The Bremer Commission recommendations included a plan to transfer power to the Department of Defense “during a catastrophic terrorist attack or prior to an imminent attack.”  Another recommendation was to prepare a manual on how to implement legal authority at the federal, state and local levels in case of a catastrophic terrorist attack.  Yet another was to institute annual exercises under the direction of the national coordinator for terrorism (Richard Clarke) for counterterrorism and consequence management during such an event.

Journalist James Risen noted, just after the Bremer report was issued, that one of the recommendations called “on the Central Intelligence Agency to drop its human rights guidelines on the recruitment of terrorist informants.”[63]  That recommendation was clarified by a commission led by propagandist Arnaud de Borchgrave that same year: “It is clear also that FBI and CIA guidelines about recruiting terrorists as informants must be simplified to make it easier to recruit terrorists to provide information.”[64]

As the Bremer Commission report was being issued, Bremer appeared on PBS’ Frontline television program to discuss the report’s claim that international terrorism was an increasingly lethal threat to the United States.[65]  Joining Bremer was Larry Johnson, a former CIA covert operative and State Department expert on terrorism.

Johnson’s remarks during this program were interesting: “What has happened is once the threat of the Soviet Union disappeared, we’ve got a lot of national security bureaucracies and other bureaucracies that are looking for a way to justify their existence, and many are scrambling to get the counter terrorism bonanza.”

On the same program the year before, Johnson was asked if the U.S. government was hyping the threat of terrorism.  Johnson replied

They’re grossly exaggerating the problem. They are hyping it. They shouldn’t be talking about rising terrorism…. what they should be saying is, “There’s one individual out there that really doesn’t like us…”  Johnson named OBL as that individual and clarified that “the problem is this: the Saudi Arabian government, not just Osama bin Laden but many people in Saudi Arabia, have been sending money to radical Islamic groups for years.”[66]

Only two months before 9/11, Johnson was even clearer.

Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism…. None of these beliefs are based in fact….[67]

Of course, the 9/11 Commission came to the opposite conclusions.  And Johnson now works with Barry McDaniel, the former COO of Stratesec.[68]

In October 2000 Bremer took his new job as CEO of Marsh Political Risk.  There are few coincidences more startling than this—the man most responsible for fomenting the fear of terrorism in the United States went directly to a job working in the WTC towers less than a year before 9/11.  Bremer’s office was in the South Tower.  In an interview with CNN after the Sept 11 attacks, Bremer claimed that his office was located “above where the second aircraft hit.”

Just days after the 9/11 attacks Bremer was chosen to co-chair the Heritage Foundation’s Homeland Security Task Force, which created a blueprint for the White House’s Department of Homeland Security.  On this task force was Edwin Meese and, again, Fred Ikle.  The report called for considerable increases in military spending that were not related to terrorism, including much of which Cheney and Rumsfeld had desired before 9/11.

Bremer also started a new division of Marsh & McLennan, which went on to purchase Kroll Associates as well, called Marsh Crisis.  At the same time, a company called Control Risks merged with Bremer’s Marsh Crisis.[69]  Based out of London, Control Risks had been one of the most prominent “terrorism research” outlets supported by Cercle Pinay and its propaganda branch, the ISC.[70]

In 2003, Bremer was selected by Donald Rumsfeld to become the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq (the Iraq Occupation Governor). His “mistakes” there were monumental.[71]  Bremer’s closest aides during his tenure in Iraq included Clayton McManaway, previously an operative within Robert Komer’s Phoenix Program.

Bernard Kerik, who was New York City Police Commissioner on 9/11, was appointed by George W. Bush to be Minister of the Interior for Iraq and Senior Policy Advisor to Bremer.  Assigned to train the new Iraqi police, Kerik’s work in Iraq was widely recognized as a dismal failure. By the time his remarkably short assignment was over, he had offended the U.S. military and left the newly forming Iraqi police force in shambles.

Bremer was not without his small successes, however.  At the time of the wildly sensationalized capture of Saddam Hussein from a “spider hole,” Bremer proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!”[72] Of course, the man Bremer had previously told us was behind the deadly terrorist network called al Qaeda, and the crimes of 9/11, was never captured.  Instead, OBL was killed by the JSOC which quickly dumped his remains in the sea seven and a half years later.

Bremer and Jenkins have gone on to lend their voices in support of the never-ending War on Terror.  In fact, Jenkins’ assessment today is that — “We are not going to end terrorism, not in any future I see.”[73] However, considering what we know about these men, their strong links to terror propagandists, and their extraordinary roles with respect to 9/11, it seems an end to terrorism might begin simply through a more close examination of L. Paul Bremer and Brian Michael Jenkins.

Notes

[1] John Glaser, CIA Documents: US Drastically Overestimated Soviet Capabilities, AntiWar.com, September 28, 2011, http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastically-overestimated-soviet-capabilities/

[2] Burton Hersh, The Old Boys, Tree Farm Books, 1992, p 271

[3] Right Web, Committee on the Present Danger, updated November 24, 2009,http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Committee_on_the_Present_Danger

[4] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, University of California Press, 2007, p 59

[5] Department of the Navy – Navy Historical Center, The Gulf of Tonkin, The 1964 Incidents, Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, February 20, 1968,http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/tonkin1.htm

[6] Douglas Frantz and David McKean, Friends in high places: the rise and fall of Clark Clifford, Little, Brown, 1995

[7] The Liberty Incident, The Clark Clifford Report,http://www.thelibertyincident.com/clifford.html

[8] John Crewdson, New revelations in attack on American spy ship, Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2007, http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/eedition/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,43090.story

[9] James Mann, Rise Of The Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, Viking Press, 2004

[10] James Bamford, Body of secrets: anatomy of the ultra-secret National Security Agency. Random House. 2002

[11] U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)”, U.S. Department of Defense, March 1962. For online pdf file, see the National Security Archive at the George Washington University Gelman Library, Washington, D.C.,http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

[12] Daniele Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, 2005

[13] Ibid, page 29

[14] David Teacher, Rogue Agents: Habsburg, Pinay and the Private Cold War 1951 – 1991

[15] Kevin R. Ryan, KuwAm and Stratesec: Directors and investors that link 9/11 to a private intelligence network, DigWithin.net, February 24, 2012,http://digwithin.net/2012/02/24/kuwam-and-stratesec-directors/

[16] Statement by Karpiloff,http://securitysolutions.com/mag/security_world_trade_center/

[17] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile: New York Port Authorityhttp://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=new_york_port_authority

[18] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror’s measure, Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/31/nation/na-jenkins31

[19] Gerry O’Sullivan, Boom! – World Trade Center bombing – Column, Humanist, May-June, 1993 issue, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_n3_v53/ai_13818521/

[20] Guatemalan Civil War, Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War

[21] United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–1966), Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_the_Dominican_Republic_(1965%E2%80%931966)

[22] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror’s measure

[23] Brian Michael Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, re-published November 1970 by the RAND Corporation for the Advanced Research Projects Agency,http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/2006/RM6278-2.pdf

[24] Brian M. Jenkins, A People’s Army for South Vietnam: A Vietnamese Solution, RAND Corporation, November 1971,http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R897.pdf

[25] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror’s measure

[26] Brian Michael Jenkins, Terrorism Works –  Sometimes, RAND Corporation, April, 1974, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2006/P5217.pdf

[27] Brian M. Jenkins, International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare, RAND Corporation, June 1974, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5261.pdf

[28] Ibid

[29] Brian Jenkins, George Tanham, Eleanor Wainstein and Gerald Sullivan, Report of a Discussion, October 19-20, 1976 at the RAND Corporation, Washington, DC, July 1977,http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5830.pdf

[30] Brian Michael Jenkins. The Psychological Implications of Media-Covered Terrorism, RAND Corporation, June 1981,http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P6627.pdf

[31] Powerbase page for Brian Jenkins,http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Brian_Jenkins

[32] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror’s measure

[33] James Mann, Rise Of The Vulcans

[34] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11

[35] White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, Final Report To President Clinton, February 12, 1997, http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin~1.html

[36] Paul Wilkinson and Brian Michael Jenkins, Aviation Terrorism and Security, Frank Cass, Mar 1, 1999

[37] David Teacher, Rogue Agents

[38] Nafeez Ahmed, The War on Truth (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005), p. 3

[39] James Fallows, Gary Hart, Lynne Cheney, and War with China, The Atlantic, July 5, 2007, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2007/07/gary-hart-lynne-cheney-and-war-with-china/7644/

[40] U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman), Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, January 31, 2001,http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/nssg.pdf

[41] Lewis Paul Bremer III on Washington, DC, NBC4 TV, 11 September 2001, Vehmgericht http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/08/lewis-paul-bremer-iii-on-washington-dc.html

[42] Craig Eisendrath and  Tom Harkin, National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War, Temple University Press, 2000

[43] Tanzania Expels 2 U.S. Diplomats. AP. New York Times, Jan 16, 1965

[44] Letter to Paul brmer from Victor Tomseth, September 2, 1979, accessed at Wikisource, http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=File:Documents_from_the_Den_of_Espionage.djvu&page=1

[45] Phil Gailey and Warren Weaver Jr. Briefing, New York Times, July 10, 1982

[46] Daniele Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies

[47] Stephen Engelberg, The World: Washington’s War on Terrorism Captures Few Soldiers, The New York Times, March 5, 1989,

[48] Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Scandals: Not Just a Bank, September 2, 1991,http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973732-4,00.html

[49] John Kerry and Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, December 1992, Senate Print 102-140,http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/

[50] Catherine S. Manegold, Explosion at the Twin Towers: The Precautions; With Talk of a Bomb, Security Tightens, The New York Times, February 28, 1993

[51] L. Paul Bremer, Terrorists’ Friends Must Pay a Price, The Wall street Journal, August 5, 1996

[52] Congressional Research Service, Memorandum to House Government Reform Committee on Terrorist Attcks by al Qaeda, March 31, 2004,http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/033104.pdf

[53] Tim Weiner, After The Attacks: The Outlook; Raids Are Seen As One Battle In a Long Fight, The New York Times, August 23, 1998

[54] Colum Lynch; Vernon Loeb, Bin Laden’s Network: Terror Conspiracy or Loose Alliance?, The Washington Post, August 1, 1999

[55] Tim Weiner, After The Attacks

[56] RAND National Security Research Division, Gilmore Commission – Panel Chair and Members, http://www.rand.org/nsrd/terrpanel/panel.html

[57] Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 161 (Tuesday, October 23, 2007), Statements by Representative Bennie Thompson (D, MS),http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2007-10-23/html/CREC-2007-10-23-pt1-PgH11854-3.htm

[58] First Annual Report to The President and The Congress of the Advisory Panel To Assess the Domestic Response Capabilities For Terrorism Involving Weapons Of Mass Destruction (Gilmore Commisison), RAND Corporation website,http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/nsrd/terrpanel/terror.pdf

[59] Laurie Goodstein, Gephardt Bows To Jews’ Anger Over a Nominee, The New York Times, July 09, 1999

[60] Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen, Trine Day, 2011

[61] Pranay Gupte, Maurice Sonnenberg: A Concerned Optimist, The New York Sun, March 23, 2005

[62] Sourcewatch page for Bear, stearns & Co, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bear,_Stearns_%26_Co.,_Inc.

[63] James Risen, Terrorism Panel Faults U.S. Effort on Iran and 1996 Bombing, The New York Times, June 4, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/04/world/terrorism-panel-faults-us-effort-on-iran-and-1996-bombing.html

[64] Defending America in the 21st Centur: New Challenges, New Organizations, and New Policies, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2000,http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/defendamer21stexecsumm.pdf

[65] PBS Online Newshour, Global Threat, Jun e6, 2000,http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june00/terror_6-6.html

[66] Wikipedia pager for Larry C. Johnson,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_C._Johnson

[67] Ibid

[68] Kevin R. Ryan, The small world of 9/11 players: LS2, Vidient and AMEC, DigWihtin.net, January 1, 2012, http://digwithin.net/2012/01/01/a-small-world/

[69] Sourcewatch, Crisis Consulting Practice of Marsh, Inc.,http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Crisis_Consulting_Practice_of_Marsh,_Inc.

[70] David Teacher, Rogue Agents

[71] Sourcewatch, L. Paul Bremer III, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_Bremer

[72] Max Brockbank, ‘Ladies eand Gentlemen — We Got Him!’, Time Magazine, December 14, 2003, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,561438,00.html

[73] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror’s measure