One out of three Americans suspects the latest Bin Laden
tape is a fraud
By Amir Butler
Hard on the heels of the broadcast of the latest purported evidence linking the people of Afghanistan to the events of 9/11 via ex(?) CIA spook Osama bin Laden, C-SPAN ran a quick poll of the public response.
Public media polls are not used to measure the public's response but to create it. The purpose of this poll was to no doubt silence what was expected to be a very few doubters with the impression of overwhelming public belief in this latest evidence.
But the best-laid plans of mice and politicians gang aft agley and the C-SPAN poll surprised a great many people when fully one third of all respondents expressed doubts about the tape's authenticity, or that it actually said what the government claimed it said.
There is clearly reason to doubt the tape. There is excessive noise on the audio track, making it impossible to really hear what is being said. Given that the tape was recorded in an area supposedly devoid of audio urban signature, there should have been little ambient noise, yet the speech is masked with a great deal of noise. Then there is that gap in the audio track, reminiscent of Nixon's missing 18 minutes, and the truths it once contained which are lost forever to history.
Doubts have already been raised regarding the correct translation of Osama's words into "We", when his words could also mean "They".
But there are very good reasons to suspect that the tape is not what the US Government claims it to be. In the tape, Osama supposedly states that he knew of the attack on the WTC 5 days in advance, yet we know from the preparations inside the United States that the plan had been in existence for much longer than that. In particular, the supposed hijackers took flying lessons without asking to learn how to land the planes. The records of those flight schools where the hijackers supposedly trained have been confiscated under the watchful eye of Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida and brother to the President. Will the Bush administration now claim that the hijackers learned to fly a passenger jet in just 5 days' time?
Likewise, The translation of the Osama tape has him stating that the hijackers did not know they were about to die, yet the letters the FBI claims to have found written by the hijackers indicate the exact opposite. Then too there were the numerous words added to the translation in parenthesis to alter and redirect the meaning of the translated words. Finally, this was not the first video tape claiming to be evidence against Osama to surface, and the public is well aware that the claims made regarding the earlier "confession" tape, including a claim that Osama had nukes, were created by the translator, not actually stated by Osama.
As quoted in the Associated Press, Al-Muhajiroun is reporting that the video tape is actually years old; the target being discussed by Osama not the World Trade Towers, but a target inside Saudi Arabia. Even hard line secular Pakistanis are unconvinced. Iqbal Haider, a former senator from the party of ousted prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said he found it hard to believe that bin Laden would allow himself to be filmed confessing to the crime. "It is hard to believe that a man who masterminds the September attacks which such secrecy and finesse could be that stupid and imprudent," he said. "I hate Osama and the Taliban because they inflicted incalculable damage on Muslims ... but it is hard to digest that he can be such a fool."
One third of the public suspects the tape is not what it is claimed to be. The American revolution was fought with less than one third public support. Most Presidents are elected with less than a one third majority.
What the C-SPAN poll reveals is that the government of the United States finds itself in a huge credibility crises. Far more people doubt the official story than anyone dreamed! Even I was surprised (and encouraged) by the C-SPAN poll.
And if the government of the United States finds itself in a credibility crises, who but itself does it have to blame?
We live in a time of very unpleasant realities. Truth has become such a valuable commodity that the government of the United States and the media have started (to put it politely) economizing it. Documented cases of media deception over the years have made it clear that the media lies to the public on important issues. As Richard Salent, Former President of CBS News has stated, media's job is to feed the public what media thinks the public ought to know. Clearly, anything that happens that the media doesn't think the public needs to know about will simply not be reported.
By way of example, let's take a look at the JFK assassination. For years, the government and the media sang a uniform chorus of "lone assassin" and "Magic Bullet", even though careful analysis showed that the media was using fraudulent photos to sell these claims. Finally, in 1998, trapped by his own handwritten notes uncovered in the National Archives, Warren Commission member Gerald Ford admitted that the Warren Report altered the official location of the entry wound on JFK's back. While the admission was made to appear quite trivial in the media, a moment's consideration reveals that this confession triggers some important consequences.
JFK had an entry wound down on his back, over by the shoulder blade. The photo of JFK's shirt showed clearly where this entry wound was. Gerald Ford's (and the Warren's) official version placed the wound up by the base of the neck. The hole in the shirt was explained away by suggesting that the normally fastidious John Kennedy had allowed his shirt to come un-tucked and ride up his back under the suit coat sufficient to place the back of the shirt up around the neck. Now, however, the original source document showing the back wound to be right where the (properly tucked in) shirt indicated it was.
What does this mean? The theory of the lone assassin is based on the "Magic Bullet" theory, that one single bullet accounted for all of JFK's wounds except the head wound, plus all the wounds on Texas Governor John Connelly. In order to work, the entry wound on JFK's back had to be up at the base of the neck to line up with the purported exit wound in the front of the throat. If the entry wound wasn't where the "Magic Bullet" theory requires it to be then there is no "Magic Bullet". If there is no "Magic Bullet", then there is no "lone assassin".
But more to the point, even ahead of the implications for the "Magic Bullet" theory, the irrefutable fact is that the Warren Commission lied to the public about that back wound. Though they may try to explain it away as some bizarre attempt at historical "clarification", the plain simple fact is that a wound lower in the back and out on the shoulder blade was reported to the public by the Warren Commission as being at the base of the neck.
The Warren Commission lied to the public about the location of that wound. There is no other way to put it. It cannot be candy-coated. It cannot be "spun". It cannot be excused. The wound was in one place, but the public was told it was someplace else.
Just take a moment and think that through.
Once you accept that the Warren Report lied to the public, you'll realize you knew it all along. After all, the last official government verdict, rendered by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, was that there had indeed been a conspiracy, and John Connelly went to his grave insisting he was not hit by the same gunshot that had hit John F. Kennedy. The Zapruder film bears him out, showing Connelly, after John Kennedy has clutched his throat, still holding his Stetson hat in the hand which was just moments later, struck by a bullet. A different bullet.
For those of you old enough to remember, recall how the media unabashedly signed onto this lie of a "magic bullet" and a "lone assassin". The mainstream media, who purports to be the watchdog against government abuse on behalf of the American people, stood up to be counted with what may be the most monstrous lie told to the American people in the last half century. People tend to believe what they hear over and over again. And over and over again we heard the steady and unrelenting litany of "lone assassin", "lone assassin", "lone assassin". It wasn't news; it was a hypnotic sales pitch.
When Robert Kennedy was killed, yet again the people were told over and over again that it was a lone assassin. The government and the media spoke with a single voice of reassurance that nobody else had taken part in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Yet it was clear from initial police reports that one other suspect did exist, a girl in a polka dot dress who was seen leading Sirhan around early in the evening, then running from the scene of the assassination. Probably few would have paid that much attention to her, since the investigation appeared not to be interested, until an official LAPD audio tape surfaced from the lie detector test of witness Sandy Serrano. Serrano was one of the witnesses who saw the woman in the Polka-dot dress leading Sirhan around prior to the shooting. Yet as can be heard on this tape, the police investigator (later revealed to have CIA connections) is clearly trying to coerce Serrano into changing her story!
One more Kennedy death. One more cover-up.
In those innocent times, the American public was naïve, perhaps dangerously so. Americans never dreamed that our government and the media would lie to us all about something so important as the killing of our leaders. But, as history has shown, they did just that. We never dreamed that our nation's future was being shaped, not by the ballot box, but by the hired assassins of secretive powerful individuals. Yet it was, and still is.
The Kennedy assassinations, coupled with that of Martin Luther King, plus the attempted assassination of George Wallace, brought an end to that naivete, as we watched the man who would have never been President but for all those convenient deaths walk into the White House on Inauguration day, 1969.
More than anyone else, with the possible exception of the current occupant of the White House, Richard Nixon destroyed the image of an honorable and law-abiding American President we had all been raised with, The lesson of his term in office was a simple one. Presidents do break the law. Presidents commit perjury and obstruction of justice. Presidents have things to hide. Presidents do not respect the Constitution.
Oddly enough, Richard Nixon was forced to resign because of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The break-in at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee would have never become the issue to topple a President, but for the need to protect just WHY the crime had been committed. The Democrats had obtained photographs which showed Nixon "associate" E. Howard Hunt to be one of the tramps arrested and then released in Dealey Plaza. This is why Hunt led the break-in at the Watergate. He was protecting his own posterior.
Rather than risk exposure of a far worse scandal, Nixon resigned, turning over the White House to Gerald Ford, the Warren Commission member who in 1998 admitted to altering the official location of JFK's back wound.
From this linkage, it should be obvious that the various assassinations that dominate the political history of our nation are not the isolated events that the media and government would have us believe. They are, rather, high points on an ongoing continuum of intrigue and criminal enterprise that is the political reality.
Starting from the fact that you were lied to about the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, take a moment to think back at just how many people had to sign onto those lies. Newscasters, police officers, investigators, and government officials, all had to take part, all DID take part.
That is an important lesson to keep in mind, that a lie to the public demands, and has little trouble obtaining, a vast number of people to help it along.
The media
Asked to give a toast before the prestigious New York Press Club, John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff at the New York Times, made this candid confession [it's worth noting that Swinton was called "The Dean of His Profession" by other newsmen, who admired him greatly]:
" There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. "
From a very young age we are all raised in the belief that the media is supposed to keep an eye on the government, to watch out for wrongdoing. There is a carefully crafted illusion of an independent media, but it is illusion only. Since WW2, the Central Intelligence Agency has been running operation MOCKINGBIRD which places CIA assets in management positions of all the media. That the CIA wields a great deal of control over the media and what it tells the American people was revealed by the heavy handed actions taken in regards to covering up that portion of the Iran-Contra scandal that took place at the Mena, Arkansas airport. Following the killing of cocaine smuggler and Iran-Contra pilot Barry Seal, writers Roger Morris and Sally Denton uncovered documents proving that Seal had been working for the CIA. That information was written up as an article for the Washington Post, and had been cleared for publication by legal and fact checking when Managing Editor Bob Kaiser spiked the article without explanation. When writer Gary Webb wrote his series of article "Dark Alliance", which accused the CIA of being the source of the cocaine that poured into Los Angeles in the 1980s, virtually every major newspaper, including the Los Angeles Times, united in their attack on his story. Less than one year later, the CIA's Inspector General issued a report that admitted to the cocaine trafficking in connection with Iran- ontra. None of the newspapers that savaged Gary Webb ever bothered to apologize to him.
Recently the American Movie Classics cable channel ran a program which openly admitted that the CIA uses Hollywood for propaganda purposes. Consistant with that revelation, the AMC program portrayed the CIA/Hollywood alliance as being of great benefit to the movie-going, tax-paying, public.
The few times the media has appeared to expose government wrongdoing has later been revealed in historical hindsight as one faction using the media against another faction. For those issues which all factions agree must be kept from the public, the media operates with total unanimity. As we saw in the photos from the Dec 14th, 1963 POST magazine, the media was committing outright fraud to sell the single bullet theory to the public. And, as we saw with regard to the cocaine smuggling by the CIA, the media not only ignores the story, but attacks anyone who dares touch the subject.
Alternatively, in hindsight, it is obvious that the media's obsession with Monica Lewinsky was a ploy to distract the American people from the real crimes of drug money laundering at the heart of the Whitewater affair, while the media obsession with Chandra Levy early in the year was done to distract the people of the United States from the fact that the US Government was already informing other nations of a plan to invade Afghanistan BEFORE there was ever an attack on the World Trade Towers.
And again, these are not isolated incidents, but part of a continuum, as evidenced by the various scandals which have hit the major media involving the fraudulently manufactured Food Lion story, the phoney Bosnian "Concentration Camp" photos, and the use of explosives to manufacture a story about unsafe side mounted gas tanks on GM trucks.
That our media is biased is clear. All the mainstream media championed the story that White House Deputy Council Vincent Foster committed suicide. CBS "60 Minutes" went out of their way to attack writer Chris Ruddy, who pointed out the evidence of cover-up (evidence which has now brought the FBI into Federal Court on charges of witness harassment and evidence tampering). A&E's "Inside Investigations" explained away the lack of fingerprints on the smooth metal revolver Foster was found with by using a heavily textured semi-automatic pistol on their program, a deliberate fraud.
Speaking of CBS "60 Minutes", the executive producer of that show, Don Hewitt, has admitted on video tape to editing his show's segment on Gennifer Flowers to discredit her and help Bill Clinton, even though Gennifer Flowers had audio tapes which proved her story was true.
DON HEWITT (Executive Producer, "60 Minutes"): And they came to us because they were in big trouble in New Hampshire. They were about to lose right there and they needed some first aid. They needed some bandaging. What they needed was a paramedic. So they came to us and we did it and that's what they wanted to do. When I told Tim Russer that I was persona-non-grata at the White House, he said, "Why?" I said, "The Gennifer Flowers interview." He said, "You got him the nomination." I said, "I know that." As far as I know from the conversations I've had, Bernie Nussbaum knew that, Gergen knows that, Lloyd Cutler certainly knows it 'cause Lloyd had a hand in his coming on that night.
You know it was strong medicine the way I edited it but he was a very sick candidate. He needed very strong medicine, and I'm not in the business of doctoring candidates but he got up out of a sick bed that night and walked to the nomination and as I said to Mandy, "You know if I'd edited it your way, you know where you'd be today? You'd still be up in New Hampshire looking for the nomination." He became the candidate that night.
Because of incidents like the above, plus others so numerous as to be beyond the scope of this document, it has become popular to refer to members of the media as "presstitutes", in keeping with John Swinton's quite honest assessment of his own profession.
It therefore follows that, since the presstitutes write or broadcast what they are told to write and broadcast, that all media presents to the public is what the owners and controllers of the media, all with ties to the government, want you to see. They print it, you think it. They broadcast it, you think it. They print it, you think it. They broadcast it, you think it. People believe what they hear over and over again.
And over and over again, you are being lied to.
COINTELPRO - harassment of those who try to expose the lies.
The FBI has enjoyed, for much of it's existence, a splendid public image. This is no accident. J. Edgar Hoover spent as much time polishing the image of the FBI as he did solving crimes, and the unofficial motto of the FBI remains, "Never embarrass the bureau".
Hoover was obsessed with Hollywood, going back to his battles with Charlie Chaplin. Hoover personally supervised the filming of the Jimmy Stewert movie, "The FBI Story", and FBI documents show that the FBI not only kept watch on celebrities, but kept an eye on movies that might be considering showing the FBI in a poor light. So concerned with the FBI's [public image was Hoover that he even used taxpayer paid for bureau assets to counter rumours of his gay lifestyle, considered deviant at the time.
But that's just the FBI's public image. The reality is quite something else.
It is inevitable that when a government lies to the people, sooner or later the liars need to have in place a mechanism to suppress anyone who might wish to expose the lies, the first amendment be damned.
Fullfilling that role is the FBI and its COINTELPRO program, the harsh reality behind the polished public image.
Originally started back in the 60s to sabotage opposition to the war in Vietnam, the FBI's COINTELRO operation was exposed in the 70s and led to Congressional Hearings. In those hearings, it became obvious that rather than fighting crime, the FBI had been engaged in criminal actions of its own and for no other purpose than to silence anyone who spoke out against the government's policies, and especially those who challenged the official view of events.
One of the tools most used by the FBI was to sabotage public support for dissident views by planting false information, either through informants, the complicit media, or undercover informants which operated on every college campus (and still do to this day).
One of the most infamous smear jobs involved the "Black Panther Coloring Book". The Black Panthers were originally formed to address two issues. They wanted to make sure that kids in the ghettos were getting breakfasts, and they were concerned with the curriculum in the public schools and wanted local control of education (an issue that many today can easily identify with). And, of course, they wanted the government to respect their Constitutional rights.
Needless to say, the Federal government did not like either the idea of giving up control of the public school curriculum, nor of having to respect anyone's Constitutional rights.
The FBI then printed up the colouring book shown at the above link and distributed it far and wide. That it was mailed primarily to white households should have been the tip-off, but again, people didn't believe that the government of the United States engaged in such despicable behaviours, and that belief kept the people blind. The mainstream media then proceeded to tell the public that the colouring books were being given out to black children at those free breakfasts, and forever after, the Black Panthers were portrayed by the media as dangerous fanatics intending to kill white people. Needless to say, all support for local control of the curriculum vanished.
Yet another infamous FBI trick was the smearing of actress Jean Seberg, who at a time when the Black Panthers were under attack by the media and the FBI, openly supported them on the issues of civil rights. Because of her fame as a film star, Jean Seberg drew a lot of public attention to the real issues the Black Panthers were working for, so the FBI set out to destroy her.
The SAIC Los Angeles wrote a memo to FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. Page one of the memo requested permission to plant a false story to destroy Jean Seberg's public image. Page two of the memo contained assurances that the smearing would never be traced back to the FBI, clear evidence that the Los Angeles office knew it was acting in a criminal manner.
Permission was granted by Washington D.C. with the suggestion that the smear be delayed until Jean's pregnancy was much more obvious. The phoney letters were sent, and the story broken by Los Angles Times gossip columnist Joyce Haber. NEWSWEEK picked up the story, and it was soon world wide. All this at a time when inter-racial sex, let alone an inter-racial adulterous affair, was a career-wrecking scandal. The emotional shock of the smear drove Jean Seberg into miscarriage. The funeral for the baby was help with an open coffin, so the lie stood revealed in it's most tragic and pathetic form. Soon after, Jean Seberg committed suicide. Because Jean Seberg's husband was a French Diplomat, the scandal became an international incident that ended only when the FBI was forced to make a public apology for it's action (one of very few times it has done so).
This is the harsh reality behind the glitzy and quite phoney façade of the FBI. As whistle blower Frank Whitehurst has pointed out, and as the lawsuit against the FBI for witness harassment and evidence tampering in the Vincent Foster case underscores, the FBI is never interested in what is true, but only in what is expedient for those in power.
The FBI is in the business of planting false information for the express purpose of deceiving the public. They do it in the media. They do it on the internet. (And right now they are working overtime in every public forum they can infiltrate).
TWA 800
Perhaps no stronger indication exists of the culture of deception that permeates our government than the deplorable behaviour of the NTSB in the aftermath of the crash of TWA 800.
The evidence that TWA 800 was victim to something other than a mysterious fuel tank explosion could fill a website (several, actually) but for our purposes, we will focus on one issue only, that of the strange red residue found on three rows of seats in the reconstructed wreckage.
In the NTSB's report, specifically the Fire & Explosions report written by Merritt Birky, the NTSB claims that the red residue, thought by many to be the combustion products of a solid fuel rocket motor, was the 3M contact cement used in the manufacture of the seats. The NTSB went further, claiming that lab tests conducted by NASA scientist Dr. Charles Bassett had linked the red residue to the seat glue.
But that is not what Dr. Bassett found. In a sworn declaration entered as evidence in a court case Dr. Bassett makes it clear that his tests did not and could not link the red residue to seat glue. More telling, samples of the normally pale yellow seat glue provided to Dr. Bassett by the NTSB had been dyed with a red dye!
The NTSB lied to the public when they claimed Dr. Bassett's lab tests linked the red residue to seat glue. Dr. Bassett's tests did nothing of the kind.
The NTSB lied.
What the red residue actually is, is a subject for another monograph. The key point to be made here is that the National Transportation Safety Board wilfully and knowingly lied to the public about an air crash.
The NTSB lied.
The FBI lied.
The US Government lied.
The people of the United States are the most lied-to people on Earth. We are more lied-to than the people of the USSR ever were. The US Government lies to protect its crimes, to replace leaders We The People elect with ones the government insiders prefer to have, to conceal its mistakes, to initiate wars of conquest among a population morally opposed to such adventurism.
"All warfare is based on deception." The Art Of War-- Sun Tzu
All governments that start a war use deception to do so. No modern people ever agreed to march into another land, murder the women and children in their beds, and take what did not belong to them. All invading armies have to be lied to, to make them believe they act in self defence or to recover what is rightfully theirs. The Nazis followed Hitler into Poland behind the lie that Poland had attacked them first, then across France convinced that France had originally been German lands in the distant past. The German people believed those lies because the German media worked just as hard to sell Hitler's lies as the American media works to sell the lies of the US Government.
One media lie which has been repeated recently (and endlessly) in the quest to create a new war for the oil of Iraq is the claim that Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Iraq. Most people accept this as a fact simply because they have been told Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds over and over by an endless line of government spokeswhores. The TRUTH is that the United Nations investigated these claims and found NO EVIDENCE that Saddam had ever committed any such acts. Did the American media report the United Nations conclusions to you? No?
The fastest way to trick a population into invading someone else's lands is to create the fear and terror NOT to do so. Hitler was hardly the first to use the tactic; fake terror against ones own population as a tool of domestic policy goes back to Roman times.
Even the US Government uses fake terror. In this excerpt from James Bamford's book, "Body Of Secrets", declassified documents reveal US Government plans for staged terrorist attacks on Americans, with the intention of blaming Cuba, following the Bay of PIgs, a plan spiked by John F. Kennedy. More about Operation NORTHWOODS from the National Security Archives.
"Body Of Secrets" by James Bradford, was mentioned last spring in an article in the Baltimore Sun , and more recently in an article in ABC News. This book is available in bookstores or at Amazon.com.
The US uses lies to start wars. From the USS Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin, the American people have been fed one deception after another to justify wars of aggression by the United States Government. Pearl Harbor, as one example, was NOT a surprise, but the end result of an 8 step plan to provoke Japan created by ONI Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum and implemented by FDR in order to get the United States into a war with Hitler which the American people did not want.
Additional info, including scans of declassified documents proving US foreknowledge of the attack is in Robert B. Stinnett's book, "Day Of Deceit", available in bookstores or at Amazon.com.
Finally, our government has ALREADY BEEN CAUGHT carrying out staged terror attacks, during the first attack on the World Trade Towers. New York Times - FBI allowed 1993 World Trade Towers bombing to happen!
The Bush White House has blown it, big time. The Canadian Broadcasting System news is, even now, reporting that Bush has "struck out" with this latest pathetic attempt. Likewise the foreign press is reporting that doubts exist worldwide as to the authenticity of the tape and the translation. Bush is screaming that anyone who doubts him is aiding the enemy, which makes traitors of one out of every three Americans according to the C- PAN poll. Poker players would call this "trying to raise on a busted flush." Bush should quit while he's ahead.
Sadly, however, he cannot. A careful reading of the Constitution reveals that nowhere and under no circumstances is the government of the United States allowed to lie to the people; certainly not to start a war of aggression into a region with $5 trillion worth of oil (against which the cost of a new WTC is just chump change). A government that lies to its people acts unconstitutionally and illegally. It loses the moral right to rule. Our government claims to rule with the consent of the governed. Nobody I know consented to be lied to by the government. Did you? I doubt it.
So here is the corner the US Government has painted itself into. After decades of lying to the people it cannot admit that it lied to the people without in essence saying that it has ceased to be the legitimate government. It HAS to go forward with whatever plan was created to justify invasion of some 50 other nations. The Bush White House, faced with such doubts about the latest Osama tape, and doubts about the validity of the war as a whole, may well see the activation of an Operation NORTHWOODS style plan as the only option left to try to recapture the public support which is evaporating even as I type these words. Something perhaps related to the sudden strange deaths and incapacitations of micro- iologists around the world. Something related to John Walker Lindh's claim of an impending bio-war attack?