The Linear Canvas

I am currently reading Richard A. Clarke’s book "Against All Enemies".  I highly recommend it. It is well written and mostly easy to follow. Mr. Clark is a former long time government employee who had worked in the consecutive administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He routinely held positions that required the highest of security clearance. It would include being Chief Counter-Terrorism Adviser on the U.S. National Security Council. That made him a member of the executive branch on 9/11. Published in 2004, the book is about his involvement in helping to direct the counter-terrorism strategy for the United States, through his retirement in 2003.

I came across these two paragraphs in the book. The context was a discussion on how some theories about government conspiracies were true while others were fabrications or distortions:

Another conspiracy theory intrigued me because I could
never disprove it. The theory seemed unlikely on its face: Ramzi
Yousef or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had taught Terry Nichols how to
blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building. The problem was that, upon
investigation, we established that both Ramzi Yousef and Nichols had
been in the city of Cebu on the same days. I had been to Cebu years
earlier; it is on an island in the central Philippines. It was a town in
which word could have spread that a local girl was bringing her American
boyfriend home and that the American hated the U.S. government.

Yousef and Khilid Sheik Muhammad had gone there to help create
an al Qaeda spinoff, a Philippine affiliate chapter, named after a hero
of the Afghan war against the Soviets, Abu Sayaff. Could the al Qaeda
explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who
proclaimed his hatred for the U.S. Government? We do not know, despite
some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols’s bombs did
not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.
We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife
returned to the United States. The final coincidence is that several al
Qaeda operatives had attended a radical Islamic conference a few years
earlier in, of all places, Oklahoma City.

I have not believed the official story about what happened on September 11, 2001 since the shock wore off.  That took about a month or two. Mr. Clarke says he does believe the official story, so obviously he is not trying to imply there is a connection.

But taken with all the other evidence that exists for a connection between the CIA, the American political right-wing and al-Qaeda, I think that this story helps to illustrate the terrorist associations and cooperation that may actually exist in the United States.

It’s possible I could believe one of the fantastic, scientifically impossible tales about 9/11 the government has told us. But there’s way too many inconsistencies for me to swallow. I am thinking about making a short film about 9/11. I’ve also got an idea for a book. I wrote a song about it too. (obsessed much?)

I hope someday more people will be as curious to know what really happened on 9/11, like I am. If nothing else, there needs to be a re-investigation into who really screwed up that day and those people fired and/or charged with a crime. Comedian Bill Mahr likes to point out often, that he was the only person who got fired for 9/11 when he was dumped by ABC after the 9/11 event. Unfortunately he’s not completely kidding.