“Fabled Enemies” then looks at a few other indications that the Bush administration, which has a serious conflict of interest with the Bush family’s tight relationship with Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family, reined in investigators who tried to look at Saudi financing for terrorist groups like al Qaeda. It includes a snippet from one of Greg Palast’s investigative reports showing that the FBI had been obstructed from investigating Omar and Abdullah bin Laden for their involvement in a suspected terrorist organization.
It spends a bit of time looking at the story of Robin Wright, who went public about an FBI operation called “Vulgar Betrayal” that revealed Saudi financing of terrorist groups and that U.S. banks looked the other way as terrorist money flowed through the financial system. The FBI responded by demoting and trying to silence him.
Echoing an aspect made famous by Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911”, Bermas notes that members of the bin Laden family were collected by private charter jet and whisked out of the country immediately following the attacks.
Bermas then moves on to look at the military intelligence operation “Able Danger” that reportedly identified hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, prior to 9/11. Although it was given the operation files, the 9/11 Commission Report is silent on the matter and agents who have tried to come forward to bring this information to light have been gagged.
The video then moves on to discuss one of the great unanswered questions of 9/11 that, although receiving widespread attention on the internet, has not been given a similar amount of attention by documentaries dealing with 9/11. Bermas does a good job of helping to correct that by going into some detail about the uncovering of a huge Israeli intelligence operation within the United States.
He begins with the story of the five Israelis seen celebrating the smoking trade center towers who were later arrested and deported after it was revealed that at least a couple of them were Mossad agents.
Bermas then looks at the story of the Israeli “art students” spy ring that was blown wide open in a four part series by Carl Cameron on Fox News. Numerous Israeli intelligence operatives operating under the cover of students selling art had targeted government officials, including members of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, prior to 9/11. The operation was discovered and 60 or more operatives were rounded up and deported.
In one of Cameron’s reports, he looks at how U.S. investigators had looked at the Israeli company Amdocs, which does the billing for most U.S. phone companies. It was feared that billing data could easily end up in foreign hands. Investigators were similarly concerned with another Israeli company, Comverse Infosys, which was responsible for wiretapping for U.S. law enforcement agencies. There were indications that information obtained from wiretaps was being leaked and the fear was that a “back door” in the Comverse system allowing the company access was being or could be exploited.
Bermas makes a leap of logic here. Fox News reported that investigators of the Israeli spy ring were concerned about a connection to 9/11, but that the information linking the Israelis to 9/11 was classified. From that, Bermas asserts that the Israelis were tracking the 9/11 hijackers. From Cameron’s reports and other information this is not an unreasonable assumption, but Bermas takes it a step further, asserting as fact that Israel had warned the hijackers. This is perhaps the most serious weakness in the video.
Another underreported aspect of 9/11 is the story of former FBI contract translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been gagged for trying to go public with information she obtained while working for the FBI that there were agents within the government acquiring nuclear technology to be sold on the black market. Bermas does not spend a lot of time educating viewers on her story, but, importantly, does introduce it to those who may not have been familiar with Ms. Edmonds before watching “Fabled Enemies”.
Bermas also addresses the matter of the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency Mahmud Ahmed having authorized the transfer of $100,000 to hijacker Mohammed Atta just prior to the attacks. Ahmed was in Washington on September 11th, where he met with his CIA counterpart, George Tenet. He was having breakfast as the planes crashed into the towers with Bob Graham and Porter Goss, who would later chair the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11.
This was a vital piece of the puzzle that had been grievously excluded from 9/11 documentaries until “9/11 Press for Truth”, perhaps the overall best 9/11 film to date, corrected that situation.
Graham later said, “I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States. I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that”, adding that there is credible evidence that the terrorists were assisted “by a foreign government”.
Bermas takes the opportunity here to observe that this is a further demonstration of how the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash, but neglects to inform viewers precisely why this is so; the Commission Report, despite having received the information on Mahmud Ahmed, stated that there was no such evidence and, incredibly, that the question of who financed the terrorists “is of little practical significance”.
But he demonstrates the absurdity of considering the Commission a real investigation into 9/11 by noting other aspects of its ridiculousness, such as by featuring former Commission member Max Cleland, who wanted the Commission to subpoena the FAA, Norad, and the White House. But the White House would review any documents and choose a minority of them to be shared with the Commission. But only a minority of the Commission members selected by the White House would be allowed access to those documents. And only information cleared by the White House could be shared by those selected individuals with the rest of the Commission.
While demonstrating the corruption and incompetence of government officials, Bermas also presents courageous leaders like Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich standing up and speaking out. This is an important note as the video then turns to the question of prior knowledge of the attacks and the warnings that had been received in advance.
Vice President Dick Cheney is shown warning others in government to “be very cautious not to seek political advantage” by “making incendiary suggestions” about the Bush administration, like suggesting that “the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11.”
“Fabled Enemies” goes a long way towards showing the ridiculousness of Cheney saying there was no information that could have led to the prevention of the attacks.
Bermas then gets into the numerous military and intelligence exercises that were taking place on the morning of 9/11, including drills which simulated the hijackings of airplanes, and shows evidence of how these exercises served to confuse FAA flight traffic controllers and to delay the NORAD response. Bush is shown saying “No one in our government … could have imagined flying airplanes into buildings [pause] on such a massive scale.” Bermas does a good job of demonstrating the absurdity of that statement as well, including by showing that one or more of the drills held on 9/11 actually simulated that exact scenario.
“Fabled Enemies” next spends a considerable amount of time on the alleged “threat” to Air Force One, granting that “threat” more credibility than it perhaps deserves in an attempt to insinuate that Cheney or someone acting under him had leaked information to terrorists enabling them to target Bush. Viewers would have been better served had this dubious speculation been omitted and other more credible and well documented arguments granted more favor.
Next, the anthrax attacks are briefly discussed, another aspect of 9/11 deserving more attention than it has received in documentaries on the subject.
Bermas sensibly concludes by saying that it is not a revolution, but a restoration of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that is required.
In the end, I was pleasantly surprised with “Fabled Enemies”. The final edition of “Loose Change”, a huge improvement over its predecessors, had apparently benefited from the knowledge and fact-checking of David Ray Griffin, who served as a consultant on the that video. “Fabled Enemies” does an even better job of sticking more to the facts and drawing reasonable conclusions, which might perhaps be in part the influence of producer Alex Jones.
“Fabled Enemies” also covers a much broader range of the many aspects of 9/11 requiring further investigation than most other films on the subject. This is one of the benefits of having dealt only briefly with WTC 7 and no time at all with the other towers’ collapses; events which have been exhaustively covered in numerous other videos, have in many regards served only to discredit the 9/11 Truth movement, and which have regrettably overshadowed the countless other important pieces of information about 9/11 that researchers have brought to light.
Jason Bermas does the 9/11 Truth movement a great service by choosing to finally bring much of this important information into one place and presenting it in a medium that can effectively reach a wide audience.
You can visit the official “Fabled Enemies” website at:Â http://fabledenemies.com/. From the site, you can click to watch the full film on Google Video or purchase the DVD.
