i) The seeming failure of western intelligence sources. After all bin Laden is already a prime suspect in other terrorists acts. How could intelligence be so terribly inefficient as to not know anything about what was about to take place: an action involving a fairly large number of people well co-ordinated, and involving a fairly long term preparation--flight training etc. Assuming there was any significant degree of central planning and minimal skills on the part of intelligence services there would be advance knowledge and action taken on the basis of that knowledge. If there was no action taken then this must be because the intelligence services did not wish to take action. If they did not wish to take action then it was for reasons of the sort Gulick mentions and perhaps others. This argument makes sense of the fact that intelligence services did nothing. Either you must reject the premise that the intelligence services have minimal skills or that there was any significant degree of central planning. I reject the premise re significant central planning because there is considerable evidence that terrorists operate with minimal central direction in order to avoid detection. However, I see nothing particularly far out or even right wing about holding intelligence services responsible. Consider the following:
ii) Various possible scenarios were considered by intelligence agencies to blame things on Cuba to justify an invasion. I am sure Pugliese has some of these at hand. I recall one scenario was to blame any accidents in Challenger? missions on Cuba. But there were other scenarios involving killing innocent people by the CIA operatives and blaming it on Cuba. The aim here is to give a window of opportunity for the US to clean up Iraq, Afghanistan, and secure oil suppllies among other things.
The idea not only has merit, it has evidence to support it. I find it touching that so many people have faith that the CIA would not knowingly sit back and let thousands of innocent people be killed if they thought it was in the national and their own interest. These people believe in a type of utility theory that sees nothing wrong in helping the Taliban and allies in a war that killed thousands upon thousands of innocents and established a fundamentalist regime that shackles women and undid all the liberalisation of Afghanistan. Why should they blink at the utility of killing thousands of their own innocents. Maybe as Gulick says they did not realise that it would be as bad as it turned out to be. Maybe their utility calculations were a bit off.
CHeers, Ken Hanly
P.S. If this theory is true it might also explain why there is reluctance to release the evidence that bin Laden was involved. Perhaps that evidence might lead to questions as to whether the CIA knew he was involved before the acts happened!
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Gulick" <jlgulick at sfo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Cc: <jlgulick at sfo.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 4:17 PM Subject: RE: oil angle?
> How many of you, when not in the company of conspirary-theory loose
cannons
> and wingnuts, are willing to seriously entertain the idea that elements
> w/in the CIA deliberately overlooked advance warnings of the 9-11 attacks,
> in order to
> justify either a) beefing up counter-intelligence budget and rewriting
> restrictions on special op assassinations and recruitment of human rights
> violating-moles, b) intervening in Afghanistan to engender the "political
> stability" necessary to secure the flow of oil from Central Asia to the
> Indian Ocean, or c) some combination of a) and b) ? To entertain this
idea,
> one need not believe that elements within the CIA expected atacks as
severe
> (in terms of destruction of human life and property) as those that took
> place on 9-11. One also need not
> believe that the Pentagon, the NSC, the State Department and so on had any
> knowledge or role in this.
>
> I do not consider raising and trying to answer this question simply a
> matter of idle speculation. I will try and make the political consequences
> of this question
> clear in future posts (if I have the time), but I initially I wanted to
> float the idea
> in this forum to see if any of you think it has any merit whatsoever.
>
> John Gulick
>