Those in the intelligence community, who had watched me work for a decade, had no doubt that I would do it.
CHAPTER 7:
SEPTEMBER 11
Finally you are told some facts.
Surely they make a great deal more sense than the semantic games played in Washington all these years. Yes, the greatest Intelligence Community in the world expected a major terrorist strike according to a 9/11 style scenario. We lacked actionable intelligence to identify airport hubs or flight numbers, which would have been necessary to stop the attack. Yet far more tragically, the command leadership necessary to coordinate that pre-emptive inter-agency effort — or deploy anti-aircraft guns on top of the Trade Center, or activate NORAD during its pre-scheduled military exercises— failed to mobilize.
It was not for lack of trying by those of us at the mid-level, below the leadership. We raised the alarms. Alas, Republicans at the command level chose not to act.
Instead, throughout the summer of 2001, the U.S threatened Iraq with military retaliation “worse than anything they suffered before,” if a 9/11 style attack occurred. Yes, U.S. Intelligence abhorred the concept of a 9/11 attack, including my own handlers. But a handful of puppeteers controlling the stage at the highest levels of government aggressively prepped some factions of U.S. Intelligence to accept War with Iraq as the inevitable outcome of the 9/11 strike. In which case, they made no effort to block 9/11, so they could fulfill their quest.
Adding to the confusion, most Americans have wrongly split between two stark choices: Either they think airplanes brought down the World Trade Center – or a controlled demolition using military grade weapons accomplished the evil deed. Until now, arguments on both sides have been framed to cancel the other out.
From where I sit it’s obvious that both the airplane hijackings and the controlled demolition were synchronized to play off each other.
9/11 was like a magician’s trick. All eyes were watching the airplanes on the left, while the real sleight of hand was happening on the right. In other words, the airplane hijackings provided a “cover” for the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers.
In spy circles, it’s known as a “cover and deception” operation.
It’s critical to understand that Intelligence is not a monolithic mega-entity, but a community of factions, broken down into small teams. Once advance warnings about the World Trade Center attack get factored into the equation, it’s entirely conceivable that some different team, in a competing faction—called an “orphan,” entered the World Trade Center in the midnight hours, and positioned explosives throughout the buildings, with the intention of maximizing the detonation impact on whatever day the hijacked airplanes struck the buildings.
All crimes require motive and opportunity. By my count, the “orphan team” had six months of warning time to acquire explosives and map out a detonation pattern. And that threat of War with Iraq provided the missing “motive” to do the unthinkable.
Regrettably, everything falls into place in the Terror Timeline once Washington’s advance threats against Iraq are factored in.
Does that truth satisfy you?
It has cost me a great deal to tell you. I have waited a long time and suffered through a frightening and horrific ordeal for my chance, spending a year in prison on a Texas military base without a trial or guilty plea, as you’re about to discover.
That ugliness was coming faster than I ever dreamed. However, have some patience, friends. First, some more truth. Because you see, just as I warned about the 9/11 attack, I was also a “first-responder,” covering Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation.
I told you. I know everything. Those facts have been concealed from you, as well. And they are more devastating than you know.
First though, think back with me. Do you remember what you were doing when you first heard that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center? Did you hear it on the radio, driving to work? Were you taking the children to school? Can you recall your split second reaction to the news?
I was at the Post Office in Takoma Park, my tiny peacenik hamlet in the suburbs of Washington DC. Someone behind me groaned excitedly that a crazed, grief stricken pilot must have committed suicide.
I recall my split second reaction like a punch in the gut: We knew it! Richard and I told them this was coming. Oh God, why didn’t they listen to us?
I rushed home and got on the phone with Dr. Fuisz. Shouting over each other at the carnage playing on our televisions, we commanded office workers not to go back inside the damaged towers. I demanded that Richard stop them. In my grief, I endowed him with super human strength to right all wrongs, fly down amidst the chaos, and issue vital instructions for the preservation of the crowds.
To no avail. On September 11, 2001, 3,017 souls lost their lives, and 6,291 were seriously injured when the Twin Towers of black glass imploded and crashed to the concrete floor in a frightening cloud of thermatic dust.
Fire-fighters and rescue workers died with them.
Alas, 9/11 proved that none of us are super human. Not to diminish the irresponsibility of the government’s role, but I seriously doubt the inner circle of U.S officials comprehended the full power of the blow, or the scope of repercussions, when they made the fatal decision not to block that hideous attack. In all likelihood, they expected only minor damage, according to the scope of what had come before.
To put that in context, the 1993 World Trade Center attack killed just 5 people—and wounded 1,000. The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen killed 17 people.
I mean, come on. Nobody imagined the Titanic would sink either. Right?
The Titanic did sink, though, didn’t it? And more government officials had been debriefed about this “imminent” terrorist threat in late August or September than Americans would like to imagine. Everybody we could think of had been warned.
Most intelligence teams would have concluded that airplanes alone could not bring down the Towers. If the goal was maximum destruction, it would require some help. And don’t forget there was six months of advance time to plan a “cover and deception” operation that would exploit the airplane hijackings, as a false flag to complete the job.
That’s how it happened.
Many times I’ve been questioned about Dr. Fuisz’s other sources, who fed him intelligence before the attack. Truthfully, he never revealed them to me.
But I have guessed. Shortly after the first tower collapsed—but before the second tower collapsed, Dr. Fuisz blurted something to me over the phone. It regarded the videotape of the first hijacked airplane flying over the Manhattan harbor moments before ramming full force into the World Trade Center. The video camera was held by steady hands in a controlled setting, not whipped around by an amateur bystander, responding hysterically to surprising, fast breaking events.
Dr. Fuisz demanded to know if I thought it was “an accident that a man and woman happened to be waiting on the sidewalk with a video camera, ready to record the attack?”
He was highly agitated.
“How often does a bystander have a camera cued up to record a car accident on the street? It never happens, Susan. It never happens.” He challenged me.
Then Dr. Fuisz said, “Those are Israeli agents. It’s not an accident that they were standing there. They knew this attack was coming. They were waiting for it all morning.”
In my grief, I was outraged and shocked by the images on television. I shot back something to the effect of—
“You mean to tell me, we’ve been looking for intelligence on this attack for months! And Israel knew the whole time? And they didn’t tell us?” I was madder than hell.
Immediately the phone line cut dead between us. I called him right back.
Very calmly, he said, “Susan, we must never talk about that again.”
We never did. But it prompts serious questions. Did the Israelis fail to warn us? Or did Israel provide a broad outline of the attack, but withhold crucial details that
would have empowered the CIA to defeat it?
Or did White House officials ignore Israel’s warnings like they ignored everybody else? Dr. Fuisz gave no hint.
A couple of details are worth noting, however. Dr. Fuisz was knowledgeable about the team’s intelligence identities and the existence of the videotape about 24 hours before the corporate media started broadcasting footage of airplanes striking the Towers, on September 12.
Now, Dr. Fuisz enjoyed absolute superiority in his intelligence sources. But this video must have been distributed to the top echelons of U.S. Intelligence with lightning speed to become available so quickly—before the second Tower collapsed. That would signify the video was filmed by a friendly Intelligence Agency like the Mossad. Only somebody with top access inside the CIA could pull that off so rapidly.
That also explains the extraordinary remarks by President Bush— how he saw footage of the first airplane crashing into the Towers before he entered the classroom in Florida. Bush guffawed that he thought the pilot was lousy. The second plane crashed into the World Trade Center while President Bush was reading to the children. My own cousin, Andy Card, whispered in his ear, when the second crash happened.
Is that significant? I could be wrong. But I would say it’s huge.
Obviously President Bush saw video of the first airplane crashing into the Towers. And so did Dr. Fuisz. It was filmed by the Mossad— which enraged us both. I am convinced the White House spiked the video’s release, realizing that our reaction would be universal. At warp speed, Americans would know that our ally, Israel had advance knowledge about 9/11—Or worse.
So why the hell didn’t they speak up?
One more thing occurred that morning. Dr. Fuisz and I made a crucial decision in the first hours after the attack. Whether it proved correct or not, I leave history to judge.
We agreed to avoid recriminations in the first days after the attack. U.S. Intelligence did not need to hear ‘we told you so’s.’ Not from us. It was not a conspiracy of silence. We never agreed to bury the truth. We only agreed to delay confronting it. Everybody recognized a terrible mistake had been made. Everybody knew our team had warned about the threat. We’d been highly vocal. What they needed most urgently was Our Help— and the help of everyone with special access to high level sources close to Middle Eastern terrorism. They needed us. Beating up the Intelligence Community in those first days would have demoralized the very men and women who now had to mobilize all of their energies to launch an effective investigation.
We wanted to contribute. And so we decided to wait before calling attention to our team’s accurate predictions. I always expected a Congressional inquiry to bring our advance warnings to light. It was a question of a few weeks, I figured, while everyone focused on the criminal investigation.
There would be enormous repercussions from our decision. I myself would suffer appalling personal consequences. We had no way of knowing how serious or terrible.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with best intentions.
For me, it meant the abyss.
CHAPTER 8:
IRAQ’S COOPERATION
WITH 9/11 INVESTIGATION
Everyone wanted to help after 9/11. Very few people actually could. I was one of those. There’s nothing grandiose about it. The U.S. required a rapid turn around of high value, actionable intelligence from all possible Arab sources, in order to launch a muscular response to Al Qaeda. Iraq and Libya were both known to possess a significantly higher quality of tracking intelligence on terrorist cells in the Middle East. As such, my special access to those embassies— and my history securing their cooperation with other anti-terrorism projects — carried premium value in any serious investigation.
To put that in context, by September 11, 2001, Paul Hoven and I had worked together for eight years, going back to the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Dr. Fuisz and I had worked together from September, 1994 onwards. I established contact with the Libya House in May, 1995 and the Iraqi Embassy in August, 1996. Our work encompassed significant parts of the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah, Yemen and Malaysia. However, primarily we focused our energies on Libya and Iraq, leveraging my anti-war and anti-sanctions activism to build relationships with diplomats on all matters involving counter-terrorism.
This was a well-oiled machine. Virtually no one else enjoyed such close proximity to either Iraq or Libya’s embassies. Both countries had been isolated at the United Nations for years, though Libya’s relations in Europe and Africa had started to thaw following the Lockerbie Trial.
As for Baghdad, former CIA Director, George Tenet, bemoaned that he could “count on one hand the number of agents working inside Iraq.”146 The simple fact was that Saddam tortured and killed them as quickly as he uncovered their duplicity. Saddam executed them as traitors.
Globally, there were just 5,000 Assets, making us a fairly elite group.1
That put me in a prized position in New York. Only three U.S. Assets covered the Iraqi Embassy— And my two comrades got drafted by the FBI after 9/11. Raed Al-Anbuke and Wisam Al-Anbuke were sons of an Iraqi diplomat, brothers who desired to remain in the U.S. after their visas expired. In exchange for validating their green cards and work visas,148 the brothers videotaped and photographed guests at Embassy parties.149 I know that because, as co-defendant, I received copies of their legal discovery and saw the paltry evidence against them.
The Anbuke brothers were very young, in their mid-20s, and worked at a dry cleaners and a video rental store in Manhattan.150 By contrast, I had graduated from Smith College and the London School of Economics. I had worked as a Congressional Press Secretary and Capitol Hill journalist in Washington DC. Throughout the 1990s, anti-terrorism was my specialty. Most unusually our back-channel was not covert, in that I operated with the full knowledge of Arab diplomats and Ambassadors, who understood my motivation as a desire to help end UN sanctions. This was an open and direct line.
In short, if the U.S. government was serious about acquiring Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation, they required my help. There was nobody else who could do it.
Under the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible—and possibly criminal— if I had refused. During my nightmarish federal indictment, I frequently pondered the irony of that point. Refusing to help might have got tagged as “obstruction of justice.” Many times I pictured that “alternative” court session— how Judge Mukasey might have lectured the Court on my stunning failure to provide for the community’s welfare. He might have denied my bail, or handed down a heavy sentence to teach everyone a lesson of the obligations we all bear to our society.
I would have deserved it.
After all, pressure to secure Iraq’s cooperation was intense after 9/11. The Pro-War camp hurled outrageous accusations about Saddam’s support for Al Qaeda. On November 28, 2001, Presidential hopeful, Senator John McCain declared— “There was a meeting between Iraqi Intelligence and Mohammed Atta [chief conspirator of the 9/11 attack] in Prague.”151
Two weeks later on December 9, 2001, Vice President Richard Cheney said on “Meet the Press,” “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague, and he did meet with a senior official of Iraqi Intelligence Service.”152
Republicans in Congress jumped fast on that bogus bandwagon, trumpets blaring.
I suffered no suspicions. From where I sat, Congressional leaders had zero comprehension of Saddam’s philosophy for holding onto power, or his deep paranoia of all Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists or not. He tracked those individuals mercilessly. What’s more I had full confidence that Baghdad would have supplied me with any fragment of intelligence on the 9/11 conspiracy, as I had demanded for months, if they had come across it. Providing that intelligence would have brought Baghdad closer to Washington and Europe. I had underscored that advantage many times over the summer of 2001. Helping us pre-empt the attack would have emphasized Iraq’s secular commitment and moderation. Baghdad understo
od that. They simply had nothing to give us.
In truth, throughout the summer of 2001, Iraqi officials raced full steam to topple the U.N. sanctions, actively wooing trade missions from Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf to rebuild bridges and overcome that isolation barrier. My back channel focused on the critical importance of resuming U.N. weapons inspections to verify disarmament But tantalizing side conversations promised the U.S. a bonanza of economic reconstruction contracts in various economic sectors.153 Trying to win over Washington, Baghdad dangled priority contracts in telecommunications, transportation, hospital equipment and pharmaceuticals, in addition to the oil sector. Whatever the CIA asked for, the U.S. could have. Diplomats swore a thousand times that it would be mine.154
After 11 years of hellacious misery, the end of sanctions loomed closer every day. Iraqi officials would have done nothing to jeopardize that progress. It was their greatest hope for the future.
In short, there was zero chance that Iraq had any incentive to participate in the 9/11 conspiracy, or withhold information about it. They would have lost everything at exactly the moment they were poised to triumph over all their obstacles.
September 11 was Baghdad’s tragedy, too.
I was never fooled by Republican rhetoric to the contrary. Yet even those of us who correctly recognized that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 should have been enthusiastic to receive Iraq’s cooperation with the War on Terrorism.155 Baghdad had some of the best tracking intelligence on the workings of terrorist networks anywhere— Saddam’s secular government loathed and reviled Islamic fundamentalists. In his paranoia, he presumed that sooner or later they would become “enemies of state.” So Iraqi Intelligence monitored them constantly, and tracked them all over the Middle East. They would often appeal to his government for sanctuary, anticipating his hatred of the United States. If so, they failed to understand that Saddam desperately hoped to reconcile with America. Getting access to that superior trove of intelligence would have made a phenomenal impact on U.S. goals— and Saddam understood that.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 16
