Former UK MP: 'This War on Terrorism is Bogus' - reference companion

Michael Meacher, a Member of the British Parliament until recently, has written a very provocative article providing his analysis of the events leading up to 9/11, the War or Terror™, the failure of US forces to capture Osama bin Laden and the true goals of the Iraq war. It's a doozy.

Meacher works primarily from documents already in the public media, and the article lists the publications and dates he's gotten his information from, though it does not provide clickable links. As with anything that tends to get into conspiracy theory territory, I like to try and at least verify the information being provided and a sense of the context it was initially presented in, so I figured I should start checking what I could of the references he gave - and since I was going to do all that for myself, I figured I might as well provide some of what I find to you as well.

Understand - I have not yet made up my mind as to whether I find Meacher's theories credible or not, but given his recent position and how widespread this article is going to be (there are already about 5 pages at Google that are just links to reposts of this article at various sites around the world), it's at least worth looking at. The quotes below are from what I've judged to be the most likely part of each article he's referencing, and occasionally a bit addition to help provide context (especially where the additional material - in my opinion - either strongly supports or potentially weakens his arguments). As with anything, I strongly recommend that you read the entire article for yourself. You might also want to review the companion article "Meacher sparks fury over claims", also published in the Guardian, which provides a small amount of information on Meacher and comments by a few who disagree with his views.

Because of the nature of the claims made in this article, I feel it should be approached with caution. Meacher's standing as a recent member of the Blair Parliament gives his comments an extra veneer of crediblity such that many people will likely latch onto this article as proof of their worst fears. While it is possible that what he's saying is true (and if it is, we have been witness to one of the most heinous crimes in the history of mankind, paleing only - in my opinion - to crimes of genocide such as the Holocaust), it is also possible that he is seeing connections and links where there are none. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote:

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing.” ... “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”

1. Daily Telegraph (UK), September 16, 2001 - Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of large-scale terror attacks
   
   "The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation.
   
   "They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement," said a senior Israeli security official."
   
   
2. BBC Newsnight, November 6, 2001 - Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
   
   "PALAST: Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
   
   MICHAEL SPRINGMAN: In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.
   
   PALAST: By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA were playing "the Great Game".
   
   SPRINGMAN: What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.
   
   The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?"



3. Newsweek, September 15, 2001 - Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases
   
   "U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.
   
   Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.
   
   Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.
   
   But there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations. "



4. Times, November 3, 2001 - I was unable to find the article referred to here. Initially, the problem was that I didn't know for sure which "Times" he was referring to. A later reference, also attributed to "Times", however, was located in the Times Online (UK). I attempted to search their archives for this article, also, but was unable to find anything. It may be behind the archive wall. If anyone has a copy of this article or knows where one is posted, please let me know so I can add it to this list.



5. Newsweek, May 20, 2002 - Unheeded Warnings - [Note: The original source article is now behind a pay-per-view archive wall. The text of the article, however, can be found at "America's Intelligence Failures"]
   
   "The FBI has insisted it had no advance warning about the 9-11 attacks. But internal documents suggest there were more concerns inside the bureau's field offices than Washington has acknowledged.
   
   One FBI memo, written by a Phoenix agent in July 2001, warned about suspicious activities by Middle Eastern men at an Arizona flight school. Last week, in little-noticed testimony before a Senate panel, FBI Director Robert Mueller referred to another internal document that may prove more explosive: notes by a Minneapolis agent worrying that French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui might be planning to "fly something into the World Trade Center."
   
   The notes are especially eerie because Moussaoui faces charges that he was part of the 9-11 plot. Sources say the notes Mueller referred to were written in early September 2001-days before the attack. The author was part of a counterterrorism team desperately trying to figure out what Moussaoui was up to. He had been arrested in August on immigration charges after a Minnesota flight instructor reported that he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners."



6. AP - August 13, 2002 - Use of Military Jets Jumps since 9/11
   
   "The military sent fighter jets to chase suspicious aircraft 462 times between Sept. 11 and June, nearly seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from the same period a year earlier. More frequent scrambles are also faster in the tense new environment because the North American Aerospace Defense Command communicates better with the Federal Aviation Administration."



7. AP - April 5, 2002 [Note: I was unable to locate the actual AP article, however I did find the transcript of the CNN interview at the Department of Defense news site from which the quote "the goal has never been to get bin Laden" was taken. Here is the segment of the interveiw containing that quote.]
   
   "Hunt: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?
   
   Myers: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.
   
   Interesting, I just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in these organizations. You may have more effect by going after the middlemen, because they're harder to replace. I don't know if that's true, or not, and clearly we would like to eventually get bin Laden.
   
   But I think the fact that we've been able to disrupt operations, get a lot of the people just under him and maybe just a little bit further down, has had some impact on their operations. We know have disrupted, you know, four, five, six, seven active operations that they had planned and probably more that we don't know about.
   
   So we're going to keep the hunt on. Finding one person, as we've talked about before, is a very difficult prospect, but we will keep trying."



8. ABC News - December 19, 2002 - Primetime Investigation FBI Terrorist Cover-up [Note: The original piece containing the quote is a video story I located a transcript of the story, as broadcast, at Cooperative Research. Brian Ross is the reporter.]
   
   "BRIAN ROSS(Voice Over) Their story begins in the mid-1990s. With growing terrorism in the Middle East, the two agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected terrorist cell that would later lead them to an Osama Bin Laden connection.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:We had a cell in Chicago, right. And that was, that was the premise of how we got the investigation going.
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Voice Over) But Wright says he soon discovered that all the FBI Intelligence Division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists around town and file reports, but make no arrests.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me, "you will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects."
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Off Camera) You're on the Terrorism Task Force and you were told you will not open criminal cases?
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:Yes.
   
   BRIAN ROSS: (Voice Over) In 1998, Al-Qaeda terrorists bombed two American Embassies in Africa, killing more than 200 people. The agents say some of the money for the attack led back to the people they had been tracking in Chicago, and to a powerful Saudi Arabian businessman, this man, Yassin Kadi, (PH) who had extensive business and financial ties in Chicago. Yet, even after the bombings, the agents say headquarters ordered no arrests.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they want to shut down the criminal investigation. They wanted to kill it.
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Voice Over) The move outraged the Federal Prosecutor in Chicago, who says Agents Wright and Vincent were helping him build a strong criminal case against Kadi and others.
   
   MARK FLESSNER, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR : There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let it happen. And it didn't happen.
   
   BRIAN ROSS: (Voice Over) Mark Flessner,(PH) now in private practice, says he still can't figure out why Washington stopped the case, whether it was Saudi influence or bureaucratic ineptness."



9. Time Magazine - May 13, 2002 - This issue is now premium (paid) content at Time's archives, and I was unable to find any direct quotes from the article elsewhere. I haven't even been able to figure out the actual name of the article, so I'm not sure which article to buy at the Time site. The index page for that issue is here, and if you find a copy of the article or relevent quotes from it, please let me know.



10. Times - July 17, 2002 - Britian Backs US Plan for Attack on Iraq
    
    "There was a lesson from September 11. “We knew about al-Qaeda for a long time. They were committing terrorist acts, they were planning, they were organising. Everybody knew, we all knew, that Afghanistan was a failed state living on drugs and terror. We did not act.
    
    “To be truthful about it,there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11.
    
    “There is a threat, the threat has changed in the way that I have described post-September 11. The options are open, but we do have to deal with it. How we deal with it, however, is, as I say, an open question.”
    
    He added: “And that is why I constantly say to people there are no decisions that have been made in relation to Iraq at all, but there is no doubt that Iraq poses a threat in respect of weapons of mass destruction.
    
    “And there is no doubt that this issue is an issue that must be dealt with.”'



11. Time Magazine - May 13 2002 - See note on #9



12. Sunday Herald - October 6 2002 - "Official: US Oil at the Heart of Iraq Crisis" (This link is to the Common Dreams mirror of the article. The full "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century" report is available online at The Baker Institute site.)
    
    "President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary.
    
    Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on 'energy security' from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr.
    
    The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: 'The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments.
    
    'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.'
    
    Baker who delivered the recommendations to Cheney, the former chief executive of Texas oil firm Halliburton, was advised by Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former chief executive of Enron, the US energy giant which went bankrupt after carrying out massive accountancy fraud.
    
    The other advisers to Baker were: Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. Another name linked to the document is Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute."



13. BBC - September 18, 2001 - "US 'Planned Attack to Taleban'"
    
    "A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.
    
    Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
    
    Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
    
    Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
    
    The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah."



14. Inter Press Service - November 15, 2001 - POLITICS: U.S. Policy towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - authors [This also is located at Common Dreams. The original article is available at Inter Press Service, but is available by subscription only.]
    
    "In the book ''Bin Laden, la verite interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.
    
    Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. Oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.
    
    The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
    
    They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
    
    Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.
    
    But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.
    
    ''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris."



15. Guardian - October 30, 2002 - BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
    
    "Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war.
    
    The comments from the most senior European oil executive, who has impeccable political connections in the UK, will be seen by anti-war protesters as further proof that US president George Bush has already made his mind up about an early attack.
    
    They will also serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction.
    
    Britain's biggest company is reviewing what impact a regime change in Baghdad would have on its own business and global crude supplies.
    
    Both London and Washington have been lobbied by the UK oil giant, which is concerned that European companies could be left out in the cold.
    
    "We have let it be known that the thing we would like to make sure, if Iraq changes regime, is that there should be a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if they're needed to do the work there," said Lord Browne yesterday at a briefing on the company's results."



16. BBC Online - August 10, 2002 [Note: The article I was able to locate with the relevant quote is actually dated August 8, 2002.] - Libya Hints at Lockerbie Payout
    
    "Regarding the fight against terrorism, Mr O'Brien said the UK authorities were already cooperating with the Libyans.
    
    "They know they are as much at risk from the extremists of al-Qaeda as any western country is," he said.
    
    "They have made promises and we will look at whether they deliver on this," Mr O'Brien added.
    
    Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abderrahmane Chalgam, for his part, stressed his government's willingness to cooperate in the fight against al-Qaeda.
    
    "The fundamentalists are against our project," he said. "They are against the freedom of women, they are against technology."
    
    Libya had shown its desire to move from "pariah" to a state complying with international law by handing over the Lockerbie bomb suspects, said Mr O'Brien.
    
    The UK was keen to boost ties that have been cautiously improving since diplomatic relations were restored three years ago.
    
    Libya is keen to re-enter the world economy and the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts.
    
    Sanctions against Libya have been suspended but Colonel Gaddafi wants them lifted permanently."