based upon field notes from Minnesota field agents discloses that the agents had been investigating and had questioned the "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui. The field notes speculate that Moussaoui, who had been taking flight lessons, might crash an airliner into the WTC. Interestingly, the field agents' requests to obtain a search warrant for his personal computer were denied. French intelligence confirms to the FBI that Moussaoui has ties to terrorist groups and may have traveled to Afghanistan. The agents also had no knowledge of the Phoenix memo (See Item #18). One news story states that agents were in "a frenzy," absolutely convinced that he was "going to do something with a plane." [Source: Newsweek, May 20, 2002 issue, story by Michael Isikoff].

Sept. 1-10 2001 - In an exercise, called Operation "Swift Sword" and planned for four years, 23,000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9-11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment, the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the WTC. [Sources: The Guardian; CNN; Fox; The Observer; International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]

September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida website listing of Governor's executive orders]

Sept. 6-7, 2001 - Put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) totaling 4,744 are purchased on United Air Lines stock, as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the United puts are purchased through Deutschebank/A.B. Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), http://www.ict.org.il/, Sept. 21, 2001 (Note:The ICT article on possible terrorist insider trading appeared eight days *after* the 9/11 attacks.); The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 29, 2001]

Sept. 10, 2001 - Put options totaling 4,516 are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: Herzliyya Institute - above]

Sept. 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by United and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600 percent above normal. This at a time when Reuters (Sept. 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off." Sept. 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25 percent of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the Sept. 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Oct. 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html] It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported as recently as June 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by Fox, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least summer 2002. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; Fox, Oct. 16, 2001; FTW, Oct. 26, 2001, - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/magic_carpet.html FTW, Vol. IV,

No. 6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/sept1801.html; FTW, Vol. III, No. 7, Sept. 30, 2000 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html] Sept. 9, 2001 - President George W. Bush is presented with detailed war plans to overthrow Al Qaeda, according to U.S. and foreign sources speaking to NBC News. [Source: MSNBC, May 16, 2002. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]

Sept. 10, 2001 - On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. [Source: Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2001 issue, story by Evan Thomas]

Sept. 11, 2001 - United Air Lines flight 23, scheduled to fly from New York City to Los Angeles was delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off immediately. This happened apparently after the first plane had hit the WTC. The passengers were thrown off the flight. [Source: The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2002]

Sept. 11, 2001 â Gen. Mahmud of the ISI (see #16), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]

Sept. 11, 2001 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo research and development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv that is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism, which eight days later reports details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, Sept. 28, 2001; MSNBC Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, Sept. 27, 2001; Ha'aretz, Sept. 26, 2001]

Sept. 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred. [Source: CNN; ABC; MSNBC; Los Angeles Times; The New York Times; www.tenc.net]

Sept. 11-12, 2001 - Nearly a month before the first reported outbreak, White House officials start taking the powerful antibiotic Cipro to treat anthrax. By the end of the year it will be known that the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks against Sens. Leahy and Daschle was produced by CIA programs coordinated through Fort Detrick, the Batelle Memorial Institute and the Dugway Proving Ground. [Source: NBC; CNN; www.tetrahedron.org, www.judicialwatch.org]

Sept. 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001]

Sept. 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]

Sept. 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex Brown (A.B.) unit of Deutschebank.

Sept. 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American and United airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the attacks, which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.

Oct. 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to Pakistan is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."

Oct. 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York, which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2001]

Mid-October 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations. Nov. 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country.

Nov. 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant as much opium as possible."

Dec. 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the U.S. government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, Dec. 4, 2001] Dec. 25, 2001 - Newly appointed Afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde] Jan. 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalmy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, Jan. 9, 2002]

Jan. 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 4, 2002]

Jan. 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for Mike Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a naval lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; Toronto Superior Court records]

Jan. 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft rescues himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to rescue himself from involvement in two sitting federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against Exxon-Mobil and BP Amoco, which have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002; FTW, "The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I," April 4, 2002, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/032602_elephant.html]

Jan. 23, 2002 - Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Pakistan. Pearl is reported dead on Feb. 21. Lead suspect Ahmad Umar Sheik, former colleague of Gen. Ahmad, is arrested on Feb. 12 and named as the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder. Legal sources close to the Pakistani government tell FTW that Pearl was investigating the ISI. [Source: CNN.com]

Feb. 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader Gen. Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity," including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghan government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, Feb. 9, 2002]

Feb. 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late-spring 2002 will reach a world record 4,500 metric tons.

Mid-April, 2002 - World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, at the opening of the World Bank's offices in Kabul, states he has held talks about financing the Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline. He confirms $100 million in new grants for the interim Afghani government. Wolfensohn also states that a number of companies have already expressed interest in the project. [Source: Alexander's Gas and oil Connections, citing an Agence France-Presse story]

May 13, 2002 - The BBC reports that Afghanistan is about to close a deal for construction of the $2 billion gas pipeline to run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The story states, "work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck" at a summit scheduled for the end of the month. Unocal will build the pipeline. [Source: BBC, May 13, 2002]

May, 2002 - A number of sources report progress on both oil and gas pipelines. Regional sources state that Unocal will re-emerge as a pipeline contender after withdrawing from the CentGas pipeline project in 1998. Unocal denies plans to revive the gas pipeline but curiously neglects to mention whether or not it has any interest in the oil pipeline, which local sources say is moving ahead. [Source: The Dawn Group of Newspapers, May 7, May 17, May 22, 2002]

May 30, 2002 - Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf meet in Islamabad to sign a memorandum of understanding on the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project. The three leaders will meet for more talks on the project in October. The Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistani gas pipeline accord has been published and can be viewed at the following website: http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nts22622.htm. [Source: NewsBase, June 5, 2002]

May 16, 2002 - A White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer states unequivocally that while President Bush had been warned of possible hijackings, "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." [Source: CBS News, May 15, 2002]

May 19, 2002 - Former FBI Agent Tyrone Powers, now a professor at Anne Arundel Community College states on radio station KISS 98.7 that he has credible evidence suggesting that the Bush Administration did in fact allow the Sept. 11 attacks to further a hidden agenda. [Source: http://www.indymedia.org/ - May 20, 2002]

May 31, 2002 - FBI Agent Robert Wright delivers a tearful press conference at the National Press Club describing his lawsuit against the FBI for deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented the 9-11 attacks. He uses words like "prevented," "thwarted," "obstructed," "threatened," "intimidated," and "retaliation" to describe the actions of his superiors in blocking his attempts to shut off money flows to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. These are not words of negligence. They are words describing deliberate and malicious actions. [Source: C-SPAN website]

June 4, 2002 - Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Butler, who had called President Bush a joke and accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen, is suspended from his post at the Defense Language School in Monterey, Calif. and could face a court martial. [Source: Associated Press, June 4, 2002] June 17, 2002 - Reuters reports that Butler's case has been resolved without the necessity of a court martial. (I guess so. There's enough material here to prove him right. -- MCR) [Reuters, June 17, 2002]

July 2, 2002 - Motions from Zacarias Moussaoui are unsealed in federal court, indicating that Moussaoui wants to testify before both a grand jury and Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui claims to have information showing that the U.S. government wanted the attacks to happen. [Source: The Washington Post, July 3, 2002]

July 3, 2002 - The first-ever shipment of Russian oil, 200,000 metric tons, arrives in Houston. [Source: The Moscow Times, July 6, 2002].

July 6, 2002 - Afghan Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir is assassinated by Afghan warlords. The New York Times reports that Qadir may have been assassinated by opium warlords upset by Qadir's efforts to reduce the rampant opium farming and processing that has taken place since the U.S.

occupation. Qadir had been overseeing a Western-backed eradication program, according to the Times. However, the opium warlords of the region are same ones sponsored, protected, and in some cases released from prison by the CIA and who have been protected by President Bush's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. It is reported that the raw opium is being refined near U.S. bases at Kandahar. [Sources: The New York Times, July 8, 2002; Far Eastern Economic Review, April 18, 2002]

Now, let's go back to the Oct. 31 story by Le Figaro -- the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai in July 2001. The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a black sheep! --MCR] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room.

"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15, the day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta.

"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory. "Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, ‘What do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence.

"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between the CIA and its ‘Islamic friends' over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American policy.'" Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on Nov. 1 contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On Nov. 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.

Who do you believe?

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