dinsdag 3 maart 2009

11 september 2001 (47)

'Former Accused Iraqi Agent Reveals Facts about 9/11 Warning
By Michael Collins

I first wrote about Susan Lindauer's struggle against the Bush-Cheney regime in October 2007, "American Cassandra: Susan Lindauer's Story." This was initially published in "Scoop" Independent Media (complete series) and carried by a wide variety of concerned Internet news sites and blogs. This interview follows the full dismissal of charges against her just before President Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009. This is the first in depth interview that Lindauer has offered regarding 911. Below is part one of the interview.
I asked Ms. Lindauer to make her own statement about why she's willing to go into detail now about 911 and the governments handling of pre 911 intelligence.
"For five years, I was the poster child for President Bush's retaliation against Americans who opposed his War Policy in Iraq. In March, 2004 the Justice Department indicted me for acting as an "unregistered Iraqi Agent" (not espionage), because I delivered a prescient letter to my second cousin, Andy Card, former Chief of Staff to President Bush, warning of the dire consequences of War.
"More dangerously, I had decided to talk. In February, 2004 I approached the senior staff of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain and asked to testify in front of the new blue ribbon Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Within a month, I was astounded to wake up one morning to hear FBI agents pounding on the door of my house in Maryland with an arrest warrant.
"The indictment called me "Symbol Susan." It was a bizarre notation unsupported by any evidence or action in the indictment. It did however have one crucial purpose-to communicate a warning that anybody breaking ranks from the Bush White House should expect to be brutally crushed like I was.
To speak the truth under President George Bush was the worst crime of all.
It was treason.
'But what exactly was the U.S. government trying to hide?
"The answer is more far reaching than you would expect. In the first article of this series written and edited with the help of Michael Collins, we talk about the 9/11 warning that my team delivered to the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department in August, 2001.
"For those who think you've heard the whole story of 9/11, you might be surprised."
Susan Lindauer, March 1, 2009
Interview of Susan Lindauer by Michael Collins
Michael Collins: What confirmation can you provide that you actually warned about 9/11 several months before the attack?
Susan Lindauer: On June 17, 2008 the Court granted the Defense our first and only pre-trial evidentiary hearing in five years, which allowed my attorney to begin confirming that my relationships with my intelligence handlers were fully authentic and involved counter-terrorism.
Dr. Parke Godfrey, an associate professor of computer science at York University in Toronto, testified under oath that starting in the year 2000, and several times in the spring and summer of 2001, I warned him that we expected a major attack on the southern part of Manhattan, and that the attack would encompass the World Trade Center. Dr. Godfrey assured the Court that he had told the FBI about my 9/11 warning during a sit down interview in Toronto in September, 2004, which was jointly attended by a member of the Canadian Royal Mountie Police.
It's worth noting that Dr. Godfrey is a scientist and a precise, deliberate and methodical thinker, who chooses his words carefully. In style, he's been compared to Dr. Spock of Star Trek fame. He does Leonard Nimoy proud.
He would make an outstanding witness at any congressional hearing.
Quoting from his testimony in June 2008, he said that I told him, "A massive attack would occur in the southern part of Manhattan that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon."
He testified that I told him "the attack would complete the cycle of the first bombing of the World Trade Center. It would finish what was started in the 1993 (World Trade Center) attack."
Dr. Godfrey testified that I first mentioned the possibility of an attack in the year 2000, which coincided with the Lockerbie Trial. Then throughout the spring and summer of 2001, I described the threat much more specifically as "involving airplanes" and the World Trade Center.
In August 2001, I told him the attack was "imminent."
He testified that I urged him to stay out of New York City.
Collins: What was your background that made it possible for you to issue this 9/11 warning?
Lindauer: Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. used me as a back-channel to Libyan and Iraqi officials at the United Nations, seeking to leverage my anti-sanctions and anti-war activism to establish contacts within nations under sanctions, in support of anti-terrorism goals. I established contact with the Libyan Embassy in May, 1995, for the purpose of starting negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial. In that capacity, I met with Libyan diplomats approximately 150 times over the next eight years. I established contacts at the Iraqi Embassy in August, 1996. In addition to providing a back channel for terrorism intelligence from Baghdad, I conducted preliminary talks to resume the weapons inspections with Iraq's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Saeed Hasan, and other senior Iraqi officials.
Our purpose was to guarantee that Iraq would agree to rigorous U.S.
standards for transparency in the inspections process before the matter went to the U.N. Security Council.'

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