DEATH OF A NATION: 9/11 and the Rise of Fascism in America

[Anthony Thorne]

This volume is new to me. George Grundy, a British-Australian author, covers 9/11 (and all the related topics familiar to us) up to the present day. Dylan Avery, the director of the LOOSE CHANGE films, contributes an introduction. Judging by the contents it looks like Grundy has summarised much of the available info that has appeared up to this date, and done that task well. Whether he's dug up anything new is another question. The sub-branches of 9/11 research that interest me at the moment are not reflected in the contents of this book. That said, I'm glad new volumes on the topic are continuing to appear.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Nation-Rise...1510721258

[Peter Lemkin]

Thanks for the heads up. I read the entire available preview and looked at the table of contents. He seems to have captured the generally accepted 911-Truth model [though there are variants as we all know] and drawn a direct line from 911 through the wars/militarized police/NSA bugging of everyone/war-of-terror/rise of the Oligarchy/impoverishment of everyone else/drones/cover-up of the who/what/why of 911/(un)Patriot-Act/rise of W=>Obama=>Trump - and painted them all as one Grand Event, carefully planned. As far as the events of 911 itself, the book seems to be only a summary, but a good one - taking up less than half of the book. The other half is about the consequences to the USA and the World and what became of the players involved. In the few pages I read I found a few dots connected which had not been well drawn before [though were not new if one has read all of the 911 Truth literature as I have]. It looks like the most comprehensive advanced introduction to the case and makes the logical argument for what happened after and why. The title says it all really, and I have to agree - those who planned and carried out/covered-up 911 and its planned sequellae of endless war of terror and diminution of rights and freedom at home had in mind fascism in the USA and to spread it Worldwide [and have done so to a large extent, with the roll-out going just fine for them]. I don't think it is going to be an exceptional book, but it probably has to be in any complete 911 Truth library. I wonder if it has references. I didn't see footnote numbers in the pages I read, but now they often do not use them in books.

[Anthony Thorne]

I agree with your comments. I read the preview and it is probably better than my initial impressions. The book does not have footnoted references, and the author says as much in the opening chapter, arguing that he was after readability and that most of his assertions can be confirmed with a general online search. Peter Dale Scott would not approve. I can see his point but I think general or cursory footnoting and references should be a minimum as it helps with credibility, and that additional time spent by the author will help the reader in the long run.I was debating writing a similar book myself - 9/11 (+ background) to present day - and seeing this volume appear takes some of the urgency away from that task. I think the unexplored grounds for 9/11 research lie in the years prior, in particular through two periods. The first is the Team B / Safari Club era of the late 70's when the anti-detente forces were gathering together, and the threat of 'international terrorism' became a talking point among militarists - Stefan Possony published a book on the matter a year before the notorious 1979 Jerusalem Conference on terrorism, and Brian Crozier was pushing the matter sometime before that. The second period is through the several years prior to 9/11 when Aspen Strategy Group members, neocons, RAND Corporation militarists and various foreign intelligence and military folk gathered again and again, and undertook a number of prescient commissions, think tank gatherings, and other propaganda initiatives. I've been returning to both those periods in my own reading this year, and have found things of interest pretty much every time I looked, including a lot of pointed stuff that should by now have been highlighted in a number of 9/11 research books, but has not been. I'd like to see a few more writers attempt volumes like Kevin Ryan's ANOTHER 19, which touches on some of the subject matter I've mentioned above, but by my count Ryan's nineteen could have been doubled or tripled, with the same amount of useful material to cover.Edited to add, more pages are readable via the Google Books preview here. Checking the author's website, he's pushing the anti-Trump / Russia-did-it stories and seems not to have noticed how the Neocons - Kagan and others - rallied behind hawkish Hillary in the months prior to the 2016 election. Trump is hugely problematic, obviously, but I think he's misses a trick by not paying closer attention to the deep state battles with the incumbent. It all ties back in to 9/11, but possibly not in the way he's arguing. He pushes the Saudi financing / 28 pages angle a lot as well. The Corbett Report had a useful video cautioning people going too far with that one.Not mentioned in his chapter summary regarding the Project for a New American Century as far as I can tell - Lockheed Martin helped provide the seed money for Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard, and the PNAC operated out of the offices Lockheed Martin had helped pay for, and then Thomas Donnelly, the Lockheed Martin Director of Communications, wrote the REBUILDING AMERICA'S DEFENCES document with the premonition of a New Pearl Harbour. Bruce Jackson, the Lockheed Martin V.P for Strategy and Planning through this period, is the son of the late C.D. Jackson, the OSS psychological operations specialist who bought the Zapruder Film and locked it up for years later. James Woolsey - the former CIA head and PNAC signatory who later took part in anthrax drills with Operation Dark Winter, and who sat alongside Rumsfeld on the latter's Missile Commission meeting with Washington hawks, Boeing and CIA figures exactly concurrent with Zelikow and Carter's working group on Catastrophic Terrorism - spent his spare time at Shea and Gardner, a Lockheed favourite law firm.

[Peter Lemkin]

Interesting thoughts and information. Perhaps you should think of doing a book! I agree that Another 19 is such a splendid book - and yes it could have been expanded. Obviously, the 'theoretical' groundwork for such a 'New Pearl Harbor' was carefully laid by a larger group - and then some group within that larger group chose their scenario and cover-story which we live the consequences of now. The 911-Truth Movement [for lack of a better term] seems to have lost steam at the moment. The websites don't seem as alive; fewer good books, films and papers seem to come out. Thank goodness some still do. I don't think anyone in the community has changed their mind about the falsity of the official story or the truth of the basic alternative one. I hope it is not that they feel 'the war is over, the good guys lost'. The one thing we who try to expose the truth of 911 can agree with with those who pulled it off is that '911 changed everything'. It started the Planet spinning completely differently, and it is not going to change until we change it in a totally different direction with the Truth. The average Pleb senses the official story is untrue or at least grossly incomplete [as they do with JFK's Assassination and other events like that], but they don't know exactly what to believe, and also dare not 'go there', as 'going there' completely means admitting that the entire political and economic systems - the very culture and mostly false history itself is not only flawed, but fatally flawed and evil. In fact, this is the horrible truth one must face to make the needed changes, and most are sadly not up to it - yet. If there is any history written 50+ years from now - if humanity survives - those few who saw the Truths through the fabric of intentional lies, and not only saw them, but spoke out about them will surely be seen as the heroes who made it possible to survive the current period of darkness. The USA is headed at lightning speed for a fascist police surveillance state with permanent war, a gulag, thought police, and poverty for the masses of the Serfs - and the other English-speaking countries seem to be joining it, if only a few paces behind - with much of the rest of the World either being pushed in that direction or dragged there by the military, economic, propaganda 'suction' forces. It is a very sad state humanity finds it self in in the wake of 911's Big Lie.

[Lauren Johnson]

who/what/why of 911/(un)Patriot-Act/rise of W=>Obama=>Trump - and painted them all as one Grand Event,

Including Trump in the with Bush and Obama is actually not typical. Usually we read about how Trump started off trying to fight the The Swamp (the deep state) but was soon brought into line by various antics, e.g. faking the Syrian government gassing of its own people. His thesis is daring and should require some serious argument -- but alas, no footnotes.

[Anthony Thorne]

Despite my mild misgivings (I have nearly 20 or so 9/11 truth volumes on the shelf already, give or take), I like what I've read of the book enough so far to pop it on my purchase list.

Woolsey was a Continuity of Government participant along with Cheney, Rumsfeld and a few others. At this point, having gone over the developments of the anti-detente folk in the late 70's, the gathering of the militarists and Safari Club regulars at the 1979 Jerusalem Conference, and noticed the wave of "It's terrorism, folks, terrorism!" propaganda that hit at the beginning of the Reagan admin - stoked by guys like Michael Ledeen working as an advisor for Haig, after returning from the thick of P2 / Strategy of Tension activities in Rome - I view the Continuity of Government exercises as having been done with the expectation of a future domestic terror event giving a payoff for everyone's efforts. It's why North was encouraged to extend the REX 84 exercise of preparing for internment camps and suspending the constitution, and why guys like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Woolsey - all of whom carried their own baggage and had their own very clear attached goals - stayed with the program for years and years. The expectation was that a payoff would eventually be forthcoming. Edward Herman's 1989 volume THE TERRORISM INDUSTRY, noting the prevalence of rightwing folk who appeared to benefit greatly from terrorism in all its guises, has at least a few names that reappear in Kevin Ryan's ANOTHER 19. On that subject, Mark Crispin Miller's book CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: BUSH / CHENEY'S NEW WORLD ORDER (and I think the subtitle dates it a little) is a circa 2004 volume containing more than 300 pages of unbridled disgust at George W. Bush's first term. In passing, Miller spends a page on a White House event where the Mexican ambassador was treated with an evening dinner, a gathering of White House regulars, and a massive, unusually large fireworks display that went on for much longer than was typical, and which kept Washington residents in the area awake till the early hours of the morning. Miller quotes a couple of newspaper articles where various folk express their surprise and annoyance at the extravagance of the celebration, and state that the fireworks really went overboard. Miller notes the date, and the celebration occurred the week before 9/11. I think they were celebrating more than just the Mexican ambassador that evening.

On the subject of Continuity of Government, which Peter Dale Scott has covered for the past decade in articles, and in books like THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE, Rumsfeld implemented COG on his very first morning in the job, during the caretaker period of Clinton's Presidency. The timeline ran like this -

January 18th. Clinton gives his farewell address.

January 19th. Clinton announces the Chief of Staff of his Post-Presidency Transition Office. On the same day, Rumsfeld approves an updated version of the U.S. Army's Continuity of Government plans, signing off on 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 20th. The oath of office for George W. Bush is administered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

So Rumsfeld wasn't mucking around. A Wikileaks article allowing one to reconstruct the timeline is here.

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_Upda...efore_9/11
I'll post more thoughts and comments in a bit.

[Peter Lemkin]

Good thread...keep it coming...
That url didn't work for me.

[Anthony Thorne]

The Wikileaks link I posted above has a typo. Despite three attempts right now, I'm unable to fix it. Can a mod adjust the link? You just need to delete the unwanted space in the word 'Plan' near the end of the link. Peter, if you copy and paste that link, and delete that space mark, the link should work, I tried it just a moment ago.

The text of the piece is below. Not sure if it has appeared at DPF before now. It may have.

Tom Burghardt (Global Research, Canada)

October 6, 2008


Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army's secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, "Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.


Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: "Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document." The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).

Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG). In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. ("Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]

"All-hazards COOP planning" is described as the means by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." While the Army stresses the updates described in AR 500-3 relate to chemical, biological, nuclear attacks, "natural disasters" and "technical or man-made disasters or accidents," current Army doctrine is also heavily weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances."

Two national "civil disturbance" plans, Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been operational since the 1960s. Researcher Frank Morales has detailed how,

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle." ...

Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America. Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "non-white" poor and working people. (Frank Morales, "U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home," in Police State America, ed. Tom Burghardt, Toronto/Montreal: Arm The Spirit/Solidarity, 2002, P. 59)

AR 500-3 should be viewed in this context. Plans for Continuity of Government have been in place since the 1950s. Originally conceived during the Cold War when fears of a nuclear strike envisaged by atomic war-gamers at the RAND Corporation, believed that an immobilization of government functions and a breakdown of civilian rule would follow a nuclear attack. But from their inception, COG planning has been shrouded in secrecy.

In addition to constructing nuclear-proof underground facilities where the civilian leadership could escape a decapitation strike, other COG provisions included a series of executive orders designating which officials would assume Cabinet-level posts and other Executive Branch positions. Officials so designated would constitute a "shadow government" should office holders be killed in an attack "or otherwise incapacitated."

However, when these and other Pentagon "civil disturbance" plans surfaced in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra hearings, they were roundly criticized by members of Congress, civil liberties groups and the media before disappearing once again, down Orwell's "memory hole." The inherent dangers implicit in such plans are that unelected Executive Branch officers could assume the Presidency and other appointed offices subject neither to congressional scrutiny nor judicial oversight.

Exercising sweeping emergency powers buried within Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs), unelected officials could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S. military.

Most troubling, Executive Branch officials under secret rules of a COG regime could suppress and usurp the lawful powers of Congress and the Judicial Branch (by force of arms if deemed necessary) as a means of ensuring "cooperation" under a "unitary executive."

As we have seen, the "unitary executive" theory has been a salient feature of Bushist rule since the December 2000 judicial coup d'état, when the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision handed a contested election to George W. Bush by stopping the vote count in Florida.

Since assuming office, the administration has ruthlessly wielded executive power in order to achieve their antidemocratic agenda: from the looting of the economy through "deregulation," massive deficit spending and tax cuts for their corporate "clients," to waging a preemptive war of conquest in Iraq, the "unitary executive" has systematically shredded America's constitutional system of checks and balances.

The Bush administration put COG plans into operation for the first time in U.S. history in the hours directly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They have never been rescinded.
Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75-150 senior government officials and others from every Cabinet department in two "secure, undisclosed locations" on the East Coast. However, key congressional representatives have been kept out of the loop and House and Senate leaders have said they were not informed the "shadow government" had "gone live."

So secretive are Bush administration plans that Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access in 2007 to the classified version of the COG plans contained in top secret Presidential Decision Directive annexes. This too, is unprecedented.
While the Bush administration admitted that COG was activated in 2001, their disclosure came only after The Washington Post broke the story based on confidential administration sources troubled by the scope of the program and its secretive implementation.

Since the late 1980s, Rumsfeld was a habitué of COG exercises along with Vice President Dick Cheney. Indeed early COG drills had been organized by the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). As investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn revealed in his definitive political biography of the former Defense Secretary:

This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld. ... There, for several days, he would be immured in artificial caverns, staring at electronic displays streaming data of disaster and confusion, sleeping on cots and subsisting on the most austere rations. ...

Insofar as the COG games gave the illusion of reality, they taught Rumsfeld and his fellow players some dangerous lessons, particularly when the fall of the Soviet Union induced some changes in the usual scenarios. Although the exercises continued, still budgeted at over $200 million in the Clinton era, the vanished Soviets were now customarily replaced by terrorists. The terrorism envisaged however, was almost always state-sponsored. ...

"There were other changes, too. In earlier times the specialists selected to run the "shadow government" had been drawn from across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike. But now, down in the bunkers, Rumsfeld found himself in politically congenial company, the players' roster being filled almost exclusively with Republican hawks. (Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, New York: Scribner, 2007, pp. 85-86, 88)

As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed, in early 2006 the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $385 million contract to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, to provide "temporary detention and processing facilities." Scott wrote,

The contract--announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR--calls for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when. ...

After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security. (Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," Pacific News Service, February 8, 2006)

The DHS contract to KBR had been preceded by the April 2002 creation of the Pentagon's Northern Command (NORTHCOM), specifically empowered by the Bush administration for domestic U.S. military operations in direct violation of Posse Comitatus prohibitions forbidding the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. At the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called NORTHCOM's launch "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946."

Sweeping indeed! Last month Army Times reported that the Army's "3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission--with a twist--at home." According to Army Times],

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. ...

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. ...

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ...

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. (Gina Cavallaro, "Brigade Homeland Tours Start Oct. 1," Army Times, September 8, 2008)

While senior Pentagon brass have downplayed the significance of deploying a BCT that has taken part in aggressive occupation duties to suppress the Iraqi people's resistance, Col. Lou Vogler,
\NORTHCOM's chief of future operations said in an interview that the military "will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we're aware of any threats." An article published by the Army News Service disclosed,

During the exercise, commanders and staff of the force will train, rehearse and exercise--from academic classes to making decisions and executing orders--all to help prepare them for the mission they will assume on Oct. 1, said Vogler.

"It's an opportunity for network building in an unprecedented assignment of forces," said [Marine Corps Lt. Col.] Shores. "DOD always had allocated contingency sourced forces--but this is precedent-setting network building with the forces that we ultimately will go out and execute with. It's an opportunity to get to know our forces, to see them in execution, to mission-orient them and be that much better--to be that much more responsive."

One goal of the exercise is to exercise with partners from the civilian agencies they would support. To that end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other interagency representatives are participating to ensure integration with civilian consequence managers who would lead a response, said Vogler.

"The overall federal response builds on the local and state response in accordance with the incident command system and existing plans and processes that are out there," said Vogler. "The response force would supplement local efforts." ("Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command," Army News Service, September 15, 2008)

Vogler and Shores were discussing an exercise code-named Vibrant Response, that took place September 8-19 at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Three brigades form the core of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force: the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division; the 1st Medical Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. All three units participated in Vibrant Response.

As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky comments:

The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.

With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in "defense" efforts as well as provide "support to civilian authorities".

What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a "war theater" thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.

The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act. ("Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to 'help with civil unrest'," Global Research, September 26, 2008)

One scenario envisaged by Chossudovsky is that "civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc."

One might reasonably inquire, what "precedent-setting network" does the Army have in mind that would "ensure integration" with "civilian agencies" such as FEMA (a branch of Homeland Security)? As the World Socialist Web Site reports:

It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters"--in the words of the Army Times--coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America's borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability. (Bill Van Auken, "Army deploys combat unit in U.S. for possible civil unrest," World Socialist Web Site, 25 September 2008)

As the 2001 COOP planning document describes, a host of on-going Army plans and exercises have been revised by the Bush administration. In addition to Vibrant Response discussed above, they include: Plan EXCALIBUR, a COG Army training exercise; ADOBE, described by investigative journalist William M. Arkin as a "FEMA continuity of government special access program designation." Arkin describes special access programs or SAPs as,

Classified research and development, acquisition program, operation, intelligence activity, or plan that is so sensitive or critical that the value of the information warrants enhanced protection beyond that normally provided for access to Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret information. (William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 598)

The impetus for revising Army COOP was, according to AR 500-3 primarily because,
The end of the Cold War and the breakup of the former Soviet Union significantly reduced the probability of a major nuclear attack on CONUS but the probability of other threats has increased. Army organizations must be prepared for any contingency with a potential for interruption of normal operations. To emphasize that Army continuity of operations planning is now focused on the full all-hazards threat spectrum, the name "ASRRS" has been replaced by the more generic title "Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program." (p. 13)

Towards this end, the Rumsfeld-era document states that the Army's new "mission-critical" functions will be restructured so that, "Army COOP plans must ensure that the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." (p. 13) The Army, following various contingencies analyzed in the document will "coordinate with mission-essential external organizations and agencies." (p. 14)

So sensitive are the political ramifications of these plans that under the heading, 3-12 Operational Security (OPSEC), the Army avers,

a. The success of COOP planning relies on denying access by unauthorized parties to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities.

b. Overhead imagery, signals intelligence, human sources, and exploitation of open literature during peacetime are threat capabilities used to gain knowledge of Army emergency plans, command and control systems, and facilities.

c. See Appendix B, Security Classification Guide, for guidance on the level of classification of COOP-related information. (COOP, op. cit., p. 20)

Appendix A of AR 500-3 lists relevant references for changes included in the COOP planning document.
These include:

Section I
Required Publications
HQDA Operations Plan EXCALIBUR, 30 April 1999 (Being Revised)
HQDA Continuity of Operations Plan (cited in para 1-4.f)
Section II
Related Publications a related publication is merely a source of additional information. The user does not have to read it to understand this publication.
Executive Order 12656
National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP), 18 November 1988
DoD Directive (Dodd) 2000.12
DoD Antiterrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) Program, 13 April 1999
CJCSM 3410.01
Continuity of Operations Plan for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (COOP-CJCS), 1 March 1999
Executive Order 12787
Prescribing the Order of Succession of Officers to Act as Secretary of Defense, 31 December 1991
DoDD 3020.26
Continuity of Operations (COOP) Policy and Planning, 26 May 1995
DoD 3020.26P
Continuity of Operations Plan, 21 June 2000 (Classified SECRET)
DoDD 3020.36
Assignment of National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) Responsibilities to DoD Components, 2 November 1988
DoDD 3025.15
Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA), 18 February 1997
The Federal Response Plan, April 1999
Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67, (Top Secret) Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) and Continuity of Government (COG) Operations, Oct 21, 1998
Federal Preparedness Circular 65, Federal Executive Branch Continuity of Operations, (COOP), July 26, 1999

As Peter Dale Scott reported in CounterPunch, apparently members of Congress are considered "unauthorized parties" to be denied access "to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities." Congressman DeFazio had been denied access to the classified annexes of National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51/HSPD 20) Scott wrote,

NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Congressman DeFazio twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter cosigned by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney. It was these requests that the White House denied. ...


DeFazio's inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.


To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority. (Peter Dale Scott, "The Showdown," CounterPunch, March 31, 2008)

With the stunning revelations published by Wikileaks, it is abundantly clear that top Bush administration officials were busily revising Continuity of Government plans, including "civil disturbance" contingencies for suspending the Constitution and imposing martial law, long before the 9/11 attacks.

Since that fatal and tragic day seven long years ago, we have been told repeatedly by the government and their media sycophants that 9/11 was the day "when everything changed."

We now know thanks to Wikileaks, that as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the unprecedented and lawless surveillance of Americans, the illegal detention and torture of prisoners of war, that Bush administration assertions are no more than a pack of murderous lies.

One fact is abundantly clear from the mass of conflicting evidence and assertions made by proponents of various theories surrounding the 9/11 events: AR 500-3 demonstrates that from the very first moments after being installed in office, the Bush regime was involved in a "controlled demolition" of the U.S. Constitution.

First appeared in Global Research. Thanks to Global Research and Tom Burghardt for covering this Wikileaks document.

[Lauren Johnson]

The link works fine for me. You must have fixed it. Thanks for your great posts on this.

[Anthony Thorne]

I have several more things to post in this thread, but just off the topic, I'll drop this here in passing, as I only just noticed it on another blog. A few years prior to his tenure as CIA director, Woolsey was employed at Offutt Air Force Base through 1987 - 1988. His CIA nomination hearings include the resume note -

Joint Strategic Targeting and Planning Staff, Scientific Advisory Group, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 68113, advisor, 1987 - 1988.

Nebraska, 1988 was a key time and place for the Franklin Scandal. I'm not digging in to Franklin Scandal connections to 9/11 for now as I'd prefer to focus on stuff that doesn't disappear through your fingers like wind, but Tom Henry - the attorney for Delmat Vreeland who pops up in Mike Ruppert's CROSSING THE RUBICON - was the guy who appeared in Colorado at a key point in the Jonathan Elinoff story, and who told a local white supremacist that Elinoff (sniffing around the Pat Sullivan story, much to his detriment) was the only guy in town who could somehow keep him out of prison. The white supremacist had been arrested after illegal materials (I think drugs) were found in the guy's car, in the carpark of a Ramada Inn. The supremacist told friends he'd been set up, and that the drugs weren't his. Elinoff did his best to look into that side of things, and found that the desk clerk of the Ramada Inn in question was a woman who worked in Tom Henry's office. Go figure.

The Elinoff story is way too labryrinthine and problematic to get much useful material out of. That said, I have some useful 9/11 research, covering a few avenues worth discussing, that I'll be posting here shortly. As prelude, a useful article from 1985.

THE CIA'S CHARLES RIVER LINK

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/...0048-6.pdf

The article references the CIA's interest in Harvard. Several puzzle pieces surrounding the background of 9/11 point back here, so I'll try and assemble some of them shortly, with links. The Possony book I mentioned earlier is the 1978 volume INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM: THE COMMUNIST CONNECTION, hyping the Soviets as the great terror threat. Possony was an Austrian exile who worked with the French Foreign Affairs Ministry as a counselor in Psychological Warfare. He became an Advisor to the US War Department between 1943 and 1946, and a psychological warfare expert with the Office of Naval Intelligence during WW2. Possony later co-founded the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), a "think tank long linked to the CIA" (according to Russ Bellant). The FPRI played a key role in establishing the American Security Council, and Possony remained on the ASC Board of Directors for decades afterwards. In OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, Bellant noted that the ASC "..co-sponsored a series of annual meetings from 1955 to 1961 called National Military-Industrial Conferences in which elements of the Pentagon, National Security Council, and organizations linked to the CIA discussed cold war strategy with leaders of many large corporations, such as United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. Steel, and of cours, Sears Roebuck... One conference 'cooperating organization' was the CIA-linked Foreign Policy Research Institute." Possony co-authored the FPRI's foreign policy thesis, A FORWARD STRATEGY FOR AMERICA, where he argued that a nuclear strike would be a positive step in the fight against Communism, despite "severe American casualties".

In 1962, Possony became a member of the American Security Council's National Strategy Committee. In 1963, he co-wrote THE GEOGRAPHY OF INTELLECT with Nathaniel Weyl. THE GEOGRAPHY OF INTELLECT is a racist tract arguing that intelligence can be measured through proximity to temperate climates, people who live in hot countries are dumber than those who live in cold ones, etc. In the Spartacus bio of Weyl, it's mentioned that in 1964 Weyl (with John Martino) "promoted the story that Oswald had been in Cuba beforehand and that he had been in contact with Cuban intelligence and Castro himself. Their story described Castro's motivation as revenge for continuing attempts on Castro's life by the United States government."

In 1970, Possony wrote THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY: WINNING THE DECISIVE WAR. The book was popular with hawkish Pentagon officials in the 1970s. It argued for the development of weapon systems that would be too high tech and expensive for other nations to reproduce without collapsing their economies. In 1974, Possony authored WAKING UP THE GIANT: THE STRATEGY FOR AMERICAN VICTORY AND WORLD FREEDOM. That book opens with a conversation between a Nixonian Republican President-elect and an outgoing President, who discuss how to confront the Red Menace. The remaining 700 pages detail a think tank's response on how to battle the Communist goal of world domination.

Possony's INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM: THE COMMUNIST CONNECTION was published by the American Council for World Freedom, an affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League, and the thesis of the book - written by a psychological warfare expert embedded in the military industrial complex's national security strategy - was picked up by Israelis, Brits, CIA folk, Safari Club members and their pals at the July 1979 Jerusalem Conference. Robert Moss, Brian Crozier, Ray Cline, and Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, mentor of Neocons like Wolfowitz, Perle, and Woolsey, also attended the conference that week. (In Alexander Cockburn's book on Al Gore, Cockburn notes that Woolsey was "..chief counsel for the notorious cold war hawk and whore for Boeing, Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson". Woolsey represented "..arms contractors as well as CIA / NSC operatives who had got themselves intro trouble." When the Neocons, including Woolsey, took part in COG exercises in the 80's with Oliver North, they did so alongside Kenneth Duberstein. Duberstein would become the head of Boeing in 1997. I'll mention another, more dramatic link between Boeing and 9/11 planning in a future post). A week or so after the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism finished, Carter signed Executive Order 12148, transferring emergency powers to FEMA and making it responsible for the "coordination of preparedness and planning to reduce the consequences of a major terrorist incident." As noted in the below article, FEMA would thereafter take charge of Continuity of Government planning. As Peter Dale Scott noted further in THE ROAD TO 9/11, Cheney, in charge of FEMA at the time of the event, activated those Continuity of Government plans on the morning of 9/11. The FEMA draft signed off by Carter had been written by Samuel Huntington, later the author of THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS, which predicted that America would soon struggle with radical groups in the Middle East. Huntington was a political science professor at Harvard. In 1975, Huntington had co-authored a book, THE CRISIS IN DEMOCRACY, where he noted "A government which lacks authority will have little ability, short of a cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary to deal with foreign policy problems and defense." Huntington then noted that there were "potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy".

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/14/the-...the-world/

By a quirk of timing, July 3rd, 1979 (day two of the Jerusalem Conference) was also the day Carter signed the directive to aid Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan, with Brezinski telling Carter that it would force a Soviet military intervention. This isn't central to the thread I'm building here though.

While COG planning was taking place, I believe other planning was taking place elsewhere, out of government, in a very specific location. Some of the puzzle pieces are very blatant. Scott, to his credit, noted a couple of them some years ago, but a few others have been overlooked up till now. I'll post more on this, with addititional links, shortly.