By Chaim Kupferberg
Global Research
December 6, 2003


The following is a selected excerpt only. The complete text for Truth, Lies,
and The Legend of 9/11 may be found at
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html

One man was Clinton's counter-terrorism "czar". The other was reputedly
the FBI's most dogged pursuer of Osama bin Laden. But did these two
men perform a more sinister, covert role in coordinating the global
elements of the unfolding 9/11 Legend? In this latest excerpt from his
landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg takes a closer at Richard Clarke and
John O'Neill - the men who reportedly "discovered" Osama bin Laden as a
terrorist mastermind.

As we shall see, the various elements of the 9/11 Legend were assembled with
the help of a number of international players. Through the Pakistani ISI (an
organization, in fact, with close historical ties to the CIA and British
intelligence), the Taliban were armed and installed as the resident overlords
of Afghanistan. Under the watchful eye of German intelligence, lead hijacker
Mohamed Atta would set up his Hamburg "cell" of conspirators, sharing a flat
with senior al-Qaida operative Ramzi Binalshibh. Through French authorities,
particularly with the assistance of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere (a friend of
John O'Neill), Zacarias Moussaoui (arrested August 2001) and senior Al-Qaida
leader Abu Zubaydah (the first "big fish" captured in March 2002) would work
their way into the official 9/11 Legend. By way of Spanish Police Chief Juan
Cotino (who was also a senior figure in Europol), other al-Qaida cells were
discovered as further proof of bin Laden's global reach. In fact, as the 9/11
Legend would have it, Mohamed Atta had rendezvoused with Ramzi Binalshibh in
Spain sometime in July 2001, where the two presumably made final preparations
for September 11. Around the same time, the FBI's lead point man on al-Qaida,
John O'Neill, was in Madrid to discuss counter-terror issues with Police Chief
Cotino. Thereafter, O'Neill made his last public appearance (before his
retirement the next month) at a counter-terror conference held at a three-star
hotel in the Spanish resort town of Salou - coincidentally, only a few days
before Mohammed Atta had checked into the very same hotel in his last
international trip before September 11 (a curious fact reported in John
Miller's book "The Cell"). Atta's previous trip to Madrid had been in
January 2001, within days of the very first Europol Conference On Terrorism,
also held in Madrid.

Finally, the United Kingdom served as a major transit point, educational
center, and source of "evidence" pointing to the hijackers and various
al-Qaida operatives - most notably, Omar Saeed, Zacarias Moussaoui, and
Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber." Thus, the very countries that were
so prominent in furnishing the various elements of the 9/11 Legend -
"burnishing" it with a globalized gloss - also happened to be the same
countries that served as senior partners in the War On Terror.

The fact that France and Germany have since headed up opposition to the War
In Iraq should not be taken as an irreconcilable contradiction in this regard.
Rather, just the opposite. As we shall see, a strategy to cast doubt on the
War In Iraq - fuelled by elements in the CIA and some of the more vociferous
supporters of the War On Terror - has actually worked to strengthen the
credibility of the overall 9/11 Legend. In counter-point to that strategy
lies a fall-back option that "localizes" any potential conspiracy to a "rogue"
clique of "hawks" holding President Bush in their ideological sway - the
markedly Jewish and pro-Israeli neo-conservatives, an apparent CIA "cut-out"
helmed by Richard Mellon Scaife during the Clinton years, then by Richard
Cheney in the early months after 9/11 before he mostly disappeared from public
view along with his defibrillator, and most famously now, by Richard Perle (a
product of the RAND Corporation).

As I argued previously in The Propaganda Preparation For 9/11, the Saudis,
Pakistanis, and Israelis were set up as the primary alternate foreign patsies
to divert attention from the far more plausible (and obvious) involvement of
the U.S./U.K./E.U., the very alliance which now spearheads the War On Terror
even as it choreographs the Official 9/11 Legend. As we shall see, with the
relatively recent prominence of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as 9/11 mastermind,
Iraq now takes its place as a plausible patsy (particularly since Colin
Powell's introduction of a new al-Qaeda leader by the name of Abu Musab
Zarqawi, a Baghdad-based Palestinian whose legend and motives will no doubt
grow out of the recently completed War In Iraq). With regard to the Saudis,
their actual involvement was more indirect - as they financed the various
Pakistani madrassas (Muslim yeshivas) that served as a farming system for the
hordes of wild-eyed Wahhabi idealists looking to set up camp in Afghanistan.
Still, their domination of the Middle East media served to give an impression
- to Western eyes - that bin Laden was more intimately known among the
Arab/Muslim masses than he was by an insular clique in the Western security
establishment.

Heading up that clique was Richard A. Clarke, who joined the National Security
Council under the first President Bush, and stayed there under Clinton. As
reported by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, "In the web of federal agencies
concerned with terror, Clarke was the spider." Tim Weiner of the New York
Times wrote of Clarke on February 1, 1999: "He has placed proteges in key
diplomatic and intelligence positions, creating a network of loyalty and
solidifying his power."

It was Clarke who, together with John O'Neill, "discovered" bin Laden as a
global terrorist mastermind. Here, as reported by Lawrence Wright in The New
Yorker, was Clarke's version of his discovery:

"We'd [O'Neill and I] see CIA reports that referred to 'financier Osama bin
Laden' and we'd ask ourselves, 'Who the hell is he?' The more we drilled
down, the more we realized he was not just a financier - he was the leader.
John said, 'We've got to get this guy. He's building a network. Everything
leads back to him.' Gradually the CIA came along with us."

Presumably, Clarke had help in marketing bin Laden - for bin Laden himself
would soon enough make his high profile media debut as the declared enemy of
American interests the world over, thereby giving the world's only superpower
a plausibly sophisticated foe who would overshadow the efforts of one Muslim
fanatic (Ramzi Yousef, World Trade Center '93) or one right-wing nutcase
(Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma '95). Meanwhile, the gregarious John O'Neill would
make the global rounds, liaising with various counterparts as he shadowed the
presumed activities of Osama bin Laden. In other words, if one were
theoretically to posit the type of operatives who would be most suited to
running a highly compartmentalized "op" to develop a global legend of Osama
bin Laden, one could find no more conveniently placed men than Richard Clarke
and John O'Neill. Where Clarke would manage the national security
rank-and-file through his network of loyalists, O'Neill would be the
globetrotter, coordinating the unfolding legend through his counterparts in
various countries.

In short, Clarke and O'Neill would theoretically be conducting their
activities in "plain sight." Under the cover of counter-terrorism, O'Neill
would be building a terror legend fit for the New World Order - in the same
manner that Oliver North in the '80s employed the cover of counter-terrorism
to conduct, on behalf of Vice-President Bush, the illegal arms dealing
operations popularly known as Iran-Contra (for which North took a decidedly
light rap as the designated patsy). The main difference would be that where
North would eventually be tagged as the moron of Iran-Contra, O'Neill would
take his place as the martyr of 9/11.

In the few months leading up to September 11, O'Neill - for the first time in
his 30-year career with the FBI - would make the headlines in two separate
scandals. The first, reported in July 2001, concerned O'Neill's dispute with
Ambassador Barbara Bodine in Yemen, where O'Neill was reportedly pursuing
al-Qaida links to the U.S.S. Cole bombing. As the story had it, O'Neill was
too much the cowboy for Bodine's tastes, and so she summarily banned him from
returning to Yemen. The second scandal, reported in August 2001, concerned a
briefcase of classified documents that O'Neill had misplaced during a
convention in Tampa. Considering the resolution of the latter scandal - the
documents were found, "untouched," a couple hours later - it seemed much ado
about nothing. Yet in the light of O'Neill's subsequent death as head of
security for the World Trade Center on September 11, the scandals began to
take on a more suspicious tint. Was O'Neill digging too deep? A maverick who
stepped on too many feet in his efforts to bulldog his way through the
hierarchy? Put bluntly, had the maverick been taken down a notch by a bloated
bureaucracy beholden to a "cover-your-ass" ethic? As Richard Clarke, Jerry
Hauer, John Miller, Chris Isham, and O'Neill's friends/colleagues at Kroll
Associates would spin it, O'Neill's was the lone voice shouting in the
wilderness, warning all who would listen about the approaching bin Laden
threat before falling himself, "ironically", at the hands of bin Laden.

It was an ingenious cover story - for if O'Neill was a crucial operative in
assembling the al-Qaida elements that fed into the 9/11 Legend, then O'Neill's
crystallized role as official 9/11 martyr would forever obscure the trail to
September 11, and, by extension, leave his most intimate comrades and contacts
out of the suspect category. In short, it would be like reconstructing the
murder of Nicole Simpson without O.J. in the tale. With O'Neill cast as
martyr, 9/11 critics would now be left with a mishmash of innuendos and bits
and pieces of shadowy conspiracies: Israeli spy rings that trail off into the
ether of Fox News; passenger lists with missing hijackers; and abandoned "put"
options. If the shadowy conspiracy had a face, it was in the image of either
Dick Cheney or Richard Perle. But then again, who marketed them as the latest
powers behind the throne? Where were the folks who brought us BCCI,
Iran-Contra, and the Warren Commission? Where were James Baker, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, David Rockefeller, Kissinger?

End of excerpts.

For the complete text of this article, please go to
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html
For further material on John O'Neill, please read "The Propaganda Preparation
For 9/11" at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP206A.html