Doubt Foreclosed
18
Moussaoui. In May, mainstream media did report that FBI agent Williams in Phoenix had unsuccessfully
urged head office investigation of U.S. flight schools; the FBI later maintained that this recommendation
was never paired with the Moussaoui affair. Moussaoui was detained by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) in August. Authorization for a counter-intelligence warrant for officers to
search his computer hard drive, which allegedly did contain incriminating evidence, was
uncharacteristically denied by Washington authorities. Moussaoui had trained at a school previously
known to have trained terrorists. Even when the FBI received word from French intelligence on August 26
that Moussaoui had ties with Al Qaeda, he was not transferred into FBI custody until after 9-11. The White
House was reportedly not informed as to Moussaoui’s detention (Elliott, 2002). The significance deepened
when set alongside reports, separately mentioned in mainstream media in the days following 9-11, that the
governments of at least four countries (Egypt, Germany, Israel, Russia; in June 2002, the British Sunday
Times added 1999 British MI6 alerts) warned Washington of unconventional use of hijacked airplanes
against U.S. targets. The government had multiple indications of suicide hijackings, based on
investigations into previous terrorist attempts; it closely monitored electronic communications of Bin
Laden and associates prior to 9-11; several hijackers, including the alleged ringleader, were under direct
surveillance by US agencies as suspected terrorists, yet traveled freely into and out of the US, at least two
of them using their own names, having telephone numbers published in the local directory. Brisard and
Dasquie (2001) noted how the FBI stalled investigations of leading suspects, including Zaccarias
Moussouri.
John O’Neill, director of antiterrorism for the FBI’s New York Office, resigned in frustration,
August 2001. O’Neill became Security Chief at the World Trade Center and was killed on 9-11. (Searches
yielded only five U.S. press references to the Brisard and Dasquie book in the four months following 9-11).
(e) Causes of war are sometimes staged. Foremost critical events in U.S. history include the 1941
Pearl Harbor attack (subject of ten congressional investigations), and the 1964 Bay of Tonkin incidents,
triggering official U.S. entry to World War Two, and to Vietnam, respectively. Corporate media leaders,
knowing these events, should surely have wondered, following 9-11, “Was this provoked? Did we make it
happen?” There were many post 9-11 references to Pearl Harbor (906 in 3 months), all “day of infamy”
and “sleeping giant awakes” clichés. Of less than two dozen references to the Gulf of Tonkin, most even
failed to recollect that the incidents were provoked, in part fabricated.
Convention