9/11 and US-Led Neo-Fascism
by Ed Rippy
www.globalresearch.ca 17 August 2003
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308A.html
The "War on Terrorism" and legislation such as the "PATRIOT" Act are the latest phase of a plan for US-led global neo-fascism which has been in the works for decades at least. Powerful elements in the US government wanted to take over Afghanistan and the surrounding area, with its oil, natural gas, minerals, and opium, to further worldwide US military and economic dominance. The terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 are reminiscent of previous "arranged" attacks including the Boston Massacre, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin "incident."
Of course, this is not the "classic" fascism of the 1930s; history never repeats itself exactly. There is no need for the Brown Shirts and the Black Shirts of the ‘30s, since there is no longer any strong Communist movement to defeat. Overt racism is out these days; "Islamic fundamentalists" (patiently built up by the US and allies) fill the bill now. But the essential elements (as identified by Prof. Bertram Gross1) of big business-big government cooperation, authoritarianism, and militarism are still there.
Powerful elements in US business, political, and military circles have wanted a global fascist order for a long time. (For example, in the mid-1930s, vice-president of General Motors Graeme K. Howard wrote a book titled America and a New World Order.) IBM, ITT, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, General Motors, The Chase Bank, the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank/Citigroup), and other US businesses and banks funded Hitler before and during World War II.2 (Prescott Bush, G. W. Bush’s grandfather, funneled money to the Nazis from New York.3) They also supplied trucks, oil, aircraft engines, communications equipment, transportation, and propaganda to the fascist powers.
Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, who later became head of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively, were heavily involved in this collaboration. Some of these fascists actually plotted a military coup against President Roosevelt, but it was discovered.
Hitler was planning to attack the US when he had developed bombers with enough range, and besides if Britain fell he would be able to take South America and Canada. Japan was also becoming a threat.4
Roosevelt decided it was necessary to get the US into the war, so he provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (People have argued this for decades, but recently declassified US documents leave no room for doubt.5 This is a common ploy of governments when they want to start unpopular wars; the Boston Massacre6 and the Gulf of Tonkin "incident"7 are other examples.)
The Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan ensured that when the US declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy would declare war on the US. After the war, the US fascists saw to it that most of the Nazi industrialists remained in place.8
The Office of Naval Intelligence recruited the Mafia to control the New York waterfront and help plan the invasion of Italy. The US military also installed Mafia chiefs as mayors of many towns and cities in Italy (they had set them up as an occupation force to release US troops for the European theater of war). Under Lucky Luciano, the Mafia rebuilt its heroin trade, expanding into Marseille.
The Mafia also kept the Socialist and Communist parties under control, a great aid to US foreign policy.9 In 1945 Roosevelt made a secret deal with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia to guarantee his family’s throne in return for privileged access to oil.10
The Saudis also got filthy rich from oil sales, and put most of their money in US banks and businesses — an estimated $750 billion.11 Ibn Saud had supported Hitler; the CIA, which adopted hundreds of Nazi spies, scientists, and military officers, set up a fascist network in the Middle East to assure control of oil supplies and to counter Soviet influence. It also brought many Nazis to the US and to South America.
One of the Nazis the US spirited away to South America was Klaus Barbie. Known as "The Butcher of Lyons," he helped set up the infamous "School of the Americas," a training center for torture and repression, for the US army in the Panama Canal Zone.12 (The school later moved to Fort Benning, GA, and has changed its name to the "Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Co-operation.")
Starting in the 1950s, the CIA built up the heroin production in Burma (now Myanmar) to fund the Chinese Nationalist Army as a bulwark against Chinese Communist expansion. In the 1970s, it expanded the drug racket into Laos, largely at the expense of the US troops in Vietnam. The troops brought their habits and connections home with them, leading to a heroin epidemic in the US.13
The US has used the drug trade to finance its covert armies and destabilize and corrupt governments; as late as 1980 the Bolivian government hired Barbie to manage a band of mercenaries which protected its cocaine shipments.14 The Nicaraguan Contras were another example of a US client army supported by CIA-protected drug dealing. Due to the outcry over Gary Webb’s "Dark Alliance" series exposing this in the San Jose Mercury News, the CIA Inspector General investigated the allegations and produced a report admitting that it was protecting the drug dealers who were supporting the Contras.15
In 1979 Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor and a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, convinced Carter to covertly arm the opposition to the socialist government in Afghanistan. Brzezinski’s plan (which worked very well) was to draw the Soviets into a military morass there and thus weaken it.16 Once again, the CIA built up a huge drug trade, and eventually Afghanistan became the source of about two-thirds of the world’s heroin.17
Osama bin Laden, son of an immensely wealthy Saudi family which is very close to the royal family, became a major recruiter for the CIA, rounding up footloose Arabs and sending them to the US for military training. The US then sent them to fight in Afghanistan.18
Bin Laden also financed and directed major construction projects for the CIA. The Saudi royal family (with CIA guidance) set up madrassas, or Islamic religious schools, which taught a particularly conservative brand of Islam called "Wahabbism" in Pakistan. (The Saudi royal family supports Wahabbism in return for the Wahabbis’ religious blessing.) The Taliban came from these schools.19 But observers have noted that the Taliban emerged able to operate tanks and other sophisticated military equipment, suggesting that the Koran was not their only subject of study.20 Dana Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Committee on International Relations, says the US saw to it that the Taliban took over most of Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew.21 The CIA and Saudi Arabia built up Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Service and established a huge network of terrorist training camps and heroin laboratories there.22
The drug trade, and other criminal rackets like prostitution, not only bankroll the CIA’s covert armies, they feed huge amounts of money into US banks and stock markets — the central banks of Colombia, Peru,23 and Pakistan24 rely on drug money to repay their loans from US banks, and large US companies which trade their stock in certain exchanges are exempt from reports designed to detect money laundering.25 International crime, protected by governments and their intelligence agencies, accounts for an estimated 20% of world trade — a seamy side of globalization rarely mentioned in the press — and the US is in the lead.26
Zbigniew Brzezinski,27 Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, and other US movers and shakers see the US as the rightful ruler of the world, with a "decisive arbitrating role" and "constabulary" (police) functions — without regard to the wishes of the UN or the people of the US.28
Control of Eurasia is key to control of the world, and the key to Eurasia is Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, etc.)29 — the oil30 and opium31 in the region are some of the greatest economic prizes on the planet. But global dominance is expensive, both in money and blood, and the hawks recognized (and stated publicly) that it would take an attack on the US comparable to Pearl Harbor to get the military forces and domestic political control they need.32 Given the thousands of terrorists they had trained and financed (most of whom didn’t know where the money had come from and were, ironically, seething with rage at the US), plans for such attacks are always in the works. In fact, many FBI agents had been trying to investigate al-Qaeda for years, but their superiors stopped them.33 They had known since 1995 that terrorists were planning to fly hijacked airplanes into US buildings.34
The Clinton Administration drew up detailed plans for an attack on Al-Qaeda (and Afghanistan), but they weren’t ready until the last month of Clinton’s term, so he passed them on to the Bush administration, which rewrote them for a bigger war (the final version reached Bush’s desk a few days before 9-11).35 Retired Clinton Administration diplomats told their Pakistani counterparts in July 2001 that the US was considering a "military option" and might attack Afghanistan in mid-October.36
Israeli, Russian, German, Jordanian, and Egyptian intelligence services warned the US of upcoming attacks before 9/11/01, and many individuals did as well.37 Even the Director of the CIA, George Tenet (who appears not to have been "in the loop"), warned Congress shortly before the 9-11 attacks that something like them would happen soon.38 Before 9-11, John Ashcroft,39 George Schulz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney quit flying on commercial airliners due to a "security alert,"40 San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown received warnings not to fly,41 and a group of high-ranking Pentagon officials canceled their travel plans without explanation.42
Although it has been standard operating procedure for years to intercept flights as soon as air traffic controllers lose contact with them,43 no intercepts happened on 9-11, and one fighter which was on a routine training mission near New York after the first airplane hit the World Trade Center was ordered back to its base.44
Endnotes:
1. Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism. Boston: South End Press, 1980.
2. Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1983.
3. Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1991).
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
4. Higham, Trading With the Enemy.
5. Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit. New York: Touchstone, 2000.
6. John C. Miller, Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda. Stanford University Press, 1936.
7. Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War. New York: Touchstone, 1972.
8. Higham, Trading With the Enemy.
9. Michael Zezima, Saving Private Power. New York: Soft Skull Press, Inc., 2000.
10. Daniel Yergin, The Prize. New York: Touchstone, 1991.
11. (London) Daily Telegraph, "Saudi Threat to Withdraw Billions in US Investments" 8/20/02
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk
.12. Zezima, Saving Private Power.
13. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.
14. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
15. Gary Webb, Dark Alliance. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998; see also
http://home.attbi.com/~gary.webb/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
16. Le Nouvel Observateur, "The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan." Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, 15-21 January 1998 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html).
17. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin.
18. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, interview with Michael Springman 1/19/02
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm
19. Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror. New York: Algora Publishing, 2000.
20. Amnesty International, Grave abuses in the name of religion 11/12/96.
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/ASA110121996
21. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Was U.S. Aiding the Taliban? Guest Commentary: 9/18/01
http://www.politicsol.com/guest-commentaries/2001-09-18.html
22. Labeviere, Dollars For Terror.
23. Peter Andreas and Coletta Younger, "‘Busting’ the Andean Cocaine Industry." World Policy Journal Summer 1989.
24. B. Raman, Heroin, Taliban, and Pakistan. South Asian Analysis Group, 2001
http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper288.html
25. Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering -- Comptroller’s Handbook. 12//00.
http://www.occ.treas.gov/handbook/bsa.pdf
26. Christian de Brie, "Thick As Thieves." Le Monde Diplomatique 4/5/00
http://mondediplo.com/2000/04/05debrie
27. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
28. Project for the New American Century, Statement of Principles 6/3/97 (http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm); see also Rebuilding America’s Defenses
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
29. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard.
30. House Committee on International Relations, Testimony of John J. Maresca, Vice President of Unocal Oil, 2/12/1998
http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm
31. Ed Rippy, Where the Narcodollars Go, 4/27/02
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=183902&group=webcast
32. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard; see also The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses.
33. Ed Rippy, 9-11 and US Global Hegemony
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=192883&group=webcast
34. PublicEdCenter.com, Terrorist Plan to Use Planes as Weapons Dates to 1995
http://www.publicedcenter.org/faaterrorist.htm
35. Reuters, Plan to Fight Al Qaeda Approved Week Before 9/11, 8/4/02
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=SAVJPT54ET5N2CRBAELCFFA?type=politicsnews&StoryID=1289570
36. Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ed Harriman, "Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack." Guardian (UK) 9/22/01
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4262511,00.html .
37. Michael C. Ruppert, "Oh Lucy! You Got a Lotta ‘Splainin to Do." From the Wilderness 9/4/02
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html
38. NPR, Morning Edition 9/11/01
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010911.me.18.ram The statement cited is at 1 hour, 5 minutes, 40 seconds from the start. Russ Kick has archived the statement
http://www.thememoryhole.org/tenet-911.mp3
39. CBS News, Ashcroft Flying High, 7/26/01
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtm
40. John Judge, The Strategy of Tension. Lecture at Fellowship of Humanity, Oakland, Ca 9/19/02.
41. Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, "Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel." SF Chronicle 9/12/01
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL
42. Michel Hirsch, "‘We’ve Hit the Targets’" Newsweek 9/13/01
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627963.asp
43. Air Traffic Control Intercept Procedures
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html#5-6-4
44. Judge, The Strategy of Tension.
© Copyright E Rippy 2003 For fair use only/ pour usage équitable seulement .
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308A.html