For four months I’ve been waiting in vain for the North American media to pursue questions about the startling events of September 11^th. Here’s what I want to know:  

The multiple hijackings are unprecedented. The first occurs at 7:45 in the morning. It’s a full hour before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. But it’s an hour and 20 minutes -- and after the second plane hits – that the President allegedly becomes informed. Think about that.  

Then, he gives no orders. Why? He continues to listen to a student talk about her pet goat. Why?  

It’s another 25 minutes until he makes a statement, even as flight 77 is making a bee-line for Washington, DC.  

In the almost two hours of the total drama not a single U.S. Air Force interceptor turns a wheel until it’s too late. Why? Was it total incompetence on the part of aircrews trained and equipped to scramble in minutes? 

Well, unlike the U.S. Air Force, I’ll cut to the chase. Simply to ask these few questions is to find the official narrative frankly implausible. The more questions you pursue, it becomes more plausible that there’s a different explanation: namely, that elements within the top U.S. military, intelligence and political leadership – which are closely intertwined – are complicit in what happened on September the 11^th. 

Why U.S. complicity, you ask? 

Well, to stampede public opinion into supporting the so-called war on terrorism, to justify a war on Afghanistan for a future oil pipeline, the grab for Middle East oil, big budget increases for the military, and the general drive for global domination by the American Empire. 

I know it sounds incredible. 

But here’s some historical context from this book, Body of Secrets. Its author is James Bamford. Bamford until recently was Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News tonight with Peter Jennings. I learned of this book on ABC’s website.  

Bamford’s information comes from interviews with, for instance, the former dean of the U.S. intelligence community and from government documents. It takes 80 pages to list Bamford’s more than 600 information sources. 

Here’s the story. It’s 1962. John F. Kennedy is U.S. president. Robert McNamara is Secretary of Defence. And Admiral Lyman Lemnitzer heads the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The CIA has failed in its illegal Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.  

JFK decides, Bamford writes, to back away from military solutions to the Cuban problem.  

But Lemnitzer, the CIA and others at the top remain obsessed with Cuba. Writes Bamford: “As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly ‘go soft’ on Cuba, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade … quickly slipping away. …attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead…”  

Continues Bamford: “Lemnitzer and the other chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion…” 

Lemnitzer comes up with Operation Northwoods.  

“We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba…casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”  

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.”  

An elaborate variation: create “an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft…” “At a designated time the duplicate would be…loaded with…selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]”… “the destruction of (that) aircraft will be triggered by radio signal.”  

The Cubans would be blamed.  

Finally, another variation is described by Bamford: “On February 20^th, 1962 (John) Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral…on his historic journey. Lemnitzer “proposed … that should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, ‘the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that…the fault lies with (Cuba)…” “by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.” 

Thus, Bamford notes, “as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn’s possible death as a pretext to launch a war.”  

The Operation Northwoods plan shows the Pentagon was capable, according to Bamford, “of launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting a (war on Cuba).” 

Can we be sure, therefore, that complicity by the Pentagon in the events of Sept. 11^th is entirely out of the question? 

Next week, a more precise look at the events of that fateful day. 

And what about bin Laden? I’ll have more on him too. And the arrests of people named as terrorists around the world.

WEBSITES

USATODAY.com (for animated map of the routes of the four hijacked airliners). This has been taken off the USA TODAY website.

Body of Secrets, Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency,From the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century, by James Bamford (author of The Puzzle Palace), hard cover, Doubleday, New York, 2001, 721 pages, ISBN 0-385-49907-8