New questions arise every day and I don’t have to actively dig them up. It’s just one contradiction after another.
This applies to subjects in several current diaries but I put it here, to avoid possible disruptions. The subjects themselves are a source of contradiction, not any of the diaries. This applies to ethics in journalism, the lack of a credible investigation of 9/11 and the immediate reaction that cast Muslim/Arab folks into the role of enemy based on apparent lies.
This ignorant hatred is the root of many current problems and it has to stop. It should also be seen for where it originates and how it is perpetuated.
Here’s one example of how it starts.
Within 6 days of the 9/11 attack, this article appeared in the New Yorker. Considering the attack was a crime, it’s inconceivable that no criminal investigation was pursued. Look how fast the conclusions were reached by a trusted scholar on the subject.
Posted 2001-09-17
In the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in 1995, there were experts and officials who automatically assumed, in print and on television, that the perpetrators were Islamic fundamentalists. When it turned out that two young Americans had planted the bomb, everyone–talking heads and government officials alike–vowed to practice more restraint. In the initial reports from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, one could hear that catch, that attempt at evenhandedness and caution. And yet, by early afternoon, Administration officials, congressional leaders, and many others were saying that the bombing had “all the characteristics” of an operation carried out by Islamic radicals–in particular, the terrorist network run, at least in part, by Osama bin Laden.Yossef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and the author of “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” was not among those who hurried to focus solely on bin Laden. “We don’t have all the evidence yet,” he said. “We have to look at the material as it comes through, and, if the material says it is the little green man on Mars, then it will be the little green man on Mars. I’m not among the choir who says the bearded one did it. He may have done it, but we’ll see.”
Bodansky went on, “Training a would-be martyr is one thing. Usually, as in Turkey or in Israel, a martyr is like a robot. He gets a specific mission: You strap on a bomb, you go stand in a night club, count to three, say ‘Allah is Great,’ and boom. This is something else. These people, four crews, had to have had special preparation, they had to work together, to hold together a situation in which a planeload of people is taken captive and they know they are headed for a bad end. And in three of the four cases the crews succeeded. No one is rushing to take credit for this. The sponsoring states don’t want to be bombed, and they will go to extreme measures to conceal who did it, just as they went to extreme measures to coördinate it.”
So, we have an established professional Congressional consultant both disclaiming ignorance of the facts and proceeds to justify a case for Muslim persecution. The simple disclaimer isn’t enough if he’s going to contradict it. Further into the story he gets more specific.
Bodansky and others have said that U.S. intelligence has long known that countries such as Iran and independent groups have made plans for “super-terrorism” and have trained people to carry out terrorist acts..
“We’ve known since the mid-eighties, for example, that Iran was training people to fly as kamikazes on commercial planes, as bombs, into civilian targets,” Bodansky said. “The question was whether the political leaders of the sponsoring states would give the order to actually do it. From the moment a country starts risking the wrath of the civilized world to start such a training program, it must be serious about it.” Bodansky explained that Iran’s principal “school” is in Wakilabad, in the northeast part of the country, and is an entity of Iranian intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard. The school, he said, has American-made commercial jets for training its students in techniques of hijacking, sabotage, and flying into civilian targets. While evidence was beginning to accumulate that at least some of the nineteen suspected hijackers were men who had taken flying lessons at schools in Florida, Bodansky indicated that it was still early and the picture incomplete.
“The bottom line is that the attack in New York and Washington was carefully prepared and studied,” Bodansky said. “The people who flew into the World Trade Center were highly trained professionals with experience in flying large commercial jets. Flying large aircraft at low altitudes in an urban sky is not a simple thing.”
A retired C.I.A. officer said, “I’ve never seen an operation go that smoothly.” What particularly alarmed him, and other members of the intelligence community, was the likelihood that the terrorists had been sheltered–and never betrayed–by Muslim communities in the United States.
Even as commentators and political leaders repeatedly warned against stereotyping, there was strong agreement among former intelligence officials that Arab and Muslim communities in the United States could suffer. A former national-security adviser was outspoken. “We can’t do racial profiling?” he asked. “Like hell. Nobody is going to trust anybody looking like an Arab. They’re done.” Another former high security official said, “It’s civil liberties versus getting the bad guys.” A Justice Department official put it more delicately: “You’ve got bunches of Arabs who don’t want to throw bombs. Yet they’re Arabs. It doesn’t mean we’re going to profile Arabs, but we’re going to look at people who come from a certain culture with a certain background.” A military officer said, simply, “The Muslim people will pay a horrible price.”
While actual evidence was coming in of air training in Florida, Bodansky offered this ‘fact’ as he was building a case (in earlier parts of the article) to bomb states in the Mid-East.
Bodansky explained that Iran’s principal “school” is in Wakilabad, in the northeast part of the country, and is an entity of Iranian intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard. The school, he said, has American-made commercial jets for training its students in techniques of hijacking, sabotage, and flying into civilian targets.
Trouble is, I can’t seem to find any other reference to Wakilabad other than Bodansky’s or a near identical version of it as it’s repeated in different media as definitive sourced knowledge.
Now, is this misplaced ethics or is Wakilabad so secret that nobody else has mentioned it?
Also from Bodansky
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
Mohammed was seen in Islamabad’s posh F-7 sector when Pakistani and U.S. officials arrested Ramzi Yusuf, the man who tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
The director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Josef Bodansky, told UPI emphatically, “Mohammed was Pearl’s killer.”
“An Algerian actually did the job, but Mohammed gave the order for the killing. There’s no question about it,” he said. Bodansky said Mohammed also has ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which he said had acted to shield him in the past.
“Mohammed was running operations right in Karachi,” said Bodansky. Bodansky would not reveal his sources of information.
And then there was this in an interview with a colleague
JD: In May of 1996, I flew to Washington D.C. and met personally with the Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Yossef Bodansky. Mr. Bodansky’s resume included international acclaim as a terrorism expert and former consultant to the Departments of State and Defense. He shared that he had independently come across the same Middle Eastern suspects that KFOR-TV had been investigating. In the years that followed, we forged a unique working relationship in which he disclosed sensitive intelligence documents that convincingly refuted the notion that two disenfranchised army buddies single-handedly pulled off America’s deadliest terrorist attack of the 20th Century.
I obtained copies of the significant portions of an alert that was disseminated prior to the bombing that predicted Islamic militants were planning to strike. On February 27, 1995 the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare issued a prior warning that stated there would be an “Iran-sponsored Islamic attack” on U.S. soil. Washington D.C. topped the hit list. The primary targets were Congress and the White House, a prescient insight into the events of 9-11. In response to that warning, security was beefed up in the nation’s capitol, so the focus then shifted from Washington D.C. to America’s heartland. On March 3, 1995, Mr. Bodansky authored an updated warning that stated the terrorists now planned to strike at “the heart of the U.S.” Twelve cities were placed on the potential target list because of the radical Islamic groups and terrorist networks operating within those cities. Oklahoma City was on that original list.
OKC BOMBING, JAYNA DAVIS INTERVIEWED
So what are we supposed to believe?
Could the information that’s cited by Congress to fund mega-billions into an industry be exploited by politics? Could it be an influence that’s been at work for 20 years or more, slowly building to a turning point?
Dropping the Franklin Inquiry: Anticipated Contingency?
Also working in McCollum’s office during that same time period was Yossef Bodansky. On Dec. 1, 1985, the Israeli newspaper Davar reported that “the FBI is looking into the possibility that a journalist in the US known as an associate of Israels, may have served as a courier for classified materials delivered to the Israelis. The Israeli newspaper identified the man as Yossef “Seffie” Bodansky, an Israeli living at that time in Baltimore and working as a writer and consultant on military affairs.
According to a fascinating report published in 1986 titled “Spy, Steal and Smuggle: Israel’s Special Relationship with the United States” by Claudia Wright, Bodansky, who was working on a contract with the Pentagon in 1985, underwent an investigation conducted on his activities in the Pentagon by the Defense Investigative Service, the Pentagons own security department and, many of Bodansky’s activities were put on hold. Shortly after this, Jonathan Polllard was arrested for spying on the United States for Israel.
Additionally Davar reported, Bodansky had met Pollard for lunch and Bodansky admitted to the Israeli reporter that “he may have run into Pollard at some party although he had no memory of such a meeting.” According to Wright, a Washington source claimed that he had introduced Pollard to Bodansky and confirmed that they knew each other.
Wright goes on to say that Bodansky’s principal contact at the Pentagon was Harold Rhode who was an adviser on Southwest Asia affairs to the then Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. Rhode has been named in many articles on the current Israeli espionage affair as having traveled to Rome with Larry Franklin to meet with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Bodansky not only went on to receive additional security clearances, but he joined McCollum’s staff in the late 1980s as the head of the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. Though a citizen of Israel, Bodansky held that position until very recently.
District Attorney Paul McNulty might have gotten some interesting insights into Israeli espionage and security clearances while working in close proximity with Bodansky on McCollum’s staff. Many of these political connections and the movement were reminiscent of the experience of the Stephen Bryen Israeli Espionage case of more than 25 years ago.
I’m not making any accusations here. I’m only asking questions in trying to determine the credibility of popular reference work based on the possible influence of political bias.
Could external forces have had an effect on the accuracy of his work?
