NIDAL MALIK HASAN OF VIRGINIA TECH, BETHESDA, AND FORT HOOD: A MAJOR PATSY IN A DRILL GONE LIVE?
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6409
By Webster G. Tarpley
14 November 2009
In the wake of the massacre at Fort Hood Texas , two principal theories have emerged to explain the conduct of the accused shooter, identified by the U.S. Army as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist of Jordanian-Palestinian ancestry. One of these theories is embraced by left liberals and other supporters and acolytes of the Obama regime, and argues that Major Hasan is a sincere and devout Muslim who was the victim of a tragic contradiction between his religious faith and the logic of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both the heritage of the odious Bush-Cheney regime. According to this version, Hasan must be viewed as a troubled and tormented individual who "snapped," breaking down psychologically under the stress of his awful predicament. Here is how Obama summed up this approach: “Even within the extraordinary military that we have -- and I think everybody understands how outstanding the young men and women in uniform are under the most severe stress -- there are going to be instances in which an individual cracks.” (New York Times, 10 Nov and ember 2009) Calling Major Hasan a terrorist amounts, in this view, to racism and vindictive prejudice.
The other theory is the one advocated by assorted neocons, reactionaries, Islamophobes and others generally hostile to Obama. This account maintains that Major Hasan was a homegrown, self-starting Islamic terrorist, trumpeting his devotion to jihad and suicide bombing, seeking to make contact with “Al Qaeda,” and generally filled with hate for America , for freedom, and for his fellow soldiers. In this view, it is only the pervasive political correctness and multicultural obsession of the subversive-riddled and soft on terrorism Obama regime that prevented Major Hasan from being neutralized before he could act, and which prevents Obama and his Democratic allies from telling the truth after the fact.
These views are both superficial, naïve, and inadequate.[1] They amount to two prongs of an articulated campaign of media hysteria and mass manipulation designed on the one hand to prod the dithering Wall Street puppet Obama – who is having second thoughts about his own political survival -- into an early decision in favor of massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan for the purpose of hastening the breakup of Pakistan, and thus threatening China. On the other hand, the delirium of Islamophobic hatred being ginned up against Major Hasan by the usual cast of reactionary radio ogres (Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Levin) seeks to accentuate and strengthen the racist and xenophobic elements in the militant anti-Obama opposition, in particular among the Tea Party movement. The decision to put the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confreres on trail in New York City, plus the recent government seizure of numerous US mosques and other buildings on the grounds that they are Iranian assets, also contribute to a growing mood of anti-Moslem hysteria. This atmosphere is accentuated by the reckless and irresponsible actions of some Moslem groups which happen to be foundation-funded, and must thus be considered as part of the apparatus of US domestic social control.
The media narrative which is now being consolidated a week after the shootings is full of contradictions, embarrassed silences, and absurdities. A third and distinct approach to this case is therefore required, one which regards Major Hasan as a manipulated patsy in the context of a relatively sophisticated operation mounted by forces within the US intelligence community, using methods and assets which by now ought to have become familiar. Major Hasan can be seen as a mixture of Lee Harvey Oswald, legendary 9/11 “suicide pilot” Mohammed Atta, and Cho Seung-Hui (the alleged April 2007 Virginia Tech shooter). He also has elements of reputed Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and of John Hinckley Jr., who was involved in an attempt to kill President Reagan – both of whom survived the operations in which they were implicated. He thus represents a new cocktail of patsy ingredients. Until now, Islamic terrorists had come in collectivist groups, and not alone. Major Hasan by contrast is a troubled loner in the tradition of Oswald, at the same time that he embodies the religious fanaticism of Atta, along with some of his peccadilloes. Major Hasan is that novelty, a troubled Islamic fundamentalist loner, even though this is something of a contradiction in terms. Like Cho, Major Hasan emerges from the psychiatric clinic, in his case as a practicing psychiatrist, but as a shrink with egregious symptoms of his own. Like all patsies, Major Hasan combines the flamboyant and bombastic proclamation of his personal creed with a seeming immunity from bureaucratic countermeasures which would normally be automatic in shutting him down. Hasan is revealed as a fanatic, a misfit, and a quasi-psychotic or psychotic mental case in his own right – who could not subsist without protectors in high places of the US intelligence community.
In my 2005 book 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism, I argued that 9/11 and other recent terrorist attacks represented provocations cynically orchestrated by privately controlled rogue networks operating within the US intelligence agencies for purposes of mass political manipulation. Starting from an overview of terrorist actions from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 through 9/11, I developed a method of analysis of state-sponsored false flag terrorism which distinguished the roles of fanatical, duped, or psychotic patsies like Oswald, of subversive moles ensconced as officials within government agencies, and of technicians or professional killers who actually create the observed effects, all commanded and coordinated from outside of government, and all operating within the atmosphere of mass brainwashing provided by the Wall Street media. I also highlighted the role of drills and exercises which are hijacked and turned into real-world terror attacks. In order to understand the Fort Hood massacre, it is indispensable to apply this method here as well.
TROOPS THOUGHT IT WAS A DRILL – DID MAJOR HASAN THINK SO TOO?
In investigations like this, it is generally a great mistake to fixate on the scapegoat dished up by the mass media. The more we focus on the Oswald of the day, the less we understand of what actually happened. Let us turn away from the TV pundits, and listen instead to the eyewitness testimony of the troops who were present at the shootings. Many of them are on record agreeing that the events of November 5 were initially interpreted by those on the scene as an exercise, as a drill. Emphasis will be added to bring out this central fact.
From ABC News we get the following testimony: Solider Keara Bono ‘told "Good Morning America" today that she initially thought the scene of Hasan standing up, praising Allah and starting to fire was a drill. She didn't believe it was real even when she felt her own blood, she said. "Then I looked to my left and right and I saw people that were bleeding," she said. That's when Bono realized that Hasan's rampage wasn't a drill.’ (ABC News GMA)[2]
In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of 9 November 2009 we find: “Pfc. Amber Bahr of Random Lake [ Wisconsin ] heard someone yelling and ducked at the sound of gunfire, but she said she thought supervisors at Fort Hood were holding a drill last Thursday. She didn't know she was under live fire until she heard people screaming.”[3] This story was based on an interview given to NBC’s Today show.
CBS News reported: “Two days after narrowly escaping death at Fort Hood and just hours after his release from the hospital, Corporal Nathan Hewitt still can't believe what happened was real. The survivor spoke to CBS News Correspondent Don Teague about those fateful minutes…. Even after being shot, Hewitt didn't believe what was happening. He thought the gunfire was a training exercise and that he'd been hit by a rubber bullet. He says other victims thought the same thing.”[4]
ABC newsman Bob Woodruff found further corroboration of this general impression when he was allowed to interview shooting victims who were recovering in the hospital: “For many of the 43 people wounded when an Army psychiatrist allegedly went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, the scene was unreal -- it seemed like something out of a movie. Maybe it was a drill. ….Capt. Dorrie Carskadon, a combat stress specialist from Wisconsin , who was at Fort Hood training for a deployment to Afghanistan , said she initially thought the shooting was a drill.”[5] Notice that this testimony comes from a field grade officer, a captain.
The Austin television station KXAN provides the following evidence: ‘Spc. Scott Hamrick and First Sergeant James McLeod made it out of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center alive after some maneuvering to get away from the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. "My initial thought is that it was a drill," said Hamrick. "Because you know you're always getting drilled for situations." However, what Hamrick thought was a drill turned out to be something closer to war at home.’[6]
The Miami Herald furnished this account: ‘For Skip Blancett, the senior pastor at the First United Methodist Church of Killeen, news of the shooting left him anguishing for hours because his daughter, Hollye Davis, was at a building next door to where the gunman started firing. She and others were in lockdown for hours. Without a cellphone, she couldn't call home. “They had no idea what was going on; everyone thought it was a drill at first,'' Blancett said.’[7]
The idea that the shooting was part of a drill or exercise was so widespread that it had to be expressly countered in the first emergency announcement posted on the Fort Hood web site, which read: "Effective immediately. Fort Hood is closed. Organizations/units are instructed to execute a 100 per cent accountability of all personnel. This is not a drill. It is an emergency situation."[8]
Based on this testimony, it seems clear that unannounced, surprise terror drills are standard operating procedure at Fort Hood and probably other military bases as well. They are frequent enough to be the first thing many soldiers, including at least one officer, thought was happening. Drills are designed to be as realistic as possible. But the acme of realism is reality – real killing, which can occur through small but decisive changes in the unfolding of the drill. We may therefore be dealing here with a drill which has been taken live or flipped live, as so often happens in terror incidents.[9]
This array of evidence allows us to pose the following question: If so many of the Army personnel on the scene thought at first that the incident was a drill, did Major Hasan also think he was attending a drill? Did he imagine that he was going to be an actor playing the assigned role of a member of the terrorist red team in a realistic exercise? In other words, was this inept, troubled and quasi-psychotic individual somehow under the impression that he was attending an officially sanctioned exercise of some routine type, until real bullets began to be fired by other more qualified shooters, thus taking the drill live? This might also help us to account for the extraordinary intensity of firing at the scene – well over 100 rounds. For this working hypothesis to stand up, we would have to show that there were other gunmen firing – gunmen who knew that the drill was turning into a real massacre. The additional shooters would according to the classification referred to above represent the technicians in this action – the trained killers who have the ability to do the things that the patsy is accused of doing. Interestingly enough, extra gunmen are exactly what we find.
ONE SHOOTER, OR THREE?
How many shooters were there? Early reports indicated that there were at least one, and perhaps two, in addition to Major Hasan. Dow Jones newswires reported at about 5 PM Eastern Time: “A second gunman is in custody after a shooting at the Army's Fort Hood in Texas in which at least seven people were killed and 12 wounded, reports KCEN-TV of Waco. The report comes about two hours after a first suspect was captured, shortly after gunfire broke out.”[10] According to the Dow Jones report cited, shooting had occurred in two separate locations on the Fort Hood base: “The incident reportedly began at Fort Hood 's theater and then moved to the Soldier Readiness Processing Center , Killeen City Public Information Officer Hillary Shine told Fox News.” According to an AP wire, these facts were also announced by an official Army spokesman at the base: “The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead. Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base.” [11] Many of the embarrassing reports about multiple shooters have been purged after the fact from websites, but a few have survived, as in the case of this Wisconsin radio station, where we read that the triple assassin theory had been embraced by the commander of the base: "Newsradio 620 WTMJ: Lt. General Bob Cone at Fort Hood confirms 12 dead, 31 hurt in shooting. Soldier gunman killed. 2 others in custody.”[12] During the later afternoon, cable television talked of three shooters, and in the London Daily Mirror account we find: “Twelve people were killed and 31 wounded when three gunmen in uniform opened fire at the US Army's largest armoured base in Texas yesterday. One gunman was shot by civilian police and the two others held at Fort Hood .”[13]
GEN. CONE BRINGS MAJOR HASAN BACK FROM THE DEAD AFTER 8 HOURS
It was only in the late evening that the official lone assassin version of these events was assembled in another press conference by General Cone held about eight hours after the shooting had started: “ KILLEEN , Texas (KXAN/AP/MSNBC) - Twelve died and another 31 were hurt in a mass shooting on Fort Hood that stunned the nation on Thursday. Accused gunman Major Malik Nidal Hasan is alive and in stable condition, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone said at a Thursday evening news conference just outside the storied military post - the largest in the United States . Counter to initial reports, the 39-year-old psychiatrist - who was thought to be killed by local police - is hospitalized and not expected to die of multiple gunshots wounds sustained during the 1:30 p.m. attack. The local police officer who allegedly shot Hasan and injured him is in the hospital also in stable condition.”[14]
In the course of the day, we had thus gone from three shooters to only one. The separate shooting incident at the Howze theater on the post reported earlier had also been expunged in the process. Most remarkable of all was the ability of Major Hasan to come back from the dead after eight hours in which the world had been assured of his demise. Such resurrection is of course a physical impossibility for mere mortals. When individuals are alleged to have performed deeds which are physically impossible in the world as we know it, from Oswald's feats of shooting to Atta’s (and Hani Hjanjour’s) feats of flying, we must become suspicious that intelligence agencies are assisting the probable patsies in hidden ways. Major Hasan is said to have fired more than 100 rounds using the two pistols he is alleged to have carried. This seems like a lot of shooting for a single person surrounded by scores of trained combat veteran soldiers, even if these latter had not been carrying their usual weapons.
The categorical imperative for every patsy is to get noticed, and to call attention to himself or herself pointedly and repeatedly, by hook or by crook. They must stand out so much that they will be remembered by many ordinary people after the process of their demonization has been launched. In order to fulfill their function, patsies must leave a trail of clues and evidence which will tie themselves and the larger target group they supposedly represent to the heinous actions they will shortly be accused of having committed. Oswald handed out leaflets sympathetic to Cuba and told a television audience that he was a Marxist. He went to the USSR, and tried to go to Cuba. Atta cultivated a frightening stare, and took time to argue ostentatiously about a parking place at an airport in Maine while he allegedly thought he was on his way to death. Major Hasan seems to have some of the same strange proclivities. On the day of the shooting, Major Hasan made sure there was no doubt about his religious loyalties by donning a trademark “Islamic” white robe and skull cap to go to his local Seven-Eleven, where he was sure to be filmed by the security cameras there. This footage was then played on all the networks for the next 48 hours. This gesture recalls the Koran Atta left in his car at Boston ’s Logan airport. When the FBI located Atta’s rented car, they found a copy of the Koran, airline schedules, terrorist literature and videotapes, and Atta’s crudely forged last will and testament in the luggage – all obviously and crudely left behind to make the necessary point. Atta’s will betrayed the amateurish attempt of some half-baked area specialist to sound Islamic
At Fort Hood , Major Hasan ‘told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors."’ [15] Count de Borchgrave points out that Major Hasan had made at least one overtly ominous statement just before the shooting spree: ‘As the Virginia-born major told a female neighbor in his apartment complex, "I'm going to do good work for God."’[16] The neighbor would not forget that grim pledge anytime soon. Major Hasan was suspected of having authored internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on hand grenades to save others, although here we must be cautious, since these postings could have been made by imposters. All accounts agree that witnesses heard a shout of “Allahu Akbar” just before the firing started. Less clear is whether these words were spoken by Major Hasan. And if he did say them, was this a line from the scenario script of a drill?
MAJOR HASAN’S RANT TO MILITARY DOCTORS: “WE LOVE DEATH MORE THAN YOU LOVE LIFE”
The most elaborate attempts by Major Hasan to assert and establish a thoroughly Islamic profile for himself came in the form of a lecture at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda , Maryland . He was supposed to present a paper on an issue of medical or clinical interest, but instead elected to make a ranting speech about the oppression of Moslems in the US military and the dangerous consequences this was sure to have. Here are some relevant parts of the account published by Dana Priest in the Washington Post: ‘The Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid "adverse events," the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims. The title of Hasan's PowerPoint presentation was "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military." Under a slide titled "Comments," he wrote: "If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the 'infidels'; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc." [sic] The last bullet point on that page reads simply: "We love death more then [sic] you love life!" Under the "Conclusions" page, Hasan wrote that "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam," and that "Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly -- will vary!" The final page, labeled "Recommendation," contained only one suggestion: "Department of Defense should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events."’[17]
Objections were made to Major Hasan’s tirade: “Students on a 2007-2008 master’s programme at a military college revealed … that they had complained to faculty about Major Hasan’s alleged anti-American views. They included him giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the US Constitution.”[18] But nothing serious happened. According to National Public Radio's Joseph Shapiro, the worst thing that happened was that Hasan was given a period of probation early in his postgraduate work because of his insistence on seeking to convert to Islam some coworkers and the soldiers he was treating.
The title of this speech, "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military," sounds very academic and not very Islamic at all. It seems to imply that Islam and the Koran are just a world view or Weltanschauung among others. It falls far short of the basic Islamic fundamentalist claim to represent the authority of absolute revealed truth. We are reminded of Mohamed Atta’s will and instructions for his own funeral, which Islamic experts have found to be replete with elements and formulations utterly alien to Islam.
The categorical imperative for every mole is to protect the relevant patsies from investigation or arrest until the terror event has occurred and it is time to round the patsies up as scapegoats. The part about "We love death more then [sic] you love life!" is blatant ID format “Al Qaeda” speak, and in a military setting this speech would normally be more than enough to trigger a probing investigation into Major Hasan's activities and belief structure. But no serious consequences ensued, suggesting that Major Hasan was an asset who was being protected for the sake of some future mission which he was being groomed and prepared to perform.
Thus, while Hasan’s medical superiors were aware of him as a problem case, they chose to do nothing: a “ group of doctors overseeing Nidal Malik Hasan's medical training discussed concerns about his overly zealous religious views and strange behavior months before the Army major was accused of opening fire on soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood , Texas . Doctors and staff overseeing Hasan's training viewed him at times as belligerent, defensive and argumentative in his frequent discussions of his Muslim faith, a military official familiar with several group discussions about Hasan said…. As a psychiatrist in training, Hasan was characterized in meetings as a mediocre student and lazy worker, a matter of concern among the doctors and staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences military medical school, the official said.” (AP, 11 November 2009 )[19] At the same time, the training of a psychiatrist involves intensive psychological profiling an depth analysis by professors as an integral part of the training. As a shrink among shrinks, Major Hasan’s psychology must have been well known to the military doctors who were his professors. This opens up an avenue for manipulating and controlling him which has not been present in other terrorism cases. Did one or more of the Major Hasan’s analysts have a sideline as terrorist controllers and mind benders working for the rogue network?
WALTER REED OFFICIALS ASKED: “WAS HASAN PSYCHOTIC?”
A more explicit and illuminating version of Major Hasan’s psychiatric review comes from National Public Radio. Here we find that he was variously evaluated as “disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid.” This raised the problem of whether he was actually psychotic and thus suffering from severe mental illness: ‘Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan….One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic? Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan's behavior — which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that "Islam can save your soul." Hasan spent six years as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed, beginning in 2003, and he had a fellowship at USUHS until shortly before he went to Fort Hood in the summer of 2009. A committee of officials from both places regularly meets once a month to discuss pressing topics surrounding the psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who train and work at the institutions. Participants in the spring meeting and in subsequent conversations about Hasan reportedly included John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed; Robert Ursano, chairman of the Psychiatry Department at USUHS; Charles Engel, assistant chair of the Psychiatry Department and director of Hasan's psychiatry fellowship; Dr. David Benedek, another assistant chairman of psychiatry at USUHS; psychiatrist Carroll J. Diebold; and Scott Moran, director of the psychiatric residency program at Walter Reed, according to colleagues and other sources who monitor the meetings.’[20] Why did this august panel not take any practical steps in regard to Major Hasan? This account blames bureaucratic inertia and political correctness founded on the fear of seeming to discriminate against Moslems. But these reasons need to be supplemented with another possibility: that a witting mole (or moles) was shielding Major Hasan from any sanctions so he could go on to greater things as a witting or unwitting agent provocateur and patsy.
One comment included in this NPR account was especially ominous: “Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide, like the Muslim U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2003, killed two fellow soldiers and injured 14 others by setting off grenades at a base in Kuwait .” Despite such real and present dangers, nothing was done.
MAJOR HASAN’S MOSQUE LINKED TO THE CIA’S CHECHEN TERRORISTS
In recent years, Major Hasan attended a mosque in Silver Spring Maryland which hosted fundraising for CIA covert operations against Russia : “Imam Faizul Khan ministered to Hasan when he worshiped at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring , Md …. The Muslim Community Center has held fundraisers for Chechen jihadists, and promotes on its website a Shariah-based financial product offered by a Muslim Brotherhood front group under federal investigation.”[21] The essential element here is that the mosque was raising money for Chechen rebellion, which is notoriously a strategic tool of the United States and the United Kingdom against Russia . Perhaps such a fundraiser for Chechen terrorism might have been attended by Ilyas Achmadov, the de facto ambassador of the leading CIA-backed Chechen organization implicated in terrorism, who lives in Washington , DC at US taxpayer expense thanks to his sponsorship by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the gray eminence of Obama’s foreign policy team.
The impression that Major Hasan was in fact a protected patsy is strengthened by reports that he frequented mosques which have figured in previous intelligence operations, and that he was in contact with an American-born Muslim cleric now living in Yemen who currently plays the role of one of the most bombastic agent provocateurs operating under the umbrella designation of “al Qaeda.”
ANWAR AWLAKI, PATSY MINDER FOR HANI HANJOUR OF 9/11 INFAMY
In earlier years, Hasan had worshipped with his mother at the radical Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church , Va. During 2001, he worshipped there alongside some of the 9/11 patsies, specifically those alleged to have been aboard the aircraft which allegedly struck the Pentagon. The dominant figure of this mosque was at that time a certain Anwar Awlaki or Awlaqi, who must be regarded as an intelligence agency operative and patsy-minder, the latter because of his role in supervising the alleged Pentagon suicide pilot Hani Hanjour and other 9/11 figures who frequented the mosque. Hanjour, whose purported feats of flying would if true have placed him above the Red Baron in the Valhalla of air aces, was in fact a pathetic and clumsy nebbish.
Just after the Fort Hood massacre, Awlaki used his website for a bombastic endorsement of Major Hasan and the Texas slaughter, evidently designed with Pavlovian technique to goad Islamophobic US reactionaries into a frenzy and give the radio ogres much grist for their mill. Here is the relevant report from the New York Times: ‘Mr. Awlaki, an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, wrote on Monday on his English-language website that Mr. Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.” He added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”’[22] This was a piece of crude manipulation, and at the same time an engraved invitation to an anti-Moslem pogrom. The report went on: ‘But since leaving the U.S. in 2002 for London , and later Yemen , Mr. Awlaki has become a prominent proponent of militant Islam via his Web site,
www.anwar-alawlaki.com. The Toronto Star reported last month that a group of young Canadians charged with plotting attacks against military and government targets were inspired, in part, by listening to Mr. Awlaki’s sermons online. In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Awlaki served as an imam at two mosques in the United States frequented by three future 9/11 hijackers. Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended the Rabat mosque in San Diego, where Mr. Awlaki later admitted meeting Hazmi several times but “claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed,” according to the report of the national 9/11 commission. Both Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, later attended the Dar al Hijra mosque in Falls, Church, Virginia after Mr. Awlaki had moved there in early 2001. The 9/11 commission report expressed “suspicion” about the coincidence, but said its investigators were unable to find Mr. Awlaki in Yemen to question him.’[23] We should notice the nice plug given here to Awlaki’s web site by the New York Times; his site traffic is sure to benefit enormously. Major Hasan had taken care to establish his devotion and fealty to Awlaki during the time leading up to the massacre. He left no doubt that he was a disciple of Awlaki: ‘Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.’[24]
Major Hasan, it transpired, had also been exchanging emails with the fiery double agent he so much lionized; the imam-provocateur had fled abroad after 9/11and was now operating under “al Qaeda” cover from Yemen . According to one report: “two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record, said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications between Hasan and a radical imam overseas, and the information was turned over to a Defense Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force. The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year. That Defense investigator wrote up an assessment of Hasan after reviewing the communications and the Army major's personnel file, according to these officials. The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation — in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said. The disclosure Tuesday of the defense investigator's role indicated that the U.S. military was aware of worrisome behavior by the massacre suspect long before the attack. Just hours later, a senior defense official, also demanding anonymity, directly contradicted that notion. The senior defense official said neither the Army nor any other part of the Defense Department knew of Hasan's contacts with any Muslim extremists…. Military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies also are defending themselves against tough questions about what each of them knew about Hasan before he allegedly opened fire in a crowded room at the huge military base in Texas .” [25]
AWLAKI HELPED ENTRAP FORT DIX SIX, TORONTO DUPES
The decision of the Army to ignore Major Hasan’s correspondence with Awlaki is all the more astounding given Awlaki’s status as one of the premier terror impresarios of the age operating under Islamic fundamentalist cover. More than a mere ideologue, he is a recruiter and an entrepreneur of terror. His web site would not survive five minutes of concerted US cyber-attacks, but he is not disturbed in his role as a pied piper of patsies. In particular, Awlaki and his work were used to motivate and encourage groups of mentally impaired and suggestible young dupes who were entrapped into “terrorist plots” by busy FBI and Canadian RCMP agents during recent years, thus keeping the boogey man of Islamic terrorism in the public eye. ‘In addition to his contacts with Major Nidal Hasan, the radical American cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, served as an inspiration for men convicted in terror plots in Toronto and Fort Dix, New Jersey, according to government officials and court records reviewed by ABCNews.com….Despite his ties to other plots, including the one against the Army post at Fort Dix, some 20 e-mails between Awlaki and Major Hasan were dismissed as "innocent" by a military investigator working on the FBI's Joint Terror Task Force in Washington, D.C...."He is not just a proselytizer but someone who is operational, with deep and longstanding connections to al Qaeda and has been for some time," said a former senior American intelligence official who had access to classified information. Awlaki was characterized in court testimony as an inspiration by two of six Muslim immigrants convicted on conspiracy and other charges in a plot to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix….In Toronto, members of the so-called Toronto 18 watched videos of Awlaki at a makeshift training camp where they allegedly planned an attack on the Canadian parliament and prime minister.’[26]
YET ANOTHER DELIBERATE FBI SNAFU
Just as in the 9/11 instance, the scandalous failure to connect the dots and round up the patsies was due to the non-feasance and malfeasance of the FBI, the criminally negligent agency which, according to 9/11 commission co-chair Gov. Thomas Kean, “failed and failed and failed,” but nevertheless escaped breakup after 9/11. Starting in 1996, the FBI had been aware that international terrorists were making a show of learning to fly passenger jets at U.S. flight schools, but took no action. According to a press report, the failure to inform Major Hasan’s superiors was the direct and specific responsibility of the FBI: "The Pentagon said it was never notified by US intelligence agencies that they had intercepted e-mails between of the alleged Fort Hood shooter and an extremist imam until after last week's bloody assaults, raising new questions about whether the government could have helped prevent the attack…. a person familiar with the matter said a Pentagon worker on the terrorism task force overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was told about the intercepted e-mails several months ago. But members of the terror task forces aren't allowed to share such information with their agencies, unless they get permission from the FBI, which leads the task force. In this case, the Pentagon worker, an employee from the Defense Criminal Investigations Service,, helped make the assessment that Major Hasan wasn’t a threat, and the FBI’s ‘procedures for sharing the information were never used,’ said the person familiar with the matter."[27] Those involved in this decision by FBI and the Defense Department need to be probed as possible terror moles. This is reminiscent of the FBI’s Dave Frasca, who could not assemble and act on the pre-9/11intelligence he had on his desk. This was a new chapter of the story of FBI sabotage told by Colleen Rowley and documented at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006. If the FBI had rounded up the 9/11 patsies, the operation could not have occurred – not because the patsies were going to fly planes into buildings by themselves, but because the jailing of patsies before the fact would have made the targeting of the Moslem world impossible. In this sense, the same FBI rogue networks which made9/11 possible are still in place and still effectively sabotaging effective law enforcement.
MAJOR HASAN’S SECURITY CLEARANCE: SECRET
Major Hasan reportedly has a security clearance which allows him to receive secret information. All US Army officers are required to have at minimum a secret-level security clearance, and Major Hasan’s clearance might even have been at the more stringent top secret level. All indications are that Major Hasan’s clearance was never reviewed, despite his ostentatious antics. Major Hasan’s aberrant behavior should at the very least have put him in line for a National Agency Check or NAC. Newsweek writes that ‘extended NACs, which the officials indicated are more likely for would-be military officers, would include checks of local and state police records in jurisdictions where the subject lived, as well as credit-bureau and financial-record checks. In the event that some kind of “derogatory” information turns up during these checks, one of the officials said, field investigators are likely to be sent out to conduct interviews, and the procedure could also include an interview with the security-clearance applicant.’[28] This puts Major Hasan in a very special category, subject to special rules and surveillance which are enforced by specific agencies, and not by military physicians of whatever rank. Perhaps the most direct evidence that Major Hasan was a protected patsy was the fact that he could make incendiary speeches and correspond with self-proclaimed “al Qaeda” firebrands without having his security clearance reviewed, to say nothing of lifted.
As a well informed Stratfor letter to the editor posting points out: “The contacting of a foreign Islamic militant who openly espouses killing of Americans is, in and of itself, is a violation of U.S. security regulations with respect to individuals with security clearances. Hasan’s foreign contact should have been reported through the chain-of- command to his commander. Lt. Gen. Cone, in consultation with his G-2, Counter-Intelligence Staff Officer, Personnel Security Officer and the CID, could have immediately suspended Maj. Hasan’s security clearance subject to a local AR 15-6 investigation. Lt. Gen. Cone is responsible for force protection of assets in his command, not a DoD criminal investigator. A minimally competent investigation would have uncovered other comments and actions that would probably have resulted in adverse command action on Maj. Hasan’s security clearance and possibly led to charges being brought for conduct unbecoming an officer.”[29] But the usual rules were suspended for Majopr Hasan, indicating that he belonged to a special class of persons – patsies who were being groomed for future actions and therefore had to be kept out of trouble.
LIKE ATTA AND KSM, THE DEVOUT MAJOR HASAN LIKES STRIP CLUBS
Thanks to the investigative work of Daniel Hopsicker, it has been revealed that key 9/11 figure Mohammed Atta was no devout and puritanical Moslem, but a hedonist. The legendary Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), touted by the controlled media as the “9/11 mastermind,” was also devoted to alcohol, floozies, and nightlife. It is striking that Major Hasan, allegedly a rigid and doctrinaire Moslem, also conforms to this model. Patsies working for or manipulated by the de facto Islamic fundamentalist directorate of Anglo-American intelligence seem to share the same decadent western foibles. One of Major Hasan’s favorite relaxations was to attend the local strip club: ‘Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came into the Starz strip club not far from the base at least three times in the past month, the club's general manager, Matthew Jones, told FoxNews.com. Army investigators building their case against Hasan plan to interview Jones soon. "The last time he was here, I remember checking his military ID at the door, and he paid his $15 cover and stayed for six or seven hours," Jones, 37, said. Jennifer Jenner, who works at Starz using the stage name Paige, said Hasan bought a lap dance from her two nights in a row. She said he paid $50 for a dance lasting three songs in one of the club's private rooms on Oct. 29 and Oct. 30. She recalled that he arrived at about 6:30 p.m. and stayed until 2 a.m. She said he brought in a six pack of light beer, took only a few sips from one can and gave the rest to the strippers. "He preferred the blondes," said Jenner, whose hair was dyed blond at the time. "He said he was a medic and that he was being deployed soon, but mostly he wanted to ask us questions."’[30] Needless to say, alcohol and strippers do not an Islamic fundamentalist make.
As for prominent 9/11 figure Atta, he was in fact not a practicing Moslem at all, but rather a devotee of alcohol, cocaine, call girls, and pork chops. Like Major Hasan, Atta preferred blondes, specifically pink strawberry ones. He cohabited with a 22-year old call girl who may also have been a sex operative for one of the intelligence agencies. Amanda Keller worked for a “lingerie model escort service” in Sarasota called Fantasies & Lace. Atta loved to attend topless bars, where he would order lap dances at the Pink Pony, or else stuff twenty dollar bills into the g-strings of the dancers at the Olympic Garden nightclub. He was also a regular at Harry’s Bar in Naples. Atta’s favorite nightspots were the Cheetah in Venice, and Margarita Maggie’s in Sarasota. FBI investigators showing around pictures of Atta after 9/11 found that he had been in a bar drinking Stolichnaya vodka for three hours quite recently; with him was accused suicide pilot Marwan al Shehhi, who preferred rum. Atta was also a frequent cocaine user. He would habitually snort rows of cocaine with a dollar bill. Are we therefore dealing here with two patsies from the same levy, two parallel patsy lives?
FROM ARMY-MCCARTHY TO ARMY-LIEBERMAN
The reactionaries of today yearn for the days of Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), who launched his campaign of red-baiting and witch-hunting some six decades ago. At the height of the Cold War, McCarthy launched the hysterical charge that the US Army had been massively infiltrated by agents of the international communist conspiracy. This led to the infamous and protracted Army-McCarthy hearings in the Senate, during which McCarthy’s influence reached its demagogic apex. Today, the neocons are still full of rancor and resentment over their wholesale ouster from the government through the end of the Bush-Cheney era, and the ascendancy of the Brzezinski-Nye-Soros faction of liberal imperialists who control Obama. Immediately after the shootings. Now, Senator Joe Lieberman has announced that he will use his homeland security subcommittee to investigate the failure of the intelligence agencies to connect the dots in the Fort Hood incident. Already, neocon web sites are contending that the US Army of the Obama era is thoroughly infiltrated by Islamic fundamentalists favorable to terrorism. Lieberman says he wants to know how the Army missed numerous warning signs about Hasan's radical views. The Army-Lieberman hearings may soon launch an anti-Moslem witch hunt in the US military, fulfilling much neocon nostalgia. The best approach would be to empanel a genuinely independent board of inquiry to investigate the Fort Hood massacre. Care should be taken to avoid the begging of the question and the blatant conflicts of interest which made the recent Kean-Hamilton 9/11 commission such a mockery. Care should also be taken to keep the inevitable Lee Hamilton out of any board of inquiry, given his wretched track record of cover-up and misprision.
FORT HOOD MOSLEM CLERIC TO MAJOR HASAN: “THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU”
The London Daily Telegraph interviewed Osman Danquah, a local Moslem clergyman, who had contact with Major Hasan. Osman Danquah had come to the conclusion that Major Hasan had debilitating mental problems, and was not suitable for any leadership roles – even though he was an Army officer of the middle rank. Citing several sources, this paper writes: ‘What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks. "I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday's attack," said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a "ticking time bomb" after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers…. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence. But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent. "I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right." He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood .’[31]
The pathos Major Hasan’s existence is perhaps most clearly portrayed in his unsuccessful effort to find a wife of his own faith: ‘Relatives said that the death of Hasan's parents, in 1998 and 2001, turned him more devout. "After he lost his parents he tried to replace their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran," his uncle Rafiq Hamad said. "He didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't dance, he didn't go to bars." His failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.” Major Hasan returned repeatedly and obsessively to the same theme, according to a another acquaintance: "Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers, Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew "a nice Muslim girl" he could marry. "It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before. It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his face," said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University in Washington . "You could see he was lonely and didn't have friends.[32]
WAS MAJOR HASAN BRAINWASHED?
Given the accumulated evidence that Major Hasan was possibly psychotic, there remains the question of whether this psychosis might have been endogenous and due to natural and spontaneous causes, or whether it had been artificially produced in him through a program of brainwashing and heavy-duty “Clockwork Orange” psychological manipulation by others. We cannot exclude the possibility that Major Hasan went out on November 5 consciously determined to kill, and may also have discharged his weapons. We thus have two possible scenarios: on the one hand Major Hasan the duped patsy caught totally by surprise when the shooting started, and on the other, Major Hasan the psychotic and criminally insane killer who possessed the will, if not necessarily the ability, for serious shooting. There may be evidence for both scenarios.. We should also point out that seeing Major Hasan is a psychotic killer in his own right does not in any way rule out the presence of additional and more capable shooters. We are reminded here of the case of Sirhan Sirhan, who appears to have fired at Robert Kennedy, but who also appears to have received a powerful assist from some other as yet unidentified more expert shooter who may have actually fired the lethal bullet.
MAJOR HASAN’S VIRGINIA TECH CONNECTION
Where would Major Hasan have been brainwashed? An obvious place to look would be the precincts of Virginia Tech, the home of Cho Seung-Hui, the alleged mass killer of 32 students and professors along with himself in April 2007. This incident involves far too many unanswered questions to be addressed in detail here. In any case, the fact that Major Hasan graduated from the alma mater of Cho should be enough by itself to raise some red flags. We should also recall that several additional homicides have occurred in and around Virginia Tech during the last year. In January 2009, a Virginia Tech doctoral student beheaded a fellow student in a campus cafe. In this incident, a female graduate student who had just arrived from China was killed when another graduate student she knew attacked her with a knife and decapitated her.[33] Beheadings are rare on American college campuses even today, so this is an extraordinary event indeed. In August 2009, two Virginia Tech University students were found murdered at a Jefferson National Forest campground that is a popular hangout for students. The bodies of David Lee Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Lynn Childs, 18, of Forest were found by a passerby.[34]
So what in the world is going on in or near Blacksburg , Virginia ? The report on the Virginia Tech slayings prepared by a special commission set up by Virginia Governor Tim Kane covers up the failure of mental health professionals in and around Virginia Tech to take effective action in regard to Cho, whom they had nevertheless recognized to be a profoundly disturbed and potentially highly dangerous personality. This report commits the usual fallacy of petition principi, begging the question, and assumes from the start that Cho was the sole shooter.[35] Because of this failure to account for numerous salient features of the Cho incident, this entire case must continue to be classified as unsolved. We must therefore conclude this essay merely by citing one of the many clues which the Virginia investigation chose to ignore, but which might begin to account for the extraordinary number of homicides observed in the area of Blacksburg Virginia . As a somewhat obscure website alleges in an unconfirmed report, "Blacksburg, VA houses a US government ABOVE TOP SECRET underground laboratory (in the side of a local Blacksburg mountain) that develops in conjunction with DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], weapons such as human robotic mind control programming.”[36] Does such a facility exist, and what does it do? At this point, any further comment would be pure speculation.
We cannot be optimistic that, should he survive, a future trial of Major Hasan will clear up these questions, any more than criminal trials established the real facts in the cases of Sirhan Sirhan, Hinckley, McVeigh, or John Allen Muhammad. What does appear confirmed as of now is the existence of a mutating model of terrorism alongside the large-scale 9/11 or WMD paradigms of false flag manipulation seen and propagandized during the last decade. In this sense, Major Hasan represents the evolution of the figures of Cho, and also of Steven P. Kazmierczak, the Northern Illinois University shooter of February 2008. As I wrote last year, “The new model is Virginia Tech gunman Cho, a mentally disturbed or brainwashed mass killer. Another case was that of Steven P. Kazmierczak, who in mid-February 2008 shot 21 people and killed five of them at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb. Kazmierczak was described as being intensely concerned with “corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice.”[37]
Will the American public ever learn to see through and reject false flag operations, as many Spaniards were able to do after the Madrid bombs? Will Americans ever swear off the dangerous habit of being duped? Will opinion leaders ever master the rather elementary methods of rogue network, false-flag terrorism? Until this occurs and the gullibility of the public is reduced, such operations are likely to continue on scales both small and large, with incalculable consequences for the future of humanity.
[1] Another concept asserts that the 13 Army personnel were killed during the suppression of a mutiny occasioned by the overstretch of US forces caused by Obama’s contination of the Iraq war and escalation of the Afghan war. Almost a week after the massacre, no direct substantiation for this idea has emerged.
[2]
http://mobile.abcnews.go.com/wireles...n/US/9018559_2
[3]
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/69626847.html
[4] Don Teague, “Hood Eyewitness Remembers the Tragedy: Corporal Nathan Hewitt Thought Gunfire was a Drill, Until He Realized He was Bleeding,” at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n5567562.shtml
[5] “Bob Woodruff Hears Soldiers' Tales of Survival, Recovery,”
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/president-...9039151&page=1
[6]
http://www.kxan.com/dpp/military/army/kxan_military_Hasan_family_co... 009
[7]
http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/1321119.html
[8]
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...wt&twt=nytimes
[9] My 9/11 Synthetic Terror provides a detailed discussion of how virtually every aspect of 9/11 corresponded to an exercise or drill which was then taken live.
[10] Dow Jones Newswires 11-05-091656ET at
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-mar...djonline000934
[11]
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...w7Y3gD9BPJO100
[12] Newsradio 620 WTMJ, November 5 at 2:01pm CST, at
http://www.facebook.com/620wtmj accessed 13 November 2009.
[13]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-sto...5875-21801278/
[14]
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/military/military_kxan_texas_shootin... 4301257453645749
[15]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html
[16]
http://www.newsmax.com/borchgrave/ha...09/283713.html
[17] Dana Priest, Washington Post, 10 November 2009 at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110903618.html. See the slide show, which is posted with this article.
[18]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html
[19]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091111/..._hood_shooting
[20] Daniel Zwerdling, “Walter Reed Officials Asked: Was Hasan Psychotic?” National Public Radio, November 11, 2009,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=120313570
[21] World Net Daily, 10 November 2009 , at
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115465
[22] “U.S. Monitored Fort Hood Suspect Before Shooting," New York Times, 9 November 2009 at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33807907...new_york_times
[23]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33807907...new_york_times
[24]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html
[25]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/..._hood_shooting
[26] ABC News, “From Yemen, Anwar Awlaki Helped Inspire Fort Dix, Toronto Plots
Despite Terror Connections, E-mails with Major Hasan Did Not Raise Red Flags” at
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/anwar-...ory?id=9055322
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/anwar-...9055322&page=1
[27] Yochi J. Dreazen and Evan Perez, “Army Wasn’t Told of Hasan’s Emails,” Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2009.
[28] Mark Hosenball, “Fort Hood Shooter: How Recently Was His Security Clearance Updated?” in Newsweek at
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/decla...e-updated.aspx
[29]
http://www.stratfor.com/content/hasan_case_1
[30]
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573052,00.html
[31]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html
[32]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...errorists.html
[33]
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...attacked_.html
[34]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_270892.html
[35]
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/Tem...anelreport.cfm
[36]
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6409
[37] Webster G. Tarpley, Obama The Postmodern Coup ( Joshua Tree CA : Progressive Press, 2008), p. 71.
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