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My Rejected Column by Jack Rain Two days after the Attack on America, I wrote a column stating my suspicions that Israel might be behind the attack. I knew my column was a hot potato and really didn't expect it to be picked up by the websites I submitted it to (I sent it to Strike The Root and LewRockwell.com). As expected, both Rob and Lew rejected the column, but at least I was on record with them personally. I didn't send it to any anti-Jewish sites, which I am sure would have jumped at the theorizing in the column. I didn't send it to those sites because I wasn't coming from an anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish perspective. If I had sent it to one of those sites, it could very easily have been dismissed as an anti-Semitic rant. I have no such axe to grind. I was simply writing a column on a gut feel from my personal experiences on how the world sometimes works. Since I wrote the column, my belief that Israeli operatives may have played a role in the attack is even stronger. It has since come out that Secretary of State Colin Powell was to have given a speech calling for a Palestinian state. The attack preempted the speech, which benefited Israel. Fox News and Justin Raimondo are both now implying, if not completely stating, that Israel had to at least have known about the attacks in advance. I continue to contend that it MAY have played some role. My original article is below; read it carefully. Unlike George Bush, I did not immediately accuse Israel the way Bush immediately accused bin Laden. I merely said that Israel was on my suspect list based on the question, "Who benefits?" With the new information that the attack stopped a speech by Colin Powell calling for a Palestinian state, the benefit of the attack for Israel now seems greater than when I first wrote my column. The Fox News reporting on suspicious activity by some Israelis now lends some facts to my speculative thinking. Misdirection is a hallmark of secret operatives, and I believe it may have been used in the Attack on America. Indeed, we know for a fact that some of the terrorist hijackers who died in the suicide attacks used misdirection even at the operational level when they strapped weightlifting belts around their waists and told the passengers they had bombs and were going to hijack the plane. This misdirection was designed to keep the passengers controlled and stopped them from understanding the true purpose of the mission. (It was only a hijacking, not a suicide mission.) Israeli operatives may or may not have been behind the Attack on America, but I think Israel has clearly benefited. They can, for example, become much more aggressive "terrorist" fighters. The federal government has now frozen Hamas' money here in the United States, and Colin Powell delayed his speech calling for a Palestinian state. Israel may have simply been a bystander aware of the coming attack, and if so, my original column helps explain why Israeli would have been a silent observer. But I think if you believe that they could have been a silent observer, you also have to put them on the suspect list. This doesn't mean that they absolutely positively did it but, but simply that they cannot be eliminated as suspects. The developments since I wrote my original column on September 13 only harden my convictions that Israel must remain on the suspect list as perhaps having some role, bin Laden's confession notwithstanding. Bin Laden may have had some role in the attack, but the most recent videotapes leaves me even less convinced of this possibility. In my view, on the tapes bin Laden comes off as a lying braggart in front of a potential money source ("Yeah I did it. Boy, more donations for my next evil scheme would be great right now. Praise Allah.") Real investigators know you always keep some information about a crime secret to test the credibility of those confessing. In the videotape, bin Laden doesn't say anything about the attack that couldn't have been gleaned from news reports. He did not talk like a man who was rationally analyzing the attack. "Yeah, we hit three of four targets. By the way, that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed for XYZ. We will get XYZ next time." It was 100% chest pumping which provided zero new facts that weren't already in the public venue. Here is my original rejected column. I believe it is time for a full OPEN and thorough investigation of the attack conducted by Congress to see who was truly behind the evil attack. No secret "We have information we are going to share with Tony Blair" stuff, a real thorough open inquiry. Who knew what when? Who did what when? This was an attack on America. A full inquiry should be conducted before the American people as to who was truly responsible. My Number One Suspect September 13, 2001 While Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and most of the rest of the American media has placed Osama bin Laden at the top of the suspect list for the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, my personal suspect list is a little different. My list is different because when I ask the key question "Who benefits from the attack?", bin Laden's name just does not jump out at me. Yes, in a way, if bin Laden did pull this off, he has a new recruiting slogan for future Muslim terrorists that would be something along the lines of the U.S. Army's "Be all that you can be" slogan. You know, something like, "Be all that you can be, join the terrorists, fight Satan America and die for Allah." But he is going to take big time heat for this attack, whether he conducted it or not. Face it, the U.S., if it goes after this guy, will get him. And bin Laden would have known this before such an attack. So would he want to create such heat for himself? Maybe. Maybe he wants to die a martyr like those who crashed the planes. But leaders in general do not seem to be the martyr type. It's okay for their followers to commit suicide, but generally, leaders like to be around to direct the next suicide mission. Maybe he thinks he is invincible and that the United States won't be able to get him. But if this is so, and he did it, why isn't he taking responsibility for the attack? No, there are other suspects. And that is why I am not jumping on the bin Laden as Number One suspect bandwagon. My prime suspect arises from thinking again about that all important question, "Who benefits?" The biggest reaction to this attack is a new round of aggressive talk from President Bush, Congress and European leaders that terrorism must be stopped. "This is now war," Bush tells us. So a prime suspect would then have to be anyone who wants a stepped up fight against terrorism. Well lo and behold, there is such a group. The state of Israel has been doing some heavy "terrorism fighting" of late. They have been taking out a bunch of Palestinian leaders, excuse me, Palestinian terrorists. Their attacks on targeted Palestinians have been so aggressive of late that even the casual news observer has become aware of them. In fact, the Bush administration labeled some recent Israeli attack as "excessive." Boy, it's too bad the Bush administration didn't know then what it knows now about Middle East terrorists. They didn't realize it was war back then, I guess. But the Bush administration attitude has certainly been changed by this attack in America. Lucky for Israel, I guess. Or was this whole thing an operation of Mossad, Israel's equivalent of the CIA? The Mossad is known for aggressive, manipulative operations. Anyone in the intelligence world would agree that they certainly would have the ability to pull this off. They are masters of misdirection, and I think a lot of misdirection has been going on of late. Consider: This whole well-organized operation went on for months, if not years, without any clues that the American intelligence community could detect. In other words, it was a very sophisticated, well thought-out attack, with smart people behind it. Then suddenly after the attack, there are clues all over the place. Huh? The attackers used credit cards to purchase some of their tickets that now link them to some of their operatives on the ground. They left an Arabic flight manual in some luggage that missed a connection. Why would someone knowing he was going to crash a plane check a bag that contained a flight manual that then misses its connection (lucky for the FBI)? This is a great clue that points at Arabs, but it doesn't make any sense. The FBI is now on the chase of clues everywhere. A sophisticated, well organized attack now seems to have been run by a bunch of village idiots that got caught. Hmm. Luckily, in the World Trade Center bombing a few years ago, the FBI was able to quickly find the metal vehicle identification number from the van that carried the bomb into the World Trade Center, and the idiot then went to get his refund on the truck. Luckily, this time the idiots are leaving clues all over the place. Yeah, the actual operatives who carry out these missions are generally idiots. They are not savvy about the world around them. They are run by "controls" who are very savvy. The controls know how to pull these things off in utmost secrecy. And they know how to get their operatives out without detection--if they want. If the operatives are leaving sloppy after-the-fact clues all over the place, it is because the controls want those clues around. If they want those clue to point to Arab terrorists, they will. It is my opinion that Mossad is the only group capable and the only group having the incentive to pull this off. Yes, the actual attackers were Arab but they worked out of a "cell." These idiots could have been told they worked for bin Laden. I doubt most of them ever met bin Laden. It could have been a cell run, in fact, by anyone. My bet is that it was run by the Mossad. It is the theory that best fits the facts and is the only theory that explains the total sophistication and secrecy of this operation with clues now bursting out all over the place. December 28, 2001 Jack Rain is a traveler and observer of world events. |