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FTR #375 “Take Two” For the Fifth Column?

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This pro­gram is inter­roga­to­ry in nature. While of the opin­ion that the events of 9/11 were exe­cut­ed, in part, by an active­ly sub­ver­sive ele­ment con­sti­tut­ing a Fifth Col­umn, con­nect­ed to the Unit­ed States through the struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships between the U.S. and Sau­di Ara­bia and, beyond that, the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies, the pro­gram exam­ines some recent thefts and unex­plained dis­ap­pear­ances of mate­ri­als sen­si­tive to the issue of ter­ror­ism and counter-ter­ror.

1. Past pro­grams (FTRs 322, 326, 349) high­light the theft of a brief­case con­tain­ing top-secret doc­u­ments about coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and coun­tert­er­ror­ist oper­a­tions in New York. (“FBI Ter­ror Expert Lost Track of Top-Secret Plans” by David John­ston [New York Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 8/9/2001; p. A8.) The FBI expert in ques­tion, the late John O’Neill, was in charge of the Bin Laden inves­ti­ga­tion for the FBI, and Mr. O’Neill may have been delib­er­ate­ly frus­trat­ed and betrayed by the fifth colum­nists with­in ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. This broad­cast delin­eates a dis­turb­ing aspect of the doc­u­ments stolen from O’Neill in the sum­mer of 2000. “Offi­cials iden­ti­fied one doc­u­ment in the brief­case as a draft of the annu­al field office report for nation­al secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions in New York. The close­ly guard­ed report con­tained a descrip­tion of every coun­teres­pi­onage and coun­tert­er­ror­ism pro­gram in New York and detailed the man­pow­er for each oper­a­tion.” (Idem.) In August, O’Neill left the bureau to become direc­tor of secu­ri­ty for the World Trade Cen­ter. He was killed on 9/11.

2. Tam­pa, Flori­da (the site of the theft of the O’Neill doc­u­ments in 2000) has seen the dis­ap­pear­ance of sen­si­tive lap­top com­put­ers from a mil­i­tary com­mand cen­ter deeply involved in the effort in Afghanistan. Sub­se­quent pro­nounce­ments were vague, but down­played any con­nec­tion to ter­ror­ism or espi­onage. (There was a sim­i­lar denial to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of espi­onage in the theft of the O’Neill doc­u­ments.) “Two lap­top com­put­ers are miss­ing from the mil­i­tary com­mand cen­ter coor­di­nat­ing the war in Afghanistan, includ­ing one with clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, offi­cials said Wednes­day. The Air Force Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions is inves­ti­gat­ing the com­put­ers’ pos­si­ble theft from U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, said Major Mike Rich­mond, a press offi­cer. The com­put­ers dis­ap­peared last week. Cen­tral Com­mand would not release fur­ther details, such as what infor­ma­tion was stored on the com­put­ers and what office or per­son was respon­si­ble for them . . .” (“2 Mil­i­tary Lap­tops Miss­ing” [AP]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 8/8/2002; p. 4A.)

3. The Jus­tice Depart­ment, FBI and Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice also lost sen­si­tive equip­ment. “Ear­li­er this week, a gov­ern­ment audit was released that showed the Jus­tice Depart­ment lost 400 com­put­ers last year. Most belonged to the FBI and the Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice, and many had clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. The agen­cies said poor track­ing of equip­ment was like­ly to blame, not theft.” (Idem.)

4. In addi­tion, the U.S. Cus­toms Ser­vice has lost equip­ment and doc­u­men­ta­tion that could be of inter­est to ter­ror­ists. “Thou­sands of U.S. Cus­toms Ser­vice com­put­ers and employ­ee cre­den­tials were report­ed lost or stolen over a three-year peri­od, wor­ry­ing offi­cials who not­ed that cus­toms per­son­nel com­mon­ly have access to some of the most sen­si­tive areas of air­ports, har­bors and oth­er trans­porta­tion cen­ters. The report by the Trea­sury Depart­men­t’s inspec­tor gen­er­al found that Cus­toms could not account for 2,251 com­put­ers and near­ly 1,200 cre­den­tials between Octo­ber 1998 and Sep­tem­ber 2001.” (“Cus­toms Equip­ment Miss­ing” by Dan Eggen; Wash­ing­ton Post; 8/9/2002; p. A21.)

5. “Many of the com­put­ers could have con­tained infor­ma­tion that was clas­si­fied or relat­ed to law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tions, while the badges could be used for some­one to pose as a cus­toms offi­cer or gain access to pro­hib­it­ed areas, accord­ing to the report and secu­ri­ty experts. ‘It is total­ly inex­cus­able that they can­not account for every sin­gle cre­den­tial,’ said Dou­glas R. Laird, a for­mer Secret Ser­vice agent who works as a secu­ri­ty con­sul­tant. ‘It shows that the sys­tem lacks integri­ty . . . ” (Idem.)

6. “The find­ings released yes­ter­day were sim­i­lar to a report ear­li­er this week on the FBI and INS, both of which had lost track of hun­dreds of guns and lap­top com­put­ers in recent years. Sen. Charles E. Grass­ley (R‑Iowa), who is a mem­ber of the judi­cia­ry and finance com­mit­tees, and who request­ed the Cus­toms audit, said the laps­es out­lined in the report ‘pose seri­ous threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty.” (Idem.)

7. “It’s iron­ic and alarm­ing that a fed­er­al agency charged with account­ing for goods com­ing into our coun­try has so much trou­ble keep­ing track of its own sen­si­tive prop­er­ty,’ Grass­ley said in a state­ment. ‘If the Cus­toms Ser­vice can’t keep track of some­thing as sim­ple as employ­ee badges, then how is it going to meet it’s more com­pli­cat­ed respon­si­bil­i­ties? The report was ini­tial­ly clas­si­fied as ‘law enforce­ment sen­si­tive’ by cus­toms offi­cials, a des­ig­na­tion that shield­ed it from pub­lic view. A redact­ed ver­sion of the report was pro­vid­ed to Grass­ley yes­ter­day short­ly after he sent a let­ter to Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul H. O’Neill demand­ing its release.” (Idem.)

8. Anoth­er dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment involves infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing thefts and phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance of air­line per­son­nel that, togeth­er or sep­a­rate­ly, could be uti­lized in the per­pe­tra­tion of ter­ror­ist attacks. As is the case with the infor­ma­tion about the miss­ing com­put­ers pre­sent­ed above, the theft from and sur­veil­lance of, air­line employ­ees is anoth­er of the activ­i­ties that seems sus­pi­cious, pos­si­bly evi­dence of Fifth Col­umn activ­i­ty. “The Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion has warned air­lines to be on the look­out for impos­tors wear­ing stolen uni­forms try­ing to gain access to planes or air­ports, cit­ing a series of recent thefts from flight crews. Agency offi­cials would not com­ment on the con­fi­den­tial warn­ing, which was issued July 22‑a week after bur­glars took air­line uni­forms, keys and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tags from the New York apart­ment of two Delta Air­lines flight atten­dants.” (“Air­lines Warned of Stolen Uni­forms” by Greg Schnei­der [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; p. A4.)

9. “The warn­ing does not cite any par­tic­u­lar case, say­ing only that ‘TSA con­tin­ues to receive reports’ about such thefts. It adds that ‘recent report­ing also sug­gests a pos­si­ble trend in the thefts of uni­forms, vehi­cles and oth­er items used by police, fire­fight­ers and emer­gency response per­son­nel.’ The warn­ing urges air­port secu­ri­ty offi­cials to be vig­i­lant about check­ing employ­ee iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards.” (Idem.)

10. “Rumors about ter­ror­ists pos­ing as law enforce­ment or res­cue per­son­nel abound­ed in the Unit­ed States short­ly after the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, and as recent­ly as June, two Mid­dle East­ern men were ques­tioned by police after try­ing to buy a used ambu­lance in New Jer­sey. ‘The threat is very real,’ said Capt. Stephen Luck­ey, head of secu­ri­ty for the Air Line Pilots Asso­ci­a­tion, a union rep­re­sent­ing some 67,000 com­mer­cial pilots. Pilots and flight atten­dants have always been vul­ner­a­ble to theft when trav­el­ing, Luck­ey said, but since Sep­tem­ber 11, the items tak­en seem to have changed. ‘They used to steal things like radios, maybe a com­put­er. Now, they’re focus­ing more on uni­forms and acces­sories,’ Luck­ey said . . . ” (Idem.)

11. “In the inci­dent last month in New York, two Delta flight atten­dants returned home after sev­er­al days away to find that some­one entered their Asto­ria, Queens, apart­ment and stole air­line uni­forms, a key that opens stor­age com­part­ments on board a plane, crew-bag tags, flight atten­dant wings, a flight book and a Delta ID card. The only oth­er items report­ed stolen were $20 in cash and two car­tons of cig­a­rettes. In May in Kansas City, Mo., some­one stole a deliv­ery truck con­tain­ing uni­forms for mechan­ics and oth­er flight-line work­ers. The truck was lat­er recov­ered, but the uni­forms-for employ­ees of three air­lines-were gone. FBI counter-ter­ror­ism agents were con­sult­ed on that case and the one in New York but said they found no links to ter­ror­ism in either. FBI offi­cials said they are keep­ing tabs on both sit­u­a­tions but are no longer par­tic­i­pat­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tions.” (Idem.)

12. “Luck­ey said the pat­tern of such inci­dents can­not be dis­missed. ‘Tak­en out of con­text, indi­vid­u­al­ly, I don’t think they’re that sig­nif­i­cant. But when you put them togeth­er, they paint a fair­ly good mosa­ic of threat,’ he said. ‘In light of the 9/11 attacks . . . I think this is an actu­al indi­ca­tion of some­thing that requires a lit­tle more than casu­al atten­tion.’ In addi­tion to theft, pilots and flight atten­dants say they increas­ing­ly feel they’re being watched or even fol­lowed when trav­el­ing abroad.” (Idem.)

13. “The North­west Air­lines unit of the pilots’ union issued a secu­ri­ty alert to its mem­bers on July 2, warn­ing that ‘flight crews from oth­er air­lines have report­ed being the sub­jects of obvi­ous sur­veil­lance by Mid-East­ern look­ing males and females’ while trav­el­ing in Frank­furt, Ams­ter­dam and Lon­don. One Amer­i­can Air­lines flight crew mem­ber who asked not to be iden­ti­fied said a co-work­er was in a Lon­don pub dur­ing a lay­over when ‘a Mid­dle East­ern man start­ed tak­ing pic­tures’ of her and oth­er crew mem­bers. ‘There are lots of sto­ries of stalk­ing, and I don’t know of these kind of sto­ries before 9/11,’ the Amer­i­can employ­ee said.” (Idem.)

14. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of one of the above-ground ele­ments of the Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States-Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions mas­querad­ing as legit­i­mate or rep­re­sen­ta­tive when, in fact, they are involved with the real­iza­tion of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. Orga­ni­za­tions like CAIR and AMC (Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil) make it much more dif­fi­cult to respond effec­tive­ly and intel­li­gent­ly to sit­u­a­tions such as that faced by air­lines per­son­nel in the theft of iden­ti­fy doc­u­men­tion and uni­forms. Steven Emer­son not­ed the groups’ activ­i­ties as pro­pa­gan­da agents and flak-catch­ers for ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. “The attacks on today’s hear­ing and on me by var­i­ous Islam­ic and Arab advo­ca­cy groups illus­trates the grow­ing dan­ger of allow­ing mil­i­tant groups to mas­quer­ade uncrit­i­cal­ly under the ban­ner of self-anoint­ed ‘civ­il rights’ and ‘human rights’ sta­tus. These groups are no more deserv­ing of civ­il rights sta­tus than the Ku Klux Klan’s patent­ly trans­par­ent efforts to mas­quer­ade under civ­il rights monikers advo­cat­ing ‘human rights’ for whites. In par­tic­u­lar, the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions and Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil, as well as oth­ers, have sent e‑mails and inter­net alerts ‘warm­ing’ their sup­port­ers about these hear­ings this morn­ing. In effect, the mes­sage dis­sem­i­nat­ed by these groups was that mere­ly dis­cussing the pres­ence of Islam­ic rad­i­cals on Amer­i­can soil is to be con­strued as an attack on Islam. The same type of mes­sage was issued by Sheik Omar Abdul Rah­man, spir­i­tu­al ring­leader of the World trade Cen­ter bomb­ing-relat­ed con­spir­a­cy, when he claimed that his con­vic­tion was ‘an attack on Islam.’ This type of con­trived delu­sion is but a trans­par­ent effort to pre­vent a free dis­cus­sion of the threat of mil­i­tant Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism in the Unit­ed States. On Sun­day night, an even more incen­di­ary e‑mail alert was dis­trib­uted by the ‘Free Arab Voice’ when it labeled this hear­ing an ‘attack on Islam.’ ” (“The Amer­i­can Con­nec­tion to Islam­ic Ter­ror” by Steven Emer­son [Emer­son­’s offi­cial pre­pared state­ment before the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Sub­com­mit­tee on Ter­ror­ism, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Gov­ern­ment Infor­ma­tion on 2/24/98]; p.3.)

15. “The Threat to Free speech and Thought: If not con­front­ed, the efforts by rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups such as the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) and the Amer­i­can Mus­lim coun­cil (AMC) to intim­i­date those who speak out on the threat of mil­i­tant Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism pos­es one of the great­est dan­gers to the free­doms in Amer­i­can soci­ety. In point of fact-elu­ci­dat­ed lat­er in this tes­ti­mo­ny-these groups are actu­al polit­i­cal wings of rad­i­cal Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist orga­ni­za­tions. They have defend­ed ter­ror­ist groups, ter­ror­ist lead­ers includ­ing Hamas chief­tain Musa Mar­zook and World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing con­spir­a­cy ring­leader Sheik Omar Abdul Rah­man, and the Sudanese ter­ror­ist regime cur­rent­ly engaged in a geno­ci­dal war against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty. Both of these groups have spon­sored vis­its in the Unit­ed States of lead­ing inter­na­tion­al mil­i­tants and known anti-Semi­tes (includ­ing those who exhort­ed their fol­low­ers to kill Jews) and con­sis­tent­ly attacked Amer­i­can writ­ers for expos­ing the threat of mil­i­tant Islam­ic extrem­ism. These groups pose a clear and present dan­ger to Amer­i­can free­doms and soci­ety, not to men­tion mod­er­ate Mus­lims around the globe.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

16. The recent pas­sage of untracked nuclear mate­ri­als across the Canadian/Michigan bor­der is not encour­ag­ing either. (Michi­gan has one of the largest Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions in the Unit­ed States.) “Fed­er­al agents and teams of nuclear spe­cial­ists are search­ing the Mid­west for a mys­te­ri­ous ship­ment of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al that was trucked across the Cana­di­an bor­der into Michi­gan in May, gov­ern­ment offi­cials say. Gov­ern­ment inspec­tors did not become aware of the mate­r­i­al until ear­ly June, about a week after it crossed the bor­der. Inves­ti­ga­tors with the FBI and U.S. Cus­toms have been track­ing the vehi­cle that trans­port­ed the ship­ment through cus­toms records, fed­er­al offi­cials said. Offi­cials char­ac­ter­ized the point of entry as a major cross­ing in the Detroit area.” (“Mys­te­ri­ous Radioac­tive Ship­ment in U.S.” by Tama­ra Audi [Knight Rid­der]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 8/4/2002; p. 10A.)

17. It is stressed that so-called “neo” Nazi and White Suprema­cist ele­ments may very well be oper­at­ing in con­junc­tion with the Islam­o­fas­cist milieu of Al Taqwa/Al Qaeda/Wahhabiism/oil.

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