BOMBSHELL, but really we knew this, didnt we?

[busybody..]

You are welcome

 

[busybody..]

THE DEAD STAY THAT WAY:
Targeted Killings Only Work For A While (Oxford Analytica, 03.28.06)


The available data suggest that decapitation offers clear strategic advantages in the short-medium term. However, over time, the practice may undermine the perpetrator-state's objectives:

-- Benefits: Israel has been the most prominent and successful proponent of targeted killing. Although undoubtedly brutal, its policy has been effective.

-- Drawbacks and dangers: While targeted killing may help deter and disrupt attacks by terrorist or insurgent enemies, there is a strong case that it also alienates the "hearts and minds" of surrounding civilians. Winning over these individuals is a prerequisite for long-term success in any counter-terrorist campaign.

Targeted killing operations can have a significant short-medium term disruptive affect on terrorist organisations. Therefore, Washington is likely continue the practice, despite concerns that it may be counterproductive over the long term.


You know what? At the end of the day, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is still dead.

 

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So is it really Adam Weishaupt's pic on the dollar bill?

 

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Adam Weishaupt
Joseph Trainor

I can practically guarantee you'll never see this article in Reader's Digest. But I love to do these Digest-style biographies of famous people in the paranormal field, so here goes. He's been called many things. The Abbe Barruel called him "a human devil." Thomas Jefferson called him "a harmless philanthropist." Prof. John Robinson called him "the profoundest conspirator that ever existed." But what's the real story behind the man who simply called himself “Brother Spartacus?” Adam Weishaupt was born on February 6, 1748 in Ingolstadt, a city in Bayern (Bavaria), Germany, which was then an independent kingdom. When he was a baby, his parents, who had been Orthodox Jews, converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Instead of attending the yeshiva, Adam attended monastery schools and later a hochschule (high school) run by the Society of Jesus.

As a Bavarian, Adam learned Czech and Italian as a child, and in school, he soon mastered Latin, Greek and, with his father's help, Hebrew. With his avid scholarship and knack for languages, his Jesuit superiors thought he would be a natural for overseas missionary work, perhaps in the Americas or in Asia. But Adam rebelled against Jesuit discipline, resisted their overtures and eventually became the professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. Beginning around 1768, Adam began “the collection of a large library for the purpose of establishing an academy of scholars.” He read every ancient manuscript and text he and his associates could lay hands on. Adam grew interested in the occult, becoming obsessed with the Great Pyramid of Giza.

He was convinced that the edifice was a prehistoric temple of initiation. In 1770, he made the acquaintance of Franz Kolmer, a Danish merchant who had lived for many years in Alexandria and had made several trips to Giza.. The following year, 1771, Adam decided to found a secret society aimed at "transforming" the human race. He devoted five years to thinking out the plan, borrowing from many different occult sources. His first name for the proposed order, Perfectibilisen, suggests that he borrowed from the Cathars, a gnostic religion that flourished in Europe for four hundred years. The Cathars, whose name means “perfect ones,” were decimated in the Albigensian Crusade of Pope Innocent III during the early Thirteenth Century. Adam fashioned his order in the form of (what else?) a pyramid.

“Its members, pledged to obedience to their superiors, were divided into three main classes; the first including novices, minervals and lesser illuminati the second consisting,” like the Freemasons, of “ordinary, Scottish and Scottish Knights, and the third, or mystery class, comprising two grades of priest and regent, and of magus and king,” or Illuminatus Rex. This hierarchy, incidentally, is identical to the table of organization of the Sufis of Islam, which has some historians wondering if Adam's friend Kolmer was a closet Sufi. The Illuminati were a closemouthed bunch. “Every candidate had to give a written promise to tell nobody of this society. He learned nothing of his superiors and of the origin of the society, but was confirmed in the belief that the order could be traced back to antiquity and that its members included even popes and cardinals.” He further vowed eternal silence and strict obedience.

Every month he had to send a report to his superior, “whom he did not know.” Adam felt that human society had grown hopelessly corrupt and that it could only be saved by a complete overhaul. In effect, he was the first utopian to think on a global scale, and he looked forward to the day his group would bring about the Novus Ordo Seclorum, sometimes called the New World Order. The Illuminati had five goals, including “(a) Abolition of monarchies and all ordered governments, (2) Abolition of private property and inheritances, (3) Abolition of patriotism and nationalism, (4) Abolition of family life and the institution of marriage, and the establishment of communal education of children. (5) Abolition of all religion.” By drawing upon Europe's “best and brightest,” Adam was confident that the order could attain its goals. He wrote, “The pupils are convinced that the Order will rule the world. Every member therefore becomes a ruler. We all think of ourselves as qualified to rule. It is therefore an alluring thought both to good and bad men. Therefore the Order will spread.”

He also urged his followers not to shrink from committing violence or criminal acts in meeting Illuminati objectives, writing, “Sin is only that which is hurtful, and if the profit is greater than the damage, it becomes a virtue.” Recruitment proceeded at a brisk pace. Adam rallied many able lieutenants to his cause. Such as Baron Xavier von Zwack, who lobbied for the order in Germany and in Britain, too, with help from William Petty, the second Earl of Shelburne. And Baron Adolf von Knigge, who brokered a “shotgun marriage” between Illuminism and European Freemasonry at the Congress of Whilhelmsbad in 1782. By 1782, the Illuminati “had spread from Denmark to Portugal,” and even further afield. Illuminized Britons joined with like-minded Americans to found the Columbian Lodge in New York City that year. A young Russian nobleman, Alexander Radischev, joined the order in Leipzieg and carried the doctrines home to St. Petersburg.

In Lisboa (Lisbon), a poet named Claudio Manuel da Costa became a member and, upon returning home to Brazil, founded a chapter with two doctors from Ouro Preto, Domingos Vidal Barbosa and Jose Alvares Maciel. In 1788, this trio launched the first Illuminati uprising, the Inconfidencia Mineira, but the revolt was nipped in the bud by the viceroy, the Marquis de Barbacena. Meanwhile, back in Germany, Adam was learning that life as the Illuminatus Rex was not quite the paradise he'd envisioned. His long-time mistress became pregnant and insisted that he either pay up or marry her. Adam stalled, and the lady threatened to go public with the scandal. Baron von Knigge, who had given the Illuminatenorden a big boost by allying with Freemasonry, thought he should be rewarded by becoming Adam's co-ruler in the order. Adam disagreed, and the resulting feud between the two men resulted in von Knigge quitting the order in 1784. To make matters worse, Illuminati writers Johann Herder and Johann G. Fichte had begun beating the drum for German unification. Their calls for "Ein volk und ein Reich" were completely out of sync with Adam's plan to do away with nationalism. While Adam may have been a brilliant scholar, he lacked the leader's touch. He was too high-handed and arrogant, disinclined to listen to the advice of subordinates.

These characteristics enraged some of the lesser Illuminati, such as Joseph Utschneider, and they awaited the day they would have their revenge. The day was not long in coming. An Illuminati courier was struck by lightning and killed. When the Bavarian police searched his body, they found coded messages from Weishaupt sewn into the clothes. At this critical juncture, Utschneider and his three companions came forward and told the Bavarian authorities all about the Illuminati. As a result, the King of Bavaria banned the order in August 1784. Fired from his position at the university, and accused of everything from treason to goat molestation, Adam fled Ingolstadt on horseback and went to Regensburg. When he found the people there equally hostile, he rode on to Gotha, where he was offered refuge by Duke Ernst II. An associate, Dr. Schwartz, loaded the order's collection of Kabbalist, Cathar, Sufi and occult books into an ox-cart and begn the long journey eastward to Moscow.

Weishaupt's escape to Gotha resembles the "midnight ride" of Paul Revere and William Dawes in 1775. And Dr. Schwartz's trip to Moscow has its parallel in the wagon trains of the first Oregon pioneers. Maybe he should have put a sign on the cart--Mockba hhaye Khytekh, "Moscow or Bust." The "profoundest conspirator that ever existed" lived out the rest of his life in exile in Gotha. He got into more mischief in the French Revolution with his friend and correspondent, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, the Illuminatus of Lyons. And lived long enough to inspire new generations of Illuminati--Anacharsis Cloots, Francois Babeuf and Filippo Buonarotti, among others. Adam Weishaupt died on November 18, 1830 in Gotha. Even in death, he remains a figure of controversy. The Roman Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 said Weishaupt repented on his deathbed and was reconciled with the Church. Author Gary Allen claimed that Adam was working on an essay on hermetic art magick, Two Fragments of a Ritual, when he suddenly dropped dead. Quien sabe?

Proper assessment of Adam's role in history may have to wait a few more centuries, for a generation of more objective historians. His is still a hot-button name. Here in the USA, fundamentalist Christians consider Adam Weishaupt a kind of sinister John the Baptist, proclaiming the global Kingdom of Satan. And those who favor the New World Order... well, they don't say much of anything. Mention the names "Adam Weishaupt" and "Illuminati," and they tend to grit their teeth and scowl. For myself, whenever I think about Adam Weishaupt and his sect, the haunting question of Jesus Christ comes to mind. “Can an evil tree produce good fruit?”

(See The New World Order by Pat Robertson, Word Publishing, Dallas, Texas, 1991, pages 180 through 183; Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens, Munich, 1786; and Essai sur la secte des Illuminees, by J.P.L. de la Roche de Maine, Paris, 1792.) http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/
Joseph Trainor,2000.

Footnote: John Robinson, a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and a member of a Freemason Lodge there, said he had been asked to join the Illuminati. After consideration he concluded that the Illuminati were not for him. In 1798 he published a book called "Proofs of a Conspiracy" in which he wrote: “An association has been formed for the express purposes of rooting out all the religous establishments and overturning all existing goverments. . .the leaders would rule the World with uncontrollable power, while all the rest would be employed as tools of the ambition of their unknown superiors”. “Proofs of a Conspiracy” was sent to George Washington who replied that he was aware that the Illuminati were in America and that they had “diabolical tenets”. Ed.

 

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the illuminati



A Concise Appraisal by Ecclesia Apostolica Jesu Christi


&



The Illuminati is considered by a significant number of people to be a covert force that has created or taken over groups and organisations to manipulate the world in their desired direction and that it is now part of a global elite sometimes described as the New World Order. The Illuminati is believed to be a leading vehicle for manipulation, but by no means the sole vehicle. What follows is strictly a viewpoint from the perspective of those who subscribe to the existence of a global elite or New World Order, and is not necessarily embraced by Ecclesia Apostolica Sancti Graal. It is proffered here for those seeking subjective information.






Adam Weishaupt was a Bavarian Illuminati who, on 1st May 1776, with the financial support of the House of Rothschild, founded a German expression of Illuminism. However, the Bavarian seers can be traced back to a 16th century Muslim cult of illuminated men called the Roshaniya in Afghanistan. Weishaupt produced the “Law of Fives.” His original inner council was structured around the pentagram. This inner council comprised of five men: Weishaupt’s friend, Kölmer, Sir Francis Dashwood (of the satanic Hellfire Club), Alphonse Donatién de Sade (from whom derives the word “sadism”), Meyer Amschel Rothschild (founder of the powerful banking house) and Weishaupt himself who used his wing of the Illuminati to infiltrate and control Freemasonry. Baron Adolf von Knigge, a Mason of considerable standing, joined Weishaupt in 1782 and helped infiltrate European Masonry for anti-Christian, anti-monarchial, anti-social and pro-revolutionary ends. Other notable members were Councillor Xavier von Zwack, Dietrich (Mayor of Strasbourg), Baron Thomas Bassus, Canon Hertel, Baron William von Busche, Marquis Saint Germain de Constanzo, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Duke Ernest of Gotha, and the author Johann W Goethe. Meanwhile, Weishaupt created thirteen degrees of initiation in his Illuminati and the key personnel were to be found in the top nine degrees. These people became members of other secret societies, not only the Freemasons, and “illuminised” them ~ took them over and used them to destabilise nations and hasten the New World Order by fostering controlled chaos. They are alleged to have done the same within governments, banking, commerce, the military, and the media. Masonry, welcoming many powerful occultists and sorcerers into its highest ranks, went on to secretly infiltrate the pulpits, sessions, committees and other offices of leadership in the main churches.






The Illuminati’s greatest weapon is considered by most researchers to be the advanced esoteric knowledge it has passed on through its initiation ceremonies and the misuse and abuse of that knowledge. Hence most of those working for the New World Order agenda do not know they are doing so. The conspiracy could not exist if everyone involved was aware of the plot. Manipulating the manipulators and controlling the controllers is therefore essential to its success. Weishaupt taught that everything occurred in fives. Human history, he believed, came in a cycle of five stages: (1) Chaos, the starting point of all societies. It related, in Weishaupt’s mind, to the goddess cults of antiquity; especially to the worship of Lilith, Eris, Diana, or Kali. (2) Dicord, where a ruling class emerges and seizes control. Weishaupt related this period to introduction of the worship of Marduk or Osiris. (3) Confusion, where folk would attempt to restore a balance between the two preceding forces. He related this period to the child-god Loki or Horus or to a kind of devil. (4) Bureaucracy, the result of the synthesis of stage 3 failing. A spiritual void where absolutely no deity would be acknowledged. People cannot abide this void and escape into fantasy, drugs, or madness. During this phase the destruction of the middle class takes place. (5) Aftermath, where society implodes and reverts to chaos. The bureaucracy crashes under the weight of its own red tape and things spiral out of control. Magic and nature now rule again, and the cycle is in preparation to begin again. Hence the Scottish Rite 32° motto: “Order from Chaos.”






By dovetailing his Illuminati with Masonic Lodges, Weishaupt had built the power base he needed. He felt the stage was set for the destruction of all social institutions of the Continent. Revolutionary France was very much an experiment in Illuminism. Had God, or nature, not intervened, all Europe might well have gone the way of France and the then coming “Terror.” Weishaupt’s infiltration of Masonry might have been complete had not an Illuminati courier been blown off his horse and killed by a lightning stroke in 1785. The courier was carrying papers written in the cipher of Illuminism, and dealt with the plans of the Illuminati to subvert the Masons and the governments of Europe. The Illuminati were obliged to go underground; yet still greatly influenced the Grand Orient Lodge and the occult rites of Memphis and Mizraim (Egyptian Freemasonry).






The illustration (above) shows symbols on a tracing board used in the third degree of Craft Masonry. In the legend of the 3°, Hiram Abiff is personated by the candidate who is “slain” by a blow with a setting maul, buried in a grave due east-west, with an acacia tree planted over the grave to conceal it. The legend of Osiris of the Egyptian Mysteries parallels that of Hiram Abiff of Masonry in every detail. Craft Masonry consists of the three degrees: “Entered Apprentice,” “Fellow-Craft,” and “Master Mason.” These three degrees inspired the three degrees of modern witchcraft whose principal inspiration has been Aleister Crowley, himself initiated in 1900 into the Ancient and Accepted (Scottish) Rite, and in 1904 initiated into Craft Freemasonry in Anglo Saxon Lodge Number 343 (recognised from 1964 by the Grand Orient Lodge as Number 103). In circa 1910, Crowley enetered the degrees of 33°, 90° and 95° respectively in the Rite of Memphis and Mizraim. Following a further elevation to 96°, Crowley concentrated his Masonic tendencies in the Ordo Templi Orientis where sex magic and Satanism feature strongly. Crowley was a Satanist without whom the occult explosion and satanic revival of the 20th century might never have happened.






So there is Freemasonry and Illuminised Freemasonry. The former manipulates at one level, but it, too, is being manipulated by another covert force, the Illuminati, which, in turn, answers to the global elite of the New World Order. There are organisations within organisations (eg Freemasonry within government) and yet another organisation within those organisations (the Illuminati within Freemasonry). This Illuminised form of Freemasonry became known as The Grand Orient Lodges or faction. It is said to have followed the modified Hegelian tradition of infiltrating two extremes and playing one off against the other to create the desired change. Using these methods, it was pledged to overthrow the rule of the monarchies, destroy faith in God, put an end to patriotism and nation states, abolish the ownership of property and dismantle traditional social order.






The vast majority of Freemasons in the world never progress beyond the bottom three levels of degree. But above them are another thirty levels in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and even the thirty-third degree is not the top because there are the Illuminati levels above that (and even the 33° degree itself is unofficially divided into two streams, one knowing far more than the other). Ninety percent of Freemasons are on the bottom three levels. They are the fodder and the front. Between the fourth and thirty-third degrees are those of the “right mind” who have influence in society, right up to the presidents of the United States. Then you have the Illuminati levels that you will not find mentioned in any Freemasons’ guidebook. Those are the people who are believed to actually run the show and are the agents of the New World Order.



World Freemasonry, then, is a massive pyramid of manipulation. See illustration below:






The decision to put the Illuminati and New World Order symbol on the American one dollar note was made by the thirty-third degree Freemason, Franklin D Roosvelt, in 1935, with the full support and encouragement of his vice president Henry Wallace, another thirty-third degree Mason. The leaders of the American War of Independence, including those who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were virtually all Freemasons. The first president of the United States, George Washington, was a high ranking Freemason. John Adams, the second president, belonged to a secret society known as The Dragons. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was the first Grand Master of the Freemasons in Pennsylvania. He became a friend of Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the notorious British Hellfire Club secret society. Franklin also became a high ranking member of lodges in league with Grand Orient Lodge in Paris that would trigger the French Revolution in 1789. It is interesting to observe that the Latin words beneath the pyramid on each one dollar bill ~ Novus Ordo Seclorum ~ translate as “New World Order.” The Illuminati seal with the all-seeing-eye and pyramid are often used by powerful institutions. See examples below:






American dollar bill.






Columbia Broadcasting.






Columbia Pictures.




British Intelligence.



Likewise the same Freemasonic names ~ names like Rockefeller, Rothschild, Morgan, Harriman, Milner, Dulles, Warburg, Roosvelt, House, and Baruch ~ within the Illuminati network are suspected of being behind two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the rise of tyrants, and the constant manipulation of the financial system. These events are believed to have kept humanity in fear and division, exactly as would be required by a global manipulation strategy. See illustration below:






In times of war and peace the Illuminati pervert justice in pursuit of their own goals and for the protection offered against penalties warranted by personal acts. Masonic allegiance is always to their brotherhood. Their goals encompass self-aggrandisement, profit, and control of the world through deception or any means available that serves their purpose. Wars not only provide profit for armaments manufacturers and munitions dealers, but also serves to disrupt the politics of governments; thus making control more easily obtainable. Wars and other conflicts can also provide a boost to troubled national economies. To achieve their goals they would have little concern for the disruption of family life, or the suffering and deaths of millions. Their own membership would have little concern as they would be protected from conscription or given safe assignments away from front-line fighting ~ at least, those in the higher ranks. Is it just coincidence that Americans have become involved in so many wars since their independence?



Revolutionary War: provoked by the Boston Tea Party was the activity of Masons. Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, George Washington, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, and some of those who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. All but two of the generals of the Revolutionary War were Masons.



Civil War: Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant were Masons in waiting.



Second World War: Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry S Truman were both Masons. Four cities in Japan were originally considered as military targets on which to drop the two atomic bombs. One of these cities, Kyoto, was removed from the list because of its religious and historical significance to Japan. The only city with a large population of Christians was chosen as a replacement even though it had far less strategic military significance. The largest of the two bombs dropped on Japan was reserved for Christian Nagasaki, the city with the least military significance of the four. This city was chosen with the approval of President Truman.



Korean War: President Truman, a Mason, announced on 27th June 1950 his order to send US air and naval forces into South Korea despite the fact that the United States had begun withdrawing its troops from South Korea in 1948. As late as January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had implied that the Korea Peninsula lay outside the all-important “defence perimeter” of the United States, a statement that some took to mean that the US would not defend the rest of Korea from communist attack.



Vietnam War: Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Mason, decided that more aggressive action was needed over the continuing political problems in Saigon. The Johnson administration argued for expansive war powers for the president after suspected attacks on two US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. However, Vo Nguyen Giap, the DRV’s leading military figure at the time, and Johnson’s Secretary of Defence, Robert S MacNamara, have recently concluded that no second attack ever took place. In any event, the Johnson administration used the “second attack” to secure a Congressional resolution that gave the president broad war powers.



Persian Gulf War: Forty-five Democrats filed a suit in Washington on 20th November 1990 to have President George H Bush, a Mason, first seek Congressional approval of military operations. This was to be eventually thrown out. On 16th January 1991, the first US government statement on Operation Desert Storm was made.



War on Terror: With the foundations laid by President William Clinton and completed under President George W Bush (both are members of the Masonic Skull and Bones Society) the world now has the beginnings of the supposed 21st century “war on terror.” This has witnessed an escalation of unrest, violence and conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, and the Middle East.






Winston Churchill, in spite (or perhaps because) of his own Freemasonic membership and knowledge, was to nonetheless admit:



“From the days of [Adam] Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx (Moses Mordecai Levy) and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kuhn (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.”



The Sunday Times, 16th April 1995, reported: “In future, scientists want to insert electronic chips into our heads so we can plug directly into the information highway. British researchers are among international teams working on an implant to translate human thought into computer language. In a generation, one group says, people with a peppercorn-sized chip in the back of the neck will be able to talk to machines.” Or, perhaps, the machines will be able to talk to them? The story of Dr Carl W Sanders was reported in Nexus in the summer of 1994. He said he attended seventeen meetings of the One-Worlders in places like Brussels and Luxemburg. The meetings, he claimed, were “tying together the finances of the world.” Dr Sanders said: “I was at one meeting where it was discussed: ‘How can you control a people if you can’t identify them?’ People like Henry Kissinger and CIA folk attended these meetings. It was discussed: ‘How do you make people aware of the need for something like this chip?’ All of a sudden the idea came: ‘Let’s make them aware of lost children etc.’ This was discussed in meetings almost like people were cattle. The CIA came up with the idea of putting pictures of lost children on milk cartons. Since the chip is now accepted, you don’t see the pictures anymore, do you? It’s served its purpose.” Dr Sanders said the manipulators want the chip to contain a name and a picture of the person’s face, an international Social Security number, fingerprint identification, physical description, family history, address, occupation, income tax information, and criminal record. The chip recharges itself by turning the changes in body temperature into a dynamo system and the most effective places they have found for this are the forehead and the back of the wrist.



If things go to plan it is believed that a joint identity/money card with all personal details will be on the implanted chip. All transactions will then be recorded by a global computer. The “mark of the beast,” the microchip, is thought to be intended to be moved from the smart card to the human body when a story can be hatched to persuade people to accept it. Some researchers suggest that the human bar-coding system will include three sets of six digits in the computer ~ hence 666, “the number of the beast.” The technology now being developed will allow every thought and action to be monitored.






“And he [the beast or Antichrist] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead, and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is 666.”

(Revelation 13: 16-18)






Whatever the truth might or might not be about the Illuminati, and it is not being suggested that the claims reported above are anything more than a subjective viewpoint held by those who subscribe to the existence of Illuminist global manipulation by a shadowy New World Order, there is one path that invariably thwarts its grip. That path is not an easy one, but it is the only Way.






“For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of

light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants

also disguise themselves as servants of righteous-

ness; whose end shall be according to their deeds.”



2 Corinthians 11: 14 -15

 

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America's Arcane Origins
Political activists of the so-called “religious Right” in the United States never tire of preaching that their country was founded as “a Christian democracy.” But they are wrong on both counts.
2006 01 14

By Frank Joseph | newdawnmagazine.com


Image from: trosch.org
When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the first Continental Congress, he was asked by one of many anxious patriots waiting outside the courthouse, “What have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The difference might seem trivial or even non-existent to narrow-minded persons for whom democracy and dictatorship are the only conceivable forms of government. Yet, the very word, “democracy,” does not occur once in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, or any state constitution. It was mentioned often by America’s Founding Fathers, but invariably as a synonym for “mob rule,” and, along with obsolescent monarchy, an evil to be avoided.

Thomas Paine, the American Revolution’s most eloquent voice, summed up his colleagues’ view of democracy when he described it in his world-famous “Rights of Man” as “a species of demagoguery, wherein clever charlatans, making promises as enticing as they are impossible to fulfil, win for themselves unwarranted power and wealth, persuading gullible people to discard their liberties for a secret tyranny masquerading as public freedom.”

Particularly in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the historic models held up for emulation did not include Greek democracy, but the Venetian and Roman republics. The difference between these examples most important to men like Paine and Jefferson was the concept of citizenship. Anyone born in a democratic state automatically becomes a citizen with all the privileges that entails, including the right to vote. In a republic, one is not born a citizen, but may only become one when he or she reaches adulthood; can demonstrate at least a fundamental grasp of the workings of their government, and is either going to school or gainfully employed.

In modern America, all that remains of these basic requirements is a restriction against voting until one’s eighteenth year. Foreigners must, in fact, pass tests proving their basic comprehension of the Constitution before becoming US citizens, which makes them more knowledgeable, discerning voters than native-born Americans, who are supposed to receive the same kind of rigorous Constitutional education, but rarely, if ever, do. In demanding at least some qualifications for citizenship, America’s Founding Fathers believed that responsible leaders could only by chosen by a competent electorate. Today, however, such notions are shunned as “elitist” in most countries described as “democratic.”

Yet more shocking to bible-beating conservatives, if they were to learn the awful truth, is that the United States was not founded by Christians, at least of the kind they would approve. Instead, that country’s constitutional republic was conceived, fought for and built almost entirely by deists. While the majority of Americans, then as now, were at least nominally Christian, most of their leaders were not. George Washington, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere and virtually all of their intellectual compatriots were deists. The term is not generally familiar today, but signifies a person who believes in a universal, compassionate Intelligence that made and orders Creation, manifests its will through natural law, but requires no religious dogma to be understood, only the faculty of reason with which every human is endowed.

Referring to the church of his day, Paine wrote, “The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue... My own mind is my own church.” Like his fellow deists, who made a clear distinction between church and state, he was convinced that freedom meant being able to speak one’s mind on all subjects, religious as well as political. He did not “condemn those who believe otherwise. They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.”

Nor were the deists anti-Christian. They concluded that Christianity had at its theological core the same mystical truth found in every genuine spiritual conception; namely, the perennial philosophy of compassion for all sentient beings as the means by which the human soul develops. This recognition, however, deeply offended mainstream Christians, who insisted their brand of faith alone was correct, all others being heretical at best or demonic at worst.

As an example of the extremes these defenders of the One True Religion went to demonstrate their piety, hob-nails initialled “T.P.” were sold by the thousands to Londoners who could walk all day on the name of Thomas Paine. His treatment in the land he had done so much to free was more harsh. When he walked through the streets of his hometown in Bordentown, New Jersey, doors and window shutters were pointedly banged shut as he passed by, while cries of “Devil!” followed him everywhere.

Modern American Christian crusaders would be even more alarmed to learn that not only was their country founded by deists, but its capitol deliberately designed as a metaphor for Freemasonry. In his profoundly researched book, The Secret Architecture of our Nation’s Capital (London: Century Books, Ltd., 1999), author David Ovason offers abundant evidence to show that Washington, D.C. was built by Freemasons who incorporated their arcane, even heretical ideas in the White House, the Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, the Post Office, the Capitol Dome, the Federal Trade Commission Building, the Federal Reserve Building, even Pennsylvania Avenue itself.

But what is, or was, Freemasonry? Like any idea or organisation that persists over time, Freemasonry deviated from its initial purpose until, in the end, it bore only slight, outward resemblance to its origins. By way of comparison with a group alleged without much real foundation to have been Freemasonry’s precursor, the Knights Templar was founded in the early 12th century, ostensibly for guarding pilgrim routes to Jerusalem with a few soldiers sworn to poverty and abstinence, but grew to become a virtually autonomous army richly equipped and armed, finally blossoming into an economic entity so potent it called down on itself the murderous envy of a French king.

So too, Freemasonry began in 1717 as a fraternity dedicated to humanitarian, deistic principles for Englishmen unhappy with the royal powers-that-be, and so were forced to operate with discretion. By the time early Americans were ready to part ways with the Mother Country, Freemasonry had spread to their shores and was embraced by many revolutionaries as an expression of opposition to everything British, including the Church of England. The secret order continued to grow in membership and prestige, until it was infiltrated and perverted from its high-minded ideals by Spartacus Weishaupt, a demented power-freak who wanted a respectable vehicle for subversion and insurrection. Separated by a vast ocean from the facts, even Thomas Jefferson was fooled by Weishaupt’s duplicity.

Henceforward, the “Free and Accepted Masons” were lumped together with Communists as the secretive enemies of Western Civilisation, and outlawed in most European countries. Even in the United States, though they were never banned, the Freemasons were under suspicion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many years, and condemned by several congressmen. Thus criminalised or under suspicion, their popularity went into a long decline, until today their once numerous, now largely abandoned lodge buildings, some still bearing masonic emblems, testify to an aging, dwindling following. It is wrong, therefore, to parallel the Freemason George Washington, for example, with the likes of Adam Weishaupt, anymore than it is to equate George Washington with George Bush.

“The very struggle for independence seems to have been directed by the Masonic brotherhood,” Ovason writes, “and, some historians insist, had even been started by them.” Indeed, the War for Independence began in a warehouse owned by a Mason, and a majority of the revolutionaries who undertook the Boston Tea Party of 1773 were Masons. The most famous American Mason was George Washington himself, although some biographers not altogether happy with Freemasonry have tried to minimalise his association with it. In fact, however, he was the first Master of the Alexandria, Virginia lodge (Number 22) from April, 1788 until December the following year.

It was this lodge number that was carried before him on a masonic standard, as Washington, leading ranks of fellow Masons all wearing their emblematic aprons, walked in procession to the founding of the American capital, in 1793. The event was commemorated in a pair of bronze panels designed in 1868. They portray him laying the cornerstone surrounded by masonic symbols, including the square and trowel. Washington was still Master Mason when inaugurated as the first President of the United States on 30 April 1789. After his death ten years later, he was laid to rest at his Mount Vernon estate in a masonic funeral, during which all save one of the pallbearers were members of his own lodge.

Ovason observes in a companion volume (The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill, CA: HarperCollins, 2004) that Washington’s masonic significance was not only expressed in the city to which he gave his name: “The portrait of George Washington, at the centre of the dollar bill, is highly symbolic.” The President’s image is centrally framed by the last letter in the Greek alphabet, an Omega, for “completion”, or the Ultimate, and implying that the foremost Founding Father represented the apogee of human values. His appearance on the one-dollar bill is by no means the only non-Christian symbol found here.

Especially cogent is the illustration of a truncated pyramid surmounted by a radiant delta enclosing a single eye beneath the words Annuit Coeptis. A motto on a scroll near the base reads, Novus Ordo Seclorum. Both were derived from the great Roman writer, Virgil. In his classic epic, the Aeneid, he directs a prayer for assistance to Jupiter, king of the gods: Audacibus annue coeptis, or “Favor our daring undertaking!” Novus Ordo Seclorum, “a New Order for the ages,” was taken from one of his famous Ecologues – Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo, or, “The great series of ages is born anew.”

“The idea of a truncated pyramid was Masonic,” Ovason writes. It is certainly “pagan,” and generally understood to mean stability and virtue in the 18th century. According to President William McKinley, the twenty fifth president of the United States and himself a Mason, it also meant strength and duration. But these obvious characterisations only represent the figure’s exoteric aspect. Far less well recognised, the pyramid depicted on the one-dollar bill, unlike any in the Nile Valley, has seventy two stones. This amount is hardly circumstantial, because it has been revered by mystics as one of the most sacred of all numerals.

Since Pythagorean times, in the 7th century BCE, and millennia earlier still in ancient Egypt, 72 has represented the ways of writing and pronouncing the name of the Almighty, not the Christian or even Old Testament Yahweh, but God as represented by the Sun, as it moves through space and time. Ovason explains, “Due to the phenomenon called precession, the Sun appears to fall back against the stars. This rate of precession is one degree every seventy two years.” In other words, the dollar bill’s seventy two stones signify the deist conception of the Supreme Being as rooted in the pre-Christian, non-Biblical Ancient World.

The single-eyed triangle radiating energy above the truncated pyramid is another Egyptian image, the Utchat, or Udjat, the all-seeing eye of Ra, a sun-god and the divine king of heaven. Esoterically, the Utchat was identified with Maat, the moral law pervading all Creation. Its appearance hovering above the apex of the dollar bill pyramid not only reinforces the solar symbolism of that sacred structure, but embodies the principle of Maat America’s Founding Fathers sought to inculcate in the constitutional republic they designed.

But the esoteric, deistic, even “pagan” Freemasonry of America’s Founding Fathers is most apparent in the arcane influence that Ovason traces throughout the design and construction of the US capital. These early Americans did not weave this occult symbolism through their country’s foremost city for clubbish reasons, but because their iconological signs were the emblems of a new civilisation they wanted to create in the New World.

For New Dawn’s 92nd issue, Jason Jeffrey described in “Washington, D.C.: A Masonic Plot?” how the White House is located at the apex of a five-pointed star – the ancient geometric seal of King Solomon, with which he conjured supernatural powers – formed by the intersections of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut Avenues with K Street NW. But the significance of this urban pentagram is overshadowed by what Ovason has identified as the city’s chief orientation to Virgo.

He writes that central Washington, D.C. has twenty public zodiacs, with Virgo prominent in each one. The founding of Federal City, as it was previously known, laying the cornerstones of the President’s House, in the wing of the Capitol and the foundation stone of the Washington Monument, all were timed to coincide with the appearance of this astrological figure. Ovason shows that the White House, Capitol building and Washington Monument form a strangely imperfect “Federal Triangle” that only makes sense when we realise it identically resembles a configuration made by the stars – Arcurtus, Spica and Regulus – that bracket Virgo.

On evenings from August 10th to the 15th, as the Sun sets over Pennsylvania Avenue, the Constellation Virgo appears in the sky above the White House and the Federal Triangle. At that same moment, the setting Sun appears precisely above the apex of a stone pyramid in the Old Post Office tower, which is just wide enough to occlude the solar disc. According to the 19th century Freemason, Ross Parsons, “The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is fixed on the 15th of August, because at that time the Sun is so entirely in the constellation of Virgo that the stars of which it is composed are rendered invisible in the bright effulgency of his rays.”

Formal ground-breaking ceremonies for the National Archives Building were conducted under Virgo. Two years later, three planets were in Virgo for the official laying of the structure’s cornerstone. The Federal Reserve Building is replete with a five-petaled design motif, the symbol of Virgo. The great clock at the Library of Congress is depicted with a comet in Virgo. Because of its centralised location, Ovason believes that “the Library of Congress was sited in this position and its symbolic program established precisely in order to demonstrate the profound arcane knowledge of the Masonic fraternity which designed Washington, D.C. ... the city was surveyed, planned, designed and built largely by Masons.” Indeed, no less than twenty one memorial stones with lapidary inscriptions from various masonic lodges line the inside shaft of Washington Monument.

But why would they incorporate so many references to Virgo in their capital? As Ovason points out, the construction of Washington, D.C. “marked one of those rare events in history when a city was planned and built for a specific purpose.” He fails to mention, however, that nearly two hundred years before, the first permanent European settlement in North America foreshadowed Virgo’s ceremonial centre on the Potomac River.

In 1606, Sir Francis Bacon established Jamestown in Virginia, ostensibly named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. But the emblem he chose, and which survives today as the state seal, is the image of Pallas Athene, Parthenos, the virgin goddess of Greek myth, the divine patroness of civilisation.

Bacon, as Greg Taylor observed in the same issue of New Dawn, prefigured the Freemasons with his vision of a practical utopia based on individual liberty and social responsibility – essentially the same ideals that formed the basis of the US Constitution. When America’s Founding Fathers came to compose that document, they perpetuated the identical sacred virginal symbolism initiated at Jamestown.

Repeated symbolism in the architecture, astrological timing and the very lay-out of Washington, D.C. to Virgo-Virgin Athene represent homage to the Eternal Feminine, Goethe’s “ewige Weiblicher,” which, in his “Faust,” leads us onward – “zieht uns hinan.” The Freemasons who envisioned and constructed the capital of the United States did so to put their new country in accord with that pure (“virginal”) energy they believed to actually exist as the demiurge of Creation. They worshipped that energy, personified in the goddess, a concept that was anathema to the patriarchal Christians of their time (and ours?).

As Ovason concludes, “A city which is laid out in such a way that it is in harmony with the heavens is a city in perpetual prayer.” Given so great a distance the present occupants of Washington, D.C. have strayed from the original intentions of its designers, the US capital needs all the prayers it can get!

Frank Joseph is the editor-in-chief of Ancient American, a bi-monthly, popular science magazine describing overseas visitors to the Americas centuries before Columbus. His books Survivors of Atlantis and Destruction of Atlantis resulted from Joseph’s world travels in search of clues to the ancient past. He is a member of The Oriental Institute at the University of Illinois (USA) and Japan’s Savant Society. Joseph lives in Colfax, Wisconsin, USA.

 

[BlueEyesInLevis]

As much as I am enthralled by the last few posts. I'd like to offer one suggestion.

Lets get back on topic, shall we?

 

[Peregrinator]

As much as I am enthralled by the last few posts. I'd like to offer one suggestion.

Lets get back on topic, shall we?

He emailed me and asked me to help him with the conspiracy side of things.

 

[busybody..]

He emailed me and asked me to help him with the conspiracy side of things.

I did no such thing

and I resent what you did

if it would be anyone else, I would IGGY you!

dont do that again

 

[busybody..]

As I predicted when the documents were released

we WOULD NOT be seeing much of it in the LIB MEDIA and what we will see will be a distortion

You are seeing that in the NYTimes

That is why I posted the rebuttal, with the link above

 

[busybody..]

Isnt this nice?


#1088 - In a Telephone Interview from Jail, Saddam Hussein Calls to Cut Off Nose and Ears of Former Iraqi VP 'Izzat Al-Duri and Declares: It Will Make Me Happy If Iraq Turns into Ashes, Iraq Is Not Worth Two Bits without Saddam Hussein
Al-Fayhaa TV (Iraq/UAE) - 3/28/2006 - 00:04:47

 

[busybody..]

More BOMBSHELLS


Iraq-Libya Nuclear Connection?

As we noted last night, one of the recently-released audio tapes from Saddam Hussein's office makes clear that by the mid 1990s, portions, at least, of Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been moved outside that country:

Sir, where was the Nuclear material transported to? A number of them were transported outside of Iraq.
The tape does not say where the nuclear materials went. But two readers have suggested that it was likely Libya. Norm Grant writes:

ISSA [International Strategic Studies Association] has been saying for years that Saddam's nuclear program was primarily located in Libya. You might want to go to strategicstudies.org and check out the January 30, 2004 Iraqi war report. I'm having a hard time pulling up a link.
ISSA has written that they have better human intel in Libya than our own CIA. ISSA believed that as many as 20,000 Iraqis were in Libya working on WMD and missile development.


Paul Linsay writes:

Regarding the nuclear program and the Iraqis who were working on it "somewhere." Remember when Quaddafi gave up his nuclear program in the aftermath of OIF? Initially, I was surprised to learn that Libya had a program and wondered how they could do it. They have a population of 6 million, a GDP of $30 billion, and a 75% literacy rate. For comparison, the state of Massachusetts also has a population of 6 million, a GDP of $120 billion, and the needed brainpower to build a nuclear weapon. But Massachusetts probably couldn't afford it since the cost is north of $20 billion and requires an industrial operation of at least 10,000 people. So where does Libya come by the needed people, knowledge, and money? Iraq! At the time Quadaffi said "Uncle", there were a few reports, which quickly disappeared, of large numbers of Iraqi nuclear scientists and technicians in Libya to run the program. This tape may be a link in the connection.
The ISSA analysis is accessible here, linked through "Libya Assessments" in the upper right-hand corner of the page. The ISSA analysis is too long to quote in detail, but this is the broad outline:

Given the billions of dollars which Saddam had invested in WMD, and the fact that WMD and associated delivery systems represented his only chance at strategic independence, it was inconceivable that he would not have engaged in massive strategic deception operations in the hope that, as partially demonstrated in 1991, once the US/West/UN had gone through Iraq as comprehensively as possible, he would then be free to re-import his strategic capacity, by that time at a proven and operational level. This option was lost, however, not because the US George W. Bush Administration was aware — at the White House level — of the specifics of the deception and re-deployment of WMD programs, but because of the intuitive belief by the White House that Pres. Saddam was engaged in a strategic-level build-up which threatened the region and Western interests.
Saddam utilized his best efforts and international contacts and alliances to limit the scope of debate and UN inspections to an extremely finite set of conditions, all of which focused solely on the Iraqi territory. In this, he was almost totally successful.

However, there were numerous failures to maintain the total secrecy of his actions at an operational intelligence level. This may have been inevitable, given the scope of the WMD programs being conducted in Libya, for example, where an estimated Iraqi workforce of up to 20,000 scientists, engineers and workers were engaged in WMD and missile development, and in other countries, such as Mauritania (intended as a launch site for ballistic missiles to threaten the US), where Iraqi intelligence officials were conducting aspects of the strategy.

What has emerged from the pattern of intelligence available is that Pres. Saddam took the opportunity, possibly shortly after the 1991 defeat of his Armed Forces in the first US-led Coalition war against Iraq in 1990-91, to move his WMD programs to one or more safe havens abroad. It was known, even at that point, that Iraq maintained extensive deployments of forces and some basing inside Sudan, and that Saddam and Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi were closely aligned in that they perceived threats from the same quarters: (a) the United States, and (b) radical Islamists. Equally, they increasingly came to the same view that they needed to work with the Islamists because the various Islamist groups — ranging from Osama bin Laden’s organization to the Iranian-led Shi’a groups — also felt threatened by, and hostile to, the United States.


It will be interesting to see whether additional documents to be released will confirm that Saddam continued his nuclear program in Libya, or perhaps elsewhere.

 

[busybody..]

More From Saddam's Archives

A reader calls our attention to another of the audio tape recordings from Saddam Hussein's office. This one is ISGQ-2003-M0004667, and appears to have been recorded around 1996. Like most of the audiotapes, it is rambling, confusing and often incoherent. The ambiguity of most of what Saddam and his henchmen say is maddening. However, there are some interesting nuggets. This one suggests that the Russians have been paid off:

We have succeeded in a few of the U.N. paragraphs, we have won Russia, ahhh ... we have convinced Russia by way of generous accounts [payoffs], in which, you remember how and why it happened...
Iraq's lies to the U.N. inspectors are again acknowledged, although the actual state of Iraq's weapons programs at the time can't be deduced from the tape:

They have a bigger problem with the Chemical progam than the Biological program, a lot bigger... It is not the weapons, the size of the imported material, the size of [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that we presented to them or the size of the stockpile. They knew that not all of this was true. We have not told them about the size or kind of Chemical weapons that we produced, and we have not told them the truth about the imported material. Therefore, sir, if they want to raise an issue, I mean, they will see that our argument is the issue of the Biological program.
It is clearly stated that nuclear materials were moved out of Iraq, and it seems, although less clearly, that Iraqi "teams" were still working on nuclear weapons:

Sir, where was the Nuclear material transported to? A number of them were transported outside of Iraq. *** Sir, about the Nuclear program, we say that we have uncovered everything. In addition, we have an unannounced problem with the Nuclear program, and I think they know about it. I mean, there is working teams that are working and some of these teams are not known to anyone.
As we've said before, each of these documents is a very small piece of a very large mosaic, and it would be a mistake to try to draw conclusions prematurely. But some of these comments are certainly suggestive.

 

[busybody..]

it is NOW obvious why Col Q gave in so quickly and gave up WMDs

He KNEW this shit would come out

and we now know SH was into NUKES!

 

[Peregrinator]

I did no such thing

and I resent what you did

if it would be anyone else, I would IGGY you!

dont do that again

Lighten up and think about how many of my threads you've derailed.

And, thanks. I've never iggied you either.

 

[Peregrinator]

Hey, I need links so I can forward them to some lefties around here.

 

[busybody..]

They wont care, dont bother

when the NUKE goes off in America, they will say Bush did it so he can cancel the next elections

 

[busybody..]

http://www.beecy.net/frank/


listen to it

 

[busybody..]

of course Russia will deny it

and the oictures that came with the documents

are what? made up?

Russia is LYING, we all know that!

Russia denies Pentagon Iraq intelligence allegations Thu Mar 30, 10:46 AM ET



MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia denied on Thursday a Pentagon report that a Russian diplomat gave intelligence on U.S. military moves to Baghdad during the Iraq War and said the report was intended to distract attention from problems in Iraq.

ADVERTISEMENT

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement that Moscow had looked into the assertions but that they were wrong.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had asked Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to look into the report which said that Russia's ambassador in Baghdad had given intelligence on U.S. plans and military movements to the Iraqi government shortly after the 2003 invasion.

"Not for the first time is Russia accused of something that it did not do and that it would not do wittingly," Kamynin said in the statement, which was posted on the foreign ministry's Web site (www.mid.ru).

"Such practices can only provoke disappointment. Behind this, whether one likes it or not, there can be seen a definite motive of distracting attention from the mounting real problems in post-war Iraq."

The 210-page report by the U.S. military's Joint Forces Command cited an April 2, 2003, document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein as stating the Russian ambassador to Baghdad had given strategic intelligence on U.S. plans and military movements to Hussein's government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin opposed the invasion of Iraq, which top Russian officials say is falling into civil war.

 

[busybody..]

How the FBI Let 9/11 Happen
Never mind Moussaoui, the smoldering gun was right there all the time
Jeff A. Taylor



Anyone paying attention to the Zacarias Moussaoui trial gets it now. All the 9/11 blanks are filled in, and the picture is complete. Sorry, conspiracy freaks and blind partisan hacks. Dull, common, gross incompetence is again at the heart of a deadly government cluster-hump.

Do not linger on Moussaoui's bizarre suicide-by-testimony or the literal cheerleading for his execution—He knew. He lied. And 2,749 people died.

Neither of these is the real story of this case. Rather, the story is the definitive proof Moussaoui's case provides that the U.S. government—pre-PATRIOT Act, pre-NSA wiretaps and all—had and missed clear opportunities to stop 9/11. The FBI uniquely and repeatedly punted carefully gathered evidence of an attack in favor of adherence to bureaucratic hierarchies and power trips.

The testimony of FBI agent Harry Samit forever buries the quaint notion that 9/11 was unforeseen and unpreventable. Beginning with Moussaoui's August 16, 2001 arrest Samit mounted a global and indefatigable investigation of the man and concluded that an attack involving hijacked airplanes was imminent.

The flipside of Samit is Michael Rolince, former head of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section. Rolince is the man who previously deflected questions about the FBI's pursuit, or lack thereof, of pre-9/11 terror suspects with the line, "Would CNN have really aired their photos if we'd asked them?"

Rolince smugly insisted at trial that Samit's "suppositions, hunches and suspicions were one thing and what we knew" was another. Yet Rolince, in service of the government's desire to link Moussaoui to 9/11 and trigger the death penalty, also tried to argue that, had Moussaoui spilled his guts, everything would have changed. 9/11 might have been prevented. In short, Samit's investigation and leads were not enough; Moussaoui had to speak up for the FBI brass to hear anything.

When defense lawyer Edward MacMahon cross-examined Rolince, possibly the first and only time a government security official has been so challenged on 9/11, the disconnect between the official story and reality was plain. Rolince knew nothing of the August 18, 2001 memo Samit had sent to his office warning of terror links. In that memo, Samit warned that Moussaoui wanted to hijack a plane and had the weapons to do it. Samit also warned that Moussaoui "believes it is acceptable to kill civilians" and that he approved of martyrdom. Rolince testified he never read the memo.

On August 17 Samit sent an e-mail to his direct superiors at FBI headquarters recounting Moussaoui's training on 747 simulators. "His excuse is weak, he just wants to learn how to do it... That's pretty ominous and obviously suggests some sort of hijacking plan," Samit wrote.

Rebuffed by his superiors and ignored by Rolince, Samit still sought out more info worldwide and from sources as diverse as the FBI's London, Paris, and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA's counterterrorism center, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, probably the National Security Agency, and the FBI's Iran and OBL offices.

He was sufficiently alarmed by what he heard that Samit sent an August 21 e-mail requesting that the Secret Service be informed about Moussaoui's intentions to see the White House and that he was interested in flight training.

Samit testified that on August 22 he had learned from the French—the French!—that Moussaoui had recruited a fighter to go to Chechnya in 2000 to fight with Islamic radicals with previous links, so the CIA told Samit, to Osama bin Laden. The FBI brass remained unmoved.

Defense attorney MacMahon then displayed an August 30, 2001 communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a Bureau agent in Paris. It passed along that French intelligence thought Moussaoui was "very dangerous" and had soaked up radical views at London's infamous Finnsbury Park mosque. The French also said Moussaoui was "completely devoted" to bin Laden-style jihadism and, significantly, had traveled to Afghanistan.

Yet on August 31 Maltbie stopped Samit from sending a letter to FAA headquarters in Washington advising them of "a potential threat to security of commercial aircraft" based on the Moussaoui case. Maltbie said he would handle that, but it is not clear if he ever did.

"Minneapolis believes Moussaoui, [Moussaoui's roommate Hussein] Al Attas and others not yet known were...engaged in preparing to seize 747s," the aborted warning said.

Samit did directly tell FAA officials in Minneapolis of his concerns on September 5.

In total, the information Samit pulled together dovetailed with his belief that, based on interviews with the suspect, Moussaoui had been to Afghan terror training camps. Because he did not have proof of the suspected terror camp connection, however, Samit never passed this hunch on to the FBI headquarters. Maltbie and Maltbie's boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters, were clearly pressing Samit for facts only, as Rolince's disdain for "suppositions" from far-off Minneapolis confirms.

So? The 9/11 Commission investigation detailed that British intelligence directly told U.S. officials on September 13, 2001, that Moussaoui had attended a training camp in Afghanistan. "Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention," the commission concluded. As it turns out, Samit had that info in late August 2001 and nobody cared. CIA Director George Tenet was briefed on the Moussaoui threat on August 23. The case received intense, high-level attention. Nobody cared.

Back in 2004, Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 commission, said he was troubled that Moussaoui's arrest never made it up to the top of the FBI hierarchy.

"If it had maybe there would have been some action taken and things could have been different," Kean was quoted by The New York Times.

Yet now it is clear that senior FBI officials Maltbie and Frasca did know about Moussaoui's arrest. In fact, they knew the case so well that they denied Samit's request for a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer and belongings. Samit also testified that he was told pressing too hard to obtain a warrant on Moussaoui would hurt his career.

This decision to deny a warrant gave rise to the myth that "The Wall" between overseas intelligence and criminal investigations made the PATRIOT Act necessary. To this day this myth is cherished among right-wing radio talkers and has, just now, morphed into a clumsy justification for the White House's sidestepping the FISA court and directing its own wiretap frenzy via the NSA. This is all pure fantasy.

Instead of clueless Carter-era restrictions on domestic spying or insufficient distrust of civil liberties, Samit cited "obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism" by top FBI officials as what stopped his investigation.

There is also the curious Bureau flip-flopping on Moussaoui and his laptop. Back in November 2001 the FBI dropped Moussaoui from the 9/11 plot. In his place the Bureau put Ramsi Binalshibh, as part of the hijacking team that crashed United Airlines Flight 93 into a field in Pennsylvania.

FBI Director Robert Mueller back then also told prosecutors that there was no information on the computer seized from Moussaoui that linked him to the September 11 attacks. At that same time, Rolince himself was not convinced that Moussaoui was tied to 9/11, saying "Whoever that fifth person was is probably still alive. Clearly we are looking into the pool of people who crossed paths with the hijackers." Only sometime later did that someone become Moussaoui and his un-searched info.

While Samit was spending a solid three weeks trying to get Washington to act on his pre-9/11 terror fears, future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour was raising suspicions with his flight training in Phoenix (suspicions Samit was not told about until after 9/11). Margaret Chevrette of the Pan Am International Flight Academy reported her worries to the FAA and somehow those concerns also made their way to CIA chief Tenet and into CIA memos of August 2001, but the FBI never acted on them. Yet on September 12, FBI agents interviewed Chevrette for more information on Hanjour—reflecting the fact that another local FBI agent (Arizona-based Kenneth Williams, author of the July 2001 Phoenix memo) had notified FBI headquarters of the danger posed by Middle Eastern terrorists training at U.S. flight schools.

There were also repeated attempts by the New York City FBI office to get follow-up on Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and an August 2001 request from a New York FBI agent who warned that "someday someone will die" if New York did not win approval to launch a criminal investigation of al-Mihdhar. Al-Mihdhar was on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

Minneapolis, Phoenix, New York. Three different Bureau offices were hot on the terror plot in the days leading up to 9/11 and all were stiffed by Washington. If that is not institutional incompetence, Stalin purge-worthy stuff, heaven help the next 3,000 martyrs to J. Edgar Hoover's über-suits.

One exchange from the Moussaoui trial makes clear what happened in the weeks running up to 9/11:

"You tried to move heaven and earth to get a search warrant to search this man's belongings and you were obstructed," MacMahon said to Samit.

"Yes sir, I was obstructed." Samit replied.

No disaster, it seems, can force reform on the Bureau. The same people are still manning the posts at the FBI and Main Justice. They are going to miss the next terror attack because they are dead-certain to stop the last one. That's what bureaucracies do: cover ass. The Bureau's poisonous Andersen Consulting–with-arrest-powers culture remains unreformed and dangerously low-tech. New York City agents do not have enough e-mail addresses to go around, for example.

Instead of an effective anti-terror agency, the Bureau is morphing into a kind of Stasi Lite, keeping tabs on domestic subversives: assorted peaceniks, communists in Texas, and the League of Women Voters in Michigan, who had the gall to invite a critic of the PATRIOT Act to a panel discussion. There is a sort of logic to such surveillance: This what the FBI is good at, so this is what it does. Kinda of like looking for your car keys under a street light because the rest of the street is dark.

Still, for all the bungling in the dark the FBI has nothing to fear, not from a complicit Bush administration, not from a prostrate Congress, not from a bamboozled public. An e-mail sent to Agent Harry Samit on September 10, 2001 from a CIA Counterterrorism Center official identified only as "Cathy" points the way: "God help us all if the next terrorist attacks involves this same type of plane."

God? Cathy, dear, the FBI is God. Just look around.



Jeff A. Taylor writes the weekly Reason Express.

 

[Peregrinator]

This decision to deny a warrant gave rise to the myth that "The Wall" between overseas intelligence and criminal investigations made the PATRIOT Act necessary. To this day this myth is cherished among right-wing radio talkers and has, just now, morphed into a clumsy justification for the White House's sidestepping the FISA court and directing its own wiretap frenzy via the NSA. This is all pure fantasy.

Nice.

 

[busybody..]

You took it way out of context and you know it!

 

[Peregrinator]

You took it way out of context and you know it!

I don't think I did actually; how much clearer could it be? The author obviously doesn't buy the necessity for Bush to circumvent FISA. He calls the justification "pure fantasy."

How could that be out of context?

 

[busybody..]

BTW

Did you KNOW

I am SURE you didnt

That former FISA Judges testified in front oc Congress

and ALL said that there was NO law broken when Bush did what he did?

Did you further KNOW that the NYTimes LIED about the Judges testimony?

 

[busybody..]

Only a diseased mentality can argue that wiretaps, spying, Pat Act is not needed in the WOT

And I am CERTAIN it will be missused

And I am certain we will still be hit!