06-01-2017, 02:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-01-2017, 03:46 AM by Anthony Thorne.)
I am posting some comments here after writing notes in response to a thread over at the Prison Planet forum. It is probably the end of the Elinoff saga for the time being. I would recommend however that researchers interested in 9/11 read right through to the end of this long post. There are a few observations that may be of interest.
Making a few things explicit, Jonathan mentioned in detail how he had received tacit death threats in Colorado from Tom Henry, the Vreeland/Wanta attorney who gets a mention in CROSSING THE RUBICON. Henry had contacted a white supremacist with a violent history and told him that only Elinoff could prevent him - somehow - from going to prison, he's your ticket, why don't you track him down etc. Elinoff later learned on the grapevine that the supremacist had been arrested in a Ramada Inn carpark and claimed he had been set up by someone leaving incriminating evidence in his car there. Elinoff checked and the desk clerk from that Ramada Inn was a woman who worked in Tom Henry's office. Henry had made a cross country trip to visit the state and arrange this incident. Jonathan walked away not long afterwards. Elinoff's angry description to me of Henry on a phone call a few years back - "He fits the definition of a fucking handler if anyone ever does."
I have no doubt that Elinoff was targeted in a number of ways. I've seen the photo of his crashed car, I've heard the phone call recordings where he outlines his story in a distressed way to another legal contact. I saw photos of Jonathan's ex and saw him write anguished posts on social media for the better part of a year as he attempted to get her back. I then heard Jonathan's story - never saw any proof - that she had been abducted. I saw numerous stories from the Colorado area - some only apparent when Jonathan gave me names and leads to Google - making it clear that Colorado was an epicentre for human trafficking and kidnapping, that cops were in on it, that the mainstream media had named story after story of young women going missing, or reappearing and mentioning that cops had assaulted them or warned them off from going to the media. Cops were caught driving around with a laptop on the back seat, going into underage chat rooms and sexually propositioning young teens, then driving out to the women they had propositioned. Women were disappearing from nightclubs, and the cops were in league with the security at those clubs. Sullivan ran the area like a mafia don. I kept, but have never posted, stories that Jonathan linked where - right after Sullivan was arrested - high profile figures in sports and politics and government all fled the state with child abuse allegations following them. It was disturbing to read about. I'm not surprised it took a toll on Jonathan. We all became victims of it, in the end.
There is more good 9/11 research coming. Herbert 'Pug' Winokur, the Enron figure who was the subject of a long series of articles by Linda Minor, was the man who - according to Ashton Carter, in his 2000 book PREVENTATIVE DEFENSE - set the ball rolling on the Universities Study Group on Catastrophic Terrorism, acted as a member of the group, and supported the group's funding in a crucial way. Future 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick (along with Fred Ikle and other key figures) worked with the group, and this led to Carter, Deutch and Zelikow's report Catastrophic Terrorism: Elements of a National Policy. Rumsfeld's Missile Commission started a few weeks after Zelikow's group began its work, and finished shortly before Zelikow's group finished. In Maria Ryan's 2010 book NEOCONSERVATISM AND THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY, she devotes a chapter to Rumsfeld's Commission, and thanks a Washington figure in her introduction that sent her details about its activities anonymously. Ryan interviews some scientists and nuclear-connected figures who state that Rumsfeld's group had their conclusions chosen at the outset, that the fix was in, and that the Commission was going through the motions with its investigative work. Yet Rumsfeld was curiously busy, and maintained a long schedule meeting with militarists, figures in intelligence, people from the Pentagon, from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, meeting with other rightwing hardliners and defence advocates, all throughout the period that Zelikow's group was doing their own study into catastrophic terrorism. James Woolsey and Paul Wolfowitz worked with Rumsfeld's group, close Wolfowitz associate Ashton Carter worked on Rumsfeld's, and figures from one group were interviewed for their expertise by the other, or thanked for their assistance. Winokur was a DynCorp board member, and Woolsey later became one. Figures from both teams had met with Zelikow during Aspen Strategy Group sessions in the early 90's. The connections between the groups were numerous. In HIT TO KILL: THE NEW BATTLE OVER SHIELDING AMERICA FROM MISSILE ATTACK - a book published shortly after the attacks in November 2001 - Washington Post 'military affairs reporter' Bradley Graham outlined a bland history of Rumsfeld's Commission, describing bored sessions where Rumsfeld and his fellow commissioners would roll their eyes at boring lectures. Simultaneously, Graham ascribed Rumsfeld's months of hard work among the militarists and weapons contractors to simple curiosity:
So Rumsfeld was fascinated and curious about the results of a months-long process that had been described elsewhere as a whitewash and a fix. Rumsfeld's group and Zelikow's were so close-knit as to be essentially the same group of militarists. What was going on through this period?
Rumsfeld - chosen by senior, hardline Republican/militarist figures to head the group's work - situated his Missile Commission at the Old Executive Office Building, located just west of the White House. It was in that building that the Commission carried out their discussions, held private conversations, reached out to other militarists, and did their planning. John Poindexter had picked room 208 in the Old EOB as a crisis management centre.
In 1985, Al-Qaeda and NSDD-166 were conceived and created in Room 208.
Ikle, the 'most influential' figure of the interagency group, was later a member of Winokur's Study Group on Terrorism, working along with Zelikow and Ashton Carter. Ikle would also meet with Rumsfeld's Missile Commission on April 20th 1998. Oliver North, a leading figure in the Continuity of Government exercises that had included Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz as participants, viewed the Old Executive Office Building - kitted out with secure communication lines - as an ideal place to carry out secret operations.
From pg 9 of The Iran Contra Connection
In 1987, 9/11 SYNTHETIC TERROR author Webster Tarpley viewed the 208 Committee with suspicion, noted it as a potential source of treason and future coup d'etats, and mentioned Wolfowitz as a participant.
The Commission Meetings and Agendas documentation of Rumsfeld's Missile Commission lists the interview participants by date and location. After two months of general subject discussion, Rumsfeld and his fellow commissioners met on March 19th 1998 with George Tenet, the RAND Corporation's Andrew Marshall, David Osias, a defence intelligence officer, and David Ivry, the Director-General of the lsraeli Ministry of Defense.
Osias moved into a career in government military contracting, as a consultant with Centra Technology. Centra Tech would make hundreds of millions of dollars of profit from 9/11.
Centra Technology made much of its profits from Rumsfeld's torture program.
The other interviewee that day, David Ivry, had been a participant in the attack on the USS Liberty. Ivey later commanded the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor. He was eventually made director of the Israeli National Security Council, and the Chairman of Israeli Arms Control and Regional Security. In 1991, Dick Cheney sent Ivry a framed satellite reconnaissance photo of the destroyed reactor as a gesture of appreciation, inscribing it: "Thanks for an outstanding job... It made our job easier in DESERT STORM. Dick Cheney".
On April 16th, 1998, the Missile Commission met with Admiral William Studeman. Studeman was the former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) under Robert Gates, James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch, and was acting director of the CIA in 1995, at the time of the Oklahoma bombing. In a Chicago Tribune article on April 21, 1995, two days after the OKC bombing, Studeman is quoted saying that the attack indicates the "true globalisation of the terrorist threat", suggesting that the bombing was done with the help of others outside the US. The article is titled "Trading Privacy (Freedom) for Security".
In 1999, Donald Rumsfeld took up a position as chairman of the Salomon Smith Barney advisory board. Dick Cheney also joined the same board. Salomon Smith Barney occupied 37 floors of World Trade Centre 7, and shared its 23rd floor with the New York Office of Emergency Management, a crisis command centre with 'advanced communication capabilities'.
http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007...nued/?_r=0
Later the same year, in October 1999, after a career devoted towards the security of the Israeli state, David Ivry was appointed as Israeli Ambassador to the USA. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister David Levy approved Ivry's selection. In the short press release, Levy notes that Ivry "..will expertly fulfil his important mission".
On September 18, 2000, the New York Times publishes a profile of Ivry by Philip Shenon. Shenon is later the author of a study about the 9/11 Commission. Shenon's article again alludes to Ivry being on a mission. His piece is subtitled "Another Dangerous Mission for a Veteran Israeli Warrior".
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/18/us/pub...rrior.html
Rumsfeld, a participant in the Continuity of Government exercises, signs off on new Continuity of Government plans during the first few days of the administration, just as the caretaker period of Clinton's Presidency is finishing. Around the same period, Cheney locates his Vice President's office in the Old Executive Office Building, the same secure location where Rumsfeld earlier carried out his months of work on the Missile Commission, talking to militarists via a secure communication system.
In 2001,
January 18[SUP]th[/SUP]. Clinton gives his farewell address.
January 19[SUP]th[/SUP]. Clinton announces the Chief of Staff of his Post-Presidency Transition Office. Rumsfeld approves an updated version of the U.S. Army's Continuity of Government (COG) plans, signing off on the document Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program. The document carries the warning Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.
January 20[SUP]th[/SUP]. The oath of office for George W. Bush is administered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
In early 2001, Missile Commission interviewee David Ivry organises a series of Pentagon meetings with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other high level Israeli leaders. The meetings occur in March, May and August 2001, and Ivry participates in those meetings in the weeks leading up to the September attacks.
After the attacks, and the windfalls for contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, Ivry moves to a different career. Ivry leaves his US ambassador position in 2003 to become President of Boeing Israel, and Vice President of Boeing International, the same year that Boeing profits skyrocketed by billions due to the War on Terror. Kenneth Duberstein, a Boeing director since 1997, had been a participant in the Continuity of Government exercises alongside Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Woolsey.
On September 10[SUP]th[/SUP], 2001, Rumsfeld starts his Pentagon speech acknowledging E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Aldridge was the man who would sign off on future military acquisitions, sign the checks, and agree to the purchases. Rumsfeld had met with Aldridge during the Missile Commission talks on April 7[SUP]th[/SUP] 1998. Three weeks after 9/11, Aldridge writes a letter to the defense industry, urging that contractors shield the details of their new contracts and profits from the general public. Aldridge emphasizes that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld views this discretion as important. Aldridge also notes that the threat such secrecy is meant to avoid is of a potentially domestic nature'.
Seven weeks after Rumsfeld's speech, the Pentagon awards Lockheed Martin a $300 billion contract for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Two years later, Aldridge resigns from the Defense Department to become a director of Lockheed Martin. Seven months after this, Bush appoints Aldridge as the head of the commission on space exploration, where Aldridge can make recommendations to privatize NASA. Lockheed was a major NASA contractor at the time.
In Aldridge's March 2003 resignation letter to President Bush, Aldridge notes that one of his goals had been to "improve the health of the defense industrial base". Aldridge notes that he had made "significant progress on accomplishing" that goal.
On the morning of 9/11, World Trade Centre 7 and its high-tech emergency management communications centre is destroyed. Fires burn on various floors before the building drops to the ground that afternoon. The same morning on 9/11, a less-reported event occurs in Washington, in the Old Executive Office Building, where Rumsfeld had maintained access to secure communication lines during his months of discussions with hardliners in the military establishment, and where Cheney had later chosen to locate his VP's office. The event has been largely ignored by 9/11 researchers, but deserves examination in light of the ongoing activities in that building.
The Old Executive Office Building Fire
During the attacks, ABC News co-anchor Peter Jennings made a live call to Washington correspondent Claire Shipman. Shipman describes the fire.
As Jennings and Shipman talk, a writer for the Poynteronline journalist resource site follows the coverage, making notes as events unfold. She makes a judgement as to the position of the camera filming the fire.
Abundance Magazine maintains an online discussion board through the morning. A contributor notes an incident at the Executive Office Building.
On September 13th, a contributor to Laze.net mentions the fire.
TIME Magazine mentions the fire in an article three days after the attacks, confirming that staff members in the building watching events on television were given an order to evacuate.
The newsletter of the National Institutes of Health mentions the fire three weeks later.
A site detailing experiences from the day mentions the fire a year later.
A later Wikipedia entry on the building notes, without elaboration
In 2003, a Symantec security newsletter observes how aerial photos of the Old Executive Office building from before and after the attacks had been obscured by the Secret Service, perhaps to prevent damage comparisons between the two sets of photos.
Both the Old Executive Office Building and WTC7 suffered fires - and in the latter case, wholesale destruction - on the morning of 9/11. Both buildings had been set up as secure communications centres. Both buildings had been used in the years leading up to the attacks by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The Missile Commission sessions, conducted by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Woolsey with militarists throughout Washington as Zelikow conducted an argument for catastrophic terrorism, gave the Neocons access to high-level right wing figures in the intelligence, military and weapons contracting communities, many of whom had been joined together in the same think tanks and private companies, agitating for future events contemplated by the members of PNAC. Rumsfeld, chosen by senior militarist figures to run the Missile Commission, had made a career of running businesses, running corporations, and running war-games practicing the Continuity of Government activities that he had presciently worked towards during his first week within the George W. Bush administration.
In May 2000, as the electoral contests had heated up, Michael Ledeen a longtime associate of many PNAC members, and a supporter of their goals - released a book on Machiavelli. Machiavelli, observed Ledeen, had much to teach modern leaders. During a period of exile, Machiavelli had spent the bulk of his time in a local inn, drinking, cursing, and playing backgammon and a Tuscan card game', testing his abilities for skill and deception against those of other players. Noted Ledeen:
Machiavelli, wrote Ledeen, appreciated "..the importance, and risk, of communication, including secrecy and deception", and used "codes in some of his official correspondence…". Ledeen clearly admired this figure, who had learned to communicate secretly with his co-conspirators.
In January 2016, at the age of 83, Rumsfeld returned to New York. The Continuity of Government plans he had worked for years to initiate had remained in place since 9/11. The 'Revolution in Military Affairs' that his RAND co-Horst and Missile Commission interviewee Andrew Marshall had agitated for through the 1990's had been achieved. Rumsfeld was back in the city to promote a game he had helped create Churchill Solitaire, a card-game app. Talking to a writer from the New Yorker, Rumsfeld discussed the creation of the game, and described his own method of seeing long projects through to completion. The process, Rumsfeld said,
The journalist from the New Yorker saw deeper meanings in Rumsfeld's comment.
As a bonus for the player, Rumsfeld's app featured special hints, and an option to turn back the clock and try certain moves again. But for some long-awaited goals, there might only ever come one chance.
Quote:
pac522 wrote and asked what the latest is. I started to write a PM, but I'll post it here instead if others want to read it.
...............
Hi again, thanks for checking in on the story. You can post this in the thread if you want to.
The update is -
(a.) Jonathan has come close to releasing the documentary at least two or three times. He built a webpage for it, prepared an e-shop to sell it, announced on Facebook that people should get ready for its imminent release. I took a photo of his promotional page on my iPhone when it was up briefly, before he took it back down (it never went public).
(b.) Jonathan has changed his mind as many times, and (obviously) not released it. The usual routine is that he'll post a few things, build some hype, then disappear, then do an interview with some obscure web blog or podcast where he shrugs his shoulders and says "Yeah, maybe I'll release it". He's done this a few times in the past year.
(c.) Jonathan had continual legal and medical issues, and also relationship issues with his ex. He's made a number of erratic posts about all three topics.
(d.) Jonathan (to a private email address of mine) uploaded a video (private) to Youtube where he was wandering around his house and spent 5 minutes talking to the camera at length, showing off some big soft-drink machine he'd just had delivered to his house, showing the camera the contents of the drink in close-up, and telling the camera that he suspected foreign spies or intelligence or someone spooky was putting chemicals in his drinks machine to drug him and affect his personality. Sadly, I'm not joking about this.
Jonathan also sent me posts where he claimed his girlfriend had been kidnapped and was being sexually abused by her kidnappers, but the police wouldn't listen to him. He tended to intersperse this on Facebook with cheery posts suggesting that someone should make a movie about his life and who do you think should play him, and wouldn't it be cool if Angelina Jolie appeared in the movie etc etc.
The upshot is I've given up. I think John has been harassed. I gather he's had a few problems. His social media presence is sporadic and I suspect few people care about the films anymore. He's developed a pattern of disappearing for months, then saying the films will come out, then disappearing again, then saying the films will come out any day, then asking for money on a GoFundMe (and taking some donations - he took a good amount from me), then disappearing again, etc etc etc.
I think the Pat Sullivan thing - which I think was a huge mistake for him to get involved in, it's done no-one any f**king good whatsoever, including himself, and us - has made him permanently paranoid and messed-up. At this point he's promised the movie so many times (several) and asked for money so many times (at least three times, with no result) that I couldn't recommend anyone get involved - certainly not with any of his requests for funding. He's become way too unreliable, and has never bothered to offer any explanation each time he's asked for cash, then disappeared again. There is a fat IMDB review of the first CORE OF CORRUPTION movie (and I'm not going to bother to re-check if it's still there) that is ostensibly written by some FBI guy who goes into great detail about how Jonathan is a super talented guy and if only he wouldn't hang around supermodels in nightclubs etc. Based on Jonathan's stream-of-consciousness rants on Facebook, I'm pretty sure he wrote it himself, for whatever reason.
This all makes me angry and sad. There are other incidents - several - but that is the gist of it. I'll mention by way of observation that Dylan Avery has remained in the public eye and is finishing another documentary (BLACK AND BLUE, about cop violence). Jonathan claims he's finished multiple parts of his documentary, but he keeps on saying he's moved on, then claims the films will come out, then asks for money to bring them out, then says they'll come out imminently, then he disappears again. Etc etc etc etc etc. Again, I have now completely given up on Jonathan and his films. His story is a huge tar baby that endlessly distracts and sucks time away from research and anything legit. I have pages of Word documents where he's made promise after promise that he'd release new info or release the films. To date, he's released f**k all.
The Pat Sullivan stuff he uncovered is legit and credible - I saw enough of it and researched it a bit to see he wasn't making things up there - but how does it help us with 9/11? He's never bothered to make public the connections he said were inherent, and I could only get tidbits from cryptic conversations - blackmail and the Franklin Scandal, etc. He really should have released his movie years ago, rather than putting him and us through all this.
I do recall that when the Sullivan thing was happening, some Homeland Security guys made it to Colorado, and a few of him had words with him about his movie, put a few things in his ear. Since that point I wonder whether he's started to doubt some of his own research, hey these government guys are okay after all, maybe things aren't so black and white, etc etc. It's a bit of a mess.
Earlier this year - when Jonathan was promising on social media again, for maybe the fifth time, that his film was about to come out - he uploaded some music tracks from the film. So, I've heard the new theme tune and closing credits (plus some incidental music) from ECHOES OF TREASON - it's very good music, very powerful and well chosen and appropriate - but again, where is his film? This was around April or May 2016 or thereabouts. His first missed release date (which he dumped without explanation) was in early 2012, and that was two or three years after some earlier promised release dates, including a big "Here it comes!" page on 911Blogger and some fellow from We Are Change announcing under the Youtube teaser trailer a year or more before that about films two and three being 'released simultaneously'. It's in keeping with Jonathan endlessly teasing and promising but not delivering. Again, I have now given up. Life is too short.
If Jonathan reads this and disagrees with my assessment of how things have transpired, that's fine. He can give everyone the full story if he wants, or release the movies if he thinks they really are coming out. For my part I paid for his movies twice - once the same time when everybody was pre-ordering his DVD's, and a second time ($100) when he put up a fundraiser a year or more ago and asked for more money. ("Now it is time to tell the whole story"). He withdrew the latter fundraiser without explanation, just like he's never bothered to give an explanation each time he's announced the film (as he did on Facebook early last year) then not followed up with anything happening. That's on him, not on me, and again, I'm moving on.
I have seen some new 9/11 research in recent months from other sources - some good stuff that will be fresh to even veteran researchers - but I know it is still being put together and won't make any predictions as to when it will appear. People should just hang in there and keep an eye on the research scene, a few more puzzle pieces I suspect will be joined over the next year or two. I've seen a couple of tidbits that made me raise my eyebrows, and made me look again at some names that have been in the background all the while. But I think I've finished following Jonathan's saga. I can see the same cycle repeating 2, 3, 4 years from now, with Jonathan making cryptic posts, then promising his movie was imminent, then changing the subject, then asking for money, then disappearing, then reappearing and poo-poohing the notion of his movie coming out, but if only you knew what I knew, etc etc. Enough. It's more than enough. Life is too short, we've wasted way too much time giving Jonathan attention, he's wasted too much of our time making promises that he throws away without explanation, and I am moving on for good.
Making a few things explicit, Jonathan mentioned in detail how he had received tacit death threats in Colorado from Tom Henry, the Vreeland/Wanta attorney who gets a mention in CROSSING THE RUBICON. Henry had contacted a white supremacist with a violent history and told him that only Elinoff could prevent him - somehow - from going to prison, he's your ticket, why don't you track him down etc. Elinoff later learned on the grapevine that the supremacist had been arrested in a Ramada Inn carpark and claimed he had been set up by someone leaving incriminating evidence in his car there. Elinoff checked and the desk clerk from that Ramada Inn was a woman who worked in Tom Henry's office. Henry had made a cross country trip to visit the state and arrange this incident. Jonathan walked away not long afterwards. Elinoff's angry description to me of Henry on a phone call a few years back - "He fits the definition of a fucking handler if anyone ever does."
I have no doubt that Elinoff was targeted in a number of ways. I've seen the photo of his crashed car, I've heard the phone call recordings where he outlines his story in a distressed way to another legal contact. I saw photos of Jonathan's ex and saw him write anguished posts on social media for the better part of a year as he attempted to get her back. I then heard Jonathan's story - never saw any proof - that she had been abducted. I saw numerous stories from the Colorado area - some only apparent when Jonathan gave me names and leads to Google - making it clear that Colorado was an epicentre for human trafficking and kidnapping, that cops were in on it, that the mainstream media had named story after story of young women going missing, or reappearing and mentioning that cops had assaulted them or warned them off from going to the media. Cops were caught driving around with a laptop on the back seat, going into underage chat rooms and sexually propositioning young teens, then driving out to the women they had propositioned. Women were disappearing from nightclubs, and the cops were in league with the security at those clubs. Sullivan ran the area like a mafia don. I kept, but have never posted, stories that Jonathan linked where - right after Sullivan was arrested - high profile figures in sports and politics and government all fled the state with child abuse allegations following them. It was disturbing to read about. I'm not surprised it took a toll on Jonathan. We all became victims of it, in the end.
There is more good 9/11 research coming. Herbert 'Pug' Winokur, the Enron figure who was the subject of a long series of articles by Linda Minor, was the man who - according to Ashton Carter, in his 2000 book PREVENTATIVE DEFENSE - set the ball rolling on the Universities Study Group on Catastrophic Terrorism, acted as a member of the group, and supported the group's funding in a crucial way. Future 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick (along with Fred Ikle and other key figures) worked with the group, and this led to Carter, Deutch and Zelikow's report Catastrophic Terrorism: Elements of a National Policy. Rumsfeld's Missile Commission started a few weeks after Zelikow's group began its work, and finished shortly before Zelikow's group finished. In Maria Ryan's 2010 book NEOCONSERVATISM AND THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY, she devotes a chapter to Rumsfeld's Commission, and thanks a Washington figure in her introduction that sent her details about its activities anonymously. Ryan interviews some scientists and nuclear-connected figures who state that Rumsfeld's group had their conclusions chosen at the outset, that the fix was in, and that the Commission was going through the motions with its investigative work. Yet Rumsfeld was curiously busy, and maintained a long schedule meeting with militarists, figures in intelligence, people from the Pentagon, from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, meeting with other rightwing hardliners and defence advocates, all throughout the period that Zelikow's group was doing their own study into catastrophic terrorism. James Woolsey and Paul Wolfowitz worked with Rumsfeld's group, close Wolfowitz associate Ashton Carter worked on Rumsfeld's, and figures from one group were interviewed for their expertise by the other, or thanked for their assistance. Winokur was a DynCorp board member, and Woolsey later became one. Figures from both teams had met with Zelikow during Aspen Strategy Group sessions in the early 90's. The connections between the groups were numerous. In HIT TO KILL: THE NEW BATTLE OVER SHIELDING AMERICA FROM MISSILE ATTACK - a book published shortly after the attacks in November 2001 - Washington Post 'military affairs reporter' Bradley Graham outlined a bland history of Rumsfeld's Commission, describing bored sessions where Rumsfeld and his fellow commissioners would roll their eyes at boring lectures. Simultaneously, Graham ascribed Rumsfeld's months of hard work among the militarists and weapons contractors to simple curiosity:
Quote:"..from the start, Rumsfeld made clear that his commission would be different. He set a brisk pace, scheduling two or more all-day sessions a week through the winter and spring. He pressed relentlessly for information and placed much of the responsibility for drafting a final report on the panel members themselves. Just what drove Rumsfeld to embrace his mission so aggressively was a source of some curiosity among those involved with the commission. A onetime naval aviator, college wrestler, and congressman before serving in the Ford administration, he had been out of government nearly a quarter of a century and was successfully ensconced in the business world heading a pharmaceutical firm. Because he was living in Chicago, his work on the commission would require time-consuming commutes to Washington. But the intelligence world seemed to have a particular draw for him. "I think he was determined to push the commission and delve into details because he was fascinated by the issue," said an intelligence official who worked closely with Rumsfeld. "He just wanted to know."
"
So Rumsfeld was fascinated and curious about the results of a months-long process that had been described elsewhere as a whitewash and a fix. Rumsfeld's group and Zelikow's were so close-knit as to be essentially the same group of militarists. What was going on through this period?
Rumsfeld - chosen by senior, hardline Republican/militarist figures to head the group's work - situated his Missile Commission at the Old Executive Office Building, located just west of the White House. It was in that building that the Commission carried out their discussions, held private conversations, reached out to other militarists, and did their planning. John Poindexter had picked room 208 in the Old EOB as a crisis management centre.
Quote:From Michael K. Bohn's "Nerve Centre: Inside the White House Situation Room"
"The Situation Room flap in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan led to the creation of an adjunct to the Situation Room called the Crisis Management Center. John Poindexter, President Reagan's fourth national security adviser, recalled the circumstances.
"There was a good bit of consternation among the President's most senior advisers Baker, Meese, and Deaver about the functioning of the Situation Room following the shooting of the President," Poindexter said. "They wanted a study undertaken to examine the Sit Room's concept of operations and compare that with what it should be. The White House asked me to become Dick Allen's military assistant and, after reporting to the White House in June 1981, I spent most of that year reviewing the history of the Sit Room, as well as what happened during the assassination attempt."
Poindexter said that he found that the Situation Room performed just as it had been designed. While its technological shortcomings were evident, Poindexter determined that the problem lay in the difference between what the Sit Room had always been and what Reagan advisers thought it was. "They thought it was a decision or command center set up to facilitate high-level decision making," explained Poindexter. "It was really more of a switching center where duty officers routed incoming information to the NSC staff, the national security adviser, and other White House officials."
Poindexter then embarked on a three-phase upgrade to the crisis management capabilities at the White House. First, create a true, technologically advanced crisis management facility along the lines of what Reagan's staff envisioned. Second, upgrade the information technology in the Situation Room. And last, install a secure, closed-circuit television system that linked the White House with the other national security agencies State, the Pentagon, CIA, and others.
Poindexter enlisted the help of an assistant to Ed Meese, Dr Richard S. Beal, to conceptualize a crisis management center, then build it. "We needed to supplement the Situation Room and create a place that could take over a crisis while the Sit Room continued to watch the rest of the world," recalled Poindexter. "We wanted a room big enough to install large-screen displays and accommodate large, interagency meetings. The Sit Room could not be expanded the swimming pool, the staff mess, and the street outside restricted it. Also, the staff was too small to analyse crisis information or plan for future crises."
Poindexter and Beal, who became senior director for crisis management systems and planning, hit on the idea of converting Room 208 in the Old Executive Office Building across the street from the White House. After extensive reconstruction of the room and surrounding spaces, the Crisis Management Center, or CMC, opened in 1983; a staff separate from the Situation Room manned the facility. They worked normal hours during noncrisis times, but manned up 24/7 to support what Poindexter called "crisis consequence management." He convinced the Department of Defense to pay for the new center. "Frank Carlucci, then at the Pentagon, was not easily swayed," Poindexter said. "He told me to just call the Pentagon whenever the White House needed data, but he finally, grudgingly, acquiesced and approved the funding."
"Our objective was to organize and display information relevant to the crisis in an interactive and adaptive way," continued Poindexter. "It was difficult then because the underlying technology either didn't exist then or it was just in its infancy. While fibre optic local area networks (LANs) are commonplace today, we struggled to find those systems in 1983 to connect the CMC to the Situation Room. There were no PCs then to use as terminals or workstations; the most advanced piece of equipment in the Sit Room then was a magnetic card typewriter."
The conference room in the new CMC had been the Secretary of State's old office where, on December 7, 1941, Secretary of State Cordell Hull received the Japanese Ambassador just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The period grandeur of the room had been retained, complete with murals and artwork on the plaster walls. Behind discrete panelling were the large screen displays for the projection of maps, charts, intelligence reports, and drafts of outgoing cables.
First, the staff installed, seven powerful VAX computers adjacent to the conference room. Second, terminals to those computers were installed in the Situation Room, and they were used also to satisfy Poindexter's other goal of upgrading the information-processing capabilities there. Third, technicians installed a secure video teleconferencing network in operations centers throughout Washington. The White House had two of the terminals, one in the CMC and the second in a room in the back of the Situation Room.
..
David Aaron, deputy to President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote a novel published in 1087, State Scarlet, just about the time Room 208 became tainted by connections to Oliver North's Contra support operation."
In 1985, Al-Qaeda and NSDD-166 were conceived and created in Room 208.
Quote:From Chapter 7 of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden"
"In his rising enthusiasm for the Afghan war and in his determination to punish the Soviets to the greatest possible degree, William Casey found that he needed allies outside of CIA headquarters. Time did little to shake his belief that the CIA's career clandestine officers were too timid. But there were influential conservatives in the executive branch who could aid his push for a more covert war. The Reagan administration had attracted to Washington "an awful lot of Soldier of Fortune readers," recalled Frank Anderson, a clandestine service officer involved in the Afghan program. These mercenary voyeurs included blunt paramilitary types such as Casey's friend Oliver North and more cerebral anticommunist hawks who came from right-wing think tanks.
Casey connected with these allies as they developed a new plan for the Afghan jihad. Known as National Security Decision Directive 166, with an annex classified Top Secret/Codeword, the blueprint they produced became the legal basis for a massive escalation of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, starting in 1985.
The new policy document provided a retroactive rationale for the huge increases in covert funds forced into the Afghan program late in 1984 by Charlie Wilson. It also looked forward to a new era of direct infusions of advanced U.S. military technology into Afghanistan, intensified training of Islamist guerrillas in explosives and sabotage techniques, and targeted attacks on Soviet military officers designed to demoralise the Soviet high command. Among other consequences these changes pushed the CIA, along with its clients in the Afghan resistance and in Pakistani intelligence, closer to the gray fields of assassination and terrorism.
The meetings that produced NSDD-166 changed the way the United States directed its covert Afghan program. For the first time the CIA lost its near-total control. The peculiar Washington institution known as "the inter-agency process" became dominant. This was typical of national security policy making by the 1980s. Representatives from various agencies and Cabinet departments, selected for their relevance to the foreign policy issue at hand, would form under supervision from the White House's National Security Council. The committee often selected a vague name with a tongue-twisting acronym that could be bandied about as a secret membership code. During the Reagan administration the CIA worked continuously with one such group, the Planning and Coordination Group, or PCG, the President's un-publicized body for the oversight of all secret covert actions. With Casey's cooperation the sweeping review of Afghan covert policy was taken on early in 1985 by a PCG subset, the Policy Review Group, which began to meet in a high-ceilinged warren of the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the West Wing of the White House.
A striking gray gabled building imitating the styles of the French Renaissance, with capped peaks and sloping bays that spoke elaborately to 17[SUP]th[/SUP] Street's bland marble office boxes, the Old Executive Office Building housed many of the national security personnel who couldn't fit inside the cramped West Wing. Casey kept an office there. Behind most of its tall doors lay regional National Security Council directorates. Here delegates from Langley, the Pentagon, and the State Department's headquarters building in the nearby Washington neighbourhood known as Foggy Bottom would all tramp in to review operations, debate policy, and prepare documents for presidential signature.
The new interagency group on Afghanistan, meeting in room 208, forced the CIA to share a table with civilians and uniformed officers from the Pentagon. In early 1985 the most influential new figure was Fred Ikle, a former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and an elegant anti-communist hardliner. With him came Michael Pillsbury, an eager former congressional aide.
With Ikle's support, Pillsbury pushed a draft of NSDD-166 for Reagan's signature. For a midlevel aide with little authority on paper beyond his high-level security clearances, he defined his mission ambitiously. To help Afghan rebels overcome rising Soviet military pressure, he wanted to provide them with the best guerrilla weapons and satellite intelligence. To do this Pillsbury needed new legal authority for CIA covert action that went beyond the Carter-era policy goal of "harassing" Soviet occupation forces. He sought to expand dramatically the stated aims and the military means of the CIA's Afghan jihad."
Ikle, the 'most influential' figure of the interagency group, was later a member of Winokur's Study Group on Terrorism, working along with Zelikow and Ashton Carter. Ikle would also meet with Rumsfeld's Missile Commission on April 20th 1998. Oliver North, a leading figure in the Continuity of Government exercises that had included Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz as participants, viewed the Old Executive Office Building - kitted out with secure communication lines - as an ideal place to carry out secret operations.
From pg 9 of The Iran Contra Connection
Quote:"The White House decisionmaking center for covert operations and contracting-out strategy lay within a tiny team of select State, Defense, CIA and NSC officials known as the "208 Committee" or "Policy Development Group." Oliver North, the workaholic organizer of secret contra supply missions and Iran arms deals, was one of its most active members. Meeting in the Crisis Management Center in Room 208 of the Old Executive Office Building, surrounded by secure computer data links to the National Security Agency, this group could plan secret operations free from the obligation to report to the intelligence committees of Congress. Its mission was to implement the Reagan doctrine of fighting Soviet influence throughout the Third World, wherever possible by supporting indigenous forces. Its thorough overview of missions and logistics included such details as "which weapons will be shipped, which secret warehouse goods used, which middlemen will deliver them to clandestine airstrips." For the most sensitive policies, as with the Iran arms shipments, only a few members of even this group took part in policy discussions.
For North and others in this select circle, the guiding principle was power and the task was to expand it without answering to other authorities.
In 1987, 9/11 SYNTHETIC TERROR author Webster Tarpley viewed the 208 Committee with suspicion, noted it as a potential source of treason and future coup d'etats, and mentioned Wolfowitz as a participant.
Quote:From The Iran-Contra affair: End of the Kissinger system"
"The most concentrated distillation of this Kissinger system of government came to reside in the Old Executive Office Building, the old State-War-Navy Building in the White House compound, the seat of the NSC. Under Kissinger, the NSC usurped the role lawfully reserved for the cabinet. In Kissinger's notorious series of "end runs" around other agencies, the NSC became the chief executive arm of the government. The NSC became the headquarters for coups d'etat, destabilizations, and sundry stabs in the back.
The most typical operative cog in this system is the 208 Committee, an engine of treason quartered in a room of the Old Executive Office Building. Here, for example during the first months of 1986, an interagency task force met to supervise the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. The participants were generally of sub-cabinet rank, from deputy secretary to assistant secretary: Abrams and Wolfowitz of the State Department Mossad cell, their superior Armacost, Armitage of the Pentagon, Claire George of CIA, and Poindexter. At the service of this interdepartmental consensus stood the 208 list, a series of assets, covert operations capabilities, and agents of influence across the world, almost all of them really controlled by foreign powers, especially Israel. The 208 Committee had, of course, to pay attention to the wishes of the President, but primarily for purposes of self-protection. The players owe their careers to the Kissinger-Brzezinski establishment. "
The Commission Meetings and Agendas documentation of Rumsfeld's Missile Commission lists the interview participants by date and location. After two months of general subject discussion, Rumsfeld and his fellow commissioners met on March 19th 1998 with George Tenet, the RAND Corporation's Andrew Marshall, David Osias, a defence intelligence officer, and David Ivry, the Director-General of the lsraeli Ministry of Defense.
Osias moved into a career in government military contracting, as a consultant with Centra Technology. Centra Tech would make hundreds of millions of dollars of profit from 9/11.
Quote:David J OSIAS is currently a consultant with Centra Technology, Inc. He retired in March 2008 as Chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA's) Weapon Intelligence Group in the Directorate for Measurement And Signature Intelligence and Technical Collection. While at DIA, he had a broad range of responsibilities and gained extensive experience in intelligence analysis., much of it in technical areas relating to arms control, ballistic missiles, and weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Zwr...er&f=false
Centra Technology made much of its profits from Rumsfeld's torture program.
Quote:"The CIA Paid a Contractor $40 Million to Review Torture Documents"
https://news.vice.com/article/the-cia-pa...-documents
"How many people actually know that the cost of the five-year-study of the CIA's torture program was $40 million? This is the target of criticism by Republicans and CIA supporters against the Senate Intelligence Committee with the implication being that it was the Senate Democrats who led the investigation who are responsible for these expenditures. The CIA contractor who worked with the Senate is Centra Technology, Inc. As a pre-approved contractor, whenever the government has a need to outsource consulting work, it can call upon Centra immediately. In fact, Centra has received over $200 million in government contracts since its founding in 2009."
The other interviewee that day, David Ivry, had been a participant in the attack on the USS Liberty. Ivey later commanded the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor. He was eventually made director of the Israeli National Security Council, and the Chairman of Israeli Arms Control and Regional Security. In 1991, Dick Cheney sent Ivry a framed satellite reconnaissance photo of the destroyed reactor as a gesture of appreciation, inscribing it: "Thanks for an outstanding job... It made our job easier in DESERT STORM. Dick Cheney".
On April 16th, 1998, the Missile Commission met with Admiral William Studeman. Studeman was the former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) under Robert Gates, James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch, and was acting director of the CIA in 1995, at the time of the Oklahoma bombing. In a Chicago Tribune article on April 21, 1995, two days after the OKC bombing, Studeman is quoted saying that the attack indicates the "true globalisation of the terrorist threat", suggesting that the bombing was done with the help of others outside the US. The article is titled "Trading Privacy (Freedom) for Security".
In 1999, Donald Rumsfeld took up a position as chairman of the Salomon Smith Barney advisory board. Dick Cheney also joined the same board. Salomon Smith Barney occupied 37 floors of World Trade Centre 7, and shared its 23rd floor with the New York Office of Emergency Management, a crisis command centre with 'advanced communication capabilities'.
http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007...nued/?_r=0
Later the same year, in October 1999, after a career devoted towards the security of the Israeli state, David Ivry was appointed as Israeli Ambassador to the USA. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister David Levy approved Ivry's selection. In the short press release, Levy notes that Ivry "..will expertly fulfil his important mission".
Quote:[Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, David Ivry to be New Israeli Ambassador to USA', 27 Oct 1999, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/1999/Pag...20USA.aspx ]
On September 18, 2000, the New York Times publishes a profile of Ivry by Philip Shenon. Shenon is later the author of a study about the 9/11 Commission. Shenon's article again alludes to Ivry being on a mission. His piece is subtitled "Another Dangerous Mission for a Veteran Israeli Warrior".
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/18/us/pub...rrior.html
Rumsfeld, a participant in the Continuity of Government exercises, signs off on new Continuity of Government plans during the first few days of the administration, just as the caretaker period of Clinton's Presidency is finishing. Around the same period, Cheney locates his Vice President's office in the Old Executive Office Building, the same secure location where Rumsfeld earlier carried out his months of work on the Missile Commission, talking to militarists via a secure communication system.
In 2001,
January 18[SUP]th[/SUP]. Clinton gives his farewell address.
January 19[SUP]th[/SUP]. Clinton announces the Chief of Staff of his Post-Presidency Transition Office. Rumsfeld approves an updated version of the U.S. Army's Continuity of Government (COG) plans, signing off on the document Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program. The document carries the warning Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.
Quote:https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_Upda...efore_9/11
January 20[SUP]th[/SUP]. The oath of office for George W. Bush is administered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
In early 2001, Missile Commission interviewee David Ivry organises a series of Pentagon meetings with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other high level Israeli leaders. The meetings occur in March, May and August 2001, and Ivry participates in those meetings in the weeks leading up to the September attacks.
Quote:https://www.defense.gov/Media/Photo-Gall...2001239960
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (right) talks to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (back to camera) at the beginning of a working dinner at the Pentagon on May 3, 2001. Under discussion is a range of regional security issues of interest to both nations. Israeli Ambassador to the United States David Ivry (center) joined Peres and Rumsfeld in the talks.
After the attacks, and the windfalls for contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, Ivry moves to a different career. Ivry leaves his US ambassador position in 2003 to become President of Boeing Israel, and Vice President of Boeing International, the same year that Boeing profits skyrocketed by billions due to the War on Terror. Kenneth Duberstein, a Boeing director since 1997, had been a participant in the Continuity of Government exercises alongside Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Woolsey.
Quote:The outline of the plan was simple. Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President. If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over.
This was not some abstract textbook plan; it was practiced in concrete and elaborate detail. Each team was named for a color"red" or "blue," for exampleand each had an experienced executive who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had served at high levels in the executive branch, preferably with the national-security apparatus. Cheney and Rumsfeld had each served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration. Other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of the CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, who served for a time as Reagan's actual White House chief of staff.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...an/302902/
On September 10[SUP]th[/SUP], 2001, Rumsfeld starts his Pentagon speech acknowledging E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Aldridge was the man who would sign off on future military acquisitions, sign the checks, and agree to the purchases. Rumsfeld had met with Aldridge during the Missile Commission talks on April 7[SUP]th[/SUP] 1998. Three weeks after 9/11, Aldridge writes a letter to the defense industry, urging that contractors shield the details of their new contracts and profits from the general public. Aldridge emphasizes that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld views this discretion as important. Aldridge also notes that the threat such secrecy is meant to avoid is of a potentially domestic nature'.
Quote:"Dear Industry Partners:
"In the wake of our nation's shift to war footing, I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the tremendous contributions your companies make to our nation's security. If past conflicts are any guide, your products will prove just as indispensible to our success in the arduous task ahead as the superb young Americans who will operate and utilize them.
I would also like to stress, during this national emergency, the importance of the use of discretion in all the public statements, press releases, and communications made by your respective companies, and by your major suppliers. As we all know, even seemingly innocuous industrial information can reveal much about military activities and intentions to the trained intelligence collector. Statistical, production, contracting, and delivery information can convey a tremendous amount of information that hostile intelligence organizations might find relevant. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has recently stressed the importance of security in this new national environment. This is doubly important in light of the potentially domestic nature of the threat at hand.
Thank you again for your hard work and contributions, and for those of your respective work forces. Together we will prevail."
[Letter from E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, Jr., Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L)
THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
3010 DEFENSE PENTAGON
WASHINGTON, DC 20301-3010
October 2, 2001]
https://fas.org/sgp/bush/aldridge.pdf
Seven weeks after Rumsfeld's speech, the Pentagon awards Lockheed Martin a $300 billion contract for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Two years later, Aldridge resigns from the Defense Department to become a director of Lockheed Martin. Seven months after this, Bush appoints Aldridge as the head of the commission on space exploration, where Aldridge can make recommendations to privatize NASA. Lockheed was a major NASA contractor at the time.
In Aldridge's March 2003 resignation letter to President Bush, Aldridge notes that one of his goals had been to "improve the health of the defense industrial base". Aldridge notes that he had made "significant progress on accomplishing" that goal.
Quote:Page 64 -
http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/pubscats/PM/mar-apr03.pdf
On the morning of 9/11, World Trade Centre 7 and its high-tech emergency management communications centre is destroyed. Fires burn on various floors before the building drops to the ground that afternoon. The same morning on 9/11, a less-reported event occurs in Washington, in the Old Executive Office Building, where Rumsfeld had maintained access to secure communication lines during his months of discussions with hardliners in the military establishment, and where Cheney had later chosen to locate his VP's office. The event has been largely ignored by 9/11 researchers, but deserves examination in light of the ongoing activities in that building.
The Old Executive Office Building Fire
During the attacks, ABC News co-anchor Peter Jennings made a live call to Washington correspondent Claire Shipman. Shipman describes the fire.
Quote:[ABC News Special Report: "Planes Crash Into World Trade Center", ABC News, September 11, 2001, coverage beginning 8:53 AM Eastern Time. Transcript at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/timelin...1101.html]
JENNINGS: Let's go to the White House. Claire Shipman is on the phone.
Claire, what's that we're looking at?
CLAIRE SHIPMAN: Well, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. All we know is it's this gigantic plume of smoke coming from behind the old Executive Office Building. And we're told that the White House itself, the West Wing at the very least, is being evacuated. The personnel from there are being asked to leave. We've sent people running over there to try to find out what it is. But we don't know yet.
JENNINGS: Now the old Executive Office Building is to the--slightly to the west and a fraction to the south. So we are looking southwest from a camera just across Lafayette Park which is north of the White House. The White House is to the left side, out of your picture. Maybe even the cameraman could give us some appreciation.
But you have no idea. Was that an explosion? Did you hear anything?
SHIPMAN: We did--we did not hear it. In fact, we were trying to figure out from the White House what security precautions they were taking around the White House in the wake of the apparent attacks on the World Trade Center. And we suddenly just saw this smoke rising from behind the old Executive Office Building. We have people on their way there now but it's like nothing I've ever seen. We've never seen that kind of smoke coming from--from anything that would ordinarily occur here.
JENNINGS: I must also tell you, Claire, I think if you think about what's behind the--the EOB there, you're really down in pretty open area. It doesn't look like a place where a building would be on fire.
SHIPMAN: No, that's right, although there are a number of building just behind the old Executive Office Building on G Street that could potentially be on fire. But nothing you would necessarily think of as--as a target. Apparently, we're also...
JENNINGS: Claire, let me interrupt you for a second. We now have that fire confirmed at the Pentagon. I have John McWethy at the Pentagon.
If you can hear me, John, please get in touch immediately if you can and brief us in--John McWethy has actually been evacuated from the Pentagon. And parts of the Pentagon are, indeed, being evacuated.
Want to hold our breath here, it seems to me, for a second and--and--and--and--and not get into a mode that the country is under attack. But we now have two attacks on the twin trade towers center, US buildings, city buildings completely evacuated in New York City. We have this mysterious black smoke at the southwest corner of the White House which is to say there's something going on behind the old Executive Office Building. We now have a report that fire has been confirmed at the Pentagon.
As Jennings and Shipman talk, a writer for the Poynteronline journalist resource site follows the coverage, making notes as events unfold. She makes a judgement as to the position of the camera filming the fire.
Quote:"8:42 ABC's Clair Shipman reports smoke coming from behind the Old Executive Office Building. There is video of the smoke, from a camera position near Lafayette Park. No definitive word on what we are seeing."
[Minute By Minute with the Broadcast News, by Jill Geisler, September 11 2001, http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.6074/co...t_view.htm ]
Abundance Magazine maintains an online discussion board through the morning. A contributor notes an incident at the Executive Office Building.
Quote:"One of the Twin Towers just collapsed! The Pentagon has had a bomb attack and even though it is about 5 miles from my building here in D.C., I can see the smoke rising from it. The Executive Office Building is about 3 blocks away from me, it was bombed about a half hour ago. They are currently evacuating the U.S. Capitol."
[The First Forty-Eight Hours, Blue Knight, September 11[SUP]th[/SUP], 2001, 10:09AM. http://www.abundancemagazine.com/scribes/911/
On September 13th, a contributor to Laze.net mentions the fire.
Quote:"Rumors started flying about a car bomb going off in front of the State Dept., maybe three blocks from my office, and that the Old Executive Office building, where I was convinced that my brother-in-law worked, was on fire."
Twist Of Fate Accomplis, This Was Sent By My, September 13 2001, http://www.laze.net/fait/archive/2001/09..._by_my.php
TIME Magazine mentions the fire in an article three days after the attacks, confirming that staff members in the building watching events on television were given an order to evacuate.
Quote:"Staff members in the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House, were huddled in front of their TV screens when they heard from TV reporters that they were being evacuated. Then the tape loop began. "The building is being evacuated. Please walk to the nearest exit." "The looks were stone-faced," a staff member to the Vice President said. "They were just zombies," said another."
If You Want To Humble An Empire, by Nancy Gibbs, TIME Magazine, September 14[SUP]th[/SUP], 2001
The newsletter of the National Institutes of Health mentions the fire three weeks later.
Quote:The transition from peacetime's reliable routine to wartime anxiety took place in only minutes as NIH employees came to work on an otherwise spectacular late summer morning Sept. 11 and discovered by 9:45 via office televisions, radio, the web, phone calls and hallway conversations that terrorism on an almost unimaginable scale was taking place in New York City and in the heart of Washington, D.C. The workday froze as workers tuned in to the news the World Trade Center towers in flames, and smoke rising from behind the Old Executive Office building near the White House.
Attacks on U.S Change Life at NIH, by Rich McManus, The NIH record, October 2, 2001, Vol. LIII, No. 20, originally at nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/10_02_2001/main.htm
A site detailing experiences from the day mentions the fire a year later.
Quote:Anthony N / 37 / District of Columbia, post #2299, Wednesday, September 11[SUP]th[/SUP], 2002
http://www.wherewereyou.org/search/?sear...f+columbia
My name is Anthony Nigrelli, and I'm a law librarian at Arnold & Porter in downtown Washington, DC. I was working the morning of September 11 2001, when one of my coworkers said "a plane has hit the WTC in NY". We quickly gathered around the TVs in our library and I could not believe what I was seeing. I'm from NY, and my brother lives in NYC and recently had an interview in one of the towers.
Then the rumors began to fly around the firm - a bomb went off on the national Mall, the Old Executive Office Building was on fire, there was a car bomb at the State Department.
A later Wikipedia entry on the building notes, without elaboration
Quote:"Shortly after 11 September 2001, the 17th Street side of the building was vacated and has since been modernized."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower...e_Building
In 2003, a Symantec security newsletter observes how aerial photos of the Old Executive Office building from before and after the attacks had been obscured by the Secret Service, perhaps to prevent damage comparisons between the two sets of photos.
Quote:"Call it the case of the missing White House. Users of Mapquest's free aerial photo database recently noticed that details of several Washington D.C. government buildings were no longer discernable in overhead images of the U.S. capital.
A comparison of old and new images posted on the government secrecy watchdog site Cryptome shows that portions of overhead color photos of the Capitol building and the grounds of the Naval Observatory, where the Vice President's residence is located, have been distorted -- pixilated into an digital blur.
The White House and the adjacent Old Executive Office Building and Treasury Department headquarters were subject to more subtle tampering: the buildings are still sharp, but the roofs have been digitally painted over with featureless solid colors seeming picked from the surrounding landscape. The lot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now resembles a White House-shaped dirt field more than the seat of executive power.
But the modifications weren't performed by America Online's Mapquest, nor by the company that, until recently, provided Mapquest with aerial imagery. "We're surprised to see that," says Chris Becwar, spokesman for California-based GlobeXplorer. "We have other layers of imagery over D.C., and none of them have ever had this done to them. This is definitely a new thing."
… The digital airbrushing was done at the request of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting the President and Vice President.
.. Overhead images of the same sites taken as recently as last year are still easily found online and in print -- a detailed shot of the White House roof even adorns a glossy government brochure on the National Aerial Photography Program. "It is not as if aerial imagery of the White House is hard to come by," says Stephen Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "Except in the case of unacknowledged government facilities, it is hard to see what is gained by this policy, and the downside, I think, is that it encourages public paranoia."
[Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos, Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus, 17[SUP]th[/SUP] December 2003, http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7671
Both the Old Executive Office Building and WTC7 suffered fires - and in the latter case, wholesale destruction - on the morning of 9/11. Both buildings had been set up as secure communications centres. Both buildings had been used in the years leading up to the attacks by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The Missile Commission sessions, conducted by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Woolsey with militarists throughout Washington as Zelikow conducted an argument for catastrophic terrorism, gave the Neocons access to high-level right wing figures in the intelligence, military and weapons contracting communities, many of whom had been joined together in the same think tanks and private companies, agitating for future events contemplated by the members of PNAC. Rumsfeld, chosen by senior militarist figures to run the Missile Commission, had made a career of running businesses, running corporations, and running war-games practicing the Continuity of Government activities that he had presciently worked towards during his first week within the George W. Bush administration.
In May 2000, as the electoral contests had heated up, Michael Ledeen a longtime associate of many PNAC members, and a supporter of their goals - released a book on Machiavelli. Machiavelli, observed Ledeen, had much to teach modern leaders. During a period of exile, Machiavelli had spent the bulk of his time in a local inn, drinking, cursing, and playing backgammon and a Tuscan card game', testing his abilities for skill and deception against those of other players. Noted Ledeen:
Quote:"I suspect that Machiavelli's love of card games is of some importance in the development of his politics, for cardplayers live in a world quite different from that of players of board games. The board conceals nothing, and it is unnecessary to communicate with other players. In card games, most of the cards are concealed for much of each deal, and communication whether through bidding or betting is an integral part of the contest. Where there is communication, a whole new set of problems arises: if you tell all to your partner, your enemies obtain the same information, and it may be more valuable to them than to your ally. You may prefer to deceive them, but in so doing you risk inducing your partner to err before they do, thereby spelling ruin for your side."
Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago, St Martin's Press, New York, May 2000, pg. xviii
Machiavelli, wrote Ledeen, appreciated "..the importance, and risk, of communication, including secrecy and deception", and used "codes in some of his official correspondence…". Ledeen clearly admired this figure, who had learned to communicate secretly with his co-conspirators.
In January 2016, at the age of 83, Rumsfeld returned to New York. The Continuity of Government plans he had worked for years to initiate had remained in place since 9/11. The 'Revolution in Military Affairs' that his RAND co-Horst and Missile Commission interviewee Andrew Marshall had agitated for through the 1990's had been achieved. Rumsfeld was back in the city to promote a game he had helped create Churchill Solitaire, a card-game app. Talking to a writer from the New Yorker, Rumsfeld discussed the creation of the game, and described his own method of seeing long projects through to completion. The process, Rumsfeld said,
Quote:"is like any other set of problems. You decide what you want to do, and you set a goal, and you get good people who can do it, and then you work it and work it and work it, and refine it and fix it and change it and alter it, and make it better. It's just hard work, that's all."
The journalist from the New Yorker saw deeper meanings in Rumsfeld's comment.
Quote:He seemed to be repeating the core dogma of our civilization, from General Motors to the Pentagon to the App Store: the world consists of problems. Every problem has its fix. There is no such thing as a problem that would be better off left alone."
As a bonus for the player, Rumsfeld's app featured special hints, and an option to turn back the clock and try certain moves again. But for some long-awaited goals, there might only ever come one chance.
Quote:"On the way from coffee… Rumsfeld reflected on the paid features. "The hints are true in life," he said, as the elevator descended. "You can always call someone who has more experience than you do, and get some thoughts from them. But there are very few undos in life." He chuckled to himself. "I mean, the way things work? There are very few take-backs."
Rumsfeld's Game' by Mattathias Schwartz, The New Yorker, January 29, 2016
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/rumsfelds-game