WTC & Terrorism – three useful articles…

2001-09-29

Richard Moore

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From: "royeh" <•••@••.•••>
To: •••@••.•••
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 20:07:02 -0700
Subject: statement on corporate violence and evil 

Richard,
The following was posted on an online forum where I hang out.
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 From the New Hampshire Peace Action Listserv... 

The following statement on corporate violence and evil was
made by Jack Bussel of Veterans For Peace (Maine) at the New
Chautauqua in Unity, Maine, on Saturday, September 22, 2001.

Lest we forget, Maine Veterans for Peace seeks to encourage
people to pay heed to the most vivid evidence of the
destruction of human values wrought by our corporate system,
i.e. the imperalist U.S. tactics toward other countries,
which is often referred to as "foreign policy." These
policies have been consistently interventionist,
militaristic, brutal, racist and sadistic. My friends, we
cannot focus on the dismemberment of the corporation without
acknowledging the fact that our souls will not be saved by
achieving thriving local economies if we allow rogue,
out-of-control military machines and the corporate military
complex to continue directly, or through surrogates, to
savage the populations of the Caribbean, the Middle East,
the Baltic, the Far East, Africa, and South America. Through
out so-called enlightened policies of war and assignation,
we have provided aid and comfort, at one time or another, to
every murderous and corrupt dictator that has come along.

The existence of the corporation as an entity, and as it is
currently structured, must be ended, especially those known
collectively as the military-industrial complex, thus
bringing radical change to a corporate system that is so
destructive of our world, our peoples, ourselves, and our
souls. The changing of our corporate system will only come
when, and if, the corporation as it is currently structured,
is ended. A start toward this beginning would be to support
legislation that seeks to terminate the special legal
relationship the corporation has within our system.
Secondly, regarding the corporate military complex, the
demilitarization of Maine should be sought. Bath Iron Works,
convert or close; Saco Defense, convert or close; end
Department of Defense research at the University of Maine
and elsewhere. In other words, end Department of Defense
involvement with the economy of Maine. How sad it is that
the only way our workers can earn a living is to construct
instruments of mass murder. How sad it is that the only way
our young people can find a way out of poverty is to enroll
in the military. One of the Buddha's Eight-Fold Paths is
"right occupation." That does not mean working in an
occupation that builds a product whose only function is to
kill one family so than another may live. Labor must be held
responsible for the products they build. We in the peace and
social justice community must reject the exploitation of the
creed of "trade unionism" that would keep Bath Iron Works
and Saco Defense open. We know that there can be progressive
unionism which sees workers' interests as connected to
larger issues of public good. They are among the activists
around the world, from Seattle to Quebec to Genoa, who have
challenged the World Trade Organization's domination of the
global economy and environment. Progressive unionists have
seen corporations and their government servants as the
principal enemy.

Edward Arlington Robinson, one of Maine's premier poets, in
his poem "Reuben Bright", puts it much more elegantly than
I:

Because he was a butcher and thereby Did earn an honest
living (and did right) I would not have you think that
Reuben Bright Was anymore a brute than you or I For when
they told him that his wife must die He stared at them and
shook with grief and fright And cried like a great baby half
the night And made the women cry to see him cry,

And after she was dead, and he had paid The singers and the
sexton and the rest He packed a lot of things that she had
made Most mournfully away in an old chest of hers And put
some chopped-up cedar boughs in with them And tore down the
slaughter-house.

We should not sit here and discuss the tearing down of the
corporate slaughter-house without acknowledging that
corporate evil has always been denied by this very same
system and who insist that evil "...is never intrinsic to
the American landscape or the American character. Evil is a
deadly and unlicensed import, an outlandish disease smuggled
through customs in a shipment of German philosophy or Asian
rice. Innocent by definition, America invariably finds its
image of inviolate purity betrayed (at Pearl Harbor, Little
Big Horn, Havana Bay, 1998 & 1960, and now New York City).
And because our image of purity has been defiled we always
can justify the use of brutal and un-Christian means to
defend the American Corporate Empire against treachery by
others..." This quote, slightly adapted for my presentation,
is from Lewis Lapham's Harper's article, "The American
Rome," August 2001 issue.

The evil imported into our country these past weeks is a
most extreme, but very clear example, of our corporate
empire's "boomerang" effect: that in a curved universe all
things come back to their origin.

It is time to say enough to a corporate system that
humiliates and abuses "lessor" peoples, and it is time to
say enough to so-called "liberal" leaders who from time to
time play the union card, the patriotic card, the job card,
and, most suspicious of all, the "trust us to do the right
thing" card. Those same "liberal" leaders never seem to
encounter a "foreign" adventure they do not like.

Once again it is the innocent who suffer while the guilty go
unpunished. Note that more children die in Iraq during a two
month period as a direct result if our continued support of
sanctions and the continued bombing and which has been going
on for ten years, than have died in the current attacks on
our country.

To close I would like to bring to your attention the point
that the Declaration of Independence not only reminds us of
our inalienable rights but also our duty to throw off any
government that perpetrates a long train of abuses and
usurpations.

A beginning to this beginning would be cooperation among
peace and social justice groups in the electoral process.
Especially in bringing to the people candidates other than
the standard, corporate sponsored ones invariably seen in
our electoral process.

We Vets for Peace have taken Caesar's coin and have given
Caesar his due. Now is the time for redemption not
retribution.

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peace, royeh


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Delivered-To: moderator for •••@••.•••
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 16:23:01 -0700
From: frank scott <•••@••.•••>
Subject: we be in trouble (some of us)

fwd: if you find yourself in here....
Are you a terrorist?

Check out this document with the FBI's definitions of
domestic "terrorist groups".

http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress01/freeh051001.htm

"The FBI views domestic terrorism as the unlawful use, or
threatened use, of violence by a group or individual that is
based and operating entirely within the United States or its
territories without foreign direction and which is committed
against persons or property with the intent of intimidating
or coercing a government or its population in furtherance of
political or social objectives."

"The second category of domestic terrorists, left-wing
groups, generally profess a revolutionary socialist doctrine
and view themselves as protectors of the people against the
"dehumanizing effects" of capitalism and imperialism. They
aim to bring about change in the United States through
revolution rather than through the established political
process."

"Anarchists and extremist socialist groups -- many of which,
such as the

Workers'World Party, Reclaim the Streets, and Carnival
Against Capitalism -- have an international presence and, at
times, also represent a potential threat in the United
States. For example, anarchists, operating individually and
in groups, caused much of the damage during the 1999 World
Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Seattle."

"Special interest terrorism differs from traditional
right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special
interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than
effect more widespread political change. Special interest
extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated
violence to force segments of society, including, the
general public, to change attitudes about issues considered
important to their causes. These groups occupy the extreme
fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental,
anti-nuclear, and other political and social movements."

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Date:         Fri, 28 Sep 2001 20:00:13 -0700
From: CyberBrook <•••@••.•••>
Subject:      US terror plans
To: •••@••.•••

New book on NSA sheds light on secret
U.S. terror plan called Cuba invasion pretext

By Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, Sun Staff
Originally published April 24, 2001

WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret
plan to commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame
Cuba to create a pretext for invasion and the ouster of
Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new book about
the National Security Agency.

"We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the
Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,"
said one document reportedly prepared by the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba," the document says. "Casualty lists in U.S.
newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation."

The plan is laid out in documents signed by the five Joint
Chiefs but never carried out, according to writer James
Bamford in "Body of Secrets." The new history of the Fort
Meade-based eavesdropping agency is being released today by
Doubleday.

NSA regularly picks up the conversations of suspected
terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, says Bamford, and has
monitored Chinese and French companies trying to sell
missiles to Iran. He provides new details about an Israeli
attack on a Navy eavesdropping ship in 1967, suggesting that
the sinking was deliberate. And he reveals the loss of an
"entire warehouse" full of secret cryptographic gear to the
North Vietnamese in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War.

Bamford, a former investigative reporter for ABC News who
wrote "The Puzzle Palace" about the NSA in 1982, said his
new book is based mostly on documents obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act or found in government archives.
"NSA never handed me any documents," he said. "It was a
question of digging."

He said he was most surprised by the anti-Cuba terror plan,
code-named Operation Northwoods. It "may be the most corrupt
plan ever created by the U.S. government," he writes.

The Northwoods plan also proposed that if the 1962 launch of
John Glenn into orbit were to fail, resulting in the
astronaut's death, the U.S. government would publicize
fabricated evidence that Cuba had used electronic
interference to sabotage the flight, the book says.

A previously secret document obtained by Bamford offers
further suggestions for mayhem to be blamed on Cuba.

"We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida
(real or simulated). ... We could foster attempts on lives
of Cubans in the United States, even to the extent of
wounding in instances to be widely publicized," the document
says. Another idea was to shoot down a CIA plane designed to
replicate a passenger flight and announce that Cuban forces
shot it down.

Citing a White House document, Bamford writes that the idea
of creating a pretext for the invasion of Cuba might have
started with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the last
weeks of his administration, when the plan for an invasion
by Cuban exiles trained in the United States was hatched.
Carried out in April 1961, soon after Kennedy became
president, the Bay of Pigs invasion proved a fiasco.
Castro's forces quickly killed or rounded up the invaders.

Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
presented the Operation Northwoods plan to Kennedy early in
1962, but the president rejected it that March because he
wanted no overt U.S. military action against Cuba. Lemnitzer
then sought unsuccessfully to destroy all evidence of the
plan, according to Bamford.

Lemnitzer and those who served with him in 1962 as chiefs of
the nation's military branches are dead. But two former top
Kennedy administration officials said yesterday that they
were unaware of Operation Northwoods and questioned whether
such a plan was ever drafted.

"I've never heard of Operation Northwoods. Never heard of it
and don't believe it," said Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy's
White House special counsel. "Obviously, it would be totally
illegal as well as totally unwise."

Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, said: "I
never heard of it. I can't believe the chiefs were talking
about or engaged in what I would call CIA-type operations."

Bamford writes that besides the Joint Chiefs, then-Assistant
Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze also favored "provoking a
phony war with Cuba."

"There may be a piece of paper" on Northwoods, said
McNamara. "I just cannot conceive of Nitze approving
anything like that or doing it without talking to me."

The book contains many other revelations in its detailed
account of NSA, the biggest U.S. intelligence agency and
Maryland's largest employer, with more than 25,000 personnel
at Fort Meade, site of its global eavesdropping efforts.

Among them:

In recent years, NSA has regularly listened to bin Laden's
unencrypted telephone calls. Agency officials have sometimes
played tapes of bin Laden talking to his mother to impress
members of Congress and select visitors to the agency.

In the late 1990s, NSA tracked efforts by Chinese and French
companies to sell missile technology to Iran, particularly
the C-802 anti-ship missile. The eavesdropping led to U.S.
protests to the Chinese and French governments.

When U.S. troops evacuated Vietnam in 1975, "an entire
warehouse overflowing with NSA's most important
cryptographic machines and other supersensitive code and
cipher materials" was left behind. It was the largest
compromise of such equipment in U.S. history, Bamford
writes, but the agency still has not acknowledged it.

When Israeli fighter jets attacked the NSA eavesdropping
ship USS Liberty in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34
Americans and wounding 171, an NSA aircraft was listening in
and heard Israeli pilots referring to the American flag on
the ship. U.S. officials, including President Lyndon Baines
Johnson, decided to forget the matter, Bamford writes,
because they did not want to embarrass Israel. To this day,
Israeli officials say their forces mistakenly attacked the
U.S. ship.

Bamford says the reason for the strike was Israel's
desperate effort to cover up its attacks on the Egyptian
town of El Arish in the Sinai. The Liberty was sitting
offshore and the Israelis feared that the ship would detect
the operation, which included the shooting of prisoners.

Yesterday, an NSA spokesperson questioned a point made in
the book about the USS Liberty.

"We do not comment on operational matters, alleged or
otherwise; however, Mr. Bamford's claim that the NSA
leadership was `virtually unanimous in their belief that the
attack was deliberate' is simply not true," the spokesperson
said.

When he wrote "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, Bamford was
attacked by some NSA officials, who said his revelations
gave the Soviet Union and other U.S. adversaries too much
information on the secret agency. One former director
referred to him as "an unconvicted felon."

With the end of the Cold War, the agency has been less
guarded. NSA's current director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael
V. Hayden, has granted a number of interviews. Hayden
"cracked the door open a tiny bit," said Bamford, partly to
burnish NSA's public image and correct misconceptions.

Sun staff writer Laura Sullivan contributed to this article.

Copyright 2001, The Baltimore Sun

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