Seven Years of Bad Luck

Very superstitious

writings on the wall

Very superstitious
ladders 'bout to fall


Thirteen month old baby
broke the lookin' glass


Seven years of bad luck
the good things in your past


When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way


Very superstitious
wash your face and hands


Rid me of the problem
do all that you can


Keep me in a daydream
keep me goin' strong


You don't wanna save me
sad is my song


When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way


Very superstitious
nothin' more to say


Very superstitious
the devil's on his way


Thirteen month old baby
broke the lookin' glass


Seven years of bad luck
good things in your past


When you believe in things
that you don't understand


then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way
no, no, no, no, no

Stevie Wonder:

CRUCIAL VIDEO: "7/7 Ripple Effect"

Here's an excellent account of the London bombings of July 7, 2005 -- a vitally important and often overlooked specimen of state-sponsored false-flag terror at its worst.

I remember it all so well ... I was in a high-pressure blogging situation at the time, pulling double duty and desperate for something to write about. As a story, for somebody like me, it was a gift from Heaven. Right from the very beginning it had all the signs of a black op, and I said so at the time.

The attacks were even more opportune for some others. They occurred at a time when the run of news stories -- and of events -- was against the other puppets of the ruling class, especially in the U.K., as the British had nearly been pushed out of Iraq, the rich countries had been pushed to at least talk about helping the poor ones at the G8 summit, and Tony Blair was wilting under pressure. It all seemed just too convenient, as I wrote at the tim.

Rudy Giuliani was there. Benyamin Netanyahu was there -- and Netanyahu was warned not to leave his hotel, just a few minutes before a bomb exploded in the nearest tube station.

Peter Power explained that his consulting firm was involved in a terrorism-preparedness drill working with the exact scenario that transpired -- four explosions: three on trains and one on a bus ... and in exactly the same locations, too!

Think about that for a moment -- how far beyond coincidental can you get? This was treason of the highest order, and at the very top of the government.

Ever since I started blogging I've been trying to place terror in the context of government, in a deeper and more meaningful way than the approach followed by some more mainstream reporters such as Rolling Stone and Keith Olbermann, who draw connections between bogus terror alerts and political crises, but don't talk about how actual governments in search of ever-increasing power have participated in actual terror attacks which have killed hundreds or thousands or even more actual innocent people.

The London bombings of 7/7/2005 provided as clear an example of such a government in action as we are ever likely to see -- with the Mayor of 9/11 and a former Israeli Defense Minister right in the middle of it.

This video, "7/7 Ripple Effect", goes way beyond my quick and relatively simple analysis, and most of it makes perfect sense to me. It gets two minor details wrong, as far as I know, but neither makes any difference to any of the main points.

There are a few small bits that I still don't understand, but nothing that shocks me very much. I've reported on bogus-terror entrapment scams so often that most of my regular readers will be able to see the parallels in this case ... and if they don't, they'll probably ask questions!

Thanks to J for Justice dot Co dot UK for putting this video together, and a tip of the frozen cap to Sea Dreamer.

Tom Toles: Giuliani's Outreach

Real 9/11 Heroes Fight Back Against A Fictional One

Ryan Chatelain, Associate Editor of amNewYork, is digging gently at a very sensitive spot when he writes:

Rudy Giuliani is using his distorted reputation as a 9/11 hero as a springboard to the White House when it was his decisions that led to the deaths of more than 100 firefighters at the World Trade Center, a new video by a firefighters union argues.

"Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend," a documentary by the International Association of Fire Fighters, includes interviews with firefighters and family members of firefighters killed on 9/11. The 13-minute video was released Wednesday and can be viewed at rudy-urbanlegend.com

... or below, or here.

Ryan Chatelain continues:

"Rudy Giuliani has used the horrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, to create a carefully crafted persona, but the fact is what Rudy portrays is not a full picture of the decisions made that led, in our view, to the unnecessary deaths of our FDNY members and the attempt to stop the dignified recovery of those lost," IAFF President Harold Schaitberger says in the video.

The are a few more very interesting comments from Harold Schaitberger at the Urban Legend website, and we'll get to them in a minute.

But first, here's a bit more from Ryan Chatelain:

"Urban Legend" blasts Giuliani for equipping firefighters with defective radios, which didn't allow them to hear evacuation orders before the collapse of the north tower, which was the second to fall. As a result, 121 officers died in the tower, while no police officers, who had working radios and heard the command, perished.

The documentary alleges Giuliani scaled back efforts to recover victims' remains after $200 million in gold was recovered from bank vaults under the towers, instead leaving some firefighters to be "removed like garbage" and sent to a Staten Island landfill.

"Urban Legend" also criticizes Giuliani's decision to place the city's emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center, knowing the area was the target of a 1993 terrorist bombing.

Here's the video; watch it and see what you think.

The Giuliani campaign issued a pair of pre-emptive responses before the video was posted online Wednesday evening, but neither addressed the documentary's direct allegations.

Of course! They can't address the documentary's direct allegations, and they don't even want to start doing that, because once they start dealing with allegations of negligence and lack of respect for the fallen, they'll likely have to deal with much more serious allegations. Hold that thought.

From the Urban Legend website:

"Rudy has used the horrible events of September 11 to create a persona that is an elaborate fabrication," says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. "He is nothing more than a shameless self-promoter."

Au contraire, mon ami! Rudy Giuliani is much more than a shameless self-promoter! As Harold Schaitberger says himself:

"What Giuliani showed following 9/11 is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them. He valued the money and gold and wanted the site cleared before he left office at the end of 2001 more than he valued the lives and memories of those lost."

Rushing to clear the site was the wrong thing to do on many levels. On a basic forensic level it's called destruction of evidence. You'll find it filed under obstruction of justice.

Why would an innocent person destroy evidence? Why would an innocent mayor insist on all the evidence being destroyed before he left office? Do you find those questions disturbing? Good. Now we're getting somewhere.

When I mentioned serious allegations, I was talking about more than obstruction of justice. I was also talking about foreknowledge ... and complicity with other key 9/11 conspirators.

It's a can of worms the Rudy-For-President-Of-9/11 campaign can't afford to open.

Too bad it just got opened for them!

Jim Morin: Mr. 9-11 Didn't Hear You

What? No Tom Toles?

No, this is by Jim Morin of the Miami Herald, via McClatchy.

But it's still an open thread.

Giuliani Campaign Chairman Indicted For Cocaine Trafficking

The South Carolina state chairman of Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign has been indicted on charges of cocaine trafficking.

Thomas Ravenel has stepped down from the campaign, according to a statement released by Giuliani's political director, Mark Campbell, who also said the campaign has no information about the accusations pending against Ravenel.

As reported by AP via CNN, Ravenel has been charged with distribution of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the federal prosecutor assigned to the case, "The investigation is just beginning."

Your cold blogger predicts that Ravenel, in return for his support of the party of "family values" and "law and order", will never see the inside of a prison cell.

Giuliani, of course, is a prime suspect in the attacks of 9/11 and the state-sponsored obstruction of justice which followed immediately and which continues to this day.

Jerome Hauer, Onetime Giuliani Insider, Is Now a Critic

What have we here?

We'd better hang onto this one!

Onetime Giuliani Insider Is Now a Critic

By Russ Buettner, New York Times

As Rudolph W. Giuliani runs for president, his image as a chief executive who steered New York through the disaster of Sept. 11 has become a pillar of his campaign. But one former member of his inner circle keeps surfacing to revisit that history in ways that are unflattering to Mr. Giuliani: Jerome M. Hauer, New York City’s first emergency management director.

In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s emergency command center at the ill-fated World Trade Center.

Mr. Hauer has also disputed the claim by the Giuliani campaign that the mayor’s wife, Judith Giuliani, had coordinated a help center for families after the attack.

And he has contradicted Mr. Giuliani’s assertions that the city’s emergency response was well coordinated that day, a point he made most notably to the authors of “Grand Illusion,” a book that depicts Mr. Giuliani’s antiterrorism efforts as deeply flawed.

Mr. Hauer does not disparage Mr. Giuliani’s overall effort at emergency preparedness or appear to have actively sought out a role as a Giuliani scold. But he has emerged as one in several settings where his frank, often blunt, answers to questions have offered a rare view inside the often-insular Giuliani administration.

Mr. Hauer was once part of the coterie of high school chums, fellow former prosecutors and City Hall aides who remain the nucleus of Mr. Giuliani’s tight-knit set of advisers. From that perch, he helped Mr. Giuliani confront some of New York City’s most disquieting predicaments, like the West Nile virus and a potential millennium meltdown.

He emerged from four years of service to Mr. Giuliani as one of the country’s better known emergency preparedness experts and a frequent guest on television news programs.

But in recent years, Mr. Hauer and Mr. Giuliani have had a falling out, though they disagree on just why.

Perhaps a jealous spat over who would get top billing? (Click the "wanted" poster to enlarge it!)

Now from a distance, Mr. Hauer offers views of Mr. Giuliani’s management style, ones that depict him not only as highly competent and exceptionally hands-on, but also as insensitive and retaliatory at times.

Mr. Hauer, for example, recalls a conversation he had with Mr. Giuliani in 2001 when he had decided to endorse a Democrat, Mark Green, for New York City mayor over Mr. Giuliani’s own choice for a successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican. Mr. Hauer said Mr. Giuliani, upset, called up to say his disloyalty was unforgivable.

“He was shouting, ‘If you do this, you’re done ... I’m going to end your career,’ or something along those lines,” Mr. Hauer said.

Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor, remembered the endorsement debate differently, suggesting that Mr. Hauer had put politics over principles in a way that “put his whole credibility in question.”

Fred Siegel, the author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life” (Encounter Books, 2005), said the trust that members of Mr. Giuliani’s inner circle invested in each other was the reason no one apart from Mr. Hauer had ever emerged as even an occasional critic.

“The core of the administration was that these guys would always pull together,” said Mr. Siegel, who once served as speechwriter for Mr. Giuliani. “Once a decision was made, that was it. There wouldn’t be any second-guessing.”

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Hauer began their relationship in January 1996 when Mr. Hauer was hired to lead the new Office of Emergency Management, created to coordinate the city’s response to crises. Mr. Hauer, who was little known before he became a Giuliani aide, had previously run emergency management programs for the State of Indiana and IBM.

In his book, Mr. Siegel describes Mr. Hauer, who is 6-foot-5, as “a big, plain-spoken and knowledgeable man” who “won wide-spread cooperation.”

One of Mr. Hauer’s first tasks was to find a home for an emergency command center to replace the inadequate facilities at police headquarters. Mr. Hauer suggested an office complex in downtown Brooklyn as a “good alternative” in a memorandum.

But Mr. Hauer said the mayor insisted instead on a site within walking distance of City Hall. Given that concern and others, Mr. Hauer said he decided that offices on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, next to the twin towers and just a few blocks from City Hall, seemed the best choice.

The site was immediately controversial because it was part of the trade center, which had already been the location of a truck bomb attack in 1993. City officials, though, including Mr. Hauer, have long defended their decision, even after the command center had to be evacuated during the 2001 terror attack.

Last week, in an interview with Fox News, Mr. Giuliani again faced questions about the site. He put responsibility for selecting it on Mr. Hauer.

“Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense,” Mr. Giuliani said. “It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.”

Mr. Hauer took immediate exception to that account in interviews. “That’s Rudy’s own reality that he lives in,” he said. “It is not, in fact, the truth.”

Mr. Hauer has also expressed concern about the level of support he felt from Mr. Giuliani, in particular when he tried to bridge the divide between the city’s Police and Fire Departments, two disparate emergency response cultures that battled over turf.

Mr. Hauer said he ended up in something of a feud with the police commissioner at the time, Howard Safir, which came to a head in 1998 when, he said, he offered to help both departments prepare for a chemical disaster drill.

Police officials declined help, Mr. Hauer said, but then sent detectives to follow him and photograph his meeting with fire officials. During a subsequent meeting with the mayor, Mr. Safir held up the photographs, Mr. Hauer said, as triumphant evidence that Mr. Hauer favored the Fire Department.

“Any man worth his salt would have been outraged that the Police Department followed one of his closest commissioners,” Mr. Hauer said. “It was disgraceful.”

But Mr. Hauer said that when he complained to Mr. Giuliani, all he got was a blank stare.

Mr. Lhota, speaking for the campaign, said he was unaware of such an incident. Mr. Safir did not return a call for comment.

Mr. Hauer left his city job in 2000. A year later, Mr. Giuliani called him back into service after the terror attacks. He was assigned to help prepare for possible biological or chemical attacks and to help set up an assistance center for victims’ families.

Mr. Giuliani’s wife, Judith, who was then his companion, also had a role in setting up the center. But last week Mr. Hauer told New York magazine that the campaign’s depiction of her role was “simply a lie.”

The campaign’s Web site said that Mrs. Giuliani had “coordinated the efforts at the Family Assistance Center on Pier 94.”

Indeed, others were at least equally involved in that effort. Rosemary O’Keefe, who was then director of the Community Assistance Unit, said Mrs. Giuliani had helped during the first two days at the pier.

“Judith was a very important part in the very beginning,” Ms. O’Keefe said in an interview. “I ran it 20 hours a day from that point forward.”

Michael McKeon, a Giuliani campaign spokesman, said the campaign never meant to suggest that Mrs. Giuliani played a singular role in coordinating the center, only that she had helped set it up. He said the language on the Web site had been adjusted.

Mrs. Giuliani, Mr. McKeon said, is “the first one to give credit to other people.”

Mr. Hauer, Mr. McKeon said, is just bitter.

Mr. Siegel said that what is indeed singular is the role Mr. Hauer has now assumed, that of a high-ranking Giuliani insider who is now an outsider with pointed opinions on a central topic of the presidential campaign.

“To me, it’s unfortunate,” Mr. Siegel said, “that two people who did so much to prepare the city had a falling out.”

This is the best line I've seen in a long time!

Of course they did much to prepare the city! Of course they did!!

What exactly do you mean by "prepare"?

Giuliani Capitalizes On 9/11 To The Tune Of $30 Million

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who just six years ago told a divorce court he had only $7,000 in assets under his control, has amassed a net worth of more than $30 million, much of it from paid speeches.

This from David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, who also writes:

During his divorce from Donna Hanover in June 2001, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani said he had only $7,000 in personal money “under his control.” His salary as mayor of New York at the time was about $195,000, and his local financial disclosure forms showed less than $800,000 in deferred compensation, pension, retirement and mutual funds. He had also signed a contract to write two books for an advance of $3 million.

The latest disclosure form suggests that his biggest source of income was speeches, capitalizing on his celebrity after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For the period covered by the form — roughly the calendar year 2006 — Mr. Giuliani reported making 124 speeches for as much as $200,000 each and earning a total of about $11.4 million.

And that's my emphasis.

What a scumbag!

No disrespect intended to scumbags.

NYT 'Rips' Giuliani Over 9/11 Cleanup

The New York Times has published an article by Anthony DePalma which is critical of former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani over his handling of the cleanup after 9/11. But it's an echo of Monty Python: DePalma has strapped Giuliani into the comfy chair and hit him with the soft pillows. Like this:

Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

Anyone who watched Rudolph W. Giuliani preside over ground zero in the days after 9/11 glimpsed elements of his strength: decisiveness, determination, self-confidence.

Those qualities were also on display over the months he directed the cleanup of the collapsed World Trade Center. But today, with evidence that thousands of people who worked at ground zero have become sick, many regard Mr. Giuliani’s triumph of leadership as having come with a human cost.

A human cost indeed, and a huge one! At this point it seems quite safe to say that more people will die from illnesses contracted while cleaning up after the demolition of the World Trade Center than were killed on the day of the demolition.

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

This is a very kind way of not mentioning that his "drive" may have been primarily motivated by a desire to get rid of the evidence as quickly as possible.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

Clearly "the city" was mostly interested in enforcing something else.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

Lovely people we're talking about here.

From the beginning, there was no doubt that Mr. Giuliani and his team ruled the hellish disaster site. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, all with extensive disaster response experience, arrived almost immediately, only to be placed on the sideline. One Army Corps official said Mr. Giuliani acted like a “benevolent dictator.”

You have to wonder how much they paid him to use the word "benevolent".

Despite the presence of those federal experts, Mr. Giuliani assigned the ground zero cleanup to a largely unknown city agency, the Department of Design and Construction. Kenneth Holden, the department’s commissioner until January 2004, said in a deposition in the federal lawsuit against the city that he initially expected FEMA or the Army Corps to try to take over the cleanup operation. Mr. Giuliani never let them.

And as a result...

More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge.

On the other hand,

Although the cleanup was expected to last 30 months, the pit was cleared by June 2002, nine months after the attack.

How did they do it so fast?

The four large construction companies that had been hired to clear debris worked around the clock. But that was not fast enough for the city, especially after the rescue operation formally ended on Sept. 29. One reason for the push may have been concern that unnecessary delays would have added to the cost of the cleanup.

DePalma cannot bring himself to say "destruction of evidence", much less "obstruction of justice". Instead he just piles on the evidence:

Two days after the rescue efforts ended and the full-scale recovery and cleanup began, Michael Burton, executive deputy commissioner of the Design and Construction Department, warned one of the companies in a letter that the city would fire individual workers or companies “if the highest level of efficiency is not maintained.”

There's more. There's a lot more. But it's all the same. The mayor should have cracked down on workers who weren't wearing respirators.

Bring in more soft pillows!

If Anthony DePalma cannot say "obstruction of justice" or "destruction of evidence", he surely cannot say anything about what happened last month in San Diego, when a Citizens' Grand Jury returned indictments against both Giuliani and our favorite "suspect awaiting indictment", Jerome Hauer, for "conspiracy to commit mass murder".

Still, as the saying goes, half a loaf is better than none.

Crimes Against Humanity As A Win-Win Proposition

Writing about the "aftermath" of the not-quite-accomplished US "mission" to overthrow-by-proxy the government of Somalia, Chris Floyd hits the nail squarely on the head -- again!

And what has been the outcome of this "regime change," besides the vastly increased level of human suffering? Why, destroying moderate influences and radicalizing younger Somalis into support of Islamic extremism, of course – the same outcome we have seen in Iraq, the same general template for the entire "War on Terror," that vast machine of loot and domination that creates more terrorism at every turn. As AP notes:

Islamic militants - who now dominate the insurgency - stockpiled thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition during the six months they controlled Mogadishu. The insurgency will likely last until that stockpile is depleted, or key leaders are killed.

The militants have long rejected any secular government and have sworn to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic emirate. Clan elders have tried to negotiate several cease-fires, but cannot control the young insurgents.

Isn't that wonderful? What a blessing for the American interests represented so ably by our president and his sterling team. Raising up a whole new generation of young, radicalized Islamic extremists – most of them raised in the hellholes of failed states shattered by America's "War on Terror" – can only mean boffo box office for profiteers of war, fear and terror for decades to come! Think of all the long green that "security consultants" like Rudy Giuliani will be raking in from the new crop of "asymmetricals" sown by Bush's wars. Not to mention the even greater profit margins of the weapons peddlers, the "military servicing" empires, the oil barons – and the body-bag manufacturers.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: there is no such thing as "bad news" for the Bush Terror Warriors. They can either reap the fruits of conquest in their regime changes – or simply make hay in the bloody aftermath of the blunt force trauma they inflict on millions of people. Either way, the money keeps rolling in. In office or out, the Bushists will keep on sowing the seeds of terrorism and revenge – but it's the rest of us who will reap the whirlwind.

Gwynne Dyer And 9/11 Truth: Never The Twain Shall Meet

I've been waiting five and a half years for Gwynne Dyer to finally say something about 9/11. As it turns out, I shouldn't have bothered. Neither should he.

I'll spare you the details and get right to the conclusions...

On Loose Change:

pure paranoid fantasy and it is rotting people's brains

On MIHOP (the notion that certain key officials Made It Happen On Purpose):

I don't think that Tenet, Rice, Powell et al would have deliberately plotted the deaths of thousands of Americans.

I don't believe even Dick Cheney would have done that.

On the official conspiracy theory: not a word!

On the conspiracy theory presented by Loose Change:

The FBI was in on it, the CIA was in on it, the Air Force was in on it - except those who were killed at the Pentagon - and North American Aerospace Defence Command was in on it.

The security companies guarding the World Trade Centre were in on it, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in on it, the Federal Aviation Administration was in on it, Nasa was in on it, and the Pentagon was in on it. At least 10,000 people were in on it. They had to be, or it couldn't have worked.

More than five years later, not one of them has talked. Nobody has got drunk and spilled their guts. Nobody has told their spouse, who then blabbed.

Not one of these 10,000 accomplices to mass murder has yielded to the temptation for instant fame and great wealth for blowing the whistle on the greatest conspiracy in history.

Oh yeah? Instant fame and great wealth?? How about instant unemployment?

If Gwynne Dyer had done some honest open-minded research, he could have found the answers to many of the questions he doesn't even treat as worthy of being asked.

For instance, there is considerable evidence indicating that the security companies guarding the World Trade Center were in fact in on it. We talked about that not very long ago.

We know how the Air Force was diverted -- with the heaviest concentration of war games ever scheduled. We know how NORAD was confused -- and we marvel at how many times the people who should have been handling the emerging crisis asked, "Is this real-world or an exercise?".

In an environment where following orders is everything, where information is made available on a "need to know" basis, it certainly would be possible to organize an attack on this scale without letting 10,000 people in on the guilty secret. And Gwynne Dyer should know it.

How many people would it take? Let's look at it this way: Spectacular crimes are always easier to pull off with some inside help than without any. We're supposed to believe the crime of the century was committed by 19 or 20 foreigners with no access to any inside help whatsoever. So why would it take 10,000 well-connected insiders to inflict the same damage? It makes no sense at all.

Meet Jerome Hauer, 9/11 Suspect Awaiting Indictment

Jerome Hauer

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Jerome Hauer, director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness.

On September 11, 2001, Jerome Hauer was a national security advisor with the National Institute of Health, a managing director with Kroll Associates, and a guest on national television.

His background in counter-terror and his specialized knowledge of biological warfare served him well on that day.

Perhaps a little too well.

Anthrax Attacks

On September 11, 2001, Jerome Hauer advised the White House to begin taking Cipro, an antibiotic which is effective against anthrax.

Mr. Hauer's advice was not made public. Its value may have been underestimated at the time, but it was clearly demonstrated a week later, when the first anthrax letters appeared, and again three weeks after that, when anthrax appeared in letters to Democratic Senators Daschle and Leahy.

The obvious question is: Did Jerome Hauer know about the anthrax attacks in advance?

Prior Knowledge?

Strangely, perhaps, this is not the first time questions of prior knowledge have surfaced in Jerome Hauer's wake.

Jerome Hauer joined New York City's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in 1998 and quickly obtained funding from the office of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani for the study of West Nile virus. The following year the virus appeared in the city, and Jerome Hauer led the fumigation effort.

Did Jerome Hauer know this was going to happen? Or did he just get "lucky"?

And how could anyone know such a thing was going to happen? Unless ... unless ...

The Sound Of Two Feet Dragging

Strangely, perhaps, Jerome Hauer managed the NIH response to the anthrax attacks. The anthrax used in the attacks was identified as an Ames strain, which means it had to have come from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Jerome Hauer received relatively good information for tracking down the origin of the anthrax. He even got a list of people from various institutes, including USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. But his response was slow and hidden behind a public relations campaign spreading Orwellian claims like "Suspects are Osama bin Laden and his Al-Q'aeda network and sympathizers to US right wing extremists".

Why would he act so slowly, and in such an inappropriate fashion? Perhaps because Jerome Hauer knew someone whose name was on that list?

Stephen Hatfill, at one time considered a prime suspect in this still-unsolved case, had worked for USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. Strangely, perhaps, he had also worked with Jerome Hauer, for Scientific Applications International Corporation, at the Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis.

The World Trade Center

Jerome Hauer's connections with terror and counter-terror started with and concentrated on biological warfare, but they don't stop there.

On September 11, 2001, in addition to his job with the NIH, Jerome Hauer was also Managing Director of Kroll Associates, a well-established security firm serving clients in the military and the US government. In the 1980s, Kroll was known as the "CIA of Wall Street" because of the sorts of the people it hired, and the sorts of tasks they were assigned.

Strangely, perhaps, on 9/11, Kroll was in charge of security for the entire World Trade Center complex.

The head of security at the WTC on September 11, 2001, was former FBI counter-terror specialist John P. O'Neill.

O'Neill, considered the world's leading expert on Osama bin Laden, had resigned his post as Deputy Director of the FBI during the summer, very unhappy with the Bush administration's head-in-sand "approach" to terror, after investigations into Osama bin Laden and al-Q'aeda had been blocked.

Who Killed John O'Neill?

John O'Neill started his new job at the WTC shortly before he was killed there. His having landed that particular job at that particular time raises some very interesting questions.

Among them: Why does this matter?

If, as many people believe, 9/11 was a false-flag operation designed to implicate Osama bin Laden, then a legend, or a cover story, involving bin Laden would have to be fabricated, disseminated very quickly, and swallowed whole -- not just by the American people but by the people of the world.

And John O'Neill was a most -- if not the most -- formidable obstacle in the way of such a cover story.

He was not only the world's leading expert on bin Laden, but he was also regarded as a "loose cannon", because of his record of working outside normal channels when normal channels were "blocked". He knew FBI investigations into bin Laden and al-Q'aeda had been shut down in the summer of 2001 and it is extremely unlikely that he would have remained quiet about it. He also knew whether or not Osama bin Laden was capable of inflicting the amount of damage the US suffered on 9/11.

In other words, if the conspirators were hoping to spread a Big Lie about Osama bin Laden, they would have had a short list of things they absolutely had to do.

Surely, one of the items on that list would be to silence John O'Neill.

And what better way than to entomb him at the scene of the crime?

So many questions!

Who got John O'Neill the WTC job?

Strangely, perhaps, John O'Neill was lured to the WTC position by his old friend Jerome Hauer, Managing Director of Kroll.

Very strange indeed, don't you think?

National Television

Which employer -- if any -- was Jerome Hauer representing on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he slipped the seeds of the official conspiracy theory to Dan Rather and his viewers on CBS?

A few weeks ago I blogged about a video which was hosted at Google at the time but which has now been taken down. Fortunately I was able to obtain transcripts from the video while it was available.

[UPDATE: The video is now available again, at YouTube, and it will be embedded below if possible.]

One segment of the video [starting at 2:30] documents the following exchange, from the morning of September 11, 2001:

Dan Rather: Based on what you know, and I recognize we’re dealing with so few facts, is it possible that just a plane crash could have collapsed these buildings, or would it have required the, sort of, prior positioning of other explosives in the, uh, in the buildings? I mean, what do you think?

Jerome Hauer: No, I, uh, my sense is just the velocity of the plane and the fact that you have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building, uh, that burned, uh, the velocity of that plane, uh, certainly, uh, uh, had an impact on the structure itself, and then the fact that it burned and you had that intense heat, uh, probably weakened the structure as well, uh, and I think it, uh, was, uh, simply the, uh, the planes hitting the buildings, and, and causing the collapse.

Jerome Hauer is certainly a remarkable guest, isn't he? On the very morning of the event, he had the whole thing figured out.

The collapse was simply due to the planes hitting the buildings, just the velocity of the plane and of course the fact that it was filled with fuel, and the fact that it burned and of course you had that intense heat which must have weakened the structure ... It's incredible, of course. It's also half of the official story!

But let's get back to the attack itself. Who did it? Who could have done it? If you were watching CBS that morning, you would have heard this:

Dan Rather: What perspective can you give us? I mean, there have been these repeated reports that, well, yes, Osama Bin Laden, but some think he’s been over-emphasized as, as responsible for these kinds of events. I know many intelligence, uh, people at very high levels who say, listen, you can’t have these kinds of attacks without having some state, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, somebody involved. Put that into perspective for us.

Jerome Hauer: Yeah, well I’m not sure I agree that, umm, this is necessarily state-sponsored. Umm, it, as I mentioned earlier, certainly has, umm, the, uh, fingerprints of somebody like Bin Laden.

And that, of course, is the other half of the official story.

How did Dan Rather happen to have a guest with him on the morning of 9/11 who knew the entire official story before it became public knowledge?

Jerome Hauer was introduced to CBS's viewers as a former director of NYC's OEM. Strangely, perhaps, CBS News audiences were not told he was also a managing director of the security company responsible for the twin towers. And of course no one was told to start taking Cipro -- except the White House.

Planting The Seeds

The twin disintegrations of the twin towers certainly looked like explosives-driven demolitions to many reporters who covered them live -- but Jerome Hauer assured Dan Rather and his viewers that it was just caused by the intense heat that weakened the structure!

The attack of 9/11 was of such scope and ferocity that it was virtually unimaginable -- except to the people who planned it -- just a day before it happened. But when it did happen, Jerome Hauer was able to contradict the intelligence experts and claim it bore the fingerprints of somebody like Bin Laden!

Jerome Hauer knew the entire official story before it became public knowledge.

Jerome Hauer helped the official story become public knowledge!

Watering The Seeds

In November of 2001, Jerome Hauer participated in the Council on Foreign Relations' "Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism", along with Henry A. Kissinger and others; their task included the following items:

Release a White Paper explaining our goals and rationale for the war in Afghanistan, and outlining the evidence that the al-Qa'eda network was responsible for the 9/11 attacks

Disseminate stories of particular victims to convey the range of people killed in the 9/11 attacks -- stress range of religions, races, income levels, etc.

Counteract [the] myth that Mossad was behind the attacks by showing Jews killed, etc.

Routinely monitor the regional press in real time to enable prompt responses

Routinely Monitor This!!

You have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building, the velocity of that plane certainly had an impact on the structure itself, and then the fact that it burned and you had that intense heat, probably weakened the structure as well, and I think it was simply the planes hitting the buildings and causing the collapse.
...
I’m not sure I agree that this is necessarily state-sponsored. It certainly has the fingerprints of somebody like Bin Laden.

Yeah, sure it does! Really, Jerome -- we believe you!

No, we don't!

Book 'em, Danno!

~~~

[SEE ALSO]

CRUCIAL VIDEO: Who Killed John O'Neill?

9/11 Encyclopedia: Hauer, Jerome
9/11 Encyclopedia: Kroll Associates
Demopedia: Jerome Hauer
Demopedia: Who Killed John O'Neill
Here In Reality: Who Killed 9-11 Hero John O'Neill?
Whistleblower Andrew Grove blames Kroll for 9/11
Wikipedia: Jerome Hauer
Wikipedia: John P. O'Neill
Wikipedia: Kroll Associates


[thanks to 99 for research assistance]

Tarpley: Beware The Ides Of March -- Mobilize Now!!

Stop Sectarian Squabbles
Stop Moping
Time To Mobilize Against World War III

by Webster Tarpley, author of "911 Synthetic Terror"

[from Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth; edited slightly for clarity, emphasis added]

We are very close to a nuclear attack on Iran, meaning a Middle East regional war and a slide towards thermonuclear World War III. Beware the Ides of March, and the New Moon a few days later, the favorite time for Anglo-American sneak attacks. Stop wasting your time with sectarianism - it gets you nowhere. Compared to the world catastrophe now in sight, these petty quarrels sink into microscopic significance.

Putin's Munich Wehrkunde speech is a clear warning that we are on the brink of general war - worse than the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. This is Putin's War Warning.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1 explicitly warns that terrorist actions inside the US are being prepared which will be blamed on Iran -- for use as pretexts to attack Iran within the framework of a multi-step neocon war scenario. (Zbig wants WWIII via an attack on Moscow, not Teheran -- that is his objection.) This means a new 9/11 with WMD: it will be MIHOP, state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terrorism, for those who still do not get that crucial point.

We urgently require united front action by the 9/11 truth movement to accomplish the following:

1. Take back the airwaves. Call in to C-SPAN, Larry King, Limbaugh, Ed Shultz, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc. to cite Zbig's warning that the Cheneyacs are preparing a new 9/11 war provocation. Inoculate people not be stampeded. Ridicule the 9/11 myth being conjured up once again by Republicans like Boehner today in the House.

2. Form 9/11 truth squads and confront the 25+ declared presidential candidates on this same issue. Top priorities: Hillary the hypocrite warmonger, McCain the butcher, and Mr. 9/11, Giuliani. Challenge them to condemn new 9/11, attack on Iran, film them when they refuse to. Easiest to do in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina, but possible and necessary everywhere. Two people ask questions, a third runs the camcorder or cell phone camera. Send results to youtube, 911blogger, 911truthsquads.com. Don't let them dodge the life and death questions. We are the new alternative media, as Time mag told us.

3. Start a weekly demo to protest the new 9/11 fakery and the wider war with Iran and Syria. Start now with whatever you have. Then build it from week to week. Go for visibility. Invite the peace movement and all persons of good will to attend. Get the media. A series like this in Leipzig, Germany in 1988-89 went from 10 people to 250,000 people and what amounted to a national general strike, bringing down the East German communist regime. Maybe it is our turn to get lucky too.

4. The neocons have wars plans; we need war plans of our own. Every group in every city needs to have a pre-arranged meeting point for a protest demo when the false flag provocation goes off, and then on the first day that war starts. In Washington, we all know that if the new 9/11 goes off and/or the bombs begin to fall, we go to Lafayette Park at the White House and say no to the new neocon insanity. Get pictures of protestors saying no to national suicide on the evening news, to counterbalance the hysteria. Make sure a sympathetic antiwar local reporter is briefed and won over in advance. In the first hours, there will be a titanic struggle to control and manipulate the popular mind. Get ready to act effectively at the drop of a hat.

For the medium and longer term: Get ready to turn the imperialist world war into a new era of human progress.

WGT

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