bknight

Maybe not thousands, but tens for sure, if you research the HB beliefs.

Spektator

This is caused by different CTers following different CTs. There is a large Protestant denomination called the Baptists, but rarely do any two Baptist congregations agree on points of doctrine. The snake-handling Baptists deny the teachings of the Two Seed in the Spirit foot-washing Baptists, the Reformed Baptists say both of the others are misinformed, the Bible Baptists preach that women must never wear jeans or slacks and should not be taught to read or write, and so on. All CTers are not the same. Actually, like Baptists, no CTers are the same.

smartcooky

The people I have met or debated with who were Apollo HBs, JFK, RFK, MLK crankers, , 9/11 twoofers, Boston Marathon fruitcakes, Illuminati idiots, Holocaust deniers, NWO nutjobs, Birthers, UFOs & Roswell bleevers... in fact across the entire "Spectrum of Stupid" (including a subset of these in this very forum) all have one thing in common; they tick a crapload of boxes on on my CT Bingo Card!!

...

__________________
What is Woke? It is a term that means "awakened to the needs of others". It means to be well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble and kind. Woke people are keen to make the world a better, fairer place for everyone, But, unfortunately, it has also become a pejorative used by racists, homophobes and misogynists on the political right, to describe people who possess a fully functional moral compass.

Axxman300

Sorry, I just wanted someone to get an easy BINGO...

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Disingenuous Piranha

Wolrab

Even the date was all odd numbers! The last time that happened was 172,800 seconds before 9/11/01. What are the odds of that!!!111!

__________________
"Such reports are usually based on the sighting of something the sighters cannot explain and that they (or someone else on their behalf) explain as representing an interstellar spaceship-often by saying "But what else can it be?" as though thier own ignorance is a decisive factor." Isaac Asimov

theprestige

Well now it's odd that this thread has actually made it to two pages.

Gord_in_Toronto

Hmm. Maybe it's a CONSPIRACY!

__________________
"Reality is what's left when you cease to believe." Philip K. Dick

sts60

As bknight pointed out, Apollo hoax believers (well, maybe not the more casual ones) think the Gubmint has killed multiple people to silence the �truth�. Hell, they blew up Challenger to prevent a teacher from saying you can see stars in space.

Not the same scale as 9/11, of course, but still...

kali1137

Has the OP returned to address any of the responses? That's odd.

bknight

Shocker.

Oystein

Drive-by oddity.

__________________
Thermodynamics hates conspiracy theorists. (Foster Zygote)

smartcooky

Once, got burned, never came back!

__________________
What is Woke? It is a term that means "awakened to the needs of others". It means to be well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble and kind. Woke people are keen to make the world a better, fairer place for everyone, But, unfortunately, it has also become a pejorative used by racists, homophobes and misogynists on the political right, to describe people who possess a fully functional moral compass.

Cosmic Yak

And hasn't even logged in for 4 days (March 22nd).

Maybe "They" got to him for asking inconvenient questions.

__________________
'Of course it can be OK to mistreat people.'- shuttlt

Cosmic Yak on this forum.

smartcooky

Who are "they"? MiBs? The Deeeeeeeeeeeeeep State? Acronym shills?

__________________
What is Woke? It is a term that means "awakened to the needs of others". It means to be well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble and kind. Woke people are keen to make the world a better, fairer place for everyone, But, unfortunately, it has also become a pejorative used by racists, homophobes and misogynists on the political right, to describe people who possess a fully functional moral compass.

Oystein

Clowns!

__________________
Thermodynamics hates conspiracy theorists. (Foster Zygote)

catsmate

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative�Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

__________________
As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves.

catsmate

In USAia, the US Postal Inspection Service.

They are the oldest US Federal law enforcement agency, set up by Benjamin Franklin himself, and and the old Special Congress (the original conspiracy and weirdness investigators of the nascent USA) merged into them for cover over two centuries ago.

__________________
As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves.

smartcooky

Send them in then!

__________________
What is Woke? It is a term that means "awakened to the needs of others". It means to be well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble and kind. Woke people are keen to make the world a better, fairer place for everyone, But, unfortunately, it has also become a pejorative used by racists, homophobes and misogynists on the political right, to describe people who possess a fully functional moral compass.

cjnewson88

I'll join in.. and this is legit... because the only thing I do find "strange" about the leadup to 9/11, is that the 50 people in the CIA (including the likes of George Tenet, Richard Blee, and Cofer Black) who knew that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar had been in the US for almost 18 months, didn't tell the White House, FBI, or the Chief counter-terrorism advisor of the NSC?

It wasn't until 24 August that the CIA let FBI know, but not senior members.. and they STILL didn't tell the White House or Richard Clark, even when they had a meeting all together on September 4 to discuss the imminent threat from al Qaeda.....

__________________
Common sense has clearly been snuck up on from behind beaten several times on the head and left to bleed.
For my complete compilation of evidence showing AAL77 hit the Pentagon -http://therightbloggerbastard.blogspot.co.nz/
For my compilation of evidence for UAL93 - http://ual93.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/cjnewson88

bknight

A sad information disjunction between agencies. Not a good sign, this gap of intra-agency information likely aided the successful attacks.

Leftus

How is it strange? Do you know the rules and guidelines that were in place back then? Did they violate any of them?

cjnewson88

According to Richard Clarke, yes they did violate them. As an example, information that 2 known al Qaeda members had US visa's and travelled to the US would normally be shared automatically with the NSC and White House. This information never was, which means it was physically stopped from being shared by senior members of the CIA.

You explain to me why, in the September 4 meeting, where the CIA is pleading with the NSC for action against al Qaeda, why not mention that already 2 known al Qaeda members, known to be involved in the Kuala Lumpur planning session, were inside the US and had been for almost 18 months? Why not share this information with the NSC and White House, even though you'd shared it with the FBI a couple of weeks earlier?

__________________
Common sense has clearly been snuck up on from behind beaten several times on the head and left to bleed.
For my complete compilation of evidence showing AAL77 hit the Pentagon -http://therightbloggerbastard.blogspot.co.nz/
For my compilation of evidence for UAL93 - http://ual93.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/cjnewson88

Axxman300

No it would not. In the summer of 2001, Almidhar and Alhazmi were guilty of no crime and had no criminal record. Even if Langley had put it into an NSC brief it would have been edited out because it wasn't tied to anything because the USS Cole investigation had stalled so there was no solid link between them and Khallad.


Why would they have to do this when the FBI was already looking for them?

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-if/

Quote:

Finally, on Aug. 23, 2001, the CIA sent an urgent memo to the New York FBI office seeking help in tracking down Almidhar and Alhazmi. At long last, the significance of the information in its files seems to have dawned on the agency. A quick check of hotels listed by the terrorists as places of residence on their travel entry cards came up empty. One New York FBI agent testified before Congress in September 2002 that he had requested use of �full criminal investigative resources� to find Almidhar. But headquarters denied his request. The reason given was that Almidhar was not under criminal investigation, and headquarters cited the wall between prosecution and intelligence as posing a problem. The agent�s e-mail response to FBI headquarters, dated Aug. 29, 2001, was that �Someday someone will die and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems.�

The problem is you claim there were no restrictions when there clearly were in both the CIA and FBI's operational polices.

And I'll point out once more that the CIA's bin Laden unit, Alec Station, and the FBI's bin Laden task force were NOT run out of either agencies counter-terrorism centers, but were stand-alone cells independent of their parent chains of command. And both were run by egomaniacs. The problem was both men happened to be correct about Al Qaeda's intentions to attack the US, and understood that their respective agencies did not take terrorism as seriously as they should have. The US talked tough but was mostly full of hot air when it came to dealing with terrorists. Sure we spun up SEAL Team 6 and Delta but unless we could tie a terrorist strike to a state actor (Libya for example) we rarely struck back.

The problem with Alec Station and the bin Laden task force being insulated from the management chain was this bruised egos, and placed them at the bottom of the list for asset taskings (satellites, wire-taps, eavesdropping, etc) whereas their in-house counter-terror desks could usually get immediate action taken on their requests.

If it was anywhere as simple as you seem to think it was in 2001 for the CIA and FBI to head off the 9-11 attacks you are mistaken. Intelligence is only as good as the man in the Oval Office(and his NSC). I will point to the Capitol attack in January as a prime example of the FBI issuing warnings to anyone who would listen with zero preventative action being taken.

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Disingenuous Piranha

cjnewson88

You cannot be serious. They may not have had a criminal record, but they were both known to have been involved in the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning session, which was monitored by the CIA, and these guys were photographed there. CIA knew their names from a tapped al Qaeda phoneline in Yemen. They were known members of a known terrorist organisation. On top of that, Langley was cabled by the CIA Bangkok station on March 5 2000, telling them both these guys had US visa's and had boarded a flight that arrived at LAX on January 15 2000. You're trying to tell me because they didn't have a criminal record they saw this information as not significant enough to share with the FBI, NSC, or anyone else? Despite the fact they knew they were known terrorists??


Because the entire purpose of the principles meeting on September 4 2001 was al Qaeda. CIA was in attendance. Yet they did not mention anything about it.

Why? Because they deemed it relevant enough to tell the FBI a couple of weeks before but not relevant enough to bring it up at a principles meeting specifically regarding al Qaeda? Or because they know if they bring it up now, when they've known for 16 months these guys are in the country, they will have an investigation launched immediately against them for negligence or misfeasance?


Honestly I do not find "restrictions" and bruised egos that satisfying as an explanation. Whilst I appreciate those are factors it still does not stack up for me that this type of information, which was known about by 50 CIA members and very likely Tenet himself, was not deemed important enough to pass on to NSC. When Richard Clarke himself says they shared even the most trivial of information with each other several times a day.

As Clarke says, "There was not a lack of information sharing. They told us everything. Except this".

__________________
Common sense has clearly been snuck up on from behind beaten several times on the head and left to bleed.
For my complete compilation of evidence showing AAL77 hit the Pentagon -http://therightbloggerbastard.blogspot.co.nz/
For my compilation of evidence for UAL93 - http://ual93.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/cjnewson88

Allen773

Hate to keep beating this drum, but...even as CIA analysts in Alec Station were telling the FBI detailees to the CIA CTC to “hold off” on sharing with the FBI about Khalid al-Midhar’s multi-entry US visa, and went well over a year without telling the FBI that Midhar and Hazmi had arrived in the US, once in Southern CA Hazmi and Midhar were assisted by Omar al-Bayoumi, Fayd al-Thuimary, and other individuals with ties to the Saudi government. The CIA and Saudi intelligence had set up a joint task force to cooperate in counterterrorism in the late 90s. CTC chief Cofer Black was determined to recruit high-level sources within al-Qaeda. One of the women in Alec Station, Jennifer Matthews, was killed in 2009 in Afghanistan by a joint CIA-Jordanian intelligence source who turned out to be a triple agent loyal to al-Qaeda.

The CIA has no policing powers of its own, and once in the US, any US intelligence investigations into the two Saudi nationals Hazmi and Midhar was the responsibility of the FBI - unless, of course, the CIA wanted to recruit them, to “flip” them. But obviously the pre-9/11 CIA would never have taken such a risk. Would our Saudi friends have done it for us, though? Could George Tenet have been assured in discreet conversations with Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Prince Turki al-Faisal that they would “keep an eye on them” and let the CIA be more risk averse, allow them to not directly get involved? Who can possibly say for sure?

Oh, and as for bureaucratic rivalries: Michael Scheuer thought that al-Qaeda should be destroyed by military might and that “the only good thing to happen on 9/11 was the death of John O’Neill.” My understanding is that these days, he’s a QAnon conspiracy theorist who openly wishes violence on those he disagrees with. Make of that what you will.

Axxman300

The meeting wasn't bugged so the had no idea as to what was discussed. Al Qaeda operatives had been visiting the US since the mid-90s after the first WTC bombing in 1993. The FBI did jack s**t about this, and the CIA didn't blink. This is why O'Neil and Scheuer initiated their own bin Laden units - to counter the lax attitudes of their respective leaderships.

The fact you didn't bother to read the link means you're not interested in all of the context on which the many gaffs leading to the attack were built upon.
The CIA is not a law enforcement agency, sometimes it is the opposite. It's not their job to arrest people, it's their job to spy on them. CIA's culture is one of distrust. Field officers distrust their management at Langley, Langley isn't always thrilled by how their field officers collect intel, and different departments sometimes compete against each other.

This is how the CIA missed the whole "Collapse of the Soviet Union" thing even though 55% of the CIA's resources were dedicated to spying on the Russians.

It is your thinking which caused the post 9-11 CIA to swerve into the darkside. The Constitution? International Law? Geneva Convension? Throw that crap out the window 'cuz we got eevil terrorists to torture for intel! And you'll be happy to know that the CIA has become an unofficial law enforcement agency by funneling information to the DEA to make drug busts inside CONUS, a violation of the agency's charter and that whole Constitution thingie.

But back in 1999, 2000, and 2001 those poor Virginia farm kids were prisoners of law and order. Accusing two Middle Eastern men of being terrorists? Hell, a mall lawyer could take that case and get them off.

"Your honor, my clients are simply misunderstood Islamic missionaries who have been singled out by racist CIA and FBI thugs. These men have committed no crimes in their countries and certainly none within the United States. If they were criminals they couldn't have received visas in the first place."

In August, 2001 those guys would have walked.

Oh, and why hasn't Richard Clark ever revealed what Sandy Berger felt so important to steal from the Clinton NSC records at the National Archives? Why is it that not one of the anti-CIA crew ever seeks answers to that question. If you are looking for any evidence that there was direct interference impeding the vital flow of information between CIA and the Bureau the Sandy Berger literally stole the SMOKING GUN. Not one of the buffoons on the Clinton NSC has ever had the stones to reveal the truth about their role in the intelligence failure. This is largely due to the fact that the public and the media has never bothered to push it as far as it needs to go.

...But yeah, blah, blah, blah, CIA did it....whatever...

__________________
Disingenuous Piranha

Oystein

It has always been my impression that everything Richard Clarke wrote and said publicly post-9/11 was first and foremost self-serving: To deflect attention away from the fact that he, the counter-terrorism "Czar", was of no help whatsoever before, during or after the attacks.

My starting point for this assessment is that, even years after the day, his own timeline is critically off. Much of the case Truthers raise against Cheney rests on a false timeline as told by Clarke and Mineta which makes it look as if Cheney was in command of anything at all prior to the last crash, and thus, somehow, responsible.

__________________
Thermodynamics hates conspiracy theorists. (Foster Zygote)

Axxman300

I read his autobiography. His assessment of the events of the October 3, 1993 Mogadishu, Somalia raid was 100% inaccurate, and condescending to the men he and the NSC sent into that country - WITHOUT CONSULTING THE PENTAGON FIRST. To read his version you'd think grabbing Mohamed Farrah Aidid should have been a simple matter. This from a man with zero military experience, and a man who has never been out from behind his desk. AND like in the events leading to 9-11, he and the Clinton NSC deprived Task Force Ranger of a key component, the AC-130 gunship which is standard for any dangerous SF/SOF mission.

And Clarke fails to mention Somalia was the first time the US would cross paths with Al Qaeda, which the Somalis told us had trained Aidid's men to shoot down our helicopters. The 10th Mountain S-2 sent that report up the chain but I doubt anyone took it seriously until bin Laden bragged about it to ABC News.

Clark is as much a part of the failure as everyone else.

__________________
Disingenuous Piranha

Axxman300

To be clear, I am not absolving the CIA for their many sins which allowed the attacks of 9-11, and then the events which followed.

The facts must be laid out in their totality so that we can learn from the many mistakes so that everyone involved can prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Every time this subject comes up it is always boiled down to the CIA sandbagging the FBI, which they did. But the FBI leadership dropped the ball after the arrests of the 1993 WTC bombers, and failed to spin up a robust counter-terrorism desk; they returned to business as usual. Throw in O'Neil's actions in Yemen leading to the expulsion of his USS Cole investigators which crippled an independent line of investigation which would have connected the players.

But there are the other intelligence failures which are less sexy than CIA vs FBI:

1 - The NSA had a lot of intelligence in its database detailing names, phone numbers, locations, bank routing, etc. But nobody at the CIA or FBI asked for this information so the NSA, which vacuums up everything actually had no idea they possessed this intel until an inventory in the days following the 9-11 attacks. Here you have thre largest US intelligence agency collecting communications which it didn't even read with its spooky computer system.

2 - In March 2001, the Pentagon ordered domestic military installations to close public access due to a serious terrorist threat. Gates, fences, and walls were built. To this day the intelligence behind this expensive decision has never been made public.

3 - In July, 2001, the State Department issued a travel warning for the Middle East and Mediterranean that said Al Qaeda was planning to hijack commercial jetliners. The warning expired the first week of September, 2001. This remains the only public terrorism warning issued by a US Government agency which mentions Al Qaeda hijacking commercial jets issued two months before the attack. Again, the intelligence behind this travel warning has never been revealed.And it suggests that the DoS, which has its own intelligence department had good information that it also never bothered to mention to the CIA, FBI, or the NSC.

The United States operates the CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA, Army Intelligence, USAF's Electronic Security Command, Naval Intelligence, the DEA, FBI, and even the USPIS. They all have their strengths and weaknesses/blind-spots. All of these agencies have a 9-11 story to tell.

__________________
Disingenuous Piranha

Oystein

What's the colloquial English acronym for this situation? It's not FUBAR...

According to an old German joke, the name of the Italian car maker FIAT (an actual acronym: Factory for Italian Automobiles in Turin) is the acronym for "Fehler in allen Teilen" ("Faults in all parts"), making fun of the proverbial low quality Fiat cars were said to have in decades past. Your post reminded me of that.

__________________
Thermodynamics hates conspiracy theorists. (Foster Zygote)

Axxman300

In the US FIAT stands for "Fix It Again Tony"

__________________
Disingenuous Piranha

Allen773

Unfortunately, as Oystein mentioned re: Clarke, I fear that many of the leaders and managers in these agencies are STILL more interested in settling scores with one another and deflecting blame rather than seriously learning from their failures. The bureaucratic turf wars on both the interpersonal and institutional levels - along with, frankly, rank incompetence and poorly informed leaders and managers - continue to lead to disastrous failures. We're currently going through a world-historic pandemic that has exposed almost every government on the planet as being woefully unprepared for such crises.

The January 6 attacks on the Capitol had been telegraphed for months online - it didn't take a genius to predict something like that. Yet Capitol Police leadership were asleep at the switch.

Other events to add to the list, of varying scale:
The 2008 economic crash, aka "Housing values will always go up!"
Hurricane preparedness in New Orleans pre-Katrina
Police incompetence and unreliability in domestic violence and hate crimes cases
Any number of mass shootings foretold by tips to law enforcement that went ignored
Other terrorist attacks in the US (the Boston Marathon bombing, the Fort Hood massacre, the Pensacola military base shooting by that Saudi AQAP operative...)

Human institutions have a bad habit of failing, particularly if they're overly bureaucratized, and what is government if not that? Yet it's still necessary...

Axxman300

In July 2001 I had a friendly argument with a friend who worked in intelligence about the threat posed by Al Qaeda to the US, and that it was only a matter of time before they pulled something big. My friend was an Arab linguist, had worked at NSA, and was an Arabist told me that bin Laden and his crew was blowing hot air.
He said that the strikes after the Embassy bombings had worked against us, particularly the missile strike in Sudan against a pharmaceutical plant which killed a security guard. In each strike people were killed but not the ones we needed to kill. In the case of Sudan it seems that the intelligence stating that it was processing chemical weapons was wrong (another reason why we need a better overall review on these things since we made the same mistake in Iraq later). The fact that the CIA blew the Sudan target added to a long list of factors making the DCI and upper management gun-shy.

On the evening of September 11, 2001 I called him to ask what he thought now. He told me I was right. Me, I guy who just read the newspapers.

Here's a prediction: Now that the Capitol Building in DC has been breached successfully by white trash it is only a matter of time before someone else takes a more organized and lethal shot at it now that DC is a viable target. I doubt I'm going out far on a limb on this one.

__________________
Disingenuous Piranha

waypastvne

SAPFU.


Surpassing All Previous **** Ups

Mark F

What did the reporter say when you asked him?

__________________
So I'm going to tell you what the facts are, and the facts are the facts, but then we know the truth. That always overcomes facts.

Wballz4900

What did Richard Blee know and when did he know it

Cosmic Yak

I'm sure he knows all sorts of things.
Perhaps you could be a little more specific?

__________________
'Of course it can be OK to mistreat people.'- shuttlt

Cosmic Yak on this forum.

Fonebone

Originally Posted by Wballz4900

What did Richard Blee know and when did he know it

Let's do a little investigation and find out exactly what Richard knew.
We can start here...



https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/10...ry-cofer-black

[excerpt]
�By the time 9/11 rolled around he had stacks of paper along this 15-foot wall. The lowest pile was waste high. The highest was, I'm 6 foot 3, shoulder high," Black says.


Blee was the head of the CIA�s al-Qaida unit. So Black asked him, what's all that?
"He would say, 'Oh, that's for when we have the catastrophe and get struck and a lot of Americans die,'"
Black recalls. "'This is so the investigators know where to come, and they'll come and ask, 'Did you tell anybody?'
And we'll say 'Yeah, there it is. Here's a copy of every briefing we gave on the threat.'"
Blee was prescient.
After the attacks, investigators from across government swarmed the CIA's al-Qaida unit.
Black says they all asked the same question: "'So, did you warn anybody?'"
"'Yeah, come to my office. Here's one copy of every briefing we gave.' And they'd say, 'Man that's a lot of briefings.' And he'd say, 'Yes, it is.'"

__________________
Truth, like the sun, allows itself to be obscured;
but, like the sun, only for a time. __Bovee
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. __George Washington
All great truths begin as blasphemies __Shaw

Dave Rogers

I realise that competence is a foreign concept to 9/11 truthers, but as far as I can see that's the only thing all this suggests.

Dave

__________________
There is truth and there are lies.

- President Joseph R. Biden, January 20th, 2021

Oystein

So what, specifically, did he know?
And when did he know it?
And do you think that is odd?

__________________
Thermodynamics hates conspiracy theorists. (Foster Zygote)