SHOCK VIDEO: WHO SHOT NEW 9/11 TAPES? AL QAEDA OR SOMEONE ELSE?

by: Justin Raimondo

I shivered, a little, as I watched Lisa Meyers' report on NBC the other night:

"New and threatening messages have been received from Al Qaeda. There's a videotape aimed at American and Saudi Arabian rulers and another that includes what appears to be well-produced footage of the 9/11 attacks - raising still other questions."

This new 9/11 footage sure does raise a lot of other questions, first and foremost: who shot the video? It was posted on what is described as "a known Al-Qaeda website" last Wednesday, although it was taken down after a few days. Aside from the usual militaristic gymnastics by jihadi commandos, Meyers reports:

"The tape also contains what U.S. counterterror experts say may be never-before-broadcast video of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York's World Trade Center shot from across the East River in Brooklyn. The FBI says it is familiar with the video, which was provided by a friendly bystander. But that raises the question - how did a tape that was not widely circulated end up on a known Al Qaeda site?"

It's sinister to contemplate. Video believed to have been in U.S. government hands somehow pops up on a website alleged to be an Al Qaeda mouthpiece, and U.S. government officials hold it up as a reason to cower in fear before the threat of another major terrorist attack on American soil. Meanwhile, the President avers that Iraq is the central arena in his "war on terrorism," and his supporters claim that we're battling them in the streets of Baghdad so we don't have to fight them in the streets of Boise - or whatever alliterative cliche first comes to mind.

The idea that Al Qaeda had additional agents in the area, who knew the attack was coming, would certainly explain the unflinching steadiness of the camera's eye as it recorded the terror of that moment. But instead of inventing additional elements and players, it's always best to stick with what we already know. So who else just happened to be videotaping the World Trade Center attack that day?

Hours after the terrorist struck, five people were arrested in New Jersey as they taped the WTC from their vantage point across the Hudson River in New Jersey. A witness identified only as "Maria" by ABC News said she saw:

"Three young men kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of her apartment building. 'They seemed to be taking a movie,' Maria said. The men were taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background, she said.

"What struck Maria were the expressions on the men's faces. 'They were like happy, you know ... They didn't look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange,' she said."

Even stranger - it turned out the five were Israelis. When law enforcement swooped down on this crew, they found them in possession of $4,700 in cash, box cutters, and multiple foreign passports. Police dogs reacted as if the presence of explosives was indicated, and, as the Bergen County Record reported:

"Sources close to the investigation said they found other evidence linking the men to the bombing plot. 'There are maps of the city in the car with certain places highlighted,' the source said. 'It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park.'"

These guys were held for three months, much of the time in solitary confinement, and extensively interrogated. One refused to take a lie detector test for weeks, and then failed it. All five had been in the employ of Urban Moving Systems, of Weehawken, New Jersey, the company name on their van's registration.

Police raided the Urban Moving Systems warehouse 48 hours later, and carted away a lot of computer hard drives and other materials. The owner, one Dominik Suter, fled to Israel the next day. A few months later, Suter's name turned up on a list of terrorist suspects circulated by the FBI to European financial institutions.

The apprehended Israelis claimed that they were merely "documenting" the day's events: police confiscated their photographic equipment, and whatever film they had taken. The new film shows the World Trade Center burning from the Brooklyn side of the East River, while the Urban Movers were filming from the vantage point of Liberty State Park, across the Hudson River in New Jersey. But whomever had foreknowledge of the attack on the World Trade Center could have taken that film - and Al Qaeda operatives are not the only possible suspects.

I have written at length about the five arrested Israelis in my new book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, and I commend the attention of my readers to this modest little volume if they want to know more. I bring this up, not merely to plug my book, but to point out that we can't begin to understand the strange expropriation of this previously unknown footage outside the context provided by The Terror Enigma.

As I prove in my book, Al Qaeda did not carry out its plans for a major terrorist attack entirely undetected. The Israelis were hot on the trail of the 9/11 hijackers, and must have had some foreknowledge of what happened that fateful day.

Did they shoot the footage we are just now seeing, or was an Al Qaeda film team at the ready the moment the twin towers were hit? Readers of The Terror Enigma will understand how and why the former scenario is just as likely the latter.

As to how, in that case, the video passed into the hands of Al Qaeda's propagandists - it wouldn't be the first time the fruits of Israeli spying operations in the U.S. fell into the hands of America's enemies.

In any case, how this new 9/11 footage, previously known only to the FBI and a "friendly bystander," wound up in Al Qaeda's possession - or in the hands of a website claiming to represent them - is a mystery that the U.S. government seems quite uninterested in unraveling.

The Real Mysteries of 9/11

From: Descending Into Darkness: The Making of a Wartime President

TBR Ebooks
by Brian Harring

Between August 26 to September 11, 2001, a group of speculators, identified by the American Securities and Exchange Commission as Israeli citizens, sold “short” a list of 38 stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as a result of the pending attacks. These speculators operated out of the Toronto, Canada and Frankfurt, Germany, stock exchanges and their profits were specifically stated to be “in the millions of dollars.”

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a clandestine but official effort to resolve the market manipulations There has been a great deal of talk about insider trading of American stocks by certain Israeli groups both in Canada and Germany between August 26 and the Sept.11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Government investigators remain tight-lipped about a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of possible profiteering by terrorists with advance knowledge of the attack.

On Sept. 6, 2001, the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this could have yielded speculators between $2 million and $4 million in profit.

The matter still is under investigation and none of the government investigating bodies -including the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and DOJ -are speaking to reporters about insider trading. Even so, suspicion of insider trading to profit from the Sept. 11 attacks is not limited to U.S. regulators. Investigations were initiated in a number of places including Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain. As in the United States, all are treating these inquiries as if they were state secrets.

Lynne Howard, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), stated that information about who made the trades was available immediately. "We would have been aware of any unusual activity right away. It would have been triggered by any unusual volume. There is an automated system called 'blue sheeting,' or the CBOE Market Surveillance System, that everyone in the business knows about. It provides information on the trades - the name and even the Social Security number on an account - and these surveillance systems are set up specifically to look into insider trading. The system would look at the volume, and then a real person would take over and review it, going back in time and looking at other unusual activity."

Howard continued, "The system is so smart that even if there is a news event that triggers a market event it can go back in time, and even the parameters can be changed depending on what is being looked at. It's a very clever system and it is instantaneous. Even with the system, though, we have very experienced and savvy staff in our market-regulations area who are always looking for things that might be unusual. They're trained to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if it's offshore, it might take a little longer, but all offshore accounts have to go through U.S. member firms - members of the CBOE - and it is easily and quickly identifiable who made the trades. The member firm who made the trades has to have identifiable information about the client under the 'Know Your Customer' regulations (and we share all information with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)"

Given all of this, at a minimum the CBOE and government regulators who are conducting the secret investigations have known for some time who made the options puts on a total of 38 stocks that might reasonably be anticipated to have a sharp drop in value because of an attack similar to the 9/11 episode. The silence from the investigating camps could mean several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the listed stocks or others besides terrorists had foreknowledge of the attack and used this knowledge to reap a nice financial harvest from the tragedy.

Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a North Dakota-based private consulting company that publishes research on markets worldwide, stated that "I heard that $22 million in profits was made on these put options..."

Federal investigators are continuing to be closed-mouthed about these stock trades, and it is clear that a much wider net has been cast, apparently looking for bigger international fish involved in dubious financial activity relating to the 9/11 attacks on the world stock markets.

Just a month after the attacks the SEC sent out a list of 38 stocks to various securities firms around the world looking for information. The list includes stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and US Airways airlines, as well as Boeing, Lockheed

Martin, the American International Group, AIG, Cigna, CAN Financial, John Hancock, MetLife, General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns..ial working group that has been compiling evidence on Israeli espionage since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity."

September 6-7, 2001 -- 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]

September 10, 2001 -- 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: above]

September 6-11, 2001 -- No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."

September 6-10, 2001 -- Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks.

It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; Fox News, October 16, 2001

The President’s Actions on September 11

One of the most important aspects of the 9/11 attack is the behavior of the President and top members of his Administration before, during and after the attacks.

Although the attack has received intense media scrutiny in nearly all of its aspects, very little has even been mentioned about the President’s strange actions on that day, that have been viewed by many as suspicious in the extreme. Yet the silence of the American media on the subject has given rise to even more negative speculations.

Just prior to the attack, on July 26, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft suddenly stopped flying on civilian airlines, citing unspecified “terrorist threats.” Ashcroft later absolutely refused to answer any media questions about his sources for this specific concern on his part.

On September 10, 2001, a group of senior Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled a trip by commercial aircraft, citing “security reasons.”

On September 11, 2001, President George Bush flew with a significant number of his senior staff to Sarasota, Florida where he visited Emma E. Booker Elementary School. In a well-covered media event, Bush attended a meeting of school children and read portions of a child’s book to them.

A laudatory and paid professional Hollywood-created pre-election television movie about Bush shows him receiving the news of the 9/11 attack but like all reportage on this specific subject, it deals with error and not fact. With strong controversy about exact events of the day swirling about the President, no one can be exactly certain when he actually learned of the attacks. CIA Director George Tenet, lunching with a former U.S. Senator, David Boren, remarked as soon as he learned of the first attack that, “. . . this has bin Laden’s fingerprints all over it.”

Although Tenet was informed immediately of the attack, Bush’s entourage still insists the President did not hear about it until at least fifteen minutes after the first attack occurred, considerably after television viewers saw the smoke-engulfed building on CNN. Reporters covering the school event noted the President had received an urgent telephone call from his security advisor, Condoleezza Rice immediately after he got out of the Presidential limousine and shortly after the first incident.

None of the accounts concerning this matter, delivered at various times by members of the President’s White House staff, are in agreement. Bush himself has offered several versions of the time he first learned of the attack. The President stated on December 4, 2001 that “I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower . . . the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, ‘Well, there’s one terrible pilot.’ I said, ‘it must have been a horrible accident.’ But I was whisked off there. I didn’t have much time to think about it.”

On January 5, 2002, Bush said: “First of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was a pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake . . .”

Neither of these statements is correct. There was no current television footage of the hijacked civil airliner seen anywhere in the United States until an amateur video tape appeared one day later. The President’s post-event recollections stand in direct contradiction to all of the national media reportage of the morning of September 11 and it also contradicts his nationally televised speech of that evening. The President stated, “Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans.” What these “emergency plans” might have been have never been mentioned since, by anyone, and this statement is thoroughly disproved by Bush’s statements that he believed the crash to be the result of pilot error.

Bush also claimed he first learned of the attack from his Chief of Staff, Andrew Card. Bush said Card told him, “Here’s what you’re going to be doing. You are going to meet so-and-so, such-and such. Then Andy Card said, ‘By the way, an aircraft flew into the World Trade Center.’”

Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer commented on this publicly and alleged that Card had informed Bush of the attack “as the President finished shaking hands in a hallway of school officials.” However, other reporters claimed that Karl Rove personally gave the news to the President.

What has been clearly established is that the President continued to interact with the school children, for the benefit of the media, for a considerable time after the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the remaining personnel in the White House, the Secret Service and even Canada’s Strategic Command, had all been made aware that three commercial American aircraft had been hijacked.

In spite of this general knowledge, Bush and his aides and advisors remained at the school for nearly an hour after initial news of the attack had been broadcast on CNN. Thirty minutes after the first attack, Bush was recorded on film as telling the young students, “These are great readers! Very impressive! Thank you all so much for showing me your reading skills. I bet they practice too, don’t you? Reading more than they watch TV? Anybody do that? Read more than you watch TV?” (Hands are raised) “Oh, that’s great! Very good! Very important to practice! Thanks for having me. I’m very impressed!”

Although the President and his staff were fully aware that major terrorist attacks had been launched against important targets on the East Coast, Bush remained with the school children for some time. It was later put out by his staff that he did not wish to unduly alarm or upset the children. This story is specious in the extreme because if the terrorist attacks were as serious as they appeared, placating children should have been the least worry of the Commander-in-Chief. Bush did not contact any of the military units charged with defending prominent targets -- and the fighters that had been scrambled would have been unable to shoot down any hijacked aircraft without a specific Presidential order.

Nor were any Presidential orders issued to ground all commercial aircraft slated to take off. This order came not from Bush or any member of his staff but from FAA Administrator Ben Sliney.

When Air Force One took off with the President and his entourage safely on board, it headed west to carry the President away from the apparent target areas. While the President and his staff, like Vice President Cheney were safely ensconced in concrete bunkers, the Mayor of New York and his staff were at the center of the attack area taking charge of the confused situation.

The excuse offered by the Bush staff for the bunkering of the President is that an unnamed intelligence agency had advised the President that “Arab terrorists” had the transponder codes for Air Force One, and to fly in the aircraft would be dangerous in the extreme. This story, like the rest of the self-serving myths put forth by loyalists that day, was completely false and later admitted as such.

There is, of course, no specific evidence that the President’s trip to Sarasota, Florida was designed to remove him from the potential and strongly suspected dangers in Washington DC; nor do his subsequent inconsistent and shifting accounts of his actions prove that he and his immediate entourage were anticipating the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, a great mass of circumstantial evidence would certainly point very clearly, and strongly, in that direction.