Was there Advanced Knowledge of the 7/7 London Bomb Attacks?

Global Research

Michel Chossudovsky

On the 7th anniversary of the London Bombings (July 7, 2005), we bring the following collection of articles to the attention of our readers.

INTRODUCTION Coincidence? Unanswered Questions? Was there Advanced Knowledge of the 7/7 London Bomb Attacks? A fictional "scenario" of multiple bomb attacks on London's underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005. Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client. The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring: "POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.   HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise? POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on."   (BBC Radio Interview, 7 July 2005)   In response to the flood of incoming email messages, Peter Power --who is a former senior Scotland Yard official specializing in counterterrorism-- responded in the form of the following "automatic reply": "Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows: It is confirmed that a short number of 'walk through' scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events. However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences [??]. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario - but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting. In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events. Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic). [ signed ] Peter Power"

Coincidence?
Was there Advanced knowledge of the Bomb Attacks? 
Another Coincidence? Several important people were in London at the time of the bomb attacks including Benjamin Netanyahu and former Mayor of New York City Rudi Giuliani.

According to a report of the Associated Press correspondent in Jerusalem, the Israeli embassy in London had been advised by Scotland Yard of an impending terror event, suggesting that there was advanced knowledge of the planning of the 7/7 bomb attack by the British Home Office. (AP, July 7, 2005)  

Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time was Israel's Finance Minister, had been warned by his embassy not to attend an economic conference organized by the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) in collaboration with the Israeli embassy and Deutsche Bank. 

Netanyahu was staying at the Aldridge Hotel in Mayfair. The conference venue was a few miles away at the Great Eastern Hotel close to the Liverpool subway station, where one of the bomb blasts occurred. 

Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was staying at the Great Eastern hotel on the 7^th of July, where TASE was hosting its economic conference, with Israel's Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as keynote speaker. 

Giuliani was having a business breakfast meeting in his room at the Great Eastern Hotel, close to Liverpool Street station when the bombs went off.  

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudolph Giuliani knew each other. Giuliani had officially welcomed Netanyahu when he visited New York City as Prime Minister of Israel in 1996. There was no indication, however, from news reports that the two men met in London at the Great Eastern. On the day prior to the London attacks, July 6, Giuliani was in North Yorkshire at a meeting.

After completing his term as mayor of New York City, Rudi Giuliani established a security outfit: Giuliani Security and Safety. The latter is a subsidary of Giuliani Partners LLC. headed by former New York head of the FBI, Pasquale D'Amuro. 

It is worth noting that Peter Power's Visor Consultants and Giuliani Security and Safety LLC specialize in similar "mock terror drills" and "emergency preparedness" procedures. Both Giuliani and Power were in London at the same time within a short distance of one of the bombing sites. While there is no evidence that Giuliani and Power met in London, the two companies have had prior business contacts in the area of emergency preparedness. Peter Power served on the Advisory Board to the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness (CCEP), together with Richard Sheirer, Senior Vice President of Giuliani and Partners. who was previously Commissioner at the NYC Office of Emergency Management, and Director of New York City Homeland Security.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 7, 2012

This introduction is based on an earlier article entitled 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks?  August 8, 2007

Centuries of open justice threatened by secret courts

The Independent
Andy McSmith and Kim Sengupta

Government rewrites judicial principles after lobbying by CIA

Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information.

Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner's inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to national security.

The proposals, which run counter to a centuries-old British tradition of open justice, were introduced to a sparsely attended House of Commons yesterday by the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke – and met almost no opposition. The planned changes to the British justice system follow lobbying of the Government by the CIA.

Civil rights groups warned a serious potential threat to individual liberty lurked behind the all-party consensus.

Mr Clarke is seeking to protect the Government from a repeat of a fiasco which has cost tens of millions of pounds and led to a breakdown in co-operation between British intelligence and an enraged CIA.

The best-known case involved Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was held in Guantanamo Bay for five years, and started a claim for damages from the UK Government, which he accused of complicity in torture.

The Court of Appeal released a summary of CIA intelligence which supported Mr Mohamed's claim that British intelligence officers knew about the torture of suspected terrorists.

The CIA was furious and halted the flow of information from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and other US agencies apart from in the most serious cases. MI6 and the Foreign Office also received complaints from a number of other allied states anxious that information provided on a confidential basis would leak into the public domain.

Faced with irate colleagues at Langley, the British Government paid out to 16 terrorist suspects, to prevent further damage to US-UK relations. Yesterday, Mr Clarke let slip that the cases had already cost around £20m. Another 30 are in prospect because, he told MPs, "it is becoming fashionable" to challenge the Government in court.

Officials have privately complained that they cannot defend these cases without compromising sensitive intelligence, which means suspected terrorists have been able to use the civil courts as a "cashpoint".

If Mr Clarke's proposals are agreed, the power of the courts to order the intelligence services to disclose sensitive material will be curtailed. The Government is also planning to pass a law giving itself much more latitude to use what are called "closed material proceedings" in civil court cases and immigration tribunals, meaning the people at the centre of such cases would not be allowed to hear any evidence that MI5 or MI6 did not want them to hear. The material would, however, be examined by special advocates with security clearance.

There is also the prospect of grieving relatives being security vetted before they are allowed into inquests in cases which might involve sensitive material, such as the death of a terrorist suspect. If they refuse to be vetted, they would be barred.

Mr Clarke went out of his way to avoid a clash with Labour by reminding them that he was dealing with a problem they had to face in government, and emphasising that his Green Paper was "very green".

Mr Clarke told MPs: "The Government is clear that under the current system, justice is not being served and our national security is being put at risk. For justice to be done and the rule of law to be upheld, courts should be able to consider all the facts of the case. At the moment, we are not always getting at the truth because some evidence is too sensitive to disclose in open court."

After Oslo: Time to Crack Down On Mossad Terrorism

Strategic Culture Foundation
Wayne Madsen

Israel’s most secret and tried-and-true weapon is the “false flag” terrorist attack.

State-sponsored terrorism is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective [and] is employed by governments -- or more often by factions within governments -- against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups.”

On July 22, a bomb, said to be an Oklahoma City-type explosive device, crafted with fertilizer and diesel fuel, blew up in downtown Oslo, Norway, in the heart of the government district. Shortly thereafter, a man dressed in a Norwegian police uniform opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya in Tyri fjord. Access to the island was by boat only.  Over 100 people were killed in the twin terror attacks.

Almost immediately, the world’s corporate media began pushing the story that those who were responsible for the blast and mass shooting were associated with “Al Qaeda” and other radical Islamist groups. CNN’s Washington, DC chief anchor Wolf Blitzer, a former spokesman for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby and a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, began his late afternoon program by pointing to “Al Qaeda” and radical Islamists as the chief culprits for the terrorist attacks in Norway.

CNN paraded out a number “experts,” in actuality, propagandists for the Israeli agenda linked to neo-conservative outlets and the Pentagon’s “terrorism industrial complex,” before the cameras to advance the radical Islamist meme even as Norwegian authorities pinned blame on the attack on at least one perpetrator, a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik. CNN constantly showed footage of frightened people in downtown Oslo running for their lives from the site of the blast, as well as still photograph of a pall of light-brown smoke over downtown Oslo. Of course, CNN’s intention was to evoke memories of the 9/11 attack in Manhattan.

Breivik, who sometimes anglicized his name as Andrew Berwick in his numerous web postings, was said to be a right-wing Islamophobe who sympathized with Zionism and who was a Freemason… Breivik was also reported to be a fundamentalist Christian but he adopted a stance against the Lutheran Church, the state church of Norway, and argued for a “collective” counter-reformation to return the Protestant churches to the control of the Vatican and the Pope. Breivik lambasted the Lutheran Church and other mainstream Protestant churches, condemning “Priests in jeans who march for Palestine.”

More incredibly, the London tabloid of Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-plagued News International, The Sun, went to press with the following false headline: “Norway’s 911: ‘Al Qaeda’ Massacre.” On March 29, 2011, Harvard Law School’s extremist Zionist Professor Alan Dershowitz penned a piece in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, a newspaper that actively discriminates against the hiring of non-Jews as reporters and editors in violation of U.S. civil rights and equal opportunity employment laws, in which he called Norway anti-Semitic. Dershowitz cited as an example former Norwegian Prime Minister Kare Willock’s criticism of President Barack Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff because he is Jewish. In fact, Emanuel’s pro- Israeli sympathies as a former member of the Israel Defense Force are what prompted many political observers in Washington and elsewhere to question his primary loyalty to the United States.

A network of Israeli bloggers pushed a claim of responsibility on a previously-unknown group called Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad). The group’s claims were picked up and run by several corporate media outlets and then pulled when it was discovered the claim was a hoax. Mossad has a program to distribute bogus claims of responsibility for Islamist terrorist attacks via “Jihadist” websites that are actually operated by the Mossad and a network of “hasbaratchiks,” Israeli and foreign Jews who act as propagandists on the web. These hasbara (propaganda) agents and volunteers operate through such programs as Megaphone and GIYUS (“Give Israel Your United Support.”) After the attempt to blame the Norway attacks on Islamists failed, the “hasbaratchiks” shifted to “sock puppet” troll mode, posting comments on blogs that criticized allegations that Mossad and Zionists were behind the Norway attacks, emphasizing that such beliefs were “anti-Semitic” and wild “conspiracy theories.” Some Israeli “sock puppets” even offered lunatic suggestions that Breivik was planted by Islamists to make Israel and Zionists look bad.

When the “Islamist” connection to the holocaust in Norway was shown to be non-existent after Norwegian security and police agencies began looking at the evidence, the corporate media switched its propaganda line from “radical Islam” being responsible to “far –right extremism” opposed to multiculturalism and immigration in Europe as the culprit. Even outlets that in the past had been known for their independence from the corporate media line, including Al Jazeera and RT [formerly known as Russia Today], echoed the line that Breivik primarily represented right-wing opposition to Muslim immigrants in Europe. Al Jazeera repeated the line that Breivik was a “lone madman,” the insinuation being that he was not linked to any wider network. While Breivik certainly was associated with the far-right xenophobic elements in Norway, Europe, and North America, there was no mention by the corporate media of his admiration for such American Zionist Islamophobes as Richard Pipes and Pam Geller. Geller led the bigoted anti-Muslim campaign against an Islamic Center near the site of “Ground Zero,” the former World Trade Center site, in lower Manhattan. Breivik posted a number of his anti-Muslim and pro-Zionist screeds on the Norwegian website www.document.no, which is operated by Hans-Kristian Rustad, a Norwegian pro-Israeli journalist.

No corporate media outlets reported that the brand of far-right extremism of Breivik is closely associated with Zionist-supported far-right anti-immigrant political parties and movements in Western Europe, including the mis-named Progress Party of Norway, the Dutch Freedom Party of Islamophobe Geert Wilders, the Sweden Democrats, Finland’s True Finns Party, the Danish People’s Party, the English Defense League, the Pro-Germany Citizen’s Movement, and a pan-Nordic fascist terrorist group called “Nordiske.” Breivik also expressed support for the Tea Party in the United States…

 The European anti-Muslim xenophobic network is linked to the notorious publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons by the neo-conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and Norway’s Dagbladet. The Euro-xenophobes are supported by the longtime Zionist Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher who is a friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and disgraced former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. It is noteworthy that Levy is one of the major backers of the Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Qaddafi. Norway announced it was pulling its aircraft from the NATO campaign in Libya at the end of July. Norway also announced its support for Palestine’s sovereignty resolution in the UN General Assembly in September.

As more and more evidence pointed to Oslo being yet another example of a state-sponsored terrorist attack by Israel’s Mossad, the corporate media studiously avoided mentioning how the Norwegian government through its recent actions, had become a major problem for Israel and its allies abroad, especially on the Palestine sovereignty issue… In addition, Norwegian police and intelligence are painfully aware of Mossad’s past operations in Norway, including the infamous Lillehammer Affair in 1973. On July 21, 1973, Mossad agents assassinated Ali Hassan Salameh, a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, wrongly believing he was the operations chief for the Palestinian terrorist group “Black September.” Norwegian police arrested the Mossad agents who killed Salameh and uncovered an intricate network of Mossad safe houses, phone numbers, and Norwegian sleeper agents for Mossad.

Just as was the case with the coordinated bombings of Madrid trains on March 22, 2004 and London buses and trains on July 7, 2005, viewed by European security services as being the work of not “Al Qaeda” but domestic “radicals,” there was no link to Islamist radicals with the attacks in Norway. However, there was every indication that the attack on Norway was intended to shake up the Norwegian population and damage the reputation of the left-of-center Norwegian government of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The corporate media insisted that Breivik was solely responsible for Norway’s worst violent attack since World War II. Norwegian police reports that a second gunman, described as having “thick dark hair and a non-Nordic appearance,” were suppressed in much of the corporate media. The time line of the Oslo attack causes anyone’s imagination to be stretched on being sold a “lone gunman/bomber” theory.

9/11 AND AMERICA'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"

Global Research, May 26, 2011

The livelihood of millions of people throughout the World is at stake. It is my sincere hope that the truth will prevail and that the understanding provided in this detailed study will serve the cause of World peace. This objective, however, can only be reached by revealing the falsehoods behind America’s “War on Terrorism” and questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors responsible for extensive war crimes.

PREFACE

At eleven o’clock, on the morning of September 11, the Bush adminstration had already announced that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. This assertion was made prior to the conduct of an indepth police investigation.

That same evening at 9:30 pm, a “War Cabinet” was formed integrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors. And at 11:00 pm, at the end of that historic meeting at the White House, the “War on Terrorism” was officially launched.

The decision was announced to wage war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 9/11 attacks. The following morning on September 12th, the news headlines indelibly pointed to “state sponsorship” of the 9/11 attacks. In chorus, the US media was calling for a military intervention against Afghanistan. Barely four weeks later, on the 7th of October, Afghanistan was bombed and invaded by US troops.Americans were led to believe that the decison to go to war had been taken on the spur of the moment, on the evening of September 11, in response to the attacks and their tragic consequences.

Little did the public realize that a large scale theater war is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks. The decision to launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had been taken well in advance of 9/11. The “terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event” as it was later described by CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks, served to galvanize public opinion in support of a war agenda which was already in its final planning stage.

The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required justification to wage a war on “humanitarian grounds”, with the full support of World public opinion and the endorsement of the “international community”.

Several prominent “progressive” intellectuals made a case for “retaliation against terrorism”, on moral and ethical grounds. The “just cause” military doctrine (jus ad bellum) was accepted and upheld at face value as a legitimate response to 9/11,without examining the fact that Washington had not only supported the “Islamic terror network”, it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1996.

In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement was completely isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Afghanistan, an impoverished country of 30 million people.

I started writing on the evening of September 11, late into the night, going through piles of research notes, which I had previously collected on the history of Al Qaeda. My first text entitled “Who is Osama bin Laden?”, which was completed and first published on September the 12th. (See Chapter II.)

From the very outset, I questioned the official story, which described nineteen Al Qaeda sponsored hijackers involved in a highly sophisticated and organized operation. My first objective was to reveal the true nature of this illusive “enemy of America”, who was “threatening the Homeland”.

The myth of the “outside enemy” and the threat of “Islamic terrorists” was the cornerstone of the Bush adminstration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, not to xii America’s “War on Terrorism” mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.

Without an “outside enemy”, there could be no “war on terrorism”. The entire national security agenda would collapse “like a deck of cards”. The war criminals in high office would have no leg to stand on.

It was consequently crucial for the development of a coherent antiwar and civil rights movement, to reveal the nature of Al Qaeda and its evolving relationship to successive US administrations.

Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media, Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet- Afghan war. This was a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources including official documents of the US Congress. The intelligence community had time and again acknowledged that they had indeed supported Osama bin Laden, but that in the wake of the Cold War: “he turned against us”.

After 9/11, the campaign of media disinformation served not only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the historical evidence on how this illusive “outside enemy” had been fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.

The Balkans Connection

My research on the Balkans conducted since the mid-1990s enabled me to document numerous ties and connections between Al Qaeda and the US Administration. The US military, the CIA and NATO had supported Al Qaeda in the Balkans. Washington’s objective was to trigger ethnic conflict and destablize the Yugoslav federation, first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo.

In 1997, the Republican Party Committee (RPC) of the US Senate released a detailed report which accused President Clinton of collaborating with the “Islamic Militant Network” in Bosnia and working hand in glove with an organization linked to Osama bin Laden. (See Chapter III.) The report, however,was not widely publicized. Instead, the Republicans chose to discredit Clinton for his liason with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Clinton Adminstration had also been providing covert support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a paramilitary group supported by Al Qaeda, which was involved in numerous terrorist attacks. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6, together with former members of Britain’s 22nd Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) were providing training to the KLA, despite its extensive links to organized crime and the drug trade. Meanwhile, known and documented, several Al Qaeda operatives had integrated the ranks of the KLA. (See Chapter III).

Click here to find out more about AMERICA'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"


In the months leading up to 9/11, I was actively involved in research on the terror attacks in Macedonia, waged by the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA) of Macedonia, a paramilitary army integrated by KLA commanders. Al Qaeda Mujahideen had integrated the NLA.Meanwhile, senior US military officers from a private mercenary company on contract to the Pentagon were advising the terrorists.

Barely a couple of months prior to 9/11, US military advisers were seen mingling with Al Qaeda operatives within the same paramilitary army. In late June 2001, seventeen US “instructors” were identified among the withdrawing rebels. To avoid the diplomatic humiliation and media embarrassment of senior US military personnel captured together with “Islamic terrorists”by the Macedonian Armed Forces, the US and NATO pressured the Macedonian government to allow the NLA terrorists and their US military advisers to be evacuated.

The evidence, including statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister and press reports out of Macedonia, pointed unequivocally to continued US covert support to the “Islamic brigades” in the former Yugoslavia. This was not happening in the bygone era of the Cold War, but in June 2001, barely a couple of months prior to 9/11. These developments, which I was following on a daily basis, immediately cast doubt in my mind on the official 9/11 narrative which presented Al Qaeda as the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Chapter IV.) xiv America’s “War on Terrorism”

The Mysterious Pakistani General

On the 12th of September, a mysterious Lieutenant General, head of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI), who according to the US press reports “happened to be in Washington at the time of the attacks”, was called into the office of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitrage.

The “War on Terrorism” had been officially launched late in the night of September 11, and Dick Armitage was asking General Mahmoud Ahmad to help America “in going after the terrorists”. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was on the phone with Secretary of State Colin Powell and the following morning, on the 13th of September, a comprehensive agreement, was reached between the two governments.

While the press reports confirmed that Pakistan would support the Bush adminstration in the “war on terror”, what they failed to mention was the fact that Pakistan`s military intelligence (ISI) headed by General Ahmad had a longstanding relationship to the Islamic terror network. Documented by numerous sources, the ISI was known to have supported a number of Islamic organizations including Al Qaeda and the Taliban. (See Chapter IV.)

My first reaction in reading news headlines on the 13th of September was to ask: if the Bush adminstration were really committed to weeding out the terrorists, why would it call upon Pakistan`s ISI, which is known to have supported and financed these terrorist organizations?

Two weeks later, an FBI report, which was briefly mentioned on ABC News, pointed to a “Pakistani connection” in the financing of the alleged 9/11 terrorists. The ABC report referred to a Pakistani “moneyman” and “mastermind” behind the 9/11 hikackers.

Subsequent reports indeed suggested that the head of Pakistan’s military intelligence, General Mahmoud Ahmad, who had met Colin Powell on the 13th of September 2001, had allegedly ordered the transfer of 100,000 dollars to the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. What these reports suggested was that the head of Pakistan’s military intelligence was not only in close contact with senior officials of the US Government, he was also in liason with the alleged hijackers.

My writings on the Balkans and Pakistani connections, published in early October 2001 were later incorporated into the first edition of this book. In subsequent research, I turned my attention to the broader US strategic and economic agenda in Central Asia and the Middle East.

There is an intricate relationship between War and Globalization. The “War on Terror” has been used as a pretext to conquer new economic frontiers and ultimately establish corporate control over Iraq’s extensive oil reserves.

The Disinformation Campaign

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the disinformation campaign went into full gear.

Known and documented prior to the invasion, Britain and the US made extensive use of fake intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Al Qaeda was presented as an ally of the Baghad regime. “Osama bin Laden” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” statements circulated profusely in the news chain. (Chapter XI.)

Meanwhile, a new terrorist mastermind had emerged: Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. In Colin Powell’s historic address to the United Nations Security Council, detailed “documentation” on a sinister relationship between Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was presented, focussing on his ability to produce deadly chemical, biological and radiological weapons, with the full support and endorsement of the secular Baathist regime.

A Code Orange terror alert followed within two days of Powell’s speech at the United Nations Security Council, where he had been politely rebuffed by UN Weapons Inspector Dr. Hans Blix.

Realty was thus turned upside down. The US was no longer viewed as preparing to wage war on Iraq. Iraq was preparing to attack America with the support of “Islamic terrorists”. Terrorist mastermind Al-Zarqawi was identified as the number one suspect. Official statements pointed to the dangers of a dirty radioactive bomb attack in the US.

The main thrust of the disinformation campaign continued in the wake of the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. It consisted in presenting the Iraqi resistance movement as “terrorists”. The image of “terrorists opposed to democracy” fighting US “peacekeepers” appeared on television screens and news tabloids across the globe.

Meanwhile, the Code Orange terror alerts were being used by the Bush administration to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across America. (See Chapter XX.) The terror alerts also served to distract public opinion from the countless atrocities committed by US forces in the Afghan and Iraqi war theaters, not to mention the routine torture of so-called “enemy combatants”.

Following the invasion of Afghanistan, the torture of prisoners of war and the setting up of concentration camps became an integral part of the Bush adminstration’s post 9/11 agenda.

The entire legal framework had been turned upside down. According to the US Department of Justice, torture was now permitted under certain circumstances. Torture directed against “terrorists” was upheld as a justifiable means to preserving human rights and democracy. (See chapters XIV and XV.) In an utterly twisted logic, the Commander in Chief can now quite legitimately authorize the use of torture, because the victims of torture in this case are so-called “terrorists”, who are said to routinely apply the same methods against Americans.

The orders to torture prisoners of war at the Guantanamo concentration camp and in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion emanated from the highest levels of the US Government. Prison guards, interrogators in the US military and the CIA were responding to precise guidelines.

An inquisitorial system had been installed. In the US and Britain the “war on the terrorism” is upheld as being in the public interest. Anybody who questions its practices—which now include arbitrary arrest and detention, torture of men, women and children, political assassinations and concentration camps—is liable to be arrested under the antiterrorist legislation.



The London 7/7 Bomb Attack

A new threshold in the “war on terrorism”was reached in July 2005, with the bomb attacks on London’s underground, which resulted tragically in 56 deaths and several hundred wounded.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the London 7//7 attacks were used to usher in far-reaching police state measures. The US House of Representatives renewed the USA PATRIOT Act “to make permanent the government’s unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists”. Republicans claimed that the London attacks showed “how urgent and important it was to renew the law.”

Barely a week prior to the London attacks, Washington had announced the formation of a “domestic spy service” under the auspices of the FBI. The new department—meaning essentially a Big Brother “Secret State Police”—was given a mandate to “spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime.” Significantly, this new FBI service is not accountable to the Department of Justice. It is controlled by the Directorate of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte, who has the authority of ordering the arrest of “terror suspects”.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the 7/7 London attacks, Britain’s Home Office, was calling for a system of ID cards, as an “answer to terrorism”. Each and every British citizen and resident will be obliged to register personal information, which will go into a giant national database, along with their personal biometrics: “iris pattern of the eye”, fingerprints and “digitally recognizable facial features”. Similar procedures were being carried out in the European Union.

War Criminals in High Office

The anti-terrorist legislation and the establishment of a Police State largely serve the interests of those who have committed extensive war crimes and who would otherwise have been indicted under national and international law.

In the wake of the London 7/7 attacks, war criminals continue to legitimately occupy positions of authority,which enable them to xviii America’s “War on Terrorism” redefine the contours of the judicial system and the process of law enforcement. This process has provided them with a mandate to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are the criminals. (Chapter XVI).

From New York and Washington on September 11 to Madrid in March 2004 and to London in July 2005, the terror attacks have been used as a pretext to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. People can be arbitrarily arrested under the antiterrorist legislation and detained for an indefinite period.More generally, throughout the Western World, citizens are being tagged and labeled, their emails, telephone conversations and faxes are monitored and archived. Thousands of closed circuit TV cameras, deployed in urban areas, are overseeing their movements. Detailed personal data is entered into giant Big Brother data banks. Once this cataloging has been completed, people will be locked into watertight compartments.

The witch-hunt is not only directed against presumed “terrorists” through ethnic profiling, the various human rights, affirmative action and antiwar cohorts are also the object of the antiterrorist legislation.

The National Security Doctrine

In 2005, the Pentagon released a major document entitled The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (NDS), which broadly sketches Washington’s agenda for global military domination. While the NDS follows in the footsteps of the Administration’s “preemptive” war doctrine as outlined in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), it goes much further in setting the contours of Washington’s global military agenda. (See Chapter XIX.)

Whereas the preemptive war doctrine envisages military action as a means of “self defense” against countries categorized as “hostile” to the US, the 2005 NDS goes one step further. It envisages the possibility of military intervention against “unstable countries” or “failed nations”, which do not visibly constitute a threat to the security of the US.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon had unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the “Defense of the American Homeland” against terrorists and rogue enemies. The fact that the nuclear bomb is categorized by the Pentagon as “safe for civilians” to be used in major counter-terrorist activities borders on the absurd.

In 2005, US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) drew up “a contingency plan to be used in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack”. The plan includes air raids on Iran using both conventional as well as tactical nuclear weapons.

America’s “War on Terrorism”

The first ten chapters,with some changes and updates, correspond to the first edition of the book published in 2002 under the title War and Globalization: The Truth behind September 11. The present expanded edition contains twelve new chapters, which are the result of research undertaken both prior as well as in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. (Parts III and IV.) The sequencing of the material in Parts III and IV corresponds to the historical evolution of the post 9/11 US military and national security agendas. My main objective has been to refute the official narrative and reveal—using detailed evidence and documentation—the true nature of America’s “war on terrorism”.

Part I includes four chapters on September 11, focusing on the history of Al Qaeda and its ties to the US intelligence apparatus. These chapters document how successive administrations have supported and sustained terrorist organizations with a view to destabilizing national societies and creating political instability.

Part II entitled War and Globalization centers on the strategic and economic interests underlying the “war on terrorism”.

Part III contains a detailed analysis of War Propaganda and the Disinformation Campaign, both prior and in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.

Part IV entitled The New World Order includes a review of the Bush administration’s preemptive war doctrine (Chapter XIX), a detailed analysis of the post-Taliban narcotics trade protected by US intelligence, and a review of the 9/11 Commission Report focusing specifically on “What Happened on the Planes on the Morning of 9/11”.

Chapter XX focuses on the system of terror alerts and their implications. Chapter XXI follows with an examination of the emergency procedures that could be used to usher in Martial Law leading to the suspension of Constitutional government. In this regard, the US Congress has already adopted procedures, which allow the Military to intervene directly in civilian police and judicial functions. In the case of a national emergency—e.g., in response to an alleged terror attack—there are clearly defined provisions, which could lead to the formation of a military government in America.

Finally, Chapter XXII focuses on the broad implications of the 7/7 London Bombs Attacks, which were followed by the adoption of sweeping Police State measures in Britain, the European Union and North America.

Writing this book has not been an easy undertaking. The material is highly sensitive. The results of this analysis, which digs beneath the gilded surface of US foreign policy, are both troublesome and disturbing. The conclusions are difficult to accept because they point to the criminalization of the upper echelons of the State. They also confirm the complicity of the corporate media in upholding the legitimacy of the Administration’s war agenda and camouflaging US sponsored war crimes.

The World is at an important historical crossroads. The US has embarked on a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. As we go to press, the Bush Administration has hinted in no uncertain terms that Iran is the next target of the “war on terrorism”.

Military action against Iran would directly involve Israel’s participation, which in turn is likely to trigger a broader war throughout the Middle East, not to mention an implosion in the Palestinian occupied territories.

I have attempted to the best of my abilities to provide evidence and detailed documentation of an extremely complex political process.

The livelihood of millions of people throughout the World is at stake. It is my sincere hope that the truth will prevail and that the understanding provided in this detailed study will serve the cause of World peace. This objective, however, can only be reached by revealing the falsehoods behind America’s “War on Terrorism” and questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors responsible for extensive war crimes.

I am indebted to many people, who in the course of my work have supported my endeavors and have provided useful research insights. The readers of the Global Research website at www.globalresearch.ca have been a source of continuous inspiration and encouragement.


Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best-seller "The Globalisation of Poverty " published in thirteen languages. He is Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization which hosts the critically acclaimed website: www.globalresearch.ca . He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Jihadi who helped train 7/7 bomber freed by US after just five years

Release prompts claim Islamist was US informant while assisting London terrorist

An American jihadist who set up the terrorist training camp where the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers learned how to manufacture explosives, has been quietly released after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence, a Guardian investigation has learned.

The unreported sentencing of Mohammed Junaid Babar to "time served" because of what a New York judge described as "exceptional co-operation" that began even before his arrest has raised questions over whether Babar was a US informer at the time he was helping to train the ringleader of the 7 July tube and bus bombings.

Lawyers representing the families of victims and survivors of the attacks have compared the lenient treatment of Babar to the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Babar was imprisoned in 2004 – although final sentencing was deferred – after pleading guilty in a New York court to five counts of terrorism. He set up the training camp in Pakistan where Mohammad Sidique Khan and several other British terrorists learned about bomb-making and how to use combat weapons.

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