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... GLOBAL NEWS. ... NEWS EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES ON SEPTEMBER 11 EVENTS German Intelligence Experts Warn of Disinformation ckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, has told Agence France-Presse that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks of September 11 would have needed "years of planning". Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation, and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state-organised actions". Andreas von Biilow served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag (German Parliament) from 1969 to 1994, and wrote a book titled Jm Namen des Staates (‘In the Name of the State") on the criminal activities of secret services, including the CIA. Von Biilow told AFP he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the September 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending. The architectural-level planners use corrupt "guns for hire" such as Abu Nidal (the Palestinian terrorist whom von Biilow called "an instrument of Mossad"), high-ranking Stasi (former East German secret service) operatives, or agents who organise terror attacks using dedicated people (for example, Palestinian and Arab "freedom fighters"). The terrorists who actually commit the crimes are what von Biilow calls "the working level", such as the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked the planes on September 11. "The working level is part of the deception," he said. "Ninety-five per cent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," von Biilow said, which is widely propagated in the mainstream media, creating an accepted version of events. "Journalists don't even raise the simplest questions," he said, adding, "those who differ are labelled as crazy." Both Werthebach and von Biilow said the lack of an open and official investigation, such as congressional hearings, into the events of September 11 was incomprehensible. A Carpet of Gold—or Bombs—for the Taliban In a recently published book, Bin Laden, La Vérité Interdite ("Bin Laden, The Forbidden Truth"), authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié charge that the US government's primary objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime in order to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia. Until August 2001, the US government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stabil- ity in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia" from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, they say. "The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that," the book says. When the Taliban refused to accept US conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military one". "The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who attended the meetings. On French television, Naik said that, during the "6 + 2" meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around "...the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid." "And the pipelines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come," he added. Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the US representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'Either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option’. The words Simons used were ‘a military operation'," Naik said. "At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, ‘Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs'," Brisard said in an interview in Paris. (Sources: Tagesspiegel, Berlin, January 13, 2002, via Conspiracy Planet, http:/}www.conspiracyplanet.com, and Rumor Mills, http:/www.rumormillnews.net) DID US AGENT WARN CANADA OF SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS? lhe admission that the death of a Canadian diplomat in Moscow was mur- der may lend credence to the fantastic story arising from an extradition case in Toronto, in which a man claiming to be a US Naval Intelligence officer says he warned the RCMP and CSIS of the September 11 attacks, months in advance. Delmart Edward Vreeland claims he trav- elled to Moscow in Fall 2000 to obtain mili- tary documents regarding Russian counter- measures to US antimissile defence. His purpose was to see that they got into the hands of CSIS and to fool Ottawa into believing it was a Canadian discovery, so Canada and other allies might be inclined to drop their objections to "Star Wars". His contact was a "systems analyst", Mare Bastien, said to be a CSIS agent working out of the embassy. Vreeland says he sensed something fishy with a Russian go-between and handed over a dummy bag before trav- elling to Toronto, where he was arrested on December 6 on an immigration warrant. Only days after Vreeland's arrest by Toronto police, Bastien was found dead in Moscow. Though he was only 35, the death was attributed to "natural causes". The body was returned to Canada for autopsy. Sources with the Mounties have since con- firmed that Bastien indeed was murdered. Among the Russian documents Vreeland says he retrieved was one describing impending terrorist attacks in the United States, naming Osama bin Laden as an agent and the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as likely targets. Vreeland, with is lawyer Paul Slansky, took the informa- tion to both CSIS and the RCMP last sum- mer, but he was blown off as a crank. The US Navy claims that Vreeland was discharged in the mid-1980s, having failed boot camp, but there is evidence to suggest the military is altering his service record. For example, in a phone conversation recorded from jail in August 2001—before, Vreeland contends, his entire record could be wiped from the system—he is clearly told by a petty officer at a US naval base that computer files confirm his rank as lieu- tenant—an impossibility if he'd dropped out of boot camp. (Source: Frank magazine, Canada, October 16, 2001, http://www.frankmag.net; for updates on Vreeland's case, visit Mike Ruppert's website, http://www.copvcia.com.) 10 ¢ NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2002 WWW.NeXU smagazi ne.com