tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-330355762024-02-18T21:48:30.551-05:00Winter ParkingWinter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comBlogger3929125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-25596149699921045542021-09-12T17:55:00.003-04:002021-09-12T17:58:41.169-04:00<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/nyregion/judge-in-9-11-suits-feels-no-regret-that-none-ever-went-to-trial.html">NYT: Judge in 9/11 Suits Feels No Regret That None Ever Went to Trial</a>
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By BENJAMIN WEISER | SEPT. 9, 2016
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After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, scores of victims’ family members decided to pursue lawsuits in federal court, bypassing a dedicated compensation fund in order to seek not only millions of dollars in damages, but also answers and accountability.
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Many had wanted to compel a public soul-searching, and to have the airlines and others reveal in court how their policies and actions might have allowed 19 armed hijackers to pass through airport security, board planes and carry out the attacks.
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The families had amassed a trove of internal documents and depositions. But none of the material was ever aired before a jury: Each of the 96 victims’ cases filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan was settled confidentially under the direction of Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who oversaw all the cases.
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Although that meant there would be no Sept. 11 civil trial, Judge Hellerstein, in his first public interviews about the wrongful death cases and settlements, said that he had no regrets over the outcome.
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Settlements had become more important for the plaintiffs than “getting information and promoting accountability of airlines,” he said.
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“They decided they’d take money rather than get information,” Judge Hellerstein said. “And it’s a debatable question,” he added, “if a trial would have produced greater accountability of the airlines.”
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The judge acknowledged the criticism of those who sought to place the aviation industry on trial; one family accused him of trying to squelch a trial so that the truth about the attacks would never be made public. And he also acknowledged that by not holding a trial, there was a “loss of information” to the public.
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“But it pales in my mind,” he said, “with the fact that the people who were suing for money got their money.”
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It is rare for a sitting judge to discuss his cases, perhaps even more so when they carry the significance and emotional import of the Sept. 11 attacks. But after the last of the 96 wrongful death and injury lawsuits was settled in 2011, Judge Hellerstein agreed to a series of interviews with The New York Times about his handling of the cases. He spoke in two interviews a few years ago and a third on Sept. 2 in his chambers.
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In the interviews, he said that he had been ready to hold a trial if the plaintiffs had ultimately wanted one, but he remained skeptical they “would get their accounting in the end,” nor was he certain they would win.
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“There was great risk in these cases,” he said, adding that he encouraged families to apply to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund for a quicker recovery.
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The vast majority of victims’ families did just that, receiving money through the fund that wound up paying more than $7 billion.
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Other suits related to the Sept. 11 attacks were filed, including by ground zero workers citing health injuries and other plaintiffs claiming property damages. All went before Judge Hellerstein; only one, a property damage case, remains unsettled.
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The judge, 82, a Bronx native, was nominated to the bench in 1998 by President Bill Clinton, after a career spent mostly in private practice.
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Like so many people, Judge Hellerstein was personally acquainted with victims of the attacks. As a lawyer, he had represented the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its almost 1,000 employees in New York when the World Trade Center’s north tower was hit. He had worked closely with several Cantor executives and eaten in the company’s dining room.
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Some months later, the first Sept. 11 lawsuit was filed, and was randomly assigned to Judge Hellerstein. Other related lawsuits came in, and were sent to the judge, including one from Cantor.
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“I was reading the affidavits,” he recalled. “I had to stop reading because they were people I knew.” He said he alerted the lawyers; none asked for his recusal. (Cantor eventually settled for $135 million.)
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Judge Hellerstein has long believed that courts were not the best venue for civil litigants to seek answers. In a 2004 hearing, for example, he said lawsuits were “not good tools for investigation.”
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Kenneth R. Feinberg, the lawyer who administered the special victim fund, said that Judge Hellerstein “knew from the very beginning that the cases had to settle — and he got there.”
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“The idea of a trial made very little sense,” Mr. Feinberg said, adding that he met with families who sued. “I told them, ‘If you’re going to trial to find out what happened, you are wasting your time. A courtroom is not where you will get answers.’”
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Not everyone has agreed with that position.
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The family of Mark Bavis, a 31-year-old hockey scout who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 when it crashed into the World Trade Center, had long resolved to push for a trial; a settlement, Mr. Bavis’s twin brother, Michael, said in 2010, “has not been in our vocabulary.”
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A year later, a trial seemed near. But in a late ruling, Judge Hellerstein shifted the focus of the case in a way that the plaintiffs believed favored the defendants, United and a security firm that ran the checkpoint at Logan International Airport in Boston, where Mr. Bavis had boarded the plane.
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The plaintiffs, in a 2011 brief, argued that the airline had a history of security breakdowns and of not heeding warnings from a company executive about inadequate staffing and training; that many screeners on duty on Sept. 11 could not speak English; and that some had never heard of Al Qaeda or knew what Mace was.
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United and the security firm argued that they could not be found liable for not stopping an attack that “the entire federal government was unable to predict, plan against or prevent.”
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The Bavis family settled, but also issued a blistering statement, saying the judge had “essentially gutted the case so that the truth about what led to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, would never be told at trial.”
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“We put ourselves through great strain to try to do what we considered the right thing,” Michael Bavis said, “and eventually threw the towel in.”
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Donald A. Migliori, a lawyer whose firm, Motley Rice, of Mount Pleasant, S.C., represented the Bavises and more than 50 other wrongful death and injury plaintiffs, said the judge was “absolutely wrong” about the litigation’s value, especially because other investigations focused largely on government failures.
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The plaintiffs used “the legal system to gather real information about what happened at those checkpoints,” Mr. Migliori said. “We obtained it; we just couldn’t tell the public the whole story.”
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The settlements were for undisclosed amounts that were coupled with broad secrecy orders that cloaked the discovery materials that the plaintiffs obtained.
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Owen Fiss, a professor emeritus at Yale Law School, who has written critically about settlements, said he understood why the Sept. 11 plaintiffs might have felt they had to settle their cases.
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“But let’s not celebrate it as an occasion of justice being done,” he said. “It’s not the notoriety that they were seeking. The discovery of what the airlines did and failed to do was a precondition to seeing that the airlines were being held accountable.”
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Thane Rosenbaum, a legal scholar at New York University’s School of Law, said, “This was a case that was screaming for a larger sense of moral relief: How did this happen?”
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Mike Low, whose daughter Sara Low, 28, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center, had long been vocal about wanting to “find some answers,” as he said in 2007. The Lows settled in 2010.
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“There was so little accountability or justice,” Mr. Low said. “As a father, my daughter was murdered. It still hurts me today that I couldn’t achieve that.”
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At his request, the Motley law firm has donated public court documents from the case to the National September 11 Memorial Museum in Sara Low’s memory. Mr. Low said he hoped someday the museum could receive a full archive of discovery materials from the litigation.
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As the litigation progressed, Judge Hellerstein said that he met with individual families, often accompanied by Sheila L. Birnbaum, a lawyer he had appointed as a mediator. They would gather in his robing room, where he listened and commiserated with the family members as they expressed their grief.
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“They wanted to tell me about their case,” he said. “They asked me, ‘Judge, is it fair if I take such and such an amount?’”
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Judge Hellerstein recalled that he said what he thought. “That’s typically not a judge’s role,” he noted. “But I thought it was very important that there be a sense of equity, that people be satisfied as best they could be satisfied in such tragic circumstances.”
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“Do you live the case and allow it to dominate your life?” he added. “I think we all have unfortunate events in our lives and we have to learn to absorb them and go on.”
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Judge Hellerstein, who has written about the experience of being Jewish and a judge, paraphrased what he called one of the most powerful statements in the Bible: “I set before you good and bad, life and death. Choose life.”
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“It affected me,” Judge Hellerstein recalled. “So I say to these people, choose life.”
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Doris Burke contributed research.
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A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2016, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge in 9/11 Suits Feels No Regret That None Ever Went to Trial.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-65274818563580272222016-09-23T17:55:00.000-04:002016-09-29T23:38:37.898-04:00CNN : Obama vetoes 9/11 lawsuit bill<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/politics/september-11-bill-saudi-arabia-veto/">Obama vetoes 9/11 lawsuit bill</a><br />
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<i><b>By Kevin Liptak | CNN White House Producer | September 23, 2016</b></i><br />
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- President Barack Obama vetoed legislation allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia<br />
- The administration warns of unintended consequences<br />
- Congress may override it next week<br />
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Washington (CNN)Barack Obama vetoed Friday a bill that would allow family members of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. The White House claimed it could expose US diplomats and servicemen to litigation in other countries.<br />
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Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress say they'll override Obama's veto next week.<br />
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Obama has now issued 12 vetoes. If successful, Congress' override would be the first of Obama's presidency.<br />
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Support for the "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act" ran high among lawmakers, who overwhelmingly passed the bill earlier this year after pressure from victims' groups. The bill would end foreign countries' immunity in the United States from lawsuits, allowing federal civil suits to go forward if the country is determined to have had a hand in a US terror attack.<br />
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In his veto message, Obama wrote he had "deep sympathy for the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, who have suffered grievously."<br />
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But he maintained the legislation would seriously hurt US national security interests and cause harm to important alliances, saying it "would neither protect Americans from terrorist attacks nor improve the effectiveness of our response to such attacks."<br />
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He warned that the law would hurt the effectiveness of the administration's action against terrorism by taking questions of foreign states' involvement in terrorism "out of the hands of national security and foreign policy professionals and placing them in the hands of private litigants and courts."<br />
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Obama also said the move would open Americans abroad, especially those serving in the military, to prosecutions by foreign countries, since this would remove the reciprocal agreements that now protect both sides from such lawsuits.<br />
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He also pointed to complaints that allied nations have made about the measure. This legislation, he said, "threatens to limit their cooperation on key national security issues, including counterterrorism initiatives, at a crucial time when we are trying to build coalitions, not create divisions."<br />
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Demonstrating the difficult political position the White House is in, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state, expressed her support for the legislation Friday.<br />
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"Clinton continues to support the efforts by Sen. (Chuck) Schumer and his colleagues in Congress to secure the ability of 9/11 families and other victims of terror to hold accountable those responsible," said Jesse Lehrich, a Clinton spokesman. "She would sign this legislation if it came to her desk."<br />
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Schumer called the veto "a disappointing decision that will be swiftly and soundly overturned in Congress."<br />
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Co-sponsor Sen. John Cornyn said, "I look forward to the opportunity for Congress to override the President's veto, provide these families with the chance to seek the justice they deserve and send a clear message that we will not tolerate those who finance terrorism in the United States."<br />
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<b>White House lobbying effort</b><br />
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In recent days, some of the measure's supporters in Congress have expressed misgivings about the legislation, prompting a new effort by the administration to lobby against the bill.<br />
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The lobbying effort on Capitol Hill against the legislation has involved the administration but also representatives for the Saudi government, which denies any involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks. The alliance puts Obama in the unlikely position of defending the same position as the Kingdom, with which he's had longstanding disputes over counterterrorism strategies and human rights.<br />
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It also puts the President at odds with family members of 9/11 victims, who protested outside the White House this week and spoke alongside lawmakers from New York and Connecticut on Capitol Hill. They, along with other proponents of the bill, say the language is written narrowly to prevent the types of repercussions the administration predicts.<br />
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"The president's rationales to veto JASTA don't hold weight. They are 100% wrong," said Terry Strada, whose husband Tom Strada died in World Trade Center collapse. "For us, the 9/11 families and survivors, all we are asking for is an opportunity to have our case heard in a courtroom. Denying us justice is un-American."<br />
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Strada said the lobbying efforts from representatives of Saudi Arabia amounted to an intimidation effort from a country the US still relies on heavily in the fight against terror groups like ISIS.<br />
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"Neither the President nor Congress nor lobbyists for foreign kingdoms should be permitted to make us wait another day to pass JASTA," she said.<br />
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<b>Veto override plans</b><br />
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Administration officials had been eying a Friday afternoon veto with the hopes of submitting it to lawmakers after Congress adjourned until November's election contests. But prolonged negotiations over a government funding bill and a package to combat Zika virus have delayed the recess, meaning lawmakers are still likely to be in Washington next week to cast an override vote.<br />
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"Our assumption is that the veto will be overridden," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.<br />
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House Speaker Paul Ryan followed suit Wednesday, saying, "I do think the votes are there for the override." But the Wisconsin Republican also voiced his own doubts about the legislation, saying the implications for lawsuits against Americans worried him.<br />
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"I worry about legal matters," Ryan said. "I worry about trial lawyers trying to get rich off of this. And I do worry about the precedence. At the same time, these victims do need to have their day in court."<br />
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He was one of several prominent lawmakers who have expressed buyers' remorse for the proposed law. A pair of Republican senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have pushed for changes to make it more difficult for the families to pursue lawsuits but could also make it harder for the US to be sued for alleged wrongdoing.<br />
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Opponents of the bill gained support Wednesday both from the European Union, which issued its opposition in the form of a "demarche" statement to the US Department of State, and from a bipartisan group of former national security officials, who penned an open letter to Obama.<br />
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"The harm this legislation will cause the United States will be both dramatic and long-lasting," the letter read, citing arguments over weakening sovereign immunity. Its signatories included veterans of Republican and Democratic administrations, including Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to President George W. Bush; Michael Mukasey, a US attorney general under Bush; William Cohen, a secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton; and Richard Clarke, a national security aide to Bush and Clinton.<br />
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The letter also noted the law, if enacted, "will most certainly undermine our relationship with one of our most important allies, Saudi Arabia, and damage our relationship with the entire Middle East."<br />
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<i>CNN's Dan Merica and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-20658514753065719582016-09-23T14:22:00.000-04:002016-09-29T23:37:18.788-04:00Stars and Stripes : Is terrorism justice legislation backed by 9/11 families dangerous to military?<a href="http://www.stripes.com/is-terrorism-justice-legislation-backed-by-9-11-families-dangerous-to-military-1.430618">Is terrorism justice legislation backed by 9/11 families dangerous to military?</a><br />
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<i><b>By DIANNA CAHN | STARS AND STRIPES | September 23, 2016</b></i><br />
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WASHINGTON — Legislation that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in American courts was headed for a showdown Friday as President Barack Obama prepared to veto the bill and the families pressed for its full passage.<br />
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Caught in the middle: The question of whether the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, would imperil American diplomats and military servicemembers abroad.<br />
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The bill sailed unopposed through both houses of Congress after intense pressure from the families to pass the law on their behalf. If passed, it would remove sovereign immunity from foreign government officials, allowing U.S. citizens to sue them in U.S. courts for alleged acts of terrorism.<br />
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Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell off its U.S. assets should the bill become law and close allies France and Holland have warned they will pass reciprocal laws. Obama promised to veto the bill by Friday’s deadline, warning it could open the door to lawsuits against U.S. personnel in other countries.<br />
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The families say concerns of global repercussions are alarmist, but in recent days, a group of senior national security, defense and diplomatic officials and a separate group of former military generals, admirals and colonels wrote letters to legislators urging against the law’s passage.<br />
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Even as some lawmakers acknowledge newfound concerns, pressure to support the 9/11 families loomed large and Congress appeared primed to override the veto.<br />
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a co-sponsor of the bill, upset families when he voiced concerns. He told Stars and Stripes Thursday by email that he was disappointed that the choice had come down to supporting Saudi Arabia or supporting the families, when such serious considerations fell in the middle.<br />
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“ ‘Either or’ politics is not where I want to go, but it may wind up that if nobody’s trying to accommodate this problem, we’re just going to vote,” he said. “And if I have to vote, I’m going to vote to override the veto.”<br />
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Families of those killed and hurt in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have argued that the law is narrow and limited to acts of terrorism, not acts of war. Objectors warned that while U.S. law might differentiate between the two, it would not prevent less limited laws from being enacted in other countries. The White House also argued the classification of terrorism should remain an executive authority, not become a question for the courts.<br />
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“The safety and security of our diplomats, intelligence officers, military and other senior officials of the U.S. government and their ability to perform their duties without foreign influence or intervention would be seriously imperiled,” according to an open letter written this week by former Defense Secretary William Cohen, former acting CIA director Michael Morell and seven other former national security, intelligence and judicial leaders including advisers to Obama and President George W. Bush.<br />
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“The perpetrators of terrorism should and will continue to be pursued through our vast military, law enforcement and intelligence capabilities,” it said. But dismantling sovereign immunity “will put our government officials and military personnel at extreme risk and impede the ability of the community of nations to work together at a time when global cooperation in the war on terrorism is essential.”<br />
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On Tuesday, 9/11 families protested in front of the White House, calling on Obama to pass the act and making clear they saw his promise to veto as a direct affront.<br />
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“I am frustrated, angry and tired of the mistruths being carelessly spewed about this legislation,” Terry Strada, the chair of the 9/11 families and survivors group, said in a news conference near the Capitol after Tuesday’s protest.<br />
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Strada said JASTA was “carefully, narrowly crafted” over years by top lawmakers, and concerns about reciprocal laws were flawed. Diplomats are protected by the Vienna Conventions, she said, while the military is protected by wording in the legislation excluding acts of war.<br />
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“To equate what we do to protect ourselves from terrorism with what others do in support of terrorism completely misreads the bill,” Strada said. “Denying us justice is un-American.”<br />
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Lt. Col. Pat Testerman, a retired Air Force commander, said he strongly supported justice for the 9/11 families yet worries that the law would allow other countries to define things differently.<br />
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He could imagine a scenario in which a young Air Force lieutenant makes an error in an act of war – say, an erroneous target of a drone attack that kills civilians – and is tried in a foreign court for an act of terror, he said.<br />
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“What we define as acts of terrorism or acts of war is up to interpretation,” Testerman said. “And we open ourselves up to significant danger with this.”<br />
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White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Sept. 12 that the law could “have an impact on our relationship with every country around the world in a way that has negative consequences for the United States, for our national security and for our men and women in uniform.”<br />
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Recent reports suggest some lawmakers might be wavering in their support for overriding the veto. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said this week that she was having second thoughts about the bill “because I think it launches a number of unforeseen happenings.”<br />
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On Friday, a group of retired military leaders signed a letter being passed around on Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to reconsider an override.<br />
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“Congress must take great care to ensure that soldiers must be able to do their jobs without threat of foreign influence or repercussion,” it said. “We must do all we can to protect them from possible legal action in faraway lands.”<br />
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Earnest said the president would continue to lobby lawmakers to let his veto stand. But he recognized that despite warnings about possible consequences, the 9/11 families held strong sway.<br />
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“There’s no denying the political potency of this issue,” he said. “But the president believes that it’s important to look out for our country and to look out for our servicemembers.”<br />
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<i>cahn.dianna@stripes.com<br />
Twitter: @DiannaCahn</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-7579775761343784852015-09-19T03:05:00.000-04:002015-09-20T03:18:54.932-04:00News Observer : Distorting the study of 9/11 at UNC<a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article35735889.html">Distorting the study of 9/11 at UNC</a><br />
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<b>-- The Sept. 11, 2001 images bring back memories of foreign places<br />
-- Representing 9/11 has led to controversy in academic community<br />
-- We must move on from the atrocity to better understand 9/11</b><br />
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<i><b>By Neel Ahuja | September 19, 2015</b></i><br />
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On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a college student in Illinois. Like most Americans, I was stunned to witness the 9/11 attacks on television. Like many individuals with relatives who had survived atrocities, the images of destruction evoked for me connections to faraway places.<br />
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When I was a child, my father told me stories of his experience of resettlement as an 11-year-old refugee in India’s 1947 war of partition, recounting the loss of his home as he was driven out of the new land of Pakistan. The most vivid memory from these stories was the moment he traced a coin-sized circle on the palm of his hand to indicate the size of his daily ration of rice in the refugee camp.<br />
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Today, as refugees from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan and elsewhere journey toward northwestern Europe, the knowledge that thousands are dying along the way provokes anger and frustration. “No one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark,” writes poet Warsan Shire. And yet knowledge of the world’s shared exposure to violence revealed in the ruins of 9/11 or war-torn Syria might also be a resource for building a future in which one’s identity or birthplace will no longer mandate unequal vulnerability to premature death.<br />
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As this year’s anniversary of 9/11 approached, I had just convened my fall classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. I was teaching a course I designed called “Literature of 9/11,” which explores poetry, novels, films, comics, essays, journalism and documentary materials related to the public memory and legacies of the 9/11 attacks.<br />
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The course quickly became a topic of public debate. A first-year student who was not enrolled in my course declared that “Literature of 9/11” did not adequately represent victims. Based on a list of the assigned texts published by the campus bookstore, the student wrote on a national website that “the readings mostly focus on justifying the actions of terrorists – painting them as fighting against an American regime, or mistaken idealists, or good people.” The story went viral and was aired on one national cable news channel, reaching an audience of millions. A deluge of hateful email swamped my inbox; meanwhile, the university was flooded with calls to fire me and cut humanities funding.<br />
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There have been heated debates over how to ethically represent 9/11. Theodor Adorno famously wrote, “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” After 9/11, the sentiment was instead to publish photographs after 9/11 is barbaric.<br />
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On Aug. 26, my students read Tom Junod’s article on the famous “Falling Man” image depicting a man in mid-air as he jumped from the burning towers. We explored the controversies over this image and similar ones, like sculptor Eric Fischl’s Tumbling Woman, which was removed from Rockefeller Center after complaints about its graphic content. As we examined laments from relatives of the dead, we also viewed Alejandro Gonzales Iñarritu’s film about the victims who jumped from the towers.<br />
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The director blacks out the spectacle of the burning buildings and forces the viewer to zoom in on each falling individual, to hear the last phone calls of the victims on the planes and finally to listen to the sound of these human beings hitting the pavement at the moment of death. Disturbing as these scenes are, they attempt to individualize the dead, helping the filmmaker ask a question that on first glance seems to denounce religious extremism and on second seems more critical of the media’s obsessive repetition of the images of the falling towers: “Does God’s light guide us or blind us?”<br />
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Two days later, the story about our course began circulating online. It was disorienting to spend our class discussing the ethics of mourning and the application of Holocaust, postcolonial and trauma theories to 9/11, only to return to my office to find dozens of emails accusing me of sympathizing with terrorists, calling for the deportation or extermination of all Muslims or telling me to “go back where I came from.” (I was born in Nashville and grew up in Topeka, Kansas.)<br />
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One reason critics attacked me is that I teach three texts – “Poems from Guantánamo” and the novels “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid and “The Sirens of Baghdad” by Yasmina Khadra – that are easy to caricature as representing the viewpoints of terrorists. None of these texts is actually so one-dimensional. Khadra, for example, was an Algerian army officer who fought in that country’s civil war against Islamists, and his publisher brags that his books have been taught at West Point. Yet the book titles and authors’ names – along with the assumptions readers made about my own identity – left my course an easy target.<br />
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The student who criticized my course later admitted that he had never read any of the assigned texts. He just lifted impressions from Amazon.com reviews. Had, for him, reading itself become barbaric after 9/11?<br />
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This was a cynical attack on learning and an attempt to censor writing exploring the fraught histories of U.S. overseas military interventions. Yet reflecting on such topics is exactly the task that the memory of 9/11 and all other mass atrocities urgently requires of us.<br />
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Admirably, students at UNC have consistently opposed attempts to stifle public education and critical thought. This includes strong resistance to smear campaigns against UNC orchestrated by the John William Pope Center that aim to justify university budget cuts in order to advance the program of tax cuts being pushed by North Carolina’s state legislature.<br />
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It is time to end the hijacking of the public trauma of 9/11 for the service of such narrow political agendas. To ask critical questions about the legacies of mass atrocity is our collective responsibility. If we don’t answer that call, there will be no possibility of moving beyond the acts of retribution, hatred and fear that continue to remake today’s world in the image of Manhattan’s rubble.<br />
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Neel Ahuja is associate professor of English, comparative literature and geography at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of “Bioinsecurities: Disease Interventions, Empire, and the Government of Species,” forthcoming from Duke University Press. He teaches the courses “Literature of 9/11” and “The New Wars” at UNC.<br />
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<i>The controversy<br />
<br />
Find a news article about Neel Ahuja’s class at nando.com/911class and the original blog post at nando.com/911blogpost</i><br />
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<blockquote style="border: solid 1pt #000047; padding-left: 12pt; padding-right: 12pt;"><i><b>NOTE</b></i>: uh ... not! these are the links provided in the final note: <br />
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<a href="http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/23978/">UNC’s ‘Literature of 9/11’ course sympathizes with terrorists, paints U.S. as imperialistic</a><br />
Alec Dent | UNC Chapel Hill | August 28, 2015 <br />
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/23978/<br />
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<a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article33251352.html">UNC course on 9/11 criticized in conservative publications</a><br />
By Jane Stancill | September 1, 2015 <br />
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article33251352.html<br />
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~~~<br />
<br />
another link from the original: <br />
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Fox News Fooled By College Freshman Blogger In Attack On 9/11 Literature Course <br />
<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/01/fox-news-fooled-by-college-freshman-blogger-in/205304">http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/01/fox-news-fooled-by-college-freshman-blogger-in/205304</a><br />
<br />
and from this there are many others, including:<br />
<a href="http://ahuja.web.unc.edu/about/">http://ahuja.web.unc.edu/about/</a><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-62353652020681372242015-09-11T16:36:00.000-04:002015-09-12T16:36:43.464-04:00Newsweek : Florida Man Charged With Planning to Explode 9/11 Memorial <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/florida-man-charged-planning-explode-911-memorial-371518">Florida Man Charged With Planning to Explode 9/11 Memorial</a><br />
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<i><b>By Polly Mosendz | September 11, 2015</b></i><br />
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A 20-year-old Florida man made plans to destroy a September 11 memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Middle District of Florida.<br />
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Joshua Ryne Goldberg allegedly planned to have an accomplice carry out his plan on September 13, using a bomb.<br />
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He is charged with illegal distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction. On social media, Goldberg posed as an extremist based in Perth, Australia who planned to carry out attacks in that nation. An FBI official who was posing as a fellow jihadist spoke online with Goldberg regularly. Authorities were able to trace Goldberg’s IP address to his mother’s house in Florida. <br />
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“Have you decided what kind of attack to carry on 9/11, akhi? I was thinking a bombing. We could make pipe bombs and detonate them at a large public event,” Goldberg wrote, according to the criminal complaint. Using the pseudonym AusWitness, Goldberg provided instructions on how to make a pressure cooker bomb and selected the Kansas City 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb as the location for the attack. Rather than carry out the attack himself, Goldberg convinced the informant to bomb the memorial, the complaint says.<br />
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In messages to the informant, Goldberg advised him to purchase the bomb-making materials separately so as not to alert authorities to his plans. “When you go [to the memorial] to place the bomb, make sure the bomb is VERY well hidden.... Put the backpack near the crowd,” Goldberg wrote, according to the complaint.<br />
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In order to cause the most damage possible, Goldberg suggested filling the bomb with nails, glass and metal. “If you can, dip the screws and other shrapnel in rat poison before putting them in. that way, the kuffar who get hit by them will be more likely to die,” he wrote, the complaint says.<br />
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A search warrant was issued for Goldberg’s home on September 9 and it was then that he was detained. In conversations with authorities, Goldberg allegedly admitted to providing instructions on how to make a bomb and planning the Kansas City attack. “Goldberg stated he believed that the individual did intend to create functioning bombs and would actually attempt to use them to kill and injure persons,” the complaint reads.<br />
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Goldberg claims he planned to tell law enforcement about the bombing plan in advance so he would “receive credit for stopping the attack.”<br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-86569607613734706142015-09-01T13:52:00.000-04:002015-09-09T13:52:25.199-04:00Guardian : Frederick Forsyth: I was an MI6 agent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/01/frederick-forsyth-i-was-an-mi6-agent">Frederick Forsyth: I was an MI6 agent</a><br />
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<b>Day of the Jackal author reveals in autobiography that he worked for the intelligence service for more than two decades</b><br />
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<i><b>Alison Flood | September 1, 2015</b></i><br />
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Frederick Forsyth will admit in his forthcoming autobiography that he worked as an agent for MI6 for more than 20 years.<br />
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The bestselling thriller author, who was an RAF pilot and a journalist before turning to fiction with The Day of the Jackal, is due to release The Outsider next week. Forsyth has previously denied claims that he worked for MI6 – “Some said that I was a spook, but I just knew a few,” he told the Guardian in 2001 – but an extract from his memoir in the Sunday Times reveals how in late 1968 a “member of the Firm” - MI6 – called Ronnie sought him out.<br />
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The Nigeria-Biafra conflict had been ongoing for 15 months, and Ronnie needed “an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave, what he termed ‘someone in on the ground’”. Forsyth had been reporting from Biafra as a freelancer, and writes that “when I left for the return to the rainforest, he had one”.<br />
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Read more<br />
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Forsyth says that he was simultaneously working as a stringer for various newspapers and magazines reporting on the conflict and the humanitarian disaster, and keeping Ronnie “informed of things that could not, for various reasons, emerge in the media”.<br />
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He told the BBC that he was not paid for the work he did. “There was a lot of volunteer assistance that was not charged for. The zeitgeist was different … the cold war was very much on,” he said. “If someone asked: ‘Can you see your way clear to do us a favour?’, it was very hard to say no.”<br />
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Forsyth’s reporting from Biafra provided the material for his first book, The Biafra Story, a non-fiction account of the breakaway state’s war with Nigeria. He also undertook fact-finding missions to Rhodesia and South Africa, and in 1973, two years after the publication of his debut novel The Day of the Jackal, went into East Germany to retrieve a package from an asset. He played the part of a British tourist visiting the Albertinum museum. “Graeco-Roman treasures were my new enthusiasm and there were books to study as if for an exam,” the author told the Sunday Times, which said that Forsyth was handed the files under a toilet door at the museum.<br />
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Forsyth said this weekend that he was making the revelation now because “it is 55, 60 years later. There have been memoirs written, highly secret minutes have been published. There’s no East Germany, no Stasi, no KGB, no Soviet Union, so where’s the harm?”<br />
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He also revealed that he had consulted MI6 over passages in his novels, which are known for their authenticity. “I had a number to ring,” he told the Sunday Times. “I would have a lunch at the club, I’d ask is it OK? They would check with their superiors, and then they would say yes, you can use that, with one proviso, that sheets must be provided for vetting – just in case I went too far.” Usually, he told the BBC, “the response was: ‘OK, Freddie!’”<br />
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The 77-year-old Forsyth is the author of 13 bestselling novels, including The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative and The Fourth Protocol. The Outsider will be published on 10 September, described by its publisher as “a candid look at an extraordinary life lived to the full, a life whose unique experiences have provided rich inspiration for 13 internationally bestselling thrillers”.<br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-69211453719806072972015-07-31T12:09:00.000-04:002015-08-08T12:13:16.616-04:00Phys dot Org : Why do people believe 9/11 was an inside job?<a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-07-people-job.html">Why do people believe 9/11 was an inside job?</a><br />
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<i><b>July 31, 2015</b></i><br />
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<b>The reasons why some people believe bizarre conspiracy theories are set to be explored in a new project by a philosopher from the University of Warwick.</b><br />
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Professor Quassim Cassam has been awarded £250,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to study what he calls 'intellectual vices'. The title of his project is 'Vice Epistemology'.<br />
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He believes his research could help to explain how certain claims -- for example that 9/11 was masterminded by the US government -- are able to gain so much traction.<br />
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His findings may also shed light on why some people are susceptible to becoming radicalised in ways that make them potential recruits for extremist organisations such as Islamic State.<br />
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Prof Cassam said: "In 2008, a global poll of over 16,000 people found fewer than half believed that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, with a significant number attributing the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers to a controlled demolition by the US government.<br />
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"We live in a world where strange conspiracy theories such as this abound, often with dire social and political consequences. But how are such beliefs to be explained?<br />
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"My project as an AHRC Leadership Fellow is about the possible role of intellectual vices in fuelling these beliefs. By intellectual vices I mean intellectual character traits such as gullibility, closed-mindedness, prejudice and dogmatism. What I call vice epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature and significance of such character traits."<br />
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He added: "There are some true conspiracy theories, such as Watergate, but the philosophically interesting ones are those that are clearly false and refuted by best available evidence. Why is it that some people continue to believe such theories?<br />
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"One way of answering is to ask the person and they will give you their reasons, but the thing that's striking is that these reasons will often be bad reasons. They have access to the evidence, but continue to subscribe to their theories. If you simply answer the question 'why do they believe these things?' by reference to the reasons they give you will have an incomplete account -- you need to go deeper.<br />
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"The thing is that these people aren't necessarily crazy or irrational but, as Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein points out, crazy thoughts are often held by people who are not crazy at all. But if these people aren't irrational, why is it and how is it they believe the things they believe? We need an alternative explanation."<br />
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Prof Cassam's study will also consider whether intellectual vices may explain why there is sometimes a gap between the results of scientific research and the implementation of those findings by practitioners on the ground. "This gap is a major challenge facing clinical and other human services, identified by the World Health Organization," he said.<br />
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The research is due to begin in April 2016.
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-65985563568800120312015-07-30T01:14:00.000-04:002015-08-06T01:18:14.628-04:00Independent : What turns someone into a conspiracy theorist? Study to look at why some are more 'receptive' to such theories <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/what-turns-someone-into-a-conspiracy-theorist-study-to-look-at-why-some-are-more-receptive-to-such-theories-10427940.html">What turns someone into a conspiracy theorist? Study to look at why some are more 'receptive' to such theories</a><br />
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<b>New study will look at why some people are more suspectible to extremist views</b><br />
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<b><i>Caroline Mortimer | July 30, 2015</i></b><br />
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Conspiracy theorists aren’t "mad" they just have certain “intellectual character traits” that make them believe certain things, a professor has said.<br />
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Quassim Cassam, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick, has launched a new study into what makes people believe in certain theories – and why such theories could push people to extremes such as joining Isis.<br />
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He believes that some people are more vulnerable to “intellectual vices” such as dogmatism, gullibility and close mindedness and this in turn makes them more likely to listen to extreme "alternative" sources of information.<br />
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He told The Independent: “The other explanation is that that these people are literally mad or mentally ill but I don’t really go for that theory.<br />
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“For example take 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Why do they hold onto their conspiracy theory despite the fact that there seems to be overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t an American government conspiracy to bring down the towers?<br />
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“The answer is they are overwhelmingly receptive to certain kinds of evidence for instance of website and they are overly dismissive of other types of evidence such as engineers’ reports on the towers.”<br />
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Professor Cassam explains that psychologists have developed a theory of a “conspiracy mentality” which explains why people are more likely to be taken in by certain types of rhetoric or information that go against received wisdom.<br />
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Now he is trying to explore that idea in more depth and study the generic character traits which underpin that mentality.<br />
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In the case of terrorism and Isis, he questioned why is it that some 18 or 19 year olds can be convinced by Isis recruiters to believe their interpretation of Islam despite the people around them telling them differently.<br />
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He explained: “For example, I don’t know much about Islam but I do know that there is an absolute clear bar in Islam on suicide. So people who are told it is acceptable to be suicide bombers are ending up believing something which on the face has no foundation at all.”<br />
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He said he was not trying to prove that these character traits were the sole reason for people believing these things but they are “part of the package”.<br />
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Professor Cassam’s study, which is funded by the Arts and Humanity Research Council, will start in April 2016 and run for 18 months.<br />
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He hopes that his findings will help understand the irrational decisions made by some and be a step forward towards combating and challenging them.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-21186584129139448152015-03-13T19:26:00.000-04:002015-08-10T02:26:07.826-04:00Aeon: Bad thinkers<a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/intellectual-character-of-conspiracy-theorists/">Bad thinkers</a><br />
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<i><b>by Quassim Cassam | March 13, 2015 </b></i><br />
Edited by Ed Lake | @ejklake<br />
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<b>Why do some people believe conspiracy theories? It’s not just who or what they know. It’s a matter of intellectual character</b><br />
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<i>Quassim Cassam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry. His latest books are Berkeley’s Puzzle: What Does Experience Teach Us? (2014) and Self-Knowledge for Humans (2014).</i><br />
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Meet Oliver. Like many of his friends, Oliver thinks he is an expert on 9/11. He spends much of his spare time looking at conspiracist websites and his research has convinced him that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, of 11 September 2001 were an inside job. The aircraft impacts and resulting fires couldn’t have caused the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to collapse. The only viable explanation, he maintains, is that government agents planted explosives in advance. He realises, of course, that the government blames Al-Qaeda for 9/11 but his predictable response is pure Mandy Rice-Davies: they would say that, wouldn’t they?<br />
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Polling evidence suggests that Oliver’s views about 9/11 are by no means unusual. Indeed, peculiar theories about all manner of things are now widespread. There are conspiracy theories about the spread of AIDS, the 1969 Moon landings, UFOs, and the assassination of JFK. Sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be right – Watergate really was a conspiracy – but mostly they are bunkum. They are in fact vivid illustrations of a striking truth about human beings: however intelligent and knowledgeable we might be in other ways, many of us still believe the strangest things. You can find people who believe they were abducted by aliens, that the Holocaust never happened, and that cancer can be cured by positive thinking. A 2009 Harris Poll found that between one‑fifth and one‑quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation, astrology and the existence of witches. You name it, and there is probably someone out there who believes it.<br />
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You realise, of course, that Oliver’s theory about 9/11 has little going for it, and this might make you wonder why he believes it. The question ‘Why does Oliver believe that 9/11 was an inside job?’ is just a version of a more general question posed by the US skeptic Michael Shermer: why do people believe weird things? The weirder the belief, the stranger it seems that someone can have it. Asking why people believe weird things isn’t like asking why they believe it’s raining as they look out of the window and see the rain pouring down. It’s obvious why people believe it’s raining when they have compelling evidence, but it’s far from obvious why Oliver believes that 9/11 was an inside job when he has access to compelling evidence that it wasn’t an inside job.<br />
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I want to argue for something which is controversial, although I believe that it is also intuitive and commonsensical. My claim is this: Oliver believes what he does because that is the kind of thinker he is or, to put it more bluntly, because there is something wrong with how he thinks. The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, that they have little relevant information. The key to what they end up believing is how they interpret and respond to the vast quantities of relevant information at their disposal. I want to suggest that this is fundamentally a question of the way they are. Oliver isn’t mad (or at least, he needn’t be). Nevertheless, his beliefs about 9/11 are the result of the peculiarities of his intellectual constitution – in a word, of his intellectual character.<br />
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Usually, when philosophers try to explain why someone believes things (weird or otherwise), they focus on that person’s reasons rather than their character traits. On this view, the way to explain why Oliver believes that 9/11 was an inside job is to identify his reasons for believing this, and the person who is in the best position to tell you his reasons is Oliver. When you explain Oliver’s belief by giving his reasons, you are giving a ‘rationalising explanation’ of his belief.<br />
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The problem with this is that rationalising explanations take you only so far. If you ask Oliver why he believes 9/11 was an inside job he will, of course, be only too pleased to give you his reasons: it had to be an inside job, he insists, because aircraft impacts couldn’t have brought down the towers. He is wrong about that, but at any rate that’s his story and he is sticking to it. What he has done, in effect, is to explain one of his questionable beliefs by reference to another no less questionable belief. Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell us why he has any of these beliefs. There is a clear sense in which we still don’t know what is really going on with him.<br />
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Now let’s flesh out Oliver’s story a little: suppose it turns out that he believes lots of other conspiracy theories apart from the one about 9/11. He believes the Moon landings were faked, that Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered by MI6, and that the Ebola virus is an escaped bioweapon. Those who know him well say that he is easily duped, and you have independent evidence that he is careless in his thinking, with little understanding of the difference between genuine evidence and unsubstantiated speculation. Suddenly it all begins to make sense, but only because the focus has shifted from Oliver’s reasons to his character. You can now see his views about 9/11 in the context of his intellectual conduct generally, and this opens up the possibility of a different and deeper explanation of his belief than the one he gives: he thinks that 9/11 was an inside job because he is gullible in a certain way. He has what social psychologists call a ‘conspiracy mentality’.<br />
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Notice that the proposed character explanation isn’t a rationalising explanation. After all, being gullible isn’t a reason for believing anything, though it might still be why Oliver believes 9/11 was an inside job. And while Oliver might be expected to know his reasons for believing that 9/11 was an inside job, he is the last person to recognise that he believes what he believes about 9/11 because he is gullible. It is in the nature of many intellectual character traits that you don’t realise you have them, and so aren’t aware of the true extent to which your thinking is influenced by them. The gullible rarely believe they are gullible and the closed-minded don’t believe they are closed-minded. The only hope of overcoming self-ignorance in such cases is to accept that other people – your co-workers, your spouse, your friends – probably know your intellectual character better than you do. But even that won’t necessarily help. After all, it might be that refusing to listen to what other people say about you is one of your intellectual character traits. Some defects are incurable.<br />
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Gullibility, carelessness and closed-mindedness are examples of what the US philosopher Linda Zagzebski, in her book Virtues of the Mind (1996), has called ‘intellectual vices’. Others include negligence, idleness, rigidity, obtuseness, prejudice, lack of thoroughness, and insensitivity to detail. Intellectual character traits are habits or styles of thinking. To describe Oliver as gullible or careless is to say something about his intellectual style or mind-set – for example, about how he goes about trying to find out things about events such as 9/11. Intellectual character traits that aid effective and responsible enquiry are intellectual virtues, whereas intellectual vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. Humility, caution and carefulness are among the intellectual virtues Oliver plainly lacks, and that is why his attempts to get to the bottom of 9/11 are so flawed.<br />
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Oliver is fictional, but real-world examples of intellectual vices in action are not hard to find. Consider the case of the ‘underwear bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009. Abdulmutallab was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to affluent and educated parents, and graduated from University College London with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was radicalised by the online sermons of the Islamic militant Anwar al-Awlaki, who was subsequently killed by an American drone strike. It’s hard not to see the fact that Abdulmutallab was taken in by Awlaki’s sermons as at least partly a reflection of his intellectual character. If Abdulmutallab had the intellectual character not to be duped by Awlaki, then perhaps he wouldn’t have ended up on a transatlantic airliner with explosives in his underpants.<br />
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Intellectual character explanations of questionable beliefs are more controversial than one might imagine. For example, it has been suggested that explaining peoples’ bad behaviour or weird beliefs by reference to their character makes us more intolerant of them and less empathetic. Yet such explanations might still be correct, even if they have deleterious consequences. In any case, it’s not obvious that character explanations should make us less tolerant of other peoples’ foibles. Suppose that Oliver can’t help being the kind of person who falls for conspiracy theories. Shouldn’t that make us more rather than less tolerant of him and his weird beliefs?<br />
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A different objection to character-based explanations is that it’s just not true that people have questionable beliefs because they are stupid or gullible. In How We Know What Isn’t So (1991), the US social psychologist Thomas Gilovich argues that many such beliefs have ‘purely cognitive origins’, by which he means that they are caused by imperfections in our capacities to process information and draw conclusions. Yet the example he gives of a cognitive explanation takes us right back to character explanations. His example is the ‘hot hand’ in basketball. The idea is that when a player makes a couple of shots he is more likely to make subsequent shots. Success breeds success.<br />
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Gilovich used detailed statistical analysis to demonstrate that the hot hand doesn’t exist – performance on a given shot is independent of performance on previous shots. The question is, why do so many basketball coaches, players and fans believe in it anyway? Gilovich’s cognitive explanation is that belief in the hot hand is due to our faulty intuitions about chance sequences; as a species, we’re bad at recognising what genuinely random sequences look like.<br />
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And yet when Gilovich sent his results to a bunch of basketball coaches, what happened next is extremely revealing. One responded: ‘Who is this guy? So he makes a study. I couldn’t care less.’ This seems like a perfect illustration of intellectual vices in operation. The dismissive reaction manifested a range of vices, including closed-mindedness and prejudice. It’s hard not to conclude that the coach reacted as he did because he was closed-minded or prejudiced. In such cases as this, as with the case of Oliver, it’s just not credible that character traits aren’t doing significant explanatory work. A less closed-minded coach might well have reacted completely differently to evidence that the hot hand doesn’t exist.<br />
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Could we explain the dismissiveness of the coach without referring to his personality in general? ‘Situationists’, as they are called, argue that our behaviour is generally better explained by situational factors than by our supposed character traits. Some see this as a good reason to be skeptical about the existence of character. In one experiment, students at a theological seminary were asked to give a talk elsewhere on campus. One group was asked to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan, while the rest were assigned a different topic. Some were told they had plenty to time to reach the venue for the lecture, while others were told to hurry. On their way to the venue, all the students came across a person (an actor) apparently in need of help. In the event, the only variable that made a difference to whether they stopped to help was how much of a hurry they were in; students who thought they were running late were much less likely to stop and help than those who thought they had time. According to the Princeton philosopher Gilbert Harman, the lesson of such experiments is that ‘we need to convince people to look at situational factors and to stop trying to explain things in terms of character traits’.<br />
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The character traits that Harman had in mind are moral virtues such as kindness and generosity, but some situationists also object to the idea of intellectual virtues and vices. For example, they point to evidence that people perform much better in problem-solving tasks when they are in a good mood. If trivial situational factors such as mood or hunger are better at explaining your intellectual conduct than your so-called intellectual character, then what is the justification for believing in the existence of intellectual character traits? If such traits exist, then shouldn’t they explain one’s intellectual conduct? Absolutely, but examples such as Oliver and Gilovich’s basketball coach suggest that intellectual character traits do explain a person’s intellectual conduct in an important range of cases. People don’t believe weird things because they are hungry or in a bad (or good) mood. The view that people don’t have character traits such as gullibility, carelessness or prejudice, or that people don’t differ in intellectual character, deprives us of seemingly compelling explanations of the intellectual conduct of both Oliver and the basketball coach.<br />
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Suppose it turns out that Oliver lives in a region where conspiracy theories are rife or that he is under the influence of friends who are committed conspiracy theorists. Wouldn’t these be perfectly viable situational, non-character explanations of his beliefs about 9/11? Only up to a point. The fact that Oliver is easily influenced by his friends itself tells us something about his intellectual character. Where Oliver lives might help to explain his beliefs, but even if conspiracy theories are widespread in his neck of the woods we still need to understand why some people in his region believe them, while others don’t.<br />
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Differences in intellectual character help to explain why people in the same situation end up believing such different things. In order to think that intellectual character traits are relevant to a person’s intellectual conduct, you don’t have to think that other factors, including situational factors, are irrelevant. Intellectual character explains intellectual conduct only in conjunction with a lot of other things, including your situation and the way your brain processes information. Situationism certainly would be a problem for the view that character traits explain our conduct regardless of situational factors, but that is not a view of character anyone has ever wanted to defend.<br />
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In practical terms, one of the hardest things about dealing with people such as Oliver is that they are more than likely to accuse you of the same intellectual vices that you detect in them. You say that Oliver is gullible for believing his 9/11 conspiracy theory; he retorts that you are gullible for believing the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission. You say that he dismisses the official account of 9/11 because he is closed-minded; he accuses you of closed-mindedness for refusing to take conspiracy theories seriously. If we are often blind to our own intellectual vices then who are we to accuse Oliver of failing to realise that he believes his theories only because he is gullible?<br />
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These are all legitimate questions, but it’s important not to be too disconcerted by this attempt to turn the tables on you. True, no one is immune to self-ignorance. That doesn’t excuse Oliver. The fact is that his theory is no good, whereas there is every reason to believe that aircraft impacts did bring down the Twin Towers. Just because you believe the official account of what happened in 9/11 doesn’t make you gullible if there are good reasons to believe that account. Equally, being skeptical about the wilder claims of 9/11 conspiracy theorists doesn’t make you closed-minded if there are good reasons to be skeptical. Oliver is gullible because he believes things for which he has no good evidence, and he is closed-minded because he dismisses claims for which there is excellent evidence. It’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking that what counts as good evidence is a subjective matter. To say that Oliver lacks good evidence is to draw attention to the absence of eye-witness or forensic support for his theory about 9/11, and to the fact that his theory has been refuted by experts. Oliver might not accept any of this but that is, again, a reflection of his intellectual character.<br />
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Once you get past the idea that Oliver has somehow managed to turn the tables on you, there remains the problem of what to do about such people as him. If he is genuinely closed-minded then his mind will presumably be closed to the idea that he is closed-minded. Closed-mindedness is one of the toughest intellectual vices to tackle because it is in its nature to be concealed from those who have it. And even if you somehow get the Olivers of this world to acknowledge their own vices, that won’t necessarily make things any better. Tackling one’s intellectual vices requires more than self-knowledge. You also need to be motivated to do something about them, and actually be able to do something about them.<br />
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Should Oliver be condemned for his weaknesses? Philosophers like to think of virtues as having good motives and vices as having bad motives but Oliver’s motives needn’t be bad. He might have exactly the same motivation for knowledge as the intellectually virtuous person, yet be led astray by his gullibility and conspiracy mentality. So, both in respect of his motives and his responsibility for his intellectual vices, Oliver might not be strictly blameworthy. That doesn’t mean that nothing should be done about them or about him. If we care about the truth then we should care about equipping people with the intellectual means to arrive at the truth and avoid falsehood.<br />
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Education is the best way of doing that. Intellectual vices are only tendencies to think in certain ways, and tendencies can be countered. Our intellectual vices are balanced by our intellectual virtues, by intellectual character traits such as open-mindedness, curiosity and rigour. The intellectual character is a mixture of intellectual virtues and vices, and the aims of education should include cultivating intellectual virtues and curtailing intellectual vices. The philosopher Jason Baehr talks about ‘educating for intellectual virtues’, and that is in principle the best way to deal with people such as Oliver. A 2010 report to the University College London Council about the Abdulmutallab case came to a similar conclusion. It recommended the ‘development of academic training for students to encourage and equip them not only to think critically but to challenge unacceptable views’. The challenge is to work out how to do that.<br />
<br />
What if Oliver is too far gone and can’t change his ways even if he wanted to? Like other bad habits, intellectual bad habits can be too deeply entrenched to change. This means living with their consequences. Trying to reason with people who are obstinately closed-minded, dogmatic or prejudiced is unlikely to be effective. The only remedy in such cases is to try to mitigate the harm their vices do to themselves and to others.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, those who have the gall to deliver homilies about other peoples’ intellectual vices – that includes me – need to accept that they too are likely very far from perfect. In this context, as in most others, a little bit of humility goes a long way. It’s one thing not to cave in to Oliver’s attempt to turn the tables on you, but he has a point at least to this extent: none of us can deny that intellectual vices of one sort or another are at play in at least some of our thinking. Being alive to this possibility is the mark of a healthy mind.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-79936017295572545202014-12-07T02:20:00.000-05:002015-08-17T02:27:48.225-04:00NYT : Know Thy Self — Really<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/know-thy-self-really/">Know Thy Self — Really</a><br />
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<i><b>By Quassim Cassam | December 7, 2014 </b></i><br />
<br />
<b>The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.</b><br />
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Most people wonder at some point in their lives how well they know themselves. Self-knowledge seems a good thing to have, but hard to attain. To know yourself would be to know such things as your deepest thoughts, desires and emotions, your character traits, your values, what makes you happy and why you think and do the things you think and do. These are all examples of what might be called “substantial” self-knowledge, and there was a time when it would have been safe to assume that philosophy had plenty to say about the sources, extent and importance of self-knowledge in this sense.<br />
<br />
Not any more. With few exceptions, philosophers of self-knowledge nowadays have other concerns. Here’s an example of the sort of thing philosophers worry about: suppose you are wearing socks and believe you are wearing socks. How do you know that that’s what you believe? Notice that the question isn’t: “How do you know you are wearing socks?” but rather “How do you know you believe you are wearing socks?” Knowledge of such beliefs is seen as a form of self-knowledge. Other popular examples of self-knowledge in the philosophical literature include knowing that you are in pain and knowing that you are thinking that water is wet. For many philosophers the challenge is explain how these types of self-knowledge are possible.<br />
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This is usually news to non-philosophers. Most certainly imagine that philosophy tries to answer the Big Questions, and “How do you know you believe you are wearing socks?” doesn’t sound much like one of them. If knowing that you believe you are wearing socks qualifies as self-knowledge at all — and even that isn’t obvious — it is self-knowledge of the most trivial kind. Non-philosophers find it hard to figure out why philosophers would be more interested in trivial than in substantial self-knowledge.<br />
<br />
One common reaction to the focus on trivial self-knowledge is to ask, “Why on earth would you be interested in that?” — or, more pointedly, “Why on earth would anyone pay you to think about that?” Philosophers of self-knowledge aren’t deterred. It isn’t unusual for them to start their learned articles and books on self-knowledge by declaring that they aren’t going to be discussing substantial self-knowledge because that isn’t where the philosophical action is.<br />
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How can that be? It all depends on your starting point. For example, to know that you are wearing socks requires effort, even if it’s only the minimal effort of looking down at your feet. When you look down and see the socks on your feet you have evidence — the evidence of your senses — that you are wearing socks, and this illustrates what seems a general point about knowledge: knowledge is based on evidence, and our beliefs about the world around us can be wrong. Evidence can be misleading and conclusions from evidence unwarranted. Trivial self-knowledge seems different. On the face of it, you don’t need evidence to know that you believe you are wearing socks, and there is a strong presumption that your beliefs about your own beliefs and other states of mind aren’t mistaken. Trivial self-knowledge is direct (not based on evidence) and privileged (normally immune to error). Given these two background assumptions, it looks like there is something here that needs explaining: How is trivial self-knowledge, with all its peculiarities, possible?<br />
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From this perspective, trivial self-knowledge is philosophically interesting because it is special. “Special” in this context means special from the standpoint of epistemology or the philosophy of knowledge. Substantial self-knowledge is much less interesting from this point of view because it is like any other knowledge. You need evidence to know your own character and values, and your beliefs about your own character and values can be mistaken. For example, you think you are generous but your friends know you better. You think you are committed to racial equality but your behaviour suggests otherwise. Once you think of substantial self-knowledge as neither direct nor privileged why would you still regard it as philosophically interesting?<br />
<br />
What is missing from this picture is any real sense of the human importance of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge matters to us as human beings, and the self-knowledge which matters to us as human beings is substantial rather than trivial self-knowledge. We assume that on the whole our lives go better with substantial self-knowledge than without it, and what is puzzling is how hard it can be to know ourselves in this sense.<br />
<br />
The assumption that self-knowledge matters is controversial and philosophy might be expected to have something to say about the importance of self-knowledge, as well as its scope and extent. The interesting questions in this context include “Why is substantial self-knowledge hard to attain?” and “To what extent is substantial self-knowledge possible?”<br />
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Such questions are addressed by some philosophers — Eric Schwitzgebel, who teaches at the University of California, Riverside, comes to mind, and I often attempt to do so in my own work — but most have little to say about self-knowledge as a human concern. Self-knowledge in this sense has become an issue for psychologists and novelists rather than academic philosophers. By neglecting substantial self-knowledge philosophy is missing a trick. Questions about the sources, scope, and value of substantial self-knowledge are at least partly philosophical and philosophers of self-knowledge should be prepared to tackle them.<br />
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It wasn’t always the case that the philosophy of self-knowledge was so narrow in scope. The ancients certainly recognized the human importance of self-knowledge, and the injunction to “Know thyself” presumably wasn’t intended as the injunction to know that you are thinking that water is wet. So how and why did professional philosophy become so seemingly unconcerned with the questions about self-knowledge which non-philosophers find interesting?<br />
<br />
The professionalization of the subject has made philosophers of self-knowledge far too comfortable with the idea that their job is to discover technical solutions to technical problems generated by background philosophical assumptions about the nature of knowledge and mind. They may insist that what is philosophically worthwhile can’t be decided by what non-philosophers think is worthwhile, and that it is of no consequence if their questions strike the uninitiated as odd. Philosophy has its own concerns, and all that matters is whether their concerns have a philosophical rationale. If it turns out that trivial self-knowledge isn’t special then that really would be a reason for downplaying its significance, but that is an entirely different matter.<br />
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This is just the kind of attitude that gives academic philosophy a bad name. Of course there are topics in philosophy where engaging with the concerns of the philosophically uninitiated wouldn’t be feasible but self-knowledge is not one of them. There has to come a point at which philosophy has to address wider concerns, and if self-knowledge is not the kind of thing which philosophers can think about in ways that resonate with the world at large then one fears for the future of the subject. It’s easy for professional philosophers to sneer at popular accounts of self-knowledge in self-help books, but philosophically curious readers of such books are entitled to ask what philosophy has to offer instead. The answer had better not be “Nothing.”<br />
<br />
The challenge is to develop a philosophy of self-knowledge for humans, that is, a philosophy of self-knowledge that both engages with some of the questions about self-knowledge which human beings outside academia actually care about, and operates with a realistic picture of what real human beings are like. Few philosophers have risen to this challenge, but when they do they are likely to find that substantial self-knowledge is of greater philosophical interest than many of them suppose. In any event, the challenge of addressing a wider audience is one that academic philosophy can’t and shouldn’t try to duck indefinitely.<br />
Photo<br />
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<i>Quassim Cassam is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. His most recent book is “Self-Knowledge for Humans.”</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-90360256391695921682014-10-13T08:07:00.002-04:002014-10-13T08:25:40.653-04:00Cynthia McKinney: Dr. Peter Dale Scott writes about the ties that bind November 1963 and September 2001<a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/08.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/07.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/06.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/05.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33035576" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/04.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/031.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33035576" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Captains-America-Dick-Cheney-and-Donald-Rumsfeld-rigged-to-self-destruct.-By-Mr.-Fish1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a>[via email]<br />
<br />
<i><b>From Cynthia McKinney | October 13, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I am proud to write that Dr. Peter Dale Scott is on my Dissertation Committee. What he has written here is extremely important, tying the tragedies of November 1963 to subsequent tragedies and actions of the U.S. Deep State: Iran/Contra, September 11, 2001 by naming names.<br />
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Here are two quotes to ponder: <br />
<br />
"The point is that a very small group had access to a high-level secret network outside government review, in order to implement a program in opposition to government policy."<br />
<br />
and<br />
<br />
"The Pentagon official’s description of COG planners as a “secret government-in-waiting” under Clinton (which still included both Cheney and Rumsfeld) is very close to the standard definition of a cabal, as a group of persons secretly united to bring about a change or overthrow of government."<br />
<br />
Read the entire lecture below or here with illustrations: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/10/05/the-hidden-government-group-linking-jfk-watergate-iran-contra-and-911/#sthash.pYX3miMH.dpuf</blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Hidden Government Group Linking JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11</span><br />
<br />
<i><b>By Peter Dale Scott on Oct 5, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Peter Dale Scott is considered the father of “Deep Politics”— the study of hidden permanent institutions and interests whose influence on the political realm transcends the elected, appointed and career officials who come and go.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/08.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/07.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/06.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/05.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33035576" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/04.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/031.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33035576" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Captains-America-Dick-Cheney-and-Donald-Rumsfeld-rigged-to-self-destruct.-By-Mr.-Fish1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"></a>A Professor of English at Berkeley and a former Canadian diplomat, he is the author of several critically acclaimed books on the pivotal events of our country’s recent past, including Deep Politics and the Death of JFK ; Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (War and Peace Library); The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America and American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library). He is also a poet, whose long work, Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror, was hailed as “the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time,” by Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. <br />
<br />
Daniel Ellsberg said of his book Drugs, Oil and War, “It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children.”<br />
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What follows is based on a recent Scott lecture entitled “The JFK Assassination and Other Deep Events”, and will be expanded on further in his next book, The American Deep State, due out in November.</blockquote>
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***<br />
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For some time now, I have been analyzing American history in the light of what I have called structural deep events: events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, or 9/11, which repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, are mysterious to begin with, are embedded in ongoing covert processes, have political consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by systematic falsifications in the mainstream media and internal government records.<br />
<br />
The more I study these deep events, the more I see suggestive similarities between them, increasing the possibility that they are not unrelated external intrusions on American history, but parts of an endemic process, sharing to some degree or other a common source.<br />
<br />
For example, one factor linking Dallas, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11, has been the involvement in all four deep events of personnel involved in America’s highest-level emergency planning, known since the 1950s as Continuity of Government (COG) planning, or more colloquially inside the Pentagon as “the Doomsday Project.” A few of these actors may have been located at the top, as overseers of the secret COG system. Others – including some I shall talk about today – were located further down in its secret communications network.<br />
<br />
I see this planning group as one among many in what I have chosen to call the American deep state, along with agencies like the CIA and NSA, the private groups like Booz Allen Hamilton to which more than half of the US intelligence budget is outsourced, and finally the powerful banks and corporations whose views are well represented in the CIA and NSA. But if only one group among many, the COG planning group is also special, because of its control of and access to a communications channel, not under government control, that can reach deeply into the US social structure. I discuss these matters at some length in my next book, The American Deep State, due out in November.<br />
<br />
COG planning was originally authorized by Truman and Eisenhower as planning for a response to a crippling atomic attack that had decapitated government. In consequence its planning group contemplated extreme measures, including what Alfonso Chardy in 1987 called “suspension of the Constitution.” And yet in Iran-Contra its asset of a secret communications network, developed for the catastrophe of decapitation, was used instead to evade an official embargo on arms sales to Iran that dated back to 1979. My question today is whether the network could have been similarly misused in November 1963.<br />
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The Iran-contra misuse has been well-documented. Oliver North supervised the sale of arms to Iran by using his resources as the National Security Council action officer for COG planning, under cover of a “National Program Office” that was overseen by then Vice-President George H. W. Bush. North and his superiors could thus use the COG emergency network, known then as Flashboard, for the arms sales to Iran that had to be concealed from other parts of the Washington bureaucracy as well as the public. So when North had to send emergency instructions for arms delivery to the US Embassy in Lisbon, instructions that directly contravened the embargo prohibiting such sales, he used the Flashboard network to avoid alerting the Ambassador and other unwitting personnel.<br />
<br />
The documented example of Iran-Contra allows me to explain what I am saying about the users of the COG network, and also what I am not saying. To begin with, I am not saying that a single “Secret Team” has for decades been using the COG network to manipulate the US Government from outside it. There is no evidence to suggest that North’s actions in Iran-Contra were known to any of his superiors other than CIA chief William Casey and probably George Bush. The point is that a very small group had access to a high-level secret network outside government review, in order to implement a program in opposition to government policy. They succumbed to the temptation to use this secure network that had been designed for other purposes. I have argued elsewhere that this secure network was used again on 9/11, to implement key orders for which the 9/11 Commission could find no records. Whether it was also used for illicit purposes is not known.<br />
<br />
It is certain that the COG emergency network program survived North’s demise, and continued to be secretly developed for decades, at a cost of billions, and overseen by a team including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. It is relevant that the two men’s presence on the committee spanned three administrations – those of Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton — even though at one point under Clinton neither man held a position inside the U.S. government. Such continuity was essential for a group so secret that few records existed of its activities. And on 9/11 COG plans were officially implemented for the first time, by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the two men who had planned them for so many years.<br />
<br />
Whether or not they knew about Iran-Contra, Cheney and Rumsfeld were on the COG planning committee at the time of Iran-Contra. There is no such obvious link between COG planning and Watergate, but the involvement of COG personnel in Watergate is nonetheless striking. James McCord, one of the Watergate burglars, was a member of a small Air Force Reserve unit in Washington attached to the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) that was assigned “to draw up lists of radicals and to develop contingency plans for censorship of the news media and U.S. mail in time of war.” His unit was part of the Wartime Information Security Program (WISP), which had responsibility for activating “contingency plans for imposing censorship on the press, the mails and all telecommunications (including government communications) [and] preventive detention of civilian ‘security risks,’ who would be placed in military ‘camps.’” In addition, John Dean, perhaps the central Watergate figure, had overseen secret COG activities when serving as the associate deputy attorney general.<br />
<br />
In the case of the JFK assassination, I wish to focus on two men who functioned as part of the communications network of the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP), the agency renamed in 1968 as the Office of Emergency Preparedness (to which McCord was attached), and renamed again in 1982 as the National Program Office (for which Oliver North was the action officer).<br />
<br />
These two men (there are others) are Winston Lawson, the Secret Service advance man who from the lead car of the motorcade was in charge of the Secret Service radio channels operating in the motorcade; and Jack Crichton, the army intelligence reserve officer who with Deputy Dallas Police Chief George Lumpkin selected the Russian interpreter for Marina Oswald’s first (and falsified) FBI interview.<br />
<br />
Lawson has drawn the critical attention of JFK researchers, both for dubious actions he took before and during the assassination, and also for false statements he made after it (some of them under oath). For example, Lawson reported after the assassination that motorcycles were deployed on “the right and left flanks of the President’s car” (17 WH 605). On the morning of November 22, however, the orders had been changed (3 WH 244), so that the motorcycles rode instead, as Lawson himself testified to the Warren Commission, “just back of the President’s car” (4 WH 338; cf. 21 WH 768-70). Captain Lawrence of the Dallas Police testified that that the proposed side escorts were redeployed to the rear on Lawson’s own instructions (7 WH 580-81; cf. 18 WH 809, 21 WH 571). This would appear to have left the President more vulnerable to a possible crossfire.<br />
<br />
Early on November 22, at Love Field, Lawson installed, in what would become the lead car, the base radio whose frequencies were used by all Secret Service agents on the motorcade. This radio channel, operated by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), was used for some key decisions before and after the assassination, yet its records, unlike those of the Dallas Police Department (DPD) Channels One and Two, were never made available to the Warren Commission, or any subsequent investigation. The tape was not withheld because it was irrelevant; on the contrary, it contained very significant information.<br />
<br />
The WHCA actually reports to this day on its website that the agency was “a key player in documenting the assassination of President Kennedy.” However it is not clear for whom this documentation was conducted, or why it was not made available to the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). It should have been.<br />
<br />
For one thing, the WHCA tape, as Vincent Palamara has written, contains the “key” to the unresolved mystery of who, after the shooting, redirected the motorcade to Parkland hospital. The significance of this apparently straightforward command, about which there was much conflicting testimony, is heightened when we read repeated orders on the Dallas Police radio transcript to “cut all traffic for the ambulance going to Parkland code 3” (17 WH 395) – the ambulance in question having nothing to do with the president (whose shooting had not yet been announced on the DPD radio). In fact the ambulance had been dispatched about ten minutes before the assassination to pick someone from in front of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), who was wrongly suspected of having suffered an epileptic seizure.<br />
<br />
Lawson later reported to the Secret Service that he heard on his radio “that we should proceed to the nearest hospital.” He wrote also that he “requested Chief Curry to have the hospital contacted,” and then that “Our Lead Car assisted the motorcycles in escorting the President’s vehicle to Parkland Hospital” (17 WH 632), cf. 21 WH 580). In other words, after hearing something on the WHCA radio, Lawson helped ensure that the President’s limousine would follow the route already set up by the motorcycles for the epileptic. (In his very detailed Warren Commission testimony, Lawson said nothing about the route having already been cleared. On the contrary he testified that “we had to do some stopping of cars and holding our hands out the windows and blowing the sirens and horns to get through” (4 WH 354).<br />
<br />
The WHCA radio channel used by Lawson and others communicated almost directly to the WHCA base at Mount Weather in Virginia, the base facility of the COG network. From there, Secret Service communications were relayed to the White House, via the<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
batteries of communications equipment connecting Mount Weather with the White House and “Raven Rock” — the underground Pentagon sixty miles north of Washington — as well as with almost every US military unit stationed around the globe.</blockquote>
Jack Crichton, head of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit of Dallas, was also part of this Mount Weather COG network. This was in his capacity as chief of intelligence for Dallas Civil Defense, which worked out of an underground Emergency Operating Center. As Russ Baker reports, “Because it was intended for ‘continuity of government’ operations during an attack, [the Center] was fully equipped with communications equipment.” In retrospect the Civil Defense Program is remembered derisively, for having advised schoolchildren, in the event of an atomic attack, to hide their heads under their desks.But in 1963 civil defense was one of the urgent responsibilities assigned to the Office of Emergency Planning, which is why Crichton, as much as Secret Service agent Lawson, could be in direct touch with the OEP’s emergency communications network at Mount Weather.<br />
<br />
Jack Crichton is of interest because he, along with DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit, was responsible for choosing a Russian interpreter for Marina Oswald from the right-wing Russian community. This man was Ilya Mamantov, who translated for Marina Oswald at her first DPD interview on November 22. What she allegedly said in Russian at this interview was later used to bolster what I have called the “phase one” story, still promoted from some CIA sources, that Russia and/or Cuba were behind the assassination.<br />
<br />
As summarized by the FBI, Mamantov’s account of Marina’s Russian testimony was as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
MARINA OSWALD advised that LEE HARVEY OSWALD owned a rifle which he used in Russia about two years ago. She observed what she presumed to be the same rifle in a blanket in the garage at [Ruth Paine’s residence]…. MARINA OSWALD stated that on November 22, she had been shown a rifle in the Dallas Police Department…. She stated that it was a dark color like the one that she had seen, but she did not recall the sight.</blockquote>
These specific details – that Marina said she had seen a rifle that was dark and scopeless – were confirmed in an affidavit (signed by Marina and Mamantov, 24 WH 219) that was taken by DPD officer B.L. Senkel (24 WH 249). They were confirmed again by Ruth Paine, who witnessed the Mamantov interview, (3 WH 82). They were confirmed again the next night in an interview of Marina by the Secret Service, translated by Mamantov’s close friend Peter Gregory. But a Secret Service transcript of the interview reveals that the source of these details was Gregory, not Marina:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(Q) This gun, was it a rifle or a pistol or just what kind of a gun? Can she answer that?<br />
<br />
(A) It was a gun<br />
<br />
Mr. Gregory asked: Can you describe it?<br />
<br />
NOTE: Subject said: I cannot describe it because a rifle to me like all rifles.<br />
<br />
Gregory translation: She said she cannot describe it. It was sort of a <i>dark </i>rifle just like any other common rifle…<br />
<br />
Subject in Russian: It was a hump (or elevation) but I never saw through the scope….<br />
<br />
Gregory translation: She says there was an elevation on the rifle but <i>there was no scope</i> – no telescope.</blockquote>
We have to conclude not just that Gregory had falsified Marina’s testimony (“a rifle to me like all rifles”); but so probably had his friend Mamantov, who later testified no less than seven times to the Warren Commission that Marina had used the word “dark” to describe the gun. There were others in Dallas who claimed that Oswald’s gun indeed had been scopeless, until Oswald had a scope installed on it by Dallas gunsmith Dial Ryder. The Warren Report elaborately refuted this corroborated claim, and concluded that “the authenticity of the repair tag” used to support it was “subject to grave doubts.” (WR 317).<br />
<br />
We can see here, what the Warren Commission did not wish to see, signs of a conspiracy to misrepresent Marina’s testimony, and possibly to link Oswald’s gun to a dark and scopeless rifle he had in the Soviet Union. Our concerns that Mamantov misrepresented her lead us to concerns about why two Army Intelligence Reserve officers from the 488th unit (Jack Crichton and Deputy DPD Chief George Lumpkin) selected Mamantov as her interpreter. Our concerns are increased when we see that B.L. Senkel, the DPD officer who took Marina’s suspect affidavit, was the partner of F.P. Turner, who collected the dubious rifle repair tag (24 WH 328), and that both men spent most of November 22 with DPD Deputy Chief Lumpkin. For example, they were with Lumpkin in the pilot car of the motorcade when Lumpkin was communicating with Winston Lawson in the lead car behind them.<br />
<br />
I conclude that when we look at the conduct of the two men we know to have been parts of the COG emergency communications network in Dallas, we see patterns of sinister behavior that also involved others, or what we may call conspiratorial behavior. These concatenated efforts to implicate Oswald in a phase-one conspiracy narrative lead me to propose a hypothesis for which I have neither evidence nor an alternative explanation: namely, that someone on the WHCA network may have been the source for the important unexplained description on the Dallas Police tapes of a suspect who had exactly the false height and weight (5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds) recorded for Oswald in his FBI and CIA files.<br />
<br />
Note that there are no other known sources ascribing this specific height and weight to Oswald. For example, when he was arrested and charged in Dallas that same day, Oswald was recorded as having a height of 5’9 ½ inches, and a weight of 131 pounds. The first reference to Oswald as 5’10”, 165 pounds, was that offered by Oswald’s mother Marguerite to FBI Agent Fain in May 1960, when Oswald himself was absent in Russia.<br />
<br />
The DPD officer contributing the description on the Police Channel was Inspector Herbert Sawyer, who allegedly had heard it from someone outside the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) whom he could not identify or describe. The Warren Report said categorically that his source was Howard Brennan (WR 5), and that on the evening of November 22, Brennan “identified Oswald as the person in the lineup who bore the closest resemblance to the man in the window but he said that he was unable to make a positive identification” (WR 145). But there are many reasons to doubt this, starting with conflicts in Brennan’s own testimony (as Anthony Summers reported in Conspiracy, pp. 109-10) . And Ian Griggs has made a strong case that Brennan never saw Oswald in a line-up that evening. (There are police records placing Oswald in three line-ups that day, and corroborating witness reports of them; but there is no evidence whatever that Brennan attended any of the three.)<br />
<br />
There is another strong reason to doubt that the source was Brennan. Brennan testified later to the Warren Commission that he saw his suspect in a window of the Texas School Book Depository, “standing up and leaning against the left window sill.” Pressed to describe how much of the suspect he saw, Brennan answered, “I could see probably his whole body, from his hips up. But at the time that he was firing the gun, a possibility from his belt up” (3 WH 144).<br />
<br />
The awkwardness of Brennan’s language draws attention to the fundamental problem about the description. It is hard to imagine anyone giving a full height and weight estimate from seeing someone who was only partially visible in a window. So there are intrinsic grounds for believing the description must have come from another source. And when we see that the same description is found in Oswald’s FBI and CIA files — and nowhere else – there are reasons to suspect the source was from government secret files.<br />
<br />
We have seen that there was interaction in Dallas between the WHCA and DPD radio channels, thanks to the WHCA portable radio that Lawson had installed in the lead car of the presidential motorcade. This radio in turn was in contact by police radio with the pilot car ahead of it, carrying Dallas Police Department (DPD) Deputy Chief Lumpkin of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit. At the same time, as noted above, it was in contact with the COG nerve center at Mount Weather, Virginia. And Mount Weather had the requisite secret communications to receive information from classified intelligence files, without other parts of the government being alerted.<br />
<br />
Permit me at this moment an instructive digression. It is by now well established that Kennedy in 1963 was concerned enough by “the threat of far-right treason” that he urgently persuaded Hollywood director John Frankenheimer “to turn [the novel] Seven Days in May into a movie.” In this book, to quote Wikipedia, a<br />
<blockquote>
charismatic superior officer, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, intend[s] to stage a coup d’état …. According to the plan, an undisclosed Army combat unit known as ECOMCON (Emergency COMmunications CONtrol) will seize control of the country’s telephone, radio, and television networks, while the conspiracy directs the military and its allies in Congress and the media from “Mount Thunder” (a continuity of government base based on Mount Weather).</blockquote>
It is no secret also that in 1963 Kennedy had aroused major right-wing dissatisfaction, largely because of signs of his increasing rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The plot of the book and movie reflects the concern of liberals at the time about generals like General Edwin Walker, who had resigned in 1961 after Kennedy criticized his political activities in the Army. (Walker had given his troops John Birch Society literature, along with the names of right-wing candidates to vote for.) We can assume however that Kennedy had no firm evidence of a Mount Weather conspiracy: if he had, it is unlikely his response would have just been to sponsor a fictionalized movie.<br />
<br />
It is important at this stage to point out that, although COG elements like Mount Weather were considered part of the Pentagon, the COG “government in waiting” was at no time under military control. On the contrary, President Eisenhower had ensured that it was broadly based at the top, so its planners included some of the nation’s top corporate leaders, like Frank Stanton of CBS. By all accounts of COG leadership in the decades after Reagan took office in 1981, this so-called “shadow government” still included CEOs of private corporations, like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, as well as three former CIA directors: Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, and George Bush.<br />
<br />
Alfonso Chardy wrote in 1987 that the “virtual parallel government” empowering North to run Iran-Contra had also developed “a secret contingency plan that called for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to FEMA.” Subsequently North was questioned in the Iran-Contra Hearings about this charge, but was prevented by the Committee Chairman, Democratic Senator Inouye, from answering in a public session.<br />
<br />
Later, investigating the powerful COG planning group, CNN called it “a hidden government [in the USA] about which you know nothing.” James Mann emphasized its hawkish continuity, unaffected by changes of presidency in the White House:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States, inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America always keeps on fighting.”</blockquote>
Going one step further, Andrew Cockburn quoted a Pentagon source to support a claim that a COG planning group under Clinton was now for the first time staffed “almost exclusively with Republican hawks.” In the words of his source, “You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on.”<br />
<br />
The Pentagon official’s description of COG planners as a “secret government-in-waiting” under Clinton (which still included both Cheney and Rumsfeld) is very close to the standard definition of a cabal, as a group of persons secretly united to bring about a change or overthrow of government. A very similar situation existed under Jimmy Carter, when some of those who would later figure in Iran-Contra (notably George H.W. Bush and Theodore Shackley) worked with chiefs of foreign intelligence services (the so-called Safari Club) “to start working with [former DCI Richard] Helms [then U.S. Ambassador to Iran] and his most trusted operatives outside of Congressional and even Agency purview.” This group began by backing guerrilla forces in Africa (notably UNITA of Jonas Savimbi in Angola), which they knew would not be backed by the CIA under William Colby or Stansfield Turner.<br />
<br />
But some of these figures, notably Alexandre de Marenches of the French spy agency SDECE, became involved with Casey, Bush, Shackley, and others in a 1980 plot – the so-called Republican “October Surprise” – to prevent the reelection of Jimmy Carter. The essence of this plot was to frustrate Carter’s efforts to repatriate the hostages seized in the U.S. Tehran Embassy, by negotiating a Republican deal with the Iranians that would be more to their liking. (The hostages in fact were returned hours after Reagan took office in 1981.)<br />
<br />
This Republican hostage plot in 1980 deserves to be counted as a fifth structural deep event in recent US history. Unquestionably the illicit contacts with Iran established by the October Surprise Group in 1980 became, as Alfonso Chardy wrote, the “genesis” of the Iran-Contra arms deals overseen by the COG/ Mount Weather planners in 1984-86.<br />
<br />
In an important interview with journalist Robert Parry, the veteran CIA officer Miles Copeland claimed that a “CIA within the CIA” inspired the 1980 plot, having concluded by 1980 that Jimmy Carter (in Copeland’s words) “had to be removed from the presidency for the good of the country.” Copeland made it clear to Parry that he shared this view that Carter “represented a grave threat to the nation,” and former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe told Parry that Copeland himself was in fact “the conceptual father” of the 1980 arms-for-hostages deal, and had “brokered [the] Republican cooperation with Israel.” And Copeland, together with his client Adnan Khashoggi whom he advised, went on with Shackley to help launch the 1984-85 Iranian arms deals as well.<br />
<br />
However, just as Knebel in Seven Days may have overestimated the military component in the COG Mount Weather leadership, so Copeland may have dwelt too exclusively on the CIA component behind the October Surprise Group. In The Road to 9/11, I suggested that this CIA network overlapped with a so-called “Project Alpha,” working at the time for David Rockefeller and the Chase Manhattan Bank on Iran issues, which was chaired by the veteran establishment figure John J. McCloy.<br />
<br />
I will conclude by again quoting James Mann’s dictum that the Mount Weather COG leadership constitutes a “permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States, … a world in which Presidents come and go, but America always keeps on fighting.” And I would like this audience to investigate whether elements of this enduring leadership, with its ever-changing mix of CIA veterans and civilian leaders, may have constituted “a secret government-in-waiting,” not just under Clinton in the 1990s, not just under Carter in 1980, but also under Kennedy in November 1963.<br />
<br />
Footnotes:<br />
<br />
[1] Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014 [forthcoming]). 1.<br />
<br />
[2] For a partial list of anomalies between the JFK assassination and 9/11, see Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (New York: Skyhorse, 2013), 341-96.<br />
<br />
[3] Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 6.<br />
<br />
[4] Alfonso Chardy, “Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=9877: “Some of President Reagan’s top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.”<br />
<br />
[5] Iran-Contra Committee Counsel Arthur Liman, questioning Oliver North, “had North repeat his testimony that the diversion was Casey’s idea” (Arthur Liman, Lawyer: a life of counsel and controversy [New York: Public Affairs, 1998], 341).<br />
<br />
[6] James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 72.<br />
<br />
[7] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 213-14, 219-29.<br />
<br />
[8] Bamford, A Pretext for War, 71-81.<br />
<br />
[9] Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 23.<br />
<br />
[10] Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda (New York: Random House, 1984), 16. For more on WISP, see David Wise, The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power (New York: Random House, 1973), 134-37.<br />
<br />
[11] John Dean, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Little Brown, 2004), 120. In addition Howard Baker, in 1973 the ranking Republican member of the Senate Committee that investigated Watergate, was later part of the COG secret leadership (CNN Special Assignment, November 17, 1991).<br />
<br />
[12] James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 142.<br />
<br />
[13] Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 9, p.106 (or 9 WH 106) ; Scott, Deep Politics, 275-76; Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 119-22.<br />
<br />
[14] “White House Communications Agency,” Signal Corps Regimental History, http://signal150.army.mil/white_house_communications_agency.html.<br />
<br />
[15] In the 1990s the WHCA supplied statements to the ARRB concerning communications between Dallas and Washington on November 22 (NARA #172-10001-10002 to NARA #172-10000-10008). The Assassination Records Review Board also attempted to obtain from the WHCA the unedited original tapes of conversations from Air Force One on the return trip from Dallas, November 22, 1963. (Edited and condensed versions of these tapes had been available since the 1970s from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas.) The attempt was unsuccessful: “The Review Board’s repeated written and oral inquiries of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes.” See Assassinations Records Review Board: Final Report, chapter 6, Part 1, 116, http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/chapter-06-part1.pdf.<br />
<br />
[16] 17 WH 394-95, 23 WH 841; 17 WH 368, 395; Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 273-74, 278. The alleged epileptic walked away from the ambulance after it arrived at Highland (Warren Commission Document 1245, 6-10).<br />
<br />
[17] Statement of Special Agent Winston E. Lawson [to Secret Service],” 17 WH 632; Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 278.<br />
<br />
[18] Richard Pollock, “The Mysterious Mountain,” The Progressive, March, 1976; cf. “Mount Weather’s ‘Government-in-Waiting,’” http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/mt_weather.htm.<br />
<br />
[19] Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 121.<br />
<br />
[20] Dee Garrison , Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked<br />
<br />
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 46.<br />
<br />
[21] Warren Commission Exhibit 1778, 23 WH 383-84.<br />
<br />
[22] Commission Document 344 – SS Howard Tape Copy of 01 Dec 1963, p. 23.<br />
<br />
[23] Lee Harvey Oswald fingerprint card, 17 WH 308. The heaviest Oswald actually weighed was 150 pounds, when he left the Marines in 1959 (19 WH 584, 595).<br />
<br />
[24] FBI report by Special Agent Fain, dated May 12, 1960, 17 WH 706. In the same report Marguerite named Oswald’s father as “Edward Lee Oswald.” His actual name was Robert Edward Lee Oswald (WR 669-70).<br />
<br />
[25] Testimony of Inspector Herbert Sawyer, 6 WH 321-22: “I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old.” Cf. Dallas Police Channel Two Tape at 12:25 PM (23 WH 916).<br />
<br />
[26] Ian Griggs, “Did Howard Leslie Brennan Really Attend an Identification Lineup?”<br />
<br />
http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/28th_Issue/id_draft.html.<br />
<br />
[27] Statement of Secret Service Winston Lawson, 17 WH 630: “I checked with Chief Curry as to location of Lead Car [at Love Field] and had WHCA portable radio put in and checked.”<br />
<br />
[28] “The lead car was in radio contact with the pilot car by police radio, and with the Presidential limousine by Secret Service portable radios” (Pamela McElwain-Brown, “The Presidential Lincoln Continental SS-100-X,” Dealey Plaza Echo, Volume 3, Issue 2, 23, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=16241&relPageId=27). Cf. Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 272-75 (Lumpkin).<br />
<br />
[29] David Talbot, Brothers: the hidden history of the Kennedy years (New York: Free Press, 2007), 148.<br />
<br />
[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May.<br />
<br />
[31] Jonathan M. Schoenwald, A time for choosing: the rise of modern American conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), .<br />
<br />
[32] Hope Yen, “Eisenhower Letters Reveal Doomsday Plan: Citizens Tapped to Take Over in Case of Attack,” AP, Deseret News, March 21, 2004, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/595050502/Eisenhower-letters-reveal-doomsday-plan.html?pg=all.<br />
<br />
[33] CNN Special Assignment, November 17, 1991.<br />
<br />
[34] Alfonso Chardy, “Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=9877: “Some of President Reagan’s top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.”<br />
<br />
[35] Iran-Contra Committee Counsel Arthur Liman, questioning Oliver North, “had North repeat his testimony that the diversion was Casey’s idea” (Arthur Liman, Lawyer: a life of counsel and controversy [New York: Public Affairs, 1998], 341). Cf. The “October Surprise” allegations and the circumstances surrounding the release of the American hostages held in Iran: report of the Special Counsel to Senator Terry Sanford and Senator James M. Jeffords of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Volume 4, p. 33 (October Surprise Group).<br />
<br />
[36] CNN Special Assignment, November 17, 1991.<br />
<br />
[37] James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 145.<br />
<br />
[38] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy (New York: Scribner, 2007), 88.<br />
<br />
[39] Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to terror: the rogue CIA and the legacy of America’s private intelligence network (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 61.<br />
<br />
[40] Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, [2013]), 66-68; Elaine Windrich, “The Laboratory of Hate: The Role of Clandestine Radio in the Angolan War,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 3(2), 2000.<br />
<br />
[41] Alfonso Chardy, “Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=9877: “The group, led by campaign foreign policy adviser Richard Allen, was founded out of concern Carter might pull off an “October surprise” such as a last-minute deal for the release of the hostages before the Nov. 4 election. One of the group’s first acts was a meeting with a man claiming to represent Iran who offered to release the hostages to Reagan.<br />
<br />
Allen — Reagan’s first national security adviser— and another campaign aide, Laurence Silberman, told The Herald in April of the meeting. they said McFarlane, then a Senate Armed Services Committee aide, arranged and attended it. McFarlane later became Reagan’s national security adviser and played a key role in the Iran-contra affair. Allen and Silberman said they rejected the offer to release the hostages to Reagan.” [The Iranian was Houshang Lavi, and after Lavi’s death Robert Parry confirmed from Lavi’s diary that the meeting did take place].<br />
<br />
[42] Alfonso Chardy, “Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=9877.<br />
<br />
[43] “America’s False History Allows the Powerful to Commit Crimes Without Consequence,” Mark Karlin Interview of Robert Parry, January 15, 2013, Truthout Interview, http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/13904-americas-false-history-allows-the-powerful-to-commit-crimes-without-consequence.<br />
<br />
[44] Robert Parry, Trick or Treason, 175.<br />
<br />
[45] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America<br />
<br />
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 81-83, 88. A key figure was CIA veteran and Copeland friend Archibald Roosevelt, in 1980 a Carter foe and also employee of the Chase Manhattan Bank.<br />
<br />
[46] Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 145.<br />
<br />
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http://lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/listinfo.cgi/updates-allthingscynthiamckinney.comWinter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-14144964942845372952014-10-06T23:23:00.001-04:002014-10-06T23:23:41.913-04:00CBN : What Was the FBI Doing with Known 9/11 Terrorist?<a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2014/October/What-Was-the-FBI-Doing-with-Known-911-Terrorist/">What Was the FBI Doing with Known 9/11 Terrorist?</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>October 6, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
Internal documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation released recently show there may have been more breakdowns and a rift among agencies protecting the nation from terror.<br />
<br />
Judicial Watch obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI.<br />
<br />
"We thought something was up with the FBI and (Anwar) al-Awlaki - his ties to the 9/11 attack. We also had suspicions based on other reports that he was being used by the FBI or someone in our federal government as an asset. And the information has been astonishing," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.<br />
<br />
Fitton said documents show al Awlaki bought the airline tickets for the 9/11 terrorists and he was a spiritual advisor to some of the hijackers.<br />
<br />
"The FBI was in email contact with al-Awlaki, refused to help the 9/11 Commission talk to him. Al-Awlaki was sending the FBI emails complaining about the press he was getting. Why is this guy talking to the FBI?" Fitton asked.<br />
<br />
"My concern is the FBI has yet to be held accountable for withholding this information from the American people, answering questions - what exactly they were doing with this known terrorist," Fitton said.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-45918937119519465152014-08-16T16:38:00.000-04:002014-08-17T16:40:38.877-04:00Denver Post : After 9/11, stuck on terror watch lists<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/editorials/ci_26344387/after-9-11-stuck-terror-watch-lists">After 9/11, stuck on terror watch lists</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>By The Denver Post Editorial Board | August 16, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
In the nearly 13 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it has become clear there is a new normal in the U.S. where security is concerned.<br />
<br />
Show your driver's license. Take off your shoes. Don't even think about a bomb joke.<br />
<br />
One might think this post-9/11 era has gone on long enough to allow authorities to remedy the deficiencies that have emerged in measures designed to keep citizens safe.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case with the government's secret terrorist watch list and no-fly list.<br />
<br />
Recent lawsuits, including one filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union, have shed more light on what appear to be unconstitutional practices.<br />
<br />
Clearly it's time for that to change.<br />
<br />
The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of five people of Muslim faith who contend the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has illegally blocked them from becoming naturalized citizens or permanent residents without telling them why.<br />
<br />
They've been "blacklisted," according to the ACLU, because of their suspected inclusion on the terrorist watch list, a designation they have no meaningful way to challenge.<br />
<br />
The list has as many as 1 million names on it, the lawsuit said, and has broad parameters for inclusion. An individual need not even be suspected of taking part in unlawful activity or belong to a suspicious organization to make the list, the lawsuit said.<br />
<br />
And getting off the list? Good luck.<br />
<br />
Several government reviews in recent years document the lax practices in taking people off terrorist watchlists.<br />
<br />
In a separate matter, a federal judge in Oregon ruled the Department of Homeland Security had to do a better job of satisfying the requirements of due process when it came to appeals of inclusion on the list.<br />
<br />
The government must, the judge said, reveal the unclassified information supporting the listing. And even if the material is classified, people deserve to know the nature and extent of it.<br />
<br />
That seems reasonable given the restrictions involved. Those on the lists report being prevented from traveling on commercial airlines, being routinely detained, or being subjected to additional screenings that sometimes causes them to miss their flights.<br />
<br />
Balancing civil liberties and security is a high-stakes challenge. But clearly there are ways to do a better job of protecting — while honoring — the principles this nation was founded upon.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-79701708392229756982014-08-11T15:05:00.000-04:002014-08-14T15:05:58.066-04:00William Blum : The United States and torture<a href="http://williamblum.org/aer/read/131">The United States and torture</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>by William Blum | August 11th, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized. Since the end of the Second World War the United States has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and has led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance and encouragement by American instructors, particularly in Latin America.<br />
<br />
Thus it is somewhat to the credit of President Obama that at his August 1 press conference he declared “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”<br />
<br />
And he actually used the word “torture” at that moment, not “enhanced interrogation”, which has been the euphemism of preference the past decade, although two minutes later the president used “extraordinary interrogation techniques”. And “tortured some folks” makes me wince. The man is clearly uncomfortable with the subject.<br />
<br />
But all this is minor. Much more important is the fact that for several years Mr. Obama’s supporters have credited him with having put an end to the practice of torture. And they simply have no right to make that claim.<br />
<br />
Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”<br />
<br />
The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name some of the known torture centers frequented by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business. The same for the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.<br />
<br />
Moreover, the Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?<br />
<br />
The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions.<br />
<br />
After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had “left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ – picking terrorism suspects off the street and sending them to a third country. But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”<br />
<br />
The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely because they were willing and able to torture them.<br />
<br />
No official in the Bush and Obama administrations has been punished in any way for torture or other war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries they waged illegal war against. And, it could be added, no American bankster has been punished for their indispensable role in the world-wide financial torture they inflicted upon us all beginning in 2008. What a marvelously forgiving land is America. This, however, does not apply to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning.<br />
<br />
In the last days of the Bush White House, Michael Ratner, professor at Columbia Law School and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, pointed out:<blockquote>The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.</blockquote>I’d like at this point to once again remind my dear readers of the words of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, which was drafted by the United Nations in 1984, came into force in 1987, and ratified by the United States in 1994. Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”<br />
<br />
Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity.<br />
<br />
The Convention Against Torture has been and remains the supreme law of the land. It is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.” – United States Attorney General Eric Holder, July 26, 2013<br />
<br />
John Brennan, appointed by President Obama in January 2013 to be Director of the CIA, has defended “rendition” as an “absolutely vital tool”; and stated that torture had produced “life saving” intelligence.<br />
<br />
Obama had nominated Brennan for the CIA position in 2008, but there was such an outcry in the human-rights community over Brennan’s apparent acceptance of torture, that Brennan withdrew his nomination. Barack Obama evidently learned nothing from this and appointed the man again in 2013.<br />
<br />
During Cold War One, a common theme in the rhetoric was that the Soviets tortured people and detained them without cause, extracted phony confessions, and did the unspeakable to detainees who were helpless against the full, heartless weight of the Communist state. As much as any other evil, torture differentiated the bad guys, the Commies, from the good guys, the American people and their government. However imperfect the US system might be – we were all taught – it had civilized standards that the enemy rejected.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-71780981042849784022014-08-06T14:56:00.000-04:002014-08-14T14:59:18.738-04:00Louisville Courier-Journal : Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture<a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/08/06/obamas-breezy-words-post-torture/13664521/">Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>By Leonard Pitts | August 6, 2014</b></i><br />
<br />
“…but we tortured some folks.”<br />
<br />
— President Barack Obama, Aug.1, 2014<br />
<br />
OK, in the first place: “tortured some folks?” Really?<br />
<br />
Was there not something annoyingly breezy in the president’s phrasing last week as he acknowledged the abuse of suspected terrorists in the wake of Sept. 11? Was there not something off-putting in the folksy familiarity of it?<br />
<br />
“We tortured some folks.”<br />
<br />
What’s next? “He raped a chick?” “They stabbed a dude?”<br />
<br />
Granted, it’s a relatively minor point. But to whatever degree phrasing is a window into mindset, the president’s phrasing was jarring. It is, however, what he said next that we are gathered here to discuss.<br />
<br />
Obama, speaking to reporters Friday, invoked the atmosphere after Sept. 11 to explain why the CIA, ahem, tortured some folks. He reminded us that we were all terrified more attacks were imminent and our national security people were under great pressure to prevent them. So while what they did was wrong, said Obama, “It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.”<br />
<br />
In other words, we were all scared spitless, so it’s … understandable if not precisely condonable, that the CIA behaved in ways that betrayed our national values. But the president is wrong.<br />
<br />
In fairness to him, though, let’s stipulate a few things:<br />
<br />
One: Obama has never wavered in calling the torture of suspected terrorists precisely what it was, nor in defining it as a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. He did so again last week. “We did some things that were contrary to our values,” he said.<br />
<br />
Two: Those things did not happen on Obama’s watch. It was George W. Bush’s administration that rationalized and justified the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation.” Bush made this mess. Obama is just the guy with the push broom.<br />
<br />
Three: Obama was trying to walk a political tightrope that was probably unwalkable. Anticipating declassification of a Senate report that is said to cast a harsh light on these tactics, he sought to signal disapproval of what the CIA did, yet not throw its personnel — who now, after all, work for him — under the proverbial bus. That wouldn’t be great for morale.<br />
<br />
All that said, it was disappointing to hear the president invoke the frenzy of that era as a mitigating factor. By that logic, you could justify the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, the McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s, or dozens of other sins against freedom strewn like scars across the face of American history. All were born of the same broken rationale: We were scared, so we did things we should not have done.<br />
<br />
The thinking seems to be that sometimes fear makes our values too heavy to uphold. Actually, it is our capacity for fear that makes them more critical to uphold. And it is disingenuous to pretend the hysteria of the 9/11 era was such that anyone might have done the same thing.<br />
<br />
Not only is that not true, but it also insults the moral courage of people like Sen. John McCain and Obama himself who did stand up and say, emphatically and at political risk, that this was unworthy of us. So it’s not that it was impossible to speak reason, but that the torturers refused to hear it.<br />
<br />
They followed orders instead.<br />
<br />
The president opposes the idea of prosecuting them for that and he’s right. That would cast a pall over American intelligence gathering for generations forward.<br />
<br />
But there is a lesson here that urgently needs learning, an accounting that ought not be ignored. With the best of intentions and the approval of a morally blinkered White House, the CIA vandalized American honor and all involved must be called on it. That isn’t sanctimony.<br />
<br />
It’s patriotism.<br />
<br />
<i>Write to Pitts at lpitts@miamiherald.com.</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-39076264615732073682014-08-02T10:55:00.000-04:002014-08-03T11:36:53.742-04:00WDTV [WV] : Obama's 'Torture' Comments Reopen 9/11 Debate<a href="http://www.wdtv.com/wdtv.cfm?func=view§ion=5-News&item=Obamas-Torture-Comments-Reopen-911-Debate-17341">Obama's 'Torture' Comments Reopen 9/11 Debate</a><br />
<br />
<i>from <a href="http://www.wdtv.com/">WDTV</a>, serving north central West Virginia</i><br />
<br />
<i><b>Lauren McMillen | August 2, 2014 </b></i><br />
<br />
"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks"<br />
<br />
That's what President Obama had to say after recognizing that the U.S. may have went to far in torturing al-Queda detainees.<br />
<br />
Since in office, Obama has taken a stand against the enhanced interrogation tactics that were put into place by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. But some of you believe that the harsh conditions were the only solution.<br />
<br />
"They shouldn't have bothered us to begin with then we wouldn't have been there to torture them. You're not going to resolve anything over there. It's been going on for the beginning of time," said Jim Feeda, visiting from Pennsylvania.<br />
<br />
"They torture us, so we have to do what we can to get the information we need to get the job done," said Cliff Fox, Harrison County resident.<br />
<br />
This all comes on the brink on a new Senate report that is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The nearly 7,000 page report will describe in detail the CIA's treatment of terrorist suspects.<br />
<br />
Officials expect the document will reveal that actions, like water boarding, did not help us get any further. <br />
<br />
"We did some things that were contrary to our values," said President Obama.<br />
<br />
Others agree that these acts violated the principles of our country and what we stand for.<br />
<br />
"I think torturing people is something we not ought to do. I think there are other techniques we can use to get the same information. I don't know if anyone has ever shown that using torture gets more and better information," said Joe Burrman, visiting from Maryland.<br />
<br />
Obama's comments are likely to draw heavy criticism from some Republicans and former members of the Bush administration.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-74748613576609931022014-02-28T02:28:00.000-05:002015-08-15T02:28:35.088-04:00Quassim Cassam: Cranks, Conspiracies, and the Hidden Self <b>Cranks, Conspiracies, and the Hidden Self</b><br />
<br />
<i>transcribed by Winter Patriot in August of 2015</i><br />
<br />
NOTE: "<b>Cranks, Conspiracies, and the Hidden Self</b>" was Professor <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/faculty/cassam/">Quassim Cassam</a>'s <i>Mind</i> Lecture for 2014, marking the end of his tenure as Senior Research Fellow of the <a href="http://www.mindassociation.org/">Mind Association</a>. It was presented at the <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/">University of Warwick</a>, in Coventry, England, in February of 2014. <br />
<br />
You can <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/faculty/cassam/mind_lecture_2014.mp4">click here to listen to the lecture</a> courtesy of the University.<br />
<br />
The following transcript is not (yet) complete, but I have done my best to present Professor Cassam's ideas as he presented them. <br />
<br />
I have added a few notes [in square brackets], mainly section headings and time stamps. <br />
<br />
[<b>Introductions</b>]<br />
<br />
[0:00] [MODERATOR]<br />
<br />
OK. Good evening, everyone. What an absolute pleasure it is for us to welcome back to the PPE [Philosophy, Politics, and Economics] Society Professor Quassim Cassam, who this evening will be giving a very special lecture. <br />
<br />
This evening's lecture is the Mind lecture, bringing to a close Professor Cassam's tenure as Mind Senior Research Fellow. The title of the talk is "Cranks, Conspiracies, and the Hidden Self".<br />
<br />
Professor Cassam has had a prolific career in Philosophy. Since 2009, he has been a professor here at Warwick, and from 2010 to 2012 was Head of Philosophy Department. <br />
<br />
Like many of us here this evening, he originally studied PPE starting at Keble College, Oxford, before continuing on to do a B. Phil. and then a D. Phil. in Philosophy, which was supervised for the most part by Sir Peter Strawson.<br />
<br />
He was a fellow and a lecturer at Oxford's Oriel and Wadham Colleges, spending 18 years there, and he has subsequently been a professor at UCL [University College London] , King's College, Cambridge, and from 2007 to 2008 was Cambridge's Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, which is the senior professorship at the University. <br />
<br />
From 2010 to 2011, he was also President of the Aristotelian Society. <br />
<br />
With an interest in Kantian themes, in 1997 his first book, "Self and World," was published, in which he argued for the importance of bodily awareness for self-awareness. <br />
<br />
In 2007, his second book, "The Possibility of Knowledge," was published which focused on how-possible questions in Philosophy, and in particular, how knowledge of particular kinds is possible, despite the apparent obstacles to such knowledge. <br />
<br />
He now has two forthcoming books, "Berkeley's Puzzle," which was co-authored with John Campbell, and "Self-Knowledge for Humans." <br />
<br />
So, without any further hesitation, you will please join me in offering a very warm round of applause to Professor Quassim Cassam. <br />
<br />
[2:18] [APPLAUSE]<br />
<br />
[2:32] [PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
Ok well thanks very much for that introduction. Thanks also to Louis and the PPE Society for organizing this event so brilliantly. I also need to thank the Mind Association, whose Director is here today, for giving me a whole year in which to write a book on self-knowledge.<br />
<br />
Paraphrasing the philosopher Barry Stroud, Mind made the book possible. All I had to do was to make it actual.<br />
<br />
[3:01] Ok so what I want to do is to start off by telling you a story. Now as I tell you this story, it might not be apparent to you what its philosophical significance is. However what I want to suggest once I've told you this story that it's significant actually not just for philosophy but also for Psychology and for Economics. <br />
<br />
So the ultimate target of this lecture will be a position in Philosophy which I call "Harvard Rationalism," a position in psychology which is often called "Situationism," and a particular version of Behavioural Economics.<br />
<br />
I'll also have something positive to say, hopefully, but mainly I just want to rattle a few cages here, just make trouble for these views. <br />
<br />
[<b>Oliver and His Theory</b>]<br />
<br />
[3:54] Ok So here's the story. The story is about a fictional character who I'm going to call Oliver. Now Oliver spends a lot of time surfing the Internet and reading about the events in New York on September the 11th, 2001. Oliver indeed regards himself as something of an expert in the field of what he calls "9/11 Studies". <br />
<br />
Now the thing about Oliver is that he has a theory about what actually happened on 9/11. And his theory is this: that the collapse of the Twin Towers on that day was not in fact caused by aircraft impacts and the resulting fires. Oliver thinks that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of a controlled demolition. His theory is that government agents planted explosives in the building in advance, detonated those explosives just as the aircraft were approaching, and that's what resulted in the collapse of the Twin Towers. <br />
<br />
[5:05] That's Oliver's theory. <br />
<br />
Now, as many of you will be aware, Oliver's theory about what happened on 9/11 is actually not that unusual. There was a global opinion poll done in 2008, ten thousand respondents. And fewer than half of them believed that al-Q'aeda was responsible for the events on 9/11. Fewer than half of them believed that.<br />
<br />
So he's not alone. Oliver's not alone. But there's one problem. The problem is that Oliver's beliefs about 9/11 are complete rubbish. <br />
<br />
[5:48] Of course, aircraft impacts could, and indeed did, bring down the Twin Towers, and the events on 9/11 were the responsibility of al-Q'aeda. There's overwhelming evidence of that. <br />
<br />
So a natural reaction to the case of Oliver would be to say, Well, so what? So what? He has a strange view, a conspiracy theory about what happened on that day.<br />
<br />
His conspiracy theory happens to be shared by many people across the world. There are many Olivers -- depressingly many Olivers in the world. Perhaps there are even some in this room. <br />
<br />
[LAUGHTER] <br />
<br />
I mean, statistically, it seems quite likely that there are a few people here who believe Oliver's theory. <br />
<br />
[<b>Philosophical Significance</b>]<br />
<br />
So what's the philosophical significance of this phenomenon? That's my question. <br />
<br />
Well, things start to get interesting, I think, when we ask the following question about Oliver. Why does Oliver believe what he believes about 9/11? Why does he believe it? <br />
<br />
[7:03] Now, if you think, as Descartes thought, that we have privileged access to our own minds, then the best possible way of answering the question: "Why does Oliver believe these things?" is to ask Oliver. Who could possibly be better placed to explain why he believes these things than the subject himself? <br />
<br />
So you ask Oliver, "Why do you believe this?" So this is how the conversation goes, ok. <br />
<br />
As a philosopher, I'm afraid I can't resist using P's and Q's, ok. <br />
<br />
And the relevance of this will become clear, but supposing Q is the proposition: "The collapse of the Twin Towers was caused by controlled demolition". That's Q. <br />
<br />
And supposing P is the proposition: "Aircraft impact could not have brought down the Twin Towers, and eyewitnesses on the day heard explosions before the towers collapsed." <br />
<br />
So you ask Oliver "Why do you believe that Q?" <br />
<br />
[8:08] And he says, "Well, I believe that Q because I believe that P. I believe that aircraft impacts couldn't have caused the towers to collapse. That's why I believe that they were brought down by a controlled explosion. I believe that Q because I believe that P." <br />
<br />
[8:27] Of course you can ask him further questions, "Well, why do you believe that P?" And he gives you reasons why he believes that P. Now the story that Oliver has, the explanation that Oliver has just given you of his beliefs, is what philosophers call a "rationalizing" explanation. <br />
<br />
It's a rationalizing explanation in the sense that Oliver explains his beliefs by reference to his reasons. He represents himself as reasoning from a premise, P, to a conclusion, Q. <br />
<br />
[9:03] And his reasoning is not obviously incompetent. His reasoning is not obviously incompetent. He takes P to provide evidence for Q. <br />
<br />
Now of course, the problem with that is that most of us realize that he doesn't have any good reason to believe that P, right, but given that he believes that P, he infers that Q. So that's the kind of explanation that Oliver gives. He gives a rationalizing explanation for his beliefs.<br />
<br />
[<b>Is Oliver Irrational?</b>]<br />
<br />
[9:31] Now if that's right, then I think there's one temptation which we need to resist when we think about cases like Oliver. The temptation that we need to resist is to say, "Oliver is irrational." <br />
<br />
Here's why I think we shouldn't say that. I mean, obviously a lot depends on what you take "rational" to mean. There's a kind of very broad, loose conception of "irrational" on which "irrational" just means something like "foolish" or "stupid". <br />
<br />
[10:04] That's one reading of "irrational" so that's actually [...] it's something that Derek Parkin says: Foolish, stupid, and crazy. <br />
<br />
Well, maybe Oliver's belief is irrational in that sense, but there's a much stricter, and I think, more useful notion of irrationality, on which Oliver's beliefs are not irrational. <br />
<br />
So this stricter notion of irrationality is one that, for example, Scanlon defends, in his book, "What We Owe To Each Other". <br />
<br />
So the basic idea is this: <br />
<br />
[10:38] An attitude of yours is irrational, if and only if you hold it despite recognizing reasons -- good reasons -- for not holding it. Ok, so "irrational" in this strict sense means "contrary to your own reason". <br />
<br />
[10:57] Ok, so that can apply not just to beliefs but to actions, intentions, and so on, So supposing you recognize that there are extremely powerful and compelling reasons for you not to smoke, but you still smoke. That might be a case of irrationality. But that's irrationality because it's a kind of inconsistency, right, it's a kind of inconsistency<br />
<br />
[11:20] Now of course in that sense Oliver isn't irrational. It's not that Oliver believes things which by his own lights he doesn't have good reason to believe. He's certainly not irrational in that sense. There are in fact rational linkages between the various propositions that he believes. He believes that Q because he believes that P. He takes himself to have good reasons to believe that Q. And he believes that Q on the basis of those reasons. <br />
<br />
[11:51] So he's not believing something in the face of his own reason. He's not believing something that is contrary to his own sense of what he has reason to believe. So in that sense of "irrational", Oliver is not irrational. He might be foolish, but he's not irrational. His belief might be foolish but it's not an irrational belief. <br />
<br />
It's a false belief. Of course it's a false belief. But saying that a belief is false is not the same as saying that it's irrational. So what is going on with Oliver, in that case? How do we make sense of Oliver if not by saying that he's irrational? <br />
<br />
[<b>Intellectual Character</b>]<br />
<br />
[12:40] Well, supposing now the conversation continues, and you discover that Oliver not only believes that al-Q'aeda was not responsible for 9/11, he also believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was not solely responsible, or possibly responsible at all, for the assassination of President Kennedy. He believes that Princess Diana was killed by a hit squad hired by Prince Phillip. So he has a whole lot of conspiracy theories. <br />
<br />
Then you talk to Oliver's friends, and you say, "Well, you know, what's this Oliver character like?" And they tell you a whole lot of stuff about Oliver. <br />
<br />
[13:23] They tell you a whole lot of stuff about his character. They say things like "Well, he's a bit sloppy, he's quite gullible, he's careless in his thinking." Ok. <br />
<br />
Now, of course, what Oliver believes about 9/11 starts to make some kind of sense. It makes sense because you can now see what Oliver believes about 9/11 as part of a pattern -- a pattern of beliefs or belief-formation that Oliver exemplifies. So one way of capturing this would be to introduce the notion of character. Of character. <br />
<br />
Now of course when people talk about character, sometimes they mean "moral character", so they mean things like, you know, generosity and kindness, something like that. I'm not talking about character in that sense. I'm talking about what is sometimes called "intellectual character" or "epistemic character". So here's the suggestion: <br />
<br />
[14:26] One way of making sense of cases like Oliver is to draw on this notion of intellectual character. So what do I mean by this? <br />
<br />
By "intellectual character" I mean "dispositions to form beliefs and reason and enquire in particular ways". <br />
<br />
Now intellectual character traits can be good or they can bad. So the distinction we need is the distinction between on the one hand, what I'm gonna call "epistemic virtues," and on the other hand, "epistemic vices." [...] <br />
<br />
[15:04] So epistemic virtues would include open-mindedness, intellectual humility, tenacity, thoroughness, carefulness, fair-mindedness, determination, intellectual courage, and inquisitiveness. <br />
<br />
[15:25] Epistemic vices would include things like negligence, idleness, cowardice, conformity, carelessness, rigidity, gullibility, prejudice, obtuseness, lack of thoroughness, and closed-mindedness. <br />
<br />
[15:38] So the proposal is this, that at least in this particular case, and maybe in other cases too, it's genuinely illuminating to explain why Oliver believes what he believes about 9/11 in terms of his intellectual character, right, so crudely you might say: He believes these things because he's gullible. He believes these things because he's careless. He believes these things because he's intellectually negligent. Ok.<br />
<br />
[<b>Two Kinds of Explanation</b>]<br />
<br />
[16:09] Those are "character" explanations of his beliefs, Ok, and the point I want to make is this: Character explanations are not rationalizing explanations. They're not rationalizing explanations, so right so if you go back to the belief that Q, that the Twin Towers were brought down as a result of controlled demolition: <br />
<br />
If the question is: "Why does Oliver believe that Q?" you now have two very different answers to that question. The rationalizing answer says: Oliver believes that Q because he believes that P, and because P supports Q. That's the rationalizing answer. <br />
<br />
The non-rationalizing answer says: Oliver believes that Q, and indeed believes that P, because he's gullible, because of the kind of person that he is. He's that kind of person. <br />
<br />
[17:05] That's a non-rationalizing explanation because, of course, being gullible is not a reason to believe anything, right. Being gullible explains why you believe what you believe, but it's not a reason for you to believe what you believe. Ok. <br />
<br />
So you have these two kinds of explanation: character explanations, which are non-rationalizing, and rationalizing explanations. And the interesting thing about these two explanations is the following: <br />
<br />
[17:32] The rationalizing explanation is, of course, the one that Oliver himself gives. Of course, of course Oliver will say, "I believe that Q because of other things I believe that support that belief." <br />
<br />
The non-rationalizing explanation is not one that Oliver gives. It's one that we give, right, from the outside. It's a third-person explanation rather than a first-person explanation. <br />
<br />
[<b>Oliver's Self-Ignorance</b>]<br />
<br />
[17:59] And this brings me to the next point I want to make. The explanation of Oliver's beliefs in terms of Oliver's own character is not an explanation which Oliver himself could possibly accept. <br />
<br />
I mean, think about it, right? You might say, "Oliver believes that Q because he's gullible." But Oliver is presumably not going to say, "I only believe that Q because I'm gullible." <br />
<br />
Ok, so those of you who do philosophy will recognize it as a version of Moore's Paradox. This is a version of Moore's Paradox. <br />
<br />
Ok, the thought is this: that with respect to the character determinants of his belief, Oliver is himself ignorant. Oliver doesn't realize that he's gullible. Oliver doesn't realize that he believes these things because he's gullible. Oliver doesn't realize that he's negligent, or careless. He doesn't realize that he believes these things because he's negligent, or careless. <br />
<br />
Oliver is not going to think, "I only think these things because I'm useless." <br />
<br />
[19:13] Oliver's just not gonna think that. He's not gonna think, "I only think these things because I'm negligent." <br />
<br />
Ok, so in a certain sense, Oliver is self-ignorant. He's self-ignorant. He's self-ignorant in the sense that there is an answer to the question, "Why does he believe what he believes?" There's an answer to that question that he doesn't know. <br />
<br />
[19:37] You might know he believes what he believes because he's gullible. He doesn't know that. <br />
<br />
Now this is an example of a particular kind of self-ignorance. Ok, now when I talk about self-ignorance, let me just explain what I mean. Sometimes, indeed very often, when philosophers talk about self-knowledge, they mean knowledge of what you believe, knowledge of what you want, knowledge of what you hope, knowledge of what you fear. <br />
<br />
Now I'm not suggesting that Oliver lacks self-knowledge in that sense. Oliver knows perfectly well what be believes about 9/11, right, I mean, Oliver knows perfectly well that he believes al-Q'aeda didn't do it. So he's not self-ignorant in that sense. <br />
<br />
The self-ignorance which Oliver exemplifies is not ignorance of what he believes, but ignorance of why he believes what he believes, right. And it's a particular kind of explanation which Oliver doesn't know or accept, an explanation in terms of his character traits. <br />
<br />
Now ignorance in this sense, self-ignorance in this sense, is a pervasive phenomenon, as those of you who've read any empirical psychology will know. So let me just give you a couple of other nice examples of self-ignorance. <br />
<br />
[Empirical Examples of Self-Ignorance]<br />
<br />
[20:59] So here's one example. The bystander effect. The bystander effect. So the bystander effect is this: people are increasingly less likely to help others in distress, as the number of bystanders increases. That's the bystander effect. <br />
<br />
There are all these studies of people in a room, being played the sounds of what sounds like someone having an epileptic fit in the next room, right. And the studies show conclusively that the likelihood that you will go and help that person varies according to how many other people there are in the room with you, right. The more people there are in the room with you, the more bystanders, the less likely you are to go and help the person in the next room. <br />
<br />
So that's an interesting phenomenon, right. Because if I'm trying to explain, "Why didn't she go and help?", I might say, "Well, she didn't go and help because actually there were all these other bystanders around." That's what explains why she didn't help. <br />
<br />
But if I ask you, "Why didn't you help?" that's not the answer that you give. In these studies, everyone who was asked denied that the number of bystanders had any impact on their decision to help or not help. Right, so that's a form of self-ignorance. People are being influenced by something, in this case the number of bystanders, without realizing they're being influenced. <br />
<br />
Here's another case: <br />
<br />
[22:27] This is the famous pantyhose experiment done by Nesbitt and Wilson, several years ago. So in the pantyhose experiment, Nesbitt and Wilson went off to a shopping mall and asked people to assess the quality of items of clothing, right. So people were presented with four identical pairs of nylon stockings. Identical pairs of nylon stockings. And they were asked to say which one they thought was the best pair. Which one did they think was the best pair. So let me read to you what Nesbitt and Wilson say about this: <br />
<br />
[23:04] "Subjects were asked to say which article of clothing was the best quality. And when they announced a choice, they were asked why they had chosen the article they had. In fact, there was a pronounced left-to-right position effect, such that the right-most object in the array was heavily over-chosen."<br />
<br />
Don't forget, the stockings were identical. <br />
<br />
[23:29] "For the stockings, the effect was quite large, with the right-most stockings being preferred over the left-most by a factor of almost 4 to 1. When asked about the reasons for their choices, no subject ever mentioned spontaneously the position of the article in the array. And when asked directly about the possible effect of the position of the article, virtually all subjects denied it, usually with a worried glance at the interviewer, suggesting that they felt that either they'd misunderstood the question, or were dealing with a madman." <br />
<br />
Classic example, classic example of self-ignorance. Not knowing why you made the choice that you made, but you make up this story about the supposed unique qualities of the pair that you chose, even though the pair that you chose is absolutely identical to all the other pairs. The thing that was influencing you was the position. The position. But when asked, "Well, is that what you think was influencing you?" they all deny it. <br />
<br />
[<b>Self-Ignorance / Oliver Summary</b>]<br />
<br />
Now of course these cases of self-ignorance are slightly different from the case of self-ignorance I was discussing. <br />
<br />
[24:43] What I've just told you about, in the pantyhose case and the bystander case, these are cases where your beliefs or your choices are being influenced by what you might call external factors of which you have no knowledge. <br />
<br />
In the Oliver case, to the extent that his beliefs are being influenced by his character, it's not external factors but internal factors. Internal factors. Nevertheless, the basic phenomenon is strikingly similar. The basic phenomenon is self-ignorance. <br />
<br />
[25:22] You make choices, you have beliefs, you have desires. You know what your choices are, you know what your beliefs are, you know what your desires are, but in a certain important sense you don't know why they are as they are. That's what I mean by self-ignorance. <br />
<br />
[25:39] Ok so let me just sum up the three main features of the Oliver case, Ok, and then move on to what the significance is. [...] <br />
<br />
The first feature of what I'm saying is that Oliver is certainly not irrational in the strict sense. He's not irrational in the strict sense. <br />
<br />
Second feature: Oliver's beliefs about 9/11 are to a significant extent a reflection of his intellectual or epistemic character. <br />
<br />
And thirdly, he knows what he believes, but in an important sense, he doesn't know why he believes what he believes. <br />
<br />
[26:22] Now those claims strike me as obviously correct -- you should never say that in a philosophy lecture -- but they strike me as obviously correct, or, failing that, at least highly plausible. <br />
<br />
[<b>Re: Harvard Rationalism</b>]<br />
<br />
So why do I think that these claims cause problems for positions in Philosophy, Psychology, and in Economics? So let me now expand a little bit on that. <br />
<br />
[26:48] So my philosophical target is a position which I call "Harvard Rationalism". It's Harvard Rationalism because it's a position made famous by a couple of people who are currently teaching at Harvard, someone called Richard Moran who published an extraordinarily influential, and indeed, I think, brilliant, book called "Authority and Estrangement," published in 2001, and Matthew Boyle, who's a younger person at Harvard, who's recently been publishing some great papers -- some great papers -- on this topic. <br />
<br />
[27:23] The sense in which Harvard Rationalists are Rationalists is this: they think of us, they think of human subjects, as fundamentally in the space of reasons. They think of our beliefs and other attitudes as an expression of our reasons, as an expression of our rationality, right, so the basic idea that they have is that our beliefs and other attitudes are, on they whole, as they rationally should be -- a rather optimistic assumption, you might think. <br />
<br />
Now there's a particular claim that Harvard Rationalists make which I want to focus on. And the particular claim they make is that reasoning, or what they sometimes call deliberation, is, for us, a fundamental source of self-knowledge. Reasoning, or deliberation, is a fundamental source of self-knowledge. <br />
<br />
Ok now here's a quotation from Boyle that encapsulates that view, Ok so I'm going to read you this quotation and as I read it, I want you to think about Oliver, Ok. <br />
<br />
Think about Oliver as I read this: [...]<br />
<br />
[28:31] Boyle says, <br />
<br />
"If I reason 'P, so Q,' this must normally put me in a position not merely to know that I believe that Q, but to know something about why I believe that Q, namely, because I believe that P and that P shows that Q. Successful deliberation normally gives us knowledge of what we believe and why we believe it." <br />
<br />
That's the claim: Successful deliberation normally gives us knowledge of what we believe and why we believe it. So in the case in which you reason, "P, therefore Q," the thought is, that in that case, you know that you believe that Q because you believe that P, right, in the normal case. <br />
<br />
[29:25] Now, of course, if you apply this to Oliver: Oliver reasons "P, so Q." Oliver reasons in exactly the way that Boyle is describing. Oliver is making just the kind of rational transition that Boyle characterizes.<br />
<br />
But does that give Oliver knowledge of why be believes that Q? <br />
<br />
Well, I'm not completely dismissing the force of rationalizing explanations. But there's a very important aspect of the Oliver case which is completely missing from the Harvard Rationalists' story. <br />
<br />
What's missing from this is the influence of non-rational factors on Oliver's beliefs. In particular what's missing is any reference to the role of Oliver's character in determining what he believes, or, indeed, other internal or external factors. <br />
<br />
[30:22] So the story you get from the Harvard Rationalists is the story of this perfect calculating machine, making rational transitions from one proposition to another, and thereby knowing why he thinks what he thinks, in terms of these rational transitions. <br />
<br />
What completely goes missing from this is any reference to non-rational influences on belief formation. These Harvard Rationalists are in a way rather Cartesian, right. What they think is that the mind is in a certain sense transparent to yourself. They think that, insofar as you are able to engage in reasoning, you are thereby able to know why you think what you think. <br />
<br />
[31:06] Ok, and cases like Oliver seem to put pressure, seem to put pressure on that view. Now of course you might say, "Oliver's just a freak, Oliver's just a kind of freak, hence, why should we, I mean Boyle says "normally" in his formulations.<br />
<br />
It's not clear to me that that's right. It's not clear to me that that's right at all. It seems to me that actually a realistic account of human belief formation is going to be one that has to recognize the influence of a wide variety of non-rational influences on our beliefs. <br />
<br />
Not just Bystander effects and positional effects but like character, for example, things like emotions. Think about role of the emotions, the influence of emotions on belief formation. Hoping, believing, fearing, are all tied, are all connected with one another, actually as Spinoza recognized. <br />
<br />
So it seems to me that Harvard Rationalism is problematic at least in part because it misses out on these very important non-rational aspects of attitude formation. <br />
<br />
[32:18] I mean historically, I think, among the great dead philosophers, I think the one who has, and this is based on my cursory knowledge of him, the one who has put the greatest emphasis on this was Nietzsche. I mean Nietzsche had a lot to say about the non-rational influences on our beliefs and desires, particular case of desires. <br />
<br />
Ok, so that's the point I want to make about Oliver-type, Oliver-type cases, Ok what I hope to have persuaded you is that in those cases, and indeed in many other cases, there are all sorts of factors that are influencing our beliefs which go well beyond anything that a Harvard Rationalist can explain. You can't explain everything just in terms of reason. <br />
<br />
[<b>Re: a Position in Situationalism</b>]<br />
<br />
What about Situationism in Psychology? What's that? <br />
<br />
[33:05] So Situationism: actually a good illustration of Situationism is the Bystander Effect. Situationists think the following: that if you want to explain why we behave in the ways that we behave, the best explanation will be one in terms of the situations in which we find ourselves. It's no good explaining our behaviour by reference to our character. That's Situationism. <br />
<br />
Ok so Situationists would say things like this: If you're trying to explain why in a given situation you assisted someone in distress, whereas the person next to you didn't, the explanation is not in terms of some character trait that you have that your neighbour doesn't have. The best explanation is likely to be something much more prosaic: the number of bystanders who were present, for example. <br />
<br />
Or there's the famous Milgram experiment, where people were conned into believing they were administering electric shocks to an unseen victim in the next room. So there was this device with buttons on it marked "100 volts", "150 volts", "extreme pain", "extremely dangerous", and then "XXX' at the top of the dial, right. And they were played sounds of someone apparently in excruciating pain as they went up, as they went up the dial. <br />
<br />
So they were encouraged by the experimenter to go higher, to deliver greater and greater electric shocks to this unseen victim in agony in the next room. And in the Milgram experiment, basically everybody, I mean some very large proportion, I think 68 percent of subjects were willing to go all the way up to the top scale, right, in fact to the point where the screaming person in the next room fell completely silent. <br />
<br />
[35:00] So Situationists are people who say, "Well why did all those people do that? Did they do that because of some character trait that they all had in common? Well, well no," right. The explanation that Situationists offer is that they behaved in these ways because of the situation that they found themselves in. <br />
<br />
So the basic idea of Situationism is that explanations of action in terms of character are no good. Character is explanatorily redundant. It' s always the situation. <br />
<br />
And from that, some Situationists have concluded, "There is no such thing as character." They think that the whole idea of character is just a myth. Ok so here's a clear statement of that thesis.[...] This is actually a philosopher, not a psychologist, but it's a philosopher who's very sympathetic to Situationism, so Gil Harmon, who's a professor at Princeton, says: <br />
<br />
[35:58] "There is no reason to believe in character traits, as ordinarily conceived. We need to convince people to look at situational factors and stop trying to explain things in terms of character traits."<br />
<br />
That's Situationism. <br />
<br />
Now I think that Situationism has considerable force. It's a serious position, I think, in psychology, and many of the points that Situationists make are points that deserve to be taken extremely seriously. <br />
<br />
However, when you think about something like Oliver, someone like Oliver, it's actually very hard to make sense of what's going on in Oliver-cases, without positing explanatory character traits. <br />
<br />
So if you look at the list of Epistemic Vices, to say that there is literally no such thing as character would be to say that there is no such thing as negligence, or idleness, or gullibility; right, these things aren't real because they don't explain anything. <br />
<br />
But that view now starts to -- I hope you'll agree -- starts to look ludicrous. It's very hard to make sense of what's going on in Oliver-type cases without supposing that he does have character traits, distinctive character traits, which do help to explain why he believes what he believes. <br />
<br />
[37:29] So I think Situationists are right to this extent: they're right to be suspicious of blanket explanations of human actions in terms of moral character traits. I think that's right. <br />
<br />
But when it comes to these sorts of rather fine-grained intellectual character traits, it's very hard to do without them when we try to explain what's going in cases like this. That's why I think the Oliver case, and similar cases, are a challenge for Situationists in Psychology. <br />
<br />
Ok. Lastly I want to say something about Behavioural Economics. This is the PPE Society, so I feel I need to say something about Economics. <br />
<br />
[<b>Re: a Position in Behavioural Economics</b>]<br />
<br />
So what is Behavioural Economics? What is is? <br />
<br />
Well I think I can no better than to quote two very distinguished Chicago economists, Levitt and List, in an article which they published in Science, three of four years ago. [...] So this is the Levitt and List characterization of Behavioural Economics. <br />
<br />
[38:36] "The discipline of Economics is built on the shoulders of the mythical species Homo Economicus. Unlike his uncle, Homo Sapiens, Homo Economicus is unswervingly rational, completely selfish, and can effortlessly solve even the most difficult optimization problem. <br />
<br />
This rational paradigm has served Economics well, providing a coherent framework for modeling human behaviour. However, a small but vocal movement has sought to dethrone Homo Economicus, replacing him with someone who acts more human. <br />
<br />
This insurgent branch, commonly referred to as Behavioural Economics, argues that actual human behaviour deviates from the rational model in predictable ways. Incorporating these features into economic models, proponents argue, should improve our ability to explain observed behaviour."<br />
<br />
Right, so the basic idea is this: that there's a contrast between this ideal, this mythical, this super-rational, super-selfish Homo Economicus and real human beings. Right, so if you're trying to figure out what's wrong with Economics, one thing that's wrong with it, on this view, is that it's historically focused, really, on Homo Economicus. It hasn't tried to explain human economic behaviour, bearing in mind all the respects in which Homo Sapiens are different from Homo Economicus. <br />
<br />
[40:00] Now that seems to me to be a very powerful and intellectually respectable position in economics. I'm not especially competent to comment on it, but it seems to me to have quite a lot going for it. However, as some of you will be aware, there's a further, there's a further step which some Behavioural Economists have taken. <br />
<br />
And that further step is to claim not just that human beings are not Homo Economicus but to claim that human beings are actually irrational. Ok so some of you will have come across what Amazon assures me is a best-seller by a Behavioural Economist called Dan Ariely.<br />
<br />
The book is called "Predictably Irrational" and you can guess what the thesis of the book is. Humans are predictably irrational. And of course if you approach things from this kind of Ariely perspective, you might think, "Well, Oliver-cases are the perfect illustration of this. Perfect illustration of human irrationality." However, however, it seems to me that we shouldn't say that at all. <br />
<br />
The respects in which Homo Economicus and Homo Sapiens are different from one another do not constitute respects in which humans are irrational. Not being Homo Economicus does not make you irrational, it just makes you not Homo Economicus. <br />
<br />
And indeed when you read, when you read books like "Predictably Irrational," I mean, when I first read that, I thought, "Well, obviously the first thing I want to know is, "What does he mean by irrational?" right and that turned out to be a surprisingly difficult question to answer, despite reading the book fairly carefully, and in the end it turned out, it turns out that what people like Ariely really mean by "irrational" is actually "self-ignorant". That's actually what they mean. <br />
<br />
[42:05] So the subtitle of "Predictably Irrational" is "The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" and that's actually Ariely's thesis. His thesis is that in fact our decisions are shaped by and influenced by all sorts of factors of which we are unaware. <br />
<br />
[42:22] Right so one of the examples that he gives is a subscription for "The Economist" right where you've got "Internet Only", a certain percentage, "Print" a certain percentage, and "Print and Internet" a certain price. Right and then it turns out that we were being influenced by one of these three choices in ways that we weren't aware of. But that doesn't make us irrational, right. Being self-ignorant does not make you irrational. <br />
<br />
So it seems to me that these rather exaggerated populist versions of Behavioural Economics need to be resisted. They represent themselves as talking about irrationality but what they're actually talking about is self-ignorance. <br />
<br />
Self-ignorance is a genuine and important phenomenon, but it's not the same phenomenon as irrationality. <br />
<br />
[<b>What Philosophy has to Learn from Behavioural Economics</b>]<br />
<br />
However I do think, I do think that Philosophy actually does have something very important to learn from Behavioural Economics, and I want to end by saying just what I think Philosophy has to learn from it. <br />
<br />
One of the ideas that I explore in the book that I've just been writing is the following idea: that just as neo-Classical Economics has concentrated on Homo Economicus, Philosophy has in fact concentrated very much on what I call Homo Philosophicus. <br />
<br />
Right so when Philosophers try to explain human knowledge, or some other phenomenon, they very rarely consider human beings as we actually are. <br />
<br />
Rather, what they have in mind is an incredibly Epistemically well-behaved citizen. <br />
<br />
Right so Homo Philosphicus is a model Epistemic citizen who only believes what he has reason to believe, when he encounters evidence against his beliefs, he abandons his beliefs, and so on. <br />
<br />
[44:16] Right, well, we're not like that. We're not like that. <br />
<br />
There's a large number of disparities between Homo Sapiens and Homo Philosophicus which correspond to the disparities between Homo Sapiens and Homo Economicus, and one of the things I try to do in the book is to look at these disparities and try to consider what their significance is for Philosophical accounts not just of self-knowledge, but Philosophical accounts of all sorts of other things. <br />
<br />
So the basic idea is this: if you want to give a Philosophical account of self-knowledge, you need to make sure that the account that you give is not an account of self-knowledge for Homo Philosophicus, right, who can come to know his beliefs by engaging in rational deliberation.<br />
<br />
It would be nice if that were true of us and no doubt it is true of us some of the time, but it's also not true of us a lot of the time. <br />
<br />
[<b>Conclusion</b>]<br />
<br />
So what the Philosophy of Self-Knowledge should be trying to do give an account of what I call "A Theory of Self-Knowledge for Humans." <br />
<br />
And when you try to think about the human predicament, I think the thing that is striking is the very opposite of the thing that struck Descartes. <br />
<br />
The starting point for Cartesian accounts of self-knowledge is the ease with which we get self-knowledge, almost the unavoidability of self-knowledge. That's the Cartesian view of self-knowledge. <br />
<br />
On that view, self-ignorance is just not a problem. It's just not an issue. I mean self-ignorance is not an issue in the Cartesian tradition partly because, I guess, in that tradition, there isn't even the possibility of self-ignorance. <br />
<br />
What I've been talking about in this lecture is the prevalence and importance and depth of particular forms of self-ignorance which require considerable work to overcome, and that's really what the Philosophy of Self-Knowledge for Humans should be focused on. <br />
<br />
What it should be doing is recognizing that self-knowledge is for us a major and difficult cognitive achievement and it requires considerable cognitive effort to achieve it. <br />
<br />
So we need to get away from this idea that important interesting self-knowledge is easy to get.<br />
<br />
It isn't. It's hard. That's it. <br />
<br />
[46:46] [APPLAUSE]<br />
<br />
[<b>Questions from the Audience</b>]<br />
<br />
[<b>Maybe Oliver Doesn't Know what an Explanation Is</b>]<br />
<br />
[MODERATOR]<br />
<br />
Ok so Professor Cassam has agreed to take just a few questions. So who would like to go first?<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE]<br />
<br />
Yeah, thank you for the talk. That was very interesting. One thing I'd like to quiz you a little more on is on the Oliver situation. <br />
<br />
How much do we really need to refer to these kind of intellectual virtues or deficiencies as you refer to them? Could we not explain in terms of Oliver not having an understanding of what an explanation is and what constitutes an explanation, in the same way as if I'd watched a video about global warming denial, for instance, if I had no idea what an explanation is, I might believe it. It's got nothing to do with our ability or otherwise [unintelligible]<br />
<br />
[48:03] [PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
Ok well it's a very interesting question. I don't know if you've come across this but there's a book by the journalist David Aaronovich. The book is called "Voodoo Histories." It's a discussion of a whole range of conspiracy theories. Now one of the conspiracy theorists whom he discusses is a philosopher called Richard Popkin. <br />
<br />
Now Popkin wrote an incredibly influential, and important, and indeed good book, on the history of philosophy. the history of philosophy since Descartes. Now one of Popkin's side interests was the assassination of JFK, right, so three or four years after the JFK assassination, Popkin published a book, the title of which is, "The Second Oswald." <br />
<br />
[48:50] Right, so in that book Popkin defends the view that in fact Oswald wasn't the lone assassin of JFK. Or in fact I think he thinks that Oswald didn't fire the fatal bullets at all. In fact, there was someone physically similar to Oswald, the second Oswald, who was responsible. <br />
<br />
Now, that's a ludicrous theory, right, about the JFK assassination. But if you were to say, "Why, Professor Popkin, do you believe these things?" or if we were trying to explain why he believes these things, I think it would be a bit of an ask to say, "Popkin doesn't really understand what an explanation is." <br />
<br />
I mean, I mean, Popkin is not a stupid man, right. I mean, Popkin writes about all sorts of abstruse philosophical topics, indeed writes about topics like explanation, right, so saying that it's that kind of failure, that kind of failing, which explains what's going on, at least in his case, seems manifestly inadequate. <br />
<br />
[49:53] Right so I'm not sug-- I'm not denying that there are, that there may indeed be, people whose defects can be explained in the way that you're suggesting. What I'm saying is that that can't be the whole story. <br />
<br />
There are, as the Popkin case illustrates, other things going on in those cases.<br />
<br />
[<b>Obstacles to Self-Knowledge</b>]<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE]<br />
<br />
Yes I wanted to ask if you could talk about the nature of the difficulty that's involved in self-knowing. Because it seems to me from what you said there are two possible sources of difficulty. One is just the nature of character, that character is intrinsically difficult. <br />
<br />
But then you connected character with the third-person perspective, so the other possible difficulty is coming to know ourselves as others know us. And I wonder if you could say a bit: Do you think they're connected in some way? <br />
<br />
[50:52] Is character the kind of thing that we can only know in and through others? Or just if you could turn some light on the relation between those two.<br />
<br />
[PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
So one distinction that I want to draw, just to fill out the story a bit is the distinction between what I call "trivial self-knowledge", right, knowing that you believe that you're wearing socks, a perfectly trivial piece of self-knowledge, versus what I call "substantial self-knowledge" which would include knowledge of such things as your character, perhaps knowledge of some of your emotions. <br />
<br />
So the positive account of self-knowledge that I want to defend is that self-knowledge in those cases in inferential. And it's based on evidence, ok. It's based on evidence. <br />
<br />
So when you think about why someone might fail to have self-knowledge, knowledge of his character in these cases, you actually have a range of explanations. Ok so one explanation would be a kind of motivational explanation, where you say, "Perhaps there are aspects of your character, as it were, you avert your eyes from, because they're embarrassing or distressing to you. <br />
<br />
[52:02] Another explanation is that you don't have, you don't have sufficient evidence to draw those conclusions, right. Maybe you've never been put in a situation where certain aspects of your character are manifested. <br />
<br />
Yet another explanation is that maybe you're self-ignorant in these cases because, although you have the right evidence, you draw the wrong conclusions from it. So these are all examples of particular kinds of obstacle or cognitive failing which might prevent you from coming to know why you are, coming to know what kind of person you are. <br />
<br />
[still some work to be done here!] <br />
<br />
[...] <br />
<br />
[<b>If Oliver was Giving a Lecture ...</b>]<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE]<br />
<br />
[1:02:12] It it at all worrying that if Oliver was giving a lecture, he could have given almost exactly the same lecture and accused you of the epistemic vices of being gullible and believing everything the government tells you and etc. and etc. and make almost exactly the same points as you do? <br />
<br />
[PROFESSOR CASSAM] <br />
<br />
Well the answer is yes and no. It's not worrying in the sense that if Oliver were to do that, he would certainly be going in for the same style of explanation that I was going in for, right, and to that extent he would be right. <br />
<br />
I mean to that extent he would be right and of course this is what's so threatening about threatening about these cases right that actually, I mean, for any of us, if you step back and ask yourself, "Well why do I fundamentally think that?" right, and somebody says, "Well, you know, there's all these non-epistemic explanations," and that's a sense that's a sense in which asking these questions about why you believe what you believe can be such an an undermining can be such an an undermining exercise. <br />
<br />
[1:03:06] So insofar that Oliver runs the, does the same number on me, I don't have any objections, right, at least insofar as he's going in for that style of explanation. My objection is of course that he's wrong! <br />
<br />
[<b>One of the Things That's Actually Really Mysterious</b>]<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE]<br />
<br />
[1:03:19] [inaudible] ... [unintelligible] ... I mean you can't be a good mathematician without being rigorous ... [inaudible] ... [unintelligible] ... could require an addition ... [unintelligible] ... [inaudible] ... <br />
<br />
[PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
[1:04:02] I think that's exactly right and I think that's a really really important point. I mean one of the things that's actually really mysterious about actual conspiracy theorists is that, as you say, many of them are highly educated, highly intelligent, highly competent individuals who don't display any of these epistemic vices in lots of the areas in which they live their lives, right, so so clearly someone who says, "Well, you know, he's gullible" or "He's obtuse" or "He's careless" is going to have to contend with the fact that he isn't, all the time, right. <br />
<br />
So it might be that one's going to have to, even if one's going in for these character explanations, one's going to have to come up with a much more fine-grained explanation, in those terms. I mean, I don't myself have a developed theory of that to offer, beyond just making that concession. But it is very very instructive actually, reading more about people who have these belief systems. And actually, just saying, just saying blankly, "Well, they're gullible or stupid," is just not gonna cut it, right. <br />
<br />
[<b>Isn't There a Danger?</b>]<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE] <br />
<br />
Isn't there a danger in seeking to explain the views of people other than your own based on these epistemic virtues and vices in the sense that you might look at someone else's reading of the evidence and compare it to your own world view, find it deficient and therefore fail to actually engage with their arguments if you can write them off as "They're gullible" which is manifestly wrong. <br />
<br />
[PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
[1:06:09] Well I think that not engaging with their arguments is not something that I'm recommending. I mean I think that actually, if you were if you were if I were if I was confronted with a real live Oliver, it wouldn't be enough just to say to him, "Well, you're gullible." right I mean clearly clearly you'd have to look have to try to draw his attention to the evidence, the very strong evidence that in fact it was al-Q'aeda that did it, and it was the fires and the aircraft impact that brought the towers down. <br />
<br />
Now of course it might be I guess I guess what he's going to do is to run the same number on me that Colin was suggesting, saying "Well, you're the one who's gullible. Well you believe the 9/11 Commission Report but that's all part of the grand conspiracy." And in a way there's no answer to this, there's no, I mean, the only thing you can ever do with someone like that is to just continue the conversation up to the point where it seems useful to do so. <br />
<br />
[1:07:07] But it would come a point when it's no longer useful to do so. And at that point, really, all you can do is to walk away. right and then you can say to someone else, "Well, look, I just gave up on that person because, you know, what do you do with someone like that?" right. and that of course is what we very often say about other people: "What do you do with someone like that?" But that's not a substitute for engaging with their wacky views, I mean it's actually quite important that people who go around spouting these things, that they're actually challenged. <br />
<br />
[<b>One Final Question</b>]<br />
<br />
[AUDIENCE]<br />
<br />
I have a question. I was wondering about your response to the questions about real conspiracy theorists. [...] you might think that a Situationalist would be able to come in and say "They do have all these epistemic [vices], but you can explain in terms of their situation [...] you often get the feeling that they're trying to rationalize how their government could have gone to war in Iraq. Well, that was an evil thing to do, and our government was evil. Then everything makes more sense, in a way rather than an explanation [...] <br />
<br />
[PROFESSOR CASSAM]<br />
<br />
[1:08:22] Yeah, I'm not sure that that's what Situationists mean by situations, right I mean what you're describing is the pursuit of a certain kind of rational intelligibility that these people are after, I mean I'm sympathetic to what you're saying to this extent: I think that Situationists are onto something very important. right I mean what they're onto is the idea that we are actually prone to try to explain things in terms of character when very often there's a better explanation in terms of situations. <br />
<br />
To that extent I think they're right so this is certainly the famous fundamental attribution error of always trying to explain things in terms of character traits when very often the situation will explain. Just, uh, explain better. <br />
<br />
But Situationists at least in the sort of Harmon mold then take the further step of saying there is no such thing as character. That further step is just unnecessary and just seems to me completely bizarre, right. I mean a sensible position in this area will be a position that combines the good insights of Situationism with the good insights of what I call Vice Epistemology in coming up with an explanation of what's going on.<br />
<br />
I mean it's no more acceptable to dismiss the importance of situations than it is to say there's no such thing as character. Clearly they're both part of a part of a complete explanation. <br />
<br />
[MODERATOR]<br />
<br />
Ok then Professor Cassam then it just remains to say that on behalf of the PPE Society and all of us here this has been an absolute pleasure, so thank you very much indeed. <br />
<br />
[APPLAUSE]<br />
<br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-28074276245485858682014-01-13T12:30:00.002-05:002014-01-13T12:34:55.879-05:00L A Times : Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so<a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-nsa-20140113,0,4710459,full.story#axzz2qI4Zv5ap">Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so</a><br />
<br />
<b>But critics of the National Security Agency's program to track Americans' phone data strenuously dispute the idea that it could have prevented the terrorist attacks.</b><br />
<br />
<b>By Christi Parsons and Ken Dilanian | January 13, 2014</b><br />
<br />
WASHINGTON — Many of President Obama's closest advisors have embraced a controversial assessment of one of the National Security Agency's major data collection programs — the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could have been prevented had government then possessed the sort of vast trove of Americans' telephone records it holds now.<br />
<br />
Critics of the NSA program, and some scholars of America's deadliest terrorist attack, strenuously dispute the view that the collection of phone data would necessarily have made a difference or that the possibility justifies the program now. The presidential task force that reviewed surveillance operations concluded last month that the program "was not essential" to preventing terrorist attacks.<br />
<br />
But as the president finalizes plans for a speech on Friday announcing his proposals to change intelligence operations and oversight, the widespread agreement at the most senior levels of the White House about the program's value appears to be driving policy. As a result, the administration seems likely to modify, but not stop, the gathering of billions of phone call logs.<br />
<br />
In recent White House meetings, Obama has accepted the "9/11" justification, aides say, expressing the belief that domestic phone records might have helped authorities identify some of the skyjackers who later crashed passenger jets in New York, the Washington area and Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.<br />
<br />
He believes the main problem with the program is one of perception: Many Americans don't trust the NSA, one of the most secretive of spy agencies, to respect civil liberties.<br />
<br />
In Friday's speech, the president is expected to propose steps that he hopes will make Americans more comfortable with the program, but not greatly reduce its scope as a counter-terrorism tool. One such change would be to shift the assembling and archiving of telephone "metadata" from NSA servers in Ft. Meade, Md., back to the telephone companies, or to a private third party. But aides say he is unlikely to end the program altogether.<br />
<br />
Under the current program, the government collects and stores metadata — numbers dialed and call times — involving virtually all telephone calls in or through the United States. The program does not collect the contents of conversations.<br />
<br />
"This capability was put in place after 9/11 for a good reason," said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive deliberations. "The question we have to examine is whether the perception of privacy intrusion outweighs the operational value. It's possible we could get that same information … in other ways, but it's slower."<br />
<br />
Shifting the NSA archive to private control would be "tricky," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. If the NSA can access the data too easily, Durbin said, "there's an assumption that it's partly created or controlled by government, and that doesn't change people's skepticism."<br />
<br />
Privacy and civil liberties activists say the government has overstated the utility of amassing billions of phone call logs. They argue that it is too far-reaching and too intrusive, and that other effective counter-terrorism tools exist.<br />
<br />
The "big question … [is] whether our government is going to spy on Americans," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU.<br />
<br />
Over the last half-year, government officials have had to abandon several of their claims about the effectiveness of the metadata collection program. When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began disclosing classified documents to the news media, intelligence officials initially said the ability to secretly trace a suspect's network of calling partners had helped prevent scores of terrorist attacks.<br />
<br />
Pressed for details by members of Congress and others, officials steadily backed away from those assertions.<br />
<br />
In the end, they cited only one U.S. case in which they still say the NSA archive played a crucial role: A San Diego cab driver and three others were convicted in November of sending about $8,500 to the Shabab, the extremist group in Somalia that has launched deadly attacks across East Africa, in part because of clues collected from the phone logs.<br />
<br />
Whether U.S. authorities would have used similar data to identify any of the 19 hijackers before Sept. 11, and whether that would have stopped others in the plot, is impossible to know. The presidential commission that investigated the 2001 attack blamed more fundamental problems, including the CIA's failure to inform the FBI that several suspected Al Qaeda members had entered the United States and were living in San Diego.<br />
<br />
The strongest argument for how the program might have helped, one cited in White House discussions, involves Khalid al Mihdhar, a Saudi who helped fly an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon.<br />
<br />
After arriving in San Diego in January 2000, Mihdhar made several phone calls to an Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. U.S. intelligence was monitoring calls made to the safe house, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress last summer, but didn't realize the caller was in America.<br />
<br />
If the telephone archive had existed at the time, Mueller said, the NSA could have linked the numbers in Yemen and San Diego, identified Mihdhar and "derailed" the plot. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, made a similar argument.<br />
<br />
According to the Sept. 11 Commission, however, the NSA already had learned Mihdhar's name in 1999 in a call that linked him to Al Qaeda, but did not pass his name or that of his friend Nawaf al Hazmi, another future hijacker, to the FBI.<br />
<br />
In December that year, the CIA broke into Mihdhar's hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and photographed his passport, which had a U.S. visa. The CIA didn't warn the State Department to revoke the visas, didn't ask immigration authorities to bar Mihdhar or Hazmi at the border and didn't inform the FBI that suspected terrorists were in California.<br />
<br />
If the FBI had been warned, agents already had ample legal authority to review Mihdhar's telephone records or get a warrant to tap his phones, read his emails and track his movements.<br />
<br />
The FBI missed other opportunities to thwart the 2001 plot that it probably would pursue today.<br />
<br />
In summer 2001, agents had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, another Al Qaeda member, who aroused suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. But they failed to obtain a search warrant for his computer. And FBI managers ignored a warning by a field agent in Phoenix that Osama bin Laden might be sending pilots to train at U.S. flight schools.<br />
<br />
Today, as part of the initiatives implemented since 2001, federal watch lists bar suspected terrorists from boarding U.S.-bound aircraft or entering the country, and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies share more information and work far more closely in counter-terrorism cases.<br />
<br />
James R. Thompson, a former governor of Illinois who served on the Sept. 11 Commission, said the value of the bulk data collection was "a given" for counter-terrorism efforts even if it might not have prevented the 2001 attacks. He also said the concerns about abuse were overblown.<br />
<br />
"We don't have any examples of how the average American citizen's privacy is being harmed by the collection of this data," he said.<br />
<br />
NSA officials say they authorize analysts to access the database only a few hundred times a year, and only to determine whether suspected terrorists or spies overseas are in contact with people in the United States. In 2012, NSA analysts looked into calls involving 288 telephone numbers, John Inglis, the NSA's top civilian official, said in a recent interview with NPR. Examining the numbers that were in contact with those initial 288 as well as those in contact with that second tier meant the agency looked at about 6,000 phone numbers in total that year, he said.<br />
<br />
To date, Snowden's disclosures have produced no evidence to suggest the NSA or other agencies have sought to search details about the personal lives or activities of Americans other than terrorism suspects.<br />
<br />
<i>christi.parsons@latimes.com<br />
<br />
ken.dilanian@latimes.com</i><br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-45544902918977313242014-01-06T00:37:00.000-05:002014-01-06T03:31:40.154-05:00VOR : Len Bracken InterviewThe following is a transcript of an interview of Len Bracken by John Robles for Voice of Russia.<br />
<br />
The interview was posted on the <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/">VOR</a> website in three parts: <br />
<br />
Part 1, November 13, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_13/9-11-was-an-Indirect-Defensive-Attack-Len-Bracken-7903/">9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack</a><br />
<br />
Part 2, November 21, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_21/9-11-hijackers-had-addresses-on-Pensacola-Naval-Air-Station-Len-Bracken-2689/">9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station</a><br />
<br />
Part 3, December 8, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_12_08/9-11-was-carried-out-by-US-Saudi-Israeli-intelligence-Glen-Bracken-8307/">9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence</a><br />
<br />
Part 4, January 6, 2014 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_06/United-States-were-involved-in-9-11-events-Len-Bracken-3818/">'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas</a><br />
<br />
I have fixed some of the spelling and punctuation errors. [WP]<br />
<br />
~~~<br />
<br />
Part 1, November 13, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_13/9-11-was-an-Indirect-Defensive-Attack-Len-Bracken-7903/">9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack</a><br />
<br />
<b>States have used terrorism in various ways to advance their own interests for hundreds of years, including the use of terrorist attacks as a means to justify acts of war, crackdowns and Draconian laws such as the US Patriot Act. According to research on the matter by Len Bracken who granted an interview to the Voice of Russia, there are different types of state sponsored terrorist attacks which he has classified and that have been used by NATO, the US and other states in the past. Mr. Bracken is a specialist on the attacks of 9-11 and has done extensive research and interviewed witnesses including police who knew about Anthrax being stored by "Israeli Agents" in the US who were allowed to go free.</b><br />
<br />
Robles: Hello, this is John Robles. I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken. He is the author of six books including The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations and an accredited journalist. This is part one.<br />
<br />
Robles: Hello, sir.<br />
<br />
Bracken: How do you do? Thank you for having me.<br />
<br />
Robles: And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. It's a pleasure. My first question is regarding the motivations for your book The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror – can you give us a little bit of background: why you wrote it, what led you to write it?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Well, when 9-11 happened I was in Riga, Latvia for an activist event to sort of protest consumerism. It took place throughout the entire city.<br />
<br />
On the day of the event I knew better than to jump to any conclusions and I was very reluctant of course to say one way or the other who had done it. But after about six-months time and looking at some of the evidence and of course this was the same year that James Bamford published Body of Secrets that contained the information and reproductions of documents about Operation Northwoods.<br />
<br />
For your listeners who may not know – Operation Northwoods was proposed in the early 60s prior to the beginning of the Vietnam War and Gulf of Tonkin just before that.<br />
<br />
Robles: That was the one, I'm sorry, that was the one to blow up a done civilian aircraft and start a war with Cuba, right?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Exactly, right.<br />
<br />
Robles: Tell us about that plan. It was actually turned down for the extreme quality of it, but…<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yes, sure. It was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer who proposed the plan to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.<br />
<br />
And so the idea was to have a covert attack upon America. So the idea that they would attack America and this would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.<br />
<br />
I guess that they had planned some bombings in Miami and Washington DC and blowing up an American ship in Cuban waters. That was what the plan had as sort of its stratagems. The kind of a tactics that would be used to provoke an attack.<br />
<br />
I have a theory that I have developed, it's not just my theory but I've advanced it somewhat and we call this the "Indirect Attack". You know, this is always an attack pretending be someone else.<br />
<br />
So the idea was that the attack would be staged and would make it look like the Cubans had done it and that would justify the attack.<br />
<br />
We can see throughout history that this has taken place. You had Cuba in fact, you have the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 to get the United States into the Spanish American War, and then in 1915 you have the sinking of Lusitania to bring the United States into WWI, in 1939 you have the provocation by Hitler, he staged the raid on the Gleiwitz radio station to begin war with Poland. And of course Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Operation Northwoods was in 1962, then in 1964 was the Gulf of Tonkin.<br />
<br />
So at the same time the assassinations, and of course were coming up, the anniversary of Kennedy assassination – these events were well-known and were accepted as having involvement of the States. These other things were also taking place and of course these two now are becoming increasingly more accepted.<br />
<br />
Robles: You just mentioned Pearl Harbor as being a false-flag attack. Can you give us little background on why you are saying that was a false-flag?<br />
<br />
Bracken: You can look into some of the books that have come out- the one that I drawn a great deal is called Others Unknown, it's by Stephen Jones.<br />
<br />
I think that the evidence has come out that there was advanced knowledge on the part of the US military and the US Administration, at the time the Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.<br />
<br />
And the idea was that they would send out the newer ships so that the older ships would be blown up and it would look like the Japanese had in fact attacked us without our knowledge when in fact there was advanced knowledge and the people on the ground in Hawaii were denied the information that was being held in Washington.<br />
<br />
There are some documents that were missing from the archives that point to this, it's the implication.<br />
<br />
One of the things about the book which is The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror in addition to some detailed synopsis of these events we also have a chronology.<br />
<br />
Robles: I recently wrote an article regarding 9-11 etc. And I found a mention of your book, I was researching actually something that I had read years ago from the project for New American Century.<br />
<br />
It was very interesting that when I started researching this, the project for New American Century website was up and within like 5 hours of my beginning digging there, this site went down and disappeared and it has not come back up.<br />
<br />
Regarding 9/11 state terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and in particular the Project for New American Century – can you give us some background?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Sure. I'm also the author of the first biography in any language on the French theoretician and filmmaker named Guy Debord.<br />
<br />
He was part of what was called the Situationist International– the radical Marxist group that went from 1956 into the early 70s. And he stayed together with one of the members of the group whose name Gianfranco Sanguinetti and the two of them developed a theory of terrorism – sort of offensive-defensive theory of terrorism, saying there is offensive terrorism,, there is defensive terrorism, and it can be either direct or indirect.<br />
<br />
And I have been working with that theory. I'm trying to develop and trying to advance it because, as I said, I wrote the biography on Debord and I also translated a book by Sanguinetti.<br />
<br />
Sanguinetti's book is called On Terrorism and the State and this is where this theory was presented for the first time.<br />
<br />
So with my book what we set out to do initially was to prove what we called the State Terror Thesis. And this is to recount many of the instances in which it's well known or fairly well-known and there is some reasonable evidence to support the idea that states use terror.<br />
<br />
The big thing that influenced me in writing the book was the fact that in 2001 Jim Bamford published Body of Secrets about the NSA and other things which talked about the Operation Northwoods.<br />
<br />
A more recent example was actually spoken of by Zbigniew Brzezinski in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in February 2007 in which he referenced a leaked document that said that George W. Bush had considered shooting down a UN plane in order to justify attacking Iraq.<br />
<br />
So there is a lot of instances of this, with regard to Sanguinetti and his theory on Terrorism and the State. This involves the assassination in May of 1978 of Aldo Moro, who was the Christian Democratic Party leader, who was trying to reconcile some of the different political factions in his country.<br />
<br />
And of course Sanguinetti's book was published in the next year 1979 and then again in 1980 they had the Bologna railway bombing which killed a lot of people. And a lot of the evidence has pointed back to, I hate to say this, but it pointed back to NATO and this Operation Gladio, it's called.<br />
<br />
And there are several books published in Europe that have gone to great detail. One is by Philip Willan it's called Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, another one is called NATO's Secret Armies by Daniel Ganser. Of course, there are books in French and Italian on the subject.<br />
<br />
In fact the European Parliament has tried to go back to NATO and say: "What is the chain of command on this? How could you have justified these attacks, pretending to be the Red Brigades in Italy and yet having infiltrated these groups?" And NATO refused to respond.<br />
<br />
Robles: What was the purpose of Gladio?<br />
<br />
Bracken: The original idea of Gladio was these were going to be stay-behind armies that after WWII the US and NATO would leave caches of weapons in countries such as Greece and Italy and Turkey and set up networks that could be used in the event of a Soviet invasion or Soviet takeover or Communist Party takeover and then invitation of the Soviets, any eventuality. That was the purported idea behind these "stay-behind" armies but in the end they ended up being engaged in provocations and according to Philip Willan, a lot of it goes back to the CIA base in Paris, the Hyperion Language School and that a lot of the people who were the Red Brigades who were doing the liaison, the sort of "fake" Red Brigades, they were doing the liaison with the CIA at the Hyperion Language School in Paris at that time. In any case, that is sort of briefly.<br />
<br />
It turns out that the man who was most suspected of having pulled the trigger on Aldo Moro is free at this time. He did some prison time but he is actually a free man right now.<br />
<br />
Robles: I see. Back to your book The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, what were the motivations behind your book?<br />
<br />
Bracken: People knew about my work in developing a chronology for The Strategy of Tension, this is called The Strategy of Tension in Italy, the idea would be that they would create so much social tension that masses would want to have the state protect them and it would justify any kind of police actions, it would justify a crackdown on the left, for example.<br />
<br />
I've done a lot of work on that, I worked out the chronology of the Situationist International in Italy and of The Strategy of Tension in Italy – it's in my book called The Arch Conspirator, it's a collection of essays, and in fact I associated it with an open letter to the citizens of Poland in which I warn them that if they were to join NATO, that they would potentially have some negative repercussions along these lines, of course it turned out to be different, they were used more as these kind of "rendition centers" if my understanding of that is correct.<br />
<br />
Robles: The "Black Sites"?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yeah, exactly.<br />
<br />
So the idea is that you could have Direct Defensive Terrorism. So this goes back to the terror of the French Revolution.<br />
<br />
So that the terror was used by the revolutionary regime to defend itself. And this was done directly, they said: "Ok, we are going to go out, we are going to have a 'Scorched Earth Policy', we are going to just terrorize everyone and they will fall in line with our revolutionary dictate". That would be a Direct Defensive Attack.<br />
<br />
And then you have a Direct Offensive Attack.<br />
<br />
So these categories are a little but muddy -the example used by Sanguinetti would be the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. But of course we know that there were probably infiltrators there and that this is not so clean.<br />
<br />
But just this whole idea that you could have the IRA, the PLO these groups would be involved in Direct Offensive Attacks against the established power, a minor group against the state.<br />
<br />
So then you come to the category of the Indirect Defensive attack and this is the example that we could use from Italy where the Red Brigades are infiltrated, they are militarized and a Defensive Attack is staged. But it's done indirectly in order to justify the established power going on the offensive or for other reason.<br />
<br />
So basically it allows a Draconian crackdown or it allows the Patriot Act for example in the case of the United States.<br />
<br />
And then there is a forth category which is the Indirect Offensive Attack which has not been developed by Sanguinetti and I've done some unpublished work in that area.<br />
<br />
But consider for example that maybe the British were caught in Iraq dressed as Muslims and carrying bombs and that kind of thing. So this would be an Indirect Offensive Attack, they are pretending to be someone else but they are doing it in a foreign country in an Offensive Attack.<br />
<br />
Robles: There were reports out of Libya when all that was going on, there has been reports out of Syria as well, of officers being caught with British accents and Turkish accents and foreign languages being spoken.<br />
<br />
Bracken: It could very well be this forth category –this Indirect Offensive Attack is where everything is gone since 9-11 which was an Indirect Defensive Attack although it was never really purely an Indirect Defensive attack because you probably had Israeli and Saudi involvement as well.<br />
<br />
So it wasn't just the United States, there were other regimes.<br />
<br />
Robles: Recently Prince Bandar, or "Bandar Bush", as he is commonly called, threatened President Putin and the Russian Federation with terrorist attacks during the Olympic Games if Russia didn't pull its support for Syria.<br />
<br />
He also admitted that they control Chechen terrorist groups, they control AL Qaeda in Syria. What can you tell us about that - the Saudi connection to Syria, to 9-11, to the Bush family etc. if you could?<br />
<br />
Bracken: With regard to 9-11 I can say that there was the report of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – this is joint inquiry into intelligence agency activities before and after the terrorist attacks in September 11th, 2001.<br />
<br />
This was released in December 2002. And quite often when you get a report like this, that is conducted right after the fact it's going to be much more accurate than the 9-11 Commission Report, which we understand was more novelistic than historical.<br />
<br />
So with regard to the Senate report they are missing I believe 24-28 pages and our understanding is that Senator Robert Graham has indicated in his novels and in other places, he sort of implied, that these missing pages relate to Saudi involvement in 9-11.<br />
<br />
Of course there was a plane that ushered out, when all other flights were halted, the Saudis were escorted out of the country.<br />
<br />
We understand that there was also a plane maybe even before the Saudi plane that ushered out Israeli nationals.<br />
<br />
Robles: And the Bin Laden family…<br />
<br />
Bracken: But the most damming evidence in my opinion goes to the Israelis, because, I have made the trip to Weehawken New Jersey where they had Urban Moving Systems and the only people arrested on the day of 9-11 were Israeli citizens, some of them tied to Mossad.<br />
<br />
We know that with regard to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that the "Safe House" in New Jersey at that time was run by a Mossad Agent, probably working with the United States.<br />
<br />
In 2001 Urban Moving Systems, they had the white vans, the vans that Dan Rather said: "Hey the police have stopped a white van on the George Washington Bridge" and it had thousands of pounds of explosives and of course the people were arrested, there was a massive "Spy Dragnet" but they were all allowed to go back to Israel.<br />
<br />
And our understanding is that the person who was running the operation in Weehawken, at Urban Moving Systems is back in the United States and is actually living here now.<br />
<br />
What the law enforcement officials that we spoke to, we went back to Weehawken years after the attack, they said that they were livid because they knew what was in there, there were bombs, there were detonators and there was even supposedly Anthrax there! Is what they told us.<br />
<br />
This is John Robles. You are listening to an interview to Len Bracken. He is the author of several novels including The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror. That was Part 1 of an interview in progress, you can find the rest of this interview in our website at <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/">Voiceofrussia.com</a>.<br />
<br />
Part 2, November 21, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_21/9-11-hijackers-had-addresses-on-Pensacola-Naval-Air-Station-Len-Bracken-2689/">9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station</a><br />
<br />
<b>The events of 9-11-2001 are still cause for research and questioning and this will not go away until the truth is known. Among the thousands and thousands of inconsistencies in and around 9-11 are facts such as the US Government Anthrax that was used in the Anthrax terror attacks, the fact that two of the planes that were reportedly involved in 9-11 are still sighted today and the way the WTC buildings came down in obvious controlled demolitions. Len Bracken, who has written extensively on the matter spoke to the Voice of Russia on some of the more stunning questions that have never been answered.</b><br />
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Robles: Hello, this is John Robles, I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken, he is the author of six books including the "Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror", he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations, and an accredited journalist. This is part 2 of an interview in progress.<br />
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Bracken: When we went back to Weehawken years after attack, they said that they were livid because they knew what was in there, there were bombs, there were detonators and there was even supposedly anthrax there, is what they told us.<br />
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Robles: Anthrax?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yes, inside of the moving systems. Yes, the FBI supposedly cordoned off the area around Urban Moving Systems systems in Weehawken, NJ, came in with what are called moonsuits, these biological hazard suits because of the existence of anthrax there.<br />
<br />
Robles: I have seen credible work done pointing to the fact that the anthrax was actually US Government grade military anthrax<br />
<br />
Bracken: That's my understanding as well and I should mentioned that Andrews Smith was a contributor on the book and he did some valuable research on my book with regard to the anthrax chapter and of course, this whole idea that Mr. Ivins would have been culpable and I just don't believe it, you know, I think he was framed. I can say that based on some information that I have, people who knew him well and the evidence points to other people.<br />
<br />
Robles: Who was that, who was framed? What was his role?<br />
<br />
Bracken: There was the initial person of interest and then it came to a somewhat troubled man, forget his first name was, I believe it was "Bruce" Ivins, I think he committed suicide, one of those instances where it is very unlikely he would have done it and now he is gone and we can't really say one way or the other definitively<br />
<br />
Robles: Back to the Saudi connection and I'm interested in Bandar-Bush and Al-Qaeda again, there was this rich Saudi family living in Florida where these pilots were training, (not to land, not to take off) but just to fly aircraft. Can you tell us what happened with them? There was a big scandal about them, they just disappeared and they left their homes, their cars and their televisions on and everything and they just disappeared.<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yes, I talked to some people who knew them and other than what you have just said, I really don't know any details. It sounds like they were given a warning and they left, I don't have anything more for you on that.<br />
<br />
I can tell you about my research into Mohammed Atta, also sort of an interesting fact about some of the drivers' licenses of the alleged hijackers, they were said to have lived at Pensacola Naval Air Station and when this came out in the news, one of the Florida Senators issued a press release and said he was going to get to the bottom of this and find out why was that hijackers would have driver's licenses with addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station and when I called his office, I was told later that they were not going to look into that.<br />
<br />
Of course there is incredible evidence about Mohammed Atta and his being trained by the US Government. They say that he was in officer training school in an Air Force base in Alabama, in Montgomery, Alabama.<br />
<br />
Now I called the base and I spoke with a press officer there and she said that there was a Mohammed Atta there but she couldn't tell me whether or not it was the Mohammed Atta in question and eyewitness accounts said that it very obviously was, numerous eyewitness accounts have come forth saying it was the Mohammed Atta.<br />
<br />
So I hate to tell you this but I was actually in Riga Latvia, I live in Washington DC but I was in Riga, Latvia on the day of 9/11 so I had no ability to get there and check things out for myself but friends and family were nearby, they saw the plane go overhead, I subsequently went to the Sheraton Hotel with other researchers, with Ken Thomas from Steamshovel press, and with John Judge with the coalition of political assassinations, I am a Spanish speaker, I was able to talk with maids, talk with management there, and just based on friends and family and those people that were in the Sheraton hotel, which is right next to the flight path.<br />
<br />
Now I just wanted to say that I put myself into category of 'we really don't know exactly what happened', and I don't think we will probably ever really know and I think we should be satisfied with the idea that we will never know.<br />
<br />
I would say that it is possible that the plane was shut down or the plane was allowed to fly away and that a missile hit the Pentagon, I don't see any markings on the wall from the wings.<br />
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Robles: That is exactly what I am talking about that is evidence that's right in front of your eyes, it was in front of my eyes, it was in front of world's eyes. What does a Rolls Royce engine jet weigh? I mean the kind that are on a Boeing 767. They would have pulverized the windows, the walls, there would have been a massive hole, the lawn was untouched, that was clear, the second and third story windows were still intact, all the windows where the wings should have been were still intact, I mean, come on.<br />
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Bracken: There was some wreckage, so it would imply that something could have been shot, right before it hit and then maybe a second bomb hit the Pentagon.<br />
<br />
I agree with you there is all this evidence that looks like it just wasn't a plane, but on the other hand I've looked at a compilation of roughly 90 pages of Times New Roman, single space print, paragraph after paragraph of eyewitnesses that said that they saw people in the planes, they could see their faces, they saw the plane going into Pentagon.<br />
<br />
You know, whether it could have been some kind of optical illusion and the plane then actually flew away. At this point in our technological existence, anything is possible, I would say. So they could have seen something and then not have seen what they thought they saw.<br />
<br />
Robles: I have heard that theory being put forward by some credible people that it was just a massive psychological operation. I mean people were shocked and they were immediately told what they saw and they believed what they were told.<br />
<br />
Bracken: There was certainly a plane there. It does seem very difficult that the plane could have come down over that ridge.<br />
<br />
I grew up around here and I used to skateboard under the underpass right there, between the Sheraton and the gas station, there is a big underpass and we used to skateboard those walls, I have been back over there, I looked at it.<br />
<br />
Basically there is a highway called 395, you look at the flight path and the planes come right along straight, you know, they could have lined themselves with that and then pushed the nose down. I am told that that would have been very difficult and one eye-witness supposedly saw a pilot standing up in the cockpit with all the force of his body pushing down on the rudders to get it to dive.<br />
<br />
Robles: Somebody said that they saw that from the ground?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yes, I've read it.<br />
<br />
Robles: Have you ever tried to see a pilot in a 767 when it is just parked on the runway? I seriously doubt you will be able to see him standing up and you certainly wouldn't be able to see the flight yoke.<br />
<br />
Bracken: Oh yeah, obviously not that. Well, all I'm just saying is that there are these accounts.<br />
<br />
Robles: I've heard this and I've read about this and it's been documented: the plane that supposedly, that I would say the plane that never hit the Pentagon and a plane that never crashed or disappeared into a hole in field of Pennsylvania, their registration numbers are still current.<br />
<br />
They haven't been annulled and those planes have been sighted several times since 9-11-2001. What can you tell us about the planes?<br />
<br />
And another interesting fact was the pilot of the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon, he came from the Pentagon. He was a US air force pilot and he disappeared of course after 9/11? Have you heard any reports about those planes still being active?<br />
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Bracken: Yes, I've heard that. And of course you have these plane watchers everywhere around the world nowadays, so you would think that they would have covered their tracks a little bit better? But that does appear to be the case.<br />
<br />
I can say that my friend and colleague Wayne Madsen did travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He interviewed numerous people there, including I believe the mayor of the town. The debris spreading for miles, and other evidence makes people believe that that plane was actually shot down. And that it didn't come down on the basis of some kind of passenger intervention.<br />
<br />
That sounds more plausible as well. Why won't they tell that story if that's the true story I don't understand. There were also reports that that plane had landed in Ohio, I believe in Cleveland. I think it was channel 7 ABC news or something – they had a live report, and apparently this plane had landed and had been taken to a NASA hanger and everybody was evacuated.<br />
<br />
I think there was 184 people I believe on it. And they disappeared within 20 minutes that the plane was evacuated and those people were never heard from again. Have you heard that?<br />
<br />
Bracken: I have and I've heard some accounts of people and I've heard those accounts as well.. Those surfaced after my book published and I was not able to include those in my book.<br />
<br />
Robles: What's your theory with that?<br />
<br />
Bracken: I think that all of the scenarios..I think most of the scenarios have some degree of plausibility especially when you talk about the buildings up in New York, that's a big subject of controversy, the Pentagon as well, all of it. It's just sort of controversial.<br />
<br />
And I wrote my book and I did a couple of interviews, after ten years I made a few more interviews, and I just don't want to get into a lot of the disputes about this. I don't have any definitive answers, I don't want to argue about it.<br />
<br />
I wrote an article about Judy Wood just because I thought that this directed energy weapons should be at least examined and I got a lot of flak for it, trying to be objective and say 'Hey, at least hear the woman out'.<br />
<br />
Anyway, any or all of the above is the way we should keep our minds open.<br />
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Robles: It's interesting you mentioned the directed energy weapons because I recently (listeners can go back and find an interview with ex-MI5 officer David Shayler) that's what he said they used at 9-11.<br />
<br />
He said they were directed energy weapons, there was no way that the cement in those buildings would have been just been pulverized into dust.<br />
<br />
OK, the planes. What happened? Maybe there was no crash and the plane was landed in Cleveland. Everyone was taken off, they were killed, those planes are still active apparently.<br />
<br />
Back to WTC, the most obvious thing that we could talk about is Building 7.<br />
<br />
How long would you say it would take to plan a controlled demolition of two of the highest skyscrapers in the world so they would fall directly into their own footprint, I mean as neatly and at free-fall speed as they did ?<br />
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Bracken: Yeah. It seems like it would have taken years, seems like they had something like this in mind.<br />
<br />
I can remind your listeners about the events around the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in which an Egyptian Intelligence Agent working with the FBI was taken off the case a couple of weeks before the vans were parked there and exploded.<br />
<br />
After the event he called his FBI handlers, the FBI handlers said that a decision was made to allow the attacks and he said 'Yeah, but we were gonna put something other than real explosives' and they said ' Yes, we are sorry, but that's what happened'.<br />
<br />
Those interviews were printed verbatim in New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and Law School professors were standing on the steps of their law schools and saying 'Hey, this is a provocation'.<br />
<br />
So, there is real strong evidence, that they'd done this kind of thing before.<br />
<br />
Now of course we know that in weeks before the 9-11 there were these electricity shut downs, there were reports of people coming in with all these cables, the same thing happened around the time of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.<br />
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Robles: 24 hours before the event all the security and all the dogs were pulled off, remember that?<br />
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Bracken: Right. Yeah. So it's very damming for anybody who wants to support the establishment claims when you look at this.<br />
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One of the things that I found that was particularly interesting was the existence of this "art group" that lived in the World Trade Center Towers for several months and they had all these boxes, wires and it's still uncertain exactly what they did.<br />
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But what they were doing is that they actually took out a window and built a little balcony and they had a helicopter come by and photograph them. And that's one hell of an avant-garde art project, if you blow up the World Trade Center.<br />
<br />
Personally I think it could have been directed energy, it could have been some small nukes, it could have been all of the above – many things could have been used.<br />
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Robles: There was that film-evidence and everybody saw it and it's there. And it's out there and it's still out there – the evidence of the molten steel – even 5 or 6 days after 9-11 it was Still Molten- they filmed blasts, like 25 blasts or something. I forgot, I sat one time and counted them. It was bam-bam-bam and then the building came down.<br />
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Bracken: Right and you can see some of these I-beams that are just sliced in perfect straight lines. It doesn't look like the kind of thing that would happen from some pancaking collapse. As improbable as even that is given the speed with which they came down.<br />
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Robles: And I think the most elementary thing is that any, even a two-year old child will know, say, you've got a pencil standing on its end, if you knock it on its side, it's gonna fall over, it's not gonna collapse into itself, right?<br />
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That is just the most obvious lie in the whole thing and it is so unbelievable –it's right in front of everybody's eyes, but everybody wants to believe what they were told, because they were in so much shock.<br />
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I mean, it is shocking to think and I'd like to comment on this – do you think is really possible that a government could kill 3,000 of its own citizens as a pretext to bring about a hyper-security state in condition of endless war<br />
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Bracken: Right. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security which probably will make the Gestapo look some kind of Utopian Paradise when it's all over<br />
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Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yeah, I do think it's possible, I think that, you know, you had people like Samuel Huntington with his book 'The Clash of Civilizations', there seems to be have been this idea that they would start their "War on Terror" to pick up where the Cold War left off. And of course a lot of this all goes back to the thing that you brought up before which is the Project for a New American Century.<br />
<br />
That was part 2 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/">Voiceofrussia.com</a>. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.<br />
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Part 3, December 8, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_12_08/9-11-was-carried-out-by-US-Saudi-Israeli-intelligence-Glen-Bracken-8307/">9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence</a><br />
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<b>The events of 9-11-2001 continue to be the subject of intense debate and speculation due to the US Governments failure to provide the people of the world with a plausible or believable explanation namely: why two steel framed skyscrapers collapsed and were pulverized into dust as they imploded into their own footprints at free-fall speed from a lateral impact that they were designed to withstand, why building 7 also collapsed due to "office fires" and how a 767 disappeared into a two meter in diameter hole in the Pentagon without damaging the lawn or even second floor windows. Attacks of this nature have been classified as "an indirect defensive attack" by author Len Bracken and in this case saw the United States attacking itself. For those who think these are all "conspiracy theories" Len Bracken cites Machiavelli as one figure who actually documented such tactics man many years ago. He spoke to the Voice of Russia about these matters and more blaming 9-11 on a group originally calling itself the Safari Club.</b><br />
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Robles: Do you think is really possible that a government could kill 3,000 of its own citizens as a pretext to bring about a hyper-security state and a condition of endless war? <br />
<br />
Bracken: Right. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, which probably will make the Gestapo look like some kind of Utopian Paradise when it's all over. <br />
<br />
Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic? <br />
<br />
Bracken: Yeah, I do think it's possible, I think that, you know, you had people like Samuel Huntington with his book 'The Clash of Civilizations', there seems to be have been this idea that they would start this "War on Terror" to pick up where the Cold War left off. <br />
<br />
And of course a lot of this all goes back to the thing that you brought up before, which is this Project for a New American Century. And of course, Bamford came back in another book called "The Pretext for War" where goes into a great detail about how misleading it was for the Bush Administration to try to link 9-11 to Iraq, and of course, a lot of this goes back to the thing that you brought up before which is this Project for a New American Century, so many of the people that were a part of that, are tied to (How can I put it?) neoconservatives around Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago, who believe in the "noble lie" that can justify any kind of action. <br />
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Robles: Len, I was wondering if you could tell me anything about an article which appeared, I believe it was in Newsweek, somewhere around the 15th of September (2001), and they said that the Pentagon had been forewarned, somewhere in this article, which went into… tied into other warnings that were apparently received by other officials and, for example, Condoleezza Rice and the Mayor of San Francisco and some other officials who apparently did not fly that day. Do you know anything about that? <br />
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Bracken: Right, the article in the September, 15th issue of Newsweek talked about many of the hijackers receiving training at secure US military installations but it also mentioned that senior Pentagon officials were told not to fly, and to cancel all airplane travel reservations on the day before the 9-11 attacks. <br />
<br />
This was in the article and when fellow researchers of mine spoke with one of the authors of the article, a very senior journalist, he denied that this information was actually in the article. And then my friend in turn said: "Hey, it's right here, you can see with your own eyes that this is what it says" and then he said "Well, then that's not true". So he denied the veracity of his own article. <br />
<br />
Now with regard to some of the training, probably the most notorious example involves a 24th year air force veteran, by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler who was essentially the Dean of Students at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and he said that one of the hijackers and its, this Saeed Alghamdi (difficult name to pronounce) was actually trained at his institute and main others as well and that this Saeed Alghamdi was actually one of the three hijackers who took flight trainings at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. <br />
<br />
Then, of course, Colonel Butler was actually chastised and given some kind of disciplinary action on the basis of having made accusations, disciplinary measures were taken against him because he accused President Bush of knowing about the impending attacks and doing nothing. <br />
<br />
Here is a quote from the letter that he wrote on May, 26th 2002 in the Monterey County Herald: "Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism." <br />
<br />
Robles: Len, can you tell us a little bit of the background about the.. I believe, what was the official name of this school in Monterey? This was the school where they used to train spies. Can you give us some details on that? <br />
<br />
Bracken: It was founded in 1946 with the first name being the Military Intelligence Service Language School, now it is called the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center in Monterey, most people refer to it as the Defense Language Institute. <br />
<br />
Robles: How many of these terrorists were there and what were they studying? English? <br />
<br />
Bracken: My understanding is that there was at least one, this Saeed Alghamdi, could have been more and they were studying English as a second language.<br />
<br />
Robles: Why would they need it? <br />
<br />
Bracken: You know, that's a good question. I guess that they probably spoke some English but not well enough to further their fight training or whatever else they were doing. <br />
<br />
Robles: Do you think it is still possible that these people are still around today? Do you think any of the hijackers are still alive? <br />
<br />
Bracken: It is entirely possible but certainly the idea that people they said who committed these attacks probably were not the ones who did it. Because many of these people have been found still alive, yet the government said that they died in the attacks. <br />
<br />
Robles: So who did it then? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I go back to what I said before; I think it was a massive operation, massive intelligence operation involving several governments. <br />
<br />
Robles: Do you think it is possible they were drones? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I take all of the above approach to the technical questions; I think we should consider everything. I don't think we are not going to get definitive answers on any of them. That's not very satisfying but I think that that's the reality. <br />
<br />
I just go back to sort of my theory, I think it was an indirect defensive attack with United States attacking itself. <br />
<br />
It's a very interesting thing about conspiracies, in his discourses Machiavelli talks about six types of conspiracies and he says that an attack against one's own country is actually very easy to do and so you have it from a figure no less than Machiavelli, saying that, you know, someone in a position of power decides to attack his own country, that he certainly would be able to do that with relative ease. <br />
<br />
It might be interesting to include, you know, when people talk about conspiracy theories and try to dismiss this type of thinking. These things have been around for a long time and you have political analysts of the stature of Machiavelli presenting his classifications of types of conspiracies actually. <br />
<br />
Robles: Back to the language school, I believe the person you mentioned wrote a letter to some newspaper. <br />
<br />
Bracken: Right. It was in May 26, 2002 in Monterey County Herald, I have portion of it here at hands and he said: "Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism." <br />
<br />
So that was written by a 24-year veteran of the air force, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler who was the Dean of Students at the Defense Language Institute who said that Saeed Alghamdi, and perhaps other hijackers were students at the Institute. <br />
<br />
Robles: He "needed this war on terrorism", why do think that is? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I think its feeling the vacuum created by the end of the Cold War, you had to have something to sustain the Defense Industrial Complex, which is sort of, to say it more accurately, it's probably a Military Intelligence Complex at this point, you might even call it a Military Intelligence Pharmaceutical Complex because a lot of drugs are being given to people that are involved in those operation, I believe. <br />
<br />
Robles: Whether they are branch outing the pharmaceuticals or intelligence or military, I don't think it's important, it is the same shadow government, if you want to call them that. <br />
<br />
Bracken: That was the title of book but unfortunately, I don't have the definitive list of those responsible, we can always keep looking but it's hard to really know exactly who is pulling the strings, who are the puppet masters? <br />
<br />
Robles: Now, Len, your theory. What is your gut feeling, what is your theory who is behind this? What do you think really happened? In your gut, in your heart? Who do you think really did this? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I think it's a group, a sort of amorphous group, called the Safari Club. And this Safari Club started back in the 70s when they had the Church Committee looking into activities of the CIA. <br />
<br />
It comprises Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States primarily, could bring in other intelligence agencies, conceivably Pakistan in this event. <br />
<br />
So the Safari Club came into being in order to prosecute just these kinds of things that would never be allowed by the parliaments and the Congress of the United States, the legislative bodies. <br />
<br />
So that's my gut, that it was some kind of group, we'll call it the Safari Club, go back to the historical precedent, maybe it's no longer called that, probably it has another name, it is very easy to change names. But I think it was an alliance of intelligence forces in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States. <br />
<br />
Robles: This is even beyond Black operations, isn't it? I don't even think that Black Operations Command would allow something like that to happen? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I think it's in part a Black Opbut then it has a broader strategic… tactically a Black Op but strategically starting a massive war against terror. <br />
<br />
Of course, you mentioned Al-Qaeda, and it was not long after the 2005, 7/7 bombings in London, that Robin Cook who was the former Foreign Secretary of Great Britain said that Al-Qaeda doesn't really exist, and that it is just a database for the CIA and then he passed away shortly after saying that. <br />
<br />
Robles: I have heard that recently Al-Qaeda stands for "CIA Terrorist Database", isn't that correct? <br />
<br />
Bracken: Well, that's what Robin Cook said. The former Foreign secretary of Great Britain said that. <br />
<br />
Robles: Well, Al-Qaeda was begun, we know, in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden got his start in that war, Osama bin Laden had a CIA code name of Tim Osman when he toured US military installations and was privy to weapons demonstrations and things like that. Many people probably don't know that. <br />
<br />
The man who came up with that information Orlin Grabbe, he is no longer with us, he was forced to live in South America or some place after publishing that information, he died a few years ago. <br />
<br />
So Saudi controlling Al-Qaeda, the US funding controlling Al-Qaeda and now let's look at Syria, 426 children killed as a pretext for another aggressive military attack. What do you think about Syria? <br />
<br />
Bracken: It's just a crime; it's like a slow motion crime. My heart goes out to everyone who is faced with this "foreign intervention", I wrote a general theory of Civil War, I would say that this is not a Civil war; this is most clearly a foreign intervention using the irregular troops to do it. <br />
<br />
Robles: Non-state actors, right? <br />
<br />
Bracken: Right. <br />
<br />
Robles: President Assad, he said himself there are tens of thousands, he said, there are "tens of thousands" of imported foreign mercenary quote/unquote "jihadists", I don't know if you want to call them jihadists because, I mean, obviously they have economic interests and they are in their being paid, he said tens of thousands, it's almost beyond belief. And most people don't believe it, most people say, "Ah, it's some conspiracy theory, it can't happen", especially with what they are fed in the US media. The US media, even if they know this, many US reporters, they know this information but they can't talk about it because they will lose their jobs. <br />
<br />
Bracken: There is an interesting connection… and we do depend on Russian media to a large extent to bring us some news, but there is an interesting tie-in between 9-11 and Syria and that is in the person of Thierry Meyssan who wrote the "Big Lie", which was probably the first book about 9-11 saying that it was an inside job and he has been doing some great reporting as well with his Voltaire Network about the events in Syria. <br />
<br />
Robles: Len, let me ask you a question, a personal question, do you ever get afraid for your safety? Have you been threatened, have you been watched? <br />
<br />
Bracken: Yeah, yeah. I get some warnings. And I try my best to walk a fine line, and we say what we can say, of course, here in the United States we have libel laws for the most part, I just addressed my accusations towards the collective statesmen, you know, you have to be very careful, well this is verbatim, my warning was that: "I had to be very careful with what I write", and I try to be very careful. <br />
<br />
Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us? <br />
<br />
Bracken: I can tell you that the same verbatim words were spoken to me twice by two different people in the course of one week when I was writing the book in the summer of 2002 and my apartment was opened, I would come home two days in a row and the front door would be open. <br />
<br />
So I was given these very direct, but not too ominous messages, I would have to say that (How can I put it?), I was scared but, you know, I survived. I don't think I'm particularly brave, I'm not particularly brave, I would not be the first one to say that there is a lot of other people out there who have gone further with all of this and I think about somebody like a family member named Beverly Eckert who died in a plane crash herself, and she was one of those people who did not accept the money, and was trying to get to the bottom of what really happened. <br />
<br />
That was part 3 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/">Voiceofrussia.com</a>. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.<br />
<br />
<br />
~~~<br />
<br />
Part 4: <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_06/United-States-were-involved-in-9-11-events-Len-Bracken-3818/">'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas</a><br />
<br />
<b>There are different categories of state sponsored terrorist attacks, but almost all of them are carried out with one goal in mind, namely as a pretext by a state for the beginning of a war. The events of 9-11 are no different and if one looks at all of the evidence that exists related to the events of 9-11, it is clear that statesmen were involved. Author, researcher and expert on state-sponsored terrorism, Len Bracken, who lost a relative who was also seeking the truth as to the events of 9-11, spoke to the Voice of Russia about the events of 9-11 and the different types of state sponsored terrorism.</b><br />
<br />
Hello, this is John Robles, I'm speaking with Mr. Len Bracken, he is the author of six books including the "Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror", he is also a specialist in international affairs and international relations and an accredited journalist. This is part 4 of an interview in progress.<br />
<br />
Part 1, November 13, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_13/9-11-was-an-Indirect-Defensive-Attack-Len-Bracken-7903/">9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack</a><br />
<br />
Part 2, November 21, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_21/9-11-hijackers-had-addresses-on-Pensacola-Naval-Air-Station-Len-Bracken-2689/">9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station</a><br />
<br />
Part 3, December 8, 2013 : <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_12_08/9-11-was-carried-out-by-US-Saudi-Israeli-intelligence-Glen-Bracken-8307/">9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence</a><br />
<br />
Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us?<br />
<br />
Bracken: I can tell you that the same verbatim words were spoken to me twice by two different people in the course of one week when I was writing the book in the summer of 2002 and that my apartment was opened, I would come home two days in a row and the front door would be open.<br />
<br />
So I was given these very direct, but not too ominous messages, I would have to say that (How can I put it?), I was scared, but you know, I survived.<br />
<br />
I don't think I'm particularly brave, I'm not particularly brave, I would be the first one to say that. There are a lot of other people out there who have gone further with all of this and I think about somebody like a family member named Beverly Eckert who died in a plane crash herself, and she was one of the people who did not accept the money, and was trying to get to the bottom of what really happened.<br />
<br />
For me I just tried to make an early case and sort of pulled back and only very rarely do I speak about this publicly and just I look to others who have done, probably better work than I have.<br />
<br />
I don't want your readers, I mean excuse me, your listeners to get the wrong impression; that my book has the last word on 9-11 and that I know exactly what happened at World Trade Center. It deals a lot more with the diplomatic history and the circumstances that would have led up to <br />
justify the attack.<br />
<br />
Robles: Don't detract from yourself, everybody is doing a small part, everybody is covering certain angles. I mean, it is so big. I think it is impossible for someone to cover everything: the technical, chemical angle, the structural engineering angles, I mean, everything together, points to the fact that this was a very carefully staged and planned event. And it wasn't planned by some Islamic terrorists in a cave in Tora Bora.<br />
<br />
Bracken: We certainly agree on that. There was a report in the summer of 2002 coming out of France, Le Figaro, that said Osama bin Laden was being treated in the American hospital in Dubai in the summer of 2001.<br />
<br />
Robles: That is true, he was there. I think he was, if I'm correct, the day before and the day after he was still in the hospital and the CIA came in there, he was being operated on and there was like five CIA doctors or something, if I remember right.<br />
<br />
Bracken: Yeah, and of course there was a denial from the CIA.<br />
<br />
Robles: Do you remember, it lives only in memory I think now, there might be some references somewhere on the Internet I don’t know, do you remember Osama bin Laden's initial statement?<br />
<br />
Bracken: There was a denial! It was issued in a paper in, I'll probably butcher the name, “Rawalpindi”.<br />
<br />
Robles: Right, he said: “I had nothing to do with this! Al Qaeda had nothing to do with this”.<br />
<br />
Bracken: Exactly and yet that would never be repeated. So; you would think that just for the sake of fair journalism, that the denial (and you can sort of dispute the denial or you could rebut the denial) but you would at least allow the other side to have their say. But instead what do we get? We get these doctored videos.<br />
<br />
Robles: Right, he is wearing a US army coat, I think he has a wedding ring on his right hand or on his left hand, which Muslims wouldn't have, and in the videos I think he was left-handed and in the video he was right-handed, etc., etc., all kinds of things like that.<br />
<br />
The main thing that I think that your message could be… one thing I’d really like you to talk about because you are one of the few people that I've heard that is willing to even broach this topic: “governments using terrorism and shadow governments using terrorism. Can you expand a little on the so called ”war on terror”?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Historically it's demonstrably been the case and it's been used predominantly to bring about wars. I think that there was even an admission by the National Security Agency regarding the Gulf of Tonkin to justify the war with Vietnam, this was in 1964.<br />
<br />
So you even have the government coming out and saying: 'Hey, at least in this one instance there was a provocation'.<br />
<br />
Robles: What would you say to people who’d say: “Why do this, why to start a war on terror? I mean, that is not a reason to kill 3,000 people. To start as hyper security state and strip away civil rights; that is not a reason.” What would you say to people who say that?<br />
<br />
Bracken: You know, it is a great question and it is a great question because I always say that the question “why?”, is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas and danger. We are never going to know why.<br />
<br />
You know, you can tell me why you called me today and that might be the real reason why and there might be some other reason that you don't even know, some subconscious reason why.<br />
<br />
The whole question “why?” is one of these things that I say: “Don't ask why”. There is The Doors' song “Don't Ask Why”. But I mean, of course, you can ask why, but you never really are going to know. That is not satisfying but I think that is the reality.<br />
<br />
Robles: With 9-11 and all these events would you agree with the premise that when there is a crime you look who benefits from it and you will find the guilty party? Would you agree with that?<br />
<br />
Bracken: I would say it would give probably the best indication.<br />
<br />
You know, I was engaged in Marxist debates and we had this dialectical logic for many years, now I'm working in legal journalism, and I appreciate legal logic and it is the logical application. And what is the logical application of all of this evidence that we've talked about now and, of course, you and I both know there is much more. The logical implication is that statesmen were involved.<br />
<br />
Robles: Who benefited from 426 children being cold bloodily murdered in Latakia Syria? Who would have benefited from that in your opinion?<br />
<br />
Bracken: Well it’s the people who want to topple Assad, the people that have blood on their hands and they’re blood-thirsty killers and they’re aiming to kill Christians and Alawites and people that are different from them even if it's just in the slightest degree. Madmen…<br />
<br />
Robles: Would you say that this would be the perfect surrogate for carrying out like these… let's call them black operations?<br />
<br />
Bracken: I think that you are getting into this area, this forth category I mentioned, this indirect offensive attack. I'm working on that now, I'm trying to develop it, I see a lot of problems with it, because it requires that you have a lot of subcategories and it gets to the point where I really even ask myself – is this type of categorization really useful and beneficial in terms of the theory of terrorism? I'm working on it but I recognize the limitations, even of my own, research.<br />
<br />
Robles: Indirect offensive attack would be exactly what?<br />
<br />
Bracken: For example, the Brits dressed as Muslims that were found in Syria. They were pretending to be someone else and they are staging these attacks, making it look like Assad's troops had done it, for example, or people who are sympathetic to Assad, it is sort of my conception.<br />
<br />
Robles: I see. I like the way you divide things up into different categories, it makes much more sense, it is more logical to my mind. Thanks a lot, take care, buddy.<br />
<br />
That was part 4 of an interview in progress. You can find the rest of that interview at our website <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_06/United-States-were-involved-in-9-11-events-Len-Bracken-3818/">Voiceofrussia.com</a>. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-61573346126898829292013-12-26T10:18:00.000-05:002013-12-27T10:21:01.422-05:00WaPo : Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/psychologist-found-accused-sept-11-plotter-to-be-mentally-incompetent-in-2009/2013/12/26/f4a70202-6cb8-11e3-aecc-85cb037b7236_story.html">Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>By Adam Goldman | December 26, 2013</b></i><br />
<br />
A psychologist who examined one of the defendants on trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in connection with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, concluded that the high-value detainee was mentally incompetent, raising questions about his fitness to stand trial, according to individuals familiar with the finding.<br />
<br />
For three days in January 2009, Xavier Amador, a professor at Columbia University, interviewed Ramzi Binalshibh, an al-Qaeda operative and protege of alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirator Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He determined that Binalshibh didn’t understand the proceedings against him and suffered from delusions, said one of the individuals who has reviewed the case.<br />
<br />
Amador’s assessment, which has not been known publicly until now, comes as the military commission case against Binalshibh, 41, has stalled over questions about his mental health and whether he is fit to stand trial with four other suspected al-Qaeda members, including Mohammed. He was held for years at secret CIA prisons, where he was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” that human rights advocates have described as torture.<br />
<br />
The psychologist’s conclusion could presage a similar finding by a medical review board that was ordered by a judge last week to evaluate Binalshibh. Such a determination could cast into doubt the prosecution of one of the key defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks.<br />
<br />
The individuals familiar with Binalshibh’s case spoke on the condition of anonymity because details are being kept under protective order from the court at Guantanamo Bay.<br />
<br />
Prosecutors previously told the court that Binalshibh suffered mental health problems and was taking a variety of medications for “schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder,” but the military commission at Guantanamo Bay has never come to a determination about his fitness to stand trial.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh is accused of playing a key role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy. According to the 9/11 Commission report, he provided assistance to the hijackers and colluded with ringleader Mohamed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Binalshibh, the report found, sought to participate in the attacks but was unable to get a U.S. visa.<br />
<br />
Last week, a military judge ordered a medical board to evaluate Binalshibh after the detainee was repeatedly thrown out of the courtroom during proceedings because of erratic behavior.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh has been given a diagnosis of persecutory delusional disorder, but prosecutors said in their most recent court filing that psychiatrists who examined him in the past thought he was fit to stand trial. Prosecutors did not mention Amador’s finding, but court records indicate that he spoke with Binalshibh in 2009 as part of a hearing to determine whether Binalshibh could challenge his detainment in federal court.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh refused to cooperate with a 2008 order that he be examined by a medical board. The issue was never resolved because the case was put on hold after President Obama took office in 2009 and halted the tribunals at Guantanamo. Charges against detainees were later refiled.<br />
<br />
The issue of Binalshibh’s fitness to stand trial resurfaced after prosecutors requested that doctors examine him. The move was unusual because it is usually defense lawyers who make such a request; in Binalshibh’s case, prosecutors probably need to address the issue to avoid the chance that a conviction could be overturned.<br />
<br />
One of Binalshibh’s previous defense lawyers has said the Yemeni’s time in CIA custody appears to have contributed to his mental health problems. People familiar with the case say he was angered when those lawyers raised questions about his sanity, possibly explaining why his current counsel has not.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh spent four years in CIA custody, beginning in September 2002. He languished in prolonged isolation in “black sites” in Poland, Morocco and Romania. He could be defiant and petulant, according to former CIA officials.<br />
<br />
In the secret prisons, detainees were exposed to interrogation techniques that were “designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’ the detainee, maximizing his feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, and reduce or eliminate his will to resist,” the CIA inspector general’s report on the program said.<br />
<br />
By the time Binalshibh landed at Guantanamo Bay in 2006, he was having problems, according to a 2009 unredacted court document obtained by The Washington Post.<br />
<br />
A U.S. Navy psychiatrist examined him shortly after he was transferred to the prison and found he had an “Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood.” In a follow-up visit with Binalshibh the next month, the doctor reported that the detainee could not sleep “day or night” because of problems he suffered at another facility and that he complained about “noises, odors, and slight vibrations.”<br />
<br />
By January 2007, his condition had worsened, and the same doctor submitted a memorandum requesting that Binalshibh be given anti-psychotic medication without his consent.<br />
<br />
The memorandum said Binalshibh had a “history of fixed, firm, false beliefs” and “as a result of his delusional beliefs, the detainee becomes irritable, angry, and agitated episodically, which has resulted in two Forced Cell Extractions this month.”<br />
<br />
The Navy doctor said Binalshibh had a delusional disorder for which he has “no insight,” meaning he might not have known he was mentally ill.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh’s lawyer, James Harrington, said Amador’s 2009 opinion has no bearing on the case today because Amador never testified and his findings were never admitted into the court record.<br />
<br />
Amador, a clinical and forensic psychologist, once examined Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2006, he testified in the Moussaoui case that “of about 30 cases I have worked on, I find people competent in the overwhelming majority of those cases. I have only found people incompetent four times.”<br />
<br />
Jury selection in the case of Binalshibh and the other Sept. 11 co-conspirators could begin in January 2015, but it has been delayed repeatedly in the past.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-59386374035273732922013-12-20T00:29:00.000-05:002013-12-21T00:30:54.369-05:00ABC : 9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/911-families-sue-saudi-arabia-judge-rules/story?id=21290177">9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>By AARON KATERSKY and RUSSELL GOLDMAN | December 20, 2013</b></i><br />
<br />
Families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks today celebrated a federal court's ruling that allows relatives of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.<br />
<br />
Most of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia, and the complaint states that much of the funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists came from Saudi Arabia.<br />
<br />
An attempt to Saudi Arabia in 2002 was blocked by a federal court ruling that said the kingdom had sovereign immunity. That ruling was reversed Thursday by a three-judge federal panel.<br />
<br />
"I'm ecstatic.... For 12 years we've been fighting to expose the people who financed those bastards," said William Doyle, the father of Joseph Doyle, 25, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.<br />
<br />
"Christmas has come early to the 9/11 families. We're going to have our day in court," he told ABCNews.com.<br />
<br />
The ruling struck down an earlier decision that found Saudi Arabia immune from lawsuits. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it's in the "interests of justice" to allow them to proceed.<br />
<br />
Families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks and insurers who lost billions of dollars covering damaged businesses have alleged Saudi Arabia bankrolled al-Qaeda, knowing the money would be used for terrorism.<br />
<br />
The lawsuit, filed a decade ago by the Philadelphia firm Cozen O'Connor, accuses the Saudi government and members of the royal family of serving on charities that financed al-Qaeda operations.Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-62329750520911193152013-12-19T10:23:00.000-05:002013-12-27T10:26:45.052-05:00WaPo : Judge orders sanity hearing for accused Sept. 11 plotter<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-orders-sanity-hearing-for-accused-sept-11-plotter/2013/12/19/001e7428-68c0-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html">Judge orders sanity hearing for accused Sept. 11 plotter</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>By Adam Goldman | December 19, 2013</b></i><br />
<br />
A military judge on Thursday halted proceedings against Ramzi Binalshibh, a self-described key operative in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ordering that he undergo a mental examination and throwing into doubt whether the government will ever be able to prosecute the “high-value” detainee.<br />
<br />
More than a decade after the attacks, none of the five accused al-Qaeda plotters in U.S. custody — including the confessed mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed — has been brought to trial, their cases repeatedly stymied by legal problems and political wrangling. The latest delay raises questions about whether the CIA’s handling of Binalshibh while he was in the agency’s secret overseas prisons contributed to his ongoing mental problems.<br />
<br />
The judge’s order Thursday followed a series of outbursts by Binalshibh at a pretrial military commission hearing this week at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is another blow to a proceeding that has stopped and started across two administrations. It now may be many months, if not years, before the defendants are tried.<br />
<br />
Prosecutors asked the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, to have Binalshibh, a 41-year-old Yemeni, evaluated after he was repeatedly ejected from court for refusing to quiet down and calling the judge and the commander of the detention facility war criminals.<br />
<br />
“Until this is completed, there will be no further open hearings in this case,” Pohl said.<br />
<br />
The interruption comes as the Obama administration is reviving its effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. Officials have recently moved several detainees abroad, including two this week to Sudan, reducing the population at the controversial facility to 158.<br />
<br />
The judge scheduled the next hearing at Guantanamo Bay for February, but defense attorneys said it may take a panel of three doctors much longer to complete the review of Binalshibh. The trial for all five defendants cannot move forward until Binalshibh’s status is resolved. His mental competence has been questioned before, and a review that was ordered in 2008, before President Obama took office and suspended commissions, was never finished.<br />
<br />
In 2009, prosecutors told the court that Binalshibh was taking “a variety of psychotropic medications used to treat schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder, including Haldol, Abilify, risperidone and Ativan.”<br />
<br />
A military medical board in 2008 said that Binalshibh might have a “severe mental disease.”<br />
<br />
He is held at Camp 7, a high- security and classified section at Guantanamo Bay. According to court records, he has smeared his cell with feces and broken observation cameras at the complex, which is separate from other parts of the prison.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and whisked to a secret CIA prison, where he was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” that human rights advocates have described as torture. He and 13 other high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006.<br />
<br />
Binalshibh wanted to die in the Sept. 11 attacks but did not have the chance, according to the 9/11 Commission report. He repeatedly applied for and was rejected for a U.S. visa and instead became a key liaison between hijacker Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan.<br />
<br />
Defense lawyers assert that Binalshibh’s health problems began after the CIA captured him in Pakistan in 2002.<br />
<br />
“He wasn’t on psychotropic medications or having mental problems prior to his being detained by the CIA,” said Thomas Durkin, Binalshibh’s former attorney. “There was no evidence of any mental issues.”<br />
<br />
Between 2002 and 2006, Binalshibh spent time at CIA-controlled facilities in Afghanistan, Poland, Morocco and Romania, according to former agency officials. In Romania, Binalshibh believed that the CIA was tormenting him by intentionally shaking his prefabricated cell, in the basement of a government building near a railway line, officials said.<br />
<br />
A former senior CIA official said that Binalshibh was prone to tantrums and threw food but that there was no evidence that he was mentally unstable at the time the agency held him. He complained so often, one official said, that he earned the nickname Beaker, a Muppets character prone to misfortune.<br />
<br />
CIA officials say the detainees received excellent medical care while in the custody of the agency after enduring harsh interrogation. However, an attorney for another detainee and alleged co-conspirator, Walid bin Attash, said his client was missing several teeth and had ringworm when he emerged from a secret CIA prison in 2006.<br />
<br />
It’s unclear what prompted prosecutors to make the motion for a competency test. Typically, it is the defense lawyers who ask a judge to determine whether their client is fit to stand trial.<br />
<br />
Legals experts said prosecutors might be laying the groundwork to sever Binalshibh from the oft-delayed case so it can move forward. But a prosecutor told the judge Thursday that he had no interest in separating Binalshibh from the other defendants.<br />
<br />
The renewed attention involving Binalshibh’s treatment by the CIA comes as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is pushing to make public parts of a report that examines the effectiveness of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.<br />
<br />
<i>Julie Tate contributed to this report.</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-8433049028147535802013-12-19T01:53:00.000-05:002013-12-21T01:55:04.304-05:00NY Daily News : 9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/9-11-families-shot-suing-saudi-arabia-article-1.1553620">9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks</a><br />
<br />
<b>Relatives of people killed when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field can now resume lawsuit against the Arabian kingdom.</b><br />
<br />
<i><b>By Daniel Beekman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | December 19, 2013</b></i><br />
<br />
Twelve years after Sept. 11, and eight years after a federal judge ruled Saudi Arabia has immunity from prosecution, families of 9/11 victims will get their day in court after all.<br />
<br />
The relatives can revive their claims against the kingdom and a charity affiliated with the Saudi government, a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled Thursday.<br />
<br />
“I’m ecstatic, because we have a lot of information and evidence,” William Doyle, whose 25-year-old son, Joseph, was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, told the Daily News.<br />
<br />
The ruling overturned a 2005 Manhattan Federal Court judge’s decision that Saudi Arabia was immune from prosecution in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The lawsuit was brought by 9/11 families and insurers that covered losses suffered by building and business owners. The appellate panel pointed to a 2011 decision allowing similar claims against Afghanistan to move forward.<br />
<br />
Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudi nationals who flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, when passengers revolted, a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 innocent people died in the attacks.<br />
<br />
The families said Saudi Arabia and the government-affiliated charity knowingly provided Al Qaeda with funds and other support that helped the terrorist group carry out the attacks.<br />
<br />
“These people are getting off scot-free. They didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, and to this day we still have terrorism running rampant. We have to hold accountable the people who finance terrorism,” the 66-year-old Doyle, a retired Staten Island stock trader now living in Sumter County, Fla., told The News.<br />
<br />
In the appellate ruling, Judge Chester Straub wrote “the interests of justice” meant the claims should be allowed to move ahead.<br />
<br />
Manhattan Federal Court Judge George Daniels will handle the case.<br />
<br />
Doyle compared the role of Saudi Arabia to that of a mob boss hiring a hit man.<br />
<br />
“Not only does the person who pulls the trigger go to jail, so does the person who financed him,” Doyle said. “What’s different about this situation?”<br />
<br />
Michael Kellogg, a lawyer for Saudi Arabia, said the kingdom will seek further review of “this erroneous decision.”<br />
<br />
The 2005 decision said Saudi Arabia was immune under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act from the claims, which were first filed in 2002.<br />
<br />
“I think we’re finally seeing that light at the end of the tunnel,” Doyle said Thursday. “It's been 12 years that I’ve been fighting this battle. I will not give up this fight.”<br />
<br />
Stephen Cozen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they are seeking damages that could reach tens of billions of dollars.<br />
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“This opinion is eminently correct and will give 9/11 victims their day in court,” Cozen said. “The parties will start over, and we are very, very satisfied that we will meet any defenses, both legal and factual, that are raised.”<br />
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<i>With News Wire Services | dbeekman@nydailynews.com</i><br />
Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-37944591869132640752013-12-19T01:36:00.000-05:002013-12-21T01:36:42.875-05:00Philly Inquirer : Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit<a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20131220_Appeals-court_panel_reverses_itself__restores_Saudi_Arabia_as_defendant_in_9_11_lawsuit.html">Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit</a><br />
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<i><b>Chris Mondics, Inquirer Staff Writer | December 19, 2013</b></i><br />
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In a significant reversal, a federal appeals panel Thursday restored Saudi Arabia as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging that the desert kingdom financed and provided logistical support to members of al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, facilitating the terrorist group's emergence as a global threat.<br />
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The lawsuit, filed by Center City's Cozen O'Connor, has been wending its way through courts since it was filed in 2003. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled in 2008 that Saudi Arabia could not be sued under U.S. law. But in a highly unusual move, the court effectively acknowledged Thursday that its earlier decision was mistaken.<br />
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It restored not only Saudi Arabia, but also a government charity called the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which plaintiffs attorneys charge provided cash and logistical support to al-Qaeda units in the Balkans during the armed conflicts there in the 1990s.<br />
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"I think it is an eminently correct decision," Stephen Cozen of Cozen O'Connor said of the Second Circuit's opinion restoring Saudi Arabia as a defendant. "The kingdom and the Saudi High Commission deserved to be back in the case as defendants, and we are prepared to meet any of their legal and factual arguments with substantial legal and factual arguments of our own."<br />
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The decision marked the second advance in the last week for lawyers representing 9/11 victims, their families, and insurers that lost billions covering businesses and properties damaged or destroyed when two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Scores of people from the Philadelphia region lost their lives in the attacks.<br />
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On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on an appeal by Cozen, asking for the reinstatement of another group of defendants - dozens of individuals and financial institutions accused of funneling money to al-Qaeda before the attacks. The request suggests that the court views the matter as having some importance and increases the odds that it may agree to hear the appeal.<br />
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Cozen O'Connor and several other law firms sued the government of Saudi Arabia, various Islamist charities, and alleged terrorism financiers in 2003, charging that they provided financial support to al-Qaeda over 10 years before the 9/11 attacks. The firms alleged that Saudi Arabia provided tens of millions of dollars to charities that in turn bankrolled al-Qaeda units in the Balkans, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Senior U.S. government officials warned Saudis before the 9/11 attacks that government-funded charities were bankrolling terrorist units, but, they said, the Saudis failed to react.<br />
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A federal district judge in Manhattan dismissed the Saudi government and members of the royal family as defendants in 2005, saying the government was within its right to finance the charities and was not responsible for what the charities might have done with the money.<br />
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That was upheld in 2008 by the Second Circuit. But the court said Thursday that it had decided to reverse its decisions because it had allowed a related lawsuit to go forward on the same grounds cited in the suit against the Saudis.<br />
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"It means that the Second Circuit realized that it had made a mistake and did what courts are expected to do, which is fix it," said Jerry S. Goldman, a Philadelphia lawyer with the firm Anderson Kill, who represents the estate of John O'Neill, a former head of counterintelligence at the FBI.<br />
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O'Neill, who was raised in Atlantic City, sounded some of the earliest warnings about Osama bin Laden. He was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, where he had gone to work as head of security after leaving the FBI only a few weeks earlier.<br />
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The case has had significant political impact, and has affected U.S.-Saudi relations.<br />
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Victims of the 9/11 attacks and their relatives have complained bitterly about the U.S. government's failure to turn over more information about its investigations of Saudi support for al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.<br />
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They are pushing for legislation that would reduce protections afforded by U.S. law to foreign governments against such lawsuits. The Saudis, meanwhile, have complained that lawsuits have disrupted relations between the two governments.<br />
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Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33035576.post-89438449515193565102013-12-17T00:09:00.000-05:002013-12-18T00:10:37.322-05:00Nebraska Watchdog : Kerrey won’t ‘confirm or deny’ possible top secret 9-11 report<a href="http://watchdog.org/120750/kerrey-wont-confirm-deny-top-secret-9-11-report/">Kerrey won’t ‘confirm or deny’ possible top secret 9-11 report</a><br />
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<i><b>By Joe Jordan | December 17, 2013</b></i><br />
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Don’t bother asking Bob Kerrey about the existence of a top secret portion of the 9-11 Commission’s 2004 report.<br />
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“I can’t confirm or deny it,” Kerrey tells Nebraska Watchdog.<br />
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Kerrey, a former Nebraska governor and U.S. Senator, was a member of the 10 member commission which, according to its charter, prepared a “full and complete account” of the 2001 terrorist attack.<br />
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Congressman Stephen Lynch says a 28 page sealed document not only exists, he’s read it and wants President Obama to declassify it.<br />
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“In this case, transparency is the way to go,” Lynch tells CNN.<br />
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The Massachusetts Democrat is a key member of the House committee which tracks the flow of funds to terrorist groups.<br />
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“I think (releasing) it could help to inform our decisions going forward,” said Lynch.<br />
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“Remember, there was a very extensive report, the 9-11 report, hundreds and hundreds of pages. These 28 pages were actually excised from that report. These are not just redactions.”<br />
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The New York Post reports the secret information questions the long held claim that al Qaeda acted alone.<br />
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“Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally,” says the Post.<br />
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According to Kerrey, Nebraska Watchdog is one of two news operations asking him to comment.<br />
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He says he got an “email from Al Jazeera” but has not responded to them.<br />
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<i>Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org</i>Winter Patriothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06966573231074972843noreply@blogger.com