What Obama and McCain Foreign Policy really is
Timeline of Corporate & Oil
Exploration Events Prior to 911
by Michael C. Ruppert
© COPYRIGHT 2001, All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and
From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com
War against Afghanistan was decided
by July 2001
[Editor's Note: I don't think we've ever been
happier to make a correction when we have made an error. Until recently - relying on an
Oct. 31, 2001 article in Britain's The Guardian -- which stated, "Carlyle's other
holdings span an improbable range, taking in the French newspaper Le Figaro and the
company which bottles Dr Pepper," we had believed that Carlyle actually owned Le
Figaro. The Guardian story had been written in the context of Carlyle's overall role as a
buyer and seller of companies. We were recently forwarded information from the Guerilla
News Network (http://www.guerrillanews.com/)
citing the French publication Liberation as having reported that Carlyle's ownership of Le
Figaro is actually only 4.9%. The term "holdings" can be interpreted in two ways
and this new information makes the Figaro story - which has not been retracted - even
stronger.]
FTW, November 2, 2001 - 1200 PST -- On October 31, the French daily Le
Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic
kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official - presumably the
Chief of Station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the
American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two
U.S. embassies and this year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for
execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before
leaving office in January. Yet on July 14th he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet
and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down.
In 1985 Oliver North - the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who
doesn't appear to have a hand in the current war - sent the Navy and commandos after
terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography "Under
Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas, North wrote, "I used to wonder: how
many dead Americans will it take before we do something?" One could look at the
number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have killed before September 11 and ask
the same question. It gets worse, much worse.
A more complete timeline listing crucial events both before and after the
September 11th suicide attacks, which have been blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA
foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part
of the U.S. government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events which have
taken place since September 11th are based upon an agenda that has little to do with the
attacks. One wonders how these events could have been ignored by the major media or
treated as isolated incidents. Failing that, how could skilled news agencies avoid being
outraged, or at least even just a little suspicious?
1. 1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies
including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions
in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil
reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments
in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use
Russian pipelines the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments.
["The Price of Oil," by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The
Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]
2. December 4, 1997 - Representatives of the
Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support
for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly
because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997]
3. February 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President
John J. Maresca - later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan - testifies before
the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the
trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony
before the House International Relations Committee.]
4. 1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case
Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Q'aeda cell led by two known
terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in
August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by Robert
Baer (release date Feb. 2002).
5. April, 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion
investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol India loses access to
plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the
investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from
Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source:
The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002.]
6. 1998 and 2000 - Former President George
H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th
largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal
family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also
FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/carlyle.html.
]
7. January, 2001 - The Bush Administration
orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving
the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who
were living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous
orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family.
[Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast - Nov 7, 2001].
8. Feb 13, 2001 - UPI Terrorism
Correspondent Richard Sale - while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Q'aeda followers -
reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications.
Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh with
the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.
9. May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin
Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry
farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of
the Taliban regime. [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001].
10. May, 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized
tour while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with
Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani
intelligence connections and he is the recipient of the highest civil decoration awarded
by Pakistan. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was
described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani
counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news
agency, May 22, 2001.]
11. June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND,
warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack
commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli
culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.]
12. July, 2001 - Three American officials: Tom
Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary
of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South
Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that
the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book
released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verite´ Interdite," discloses that
Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the
Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, September 22,
2001; the BBC, September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001]
13. Summer, 2001 - The National Security Council
convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by
The Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28,
2002]
14. Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in
Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of
defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's
Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special troops in
Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were
training in Alaska and Montana."
15. Summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief
General Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who
was according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently
resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. [Source: The
Times of India, October 11, 2001.]
16. Summer 2001 - An Iranian man phones U.S. law
enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of
September 9th. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service
would not reveal any further information. [Source: German news agency
"online.de", September 14, 2001, translation retrieved from online.ie in
Ireland.]
17. June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com
states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate' US and Russian plans for 'limited
military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be
done by US and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source:
indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.]
18. August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic
militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man
is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying
lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on
Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, September 13.]
19. August 11 or 12 - US Navy Lt. Delmart
"Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an
officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals
them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star,
Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
20. Summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies
the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions.
This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired
CIA officer.
21. July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives
treatments for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA
official who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source: Le Figaro, October 31st,
2001.]
22. August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin
orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible
terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MS-NBC
interview with Putin, September 15.]
23. August/September, 2001 - The Dow Jones
Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major
stock market crash is imminent.
24. Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MS-NBC reports on September
16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent
attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.
25. September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise,
Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23, 000 British troops are
steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the
massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle
groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the
same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for
Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane
hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International
Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]
26. September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush
signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida
National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event
of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida web
site listing of Governor's Executive Orders.]
27. September 6-7, 2001 - 4,744 put options (a
speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as
opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a
dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased
through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director
of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy
Institute for Counterterrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/,
September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]
28. September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are
purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT - above]
29. September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show
any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option
purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September
10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take
off."
30. September 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels
of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which
owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted
by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV, No.7, October 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
members/oct152001.html. ]
31. It has been documented that the CIA, the
Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time
using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to
alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported,
as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent
stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S.
intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had
additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June
15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October 26, 2001, - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/magic_carpet.html; FTW, Vol.
IV, No.6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/sept1801.html;
FTW, Vol. 3, No 7, 9/30/00 - www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html.
32. September 11, 2001 - Gen Mahmud of the ISI
(see above), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He
is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Porter Goss
(R), FL and Bob Graham (D), Fl [Sources: MS-NBC, Oct. 7, The New York Times, Feb. 17,
2002.]
33. September 11, 2001 - Employees of Odigo, Inc.
in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New
York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before
the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any
investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in
the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv which is the same location as the
Institute for Counter Terrorism which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11.
[Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01; Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, 9/27/01; Ha'aretz,
9/26/01.].
34. September 11, 2001, For 50 minutes, from 8:15
AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes
have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of
the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to
intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority
waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four
simultaneous hijackings had occurred - an event that has never happened in history.
[Sources: CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.]
35. September 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the
World Trade Organization quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The
New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001.]
36. September 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the
sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against
the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a
seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence.
[Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]
37. September 15, 2001 - The New York Times
reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex
(A.B) Brown unit of Deutschebank.
38. September 29, 2001 - The San Francisco
Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American Airlines and United
Airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the NYSE
after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting
when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.
39. October 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The
Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the
Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across
Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, is
now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."
40. October 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice
Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New
York which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases
connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2002.]
41. Mid October, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial
Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack
losses. Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been
averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for
"affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations.
42. November 21, 2001 - The British paper The
Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the
Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the
country.
43. November 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story
headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that
farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are
"being encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible."
44. December 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and
opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the US government to help establish control in
Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of
the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order
to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, 12/4/01].
45. December 25, 2001 - Newly appointed afghani
Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal.
[Source: Le Monde.]
46. January 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints
Zalamy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of
Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime.
[Source: Pravda, 1/9/02]
47. January 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking
explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of
resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine
and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2002.
48. January 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker
phone in open court, attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon's
switchboard operator who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active
duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the
Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior Court.]
49. January 10, 2002 - Attorney General John
Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major
campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two
sitting Federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against
ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco who have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major
Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002 - FTW original investigation, The
Elephant in the Living Room, Part I, Apr 4, 2002.]
50. February 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader General
Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in
all spheres of activity" including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will
give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghani government workers. [Source: The Irish
Times, 2/9/02]
51. Feb 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports
that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late Spring of 2002 will reach a
world record 4500 metric tons. Now, let's go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro -
the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June.
The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin
Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a black
sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local
representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin
Laden's room.
"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about
having visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited
CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta÷
"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise
information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American
interests in the world, including its own territory."
"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a
meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details
about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions],
without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, "What
do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible
silence."
"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had
been put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the years. The
meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American policy.'"
Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff
that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1 contained quotes
from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On November 1, as reported by the
Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and
Osama bin Laden at any time.
Who do you believe?
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