Economics, Intelligence, & Transparency Conference
New York City, 13 September 2009, 1400-1430 EST
Planned Remarks for Robert David STEELE Vivas
9/11 discussion was yesterday, it is however central to today’s reflections
9/11 was about predatory economics, failed intelligence, and zero transparency
I only have 30 minutes to speak, but I can stay for an hour after that on the side
I’m going to cover three areas briefly.
First, my take on 9/11, partly as published in my second book, partly new stuff
Second, my take on what is happening right now between Wall Street and Washington
Third, my take on what you can do about it using legal, ethical intelligence sources & methods
First, my take on 9/11
In April 2002, I published my second book, and listed five policy failures and six intelligence failures.
Policy failures included not taking the 1st WTC bombing seriously, not taking the USS Cole and two Embassies and Khobar towers seriously; policy failures also included continued neglect of the US borders north and south; not following direct advice to secure pilot compartments; and leaving American citizens ignorant.
Intelligence failures included an obsession with spending on secret technical satellites while ignoring human access to extremist groups; a continued dependence on pencil and paper for most records made in the field; an inability to scan and make sense of all captured documents including an apartment full of documents associated with the 1st WTC bombing; an inability to bring together all that we know from all sources—imagery, signals, humans—in one place; the arrogance of the FBI and of the CIA combined, which ignored over 20 different explicit warnings including two walk-ins with names, one in Orlando, one in Newark; and finally, a complete lack of collaboration with other nations on the topic of non-state threats to America.
What’s new since April 2002 for me? Very simply, I was radicalized by Dick Cheney’s naked amoral hijacking of the White House. I read a lot, but it was not until I started pulling no punches on Amazon that people noticed my reviews and started following my bread crumbs. 9/11 was allowed to happen, no question about it. We got at least nine warnings, including one from Pakistan from the Pakistani intelligence officer who helped finance the Al Qaeda plans and then got scared when they suggested crashing an airplane into a nuclear plant. Dick Cheney had so much advance warning he scheduled a counter-terrorism exercise—a nation-wide counter-terrorism exercise, so he could control everything and ensure that our Air Force did not shoot down the two airplanes over New York before they hit the WTC—otherwise, the controlled demolitions would have been even more suspicious. I and another 40 or so intelligence professionals, including some in the Pentagon on the day, are pretty certain a missile hit the Pentagon as part of the theater and also to allegedly destroy all the computers holding the evidence of $2.3 trillion in financial fraud, waste, and abuse that Donald Rumsfeld was being grilled about by Cynthia McKinney in Congress the day before 9/11. I am certain that 9/11 was not properly investigated; that the Commission was at best incompetent and at worst a blatant cover-up, and I am equally certain that the day will come when the families that refused the government’s hush money will be vindicated. There is more than enough evidence to indict Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Rudy Gulliani, and Larry Silverstein for the murder of all the people who died on 9/11, and I pray that Dick Cheney in particular lives to see the day he is brought to trial for this crime against the Republic, this crime against humanity.
You can read my reviews of 9/11 books and DVDs as found at the Public Intelligence Blog, Phi Beta Iota dot net.
Second, my take on what is happening between Wall Street and Washington.
Cheney’s misbehavior radicalized me. I read more, and I widened my circle of reading. We don’t have a lot of time so here are some quick thoughts.
First, it is now clear to me that we live in a two-party tyranny that has sold us all out to Wall Street. It is equally clear to me that the Federal Reserve, which is neither Federal, nor a Reserve, is a criminal enterprise that serves as a front for Wall Street. Obama is a continuation of Empire as usual, all of his rhetoric about change was just that—the two parties are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.
Second, it is clear to me that since at least Jimmy Carter, the White House has become nothing more than theater, and the only office that has really mattered has been that of Secretary of the Treasury, an office consistently held by Goldman Sachs executives regardless of which party is nominally in power. We have gone from a village idiot to a major domo in the White House, and for all of his high crimes and misdemeanors, Dick Cheney does not hold a candle to the combined criminal conspiracy of Goldman Sachs, Morgan, City Bank, and Bank of America. The Rockefeller family is deeply entrenched in all of this, and I believe that history will reveal that the two criminal classes—the white collar criminals and the organized crime criminals—have been in league for decades, while the political class—including our own and this is globally, has racked in one trillion per year in bribes.
America has been dumbed down as a deliberate strategy. America is now a dumping ground for products and services that Europe will not tolerate. George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 have both come to pass. We are a cheating culture, a culture of the working poor, precisely because our elected leaders sold us out and went for personal gain instead of national stewardship.
You can get the rest of my take in my book, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, which is free online as well as for sale at Amazon. I especially commend to your attention the annotated bibliography there that has links to my 500+ most relevant reviews, and Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where you can search for Cheney, secrecy, 9/11, and so on.
Third, my take on what you can do about it.
I am a recovering spy. I was one of the first people assigned to chase terrorists full time in the 1980’s, and I was one of the last people to sign the letter to Senator McCain denouncing torture. Been there, done that, it does not work, and any organization or leader that tolerates torture is in my view guilty of a crime against humanity and impeachable for dereliction of duty.
For this group specifically, I offer one generality and one specific target.
The generality is called Open Source Intelligence or OSINT. I started this fight in 1988, and today, 21 years later, the USA still sucks at it. We are spending $65 billion a year or more on secret technical sources and methods that produce, AT BEST, 4% of what the President and other key officials need to know, and we are pending less than a billion or two on OSINT, but in such an incoherent way as to easily qualify as fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cool thing about OSINT is that anyone can do it. All of my books are free online, and at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, you can find the OSINT Handbooks that I wrote for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Special Operations Forces. Become a citizen intelligence officer. That is different from a citizen journalist. Journalists generally collect and report information that is of generic interest. Intelligence professionals focus on a specific “need to know” and then get the answer to that need to know.
Economics is where We the People can make a difference, by recognizing the importance of showing “true cost” information for everything. Designer blouses with 4,000 liters of water, ten toxic chemicals, 400 hours of sweatshop labor, 100% tax avoidance. Over time I expect our Collective Intelligence to clean up this mess that we have inherited.
In that vein, here is my suggestion for a city-wide citizen intelligence network campaign:
Larry Silverstein from 8/11 to 9/11
I do not know with certainly, but I am reasonably persuaded that Larry Silverstein was told in advance by the Mossad, which sent a video team to the USA specifically to video the attack, the team was perfectly positioned hours before the hijackings took place. Larry Silverstein had an asbestos problem he could not fix, and an insurance scam that he could. I am fairly certain that the most senior insurance company executives were in on the scam, and that Rudy Gulliani got a major bribe for being prepared to destroy the crime scene so quickly, so ruthlessly, that the fire fighters rioted. So here is my challenge to you: write the book on Larry Silverstein in the thirty days before 9/11. Where he went, who he saw, what he ate, what he bought, get his phone records, get it all. Let the truth be known.
Obviously you need to include all of the people that worked for Larry Silverstein, the folks that scheduled the electrical outage for an entire week-end, the folks that forbade dogs from coming back in after that week-end, everyone associated with WTC 7, and so on. Be patient, be thorough, the truth is there waiting for you to seek it out.
I have posted these comments to the Public Intelligence Blog and I will respond to all comments made there. My contact information is visible there, I have limited resources but will do what I can to respond to individual emails. If you all agree to do this and want me to come back up here in 30, 60, or 90 days to review the bidding, I will gladly do that.
Larry Silverstein. Nail him and you nail them all. Thank you.
NOTE: These remarks are also available as a three-page document.
