U.S. intelligence was certainly aware of Osama's political animosity. Odd, then, that the CIA met with him several times in July 2001, according to Paris' Le Figaro. A CIA agent (later identified as Larry Mitchell) visited Osama bin Laden several times between July 4th and July 14th 2001 in the American Hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "According to various Arab Diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests." according to Le Figaro.

CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher told reporters the piece was "utter nonsense." However, no official statement was published on the CIA's website. Unlike on October 5, when CIA spokesman Bill Harlowe issued a denial that the CIA had "any relationship whatsoever" with Bin Laden. Harlowe's firm language leaves no room for white lies: this one is a certain black fib. If the CIA thinks no one remembers their support of the Mujahedeen through Osama bin Laden and the MAK, can their word be trusted about Le Figaro's discovery?

The U.S. media have dismissed the Bush family/bin Laden connection, claiming that Osama is a "black sheep." But according to the BBC , Abdullah and Omar bin Laden are also wanted by the FBI for involvement in 9/11 . When the U.S. airports were all closed in the days following 9/11, a special charter flight out of Boston's Logan airport let 11 members of Bin Laden's family slip back to Saudi Arabia. Last November, the BBC featured author Joe Trento, who reported, "as far back as 1996, the FBI was very concerned...the FBI wanted to investigate these guys...they weren't permitted to."

The Hard Questions

In the late 60's, Jared Israel was a student radical at Harvard. He returned to politics in the late 1990's, over the breakup of Yugoslavia. He founded website emperors-clothes.com to pierce the distortions of the U.S. corporate media. With his partner, Illarion Bykov, he has assembled a series of solid reports that ask the hard questions about the 9/11 tragedy.

Jared Israel claims to have caught Vice President Cheney in a major slip-up. The official story from the White House is that President Bush first found out about the World Trade Center hits when he was visiting with students at the Booker School. However, on "Meet the Press," Cheney told Tim Russert that, around 8:46 AM that day, "The Secret Service has an arrangement with the F.A.A. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was... "

Dick Cheney stopped talking. According to Jared Israel, this sudden shut-up is crucial. If the F.A.A. was communicating with the Secret Service on "open lines" right after 8:46 AM, when the first tower was hit, then Bush and company in Florida would have been informed before he even began travelling to the school. This is supported by two journalists who were with Bush on 9/11: ABC's John Cochran and Associated Press' Sonya Ross report that the President stated he knew of the terrorists attacks before leaving his hotel. Why then did the President stick to his schedule? How could his safety be guaranteed? Time magazine once reported the Secret Service's biggest problem was that commercial jets could be hijacked while flying into D.C. over the Potomac and crashed into the White House. If commercial jets killing the President were such a pressing issue in 1994, how could the Secret Service not care in 2001?

Jared Israel's "indictments" on emperors-clothes.com have informed the television reporting of Barrie Zwicker at Canada's Vision TV. Zwicker's program, Insight Mediafile, asks why, "In the almost two hours of the total drama [of 9/11] not a single U.S. Air Force interceptor turns a wheel, until it's almost too late. Why? Was it total incompetence on the part of aircrews trained and equipped to scramble in minutes?"

"Simply to ask these few questions is to find the official narrative frankly implausible. The more questions you pursue, it becomes more plausible that there's a different explanation. Namely, that elements within the top U.S. military, intelligence and political leadership...are complicit in what happened on September 11."

Zwicker, in letters to Emperors-clothes.com, later drew a comparison between the situation on 9/11 and the airplane disaster that killed professional golfer Payne Stewart. When Stewart's Learjet stopped responding to radio contact on October 25, 1999, an F-16 was by that plane's side within 18 minutes. The F-16 "intercepted" the wayward Learjet, i.e. caught up with it, and attempted to make visual contact with the plane's distressed crew. All of this was in line with the procedures published by the F.A.A. In Payne Stewart's plane, something had gone horribly awry, the windows were fogged over (probably from a loss of pressure) and everyone on board was likely dead by the time the plane crashed, out of fuel, in South Dakota.

If the skies in October, 1999, are so well-protected that a Learjet with five people on board warrants F-16 escorts once it deviates from its flight path in rural airspace, where are the fighter jets on September 11, 2001? The first hijacking deviated Flight 11 from its path at 7:45 AM. Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM. No planes were dispatched until 9:35 AM, after the Pentagon was hit.

Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers issued three contradictory statements about why no fighters were dispatched to protect America's capital. At Myers' confirmation hearings, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida demanded an explanation of the lack of fighters. Myers answered: "I spoke, after the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft. One of the things you have to understand, senator, is that in our posture right now, that we have many fewer aircraft on alert than we did during the height of the Cold War. And so, we've got just a few bases around the perimeter of the United States. So it's not just a question of launching aircraft, it's launching to do what?"

These three stuttering answers all stink. The initial comment about NORAD is a non-answer. The Senator asked bluntly, Why did you wait so long to launch planes? and Myers answer was, we decided to launch planes after the second WTC hit, but we didn't actually launch them until Pentagon was hit. That's not an answer.

Myers' claims about not having planes are just silly. Andrews Air Force Base is only 10 miles from the Pentagon. Two 'combat-ready' fighter squadrons call it home: the 121st Fighter Squadron and the 321st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron.

When Myers says, "to do what?" he is quite possibly playing dumb. As we saw with the Payne Stewart tragedy, the F.A.A. and military have rules for how an interceptor communicates to a wayward aircraft. The F-16 attempts to get the pilot's attention, using signals to determine if the airliner in distress is still being piloted by a trained pilot.

If it's true that the White House knew of the attacks on September 11 beforehand, the question becomes what would motivate them to sacrifice so many of us? Jared Israel speaks of his love for the common people, as a former Freedom-rider in civil rights struggles. Israel realizes that to be motivated to fight an unjust war for oil, the average people would be moved only by a personal sense of grief: "The American people will not go to war over imperialism. So [the powers that be] staged this blockbuster. I think American working-class people are fabulous, but they're misinformed."

Producer Barrie Zwicker in Canada is more explicit about the reasons why they might have allowed an attack on 9/11. He feels it's likely they attempted "To stampede public opinion into supporting the so-called war on terrorism. To justify a war on Afghanistan, to justify a future oil pipeline, the grab for Middle-Eastern oil." Zwicker is making reference here to an oil pipeline to the Caspian Sea oil basin. Dick Cheney has been speaking about this pipeline since 1992. The Caspian Sea's oil wealth is estimated at $4 trillion.