#74 LYNNE STEWART, 1993, & THE DRY-RUN FOR 9-11:
RALPH SCHOENMAN CONSPIRACIES & CONSPIRACY THEORIES
(Part 4 of a 4-part series interview with Ralph Schoenman, conducted
May 27, 2004, Toronto. Schoenman was a speaker at the International
Citizens’ Inquiry into 9-11 (phase 2). Transcription of the video
interview).
President George Bush: [Picture and sound insert] Let us not tolerate
outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the
eleventh.
Ralph Schoenman (VOICE OVER INTRO/TITLE/CREDITS) History is not driven
by conspiracy. It’s structured, it’s institutional, it’s systemic and
it’s systematic – but our rulers conduct their affairs in a
conspiratorial manner.
Schoenman: It’s part of the propaganda barrage that’s directed against
any examination of the historical facts and the realities of our
present that we’re accused of conjuring up conspiracies. It’s somewhat
paradoxical, as I like to point out, in that the most frequently
deployed juridical category at every level of US jurisdiction of
municipal, county, state or federal level is that of conspiracy:
conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to do this, conspiracy to do that.
There’s the RICO Act. Most prosecutorial adventures by the authorities
have to do with what they call conspiracy. By definition, it’s two
people agreeing in consort to undertake a [purportedly criminal]
action in common. And most prosecutors impute conspiracy to those that
they charge with events that they consider to be violative of what
they call law. The only conspiracy in which they have vanishingly
little interest is that of our rulers.
[PICTURE INSERT: OUR RULERS]: George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney. Voice over:
Bush [VOICE OVER]: Let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories
concerning the attacks of September the eleventh.
Schoenman: And while it is true as I again like to point out, that
history is not driven by conspiracies. It’s structured, it’s
institutional, it’s systemic and it’s systematic – but our rulers
conduct their affairs in a conspiratorial manner precisely because
they are not answerable to our people because their power is
concealed. It’s not registered through formal representative
institutions that are empty of content. Power is not exercised through
those means.
As I like to cite Robert Townsend who was the president of Avis and
American Express. He did a book called Up the Organization [in which]
he calculates that 5,000 control what he calls the commanding heights
of the US economy. And Townsend tells us that they regard this country
as their own whore house and they treat each president as their
private towel boy.
Well, I don’t think that’s rhetoric. I think that’s an accurate
sociological description. And that’s been part of the investigative
work of historians and literary figures such as Mark Twain to Charles
Beard to C.Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite to the work of
William Domhoff, The Rich and the Superrich and Who Rules America? to
Ferdinand Lundberg’s Sixty Families. Every examination of the
structure of power in our society arrives at the same information.
It’s part of the furniture of our lives. The established media are
replete with it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It’s
nothing arcane. It’s nothing “mysterious.” It’s precise, it’s
evidentiary; it’s scientific, it’s real. It’s not a matter of
pejorative rhetoric; it’s a matter of sociology about how power
operates in a capitalist order in today’s world.
Our society is controlled by a kleptocracy, by a gang of people who
are reflective of power that does not proceed through formal
institutions. And that is the inherent conflict and contradiction, if
you like, between the forms of representative government and the
actual workings of power outside the formal reach of those
institutions. It isn’t just that the formal political process is
bought and paid for, which we well understand. It’s that the
institutions themselves are theater. It’s public relations. It has
nothing to do with where decisions are taken and how they are made.
That is done through clandestine institutions that have been
established by those in power and they are the Trilateral Commission
and the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Security Council
and the plethora of 14 to 15 intelligence agencies with their black
budgets and their secret operations.
That’s the furniture of control, the operational means through which
the rulers conduct their affairs. So there is a conspiratorial
character to the way in which they rule, because they cannot say to
the American people, [e.g.] ‘We want to obtain the resources of
Indochina. We want to displace the French colonial control of
Indochina. And in order to accomplish that, we’re going to generate
events that are of our own making such as the Gulf of Tonkin.’ When we
were told, were we not?, that the North Vietnamese had fired on an
American ship. They would have had every right to do so. These were US
destroyers, a naval armada, in territorial waters of Vietnam. Oh, fie!
They fired on these intruding forces – but in fact, it never happened.
Nobody is in dispute any more about the fact that this was an
invention. And that’s the pretext and that’s the rationale, that’s the
justification for visiting a devastating war on this suffering people,
that transformed their country into the landscape of the moon, that
killed between three and four million people, that entailed
intelligence operations of our special forces that are now unfolding
in Iraq before our eyes but which in Vietnam, in such things as the
Phoenix Program, required the systematic murder of 60,000 people on
the ground: village leaders, students, trade unionists, people who
were of those oppressed people in Vietnam, physically liquidated. Talk
about state terror. So that is the nature of rule in an economic and
political order that is essentially the domain of pirates whose proper
flag is a skull and crossbones.
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Conclusion 4-part series (filmmakers’ notebook # 74), published July
2004 Buffalo Indymedia.
Veteran analyst /activist Schoenman in 1993 revealed the FBI and
Mossad control of the Feb. 26, 1993 WTC bombing which was blamed on
Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the designated patsy (and subsequently atty.
Lynne Stewart's client). "Because Lynne Stewart is, after all, in
possession of the evidence, in mounting a case for Sheikh Rahman, was
presenting the authorities with a real prospect of the role of the US
authorities in these events becoming obvious, transparent and
irrefutable, she has herself been…charged with aiding and abetting
terrorists for functioning as a defense atty. seeking due process for
the accused." Transcription of a Snowshoefilms interview of May 27,
2004 Toronto (phase 2)Intl Citizens' Inquiry into 9-11.
Snowshoefilms: In order to understand 9-11, it's important that we
understand the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Would you
elaborate on that event?
Ralph Schoenman: It's important to look at what happened in 1993
because there you see indisputably the hands of US intelligence and
the Mossad all over the operation. In essence the…. and by the
way, it's not just about bombing the World Trade Center. It also has
to do with what is called the Landmark Case. And bear in mind that the
patsy - the person who is held responsible for both the World Trade
Center in 1993 and a presumptive plot to blow up what are called the
landmarks, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, George Washington
Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the United Nations
and so on - all of this is laid at the door of Sheikh Omar Abdul
Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric with his mosques in Brooklyn and in
New Jersey.
But in actuality, what happened in 1993, a high-level FBI operative
and figure out of Egyptian intelligence named Emad Ali Salem was sent
into the mosque in New Jersey in particular, by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation to recruit young men on a need-to-know basis, for
meetings about which they were not told - namely, as to the purpose.
And then various provocations were initiated by this operative. Emad
Ali Salem proposed bombing the World Trade Center. He made a plan for
so-called 'taking out' the landmarks, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel,
the Statue of Liberty etc.
Throughout these discussions, these meetings, the provocations and
plans, he wore a wire and transcribed the contents of each meeting.
Those transcriptions were deposited in offices of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation in New York. Fifty file boxes for a period of six
months prior to the actual event in 1993 at the World Trade Center.
When you look at what in fact took place, you find that the very
person who arranged the Ryder rental van and the safe-house and was
working in conjunction with EMAD ALI SALEM was a figure named Guzie
(also Josie) Hadas of the Israeli Mossad and the Israeli intelligence
services with their internal
Communications (Matera) had already been exchanging back and forth the
parameters of this event prior to its occurrence. That's on the
record. Ironically, and by the way, what I am describing here with
respect to the role of Emad Ali Salem, an FBI operative planning,
implementing, wholly responsible for the bombing of the World Trade
Center in 1993. This has been documented in the New York Times, in the
Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Muslim World
Monitor. In fact, Ralph Blumenthal in his long article in the New York
Times [Oct. 28, 1993] which describes the role of Emad Ali Salem,
cites Emad Ali Salem as stating that the FBI had assured him that at
the penultimate moment, the explosives put into play would not
detonate.
Now leaving aside that second line of defense, it's actual
acknowledgment of the role of the US intelligence agencies in
instigating this event. Keep in mind that all of the major media
subsequently have ascribed to the perpetration of the bombing a
lynchpin role in the 9-11 events. the article by Richard Bernstein in
the New York Times on the first anniversary of 9-11 imputes to Ramzi
Yousef and his meetings in Malaysia, contact with none other than
Mohamed Atta, for the planning and implementation of the bombing of
the WTC in 1993.
So you have in 1993 an actual dry run implementation of the
9-11operation so far as it affects the WTC. I don't mean the putative
planes, but the bombing of the World Trade Center as such.
THE 9-11 COVER-UP COMMISSION: BULLY PULPIT FOR THE BIG LIE
The ideological bully pulpit which is essential role of the official
9-11 hearings, orchestrates the same theme. '1993, Al Qaida…' Within
minutes, by the way, of the bombing of the [1993] World Trade Center,
the authorities were stating that it was the responsibility of Al
Qaida, they had the entire apparatus of Al Qaida being described in
the press in relation to the bombing of the World Trade Center.
LYNNE STEWART
The attorney for Sheik Rahman, Lynne Stewart, a heroic figure, because
Lynne Stewart is, after all, in possession of the evidence, in
mounting a defense for Sheik Rahman, was presenting the authorities
with a real prospect of the role of the United States authorities in
these events becoming obvious, transparent and irrefutable. Lynne
Stewart has herself been subject to arrest and the charge of aid and
abetting terrorists and now she's running the risk of 20 to 30 years
in prison for actually functioning as a defense attorney seeking due
process for the accused.
The measure of the extent to which the events of 9-11 and their false
flag nature are a reference point for the suspension of all formal
liberties and due process protection in the United States itself. The
hand of intelligence is all over these false flag operations. So in
that respect, it is indeed a lynchpin event, the bombing of the World
Trade Center in 1993 for the subsequent preparation and unfolding of
events. And I think it's also illustrative of a method, a modus
operandus, that is central to the capitalist state in the conduct of
its affairs today. Think through the fact that all of the major
operations
imputed to "terrorists" are associated with American intelligence
agencies. The bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 imputed
again, to Al Qaida/Osama bin Laden. Well, the actual coordinator of
that, as the San Francisco Chronicle detailed, was a long-standing,
high
level FBI operative. He was previously in army intelligence, a staff
sergeant with intelligence responsibilities. He had wholly penetrated
the entourage of Osama bin Laden. In fact was organizing the body
guards for Osama bin Laden on behalf of the FBI.
The bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi has the fingerprint of the
Mossad as well, because Israeli intelligence in Haaretz had
documented, had not just made known the plan for the bombing of the US
embassy in Nairobi, it was acknowledged in the Israeli press that
these
preparations and the projected bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi
was part of Mossad exchange of operations memoranda. They'd been
published
in Israel. False flag operation. False flag operations that bear the
mark of the rulers of the United States, that one percent of the
population that owns 90 percent of the national wealth and that
requires these sorts of pretexts for imperial adventures long in
preparation but without the casus belli of the moment which they
launch every major imperial foray.
I think that's the real heart and soul of the meaning and significance
of the events of 1993 with respect to the bombing of the World Trade
Center.
THE INEVITABLE NEXT ATTACK THE TERRORISTS ARE PLANNING
One further point about this. Particularly since the end of 2003, and
certainly since the unfolding of the false flag operation - namely the
bombing of the train station in Madrid - every major medium of
communication has centered on the inevitable next attacks that the
terrorists are providing.
Debka, which is basically the news outlet of the Israeli Shin Bet and
Mossad intelligence services, has been orchestrating the theme
everywhere, 'Oh,
Al Qaida has metastasized! It's now ubiquitous! It's everywhere all
over Europe! Forty-five thousand operatives in France, ten to fifteen
thousand in Great Britain! a comparable number in Italy and in Germany
over a hundred thousand Al Qaida operatives at work, now as sleepers.
And not just that, they're not Arabs! Why they're Europeans. They're
sitting next to you in your coffee bar preparing for an event that
will dwarf Madrid! Will dwarf 9-11 itself!' Every other minute we're
being treated to this preparation for the next foray, the next false
flag
operation.
Only yesterday [May 27, 2004], Ashcroft and Robert Mueller** again
sounded this trumpeting alarm about the inevitable attacks that will
require the cancellation of the 2004 elections. What was the theme
taken up by [David] Rothkopf in the Washington Post [11/23/03] by
William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Newsday, Newsweek.
All this is a drum beat preparing us for the 'inexorable' next attack.
Snowshoefilms: How do they know about this next attack?
Ralph Schoenman: We're informed that it's based upon what they call
'the increase in chatter.' Intelligence services are picking up an
increase in chatter. It's interesting that they monitor the chatter
but they don't determine how to locate the users of the cell phones
and the
means of communication on which the chatter is monitored, although
that is a very simple thing for them to do.
THE TERRORISTS
I have a modest proposal here. I suggest that the reason [that their
intelligence services can't 'locate' the terrorists] is very clear.
Our intelligence - these are special intelligence services that we
have; they flow from our own ability to reason. The terrorists are not
so easily found because they look like George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld,
Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. And the leaders of the Democratic Party
itself in collusion with all this. They're not so easily recognized
yet in the United States, but we're in the process of changing that.
We're in the process of allowing people to see who are the real
terrorists and on whose behalf they function and what is the nature of
the state apparatus that visits these acts upon our people, and
imputes them to demonic others who are held up as a scarecrow to
hypnotize our
population, and to lure us into a kind of numbed acquiescence in the
workings of the capitalist state itself.
Filmmaker's notebook # 74 published Buffalo Indymedia 7/8/04 (12:44
min.) Interview conducted 5/27/04. Special thanks to Bonnie Faulkner
of Guns & Butter, KPFA
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