2001: November: This Far and No Further

Back to 2001 | On to 2001: December

November 2001 map of al-Qaeda activity in Middle East

A Nov. 2001 State Department map of Middle Eastern countries where al-Qaeda is active. Iraq, marked with an arrow, is conspicuously absent from active countries. The map can be found here; the State Department has scrubbed the original map from its Web site.

November: Starting in late October, US intelligence reports begin noting that al-Qaeda fighters and leaders are moving into and around the Afghanistan city of Jalalabad.
War in Afghanistan
By early November, bin Laden is there. US intelligence analysts conclude that bin Laden and his men were preparing to flee across the border. But the US Central Command, which was running the war, do nothing to block their escape. "It was obvious from at least early November that this area was to be the base for an exodus into Pakistan,"' says one intelligence official. "All of this was known, and frankly we were amazed that nothing was done to prepare for it." The vast majority of leaders and fighters are eventually able to escape into Pakistan. (CCR)
November: Al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who had run terrorist training camps for the organization, is captured in Afghanistan.
US torture allegations
At first al-Libi is interrogated by FBI agents at Bagram Air Force Base outside of Kabul. In the process, the agents, who are beginning to win al-Libi's cooperation, inform him of his Miranda rights, believing that al-Libi will eventually be flown to the US to stand trial. The FBI believes that al-Libi can be useful as a witness in the trial of suspected 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Instead, after a pitched battle between the CIA and the FBI and personal intervention by CIA director George Tenet to Bush, CIA agents simply take al-Libi away from the FBI. The FBI recommends that al-Libi be treated humanely and even be bargained with, with one high-level FBI official recommending that al-Libi be handled "like it was being done right here, in my office in New York." But the CIA wants to pressure information out of al-Libi without delay. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up, and sent him to Cairo," says one FBI official, to be tortured by Egyptian intelligence agents. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f*ck her.' So we lost that fight."
After two weeks of torture by Egyptian officials, including "waterboarding," al-Libi begins spewing information -- information he could not possibly have. He tells his interrogators that al-Qaeda terrorists received training in chemical weapons usage from Iraqi intelligence officials. The Defense Intelligence Agency warns that al-Libi is most likely giving his interrogators what they want to hear to avoid further torture; however, the DIA warnings are ignored. Bush will use al-Libi's information to claim, repeatedly and without further basis, that the CIA has proof of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Later, al-Libi will recant his claims.
Al-Libi, whose real name is Ali Abdul Aziz al-Fakhiri, is a Libyan engineer who had spent considerable time in Syria before going to Afghanistan and, according to US officials, making bombs for al-Qaeda. He had been in charge of al-Qaeda's training camp in Khalden, preparing hundreds of fighters to wage jihad on the West. FBI agent Russell Fincher had begun bonding with al-Libi, a devout Muslim, by praying with him, talking about faith and God, Jesus and Mohammed, and slowly winning his trust. Fincher has a simple method of interrogation: treat your captives with respect, and they will reward you, eventually, with accurate information. Al-Libi began opening up to Fincher and an FBI colleague, revealing two names of intense interest: Zacarias Moussaoui, the would-be 9/11 pilot arrested just days before 9/11, and Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber arrested in Boston after failing to ignite his bomb aboard a transatlantic flight. The Justice Department is preparing cases against both men, and al-Libi's testimony might be useful in their prosecutions. "He was giving us good information," recalls FBI agent Jack Cloonan, Fincher's boss. When Fincher questioned al-Libi about the connections between al-Qaeda and foreign governments, al-Libi is forthcoming -- and never mentions anything about Saddam Hussein or Iraq. Al-Libi's statements are consistent with everything else the FBI is learning. Al-Qaeda is quite cozy with government officials in nations like Pakistan and the Sudan, but all the al-Qaeda captives, including al-Libi, deny any ties to Iraq. "It was always, 'No, no, no,'" recalls Cloonan. Cloonan, Fincher, and the FBI believe al-Libi is a potential gold mine of information.
But the CIA has a different take. They believe al-Libi is lying about al-Qaeda's connections with Iraq, and want him for themselves. The CIA is jealous of the FBI's possession of al-Libi, and, after Tenet raises the issue with White House officials, forces the FBI to hand him over to their own agents. In large part, the reason is personalities: Tenet has worked hard to bond with Bush, and the FBI's director, Robert Mueller, has a much more formal relationship with the backslapping president. "We didn't have the political juice with [Bush]," a senior FBI official recalls. "It was the agency [CIA] that ruled the roost." Fincher, disgusted by the CIA agents' crude threats to al-Libi, could only watch as the agents duct-taped him to a stretcher and loaded him into a pickup truck. "The f*cking guy just disappeared," recalls another FBI agent. "We were pissed." Al-Libi is "rendered" to Egypt, where detainees are, according to the State Department's 2001 report on human rights violations in that country, suspended from ceilings with rope and wire; beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, and other objects; subjected to electrical shock; and waterboarded. The CIA, of course, says nothing untoward or inhumane is done to al-Libi while the terrorist is in Egyptian custody. But Cloonan recalls finding out years later that al-Libi was indeed tortured, even buried alive and dug up just before he could suffocate.
Not surprisingly, after two weeks of intensive torture, al-Libi tells the Egyptians what they -- and the CIA --wants to hear. Yes, Osama bin Laden had sent al-Qaeda operatives to Iraq for training in chemical and biological weapons. These reports go directly to the White House, where senior CIA officials and White House officials take serious note. Here was far more than the usual conspiracy theories from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and their mentor in extremism, Laurie Mylroie -- here was an al-Qaeda commander saying that al-Qaeda operatives are being trained by Iraqis working for Saddam Hussein. But, as noted above, DIA analysts are skeptical of al-Libi's claims from the outset. Al-Libi has "specific details on the Iraqis involved," what materials are involved in the training, or where the training occurred. While it is possible al-Libi is deliberately deceiving his interrogators, or he simply doesn't know anything more, the DIA concludes, it is more likely that al-Libi is merely parroting whatever his interrogators want to hear. This is exactly why the FBI is so set against the use of torture: it is patently unreliable. Moreover, the DIA notes, "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. ...Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control." Why would Hussein give cherished WMD information to a group that owes no allegiance to him? And why to al-Qaeda, when bin Laden has been railing for five years about the "apostate" Iraqi regime and calling for its overthrow? "I never thought Saddam was crazy," recalls Michael Scheuer, a CIA analyst who once headed the bin Laden unit. "He was never going to give those guys weapons -- because al-Qaeda would have been just as likely to use them against him as they would against the United States. They hated Saddam."
After the invasion of Iraq, al-Libi would again be turned over, briefly, to the FBI, where he tells Fincher that what he told the FBI agent was true -- and what he told the CIA and the Egyptians was garbage. "They were killing me," al-Libi tells Fincher. "I had to tell them something." (Mother Jones, James Risen, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
November: The Department of Justice begins sweeping the country for so-called "terror suspects,"
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
arresting and detaining hundreds without charge or benefit of counsel. In many instances, the families are never contacted, and have no way of contacting their family members. The sweeps are done on a closed basis, with no information provided to the press; many of the detainees are never charged, but held on an indefinite basis as "material witnesses." Many of these detainees are still in custody. (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader, Human Rights Watch)
November: By order of the Justice Department,
Attack on civil liberties
dozens of online informational Web sites are shut down as a precaution against terrorists compiling information. Some of the sites include information for communities warning against the hazards of potential risks or accidents at local chemical and hazardous materials plants; online maps used by first responders such as police and fire departments; and academic studies warning of the dangers posed by nuclear power plants. (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader)
November: Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney attempts to question the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11.
Conservative smear campaigns
In April 2002, she will call for an investigation into whether Bush and other government officials may have been warned of the 9/11 attacks. Instead of answers, she is roundly attacked by both Democrats and Republicans as "a traitor, a freak, a conspiracy nut and 'a looney' -- the latter by her state's Democratic senator...." Charges that she is accusing the administration of being complicit in the attacks, which she never said, are leveled against her. McKinney loses her bid for re-election. (Greg Palast, CCR)
November: Defense advisor Richard Perle becomes the managing partner in a new investment firm called Trireme;
Military-industrial complex
its primary goal is investing in companies providing goods and services for homeland security. Other board members include Henry Kissinger and Perle's close associate and friend Gerald Hillman. The firm retains Arab arms dealer and investor Adnan Khashoggi to help secure lucrative contracts with Saudi Arabia. (Perle and his cohorts are vocal critics of Saudi Arabia, which they consider a prime supporter of anti-American terrorism, but apparently their criticism of the Saudis doesn't interfere with their efforts to profit from the Sauds.) More about Perle, Hillman, Khashoggi, and Trireme can be found elsewhere in this site. (Seymour Hersh)
November: A self-styled academic watchdog group called the American Council for Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
"Culture Wars"
issues a report entitled "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It." The report contends that "college and university faculty have been the weak link" in the nation's response to the 9/11 attacks, and contends that America's educational institutions are bent on teaching a "pervasive moral relativism" which endorses the notion that Western civilization is "the primary source of the world's ills." The thrust of the report is that the entire American academic community is permeated by terrorist-supporting traitors. "We learn from history that when a nation's intellectuals are unwilling to defend its civilization, they give comfort to its adversaries." As "proof," it lists 117 alleged instances of unpatriotic statements that were made after the attacks, with the names of the perpetrators listed.
Unfortunately, the report, like so many of its ilk, is proven to be built on lies and twisted facts. Many of the quotes are either flatly wrong or so mild as to merit wonderment as to how they could be construed as controversial. One example is a quote from former US ambassador Strobe Talbott, now a Yale University professor, who said, "It is from the desperate, angry and bereaved that these suicide pilots come." Talbott indeed said this, but the context of his quote proves that Talbott is merely addressing the origins of the 9/11 bombers, not trying to justify their attacks on American citizens. One co-founder of ACTA, Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, demands that his name be removed from the organization's Web site, and the report comes under heavy fire as attempting to perpetuate an academic blacklist. But the American Enterprise Institute's Lynne Cheney, the wife of the vice president and the former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, enthusiastically welcomes the report. She lauds ACTA for speaking "out forcefully in favor of well-rounded general education." Cheney's endorsement notwithstanding, ACTA withers under the criticism, and pulls the report after only a week. It subsequently re-releases the report, but with the names of the "traitors" removed. Shortly thereafter, the report disappears entirely.
What most people don't know is that Lynne Cheney co-founded ACTA, originally called the National Alumni Foundation, as a vehicle to attack the national history standards released by the NEH shortly after her tenure as chairman (see the 1994 and pages of this site for more information). ACTA's two leaders and the author of the 2001 report, Jerry Martin and Anne Neal, had been part of Cheney's "fifth-floor mafia" at NEH. The money for ACTA was provided by two reliable right-wing groups, the Bradley and Olin foundations. The ACTA report is the latest broadside in Cheney's "culture wars," only now Cheney is operating from behind the scenes.
Rumors begin circulating that Cheney is surreptitiously running the NEH. One of Cheney's "culture war" allies, Brent Cole, is Bush's selection to run the NEH; Cole, a conservative who ran the National Council on the Humanities under the elder Bush, chooses Cheney's confidantes, Lynne Munson, as his deputy. And the practice of blocking "controversial" grant proposals that do not match a right-wing purity test, the practice under Cheney at the NEH but which had stopped during the Clinton adminstration, is once again in place. "It's pretty obvious that she's running the agency," says William Ferris, a history professor who headed the NEH from 1997 to 2001, in 2004. (Both Cheneys attend Cole's swearing-in ceremony in December 2001, which sends a strong message to NEH staffers.) Lynne Cheney's photograph is featured prominently on the agency's Web site, and she is often by Cole's side for important announcements. According to Salon reporter Mary Jacoby, "[C]onservatives view the agency as a useful tool for propagating the kind of uplifting and generally uncritical version of American history they believe necessary for national greatness, as Cheney explained in a CNN interview last year: 'American history that's taught in as positive and upbeat a way as our national story deserves.'" Another crony of Cheney's from the NEH, Celeste Colgan, who left the agency in 1992 to work with Dick Cheney at Halliburton, is back, and is widely regarded as Cheney's "eyes and ears" there. Cheney and Munson are also active in a conservative anti-feminist group called the Independent Women's Forum, funded by right-wng billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. "It's amazing how cozy these people are," says former NEH program director Bruce Robinson.
The agency's phone lines are monitored to catch and punish staffers who dare talk to reporters, according to former NEH program officer Angela Iovino. The NEH inspector general opens an investigation of a former assistant chairman of the agency, Julia Bondanella, after she was quoted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article discussing the return of Cheney-era "flagging" of proposals for rejection that don't adhere to conservative orthodoxy. Bondanella, as of 2004, is mired in an expensive legal battle with the agency. And many Clinton-era appointees to the oversight board have either been reassigned to meaningless desk work or so harassed that they quit in anger. Jacoby reports "that it is now easier for reporters to ring up officials at the Central Intelligence Agency to chat about Osama bin Laden than ask a staffer at the endowment why a project on, say, ethnic Chinese in Cuba didn't get funded." "People are scared and intimidated," says Ferris. "What's happening there now is completely contrary to the values the endowment is meant to promote." But, as Cole says, the humanities "are part of our homeland defense."
One popular project from the NEH is a well-regarded American history education program called "We the People," designed, as Jacoby reports, "to raise the abysmal level of knowledge among students, who studies indicate often can't identify who the United States fought in World War II, what the term 'Reconstruction' refers to, or even name the three branches of government." The program is successful and has earned praise from history teachers around the country. But, Jacoby observes, "there is a tilt to the presentation that many scholars find troubling." History professor Eric Foner, a longtime Cheney critic, says, "I strongly support their effort to promote the better teaching of history at the high school level. But the danger is that this 'We the People' thing could become a merely celebratory history. We don't need to teach history that smashes America. But if you put forward a version of American history that it began perfect and has been getting better ever since, you're not equipping students to think critically." Cheney, Foner says, "always saw history in terms of generating a kind of patriotism for the country."
Cheney's influence is also felt at the Department of Education, which she has long wanted to chair. In October 2004, the department will destroy over 300,000 copies of a history homeschooling guide. (Homeschoolers are a key GOP constituency.) The department confirms that it destroyed the guides after being contacted by Lynne Cheney, merely because the pamphlets mentioned the objectionable national history standards Cheney has railed against since 1994 (and which she helped create). Education Secretary Rod Paige ignores requests for information as to the cost of printing, then destroying, the pamphlets, and the issue dies a quiet death. (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Salon)
November:
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
In a speech, conservative columnist Ann Coulter says, "A cruise missile is more important than Head Start." (Intervention Magazine)
November 1: Bush signs Executive Order 13233, which limits public access to papers of all presidents since 1980.
Secrecy of Bush administration
A 1978 law known as the Presidential Records Act provides for the release of presidential papers 12 years after the president leaves office, so Reagan's papers would have been released next year. Reagan issued an order in 1989 that called for disclosure of most of his official papers 12 years after he left office (the papers should have become available on January 20 of this year), but under the new executive order the papers can be kept secret even if the president in question wants them released. Bush Jr.'s father was Vice President during the Reagan administration. Observers note that now Bush's papers detailing the decision-making process in the war on terrorism can now remain secret forever; the order reverses the law, which provided that all documents must be released by the national archivist "as rapidly and completely as possible," while the new order maintains that they remain secret unless a specific party can prove to the administration's satisfaction that they have "a demonstrated, specific need" for the papers -- a difficult, "Catch-22" task, considering the party cannot see the documents in question until they are released. Reagan's papers were due to be released the day of Bush's inauguration, but White House counsel Alberto Gonzales blocked their release. In March 2001, Bush signed a temporary orders delaying the release of these papers for 90 days, and then signed for another 90 day delay before signing this order making the change permanent. The order follows Bush's earlier decision to ship his gubernatorial records to his father's presidential library at Texas A&M, where they became inaccessible (the Texas A&M administration immediately decided that Texas's Public Information Act didn't apply to them, and threatened any university employee with termination if they said or wrote anything that, in their words, could "cause embarrassment to the Bush family.") Ironically, the order is actually written by Brett Kavanaugh, a White House lawyer who formerly worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Starr and Kavanaugh fought against the Clinton efforts to invoke a "deliberative process" privilege to keep information from being released in the Whitewater investigation; Kavanugh's order enshrines the same privilege he fought while a member of Starr's team in an executive order. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales insists that the order actually makes more information available to the public, a tremendous lie. (In the spring of 2002, much, but not all, of the Reagan documents in question will be released.) (CCR, Nation, Kevin Phillips, Paul Waldman, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
November 1: Former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg publishes Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News,
Conservative media slant
a tome purporting to expose the "liberal bias" of CBS News in general and anchor/managing editor Dan Rather in particular. Goldberg's evidence for his case is shoddily researched and easily disproven, though conservatives embrace his book as "proof" of the liberal bias of the news media that they have insisted exists for the last twenty years or more. Central to Goldberg's contention is his assertion that the news media routinely identify conservatives as right-wing proponents, while routinely cloaking the allegiances of liberals. Empirical research proves the exact opposite: the average liberal is 30% more likely to be identified as a liberal than is his conservative counterpart. Congressman Barney Frank, the gay Democrat from southern Boston, was called a liberal more than twice as frequently as Representative Dick Armey was labeled a conservative. Goldberg also insists that conservative celebrities such as Tom Selleck and Bruce Willis are far more likely to be labeled for their beliefs than left-wing celebs such as Barbra Streisand or Rob Reiner; again, research proves the exact opposite, with Streisand and Reiner identified as liberals four times more than Selleck or Willis were labeled as conservatives. The Stanford professor who performs the research, Geoffrey Nunberg, also notes that, in the top twenty American newspapers that he researched, "the word 'media' appears within seven words of 'liberal bias' 469 times and within seven words of 'conservative bias' just 17 times -- a twenty-seven fold discrepancy. Now there's a difference that truly deserves to be called staggering.... Certainly critics on the left haven't been silent about what they take to be conservative bias in the media, whether in the pages of political reviews or in dozens of recent books. But the press has given their charges virtually no attention, while giving huge play to complaints from the right about liberal bias." Joe Conason writes, "Those numbers show that the media are slanted in favor of critics like Goldberg, which helps explain why his book sold so well despite its intellectual vacuity." (Joe Conason)

Influential American media reports of Hussein's involvement in 9/11 based on fraudulent information from an imposter

November 6: PBS and the New York Times collaborate on presenting stunning information from Iraqi defectors and others about an Iraqi training facility in the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq
The two defectors, who claim to be a lieutenant general and a captain, respectively, from Hussein's army, describe in vivid terms the activities at Salman Pak -- training pilots for suicide missions very similar to those of 9/11, using a real but grounded Boeing 747 in their training. PBS will make a hard-hitting segment of its signature show Frontline from the interviews titled "Gunning for Saddam," bolstered by commentary and analysis supplied by a number of administration officials and right-wing commentators, including former CIA director and leading neoconservative James Woolsey, former Defense Board member Richard Perle, former Bush I secretary of state James Baker, former UNSCOM commission chairman Richard Butler, former Bush I national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, neoconservative author Laurie Mylroie (who has been labeled a "crackpot" for her wild, unsubstantiated theories that Hussein is behind virtually all of the Islamic terrorist threats currently in existence, but is given great credence by the PBS report), and others. Scowcroft and Baker advocate dealing with Hussein separately from al-Qaeda, and state that they believe al-Qaeda and bin Laden are far bigger threats to America's safety. Woolsey, Perle, Butler, and Mylroie insist that dealing with Hussein and al-Qaeda are one and the same. No other viewpoints are welcome on the segment, except for a short denial by Hussein's ambassador to the US.
For its part, the Times will produce a shocking front-page story on November 8 that trumpet the allegations of an Iraqi terrorist training camp, and repeats the general's assertion that "We were training these [40 foreign nationals, presumably Islamic militants] to attack installations important to the United States. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States." The general also claims that a German scientist is helping Iraqi scientists at Salman Pak create biological weapons. The article and the subsequent Frontline show have a tremendous effect on the American people. The mainstream media seizes on the allegations and repeat them on network news analyses, cable and radio talk shows, Internet blogs, the works; other newspapers such as the Washington Post do their own follow-up articles, some featuring more interviews with Iraqi defector Sabah Khodada, the former Iraqi captain. Administration officials such as Condoleezza Rice use the article's allegations to bolster their own arguments for war with Iraq. The allegations appear as part of Bush's September 12, 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly. The story, along with the tale of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague before the attacks, helps cement the idea that Iraq and Hussein are at least partly responsible for the attacks.
There is only one problem with this story. It is a complete and total fraud.
The man who passed himself off as the shadowy Iraqi lieutenant general, who privately identified himself as General Jamal al-Ghurairy of the Iraqi military, is in actuality a former Iraqi sergeant living in Turkey and code-named Abu Zainab. The real General Ghurairy has never left Iraq. The meeting between "Ghurairy" and the Times and PBS reporters was set up by former 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, currently heading a post-9/11 investigation by the two media outlets. Bergman's source? Lebanese con man and Iraqi National Congress head Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi became a source for Bergman in 1991, when the Rendon Group, a public relations firm closely tied to both Bush administrations and the firm responsible for orchestrating much of Desert Storm, created the INC and named Chalabi, then an infamous financier on the run from a Jordanian prison sentence, to head the new organization. The INC was then awarded millions of CIA dollars to set up a large network of defectors and exiles, who, in addition to providing intelligence to the CIA, were charged with disseminating anti-Saddam propaganda in Iraq and to the Western media. With the help of Rendon, the INC began placing stories in the British press about Saddam's atrocities. The aim was for the stories to then be picked up by the American media, thereby bypassing US laws that prevented government funding of domestic propaganda. The CIA knew that the intelligence coming from the INC was shoddy and unreliable at best, to the point that it withdrew funding in 1996, but by that point Chalabi had his supporters in the Pentagon and among the large, powerful network of neoconservatives working to retake power in 2000. "The quality [of the INC's intelligence] was very bad," says Robert Baer, the former CIA base chief in northern Iraq. "There was a feeling that Chalabi was prepping defectors. We had no systematic way to vet the information, but it was obvious most of it was cooked."
In 1998 the Republican-led Congress passed the Iraqi Liberation Act, partially in order to strengthen the INC's role in building up a push for war among America's lawmakers, media mavens, and citizenry. The State Department adopted the INC, awarding it over $17 million to disseminate tales to the media about Hussein's atrocities against his people. (It is ironic that we can't be sure what Hussein, one of the century's worst autocrats, actually did or didn't do to the people he ruled with an iron fist due to the INC's incessant propaganda and lies.) Aras Habib was Chalabi's liason to the press, and set up dozens of interviews with Iraq defectors and reporters. (In 2004 both Chalabi and Habib will be outed as Iranian intelligence operatives; Chalabi, who will continue to enjoy the support of some American neocons, will continue to wield enormous power in post-invasion Iraq, while Habib will be forced to flee to Iran.) Working beneath Habib were Mohammed al-Zubaidi and Abu Saud, who together ran a network of up to 100 informers and agents. Their task was to troll the large Iraqi exile communities in Damascus and Amman for those who would trade information in return for the INC's help in obtaining asylum in the West. Zubaidi, a former officer in Hussein's intelligence agency, moved to Damascus in the early '80s and later to Kuwait. By 1998, Zubaidi had been brought into the orbit of the INC while maintaining contacts with the Syrian regime. He began grooming defectors to speak to US government officials and the press. Some defectors had real information; for those, Zubaidi merely coached them on how to best present their stories. Others had little real information, and Zubaidi elaborated and expanded their stories for a better impact with the credulous press. But many knew nothing at all; for them, Zubaidi concocted stories out of whole cloth and drilled them until they could present a convincing tale to reporters.
Zubaidi's first post-9/11 task was to shock the American press with a story that directly tied Hussein to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He chose to use "Abu Zainab," a former sergeant in the Iraqi military living in Turkey. Zainab's military experience was critical to Zubaidi's plan. With Zubaidi in Beirut, he rehearsed his new identity as "General Ghurairy" before returning to Turkey to confer with American and Turkish intelligence officials, passing himself off as the Iraqi general. Though he had never served with the elite Iraqi Fedayeen, his 17 years of service in the Iraqi army helped him sound "convincing with a little training," according to a former colleague of Zubaidi. "It was the perfect hoax. The man was a born liar and knew enough about the military to get by, whilst Saddam's regime could hardly produce the real Ghurairy without revealing at least some of the truth of the story." The truth, which Hussein was loath to reveal, was that Iraqi special forces were being trained in hostages and anti-hijacking scenarios. The training had nothing to do with al-Qaeda operations, as the Times story alleged.
In 2004, Zubaidi, by then having departed the INC, will admit the lies he told, though he will fail to reveal himself as an imposter; former INC colleagues will denouce him as a lunatic. PBS identifies the real Abu Zeinab as a former Pakistani intelligence officer who confirms that the man who impersonated Ghurairy had used his identity; he also confirms that the entire Salman Pak story is a hoax. PBS bolsters its story with an interview with Khidir Hamza, a former Iraqi nuclear physicist who tells a sordid tale of Iraq's renewed nuclear arms program; Hamza will later be thoroughly discredited and, as of 2006, refuses to discuss the lies he told about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. As for General Ghurairy himself, he will grudgingly give an interview in October 2005 where he denounces Zubaidi and angrily affirms that he never spoke to any Western journalists. He also confirms that the Salman Pak training facility had nothing to do with terrorist hijacking training, but was strictly for training Iraqi special forces in dealing with hostage and anti-hijacking scenarios, statements which will be confirmed by a large number of other Iraqi ex-military officers.
In testimony to Congress, INC officials will confirm that between October 2001 and May 2002, they planted at least 108 stories in the American and British press, many of them completely fraudulent. As for the American media, it has been reluctant to admit that it was hoodwinked. The Times has grudgingly admitted that the story it reported from the false Ghurairy "has never been independently verified." The Web site for the PBS Frontline story has been amended several times to acknowledge some of the questions surrounding the veracity of the defectors.
Times reporter Chris Hedges, who interviewed the false Ghurairy, admits now that he was misled by Chalabi, Bergman, and others, such as his fellow reporter Judith Miller. He remembers asking himself during the interview, "Is this man who he says he is? Even though this was Lowell's show, I asked myself the question." Ultimately Hedges was convinced by the imposter's range of knowledge and Bergman's considerable reputation: "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it." Hedges says he later refused to write stories based on other defectors' tales brought to his attention by Bergman, and says he never believed the stories about Atta's meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, another tale trotted out by a Chalabi defector. Chalabi has proved himself to be deeply untrustworthy, says Hedges in 2006. "He's a sleazy guy who I was not comfortable working around, but there was nothing right after 9/11 to indicate he was an outright liar." Bergman refuses to admit complete fraud, though he acknowledges that in 2001 the only outlet for anti-Saddam information was Chalabi. "You've got to remember that back then there really was only one show in town, and that was Chalabi's," he says in 2006. "If you were doing a story on Saddam's Iraq, you would speak to the Iraqi government, the White House, and the INC." He says he tried to verify the general's bona fides with former CIA director James Woolsey, a Chalabi supporter who had taken an interest in the defector's story. In an interview done with Woolsey for PBS, Bergman notes that the CIA had "shown almost no interest in" the general's story. He will later recall that Woolsey told him that the FBI had met with the general in Ankara. Bergman says he was aware that Chalabi was perceived as a bad actor by the CIA and that INC stories took a very definite angle. "Chalabi was dangerous goods in the sense you know he's advocating war. But that label is up-front. I think Chalabi is given too much credit for influencing the march to war." Bergman is being self-defensive and specious.
Even in 2006, many Republicans continue to cite Chalabi-based information, including the interviews with "Ghurairy" and others, to support their continued contention that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, a premise that has been proven time and again to be wrong. Chalabi will win a key role in the Shi'ite-led government by playing both sides against the middle, wooing Bush administration neocons while publicly denouncing Bush and the occupation from his post in Baghdad. In 2004, Chalabil will be more revealing: "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants. We are heroes in error." (PBS, Mother Jones)
November 8: Enron discloses that it overstated earnings dating back to 1997 by at least $600 million.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
A company e-mail sent today reads in part, "President Bush cannot talk about Dabhol as was previously mentioned." The e-mail also directs Bush economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey, who is a former consultant to Enron, to not discuss Dabhol. Enron, who along with the Bush administration was trying to strong-arm India into buying the Dabhol plant, abandons its attempts to sell the plant. Enron will file for bankruptcy in December. Bush had intended to press Enron's case over the Dabhol power plant with India's foreign minister, but after Enron's disclosure, removes the item from his agenda. (Albion Monitor/AlterNet, David Corn)

"Do you have blacks, too?" George W. Bush, to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Nov. 8, 2001 (Brazil has one of the largest populations of African descent in the Western Hemisphere.)

November 9: The Taliban abandon the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, allowing the Northern Alliance to take control.
War in Afghanistan
Many local warlords and militias abruptly shift their alliances from the Taliban to the Alliance after the fall of the city. The rest of Northern Afghanistan is abandoned by the Taliban in the next few days, except the city of Kunduz, to which most of the Taliban flee. Kunduz falls on November 25, but not before most of the thousands of fighters there are airlifted out. In the following months and years to come, the Taliban will regroup in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and will draw thousands of new recruits, mainly from the more hardline madrassahs, or religious schools, in the region. (CCR, Wikipedia)
November 9: Attorney John Ashcroft takes time out of his busy schedule of locating terrorists and securing America's borders to reverse a decision by his predecessor Janet Reno.
Medical research and funding
That decision was to refrain from intervening in states' decisions to allow doctors to end a terminally end patient's life upon request. Ashcroft's decision isn't based in any change in the law, but on a dubious legal opinion from Justice Department lawyers that, in turn, is based on a Supreme Court decision revolving around the case of a doctor who was, in effect, acting as a drug dealer -- in other words, using a completely inapplicable case upon which to base a decision to abrogate the rights of the states. Another basis for the decision is a 1984 amendment to the Controlled Substances Act which allows the attorney general to revoke a doctor's medical license for acts contrary to the "public interest." The amendment was written to combat drug abuse, and had nothing to do with physician-assisted suicide; additionally, in Peter Singer's words, "[t]he Justice Department assumes that decisions about what is or is not in the 'public interest' cannot be left to the states, but must be decided in Washington, and is better decided by a single, unelected official -- the attorney general -- than by the voters or by the legislature. This is in direct opposition to the view of the US Supreme Court, which specifically upheld the states' role in the area of physician-assisted suicide in its 1997 decision, Washington v. Glucksberg. Ashcroft was, as an amicus brief filed by a number of bioethicists and lawyers against the attorney general put it, 'hijacking an unrelated statute in order to capture new powers for the federal government.'"
Oregon's governor, John Kitzhaber, calls Ashcroft's ruling a "slap in the face to Oregonians" and "an unprecedented federal intrusion on Oregon's ability to regulate the practice of medicine," A district court judge soon rules that Ashcroft's Justice Department "overstepped its authority" in attempting to nullify Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. Judge Robert Jones rules that the federal government is not authorized to "act as a national medical board" and regulate how doctors treat patients. The decision is under appeal. (Peter Singer)
November 10 - on: The Taliban flees Afghanistan, leaving the country in anarchy and chaos
War in Afghanistan
(though Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters will continue to resist American forces well into 2007 and beyond). Documents are found in abandoned Taliban facilities that show bin Laden's group is trying to develop nuclear weapons. The search for bin Laden continues after the Taliban abandons the fight, but he is never located. He is presumed to have fled first to Pakistan; his whereabouts afterwards are less certain. The US begins to work with the ragged Northern Alliance to reform an Afghani government, but tribal rivalries, chronic defections, and lack of cooperation between rival groups within the alliance make the formation of a legitimate government difficult. As of summer 2003, most of Afghanistan is still in anarchy. Various areas of the country are controlled by rival factions within the putative alliance, by factions of the Taliban, or are under no control at all except for local warlords and strongmen. Hamid Karzai, the US-backed "prime minister" of Afghanistan, in actuality controls the region around the capital city of Kabul and little else. (CCR)
November 10:
9/11 attacks
Bush tells the United Nations General Assembly, "We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty." (United Nations/Killtown)

Investigation proves Florida recounts would have given election to Gore; media misrepresents findings

November 12: In one of the most appalling performances by the national media to date,
Conservative media slant
the nation's media outlets report on the lengthy investigation by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago into the Florida elections of 2000. According to the headlines from newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others, the NORC report declares that Bush would have been the winner of the recounts under almost any scenario. Newsday is one of the few major news outlets to report the study as "inconclusive." The same tale is echoed on television. In reality, of the 44 scenarios studied by NORC, covering eleven different scenarios producing four sets of results based on different standards of agreement between the coders examining the ballots, the results are even: 22 scenarios favor Bush, and 22 favor Gore. Most of the scenarios favoring Bush come from instances where undervotes would be counted but not overvotes. The NORC report is also clear that, if all the disputed votes in Florida were counted, Gore would have been the winner. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Florida Supreme Court justice Terry Lewis, who would have overseen the recount had the US Supreme Court allowed it to proceed, would have allowed both undervotes and overvotes to be counted. "Logically," says Lewis, "if you can look at a ballot and see, this is a vote for Bush or a vote for Gore, then you would have to count it." The fact that Gore would have won under these conditions is actually contained in many news stories, but buried deep in the columns; meanwhile, the headlines and opening paragraphs flatly contradict the NORC report. (Paul Waldman)
November 13:
War in Afghanistan
Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, falls to the Northern Alliance. The Taliban abandon the rest of the country over the next few weeks. As the New Yorker reports, "The initial American aim in Afghanistan had been not to eliminate the Taliban's presence there entirely but to undermine the regime and al-Qaeda while leaving intact so-called moderate Taliban elements that would play a role in a new postwar government. This would insure that Pakistan would not end up with a regime on its border dominated by the Northern Alliance." The surprisingly quick fall of Kabul ruins this plan. (CCR)
November 13: Bush issues an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals to try non-citizens alleged to be involved in international terrorism.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
The president will decide which defendants will be tried by military tribunals. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld will appoint each panel and set its rules and procedures, including the level of proof needed for a conviction. There is no provision for an appeal to US civil courts or international tribunals. Only the president or the secretary of defense has the authority to overturn a decision. Such military tribunals were in the Civil War and again in World War II. But experts say that while there is precedent, aspects of the order are probably unconstitutional. The New York Times writes, "There is still no practical or legal justification for having the tribunals." The tribunals "still constitute a separate, inferior system of justice, shielded from independent judicial review." A year after the order is issued, the Washington Post confirms that "the Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- US citizens and non-citizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system." The order remands to a military tribunal any foreign national about whom he has "reason to believe" a "rumor of cohabitation with a terrorist organization, a nihilist author, or an anarchist idea," in the words of Lewis Lapham. Bush concedes that the order sets aside "the principles of law and the rules of evidence." (CCR, Lewis Lapham)
November 13:
War in Afghanistan
US warplanes drop two 500-pound bombs on the al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul, destroying it utterly. The media outlet had previously informed the military of the exact location of their building in the hopes that it would not be targeted. The US defends the destruction of the news building by saying it is "a known al-Qaeda facility." While al-Jazeera is by no means an American-friendly media outlet, it is not allied with al-Qaeda or any known terrorist organizations. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
November 14 - 25: After weeks of fighting,
War in Afghanistan
Northern Alliance forces, supported by US troops and air assaults, take the town of Kunduz, occupied by hundreds of Taliban forces fleeing the assault. The Taliban forces attempt to negotiate surrender terms, as is standard practice among Afghani tribes, but the Bush administration heatedly opposes any surrender terms, and insist that the town be taken and the Taliban forces eradicated. Over 4000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are forced to surrender. On November 26, Bush brags to the media, "We're smoking them out. They're running, and now we're bringing them to justice." Bush's dramatic announcement is undermined by reports that Pakistani aircraft flew into Kunduz to evacuate Pakistanis trapped there; Defense Secretary Rumsfeld falsely claimed a week earlier that any rescue aircraft spotted by US or Northern Alliance troops would be shot down. After the siege of Kunduz ends, General Richard Myers says that it would have been almost impossible for any aircraft to land due to damage to the runways. The Pakistani government also insists that no Pakistani troops were in Kunduz and that reports of a Pakistani airlift were "total rubbish. Hogwash." It is later proven that Pakistani aircraft indeed flew Pakistanis to safety, with the approval of the Bush administration. The supposedly controlled evacuation got out of control, and an unknown number of Taliban and al-Qaeda members escaped with the Pakistanis. "Dirt got through the screen," says a senior intelligence official.
Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf convinced Bush officials that the airlift was necessary because the humiliation of losing hundreds, possibly thousands, of Pakistani Army soldiers and ISI intelligence operatives would have threatened his political survival. The decision to allow the airlift was made at the highest levels of the White House. The airlift became chaotic: "Everyone brought their friends with them," says a senior US defense advisor, referring to the Afghanis who had been trained by the Pakistani ISI agents. In addition, the Pakistani government assists 50 truckloads of foreign fighters to escape the area. Many US intelligence officials believe that a large number of ISI agents are Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers, and have worked effectively to help senior al-Qaeda leaders such as Osama bin Laden and others escape the American net. The problem is that the CIA has virtually no field agents who speak fluent Pashto, the language of the region, and are forced to rely on ISI agents to communicate its offers of defection to Taliban and al-Qaeda targets. "It's like using the Gottis to translate a conversation with the Lucheses," says a former CIA analyst. Another intelligence official says the situation is "madness," and adds, "Our biggest mistake is allowing the ISI to be our eyes and ears." Many of those airlifted out were senior Taliban leaders that Musharraf hopes to play a role in a future Afghani government.
"Musharraf wanted to have these people to put another card on the table," says the analyst. "We were supposed to have access to them, but it didn't happen." India's intelligence service, RAW, which has excellent sources in the Northern Alliance, estimates that 5000 Pakistanis and Taliban were airlifted out of Kunduz, including two Pakistani generals and an unknown number of al-Qaeda. The Bush administration did more than simply acquiesce to the airlift; according to a CIA analyst and a former Delta Force analyst, the administration ordered the US military to set up a secure air corridor to help ensure the safety of the Pakistani airlift from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan. Not only are the Delta Force soldiers involved in the siege deeply frustrated by the airlift, but so are the Northern Alliance leaders, who have been trying for years to get the Americans to acknowledge the Pakistani element among the Taliban. According to Indian intelligence, airlifts grow particularly intense in the last three days before the city falls on November 25. Of the 8,000 remaining al-Qaeda, Pakistani, and Taliban, about 5,000 are airlifted out and 3,000 surrender. Journalist Seymour Hersh later claims that "maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations."
Of course, the entire event is denied by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Hersh tells CNN, "What's interesting is I asked Mr. Rumsfeld in a fax in the middle of the week to respond. I didn't get an answer. It seems to me that along with just this story about being -- what happened, and the government not being sort of straight with us about it, there's an amazing sense that they can pretty much get away with anything, I think. You know, we in the press are sort of in a dilemma here. There were press stories, as I wrote about it in the magazine, there were press accounts of rumors about this. The government denied it, as Mr. Rumsfeld just denied it. The same language, [in a sarcastic tone] 'Oh, my God, you know, I can't believe this is happening. There's no gambling on the premises.'"
In January 2002, Hersh tells CNN, "I'll tell you right now, it was a mess. It was embarrassing. We lost control of an evacuation. I don't know why we're not being straight about it. All this talk about I don't know, nobody has come forward to me. We control the air space. We saw everything that moved. No plane could fly from Konduz to Pakistan without getting shot down unless we let it happen, and we let it happen. And I think there's just no other way to explain it. ...You know, our war was so terrific, so quick, we attacked with such ferocity and such accuracy that we had the enemy on the run, and they all congregated at this little hill town call Konduz [spelled by other sources "Kunduz"]. And from there, all of a sudden one night around Thanksgiving, in the middle of the siege, an air corridor was set up between Konduz and northern Pakistan -- northwest Pakistan 200 miles away. And at night, planes regularly flew through that corridor, the no-fly zones more or less, and Pakistani relief planes. And so, that's how this whole thing began." (New Yorker/CRG, CNN, Seymour Hersh)
November 15: The recently reactivated Predator drone tracking system
Islamist terrorism
successfully identifies a high-level al-Qaeda meeting in Kabul, Afghanistan, and joins in an attack that kills bin Laden military chief Mohammed Atef. Atef is considered al-Qaeda's military commander, and one of its top leaders. He is apparently the only top level al-Qaeda or Taliban leader killed or captured in the Afghan war. (AP/RedNova)
November 15: Influential center-right columnist William Safire writes a scathing op-ed condemning the Bush administration's plans for seizing what Safire calls "dictatorial powers"
Attack on civil liberties
assumed by Bush: "Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens," he writes. "Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts. In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing 'the principles of law and the rules of evidence' that undergird America's system of justice. He seizes the power to circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals -- panels of officers who will sit in judgment of non-citizens who the president need only claim 'reason to believe' are members of terrorist organizations. Not content with his previous decision to permit police to eavesdrop on a suspect's conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien accused of even the limited rights afforded by a court-martial. His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules, find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no review by any civilian court. No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'" (New York Times/CommonDreams)
Mid-November: Ismail Khan, governor of Herat province and one of Afghanistan's most successful militia leaders,
War in Afghanistan
later claims that his troops and other Northern Alliance fighters held back at the request of the US from sweeping into Kandahar at this time. The reasoning was that the US didn't want the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance to conquer Pashtun areas. But Khan maintains "we could have captured all the Taliban and the al-Qaeda groups. We could have arrested Osama bin Laden with all of his supporters." British newspapers at the time report bin Laden is surrounded in a 30-mile area, but the conquest of Kandahar takes weeks without the Northern Alliance and bin Laden slips away. (CCR)
Mid-November: The CIA routinely pays local Afghan warlords millions of dollars to help the US fight Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
War in Afghanistan
In one example, the CIA pays a top officer of the Northern Alliance $1 million for him to commit his troops to a morning battle against the Taliban near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif. The warlord's troops are routed; the CIA pays him another million to regroup his forces and attack again that afternoon. (Seymour Hersh)

Tora Bora escape allows bin Laden to flee

November 16: Approximately 600 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escape Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.
War in Afghanistan
Many senior leaders are in the group. They had walked a long trek from bombing in the Tora Bora region. There are two main routes out of the Tora Bora cave complex to Pakistan. The US bombed only one route, so the 600 escaped unattacked using the other route. Hundreds continue to use the escape route for weeks, generally unbothered by US bombing or Pakistani border guards. US officials later privately admit they lost a golden opportunity to close a trap. On the same day, the media reports that the US is studying routes bin Laden might use to escape Tora Bora, but the one escape route isn't closed, and apparently bin Laden and others escape into Pakistan using this route weeks later. On April 17, 2002, the Washington Post will report that Bush officials knew without a doubt that bin Laden was trapped in Tora Bora, but chose not to send US troops in to hunt him down, and in effect allowed bin Laden to escape.
The US had the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces on the run, cornered in the White Mountains hard up against the Pakistani border. But defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to send enough troops to seal off the area, with US CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks under intense pressure from Rumsfeld to limit the number of troops deployed in the region, and, lacking the manpower needed to do the job themselves, Franks and the ground commanders are forced to rely on the forces of local Pashtun warlord Hazrat Ali. Ali's forces are joined by a small number of US Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officers, along with US airpower, but the combination isn't effective. Bin Laden escapes. Many CIA officials later come to believe that Ali allows bin Laden to escape into Pakistan. "We realized those guys just opened the door," recalls a CIA source. "It wasn't a big secret." Ali is later rewarded for his collusion with bin Laden when the US allows him to set himself up as the strongman of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.
In 2002, the US's attempts to flush out bin Laden and his cohorts from their South Waziristan hideaways are frustrated by their restrictive rules of engagement and by the Pakistanis, who so jealously guard their borders -- and their al-Qaeda guests -- that a series of tense confrontations and even firefights take place between US and Pakistani forces. Both sides have largely covered up these incidents. And CIA plans to set up a new Afghan intelligence service that can help find and capture or kill bin Laden come to naught when the Bush administration begins slashing funds and manpower for Afghanistan in favor of the Iraq war effort. The respite, in early 2002, is key to allow the depleted terrorist organization to regain its footing and recruit new members. The US had captured or killed about two-thirds of the operatives who had been running al-Qaeda during the time of the attacks, but instead of crushing it, the US allows al-Qaeda to regroup and once again become a power. "Here's what you have now, you don't get anything more," recalls a former senior NSC official. "No additional missions, no additional forces, no additional dollars." During one December 2002 meeting, when several key advisors, including George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz, raise concerns about the ease that al-Qaeda terrorists have in adding new recruits throughout the Islamic world, Bush waves off the concerns. "The president dismissed them," recalls one meeting participant, "saying that victory in Iraq would take care of that. After he said that, people just kind of sat down." (CCR, Frank Rich [PDF file], James Risen)
November 16: Vice President Dick Cheney warns that up to 50 other nations could be targeted for action by the United States in its war on terror, in actions ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to military invasion.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Cheney names no specific countries, but the list is known to include Iraq, Yemen, Indonesia, the Phillippines, Malaysia, and Somalia, the East African nation that has been in anarchy for over a decade and is known to be a haven for al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. Britain is known to be cool over the prospects of such grandiose interventions, with a Foreign Office source saying, "Thinking is going on about a second phase but no decision has been taken yet and we would never speculate on it." "There are a great many places round the world where there are cells of the al-Qaeda organization," Cheney tells a BBC outlet. "Maybe as many as 40 or 50. We're working with the services of other countries and other governments to try to wrap those organizations up." Months later, Bush will tell audiences that up to 60 nations may be targeted for American action. (Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus)
November 16: Bush names Melvin Sembler as the US ambassador to Italy. Sembler, a longtime Republican fundraiser and shopping-center developer who can't speak Italian, was the former ambassador to Australia under the elder Bush.
Partisan Bush appointees
Sembler is most noted for his horrendous history as the co-director, with his wife Betty, of a large private juvenile rehabilitation program called STRAIGHT, for 16 years before it was forcibly broken apart in 1993. The program, which operated in nine states, was brought down by an array of complaints of abuse of its inmates which spanned the range from enforced confinement and hunger to beatings and even rapes.
One former inmate, Samantha Monroe, now a travel agent in Pennsylvania, spoke in 2006 to talk show host Montel Williams about her struggle to overcome beatings, rape by a counselor, forced hunger, and the confinement to a janitor's closet in "humble pants" which contained weeks of her own urine, feces and menstrual blood. During this "timeout," she gnawed her cheek and spat blood at her overseers. "I refused to let them take my mind," she says of Sembler's program. The abuse took years to overcome. "It sticks inside you," she told Williams, "it eats at your soul." Monroe, then a 12-year old girl, was caught by a friend of her mother's with a mini-bar liquor bottle. At the advice of a STRAIGHT counselor, her mother tricked Monroe into accompanying her to the warehouse-like building that STRAIGHT maintained in her city. She was forcibly dragged inside, where, at an annual cost of $12,000, the program began working on Monroe. She began what the program called an atonement process, which includes all-day re-education rituals in which flapping the arms ("motivating") and chanting signaled submission to "staying straight." She was coerced, she says, into confessing to being a "druggie whore" who went down on truckers for drugs. "You're forced to confess crimes you never committed," she said. A Pennsylvania judge oversaw hearings in which dozens of witnesses stepped forward to reveal the abuses they suffered, which included rape, sexual abuse, beatings, and recalcitrant boys being called "f*ggots" while being stomped and spat upon.
Though the clinics were closed down and the organization bankrupted by a six-figure settlement, Sembler and his wife escaped punishment, possibly because of their long-time connections to the Bush family. As for STRAIGHT itself, it still operates under the new name of the Drug Free America Foundation (director Calvina Fay denies it's the same organization but the name change is listed in Florida corporate filings). DFAF receives large tax subsidies approved by Bush administration officials, and serves as a lobbyist for draconian narcotics policies and workplace drug testing. Its advisory board includes Florida governor Jeb Bush and his wife Columba, and Homeland Security Director of Public Safety Christy McCampbell. Worse, former overseers of Sembler's company are still running spin-off businesses that treat teens with the old methods. Kelly Caputo, an inmate from 1988, says today, "I don't think I will ever be the same. My every thought has been violated, confused, degraded and warped." "My best guess is that at least half of the kids were abused," says Dr. Arnold Trebach, a professor emeritus at American University who created the Drug Policy Foundation to find alternatives to harsh laws. He has singled out STRAIGHT in his book The Great Drug War as among drug warriors' worst mistakes.
STRAIGHT started out in 1976 from another program called The Seed, which was suspended by the US Senate during investigations that prompted one senator to call its tactics reminiscent of Communist POW camps. Fueled by the Reagan-era war on drugs, and endorsed by, among others, George H.W. Bush and Nancy Reagan, the program thrived under the Reagan and Bush presidencies. Sembler himself ran Bush's "Team 100" campaign contribution organization, and often dined with the Bushes, discussing his views on narcotics legislation and rehabilitation of teenagers. The program was praised by such luminaries as Princess Diana, and listed as one of the elder Bush's "thousand points of light." The reality was far darker. Teenagers were admitted at a cost of $12,000 each, often without any documented problems or other forms of intervention. Initially, inmates were forbidden to speak or go to the bathroom without a counselor literally holding on to their clothing; as they progressed through the program, they could earn back those privileges. Many of the STRAIGHT counselors had no training, but were former inmates who had graduated from the program and could now return the bullying, beatings, and abuse they themselves had endured onto other teenagers. Like The Seed, which in 1974 had had its federal funding cut off by Senator Sam Ervin, who said its techniques reminded him of those used by North Korean brainwashers, STRAIGHT eventually fell foul of congressional investigators who wanted to know why the government was funding such a program. Sembler, his wife, and other STRAIGHT officials shocked investigators by frankly admitting to their torture of inmates. "We've got nothing to hide -- we're saving lives," he said in 1977 after six directors quit over practices that included kicking a restrained youth. Sembler kept the Florida program open for four years through his relationship with a number of Florida Republican state senators even after a former counselor went public with stories of horrific abuse and torture of inmates in 1989. "While at the facility," wrote Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services Acting Inspector General Lowell Clary on May 19, 1993, "the team [of inspectors in 1989] received a phone call informing them that no matter what they found, STRAIGHT would receive their license." "If you do anything other than what I tell you on this issue, I will fire you on the spot," an HRS official was told.
In 1997, recalling how the ACLU was furious about STRAIGHT's practices, Sembler told Florida Trend Magazine -- "with a grin," the reporter wrote -- that "it just shows that we must have been doing things right."
After STRAIGHT was shut down during the first year of the Clinton administration, Sembler joined the Republican National Committee, becoming its highly successful finance chairman from 1997-2000 and helping to fund George W. Bush's own presidential campaign. Bush thanked Sembler during an interview on the Jim Lehrer Report in 2000, noting that Sembler had raised a record-breaking $21.3 million at a single dinner in April. Lehrer asked Bush what favors the money paid for, and Bush seemed startled that anyone would assume such: "I know there's this kind of sentiment now -- I heard it during the primaries...[that] if someone contributes to a person's campaign, there's this great sense of being beholden." An $83 million annex to the US Embassy in Rome is called the "Mel Sembler Building," after some pushing from longtime ally, Representative C.W. Young. During the 2006 opening ceremony of the building, George W. Bush turned to Young and asked, "We don't do that, do we? We don't name buildings for ambassadors where they have served." Young replied, "Mr. President, I introduced the bill and you signed it." Dr. Miller Norton, who had served as STRAIGHT's National Clinical Director and had suffered a $721,000 judgment for throwing one young girl into a wall, is now a participant in DFAF's national seminars; he goes under the moniker "Friar Cassian" and calls himself a priest in the non-Catholic Antiochian Orthodox church. Another STRAIGHT director, Joseph Zappala, was named by the elder Bush as the US ambassador to Spain, even though he only held a high-school education and spoke no Spanish. (AlterNet, Wikipedia)
November 16: MSNBC's Erik Sorenson
Conservative media slant
defends his choice to put only political commentators who supported the Bush administration on the air by saying that he could find no credible spokespersons for the anti-war contingent, and that apart from a few Hollywood celebrities, there wasn't enough dissent in the country "to warrant coverage." MSNBC and other mainstream US media outlets use Pentagon-supplied war footage from Afghanistan without question. When the few independent reporters in Afghanistan sent in footage of the Taliban as they more often were: in Lapham's words, "ragged fugitives...lightly armed, often barefoot, their cause lost without a fight...." the American media "reinforced the adjectives, airbrushed out the footage of dogs devouring dead bodies on the road to Kunduz, dressed up the headlines with 'monsters' and 'diabolical henchmen' overseeing 'a web of hate.' Fox News correspondant Geraldo Rivera waves a pistol in front of the cameras, telling viewers he would shoot Osama bin Laden himself if the opportunity arose. (Lewis Lapham)

November 20: The US Embassy in Niamey, Niger, cables Washington to inform officials that there is no credible evidence that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.

Iraq-Niger scandal

The Director-General of the French consortium that oversees all of Niger's uranium transactions has told the US ambassador that "there was no possibility" that Niger had diverted any of the uranium from its two mines to Iraq. (Frank Rich [PDF file])

Bush asks Rumsfeld to begin planning for Iraq invasion

November 21: Bush asks Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to begin updating the plans to invade Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
He also asks Rumsfeld to tell General Tommy Franks, the commander of the US's CENTCOM military command, to begin working on plans to "protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to." Bush says that this war planning must remain secret. Rumsfeld acknowledges Bush's request for secrecy, telling him that such secrecy will be easy because Rumsfeld is "refreshing" all of America's war plans. Reporter Bob Woodward writes, "On this day, Bush formally set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the invasion of Iraq 16 months later." ...The Iraq war plan was the chessboard on which Rumsfeld would test, develop, expand and modify his ideas about military transformation. And the driving concept was 'less is more' -- new thinking about a lighter, swifter, smaller force that could do the job better. Rumsfeld's blitzkrieg would vindicate his leadership of the Pentagon."
Rumsfeld was the chief planner; Franks, the chief implementer. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would normally have been as involved as Rumsfeld and Franks, but because Rumsfeld and Franks essentially shut him out, he was a minor player at best. Franks openly held the JCS in contempt, referring to them as the "Top Ten Motherf*ckers." Franks believes that Myers and the JCS are irrelevant to the process.
In 1990 and 1991, then-JCS chairman Colin Powell had, with CENTCOM commander Norman Schwarzkopf, codified what became known as the "Powell Doctrine." Powell, in essence, insisted that if the US did have to go into a military operation, they should, in Powell's words, "[g]o in big and end it quickly" by the use of overwhelming force and huge troop deployments to guarantee a quick victory with minimal casualties. This time around, Rumsfeld wants to do things differently. Rumsfeld envisions a leaner, faster fighting force that will go in, achieve the objectives through speed and air superiority, and all at a cheaper cost than what the Powell Doctrine would have required. (Bob Woodward)
November 21: Bush states, "Afghanistan is just the beginning on the war against terror.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated. Across the world and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win." A short time later, it is reported that "the US has honed a hit list of countries to target for military action in rogue regions across the globe where it believes terror cells flourish," including Iraq. (CCR)
November 24: American military officials apparently condone and supervise the massacre of about 3,000 Taliban prisoners.
War in Afghanistan
A film titled "Afghan Massacre" tells of American Special Forces took control of the operation, re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Director Jamie Doran says that approximately 7,500 captured Taliban soldiers were sent to a prison at Kalai Janghi, or Qala-i-Janghi, including "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Riots soon broke out, and were quelled after three days of intense violence; one American, Mike Spann, is killed; after covering the Spann and Lindh stories, the Western journalists left. The prisoners were then taken to Kalai Zeini for holding. They were supposed to be processed by American officials, who were to sort out the terrorists from the simple foot soldiers and so on, and then interned at Sheberghan prison. Unfortunately, Sheberghan was only built to hold 500-600 prisoners, but the Americans and Afghanis wedge 3,000 Taliban prisoners into the building. Some of the remaining 4500 or so prisoners were sold to their respective security agencies, where they were tortured for information and most likely killed, and the rest were apparently massacred by being crammed into airtight containers and driven in trucks to Sheborghan; most of them die en route. Doran says, "...in many ways, in the great Afghan tradition, sadly, this massacre was preplanned. A number of these people who surrendered at Kunduz were never, ever expected to make it [out] alive."
She continues, "The containers were taken into Sheberghan. The living and the dead were poured off the containers. American CIA and Special Forces then searched for identification, along with the Northern Alliance and General Dostum [the Northern Alliance resistance leader and a key American ally]. And then crucially, the living and the dead, many of whom had simply lost consciousness, were then thrown back onto the back of lorries and, under the orders of an American officer, taken out to the desert. One of my witnesses was told, 'Get rid of them. Just get them out of here before satellite pictures can be taken.'" An Afghani soldier says simply, "They put them in the desert for the dogs to eat them." The prisoners who were not yet dead were shot and buried in mass graves, along with their dead comrades, at Dasht Leili, near Sheberghan. Later, Doran will show the film to Bush advisor Richard Perle, who is, according to Doran, "shocked" at the detailed evidence of American complicity in the massacre. According to Doran, Perle asks, "Jamie, how high does this go?" and Doran replies that he knows it goes at least as far as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office. (In the film, Perle says that the massacre warrants a serious investigation; no such investigation has ever been launched.)
The story creates a tremendous stir in Europe, but the American media refuses to touch it, except for a Newsweek article that denies any such massacre ever took place. A State Department spokesperson later tells Doran, "You have to understand we're in touch with the nationals on a daily basis. This story just won't run, even if it's true." As to the state of Afghanistan in late 2003, Doran says, "[T]he warlords are stronger and richer than they ever were. The amount of money being taken in import duties, bribes and drugs is absolutely mind-boggling. We are now talking billions of dollars. These men have everything at their hands, and, you know, this is called a liberated country." A WSWS article states baldly, "The slaughter at the Qala-i-Janghi prison fortress was authorized at the highest levels of the White House and the US military. The six-day siege on the compound involved pounding US air strikes and the execution-style killings of prisoners shot with their hands tied behind their backs. Icy water was pumped into the prison, drowning and freezing to death those prisoners who had not been killed. By the time it was over, more than 400 were dead; perhaps as many as 800. Only an estimated 80 prisoners survived the attack." (Buzzflash, Sunday Herald, ACFTV [Web site of the film], World Socialist Web Site)
November 25: Under pressure to open an investigation into the failures surrounding 9/11,
9/11 attacks
Bush performs an about-face and signs legislation to create the new Department of Homeland Security. He names close friend and current homeland security chief Tom Ridge to head the new department. He also said he will nominate Navy Secretary Gordon England to be Ridge's deputy, and Asa Hutchinson, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to be undersecretary of border and transportation security. It is the largest reorganization and expansion of the federal government since the founding of the Defense Department in 1947. Former Bush official John DiIulio describes the creation of the department as "incredibly slapdash" and a "politically timed reversal" which had received little more than "talking-points deliberation" before suddenly being adopted. Democrats like Joseph Lieberman and Max Cleland, who had months earlier written legislation urging just such a reorganization, immediately throw their support to Bush's idea, not realizing that Bush's political machine will use it to attack Democrats later on down the line. The DHS legislation also has a provision that none of the department's employees can have civil service protection, putting supportive Democrats in the untenable position of either voting for the department and thereby voting against unions, or voting against the legislation and being tarred as traitors. "I don't think you make America more safe by making the workers that protect America more unsafe," says Cleland. Most Senate Democrats vote against the legislation, insisting that union protections be added before they will approve it; Bush promptly smears the Democrats' patriotism, telling one audience, "The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people." (CCR, Al Franken)
November 25: US troops land near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Afghanistan.
War in Afghanistan
Apparently, as US forces approach, new Afghanistan head Hamid Karzai makes a deal with the Taliban, giving them a general amnesty in return for surrender of the city. Taliban's leader Mullah Omar is allowed to escape as part of the deal. But the US says it won't abide by the deal and Karzai then says he won't let Omar go free after all. Taliban forces begin surrendering on December 7, but Omar manages to escape. Karzai is later "outed" as a former paid consultant for Unocal. (Washington Post/From the Wilderness)
November 26: An enthusiastic Bush tells the press that "Afghanistan is just the beginning" and publicly suggests
Iraq war and occupation
for the first time that Iraq may be the next target for US military intervention, saying, "As for Mr. Saddam Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction." (Frank Rich [PDF file])
November 28: A US Special Forces soldier later claims that the US has bin Laden pinned in a certain Tora Bora cave on this day, but fails to act.
Osama bin Laden
Special Forces soldiers sit by waiting for orders and watch two helicopters fly into the area where bin Laden was believed to be, load up passengers, and fly toward Pakistan. No other soldiers have come forward to corroborate the story, but bin Laden is widely believed to have been in the Tora Bora area at the time. Newsweek separately reports that many locals "claim that mysterious black helicopters swept in, flying low over the mountains at night, and scooped up al-Qaeda's top leaders." (CCR)
November 30: A report suggests that the strain of anthrax used in the attacks likely originated from USAMRIID and was shared with only a small number of other labs.
Domestic terrorism
USAMRIID gave it to Battelle Memorial Institute, in Columbus, Ohio; the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, in Canada; the US Army Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah; and the Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down, Britain. These in turn sent it to seven more labs, for a total of a dozen. But only five labs total received the virulent form, and some of these may have received strains that were too old (it is known the anthrax used was two years old or less). (CCR)
Late November: Amid fears of a second terrorist attack, CIA director George Tenet lays out what the Washington Post terms "a stunning trove of new intelligence" about terrorist activities, revealed in Ron Suskind's June 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Tenet's presentation to Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice includes the fact that two Pakistani scientists who previously offered to help Libya build a nuclear bomb had also met with Osama bin Laden. (US government officials later find that bin Laden was quite curious as to what his next steps should be if he already possessed enriched uranium.) Cheney has already been thinking about how to handle with what he calls "a low-probability, high-impact event;" he says after Tenet's briefing, "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Suskind writes that this "Cheney doctrine," or what he calls the "One Percent Doctrine," lets Bush and Cheney evade analytic debate and "rely on impulse and improvisation to a degree that was without precedent for a modern president." It also constricts the mission of the intelligence and counterterrorism professionals -- "the invisibles," Suskind calls them -- who, in the days and months that follow, come to believe that "their jobs were not to help shape policy, but to affirm it." From what Suskind can glean, the actual policy direction comes from Cheney, to the point where Cheney earns the nickname "Edgar," as in Edgar Bergen, casting the president as the famous ventriloquist's dummy. (Washington Post)
Late November:
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge issues the first of many "indefinite" terror alerts. The Bush administration later admits that many of these terror alerts were issued without basis in fact, and were issued to distract the American media and populace from news releases that reflected unfavorably on the adminstration. (CCR)
Late November:
Middle East unrest
War nearly breaks out between Israeli and Palestinian forces, as Israeli military attacks on Palestinian strongholds coincide with Palestinian and terrorist attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. (CCR)
Late November:
War in Afghanistan
Massive opium planting gets underway all across Afghanistan. Farmers are encouraged by warlords allied with the US to plant "as much opium as possible." (Independent/Observer/From the Wilderness)
Late November: American citizen Yasser Esam Hamdi is captured by Afghan Northern Alliance forces in Konduz, Afghanistan,
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
along with hundreds of surrendering Taliban fighters who are then sent to the Qala-e-Jangi prison complex near Mazar-e Sharif. Among the surrendering Taliban forces, some non-Afghan fighters, known as Afghan Arabs, instigate a prison riot among the 600 prisoners by detonating grenades they had concealed in their clothing, attacking Northern Alliance guards and seizing weapons. The riot is brutally quashed by American air strikes, and over 500 prisoners are killed. Two American prisoners, Hamdi and John Walker Lindh, are among the survivors. Hamdi is designated an "enemy combatant" and incarcerated without charge or legal representation. A challenge to his status is mounted by civil libertarians, and Federal judge Robert Doumar, a staunch Republican, who will hear the challenges to Hamdi's status, says he is unable to find a case of any kind where a lawyer couldn't meet with his or her client. "This case," says Doumar, "sets the most interesting precedent...in Anglo-American jurisprudence since the days of the Star Chamber." Doumar will grant Hamdi a lawyer, but the US Court of Appeals will reverse Doumar's decision, ruling that a "wartime" president has the right to indefinitely detain a US citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that person access to a lawyer. (Wikipedia, Peter Singer)

Back to 2001 | On to 2001: December

THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

2001

November 2001

A Nov. 2001 State Department map of Middle Eastern countries where al-Qaeda is active. Iraq, marked with an arrow, is conspicuously absent from active countries. The map can be found here; the State Department has scrubbed the original map from its Web site.

Influential American media reports of Hussein's involvement in 9/11 based on fraudulent information from an imposter

Investigation proves Florida recounts would have given election to Gore; media misrepresents findings

Tora Bora escape allows bin Laden to flee

Bush asks Rumsfeld to begin planning for Iraq invasion

Quick Navigation Menu

2003 Month by Month

2004 Month by Month

2005 Month by Month

2006 Month by Month

2007 Month by Month

Other Pages On This Site

Copyright © 2002-2007 Max Black