Bin Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked Away
by
Michael C. Ruppert
[© COPYRIGHT 1998 - 2002, All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, http://www.copvcia.com/. May be copied and distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
[Expanded and Revised Jan. 28, 2002]
FTW, November 2, 2001 - 1200 PST -- On October 31, the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official - presumably the Chief of Station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and this year's attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14th he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down.
In 1985 Oliver North - the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn't appear to have a hand in the current war - sent the Navy and commandos after terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography "Under Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas, North wrote, "I used to wonder: how many dead Americans will it take before we do something?" One could look at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have killed before September 11 and ask the same question.
It gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events both before and after the September 11th suicide attacks, which have been blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events which have taken place since September 11th are based upon an agenda that has little to do with the attacks.
One wonders how these events could have been ignored by the major media or treated as isolated incidents. Failing that, how could skilled news agencies avoid being outraged, or at least even just a little suspicious?
1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco and Shell directly invest almost $3 billion in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. [Sources Testimony before the House International Relations Committee 2/12/98]
December 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997]
February 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca - later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan - testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.]
1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Q'aeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by Robert Baer (release date Feb. 2002).
1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," - http://www.copvcia.com/members/carlyle.html. ]
January, 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast - Nov 7, 2001].
Feb 13, 2001 - UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale - while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Q'aeda followers - reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.
May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001].
May, 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections and he is the recipient of the highest civil decoration awarded by Pakistan. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001.]
June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.]
July, 2001 - Three American officials: Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verité Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, September 22, 2001; the BBC, September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001]
Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."
Summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. [Source: The Times of India, October 11, 2001.]
Summer 2001 - An Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source: German news agency "online.de", September 14, 2001, translation retrieved from online.ie in Ireland.]
August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, September 13.]
June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will `facilitate' US and Russian plans for `limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by US and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.]
Summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer.
July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source: Le Figaro, October 31st, 2001.]
August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MS-NBC interview with Putin, September 15.]
August 11 or 12, 2001 - US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
August/September, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.
Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.
September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23, 000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]
September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida web site listing of Governor's Executive Orders.]
September 6-7, 2001 - 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]
September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT - above]
September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."
September 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV, No.7, October 18, 2001, http://www.copvcia.com/members/oct152001.html.]
It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other
intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly
advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is
to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks.
Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin
Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the
FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S.
intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm
that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources:
The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW,
October 26, 2001, - http://www.copvcia.com/members/
September 11, 2001 - Gen Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of
Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. [Source:
MS-NBC, Oct. 7.]
September 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it
widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been
simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the
President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force
planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This
means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before
scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous
hijackings had occurred - an event that has never happened in history.
[Sources: CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.]
September 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization
quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York
Times, Sept. 30, 2001.]
September 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike
Vreeland in Toronto and see that it describes attacks against the WTC
and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was
discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has
never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001;
Toronto Superior Court records]
September 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III
has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown
unit of Deutschebank.
September 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5
million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are
unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the
NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission
time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put
options.
October 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports
that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani
oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan,
across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling
oil and gas to China, is now back on the table "in view of recent
geopolitical developments."
Mid October, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having
suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses.
Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a
crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on
defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax
cuts for corporations.
November 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story
headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The
story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the
country.
November 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious
Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are
being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are
"being encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible."
December 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is
recruited by the US government to help establish control in Afghanistan
by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was
one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is
released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times
Online, 12/4/01].
December 25, 2001 - Newly appointed afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai
is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le
Monde.]
January 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalamy Khalilzad as a special
envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote
op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime.
[Source: Pravda, 1/9/02]
January 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a
surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources
away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of
cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor,
January 4, 2002.
January 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court,
attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator
who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty.
She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his
office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records
Toronto Superior Court.]
Now, let's go back to the October 31 story by Le Figaro - the one that
has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June.
The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin
Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story
that he's a black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of
status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by
many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room.
"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having
visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA
agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden's
departure for Quetta…
"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence
itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning
terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including
its own territory."…
"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting
with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers
exact details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden
through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature
of their inquiry. When asked the question, "What do you fear in the
coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence."…
"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had
been put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the
years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with `a
certain American policy.'"
Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff
that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on November 1
contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On
November 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly
denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at
any time.
In the most ironic twist of all, FTW has learned that Le Figaro is owned
by the Carlyle Group, the American defense contractor which employs
George Bush Sr., and which had as investors - until they sold their
stake on October 26 - the bin Laden family.
Who do you believe?
