By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News chief Pentagon correspondent, and Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative producer for special projects
The U.S. Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden recovered a number of the former al-Qaida leader’s journals at the Pakistan compound where he was hiding, but they were forced to leave behind detailed logs of bin Laden and al-Qaida activity that the Pakistanis have not yet shared, senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
Phi Beta Iota: We doubt that serious forensics and graphalogy will be brought to bear on this “treasure trove,” and consider the “left behind” series of logs to be inherently suspect. It is impossible to know the truth of the matter at this time, the major reason why the Bin Laden Show has been posted in so many pieces, to enable others to connect dots and offer up missing pieces.
Phi Beta Iota: As of 2100 broadcast media are reporting that Chinese scientists have examined the surviving wreckage. We are reminded that the Tomahawk attack on Bin Laden in the Clinton era yielded one dysfunctional Tomahawk arriving in time for Bin Laden to sell it to the Chinese for US$10M. The “true cost” calculations of such misadventures are analytically stimulating.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 /PRNewswire/ — Robert David Steele Vivas, CEO of OSS.Net, a global open source intelligence (OSINT) provider, has posted to http://tinyurl.com/bzl4f a copy of the unclassified report written for then Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, on “The Challenge of Global Coverage.” Delivered in July 1997, the report represents a consensus view across all Assistant Secretaries of Defense and State, and U.S. Intelligence Community agency heads, that the U.S. Intelligence Community was failing to cover the “rest of the world” beyond seven denied area countries, and this was a serious mistake.
The report calls for $1.5 billion a year for open sources of information, roughly $10 million a year for each of the 150 “lower-tier” (CIA code for “we can ignore”) issues such as terrorism, poverty, disease, and crime, as well as lower-tier countries such as Yemen, Somalia, and Indonesia, where terrorism is spawned.
Tenet blew off this report, saying that he was in the business of producing secrets for the President. With that one decision, he gave Bin Laden free rein to attack America and sentenced America to ignorance.
America may not be interested in reality, but reality is most definitely interested in America. Terrorism is the least of our worries. The end of cheap oil, the end of free water, the rise of pandemic disease and the proliferation of corruption among failed states and U.S. corporations, are, in the aggregate a clear and present threat to the Republic.
There is one solution: the establishment of a national Open Source Agency that is outside the U.S. Intelligence Community, under the auspices of the Department of State, with a director appointed for life as are the Supreme Court Justices.
This report spells out, in clear and precise terms, why America needs such an organization, one committed to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as it can be known from all information, in all languages, all the time.
This report will be distributed in hard-copy at IOP '06 in January 2006, where the author of the report will speak about his findings. See http://www.oss.net/IOP for information about this international conference.
Phi Beta Iota: It took nine years for the “fact of” Tenet's 1997 decision, and the unclassified version of the report, to reach the public domain. Nine years during which open source information across all languages could have made a difference, not only in detecting foreign threats, but in detecting lies from within the US Government. Tenet will never be held accountable for this decision, or his “slam dunk” support of Vice President Dick Cheney's elective war on Iraq. We are long over-due for a mature intelligence profession that works in real time with M4IS2, relying almost exclusively on open sources of information in 183 languages, leveraging the distributed intelligence of the global collective, and welcoming–demanding–transparency as a foundation for creating trust where now there is none, and rightly so.
There are many loose ends about the last days, and death, of Osama Bin Laden.
The loose ends continue to pile up as time passes. There was an alleged firefight at the compound; so where are the signs of flash grenades? Even the room in which Bin Laden made his last stand had no bullet holes in the wall! As daily videos pour out from the now most famous house in Pakistan one cannot help notice the lack of signs of a firefight at the compound.
The plot thickens when one considers that according to intelligence, Bin Laden needed two dialysis treatments a day for his failing kidneys. There was no evidence of medical equipment in the compound that would suggest such an ill man was being treated for a kidney condition as bad as alleged for Osama Bin Laden. Was he cured through a kidney transplant? When? Who performed the operation and where?
Phi Beta Iota: The US Government generally, and the US Intelligence Community specifically, really do not understand “crowd sourcing” or collective intelligence as it has evolved in accelerated fashion just in pasts two years. The Bin Laden Show is important because it has–no doubt to the surprise of its producers–focused massive distributed eyes and brains on every detail from 9-11 forward. There is no other thing the US Government could have done to mobilize the rest of the world into paying attention to “loose ends.” We pray this is the beginning of transparency, truth, and trust as we go into the future.
Omar bin Laden, bin Laden’s fourth eldest son, has allegedly issued a statement that calls the killing of his father as a “criminal” act and a humiliation for his family. Notably, he indicated the possibility of a lawsuit against the United States.
The controversy over the release of the post-mortem photos of Osama bin Laden has exploded in the news. At last check, there were more than 77,000 news stories worldwide related to this issue. And Judicial Watch, as usual, is right in the middle of this debate on government transparency.
9/11 as a set-up and distractor to unite country while multiple looting campaigns were carried out (Afghanistan/Iraq, Sub-prime mortgages, Wall Street bail out).
Phi Beta Iota: The last one is convoluted but morally and intellectually on target. Patience is rewarded.
Gul said the event was a “make believe drama” designed to be used for Obama’s upcoming re-election campaign.
The supposed hit as described by the government and the corporate media is the “stuff of folk lore, for legend-making and the ballad,” Gull explained.
Hamid Gull went on to cite the late Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, who told David Frost in late 2007 that Osama bin Laden was murdered by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is also one of the men convicted of kidnapping and killing journalist Daniel Pearl.
The BBC had excised Bhutto’s comment but was forced to reinsert the footage in its version after the unedited version appeared on YouTube.
She was assassinated on December 27, 2007, after a political rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Phi Beta Iota: Pakistani officers, whether active or retired, do not break ranks or they get assassinated. This could well be an early Pakistani counter-attack on being “caught out” with Bin Laden, but all evidence that we have seen points toward this being the correct view: CIA theater with JSOG as unwitting dupes.
I’m sure we’re all very tired by now of the Osama bin Laden nonsense, I know I am, and I really wish it would just go away. Sadly, that seems an unlikely prospect in the near future.
I’ve already provided more than enough evidence for all rational people to seriously doubt the authenticity of the “Osama bin Laden is dead” story. I’ve also exposed the many faked images and videos of the alleged terrorist mastermind that were released over the past 10 years. But the US government and CIA aren’t ready to quit just yet. It would appear that they’re determined to push the boundaries of belief and exploit public credulousness to the max (and perhaps beyond).
Phi Beta Iota: Over 15 individuals are contributing to the Bin Laden Show series. This one wishes to remain anonymous but observes that the reported details all defy credibility, and that forensics is a science that is not being applied by the gullible (or co-opted) mainstream media.
Omar bin Laden, bin Laden’s fourth eldest son, has allegedly issued a statement that calls the killing of his father as a “criminal” act and a humiliation for his family. Notably, he indicated the possibility of a lawsuit against the United States.
