L A Times : Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so

Could data collection have stopped 9/11? White House thinks so

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.

By Christi Parsons and Ken Dilanian | January 13, 2014

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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."

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.

The "big question … [is] whether our government is going to spy on Americans," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU.

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.

Pressed for details by members of Congress and others, officials steadily backed away from those assertions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The FBI missed other opportunities to thwart the 2001 plot that it probably would pursue today.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

christi.parsons@latimes.com

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

VOR : Len Bracken Interview

The following is a transcript of an interview of Len Bracken by John Robles for Voice of Russia.

The interview was posted on the VOR website in three parts:

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

Part 4, January 6, 2014 : 'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas

I have fixed some of the spelling and punctuation errors. [WP]

~~~

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

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.

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.

Robles: Hello, sir.

Bracken: How do you do? Thank you for having me.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

Bracken: Exactly, right.

Robles: Tell us about that plan. It was actually turned down for the extreme quality of it, but…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

There are some documents that were missing from the archives that point to this, it's the implication.

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.

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.

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.

Regarding 9/11 state terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and in particular the Project for New American Century – can you give us some background?

Bracken: Sure. I'm also the author of the first biography in any language on the French theoretician and filmmaker named Guy Debord.

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.

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.

Sanguinetti's book is called On Terrorism and the State and this is where this theory was presented for the first time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Robles: What was the purpose of Gladio?

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.

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.

Robles: I see. Back to your book The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, what were the motivations behind your book?

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.

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.

Robles: The "Black Sites"?

Bracken: Yeah, exactly.

So the idea is that you could have Direct Defensive Terrorism. So this goes back to the terror of the French Revolution.

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.

And then you have a Direct Offensive Attack.

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.

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.

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.

So basically it allows a Draconian crackdown or it allows the Patriot Act for example in the case of the United States.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So it wasn't just the United States, there were other regimes.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Of course there was a plane that ushered out, when all other flights were halted, the Saudis were escorted out of the country.

We understand that there was also a plane maybe even before the Saudi plane that ushered out Israeli nationals.

Robles: And the Bin Laden family…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Voiceofrussia.com.

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

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.

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.

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.

Robles: Anthrax?

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.

Robles: I have seen credible work done pointing to the fact that the anthrax was actually US Government grade military anthrax

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.

Robles: Who was that, who was framed? What was his role?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bracken: There was certainly a plane there. It does seem very difficult that the plane could have come down over that ridge.

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.

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.

Robles: Somebody said that they saw that from the ground?

Bracken: Yes, I've read it.

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.

Bracken: Oh yeah, obviously not that. Well, all I'm just saying is that there are these accounts.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Robles: What's your theory with that?

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.

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.

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'.

Anyway, any or all of the above is the way we should keep our minds open.

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.

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.

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.

Back to WTC, the most obvious thing that we could talk about is Building 7.

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 ?

Bracken: Yeah. It seems like it would have taken years, seems like they had something like this in mind.

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.

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'.

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'.

So, there is real strong evidence, that they'd done this kind of thing before.

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.

Robles: 24 hours before the event all the security and all the dogs were pulled off, remember that?

Bracken: Right. Yeah. So it's very damming for anybody who wants to support the establishment claims when you look at this.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic?

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.

That was part 2 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

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.

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?

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.

Robles: You think it's possible, you think that's realistic?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

Robles: How many of these terrorists were there and what were they studying? English?

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.

Robles: Why would they need it?

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.

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?

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.

Robles: So who did it then?

Bracken: I go back to what I said before; I think it was a massive operation, massive intelligence operation involving several governments.

Robles: Do you think it is possible they were drones?

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.

I just go back to sort of my theory, I think it was an indirect defensive attack with United States attacking itself.

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.

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.

Robles: Back to the language school, I believe the person you mentioned wrote a letter to some newspaper.

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."

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.

Robles: He "needed this war on terrorism", why do think that is?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

It comprises Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States primarily, could bring in other intelligence agencies, conceivably Pakistan in this event.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Robles: I have heard that recently Al-Qaeda stands for "CIA Terrorist Database", isn't that correct?

Bracken: Well, that's what Robin Cook said. The former Foreign secretary of Great Britain said that.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Robles: Non-state actors, right?

Bracken: Right.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us?

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.

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.

That was part 3 of an interview in progress Len Bracken. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.


~~~

Part 4: 'Why?' is always fraught with epistemological dilemmas

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.

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.

Part 1, November 13, 2013 : 9-11 was an Indirect Defensive Attack

Part 2, November 21, 2013 : 9/11 hijackers had addresses on Pensacola Naval Air Station

Part 3, December 8, 2013 : 9-11 was carried out by US/Saudi/Israeli intelligence

Robles: Who gave you that warning? Can you tell us?

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.

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 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.

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.

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
justify the attack.

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.

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.

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.

Bracken: Yeah, and of course there was a denial from the CIA.

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?

Bracken: There was a denial! It was issued in a paper in, I'll probably butcher the name, “Rawalpindi”.

Robles: Right, he said: “I had nothing to do with this! Al Qaeda had nothing to do with this”.

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.

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.

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”?

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.

So you even have the government coming out and saying: 'Hey, at least in this one instance there was a provocation'.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

Bracken: I would say it would give probably the best indication.

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.

Robles: Who benefited from 426 children being cold bloodily murdered in Latakia Syria? Who would have benefited from that in your opinion?

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…

Robles: Would you say that this would be the perfect surrogate for carrying out like these… let's call them black operations?

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.

Robles: Indirect offensive attack would be exactly what?

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.

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.

That was part 4 of an interview in progress. You can find the rest of that interview at our website Voiceofrussia.com. Thanks for listening and as always I wish you the best wherever you may be.

WaPo : Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009

Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009

By Adam Goldman | December 26, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

ABC : 9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia

9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia

By AARON KATERSKY and RUSSELL GOLDMAN | December 20, 2013

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"Christmas has come early to the 9/11 families. We're going to have our day in court," he told ABCNews.com.

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.

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.

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.

WaPo : Judge orders sanity hearing for accused Sept. 11 plotter

Judge orders sanity hearing for accused Sept. 11 plotter

By Adam Goldman | December 19, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Until this is completed, there will be no further open hearings in this case,” Pohl said.

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.

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.

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.”

A military medical board in 2008 said that Binalshibh might have a “severe mental disease.”

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.

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.

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.

Defense lawyers assert that Binalshibh’s health problems began after the CIA captured him in Pakistan in 2002.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

NY Daily News : 9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks

9/11 families get another shot at suing Saudi Arabia over terror attacks

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.

By Daniel Beekman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | December 19, 2013

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

In the appellate ruling, Judge Chester Straub wrote “the interests of justice” meant the claims should be allowed to move ahead.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge George Daniels will handle the case.

Doyle compared the role of Saudi Arabia to that of a mob boss hiring a hit man.

“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?”

Michael Kellogg, a lawyer for Saudi Arabia, said the kingdom will seek further review of “this erroneous decision.”

The 2005 decision said Saudi Arabia was immune under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act from the claims, which were first filed in 2002.

“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.”

Stephen Cozen, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they are seeking damages that could reach tens of billions of dollars.

“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.”

With News Wire Services | dbeekman@nydailynews.com

Philly Inquirer : Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit

Appeals-court panel reverses itself on Saudi 9/11 lawsuit

Chris Mondics, Inquirer Staff Writer | December 19, 2013

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

The case has had significant political impact, and has affected U.S.-Saudi relations.

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.

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.

Nebraska Watchdog : Kerrey won’t ‘confirm or deny’ possible top secret 9-11 report

Kerrey won’t ‘confirm or deny’ possible top secret 9-11 report

By Joe Jordan | December 17, 2013

Don’t bother asking Bob Kerrey about the existence of a top secret portion of the 9-11 Commission’s 2004 report.

“I can’t confirm or deny it,” Kerrey tells Nebraska Watchdog.

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.

Congressman Stephen Lynch says a 28 page sealed document not only exists, he’s read it and wants President Obama to declassify it.

“In this case, transparency is the way to go,” Lynch tells CNN.

The Massachusetts Democrat is a key member of the House committee which tracks the flow of funds to terrorist groups.

“I think (releasing) it could help to inform our decisions going forward,” said Lynch.

“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.”

The New York Post reports the secret information questions the long held claim that al Qaeda acted alone.

“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.

According to Kerrey, Nebraska Watchdog is one of two news operations asking him to comment.

He says he got an “email from Al Jazeera” but has not responded to them.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

Raw Story : 9/11 suspect ejected by Gitmo judge after mentioning secret CIA prisons

9/11 suspect ejected by Gitmo judge after mentioning secret CIA prisons

By Agence France-Presse | December 17, 2013

One of the men suspected of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks was twice ejected from a US military court Tuesday after making outbursts about secret CIA prisons and torture.

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping the hijackers enter the United States and of financing the airliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, also claimed that the judge hearing the case was biased.

Binalshibh was initially removed from the latest pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after twice being warned by the judge that he was disrupting the proceedings.

The suspect’s departure came shortly after his lawyer suggested that guards were using sleep deprivation tactics at the US military prison’s notoriously tightly-guarded Camp Seven.

“He could not sleep at all last night because of the noise he is exposed to,” said Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki. “He is too tired to pay attention.”

The latest hearing for the alleged 9/11 plotters, who are eventually expected to go on trial in 2015, was screened for reporters at the Fort Meade military base in Maryland, via a closed-circuit feed.

Commander Bogucki said Binalshibh’s cell was continually subjected to banging and knocking sounds — an allegation the US government denies, but which the judge said had not been proven either way.

Having been granted a 15-minute recess to discuss whether Binalshibh understood his right to be present at Tuesday’s hearing, the suspect refused to cooperate with Judge James Pohl.

“I refuse to answer this question as long as the judge is taking a position against me and against my allegations,” said Binalshibh, who purportedly had intended to be one of the hijackers but was refused a US visa on four occasions.

After being warned that it was not his time to speak, the Yemeni suspect, whose alleged crimes include helping the hijackers find flight schools in the United States, cited the words “secret CIA prison” during a muffled speech.

Judge Pohl then told Binalshibh — who the defense insists is not delusional — that he would be removed if he did not stop talking. But the suspect continued and US military guards were instructed to take him to the court’s holding cell.

The courtroom camera cut away while Binalshibh was removed.

The other four suspects, including the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were also present at Tuesday’s hearing, dressed in traditional white Arab robes and desert-colored combat jackets. Unlike Binalshibh, they acknowledged their right to attend.

Ejected a second time

Following the lunch recess, Binalshibh returned to the courtroom but he again refused the judge’s request and was ejected a second time, amid shouts of “I am not a war criminal”.

“As I told you this morning, I am not going to answer your questions,” Binalshibh had told Judge Pohl seconds earlier, when pressed for a “Yes or No” answer on whether he understood his rights.

“I want to leave. It is not about yes or no. It is torture. Don’t stop me like that,” Binalshibh added, just before he was removed.

The 9/11 tribunal is taking place against a background of a political push to shut down Guantanamo.

President Barack Obama pledged to close the prison when he took office in January 2009 but has so far failed to do so, amid resistance in Congress.

Two Saudi Arabian suspects arrived back in Riyadh on Tuesday, following a US transfer that leaves Guantanamo’s population at 160.

Binalshibh and his co-conspirators are deemed “high-value” detainees by the American military.

Following their detentions, in 2002 and 2003, the five 9/11 suspects spent three years in secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons abroad where they were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, a practice widely considered torture.

Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, according to US Justice Department memos.

The pre-trial hearing on Tuesday included requests by defense lawyers to introduce evidence that their clients were tortured by their American captors.

Miami Herald : 9/11 case hearing opens with closed session at Guantánamo

9/11 case hearing opens with closed session at Guantánamo

By Carol Rosenberg | crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com | December 16, 2013

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Lawyers in the Sept. 11 conspiracy trial met Monday with the judge in closed session for four hours and postponed until next year consideration of some of the hot-button issues before the Guantánamo war court in favor of a weeklong hearing tackling dry legal issues surrounding the death-penalty case.

Both the public and the five alleged 9/11 plotters will be allowed in court on Tuesday as lawyers argue a particularly military concept arguing the prosecution was the result of a “defective referral.” Defense lawyers say the Pentagon rushed the case to arraignment on May 5, 2012 before the defense teams were adequately resourced, and an attorney-client relationship was secure.

Meantime, lawyers for the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were studying a judge’s sealed ruling that appeared to let the five defendants talk about what the CIA did to them in years of secret custody before they got to Guantánamo.

According to the ruling, said attorney James Connell, defense attorneys like himself are forbidden from divulging classified CIA information, but the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, said the Sept. 11 defendants’ “thoughts and memories” are their own.

“This ruling is an important step forward in accountability for torture,” said Connell. “The real question is whether the prison will allow the prisoners to communicate with foreign government officials, medical care providers, human rights authorities and media.”

A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on whether the ruling meant, for example, that the alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, would be able to describe in open court his 183 rounds of waterboarding, who he believed interrogated him or in what country — information that so far had been considered subject to censorship as state secrets.

“The government is contemplating its scope and impact,” said Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, who noted that the judge's ruling has yet to be made public.

He cautioned: “There have been cases where counsel have prematurely raced to the press with early interpretations of an order only to find out later that a given point had not been fully contemplated.”

Similarly, the military would not say if Pohl’s ruling had implications for the clandestine world of the prison where former CIA captives are kept here, Camp 7, a site so secret its location is classified. All Camp 7 prisoners’ communications are censored by the military.

Connell, the Pentagon-paid lawyer for Ammar al Baluchi, who accused of helping some of the Sept. 11 hijackers with their travel and finances, spoke after the four-hour closed hearing that excluded the public and the alleged terrorists so lawyers and Pohl could work out what part of this week’s proceedings could be held in public.

One legal motion up for consideration had been a defense request that the judge impose a protective order on any remnants of the CIA’s secret overseas prison network that President Obama ordered shut down. It was in one of those so-called “black sites” that U.S. agents waterboarded Mohammed 183 times in 2003.

Pohl also has listed for discussion a sealed prosecution motion that’s so secret it has no name on the Pentagon’s docket, which boasts “fairness, transparency, justice.” Lawyers already began arguing that secret motion in a short closed hearing this summer.

Civilian and military lawyers for the accused terrorists have been focusing on surfacing information about what the CIA did to the men after their capture in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003. They argue that because the CIA disappeared their clients, questioned them with now forbidden “enhanced interrogation techniques” and denied them access to lawyers the case should go forward as a non-capital trial.

No date has been set for the trial itself, although the chief prosecutor has proposed it start in January 2015.

Prosecutors, who don’t concede that the CIA tortured the accused before they got to Guantánamo in 2006, argue what the CIA did to them would be part of the sentencing phase that decides on whether to execute them if they are convicted.

Defense lawyers say the captives’ detour through the Bush-era Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program implicates even this pretrial phase.

Pohl, who presided at the courts martial of U.S. soldiers who abused captives at Abu Ghraib, stopped the Bush administration from razing the prison in Iraq. Defense lawyers want a similar order on what’s left of the secret CIA prison network, which reportedly included lockups in Thailand, Poland and Afghanistan.

But the White House has never declassified the Bush-era CIA program. That means, for example, that war court rules prohibit the lawyers or accused from disclosing the locations of the secret CIA interrogation sites in open court.

So, under a structure that borrows from both civilian and military practice, the lawyers and judge were to discuss how to make legal arguments that don’t divulge classified information — so that the accused as well as the public can listen in.

Connell said Monday it was unclear whether any more hearings would be closed this week, but if the judge heard arguments or a witness without the public or accused present that would happen on Friday. He did not elaborate.

At this stage, the hearings are tackling what charges, procedures and law will govern the death-penalty tribunal.

Issues include how the lawyers can communicate with the alleged terrorists who are confined to a secret prison at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba and still preserve the attorney-client privilege; whether the judge will order the U.S. government to let defense lawyers question certain witnesses; what kind of resources the defense will get and what substitutions for actual evidence the prosecutors may present at trial.