Unanswered Questions: Thinking For Ourselves
Presented by... http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
A Controlled Burn
By Brian Salter – http://www.questionsquestions.net
For several weeks now the smart money has been betting that the whirlwind of admissions and apparently damaging leaks
about 9/11 has not been an uncontrolled disaster for the Bush Administration but instead has been a managed attempt at a
"controlled burn," which refers to the somewhat counter-intuitive firefighters' practice of lighting small blazes in the
path of an advancing wildfire in order to stop it. The name of the game is to admit one kind of wrongdoing in order to
obscure another that is worse -- in Watergate parlance, a "limited hangout." Obviously a major part of the Bush
Administration's strategy in spinning their prior knowledge of 9/11 is to direct attention to failures down the rungs.
In her testimony, FBI agent Colleen Rowley seems to have been willing so far to play softball and stay on the topic of
FBI "reform" while steering clear of the more critical issue of the deliberate obstruction of justice in the Moussaoui
case (because she violated regulations by revealing actual details of the case, this may have made her vulnerable to
pressure and threats of criminal prosecution). Thus she seems useful to the overall strategy.
The testimony of FBI agent Robert Wright, who has not been so warmly received, is much more blunt in focusing on the
active and willful resistance to antiterror investigations by FBI management (not to mention Bush's little executive
order W-199I forcing agents to back off the bin Laden clan under threat of arrest). I doubt he will be publicly praised
by director Mueller anytime soon (however, Wright's handlers, Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch and attorney David
Schippers, are both deserving of careful scrutiny because of their past involvement in the stage-managed dog-and-pony
show of the Clinton Impeachment, which insiders know was not simply a broadside partisan attack on a sitting president
but also was carefully designed to distract public attention away from the truly big Clinton crimes whose exposure would
have damaged the Bush camp severely; therefore, both are seen by some as duplicitous inside players, not outsiders. Keep
an eye out...).
I strongly disagree with the simplistic partisan approach offered by the following article (which has been very
popular), but I agree with the points made about the Bush Admin's diversionary tactics:
The Bush Scandal for Dummies, by Bernard Weiner
another interesting commentary:
Is It OK To Hate Bush? In which the president's carefully orchestrated dumb-guy shtick proves hollow and dubious
The power of the "institutional failure" ruse, which deflects anger and blame towards "bureaucratic incompetence," is
that it provides an escape valve for the public's cognitive dissonance, creating a false resolution, or syncretism,
between the need for comforting denial in the face of evidence for greater criminality and the simultaneous need to feel
that one is still being critically-minded and "sticking it to The Man."
The ultimate goal of the current smoke-mongering is to undermine the drive for an independent investigatory commission
into 9/11, which indeed already seems in some danger of fading into myth. No one is naieve enough to believe that a
"blue-ribbon" commission would wind up being truly independent or unbiased, but it is the only real chance of getting
access to more information which will flesh out and perhaps give final confirmation to the investigatory efforts being
made by the public.
No surprise... the Congressional committees "investigating" 9/11 are loaded with corrupt insiders with numerous
conflicts of interest:
Acting in incongrous congruity with the Bush Administration to deliver a one-two punch against the drive towards widened
investigation of 9/11 has been a small group of pundits amongst the establishment "left", who have engaged in the past
few weeks in a bizarre overkill campaign to label all of those daring to question the official line on 9/11 and openly
discussing the evidence for criminal negligence / complicity as "conspiracy nuts," and threatening such errant
progressives with ridicule and excommunication from "The Movement." This is covered in a new special section at
questionsquestions.net, "The Magic Bullet Dissidents." From correspondence to questionsquestions, it is clear to me that
these tactics are meeting with deep and widespread simmering outrage from the progressive grassroots, from whom the left
elite establishment have become desperately disconnected. Whom do they think they are serving?
Even stuffy and conservative military journal Jane's Intelligence Weekly notes that the real questions that need to be
asked are not about a failure of intelligence but about the decisions and agendas at the political level:
Some questions that the Intelligence Committee won't be asking in public:
Clearly presented timeline of the morning of 9/11 by Cheryl Seal. Just one facet of a body of evidence that cannot be
accounted for by an institutional "intelligence failure":
Although heavily partisan, popular site Democrats.com has been fighting hard to keep Bush and his cabinet from wiggling
away. Their new BuckStopsThere.com is a convenient summary:
petition:
Just at the point when the controlled burn seemed not to be controlling very much, Bush's recent announcement about a
plan for a new cabinet-level agency for Homeland Security has upped the ante...
Bush Intelligence Plan Meant to Blunt Tough Questions
Even Newsweek/MSNBC acknowledges that the new Bush plan is a ruse...
This is not to say that the new plans do not deserve genuine controversy...
Do the dots connect to a police state?
Building a modern version of the East German Stasi?
Or, if one compares the Patriot Act to Hitler's Enabling Act, then the current Homeland Security plans might be compared
to the Reich Security Main Office (especially given the grim inclusion of FEMA, well known for having hosted Ollie
North's infamous 80s-era REX-84 provisional plan for rounding up political dissidents and immigrants into detention
camps in the event of a full-scale war in Central America)
There are many layers of deception operating, not just one. The new Homeland Security plan distracts from looking at the
fundamental problems of the FBI and CIA; looking at these "fundamental problems" distracts from looking at evidence of
willful obstruction of justice by midlevel management; looking at this obstruction of justice distracts from the fact
that the Bush Administration already had enough warnings information prior to 9/11 to take additional anti-terrorist
measures, but did absolutely nothing in response; looking solely at the failure to respond by the Bush Administration
distracts from the fact that the exact identity of all the hijackers and the source of the 9/11 plot are still
unconfirmed, and there is a basis to believe that they were assisted from the inside, which adds an entirely larger
dimension to the puzzle.
On a much more positive front, a new non-partisan effort has emerged to give enhanced visibility and credibility to the
search for real answers about 9/11. UnansweredQuestions.org will be holding a national press conference on Monday, June 10.
The event will be moderated by Catherine Austin Fitts, President of Solari and former Assistant Secretary of Housing during the 1st Bush administration. Her
behind-the-scenes role in the cleanup of the huge HUD, BCCI, and S scandals, as well as her subsequent private-sector career as an economic reformer (who has suffered years of attacks
from the feds) makes her a uniquely credible and important witness to the acute, fundamental criminality of the Bush
Administration. In recent months she has made critical contributions to public research into the Enron / Dyncorp
scandals, and the fact that she is now putting her weight behind publicly advocating full investigation of 9/11 is a
milestone development.
Also of critical importance is the participation of high-level legal representatives of 9/11 victims' families. This
issue is now absolutely out of the underground!
The opening keynote will be delivered by investigative journalist Mike Ruppert.
more info:
Recent statement by Catherine Austin Fitts (a must read!)
I have high hopes that Fitts' efforts will have long legs, because if we are going to get out of this mess it will
require the contributions of many people like her, who not only see through the lies of the "War on Terror" but also see
through the lie of the "two party system" and the increasingly outdated concept of left-vs-right, which serves to keep
the people divided against each other rather than recognizing the power of the mannipulators at the top who have always
played both sides. The criminal connections between the Clintons and Bushes mentioned by Fitts are only one example at
the tip of the iceberg of this phenomenon... if there is not a big awakening about this, I fear that Bush's inevitable
replacement down the road will turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and we won't be anywhere close to being out of
the woods.
Historical example: When the BCCI scandal broke during the first Bush Administration, it was revealed that this criminal
cabal had been financing both left-wing AND right-wing terrorist groups. Manufacturing enemies... creating Hegelian
dialectics... this is the way the system REALLY works. As a further example, the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were both
secretly funded and aided in their rise to power by many of the same Wall Street elitists. The exposure of "terrorism"
as the newest manufactured & manipulated enemy will hopefully go a long way towards destroying many long-standing illusions...
ENDS