On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 4: The Cutouts

A cutout is a link ...

 [Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages | Part 2: No Vortex | Part 3: The Lawsuit ]

The term "cutout" is intelligence jargon for a special sort of role that must be played in covert operations. A cutout acts as a go-between, bringing support and instructions from the planners to the perpetrators.

By doing this, the cutout becomes a link in the chain of evidence that connects the planners to the perpetrators. And the cutout's most important job is to be "cut out" of the chain if and when necessary.

The timely disappearance of a cutout can break the trail that would otherwise lead back from the crime to the people who wanted it to happen. By making cutouts disappear, covert operators can maintain a certain level of "plausible denial," even if the perpetrators are caught in the act, or tracked down later.

In the case of 9/11, where the "hijackers" were apparently patsies who were intended to be caught, the role of the cutouts was especially important -- and especially dangerous.

... in the chain of evidence that connects ...

It is sad and strange and very pathetic that we still know so little about the nature of the 9/11 attacks. It's bad enough that that we don't know who did it. But we don't even know what they did! That complicates everything except the government story, the litigation based on it, and the mainstream coverage.

We do know a little bit, and presumably Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch, Bob Graham know a lot more, about some well-connected Saudis who helped to put the patsies in a position from which they could take the blame -- and who then disappeared!

From Paul Sperry in the New York Post [or here]:

Some information already has leaked from the [28 redacted pages], which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally....

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

... the planners of a covert operation ...

Watch how this happens. The timing is very interesting. al-Bayoumi, who was directly connected with the patsies, disappeared two months before the attacks. Thumairy, who was connected to al-Bayoumi but not to the patsies directly, didn't disappear until after the attacks.

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

Bassnan (sometimes also "Basnan"), who was also in direct contact with the patsies, also disappeared before the attacks.

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client. The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

... to the perpetrators.

Prince Bandar, who as Ambassador was under diplomatic immunity, didn't have to disappear until he could leave for "personal reasons" by being "recalled."

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the ­official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites. Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

A cutout's most important job...

Awlaki needed a lot of help to disappear ... and he got it! Where do you suppose it came from?

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day.

This timing is also very interesting, is it not? Normally, federal arrest warrants are not mysteriously withdrawn -- let alone just in time to facilitate a disappearance!

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled.

Hussayen "feigned a seizure" to disappear. Such a clever lad. He has even disappeared from the official story, as did they all, according to Sperry:

Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.

Poof! They're all cleared! Isn't that amazing?

Guess who else got "help" from a high-ranking Saudi, who then disappeared?

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

... is to disappear ...

Esam Ghazzawi disappeared in a big hurry. That's the way it goes sometimes, especially when you're in contact with the "ringleader."

Some folks have more pull than others, apparently. The cutouts got away, but the senator chasing them ran into a stone wall.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Of course it's a coverup. Sperry asks:

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis?

But that question is beneath consideration, is it not? The interesting question is "Why is the federal government protecting the Saudis?" But perhaps Sperry can't ask such questions in the New York Post. He does say this, though:

Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

... and they all did! Isn't that amazing?

Yes, curious indeed ... unless you prefer a stronger word. In my view, there is no plausible explanation, unless people in very high places wanted it to happen this way.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

And that's how all the cutouts disappeared. Funny how that worked, isn't it? -- probably just the way it was supposed to.

Some of the cutouts didn't disappear safely enough. As Sperry notes,

A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

We also know about some other cutouts who didn't disappear fast enough. We'll talk about them soon.

[to be continued]

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On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 3: The Lawsuit

William Doyle: "I'm ecstatic."

[Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages | Part 2: No Vortex]

Saudi Arabia and 9/11 have been in the news together recently for reasons other than the congressional resolution urging president Obama to release the 28 redacted pages pertaining to alleged Saudi involvement in the attacks of that day.

On Thursday, December 19, a three-judge federal panel reversed an earlier ruling which had granted Saudi Arabia immunity from a lawsuit filed in 2002 which claimed that in the years before the attacks, the Saudis had knowingly funded charities which were funneling the money to al-Qaeda. In 2005, a Manhattan district court ruled that Saudi Arabia was immune from prosecution because the kingdom had the right to finance the charities of its choice, and that ruling was upheld in 2008. But it was reversed on Thursday, and now Saudi Arabia has been restored as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The decision has received a modest amount of national coverage. ABC News [or here] summarized the decision and quoted "William Doyle, the father of Joseph Doyle, 25, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center" as saying:

"I'm ecstatic.... For 12 years we've been fighting to expose the people who financed those bastards.... Christmas has come early to the 9/11 families. We're going to have our day in court."

I have no wish to rain on Mr. Doyle's Christmas. He has certainly been through enough. But I feel obliged to point out that he may be going after the wrong "bastards," or even the right "bastards" for the wrong reasons. After all, if the attack on the World Trade Center was not done with hijacked airplanes, but by some other means, then the question of who funded al-Qaeda takes on a much different significance, does it not?.

More detailed coverage was provided by a local sources in New York and (especially) Philadelphia, the latter being the home of Cozen O'Connor, the law firm representing the plaintiffs. Needless to say, there was no mainstream coverage from any point of view other than the presumption that al-Qaeda alone was responsible for all the death and destruction of 9/11. So, for example, at the New York Daily News [or here] we can read:

Relatives of people killed when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field can now resume lawsuit against the Arabian kingdom.

The Daily News piece, by Daniel Beekman, features more quotes from William Doyle:

"I’m ecstatic, because we have a lot of information and evidence.... These people are getting off scot-free. They didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, and to this day we still have terrorism running rampant. We have to hold accountable the people who finance terrorism....

Beekman continues:

Doyle compared the role of Saudi Arabia to that of a mob boss hiring a hit man.

"Not only does the person who pulls the trigger go to jail, so does the person who financed him," Doyle said. "What’s different about this situation?"

One difference (to continue Doyle's analogy) is that in this case the victim appears to have died from something other than a gunshot wound. So the situation is quite messy: interesting, complicated, and dangerous in unexpected ways.

Stephen Cozen: "I think it is an
eminently correct decision"

Chris Mondics, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer [or here], gives a bit more detail on the background:

Cozen O'Connor and several other law firms sued the government of Saudi Arabia, various Islamist charities, and alleged terrorism financiers in 2003, charging that they provided financial support to al-Qaeda over 10 years before the 9/11 attacks. The firms alleged that Saudi Arabia provided tens of millions of dollars to charities that in turn bankrolled al-Qaeda units in the Balkans, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Senior U.S. government officials warned Saudis before the 9/11 attacks that government-funded charities were bankrolling terrorist units, but, they said, the Saudis failed to react.

A federal district judge in Manhattan dismissed the Saudi government and members of the royal family as defendants in 2005, saying the government was within its right to finance the charities and was not responsible for what the charities might have done with the money.

That was upheld in 2008 by the Second Circuit. But the court said Thursday that it had decided to reverse its decisions because it had allowed a related lawsuit to go forward on the same grounds cited in the suit against the Saudis.

Mondics doesn't include any comments from William Doyle, but he does quote a couple of attorneys:

"I think it is an eminently correct decision," Stephen Cozen of Cozen O'Connor said of the Second Circuit's opinion restoring Saudi Arabia as a defendant. "The kingdom and the Saudi High Commission deserved to be back in the case as defendants, and we are prepared to meet any of their legal and factual arguments with substantial legal and factual arguments of our own."

John O'Neill, former head of
counterintelligence at the FBI

and

"It means that the Second Circuit realized that it had made a mistake and did what courts are expected to do, which is fix it," said Jerry S. Goldman, a Philadelphia lawyer with the firm Anderson Kill, who represents the estate of John O'Neill, a former head of counterintelligence at the FBI.

O'Neill, who was raised in Atlantic City, sounded some of the earliest warnings about Osama bin Laden. He was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, where he had gone to work as head of security after leaving the FBI only a few weeks earlier.

It goes without saying that the decision may complicate international relations:

Victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives have complained bitterly about the U.S. government's failure to turn over more information about its investigations of Saudi support for al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.

They are pushing for legislation that would reduce protections afforded by U.S. law to foreign governments against such lawsuits. The Saudis, meanwhile, have complained that lawsuits have disrupted relations between the two governments.

Speaking of which, Mondics mentions another potential complication, and a very interesting one:

The decision marked the second advance in the last week for lawyers representing 9/11 victims, their families, and insurers that lost billions covering businesses and properties damaged or destroyed ... On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on an appeal by Cozen, asking for the reinstatement of another group of defendants - dozens of individuals and financial institutions accused of funneling money to al-Qaeda before the attacks. The request suggests that the court views the matter as having some importance and increases the odds that it may agree to hear the appeal.

This is interesting, and complicated, and (as I read it) very challenging to the Obama administration, because widespread public knowledge of just who has been funding al-Qaeda over the years would be as dangerous to "national security" as the contents of the 28 redacted pages.

[Next: The Cutouts]

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On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 2: No Vortex

A twin-engine plane leaves a
double vortex in its wake.

[Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages]

[UPDATED; see below]

In Part 1 we were discussing the December 9 piece called "9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For Release" by Jamie Reno at International Business Times [or here]. In that article, Reno quotes Sharon Premoli, "a 9/11 survivor who was on the North Tower's 80th floor when the plane hit," as saying

"It makes me angry that I still don’t know what happened or who was supporting these hijackers."

There are many people who are angry because they still don't know what happened that day, some despite extensive personal efforts to find the truth of the matter. None of this is their fault. We've been hearing lies about these attacks ever since the day they happened. But hardly ever have we heard anything that could possibly be true.

So Sharon Premoli is quite correct to say, "I still don’t know what happened." In my view, her statement shows admirable courage and integrity. But, as I see it, to go on and talk about the "hijackers" is premature and speculative, irresponsible at best. I am becoming more and more convinced that all such talk is "barking up the wrong tree" in its entirety.

Dimitri Kalezov, in his remarkable book "9/11thology," dismisses the story that "hijacked planes crashed into the towers" very convincingly. If I may rephrase some of his strongest arguments:

But the fireball from the South Tower
just hung in the air.

[1] Eight of the 19 alleged "suicide hijackers" were found to be alive after the attack. They weren't even dragged from the rubble. They were already in foreign countries. Some claimed that their passports had been stolen. But clearly, if they had hijacked airplanes and crashed them into buildings in dramatic suicide attacks, they could not have been found alive later.

[2] Some of the "live video" supposedly depicting an airplane approaching and crashing into the South Tower has been shown to be fabricated (and the same can be said of some of the later video). Kalezov credits Ace Baker for his analysis, which proves beyond any doubt that the video is bogus. [For one example, see this video.] Clearly, if the crashes had been genuine, there would be no bogus video of the event.

[3] A turbofan engine spins at up to 30,000 RPM, creating a powerful vortex. So a twin-engine plane with turbofan engines leaves a double vortex in its wake. But the fireball from the South Tower, which we all saw many times, and which was allegedly caused by an airplane hitting the tower at 590 MPH, showed no disturbance in the air. As we could clearly see, the fireball just hung there. It didn't swirl or twist at all. The smoke from the burning North Tower was not affected in any way by the approach of the plane that supposedly hit the South Tower. So the air around both towers must have been quite still at the time. And therefore no turbofan-driven airplane could have been flying in the vicinity, in the seconds before the explosion. [See this video.]

The steel perimeter columns had walls two
inches thick, and aluminum cannot cut steel.

[4] The twin towers were built mostly of steel and concrete. Their frames were like cages; each face was a grid made of steel box girders with walls two inches thick. The vertical members of this grid were spaced only three feet apart. So for an airplane, which is essentially a hollow aluminum tube, to have burst into the building on impact, it would have had to cut through dozens of these girders, instantly and simultaneously.

But the "plane" that allegedly hit the North Tower supposedly entered the building "intact!" And that's not possible, because in any collision between a softer material and a harder one, the softer material suffers most, if not all, of the damage. Or, as Kalezov puts it,

aluminum projectiles can not penetrate steel targets even in theory

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Open a can of pop and drink the pop. Now throw the can at the door of a car, and observe how the can reacts on impact. Throw it as hard as you want; shoot it with a hockey stick; hit it with a baseball bat; fire it out of a cannon if you like; and pay attention to the results. In particular, does the can [a] bounce off the car door and land on the ground, somewhat deformed? Or does it [b] penetrate the car door and wind up inside the car? If you said [b], then commercial airplanes could possibly have pierced the frames of the World Trade Center towers. Otherwise not.

Therefore the planes
that crashed into the WTC
must have been digital.

If you said [a], the planes that crashed into the WTC were digital -- pixels on a screen and nothing more. This could be why so many of the people who supposedly hijacked those planes were still alive after the fact; maybe they were not killed in the collisions because there were no collisions. Maybe their role was not to hijack any planes, nor to destroy any buildings, but simply to take the blame.

If you are not now and have never been a "no-planer," this line of reasoning may cause you considerable discomfort. That's not your fault. You've been hearing lies about 9/11 ever since it happened. But if you fire enough pop cans at your car, you may find the situation somewhat easier to accept.

This line of reasoning is uncomfortable for me because it is so obvious! Of course aluminum cannot cut steel. It never has; it never will; and I should have been able to figure this out, twelve years ago, all by myself and without any help from Dimitri Kalezov.

And if the so-called "hijackers" were merely patsies, then in the days before 9/11, they may not have known anything at all about the attacks for which they were about to be blamed. So the search for those who helped them -- whoever they were, and whatever they thought they were doing -- takes on a much different aspect. But it is still an important search.

Clearly, anyone who gave the patsies support, and/or instructions, is implicated in the 9/11 attacks -- whatever they were. And by the same logic that indicates the patsies may have been unaware of the plan of attack, those who supported them may have had no knowledge of it themselves, aside from the specific tasks they were assigned to perform.

Any serious and honest investigation would concern itself with questions such as who assigned these tasks. It would not be satisfied with explanations that the individuals involved had no knowledge of the plan. And yet this appears to have happened.

[UPDATE: Most of what I wrote in this post has been challenged. And it could be wrong. I've been wrong before. For the challenge to this post, see this comment thread. And if you're curious, I was wrong about this story, at least for a while.]

[Next: Part 3: The Lawsuit]

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On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 1: 28 Pages

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
[holding hands] with
George W. Bush

There's been a bit of a buzz building on Capitol Hill recently over a report issued back in 2002 concerning an investigation into 9/11. If you haven't read anything about it lately, it's probably not your fault. With very few exceptions, the report in question has not been mentioned in the mainstream news for more than ten years.

As you may vaguely remember, in the early days after 9/11, former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) chaired a Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry into the activites of certain intelligence agencies as they pertained to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Graham's inquiry resulted in an 800-page report, of which then-president George W. Bush held back 28 pages, claiming that the information they contained would be detrimental to national security. According to hints from sources who have read the report, the redacted pages concern a number of high-ranking Saudis who provided financial and other assistance to some of the "hijackers."

The Hill is slightly abuzz over this issue because earlier this year, representatives Walter B. Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) were allowed to read the 28 redacted pages, and earlier this month they introduced a resolution urging president Obama to release them to the public.

I have been reading about this sporadically from a very small variety of sources, beginning with Jamie Reno's December 9 article at International Business Times [or here], which says, among other things,

Most of the allegations of links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers revolve around two enigmatic Saudi men who lived in San Diego: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, both of whom have long since left the United States.

In early 2000, al-Bayoumi, who had previously worked for the Saudi government in civil aviation (a part of the Saudi defense department), invited two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to San Diego from Los Angeles. He told authorities he met the two men by chance when he sat next to them at a restaurant.

Newsweek reported in 2002 that al-Bayoumi’s invitation was extended on the same day that he visited the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles for a private meeting.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan

Newsweek's 2002 report was called "The Saudi Money Trail" and you can read it at the Newsweek site [or here]. Other early reports worth reading include "Bush Won't Reveal Saudi 9/11 Info" from Lauren Johnston of AP via CBS [or here] and "Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role By Saudi Spies" by James Risen and David Johnston in the New York Times [or here]

Jamie Reno continues:

Al-Bayoumi arranged for the two future hijackers to live in an apartment and paid $1,500 to cover their first two months of rent. Al-Bayoumi was briefly interviewed in Britain but was never brought back to the United States for questioning.

As for Basnan, Newsweek reported that he received monthly checks for several years totaling as much as $73,000 from the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and his wife, Princess Haifa Faisal. Although the checks were sent to pay for thyroid surgery for Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, Dweikat signed many of the checks over to al-Bayoumi’s wife, Manal Bajadr. This money allegedly made its way into the hands of hijackers, according to the 9/11 report.

Despite all this, Basnan was ultimately allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, and Dweikat was deported to Jordan.

Sources and numerous press reports also suggest that the 28 pages include more information about Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI asset in San Diego who Newsweek reported was friends with al-Bayoumi and invited two of the San Diego-based hijackers to live in his house.

Shaikh was not allowed by the FBI or the Bush administration to testify before the 9/11 Commission or the JICI.

Reno also says:

Jones insists that releasing the 28 secret pages would not violate national security.

This tells me that Walter B. Jones does not understand what "national security" means. But that's probably not his fault. We've been hearing lies about "national security" ever since we were born.

We tend to think of "national security" as something involving the safety and security of the nation and its people -- ordinary people such as you and me and our families. And this is what our political system would like us to believe -- not because it's true, only because it makes us easier to manipulate. As it is actually used, "national security" refers to the survival and continuing tenure in office of those who use the term to justify their actions. More broadly, it also refers to the survival and continuing (or increasing!) wealth, status and privilege of those who currently enjoy such things.

As we have known for a long time, George W. Bush and his administration resisted every attempt to investigate 9/11, except for the belated whitewash which they felt they could control. And they used "national security" to prevent the release, not only of the infamous "28 pages" but of a wide variety of other information.

It doesn't take much guesswork to figure out why they did this. Clearly the information they censored must have threatened them, their position, and their supporters. They may no longer have their positions, but surely their supporters retain a stake in the matter. And unless I am badly misreading the situation, the Obama administration has far greater incentive to keep the 28 pages secret than to release them. But we shall see what happens. Unless we don't.

[Next: Part 2: No Vortex]

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Big Surprise: US Intel Knew Syrian Rebels Could Produce Sarin; Obama Lied About It Trying To Justify Another War

Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh has reported that US intelligence agencies knew the opposition forces in Syria were able to produce sarin. Some of us may recall our noble leaders asserting quite the opposite, and using said assertion to attempt to justify waging overt war against Syria.

Hersh proves that they deliberately lied. Is anyone surprised by this revelation?

Hersh usually writes for the New Yorker. But his new article, "Whose sarin?" is published online-only by the London Review of Books.

Some of us may recall being told we have a free press. Is anyone surprised that the New Yorker has not published Hersh's new article?

Hersh reports:

A former senior intelligence official ... said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’

So I have to ask: Is anyone surprised that they do this? How can any "senior intelligence official" NOT know that they do this? It's been happening for a long time, hasn't it?

The same "former senior intelligence official" told Hersh that the "distortion" of the intelligence

reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam.

So he has noticed. But apparently he hasn't caught on yet. And this is a "former senior intelligence official." How much more experience does one need to start understanding what's happening here?

Hersh mentions in closing that the agreement which will see Syria get rid of its chemical weapons will also leave the rebels in possession of all the ingredients they'd need to make more sarin. So who's kidding whom here? And are we surprised?

All of this is very disturbing. But it's hardly surprising. Is it?

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Lessons We Learn From Our Children: A Five-Legged Stool And A Potato Of Milk

My wife and I have been getting some interesting lessons from our children, two of which stand out as especially relevant. Working together, they form a synergy that explains far too much about the current political situation. And even though they're of no importance in and of themselves, it still might be worthwhile to tell you about them.

When our daughter was learning the alphabet, we gave her a DVD set called "40 Years of Sunny Days: The Best of Sesame Street." It's an excellent compilation of skits, songs (this is my favorite), and art. We had fun watching it with her, she had fun watching it herself, and she learned the alphabet and much more. But some of what she learned was wrong!

One of the older skits was done in simple drawings with a voice track. It shows a mother sending her daughter to the store for "a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." The daughter recites the list over and over on her way to the store, and although she suffers a momentary lapse once inside, she brings home the right things.

Our daughter loved that skit, but she didn't understand it. We know this because she would walk around the house saying, "a loaf of bread, a potato of milk, and a stick of butter."

Her older brothers challenged her many times, asking questions such as, "How could you have a potato of milk?" and "A potato of milk? What does that even mean?" And every time, she gave them the same response: "a loaf of bread, a potato of milk, and a stick of butter."

Stubborn? Oh my goodness. Where does she get that from?

Meanwhile, our eldest son was involved in a group project in his science class. The assignment was to design and build a stool which would hold as much weight as possible. The teacher offered to provide all the materials, and our son suggested a hollow concrete cube.

It would not have been pretty, but it would have supported everything the class could stack on it. On the other hand, there were three people in the group, and he was the only one who liked his idea. The other two wanted to blow up a balloon, cover it with papier-mâché, and paint it blue with green stripes. So that's what they did.

They made legs out of empty pop cans, also covered in papier-mâché, also painted blue with green stripes, and they papered the legs to the balloon in such odd places that the stool fell over, even without any weight on it. So they added a fifth leg. Then the smallest girl in the class sat on it for about three seconds, and it didn't collapse. So they declared their experiment finished and their stool a success. Our son was mortified.

But this is how democracy works, kids. Two clowns with a bad idea will overrule one serious person with a good idea, every time. That's on a small scale. On a larger scale, the ratio gets worse. N+1 clowns who know nothing will overrule N serious, well-informed people, every time. So 51% is a landslide. 50.1% is a mandate. And so on.

And that's a problem. Meanwhile, most of the people -- at least, most of the people I know -- seem quite content to absorb whatever they hear. If they hear something often enough, and nothing to the contrary, they believe it -- even if it's not supported by any credible evidence, even if it's not remotely plausible, even if the very words don't make any sense at all. And when they're challenged, they'll stick by their nonsense, no matter what. That's another problem.

It's not as if honest people control the voting machines or anything. And it's not as if we control the media either. We don't even have a presence in it. So if there were no volunteer truth-seekers, everyone would hear the same lies all day long, day after day. And nobody would ever hear anything different. Then they wouldn't even need to rig the elections.

It's good to be blogging again. 

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Multiple Blogs Rolling

Not logs! I said, "blogs."

As long-time readers are aware, I have been hampered by multiple injuries for several years and my blogs have all been dormant (or mostly dormant) for a long time. However, I am happy to report that in the past month or so, I have been healthy enough to get multiple blogs rolling simultaneously. In particular ...

• Winter Parking

is rolling again, archiving news stories of interest. The newest post there is a transcript an interview from Voice Of Russia with

• Len Bracken about 9/11. 

He might not be right about everything that he says -- who is? -- but a lot of what he says is interesting ... to me, anyway.

The archiving of news stories has been much more labor-intensive at

• The Spy Who Knew Too Much

where I collect articles relevant to the death of Gareth Williams. At TSWKTM there are more than 100 new posts, most pertaining to Scotland Yard's announcement last month that the police now view his death as a probable accident. Some of the news articles mirrored here have been taken down from the websites on which they were originally published. Why? Hmm! Interesting...

I have also set up a new site called

• Tweets from the Inquest into the Death of Gareth Williams

which hosts a collection of tweets sent by five reporters during the eight days of the inquest in late April and early May of 2012. There's more detail here than anywhere else on the net, as far as I know. Not for everyone, surely, but vital stuff nonetheless. I am still working on the cross-reference, so it will be more useful to me as I work on

• Sherlock Holmes And The Alderney Street Mystery

which explores the Gareth Williams case and the stories printed about it (under the guise of fiction). SHATASM has four new installments, starting with

• Chapter 118: Toxicology: Negative.

And finally, at my music blog

• Cold Tunes

there are six new posts:

• Burn by Bruce Cockburn; 
• brilliant renditions of Pachelbel's Canon in D from Buddy Emmons (on pedal steel guitar) and The Piano Guys (on four cellos);
• You Can't Hurry Love, a big hit for the Supremes in 1966, which has been covered once or twice since;
• Roxy Music's She Sells, featuring keyboardist/violinist/composer Eddie Jobson;
• Big Day, by Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera, with ex-Roxy studio wizard Brian Eno; and
• Audrey Assad's Winter Snow, a gorgeous, slow, jazzy, song of Christmas.

These are the first new postings at Cold Tunes in five years, and I must say, it's fun to be able to do this again. While I've been working on Cold Tunes, I have noticed that some of the old videos are no longer available, and I have been putting up replacements if I could find them. So a couple of posts which have been broken for a long time are now functional again. In particular, if you haven't heard

• Tommy Bolin's Sweet Burgundy, or 
• Lowell George singing Honest Man,

this would be a good time to do so.  And whether you've already seen it or not,

• With A Little Help From My Fred

is once again worth a visit.

I am working on research for a new post or two for "my main blog" as well, and I hope this will conclude my leave of absence.

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