Author Archives: jsh54

What we learned from the Report of the 911 Commission XIII

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The “Planes Operation.”

The East African embassy bombings had persuaded Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM) that OBL was serious about attacking the United States. He renewed his proposal for al Qaeda support for the “planes operation.” In March or April 1999, OBL agreed to support the plan. (pp. 216, 223.)

 

Planning.

KSM turned to the preparation phase of the attack. KSM, OBL, and Mohammed Attef worked up a target list. The early list of targets for the “planes operation” included the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center. KSM spent the first months (Spring-Summer 1999) collecting materials: “Western aviation magazines; telephone directories for American cities such as San Diego and Long Beach, California; brochures for school; and airlines timetables, and he conducted Internet searches on U.S. flight schools. He also purchased flight simulator software and a few movies depicting hijackings.” (p. 227.) NB: KSM found a San Diego phone book in a Karachi flea market. (p. 312.)

Initially, the target date of the attacks was set for May 2001, ideally 12 May 2001—seven months to the day after the attack on the USS Cole. (p. 360.)

OBL also provided KSM with four candidates as suicide bombers. In Fall 1999 these men were passed through an advanced commando and terrorism course at an al Qaeda camp. By December 1999 they were Karachi, Pakistan, for further training from KSM. Here they may have crossed paths with four young Muslims coming to Afghanistan from Germany.

In late 1999 OBL seems to have begun recruiting several dozen “muscle hijackers.” I conjecture this because the eventual “muscle hijackers” all began breaking contact with their families in late 1999 and early 2000. (p. 337.) Alternatively, these hijackers may have ended up in Afghanistan for training when they could not get to Chechnya, and been recruited there in Summer 2000. (pp. 337-338.) In any event, there were about 20 of them recruited. About ten of them fell by the way-side during the next year: failing to obtain visas to the United States, backing out of the plan, or failing some al Qaeda test. (pp. 340-341.)

 

Bumps.

The four men initially chosen as pilots were experienced mujahideen and devout Muslims, but they were clueless about America. When it became apparent that not all of the men would be able to gain entry into the United States, the planners added a second component of the plan. This would involve destroying airliners in flight leaving from places in Asia where access could be gained easily. In December 1999 three of them traveled on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A group of Muslim students living in Hamburg, Germany, became radicalized by some means that still is not clear. In late 1999, fired by a desire to join in “jihad,” four of the group left Germany for Afghanistan. Here they were recruited by al Qaeda. The intent was to use them for the “planes operation,” but they were not told exactly what their mission would be at this time. By late January 2000 they were back in Hamburg trying to get visas for the United States; in March 2000 Mohammed Atta, the alpha dog in the group, began contacting US flight schools. (pp. 231-245.)

In May 2001 the “planes operation” had to be postponed until July 2001 because the teams were not yet ready. (p. 360.)

In Spring 2000 UBL cancelled the Asian component of the “planes operation” on the grounds that it would be too difficult to coordinate with the American component. (pp. 221-231.)

In July 2001 the “planes operation” had to be postponed until September 2001 because of another glitch (probably the uncertainty over the commitment of one of the pilots, Jarrah). (p. 360.)

 

Scottsboro Boys

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The Civil War ended slavery in the South. White Southerners then created a system called “Jim Crow.” In politics, blacks weren’t allowed to vote or to serve on juries. In economics, blacks got pushed down into “debt peonage” (a new kind of slavery), but so did many poor whites; their schools were lousy[1]; and most professions were closed to them. In 1896 the US Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of “separate, but equal” in the case “Plessy v. Ferguson.” If you were black, your only hope was to get north to New York City or Chicago.

The Great Depression hit at the end of 1929, not that you could tell in the rural South—cotton prices had been dropping for a decade.[2] As unemployment rose, lots of people went “on the bum,” living in “hobo jungles” and “hopping freights” [catching free rides on freight trains] in search of work.[3] This was a dangerous life. Hopping freights amounted to stealing and the railroad police (“bulls”) would throw you off a moving train. There were a lot of creepy people on the bum. Most “bums” or “hobos” carried knives for fighting and the few women dressed like men and sometimes traded sex for protection or money.[4]

In late March 1931, some white kids jumped off a freight train bound from Chattanooga, to Memphis, Tennessee, to report a fight with blacks on the train. A local sheriff in Alabama stopped the train. Two white girls on board said that they had been raped by the nine black males[5] on the train. A doctor examined the girls and didn’t say that they had not been raped. A lynch mob gathered, but the sheriff backed them down by himself and sent for the National Guard.[6] All were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama; all convicted; and eight sentenced to death.

This was 1931: the Depression just kept getting worse; Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t get elected until November 1932; and the “New Deal” was a way’s off. The American Communist Party offered an alternative to the mainstream political parties. They said that only social class mattered; race didn’t matter. Southerners—all of whom were Democrats—said that only race mattered; social class didn’t matter.

Both the Communist Party and the white chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court said the trial was a travesty. The United States Supreme Court agreed. So, new trials were held. One of the white women on the train recanted and said that neither woman had been raped.[7] Nevertheless, the jury convicted the blacks. The judge set the verdict aside because he didn’t believe any of the prosecution witnesses.[8] So, new trials followed. Same result: guilty.[9] Again, the US Supreme Court overturned the verdicts.

In 1937 the prosecutor dropped the charges against four of the accused—after they had spent six years in prison. The rest got long prison sentences instead of the death penalty. Three of them escaped, two to be recaptured and one who only came out thirty years later. They have all received pardons from the Alabama Parole Board. So, the South before the Civil Rights era.

[1] See Maya Angelou’s description of her middle school in Arkansas in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

[2] Alabama, “Song of the South”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHdXQAQHjd8

[3] You should always jump for the front end of the car. If you miss, you bounce off and don’t fall under the wheels.

[4] See the movies “The Emperor of the North Poles” (1973) and “The Journey of Natty Gann” (1985) for examples.

[5] The oldest was 19, the youngest was 13, so males, but not men. By my standards.

[6] His name was Matt Wann. He was killed serving a warrant on 3 May 1932. “Let us now praise famous men.”

[7] Which isn’t the same as saying that they hadn’t shtupped some of the black guys in return for a cheese sandwich.

[8] In the next election he was voted out of office and the prosecutor was elected Lieutenant Governor.

[9] Guilty of what? First, guilty of being a black male in the presence of white women. Second, guilty of having tried to make a bunch of redneck morons look like redneck morons by insisting on a trial. Not in the law books, but both were real crimes at the time in Alabama. “What’s got four eyes and can’t see? Mississippi.”

“Cabaret.”

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So, what’s a cabaret? It’s entertainment consisting of singing, dancing, telling jokes, and performing little bits of theatre. A Master of Ceremonies introduces each act and makes some jokes. Cabaret takes place in a restaurant or night-club, rather than in a theater. The audience can have some drinks or something to eat while watching the show. (SNL and Jay Leno are cabaret-on-television.) The first cabarets opened in Paris—naturally—in the 1880s. They spread all over Europe. Any place you had a big city, crowded apartments, people with some money to go out in the evening, and a sense of pride in being citizens of their city, you got cabaret. German cabaret developed along different lines than in France. Both the German and the Austrian empires censored what could be said in public performances. When those empires gave way to democracies after 1918, a flood of pent-up political smart-alecky performers hit the stage.   Mostly, the comedians didn’t write their own stuff. Instead, some really smart guys who wrote for the newspapers also wrote routines for cabaret comics. Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kastner, and Klaus Mann are good examples. Also, lots of the cabaret performers leaned left politically, so German cabaret often targeted the rich and powerful. Once the Nazis got into the saddle in January 1933, cabaret artists came in for a lot of trouble. (You try sounding smart with a broken jaw.) Still, between the end of the Second Empire and the coming of the Third Reich, you could hear a lot of funny, offensive stuff from a cabaret stage. The “Cabaret Red Light” in Philadelphia sort of falls in the German tradition.

The characteristic forms of this material were cynicism (you don’t trust the motives people give for their actions), sarcasm (you ridicule somebody, often conveying meaning by tone of voice), and irony (you mean the opposite of what you say and the hearer understands this). Cynicism: Paul Krugman of the New York Times thinks the “grassroots” Tea Party is a false front for a few rich guys who want to buy an election. Sarcasm: “Americans are the most charitable people in the world. Look at how we gave democracy to Iraq.” Irony: Stephen Colbert is all irony all the time.

 

The British writer Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) went to Berlin for the first time in 1928. He was looking for book material and boyfriends in about equal measure. Isherwood found all he wanted of each, so he went back several times before 1933. He later wrote about his experiences in Goodbye to Berlin (1935) and Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1939). The books were published together as The Berlin Stories (1946). These experiences provided the basis for a play called “I Am A Camera” (1951) by a very talented, but now forgotten, English writer named John Van Druten. Then (1955) it was turned into a movie of the same title, with a script by a very talented but now forgotten English writer named John Collier, but it suffered from the prudishness of the Fifties. (It’s difficult to convey decadence when married couples have to be shown sleeping in separate beds and wearing pajamas.) Later still it was turned into a Dr. Seuss book called Sam I Am A Camera. Ten years later, public morals were a lot harder to offend. [See: “Easy Rider.”] The not-yet-great producer Hal Prince bought the rights to the story, then turned it into a musical called “Cabaret” (1966). It was a big hit, so Cy Feuer, an important Broadway producer, decided to make a movie out of the play he had not produced. He hired the fabled choreographer and director Bob Fosse (1927-1987) to direct “Cabaret” (1972).

The movie won eight Oscars (including Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor). The original Broadway show ran for 1,165 performances. A 1998 revival ran for 2,377 performances. The movie made six times its cost in profits. What has made it so popular with people who live in a different society and culture?

“Conspiracy” (2001, dir. Frank Pierson).

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There are a bunch of movies about the Holocaust, but not a lot of good movies about the Holocaust.  Here’s one.

In the House of Lies. Ernst Marlier (1875-?) made a lot of money running a shipping company, then went into making and selling worthless patent medicines. The money rolled in. In 1914 he had a luxurious house built in the ritzy Wannsee area of Berlin. However, he was a fraud and he had a violent temper. By 1921 various forms of the law caught up with him as lawsuits, criminal charges, and a divorce ruined him. He sold the house to Friedrich Minoux. Minoux (1877-1945) had made a fortune in coal, oil, and electric power. After the First World War Minoux wanted to overthrow the Weimar Republic and had some contact with the Nazis. His money and contacts made Minoux and his wife stars in Nazi high-society after 1933. In 1941 he was convicted of having defrauded his own companies of an immense amount of money. Ruined and in prison, he sold the house at the Wannsee to the SS for use as a conference center.

On 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. On 31 July 1941, Hermann Goering, second highest figure in the Nazi government, ordered Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a “final solution to the Jewish Problem in Europe.” Heydrich’s initial plan called for deporting Europe’s Jews to Eastern Europe, where they would slowly die of over-work, starvation, and disease. Moving all these people would involve massive organizational problems. On 29 November 1941 Heydrich invited the representatives of the key government departments to a meeting to sort out these issues. The meeting was scheduled for 9 December 1941. On 5 December 1941 the Red Army counter-attacked before Moscow; on 7 December 1941 Japan attacked the United States; on 8 December 1941 Heydrich postponed the meeting. Eventually, Heydrich re-scheduled the meeting for 20 January 1942.

Fifteen men attended the conference: Heydrich, three of his most terrifying myrmidons (“Gestapo” Muller, Rudolf Lange, Karl Schongarth), his trusty assistant Adolf Eichmann (who recorded the minutes), and representatives of the Interior Ministry (police), the Justice Ministry (the lawyers), the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories (Russia), the General Government (Poland), the Foreign Ministry (all the Jews not yet under SS control), the Four Year Plan for the economy (Goering’s stand-in + slave labor), the Nazi Party (stand-in for the rising figure of Martin Borman), the SS Race and Resettlement Office, and the Reich Chancellery (the office that coordinated the bureaucracy).

The meeting wasn’t about “what” to do. That had already been decided. The meeting was about “who is in charge.” Heydrich wanted to make it clear to everyone that he was in command and would brook no opposition. There are three things to look for in the proceedings of the conference. First, there is the veiled or Aesopian language. Nobody comes right out and says they plan to gas millions of people. No one who attended had any trouble figuring out what Heydrich meant. Second, the meeting got bogged down in petty details. That’s what committee meetings are like. Try not to be on committees. Third, focus on the push-back from Wilhelm Stuckart of the Interior Ministry, and Friedrich Kritzinger of the Reich Chancellery.

What them befell? The Czechs killed Heydrich in 1942; the Americans killed Roland Friesler, the Russians killed Lange and Muller, Alfred Meyer killed himself, and the Nazis killed Martin Luther, all in 1945. The Poles hanged Schongarth in 1946 and Josef Buhler in 1948. Friedrich Kritzinger testified at Nuremberg, then died in 1947. Wilhelm Stuckart died in 1951. The Israelis hanged Adolf Eichmann in 1962. The other four–Erich Neumann, Otto Hofman, Georg Leibrandt, and Gerhard Klopfer—did a little time in prison, then died in the 1980s.

Only the imprisoned Martin Luther didn’t have time to destroy his copy of the minutes.  It’s how we know what happened at the meeting.

Bob Marley meets Adolf Hitler: Reggae.

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When the Germans over-ran western Europe in summer 1940, the Americans took over the defense of a bunch of British possessions in the Americas: in the Bahamas, Guyana, the Leeward Islands, and southern Jamaica. Lonely American kids far from home brought American music with them. Later on, radio stations of the Armed Forces Network played American music all over the world. People with radios listened to that music. It wasn’t Lawrence Welk. In the Caribbean, people could hear both jazz and rhythm and blues.

Traditionally, Jamaicans had listened to live music, usually in dance-halls. After the Second World War, radio DJs and music promoters began running what were called “sound systems.” These were flat-bed trucks with generators, big speakers, and turntables. The idea was to roll into some poor neighborhood, begin blasting music, draw a crowd, and sell goat-jerky and white lightning to the audience. This innovative approach to marketing soon won large audiences. The trouble was that it threatened to put the owners of dance-halls out of business. How to regain market share? They started hiring “rude boys” to go cause a ruckus at “sound system” street dances.  Cut somebody’s face with a straight-razor, stuff like that.  This made the dance halls seem somehow…safer.  How were the “sound system” promoters going to regain market share? They hired their own “rude boys.” Rinse and repeat.  So, Jamaican music started to acquire a certain association in some minds—those of the venue-owners, the performers, the audience, the “rude boys” themselves–with violence.

Then the Americans moved on to rock and roll, leaving R and B behind.  Jamaicans didn’t like rock and roll as much as they liked R and B, so the “sound systems” started paying for original local music to record and play.  “Duke” Reid opened the first Jamaican studio in 1959.

There is an interesting progression in Jamaican music.  Mento is a kind of Jamaican folk music that developed in the 1940s and became very popular in the 1950s.  It sounds like calypso to my ignorant ear, but purists insist there is a difference.   Mento emerged as dance-hall music that was popular with poor people.  Hence, Marcus Brewer’s analysis of rap music applies to mento.[1]  Ska then added influences from American jazz and rhythm and blues in the late 1950s. It replaced mento (without destroying it).  It also spread to Britain, where it became popular with “mods” and later with “skinheads.”  Rocksteady then emerged about 1966 as a slowed-down version of ska.  By mid-1968 music had moved on yet again to reggae.  Part of the explanation for this is the growing influence of Memphis and Detroit “soul” music. (See: Motown, Stax, and Atlantic Records.)  Reggae emerged from this line of succession in the late 1960s.

What’s distinctive about reggae? It’s the mood as much as anything else (I would argue).  Partly, this comes from the emphasis on suffering and hardship in the wake of the failed hopes of the early Sixties. Partly, the simple chord progressions or—according to my technical advisor–smoking a lot of ganja encourage a meditative mood.  Partly, many of its musicians and followers were Rastafaris whose faith explained past suffering and promised future redemption.

How did reggae get to the United States?  The character “Pussy Galore” in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel was modeled on Blanche Lindo.  Her son, Chris Blackwell (1959- ) founded Island Records in Jamaica in 1958, then moved it to Britain in 1962. Here he promoted Jamaican music for a British audience.  He produced the movie “The Harder They Come” (1972) and the first Bob Marley and the Wailers album outside Jamaica “Catch a Fire” (1973).  Eric Clapton covered “I Shot the Sheriff” (1974), introducing Marley to a huge American audience. The Wailers toured the US with Johnny Nash (1974), but got fired for being much more popular.

[1] “They’re pretty angry most of the time, but sometimes they just want to have sex.”–“About A Boy” (2002).

Big Pharma

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What we think of as medicine is a fairly new development. Doctors used to be able to set broken bones, sew up cuts, lop off limbs, and give you an emetic. This changed in the later 19th Century, thanks to the addition of chemistry to medicine. Anesthesia and disinfectants made invasive surgery possible. No screaming, no gangrene. Then insulin (1921) and penicillin (1928) were discovered. Direct chemical treatment of disorders became possible. After the Second World War scientific research was applied in a systematic way to expanding knowledge of biology and techniques for producing drugs improved. The results of this combination appeared in a flood of new drugs and the growth of huge pharmaceutical companies. The new products included oral contraceptives, blood-pressure medicines, and psychiatric drugs. Cancer drugs began to come on-line in the 1970s. More recently, there have been drugs to treat cholesterol, acid-reflux, and asthma, as well as Viagra–and anti-depressants for when that doesn’t work. Then there is the terrible plague of male pattern baldness.

There have been several important developments in my life-time.

First, rules for medical trials became more elaborate and restrictive. Between 1957 and 1961 doctors prescribed a new tranquilizer to pregnant women to counter morning-sickness. Unfortunately, thalidomide caused terrible birth defects. In 1962 Congress amended the law governing the Food and Drug Administration to require that new pharmaceuticals prove not only safety, but also “efficacy”: the ability to produce a specific desired effect (and not some other effect or no effect) before a drug could be released. In 1964 the World Medical Association established rules requiring testing before the release of any new drug.   Again, pharmaceutical companies were required to prove “efficacy.” These reforms greatly extended the time and cost invested before drugs were released. In recent years, medical crises—like heart-disease and AIDS—has created a countervailing pressure for accelerated testing and approval.

Second, the pharmaceutical business became highly concentrated and vertically integrated. These are business terms, but it is a business. You should learn what they mean—although I didn’t when I was your age.) As pharmaceutical research sought treatments for complicated illnesses, research and development became more expensive. As research and development became more expensive, companies faced a greater risk that they would not be able to cover their costs before any patent ran out. Therefore, during the 1970s many countries passed laws strengthening and extending the time limit that the patents issued to pharmaceutical companies. These were intended to prevent generic producers from just figuring out the chemical basis of a drug, then producing it without having to bear the high costs of research. During the 1980s a wave of “buy-outs” of small bio-tech firms by big pharmaceutical companies took place. Today most pharmaceutical research, production, and sales are concentrated in fewer than twenty large companies. These companies are based in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, although they operate internationally. This is called “concentration.” Each of these companies researches, develops, manufactures, and markets the product. This is called “vertical integration.” Critics refer to this complex as “Big Pharma.”

Most prescription drug use took place in a few rich countries (US, EU, Japan). Don’t get sick somewhere else. (My son’s room-mate got bit by a rabid dog while in Bolivia one summer. He had to fly home to get the injections to save his life. What if he had been Bolivian?) However, China, Russia, and South Korea expanded sales by 81 percent in 2006. Pharmaceuticals are already the most profitable business in America. Now a big money harvest looms in the developing world.

The GWOT if Israel was in charge.

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What if Israel ran the Global War on Terror (GWOT)?

On the wall of his office Meir Dagan had an old black-and-white photograph of his grandfather about to be shot by a German in Russia during the Second World War. Must be some German soldier’s snap-shot, something he could keep as a trophy or send home to his girlfriend. I don’t know where Dagan got it. Probably did a lot of looking through the picture collection at Yad Vashem. This may not be psychologically healthy. Perhaps he should have considered grief counseling. On the other hand, Dagan was the head of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. He could look at it anytime he wanted during the day while he tried to figure out how to deal with Israel’s enemies.

One of the units under Dagan’s command was called “Kidon.” That’s the Hebrew word for bayonet. (Actually, it probably means “dagger” or “six inches of honed bronze” because Hebrew is a language from the many days ago before Bayonne even existed.) You go to Barnes and Noble, you’ll find a bunch of books about American snipers with 500 “kills” or sumshit like that. Kind of FPSy if you ask me. I don’t think I’ve run across books about sticking a blade in somebody, feeling it grate on a rib, inhaling the coppery smell of blood, hearing the guy gasping for breath like it’s sex. Nothing FPS about that. Kidon typifies Israel’s response to terrorism.

After the 1972 Munich Olympics, Kidon launched “Operation Wrath of God.” (See: “Munich.”) The Israelis killed eleven PLO terrorists believed to have been involved in the attack. It took seven years. Apparently, they’re tenacious and patient.

At least once, in Lillehamer, Norway, they killed a complete innocent. In front of his pregnant wife. Apparently, they don’t get thrown off-track by remorse over errors.

After Hamas rose to power in the Gaza Strip in 1993, it sent many suicide bombers into Israel. The Israelis didn’t take this lying down. In 1996 they palmed off a “burner” filled with explosives on Yahya Ayyash, the really talented chief bomb maker for Hamas; in 1997 they tried to kill Khaled Meshal, a Hamas leader, by injecting poison into his ear; in 2004 they killed the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, with an Apache gunship; in 2008 they put a bomb in the headrest of a Hamas leader’s car in Damascus. In January 2010 they suffocated the chief contact between Hamas and Iran in his luxury hotel room in Dubai. Apparently, they focus on the enemy leadership. Just keep mowing the lawn.

When Hamas took full control of Gaza in 2007, it fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Israel responded by blockading Gaza: it will not allow in cement, steel, cars, computers, and lots of ordinary food; its navy will not let fishing boats proceed more than three miles from shore; it will not allow any Palestinians out of Gaza. From December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli forces bombarded the Gaza Strip. Anything big (police stations, factories, government buildings, schools, hospitals) got blown up; 1,300 people got killed; tens of thousands got “dishoused”—as the RAF used to describe the result of the area bombing of German cities. Apparently, they don’t care much about making a bad impression on world opinion.

At the same time, Israeli leaders began to talk about doing a deal with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights. Syria is the chief supporter of Hamas. Probably, the price of the Golan for Syria would include helping eliminate the ability of Hamas to engage in attacks on Israel—before the Syrians get back the Golan. (See: “Michael Collins.”) Apparently, they adapt to changing circumstances and will talk to their enemies.

So, tenacity, patience, focus, a thick hide to criticism, and adaptability are keys traits. The enemy hasn’t gone away, but neither have the Israelis. They live with a long struggle.

What we learned from the report of the 911 Commission XII

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On 12 October 2000, an al Qaeda team staged a suicide bombing against the American warship, the USS Cole while it was at anchor in the Yemen port of Aden. The attack killed 17 American sailors.

Although the CIA “described initial Yemeni support after the Cole [bombing] as ‘slow and inadequate,’…the Yemenis provided strong evidence connecting the Cole attack to al Qaeda during the second half of November, identifying individual operatives whom the United States knew were part of al Qaeda. During December the United States was able to corroborate this evidence. But the United States did not have evidence about Bin Laden’s personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri[1] and Khallad[2] were captured in 2002 and 2003.” (p. 278.)

The Yemenis arrested two of the surviving members of the Cole team; extracted from them the names and descriptions of Nashiri, their immediate commander, and Khallad, the liaison who came from Afghanistan; and suggested to the Americans (correctly) that Khallad was actually Tawfiq bin Attash. (p. 277.) Both Nashiri and Khallad were known to the Americans to have been involved in the 1998 embassy bombings, for which al Qaeda had claimed credit, and to be linked to al Qaeda. (p. 278.) An FBI special agent participating in the investigation recognized the name Khallad as someone described by an al Qaeda source as Bin Laden’s “run boy.” In mid-December 2000 the Americans’ al Qaeda source identified a photograph of Khallad obtained from the Yemenis as Bin Laden’s agent. (pp. 277-278.)

Moreover, the 12 October 2000 “attack on the USS Cole galvanized al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.” [OBL ordered production of a propaganda video that highlighted the attack on the Cole.] “Al Qaeda’s image was very important to Bin Laden, and the video was widely disseminated… and caused many extremists to travel to Afghanistan for training and jihad. Al Qaeda members considered the video an effective tool in their struggle for pre-eminence among other Islamist and jihadist movements.” (p. 276.) [NB: Al Qaeda appeared to be claiming responsibility for the attack. How could the CIA still waver over identifying OBL as the originator of the attack on the Cole?]

In mid-November 2000 Sandy Berger asked Hugh Shelton to review plans for military action against Bin Laden. On 25 November 2000 Berger and Clarke wrote to President Clinton to inform him that the investigation would soon show that the Cole attack had been launched by a terrorist cell whose leaders belonged to al Qaeda and whose members had trained in al Qaeda facilities; the memo also sketched out a “final ultimatum” to the Taliban being pushed by Clarke. (pp. 280-281.)

 

 

 

[1] Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (1965- ). Saudi Arabian. One of the “Arab Afghans” who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Eventually aligned with Osama bin Laden. Captured by the CIA in 2002. Reportedly “waterboarded” during interrogation. Currently being held at Guantanamo.

[2] Walid Muhammad Salih bin Roshayed bin Attash (1979- ).  Yemeni immigrant to Saudi Arabia.  Another “Arab Afghan.”  Became very close to Osam bin Laden.  Captured in 2003.

What we learned from the report of the 911 Commission XI

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Post-Crisis Reflection: Agenda for 2000.

In January, February, and March 2000 the NSC and others reviewed what lessons might be learned from the “millennium crisis.” They concluded that any effort at disrupting al Qaeda operations had to be undertaken in a more determined way henceforth and that domestic security had already been penetrated by “sleeper cells.” Action to deal with these problems was approved in a general way. (pp. 262-263.)

Various American delegations (including one by President Clinton which the security-conscious Secret Service loudly opposed) went to Pakistan in January, March, May, June, and September. The trouble is that the US had noting to offer the Pakistanis as a reward for their co-operation: Congressionally-imposed sanctions prevented the government from offering anything of substance [and apparently the Clinton Administration did not want to brave the wrath of Congress by requesting a revision of relations with Pakistan]. (pp. 263-265.)

Richard Clarke seems to have been so focused on al Qaeda that he could not see the need for CIA assets to deal with other forms of terrorism, still less for a robust general intelligence capability. This led to bitter disputes between Clarke and the CIA leaders, who may have played the terrorism card as a budget ploy without fully appreciating how grave the danger faced by America. (pp. 265-266.)

The executive branch didn’t get very far trying to tighten up border security, especially with regard to Canada.

By the end of 1999 or the start of 2000 the leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, wanted the US to line up as his ally in the struggle to overthrow the Taliban. Both Cofer Black and Richard Clarke wanted to do then what the US did anyway after 9/11. At the minimum, this would allow the CIA to put its agents into Afghanistan on a long-term basis, rather than relying on hearsay from the Northern Alliance and the “tribals.” The Clinton administration declined to forge such an alliance: the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance represented the minority within Afghanistan and many of its people had very shady pasts. (p. 271.)

Meanwhile, CIA agents in Malaysia took the group of suspects identified by the NSA intercepts under surveillance, but failed to communicate departure information in a timely fashion when some of the men moved on to Bangkok, Thailand. CIA agents in Bangkok not only failed to arrive at the airport in time to tail the arriving suspects, they failed to learn that two of the suspects had left for the United States on 15 January 2000 until March 2000. CIA’s Counterterrorist Center did not inform anyone else–neither the State Department nor the FBI– of the arrival of the two suspects in the United States until January 2001, after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. (pp. 261-262.) As a result, the first two members of the 9/11 team arrived in Los Angeles on 15 January 2000, at the height of the “millennium crisis.” Although neither one spoke any English and were Arabs, they failed to attract any recorded attention from Customs.

“Heading South” (2005, dir. Laurent Cantet)

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International Tourism.

Romans used to go to Greece to acquire some “polish.”   English noblemen used to send their sons on the “Grand Tour” for the same purpose.   Between the wars Americans used to visit European war cemeteries to see where their “gallant Willy fell.” Today, tourism is big business: in 2010 there were 940 million international tourist “arrivals” someplace and the industry earned $919 billion. The USA earned over $100 billion from foreign tourists that year. Airlines, hotels, taxis, restaurants, tour-guides, museums, and sellers of hand-woven guitars all profited. (Unless you’re willing to rough-it: learn to recognize foreign traffic signs, pick up some phrases from a guide book, and eat what you ordered by mistake even though it turned out to be a psychotropic carcinogen, the way the missus and I do. See: Mark Twain, An Innocent Abroad.)

 

International sex tourism.

Il y a etait un fois, guys went to “the big city” for these purposes (see: Patricia Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett) or Mexico (see: JFK). Now, air travel allows people to zoom all over the earth for the same purpose. Try getting through the streets around the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see the porcelain violins when a ferry-load of Brits show up on a cheap-beer-and-expensive-sex outing, and start ogling the girls in lingerie sitting in the shop windows—many of whom are petting a cat in a bit of symbolic advertising.

Of course, most people aren’t beer-sodden British soccer hooligans, so there is a market in other parts of the world. Most of them are naturally hot and sweaty places: Tunisia—where the “recent unpleasantness” has left a whole class of service workers on the beach in Speedos, Gambia, Kenya, Bali in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

 

Female sex tourism.

Women started traveling for “romance” in the mid-19th century. (See: the novels of Henry James and E. M. Forster). In the first half of the 20th Century there are some pretty interesting stories of women charting their own course, although this often involves highly repressed Northern women falling for highly unrepressed (to put it mildly) Southern men. There’s probably some kind of message about life there. You never see books or movies about some Greek having an epiphany and deciding to pay his bills or go to work on time.

So, skip ahead to the aftermath of the Feminist and Sexual Revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. Women got careers outside that of “homemaker”; women had a difficult time finding men who would accept them in their new roles (or do the dishes); marriages broke down at high rates or never got formed; and women had money. This meant that some women had one sort of success, but no significant other in their life. Result: female sex tourism blossomed (although hardly to the scale of male sex tourism). Anyway, that’s the belief. It is hard to find women who will own up to this. This makes me think that there may be a certain prurient motive behind the “exposes.” Like that “I can’t believe it’s not butter” guy on the cover of romance novels.

There are a few scholarly studies in The Annals of Tourism Research and a UC-Santa Barbara Ph.D. dissertation by April Gorry. Popular culture books and movies dealing with this supposed phenomenon include: the movie “Shirley Valentine” (1989); the novel by Terry MacMillan and the movie made from it, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998); creepy Michel Houlebecq’s novel Platform (2002); and the movie “Heading South” (2005).

In voodoo, Legba is the “master of the crossroads” who controls access to the spirits.