Let's take a different approach

For some time now, I’ve been of the view that those of us who doubt the ‘official’ version of events (OV) are making little if any progress. I know that new information occasionally comes to light and new theories become fashionable, but neither do much to move us forward. Indeed, some even harm us.

I think the problem is that we are bound as a community by the notion that we have to prove some flaw in the OV’s findings, such as demonstrating that the towers were brought down, or showing that no plane hit the Pentagon. I believe these lines of inquiry are, ultimately, futile. Instead, I have argued here and elsewhere that maybe we should zoom out and start to work our way in rather than zoom in and work our way out.

So this is my attempt at doing just that. This post will draw on documented, historical events and put forward the suggestion that these form the broad basis of a worthwhile alternative line of inquiry into the events of 9/11.

OPERATION GLADIO AND THE STRATEGY OF TENSION

The term Operation Gladio referred to CIA-backed clandestine stay-behind armies, which were left across Europe after WWII to help train partisan groups counter the threat of Communist expansion. These armies were later responsible for a decade-long Strategy of Tension, a right wing, anti-Communist programme aimed at preventing Italian Communist Party from participating in a governing coalition.

Throughout the campaign, Gladio committed many false flag attacks and blamed them on Communist insurgents. These were conducted indiscriminately against both civilian and non-civilian targets, and included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano car bombing, the attempted assassination of former Interior Minister Mariano Rumor and the 1980 Bologna massacre.

In August 1990, then Prime Minister Andreotti revealed that the secret army had been hidden within Italy’s Defence Ministry as a sub-section of their military secret service.

According to Vincenzo Vinciguerra, one of the 1972 Peteano car bombers, operatives were required to “attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game [in order to force] the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

OPERATION CYCLONE

In 1978, Afghanistan’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan was overthrown and executed. Nur Muhammad Taraki became the first Communist leader of Afghanistan. Taraki’s reformist government set out a Marxist agenda, which included land and education reforms, as well as more liberal attitudes towards women. These were seen as an affront to the traditional rural and feudal Afghan way of life; they were also seen as an attack on Islam.

Mujahideen insurgents soon established a base in Pakistan and had turned to the West, in particular the United States, for support.

In September 1979, Taraki was killed and Deputy Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, took control. Soviet leaders soon began to question his loyalty to Moscow following reports that he was purging the opposition of Soviet sympathisers and that he was a CIA agent.

On 27th December 1979, the Soviets intervened militarily in support of the flagging Communist revolution.

In an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998, then US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that, “[a]ccording to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.” And further that, “[w]e didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.”

The CIA supported the Islamic mujahideen throughout the Afghan-Soviet War. In doing so, they relied heavily on the intermediation of Pakistan’s secret service agency, the ISI. Much of that support, whether in the form of recruits, finance or equipment, was distributed by the ISI to the mujahideen via MAK, which was co-founded by Osama bin Laden.

Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA is said to have helped train over 100,000 Islamic insurgents at a cost of up to $20 billion. In his book, ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’, John Cooley reveals that some insurgents were recruited in the US and were sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia. Other ‘unqualified applicants’ were brought into the US using visas issued illicitly by the CIA, according to comments made by the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah.

DISCUSSION POINTS

• Could al Qaeda be a modern-day Gladio-style army?
  
  
• Could al Qaeda’s terror campaign be a modern-day Strategy of Tension?
  
  
• if so, is it possible that the entire operation is being coordinated by elements within US government agencies, using the secret services of other countries as intermediaries in order to ensure a degree of separation?

I’ll add one more tantalising potential clue.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to being the architect of 9/11, he admitted to being a planner and/or participant in 31 terror attacks or plots. If his confession is valid, what should we make of his claim that, “I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals”? Because if true, this admission has potentially profound implications.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the then Indonesian Prime Minister claimed that the order to plant the bomb which destroyed the nightclub came from Indonesia’s ‘armed forces not from the fundamentalist people.’

In other words, the Bali bombing was a false flag operation and al Qaeda were simply acting under orders.