Chapter 1 – Game Theory and the Mass Murder of 9/11

I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.

—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001[1]

Unconventional warfare relies on game theory and the application of mathematical models to anticipate the response to staged provocations. Reactions become “perfectly predictable” in the sense that they are foreseeable within an acceptable range of probabilities. Israeli mathematician and game theory economist Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science. Co-founder of the Center for Rationality at Hebrew University, this Jerusalem resident conceded that “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”[2]

The target of a staged provocation can be a person, a company, an economy, a legislature, a nation or even an entire culture such as Islam or Christianity. With a well-executed provocation, the anticipated response of the “mark” can even become a weapon in the arsenal of the agent provocateur. Thus, for instance, America’s anticipated response to 9/11 would enable an agent provocateur to foresee that the mark (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With fixed intelligence, that attack could be redirected to wage a long-planned war in Iraq—not for U.S. interests but on behalf of Greater Israel.

Orchestrating a war with Iraq required the displacement of an inconvenient truth (that Iraq played no role in 9/11) with what people could be induced to believe. The emotionally wrenching nature of that event played a key fact-displacing role. With the nationally televised mass murder of nearly 3,000 people, a widely shared sense of grief, shock and outrage made it easier for the mark to believe that a known Evil Doer in Iraq was responsible, regardless of the facts.

That displacement of facts with beliefs also required a period of “preparing the minds” so that Americans would readily ignore the facts and put their faith in a pre-staged fiction. Those responsible for inducing the March 2003 invasion began “laying the mental threads” (mental associations) more than a decade earlier. Notable among those mental threads was the 1993 publication of an article in Foreign Affairs by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. By the time his article appeared in book-length form in 1996 as The Clash of Civilizations, more than 100 academies and think tanks were prepared to promote it, pre-staging a “clash consensus” five years before 9/11.

Also published in 1996 under the guidance of Richard Perle was A Clean Break (subtitled A New Strategy for Securing the Realm). A member since 1987 of the U.S. Defense Policy Advisory Board, Perle became its chairman in 2001. As an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Perle’s Pentagon post helped lay more mental threads for removing Saddam Hussein, a key theme of A Clean Break—published five years before 9/11.

Articles, books and even Pentagon insiders were not enough. People in policy circles were also required to lend the authority of their office to Israel’s cause. That role was ably filled by Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, when they co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Echoing Perle’s neoconservative themes in A Clean Break, their bill laid another mental thread when it called for the removal of Saddam Hussein three years before 9/11 and appropriated $97 million for that purpose. Distracted by mid-term elections and an impeachment proceeding stemming from his liaisons with Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton signed the bill into law October 31, 1998.

After 9/11, McCain and Lieberman became inseparable travel companion and irrepressible advocates for the invasion of Iraq. Looking “presidential” aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in January 2002, McCain waved an admiral’s cap while proclaiming, alongside Lieberman, “On to Baghdad.”

By Way of Deception

An understanding of applied game theory helps grasp the sophistication with which pro-Israeli neoconservatives “prepared the minds” of the American public to invade Iraq in response to 9/11. The confidence with which that game theory strategy was advanced could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Four days after 9/11, in a principals’ meeting with President Bush at Camp David, he proposed that the U.S. military invade Iraq. At that time, there was no intelligence suggesting Iraqi involvement and bin Laden was thought to be in Afghanistan.

Neocons were frustrated when, following the First Gulf War in 1991, President George H.W. Bush declined to remove Saddam Hussein. Wolfowitz then proposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. The Mossad already had agents working in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul for at least a decade prior to the March 2003 U.S. invasion.[3] Reports of Saddam’s connections to Al Qaeda also involved Mosul—reports that proved to be false.[4] Mosul also emerged in November 2004 as a center of the post-invasion insurgency that destabilized Iraq.[5]

The potential use of game theory to provoke the U.S. invasion of Iraq dates from an earlier staged incident when Tel Aviv displayed its expertise in deceiving the U.S. to deploy its military in the region. As with the war in Iraq, that incident involved a provocation that induced the U.S. to rely on intelligence fixed around a predetermined goal.

The pre-staging: in February 1986, the Mossad launched Operation Trojan, a broadcasting operation in Tripoli meant to make it appear that the Libyan leadership was transmitting terrorist instructions to their embassies worldwide.[6]

The orchestration: though the Israeli transmissions failed to deceive Spanish or French intelligence, U.S. intelligence was reassured when a trusted ally (Israel) confirmed the messages were legitimate. With Mossad operatives tied into terrorist cells throughout Europe, it was only a matter of time before an American would become a victim.

The provocation: an April 5 terrorist attack on Berlin’s La Belle Discotheque killed an American serviceman.

The game theory deployment: on April 14, 160 American, Terrarium British and German aircraft dropped sixty tons of bombs on Libya, killing 40 civilians, including the adopted two-year-old daughter of Libyan leader Moamer al Qadhafi.

In terms of game theory math, the “terrorist” attack at La Belle Discotheque was not just probable but “perfectly predictable”—within an acceptable range of probabilities. With President Ronald Reagan on record promising to retaliate against any country found to support terrorism, the orchestration was complete, awaiting only the death of an American abroad as the provocation required to trigger Israel’s planned deployment of the U.S. military.

The attack on Libya not only scuttled negotiations for the release of hostages in Lebanon, it also led to the retaliatory execution of American University of Beirut librarian Peter Kilburn who had been held hostage for 16 months. That deadly reaction to an Israeli-orchestrated provocation also served Tel Aviv’s strategic goals as the Cold War drew to a close. Operation Trojan raised the global profile of “radical Islam” as a plausible new Evil Doer and the next threat to American security.

In combination, those events also laid the mental threads (and “prepared the minds”) to enhance the plausibility of The Clash of Civilizations, the emergence of “Islamo-fascism” and, with 9/11, the reasonableness of a “global war on terrorism.” With Israeli confidence boosted by its success in simultaneously deceiving, endangering and discrediting its ally, Iraq and Saddam Hussein became Tel Aviv’s next target. According to the assessment of a senior Mossad operative five years before the first Gulf War and 15 years before 9/11:

After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We’re starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there’s no doubt that it’ll work.[7]

Laying the Mental Threads

Tel Aviv’s Iraqi campaign took longer than its Libyan campaign because Iraq was secular, modern and moderate (arguably because of its despotic leader). Its neighbors, on the other hand, were often non-secular, anti-modern and growing steadily more radical—often in response to serial Israeli provocations. Iraq also was allied with Jordan, a friend of Israel and an enemy of both Syria and Iran. As a follow-up to Operation Trojan, pro-Israeli networks began to saturate the political mind space with tales of evildoing by Saddam and the risks that his regime posed to the U.S. and others.[8]

As an operation for “preparing the minds” to accept as plausible The Clash of Civilizations, Operation Trojan also confirmed again for the Arab world that America would favor Israel in any Arab-Israeli conflict no matter how outrageous Israel’s behavior—including Tel Aviv routinely deceiving its key ally, advocate and arms supplier.

That opinion has since been routinely reconfirmed. For instance, during Israel’s July 2006 invasion of Lebanon, the U.S. dispatched to Tel Aviv an emergency supply of laser-guided bombs. Israel Defense Forces departed Lebanon leaving more than 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets, the bulk of them fired in the final hours of the invasion when Israel knew their withdrawal was imminent. That U.S.-discrediting strategy ensured that American-made munitions would continue to kill and maim Lebanese civilians, primarily children, long after Israel Defense Forces withdrew, leaving more than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, dead.[9] And ensuring the U.S. could be portrayed as guilty by association.

Rather than punish the Israelis for this war crime, however, the U.S. military replenished Tel Aviv’s diminished stock of munitions and the U.S. Congress enacted legislation in 2007 pledging Tel Aviv an additional $30 billion in arms over the next decade at a time when Israel was already the world’s fourth largest arms supplier. At every turn in this entangled alliance, Americans were made to appear guilty by association. We became an accessory to war crimes and an accomplice in oppression as self-deceit once again led us to believe Israel is an ally.

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the 2004 Swift Boat account Unfit for Command, again played a role in 2006 in advancing a prepare-the-minds agenda. Two weeks after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he and co-author Jim Gilchrist launched their new book Minutemen at Ground Zero, the Manhattan site of 9/11. The book’s message: due to the president’s failed immigration policies, Hezbollah terrorists were infiltrating the U.S. from Mexico. Had another terrorist attack occurred on U.S. soil, Minutemen would have added a thread of plausibility to the claim that the attack was traceable to Hezbollah-sponsor Iran.

In an earlier effort to prepare-the-minds to make such an attack on Iran appear reasonable, Corsi published Atomic Iran in March 2005. As with Minutemen, Corsi argued that Israel or the U.S. should preemptively bomb the “mad mullahs” of Iran. That too was a lay-the-mental-threads publication designed to help displace facts with what people could be induced to believe was true. Plausibility was enhanced when anti-immigrant newscaster Lou Dobbs featured Gilchrist and Corsi on Time Warner’s Cable News Network (CNN).

Fast-forward to April 2007 when candidate McCain described how President Bush and he agreed that America has a responsibility to protect Israel from Iran and an obligation to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.[10] Consistent with the pro-Israeli position espoused throughout his political career, McCain continued to provide cover for Israeli game theorists even as more mental threads were being laid to make it appear rational for the U.S. to expand the war to Iran.

Corsi again emerged in August 2008 with his release of The Obama Nation, a caustic attack on the Democratic candidate published in an attempt to help elect John McCain. As before, CNN promoted the author of Atomic Iran in a lengthy interview with talk-show host Larry King. With strong pre-release sales and a first edition print run of 475,000 copies, the book immediately topped The New York Times best-seller list in the lead-up to the presidential nominating conventions.

Entropy as a Game Theory Weapon

The Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising or, literally, a “shaking off”) dates from September 2000 when Ariel Sharon led an armed march to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. When, after a year of calm, suicide bombings recommenced, Sharon and Netanyahu observed that only when Americans “feel our pain” would they understand the plight of Israelis. Both men mentioned a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 Americans lost to terrorism—the initial estimate of those who died a year later in the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center.[11]

When successful, game theory warfare leaves the mark both discredited and depleted by its reaction to a well-timed provocation. Thus the strategic success of 9/11 as the U.S. was portrayed as irrational when its reaction—the invasion of Iraq—triggered a deadly insurgency. That insurgency, in turn, was a reaction to the U.S. invasion of a nation that played no role in the provocation. As the cost in blood and treasure expanded, the U.S. became overextended militarily, financially and diplomatically.

As the mark (in this case, the U.S.) emerged in the foreground, the agent provocateur faded into the background—but only after leaving dynamics at work that steadily depleted the mark of its credibility, resources and resolve. The effect catalyzed entropy in the form of widespread cynicism, insecurity, distrust and disillusionment.

Adapted from physics, entropy implies energy that is unavailable to do work. It also suggests disorder, deterioration, loss of information and systemic transformation. Throughout this account, entropy suggests the declining capacity of the U.S. to defend its interests due to the activities of an enemy within.[12]

Those masterful at game theory can wage wars on multiple fronts with minimal resources. One proven strategy: Pose as an ally of a well-armed nation likely to deploy its military in response to a mass murder. In this case, the result destabilized Iraq, creating crises that could subsequently be exploited to long-term strategic advantage. The resulting entropy undermined U.S. national security by weakening its military, discrediting its leadership, degrading its financial condition and disabling its political will. In game theory terms these results were perfectly predictable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.

In the asymmetry that typifies unconventional warfare, those who are few in numbers must devise means to leverage their impact. The game theorists identified in this account lay mental threads and manipulate the mental environment by shaping perceptions that become consensus opinions. By steadily displacing facts with what people can be induced to believe, the people in between amplify the impact of deception, enabling the defeat of an opponent with vastly superior resources.

Intelligence wars can be waged in plain sight and under the cover of widely shared consensus beliefs. By manipulating beliefs, intelligence wars can be won from the inside out by inducing people to freely choose the very forces that imperil their freedom. Thus the role of self-deceit and, in the Information Age, the disproportionate power wielded by those with outsized influence in media, pop culture, politics, academia and think tanks.

Thus, for example, by putting our faith in the wisdom of financial markets, Americans freely chose a mindset certain to undermine democracies on a global scale. [See Chapter 6.] By branding America with the money-myopic “Washington” consensus, we simultaneously discredited ourselves and disavowed our espoused values while “our” economic model unleashed financial forces certain to create oligarchies worldwide. Those perfectly predictable results made America appear hypocritical, devious and even dangerous—i.e., not credible.

Therein lies the force-multiplier of induced beliefs as a means to wage intelligence wars from the shadows. At the operational core of such unconventional, mental-environment warfare is found the people in between. Skilled at game theory and imbedded in the intelligentsia, they anticipate the mark’s response and incorporate that response in their arsenal. Pre-staging often spans generations as chronicled in the chapters that follow.

Multi-Point Persuasion

In addition to Senators McCain, Lieberman and Kyl, others with authority also fueled the deceptions that led to war in Iraq. Former CIA Director James Woolsey focused on persuading the public that Mohammed Atta, a 9/11 hijacker, met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Woolsey had earlier joined other neoconservatives in signing a January 1998 letter to Bill Clinton from the Project for a New American Century urging the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Though the Prague account was unlikely and has since been accepted as false, that report lent incremental plausibility to the “mental threads” then being laid to persuade America to view Iraq as a present danger. As pro-Israeli neoconservatives and the Israel lobby manipulated U.S. lawmakers to invade Iraq, Vice President Cheney delivered a series of saber rattling, prepare-the-mind speeches showcasing false, flawed and fixed intelligence. Moments of candor went largely unreported. For example, Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, informed a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002:

Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the real threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it’s not a popular sell.[13]

Zelikow omitted that candor in the 9/11 Commission report.[14]

Ernst Hollings, former Senator from South Carolina, offered a similarly candid post-invasion analysis for which he was labeled an anti-Semite. Like Zelikow, Hollings first noted that Iraq was not a direct threat to the U.S. When asked why we invaded Iraq, he responded: “The answer everyone knows…is because we want to secure our friend Israel.”[15] Only an occasional journalist dared speak out—and often only once due to the vitriolic attacks which immediately ensued. Before the invasion, Robert Novak portrayed the conflict as “Sharon’s war.”[16] Journalist Michael Kinsley noted that “the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel…is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it.”[17]

U.S. presidential candidates have learned not to challenge Tel Aviv’s agenda for the Middle East. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Howard Dean called for the U.S. to take a more “even-handed role” in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Fellow Democrat Joe Lieberman lambasted him as “irresponsible” and accused him of selling Israel down the river. Senior Democrats in the House leadership jointly signed a letter criticizing Dean’s comment as his candidacy faded.[18] After that, no other candidate dared suggest evenhandedness.

Note: the long-running friction between Israelis and Palestinians is often described as a “conflict.” The facts suggest it should more accurately be described as an “occupation,” the description used in this analysis.

Emotion Management

A confluence of events in the aftermath of 9/11 affected the decision-making environment in response to those attacks, as did the timing of incidents in the lead-up to a U.S. Senate resolution in support of the invasion of Iraq.

  • September 18, 2001—the first envelope was mailed to the office of a U.S. Senator containing weapons-grade anthrax (its origins remain a subject of contention).[19] The first of five anthrax victims was the photo editor of the Sun, a tabloid published in Florida near where cells of 9-11 terrorists trained.[20]
  • October 3, 2001—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced: “I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”[21]
  • October 4, 2001—a White House leak, traced to Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, confirmed that the U.S. would invade Iraq.
  • October 5, 2001—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned the U.S.: “Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense. This is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.”[22]
  • Sharon’s comparison of the 9/11 terrorists to Hitler and of President George Bush to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who sought to appease Adolph Hitler) elicited a terse response from Secretary of State Colin Powell.[23]
  • Within hours of Powell’s comment, Israel displayed its political invincibility when Sharon launched an invasion by Israel Defense Forces of Palestinian areas in Hebron.
  • Soon thereafter, a scandal involving Sharon threatened to destabilize his coalition government by threatening to remove the policy-maker essential for negotiations in the region.
  • The White House quickly silenced Sharon’s critic in government, confirming that even the threat of entropy can be deployed as a strategic weapon by those skilled at game theory.
  • October 6-8, 2001—in response to leaks, President Bush restricted intelligence-sharing to eight senior Congressional leaders. Congressman Tom Lantos rushed to the White House to protest.
  • The White House relented and the information flow re-commenced. When asked on Meet the Press in September 2002—six months before the invasion—about the prospects for war in Iraq, Lantos said: “The train has already left the station.”
  • Speaking to the Israeli Knesset that same month, Lantos boasted: “You won’t have any problem with Saddam. We’ll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we’ll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you.”

The facts suggest that Lantos was referring to Ahmad Chalabi, head of the London-based Iraqi National Congress. Since the mid-1980s Chalabi had been groomed for a leadership role in post-invastion Iraq by neoconservatives Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.[24] Chalabi is the serial liar whose “fixed” intelligence was routinely reported as news by New York Times reporter Judith Miller.[25]

Chalabi’s bogus sources provided false intelligence on mobile biological weapons laboratories. Secretary of State Powell humiliated himself and discredited the U.S. when he relied on Chalabi’s source (code name “Curveball”) to justify an invasion of Iraq in February 2003 testimony before the U.N. Security Council. The Man Who Pushed America to War, a 2008 chronicle of Chalabi’s exploits in deceit, confirmed that John McCain and Joe Lieberman were his earliest and most reliable Senate supporters commencing in 1991, a full decade before 9/11.[26]

Chalabi boasted to the Senate Committee on Appropriations in June 2002 that he placed 108 intelligence reports in major publications.[27] With appropriations from the McCain/Lieberman-sponsored Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, U.S. defense and intelligence agencies paid Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month through May 2004.[28] Rather than deny he lied to the American public, Chalabi bragged about his manipulation: “We are heroes in error.”

On October 2, 2002, random sniper attacks began around the Washington, D.C. area, killing ten people and wounding three over a three-week period. The effect created widespread insecurity and heightened anxiety as Washington became a city under siege the day before debate began on Senate Resolution 46, introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman, to authorize the use of U.S. armed forces against Iraq.[29]

Political Management

In late March 2002, in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing, Ariel Sharon dispatched Israel Defense Forces to take control of major Palestinian areas in the West Bank. President Bush demanded that Sharon halt the incursions and dispatched Secretary of State Powell to commence regional damage control meant to pressure all sides to start negotiations. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proved correct when he commented that Powell’s trip “won’t amount to anything.”

While Powell was in the region, the Israel lobby and Christian Zionist evangelical leaders urged that Bush back off the pressure on Israel. Describing himself “an Israeli at heart,”[30] Texas Congressman Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader (2003-2005), was particularly outspoken. So was Congressman Richard Armey, Majority Leader from 1995-2003. Armey conceded in September 2002 that “my No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.”[31]

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott also lobbied Bush to ease up on Israel. Christian Zionist evangelicals, one of Bush’s key political constituencies, urged that their members flood the White House with letters and emails. Christian Zionist leaders Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer demanded an end to the pressure on Sharon to withdraw from the West Bank. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the premier fundraising arm of the Israel lobby, sponsored a rally in Washington with the United Jewish Communities.
The House and Senate ignored Bush’s objections and passed pro-Israeli resolutions by large margins (94 to 2 in the Senate and 352 to 21 in the House). Both resolutions cited America’s “solidarity with Israel.” The Armey-championed House resolution stated that the U.S. and Israel are “now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism.” In early May 2002, a House appropriations subcommittee chaired by New York congresswoman Nita Lowey approved $200 million for Israel to fight terrorism, a proposal opposed by the Bush administration. They lost and President Bush reluctantly signed the legislation.

By the time Powell returned from the region and reappraised the political landscape, he knew who controlled U.S. foreign policy in the region, as did America’s commander-in-chief. The systemic entropy injected into the U.S. political system ensured that America’s senior leadership was precluded from doing the necessary work required to defend national security.

Fast-forward two years to April 2004, 13 months after the invasion of Iraq; Ariel Sharon was again in the Oval Office for a visit with the Christian Zionist president. On April 14, the two leaders announced in a White House photo opportunity that due to “realities on the ground” these two leaders—with no Palestinians present—agreed that Israel could retain land belonging to the Palestinians and that the Palestinians would not be able to return.

Prior to this announcement, all parties had agreed that these contentious issues would be negotiated with the Palestinians. As any game theorist could have foreseen, that joint statement set off a new round of violence in the Middle East—endangering U.S. troops, further destabilizing Iraq and discrediting America in the court of public opinion, particularly in the volatile Middle East, where the declaration galvanized insurgents loyal to radical Sheik Moqtada al Sadr.

As is common with Israeli-orchestrated provocations, the pre-staging ensured that the impact would include an emotional component certain to add outrage to the response. Just three weeks before the Bush-Sharon announcement, Israel had assassinated Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Because the Israelis used U.S.-made Hellfire missiles, many in the Arab world shared the belief that Washington approved Tel Aviv’s murder of this paraplegic in his wheelchair. Three days after the Bush-Sharon announcement, the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, ensuring that the proposed “roadmap for peace” lost traction and scuttling any prospect for peace (aka entropy).

Developed by the “Quartet” comprising the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the U.N., the roadmap had been presented to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on April 30, 2003. Yet months before its release, the proposal was criticized in detail in U.S. media outlets as neocon commentators ridiculed it as “a map without a destination,” a “map to nowhere” and “road kill.” After Bush’s June 2003 trip to the Middle East to promote the proposal, Sharon ordered seven assassinations in five days. Those murders followed his promise to Colin Powell in May that Israel would cease targeted assassinations in order not to inflame the situation unless the killings involved a “ticking bomb.”

In the interim, Israelis continued to provoke Palestinians at every turn with searches, arrests, house demolitions, the bulldozing of crops and orchards, collective punishments and generally ensuring that the Palestinians knew that they remained an imprisoned people and an immobilized population—as the peace process was held hostage to the mentality of domination, subjugation, intimidation and provocation.

Terror As a Tactic

The facts confirm that Israel and its collaborators in the U.S. are serial provocateurs and key architects of the terrorism against which Tel Aviv seeks America’s military and diplomatic protection and the financial support of U.S. taxpayers. The timeline below points to a common source of terrorism orchestrated by extremists to exert geopolitical leverage while portraying themselves as victims. In each of the bombings in Israel, the victims were killed at venues frequented by recent Russian émigrés.

The consistency of the fact patterns, moreover, suggests that only a stable nation-state with world-class intelligence capabilities could orchestrate terrorist acts with such perfect timing. In each case, note the role of time, place and circumstance in manipulating the public mind space (the mental environment) to advance an agenda—a global war on terrorism—sought by pro-Israeli elites and extremists:

  • On April 12, 2002, at the same moment Secretary of State Colin Powell was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel, killing 8 and injuring 22.[32]
  • On May 10, 2002, at the same moment President Bush was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel.[33]
  • On June 11, 2003, on the same day Ariel Sharon visited the White House, a suicide bombing killed 17 and wounded 100 on a bus in Jerusalem.
  • On November 11, 2003, while the president of Italy was visiting the U.S., Italy suffered its greatest wartime casualties since WWII when 19 Italians were killed in Iraq.
  • On November 20, 2003, while President Bush was visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, the British envoy to Istanbul was among 27 killed by a blast.
  • On November 30, 2003, while the president of Spain was visiting the U.S., seven Spanish intelligence officers were killed in Iraq, along with two Japanese diplomats.
  • On that same day, Senator Joe Lieberman warned in a widely reported speech that the war in Iraq could mark the beginning of a “global religious war” (aka The Clash) commencing with a civil war in the Middle East, with Arabs killing Arabs.
    • By January 2004, Iraqis were being killed and injured by other Iraqis, including Arab-on-Arab violence by suicide bombers.
    • By March 2004, 143 people were killed in one day in attacks on two sacred sites in Iraq.[34]
    • By August 2004, Joe Lieberman, senior Democrat on the Governmental Affairs Committee, was given responsibility for crafting the Senate’s response to the 9/11 Commission report.[35]
    • By September 2004, Senators Lieberman and Carl Levin had emerged as key architects of the intelligence reform legislation crafted in response to the report.[36]
    • By January 2007, Senator Lieberman had assumed chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.
  • On August 28, 2003, while pro-Israeli forces in the U.S. were lobbying U.S. lawmakers to expand the war by invading Iran, an Israeli ship (Zim Antwerp I) was impounded in Germany carrying Israeli arms and military equipment bound from Israel to Iran.[37]
  • On October 13, 2004, Maariv International reported from Tel Aviv that George Ben Bachi, a 36-year-old Israeli citizen, was released from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. A Moroccan-born Jew, he was apprehended near the Iraqi-Jordanian border with Barazan Tikhriti, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and Iraqi chief of intelligence.
  • At 3:55 a.m. on May 5, 2005 (7:55 a.m. in London), two IEDs (improvised explosive devices) exploded in front of a Manhattan office building that includes the office of the British consulate. In London, financial markets commenced a sharp decline an hour later just as voters were going to the polls. The political impact contributed to a sharp reduction in the Labor Party’s majority in the 646-seat Parliament—from 160 to 66. Had Tory leader Michael Howard—running on a platform opposing Prime Minister Tony Blair on Iraq—been elected, he would have become Britain’s first Jewish Prime Minister since Benjamin Disraeli.

Why would any media outlet suggest that these well-timed incidents were orchestrated by anyone other than a nation state with the stable intelligence, means, motive and opportunity to benefit from them? Why would commentators suggest these events are traceable to anyone other than pro-Israeli operatives working inside governments in the U.S. and abroad? Who, other than those within that subculture, would suggest such an implausible possibility?
Endnotes

[1] Reportedly announced in an Israeli Cabinet session and later described on Kol Yisrael radio, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority.

[2] Louis Uchitelle, “American and Israeli Share Nobel Prize in Economics,” New York Times, October 11, 2005. Aumann is a specialist in non-cooperative game theory. An article written by Thomas C. Schelling, co-recipient of the prize with Aumann, prompted film director Stanley Kubrick to make the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

[3] Seymour M. Hersh, “Plan B,” The New Yorker, June 28, 2004.

[4] In a Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 documents recovered after the invasion, the U.S. military acknowledged in March 2008 that Saddam Hussein had no direct operational link to Al Qaeda. Elana Schor, “Saddam Hussein had no direct ties to al-Qaida, says Pentagon Study,” Guardian.co.uk, March 13, 2008.

[5] In July 2008, The Wall Street Journal, citing the Kurdistan regional government’s representative in the U.S., confirmed that the envoy had been approached by neoconservative war-planner Richard Perle about oil concessions in the Iraqi Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Susan Schmidt and Glenn R. Simpson, “Perle Linked to Kurdish Oil Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2008, p. A4.

[6] The Trojan was a communication device planted by Israeli Navy commandos in Tripoli. The device received prerecorded digital transmissions from an Israeli Navy ship and rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, enabling the misleading broadcast to be picked up by U.S. and other intelligence agencies. Due to triangulation methods used to verify the source, the Trojan had to be planted near Libya’s known broadcasting center. That need was fulfilled when an Israeli operative rented an apartment and prepaid the rent for six months. [See the introduction re Israel’s worldwide system of volunteers (sayanim).] When the content of the misleading message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence and confirmed by trusted sources (i.e., Tel Aviv), the Mossad’s deception was complete. French and Spanish intelligence were highly skeptical that the careful Libyans would suddenly begin to broadcast their intentions, particularly when the wording was similar to Mossad reports on Libya. That suspicion was confirmed with the interception of an after-incident report. Familiar with Israeli duplicity and staffed by personnel less plagued than U.S. intelligence agencies by conflicting allegiances, Paris and Madrid viewed that report as further proof the transmissions were Israeli disinformation intended to provoke a reaction.

[7] Cited in Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 113-117.

[8] By March 2001, the Taliban were known in the region for their Islamic fundamentalism and their oppression of women but they had not yet been branded globally as Evil Doers. That portrayal emerged with their destruction of Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan (one of them 53 meters tall) built during the third and fifth centuries AD at a crucial node on the Silk Road. That widely publicized “cultural holocaust” created a consensus of Taliban evil doing at a time when the mass murder of 9/11 was still six months in the future.

[9] Michael Slackman, “Israeli Bomblets Plague Lebanon,” New York Times, October 6, 2006, p. 1.

[10] Associated Press, “John McCain Jokes About Bombing Iran at U.S. Campaign Stop,” International Herald Tribune, April 19, 2007.

[11] The first intifada began in 1986 and ended in 1993 when peace negotiations offered hopes of justice. To suppress this rebellion against people armed largely with stones, Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin adopted the “break the bones” policy whereby those throwing stones—largely children—were held down and their bones broken. During the first five days of the policy, Gaza’s Shifa Hospital treated 200 people, mostly for broken elbows and knees though three had fractured skulls. David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 7.

[12] Why would Israel weaken its benefactor? See Chapter 5 chronicling the emergence of a predominantly Ashkenazi oligarchy in resource-rich Russia while the fast-globalizing, consensus model-driven free trade in goods and capital pits the U.S. against China with ownership concentrating in both countries at an accelerating pace. Entropy traces its root to the combination of energy and turning. With beliefs and emotions uniting people during crisis (as with 9/11), the strategic entropy would be the fictions (versus facts) deployed when people were at their most vulnerable in order to shape outcomes that otherwise could never be achieved absent the crisis.

[13] Cited in Emad Mekay, “Iraq was Invaded ‘to Protect Israel’ – US Official,” Asia Times Online, March 31, 2004.

[14] On April 12, 2004, the author hand-delivered three copies of a 152-page research compilation to the offices of the 9/11 Commission. The copies signed for there were addressed to Mr. Zelikow, chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton. That compilation chronicled John Doe’s lengthy firsthand experience with the criminal syndicate chronicled in this account. That compilation described his meeting in Baghdad in early 1997 with Dr. Nidhal Al Hamdani, head of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program (mothballed since 1991), and the fact that Mr. Doe could not persuade U.S. State Department personnel to confer with him on his return. The account also chronicled evidence confirming that, shortly after his return, FBI agents in the Minneapolis office sought to frame John Doe for a fraud orchestrated in Poland in 1995 with the participation of Dr. Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command and Minuteman and author of Atomic Iran. Though the 9/11 Commission took testimony from more than 1,200 witnesses, Mr. Doe was not contacted.

[15] Senator Ernst F. Hollings, “Bush’s Failed Mideast Policy Is Creating More Terrorism,” Charleston Post and Courier (online), May 6, 2004.

[16] Cited in Akiva Eldar, “Sharp Pen, Cruel Tongue, Haaretz, April 13, 2007.

[17] Michael Kinsley, “What Bush Isn’t Saying About Iraq,” Slate.com, October 24, 2002.

[18] Dean’s wife is Jewish and his children were raised Jewish. An outspoken supporter of Israel, the co-chair of his presidential campaign was Steven Grossman, a former president of AIPAC.

[19] The anthrax mailings killed five, including two postal workers, and sickened 17 others, spreading fear on Capitol Hill and nationwide. In June 2008, the Justice Department agreed to pay biological weapons expert Steven J. Hatfill a $4.6 million settlement to withdraw a lawsuit he filed after he was named a “person of interest” in the investigation. Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, June 29, 2008, p. 1. On July 29, 2008, government microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins committed suicide, reportedly shortly after being informed that he would be indicted. On August 6, 2008, FBI officials presented a circumstantial case alleging that Ivins acted alone in mailing the anthrax letters. Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau, “F.B.I. Presents Anthrax Case, Saying Scientist Acted Alone,” Washington Post, August 7, 2008, p.1. See Eric Lichtblau and Davd Johnson, “Doubts grow on FBI’s anthrax evidence,” International Herald Tribune, August 16, 2008. On August 8, 2008, federal prosecutors excluded Hatfill from involvement in the anthrax mailings. Carrie Johnson and Joby Warrick, “Prosecutors Clear Hatfill in Anthrax Case,” Washington Post, August 9, 2008, p, A3.

[20] Online reports suggested that FBI investigations following 9-11 uncovered an Israeli-directed operation that dispatched Israeli “art students” to the U.S., including many who had served in military intelligence and electronic signal intercept units. According to those investigations, cells of four to six Israelis each rented apartments in close proximity to Islamic terrorist cells in Phoenix, Arizona and in Miami and Hollywood, Florida. Two other Israelis in the ring settled in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where eight hijackers lived just north of town. Independent verification of this account has not been confirmed.

[21] Announced in an Israeli Cabinet session, reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

[22] James Bennett, “Sharon Invokes Munich in Warning U.S. on ‘Appeasement,’” New York Times, October 5, 2001.

[23] Alan Sipress and Lee Hockstader, “Sharon Speech Riles U.S.,” Washington Post, October 6, 2001.

[24] “Chalabi had known Richard Perle since 1985, and he had known Paul Wolfowitz for years as well.” Chalabi’s early sponsors also included Douglas Feith and David and Meyrav Wurmser, co-authors with Perle of A Clean Break (1996) written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and urging the removal of Saddam Hussein as part of a strategy to expand the Land of Israel and “secure the realm.” Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War (New York: Nation Books, 2008), pp. 134-36.

[25] Miller’s reporting helped take the U.S. to war in Iraq with a series of stories that relied largely on Ahmad Chalabi and Douglas Feith in articles that were routinely featured on page one of The New York Times. A September 8, 2002 story published six months before the invasion reported that the Bush administration worried that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’…may be a mushroom cloud.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then repeated that provocative language on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. In the lead-up to war, “the Times placed more credence in defectors, expressed less confidence in inspectors, and paid less attention to dissenters.” Michael Massing, “Now They Tell Us,” The New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld granted Miller a unique “embedding agreement” with the U.S. military unit charged with scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. In effect, Rumsfeld gave Miller the “exclusive” story—had there been any WMD. Franklin Foer, “The Source of the Trouble,” New York Magazine, May 31, 2004.

[26] John McCain first befriended Ahmad Chalabi in 1991 soon after the Keating 5 scandal subsided and a decade before the 9/11 attack provoked the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War (New York: Nation Books, 2008), pp. 174-75, 231.

[27] Those publications included the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Atlantic Monthly, the Times of London, the Sunday Times of London, several newspapers in Australia and several Knight Ridder papers.

[28] “Pentagon stops payments to Iraq’s Chalabi,” MSNBC News Services, May 18, 2004. http://www. msnbc.msn.com/id/5003986/.

[29] The forthcoming Criminal State series chronicles numerous instances in which dysfunctional personalities are catalyzed to act out profiled needs in ways that prove strategically advantageous based on the time, place and circumstances of their behavior. It may prove useful for specialists in psychological operations to examine the circumstances surrounding the timing of these sniper attacks.

[30] Quoted in James Bennett, “DeLay says Palestinians Bear Burden for Achieving Peace,” New York Times, July 30,2003.

[31] Quoted in Jake Tapper, “Questions for Dick Armey: Retiring, Not Shy,” New York Times Magazine, September 1, 2002.

[32] See press release of April 12, 2002 from New York Congressman Eliot Engel from the Bronx, a borough of New York City.

[33] The Oval Office visit was widely portrayed by observers as a way for Ariel Sharon to boost his prestige. The attack reinforced Sharon’s opposition to substantive peace negotiations.

[34] John R. Burns, “At Least 143 Die in Attacks At Two Sacred Sites in Iraq,” New York Times, March 3, 2004, p. 1.

[35] Philip Shenon, “Criticism From Many Quarters Greets Plan to Split C.I.A.,” New York Times, August 24, 2004, p. A12.

[36] Senator Carl Levin has received more funds from pro-Israeli political action committees (PACs) than any other member of the Congress. Levin ranks first among the “Top Ten Career Recipients of Pro-Israel PAC Funds” with $727,737. Tom Harkin of Iowa is a distant second at $541,950. Janet McMahon, “Pro-Israel PACs: Disguises and Permutations,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2008, p. 26.

[37] Israeli TV reported that the shipment was sent by a firm called Piad, headed by Avichai Weinstein. On March 30, 2004, New York jeweler Yehuda Abraham pleaded guilty to operating a money-transfer scheme that provided terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles (typical of sayanim, prosecutors conceded the suspect did not know the criminal objective of the transaction he facilitated). Ronald Smothers, “Jeweler Admits Transferring Money for Missiles,” New York Times, March 31, 2004, p. A21.

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