| RED CROSS EXERCISE
On Thursday
February 1, 2007 - the Capital Area Chapter took the opportunity to
facilitate an unannounced disaster exercise designed to test the chapter's
ability to recruit as many of its Disaster Services volunteers and the paid
and volunteer staff from the chapter's partner organizations.
Only two (2) individuals knew that the exercise was being developed
and when it would be facilitated. By keeping the exercise theme and
scheduled date very confidential, allowed the exercise to proceed as though
it was a real world event with a high sense of urgency in completing the
exercises goals.
What follows is the web based tool used to recruit volunteers using
the internet.
As the exercise unfolded, an hourly count of recruited volunteers was
posted to this web site. When the exercise was completed at 7:00PM a total
of 254 individuals had gone to the chapter's
On-Line - Disaster Relief Operation - Availability Registration
system and posted their availability.
In conclusion the exercise was deemed as being very successful test of
the chapter's ability to recruit large numbers of volunteers to support the
chapter's residents when they are struck by a disaster.
The mission of the
Thunderbolt Exercise
was to test the Capital Area Chapter and its partner organizations and
churches ability to respond to a severe tornado striking Tallahassee.
Between 11:00AM and 7:00PM on Thursday February 1 all of the chapter's
Disaster Services Volunteers, the staff and volunteers from its various
partner organizations and churches were requested to register their
availability on-line as part of the community's response team. The path of
the TORNADO that had struck
Tallahassee can be found at the following web site:
| Document |
Format |
| Thunderbolt Tornado |
JPG |
PDF |
Exercise Availability
All American Red Cross Disaster Services Volunteers, the staff and
volunteers of various partner organizations and churches were asked to
complete the
On-Line - Disaster Relief Operation
11 July
2005
This article is part of the series: London
7/7 false flag [
Was London attack
false flag operation?
Exercise on 7/7 identical to London attack
At
the same times and places of the attacks in London,
exercises were held that imitated what suddenly became
reality.
On the same day of the attacks the risk level
was lowered.
Both elements could have contributed to the macabre
success
of the attacks.
The Dutch in the original article has been translated
into English by Marienella Meulensteen.
The exercises on July 7 were carried out by Visor
Consultants, an agency that advises on security
and is led
by
Peter Power, former anti-terrorism expert of
Scotland Yard.
On the day of the attack, he tells in a radio
interview with
the BBC [short
-
long MP3, and
on ITV News, WMV] how the exercises of that
morning suddenly changed into reality: '
[...] within
five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this
is the real one and so we went through the
correct
drills of activating crisis management
procedures to jump from slow time to quick time
thinking and so on'. Earlier that
day, 'the Joint
Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) [lowered] its risk
level, which is shared by police and large businesses.
[...] Blair can expect concerted questioning over why
the risk level was lowered at such a time', writes
The Scotsman.
Former gov't anti-terrorism expert: exercise becomes
reality
'POWER: At half past
nine this morning we were actually running an exercise
for a company of over a thousand
people in London
based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the
railway stations where it happened this
morning, so I
still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing
up right now.
HOST:
To get this quite straight, you were running an
exercise to see how you would cope with this and it
happened
while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely [...]', according to part of
the transcript of the
broadcast, as cited in an article
by Paul Joseph Watson
and Alex Jones.
Patterns of attacks on
the West starting to become clear
Resemblances
with September 11, 2001 are inevitable.
DaanSpeak
reported already in 2002 about the enormous war
games that pulled down the defense system of
the U.S. on 9/11. Without these exercises, September
11 could not
have taken place. The exercises in London
were carried out on the orders of an anonymous
company.
Nevertheless,
the exercise possibly caused confusion for the
authorities. Watson and Jones write: 'The
exercise fulfils
several different goals. It acts as a
cover for the small compartmentalized government
terrorists to carry out their
operation without the
larger security services becoming aware of what
they're doing, and more importantly, if they get
caught during the attack or after with any
incriminating evidence they can just claim that they
were just taking part
in the exercise'. Earlier
DaanSpeak wrote
about the attacks in Moscow in 1999 when agents of the
secret service
FSB were caught planting (bogus?) bombs
that would be used during an exercise. This same
pretext that the FSB
used could have also been used by
Visor Consultants. Of course this is speculation, but
with these kinds of attacks it
is wise to be
suspicious, because in the past they were often
carried out on the orders of the West (see the last
paragraph
of this article).
Scotland Yard warns Israeli Embassy
before attack
'Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the
security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they
had received
warnings of possible attacks', writes
the Associated Press.
A consequence was
that the former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
- who was about to leave for an economic conference
in
a hotel right above one of the metro stations that was
later hit - stayed where he was.
Israel later
denied having received a warning from Scotland
Yard. Foreknowledge of the attack in London is
remarkable,
but not very peculiar. With these kinds of
attacks - just think of Oklahoma, September
11 and
Bali - there is more often
talk of foreknowledge.
'Al-Qaeda terrorist' dream criminal for Western
governments
Experienced DaanSpeak readers immediately were alarmed
when the news appeared that Al-Qaeda had hit again;
all
sorts of emails were sent to the DaanSpeak desk.
The first motive may have been our
article titled Al-Qaeda
does not
exist - Bin Laden videos are bogus - Osama
bin Laden is dead. A second reason was possibly
our
publication about
the attacks on the U.S. on
September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, it
appears more and more that this concerns an attack
executed by the U.S. itself.
Consequently,
Christians as well as Muslims (and everyone in
between) have let themselves be fooled by the U.S.,
and jumped with both feet into the trap that was set
for them.
It is part of a tactic that started
after the collapse of Communism and that became real
with the attack in Oklahoma, as
we
wrote earlier: a matter that reeks to high heaven.
From then on it became clear to the American citizen
that there
was a danger larger than communism, namely
terrorism. If the
Commies were a good enemy, the terrorist is
the
ultimate opponent: unidentifiable, uneradicable, and
in a position to attack at any moment. It is the basis
for
current Western politics that rules
through fear.
The claim that
Al-Qaeda is behind the attack in London is very shaky,
according to 'MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes,
who said that a copy of the message was later posted
on a secular Web site, noting that the claim of
responsibility
contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim
may be phony, he said.
"This is not something Al-Qaeda
would do", he said. 'It immediately reminds one of the
car that was found
directly
after the attacks of September 11, containing
a Quran and a manual
in Arabic on how to fly an airplane, and the
letter
[PDF] in Arabic of the head hijacker Mohammed Atta, of
which journalist Robert Fisk writes:
'What Muslim
Would Write: 'The Time of Fun and Waste
is Gone'? Because crazier things can happen, The
Guardian writes in
an article
titled Uncle Sam's
lucky finds: 'In less than a week came another
find, two blocks away from the Twin Towers,
in the
shape of Atta's passport. We had all seen the blizzard
of paper rain down from the towers, but the idea that
Atta's
passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged
would have tested the credulity of the staunchest
supporter of
the FBI's crackdown on terrorism'.
Attacks on West often false flag operations
A large part of the attacks on the West consist of
so-called false flag
operations: operations of Western secret
services
that blame the attack on their alleged
enemies. If you subtract these kinds of
operations (think of
Gladio) from the total
attacks, there is not much
left. DaanSpeak is full of examples
of these kinds of attacks,
among
them the attack on
Pearl Harbor and the attacks of
September 11. But also think of our article
in which we explain how the Mossad had
planned attacks
on Israelis to subsequenly have them claimed by
Palestinians in the name of Al-Qaeda. In the same
article there is also information under the heading:
'Experts: Israel
supported Hamas to sabotage the peace process'.
The first thing to ask yourself with these kinds of
attacks is Cui bono,
who profits from it? Often the answer is
Cui
prodest scelus, est fecit; loosely translated:
He who profits from
the crime is the criminal, a quote that we
cited
in an article
written about September 11, 2001.
Some journalists suspect that
the attacks in London were not
carried out by Muslim
terrorists, but by a Western
secret service that works
according to the motto 'divide
and conquer'.
In this article we
call attention to the most
important of the facts that are
being alleged.
The Dutch in the original
article has been translated into
English by Marienella
Meulensteen.
Radio announcer Alex Jones and
author Paul Joseph Watson
together were the first to pay
broad attention
to the
pronouncements of the BBC about
the former employee of
the anti-terrorism department
of Scotland Yard,
Peter Power.
Nowadays, he is president of Visor
Consultants, which at the
time of the attack carried
out an exercise
that dealt with
exactly what became reality on
the spot, as described in part
1 of this DaanSpeak. In a
television
interview [WMV], Power says
about that moment: 'We had to
suddenly switch an exercise from
fictional to real'.
The big question regarding this
statement is - why did the
participants in this
exercise-that-became-reality
suddenly begin carrying out the
game in reality instead of
immediately packing up and
leaving, and moreover -
how were
they
able to.
Exercise director is mastermind
behind attacks
In a follow-up article,
Jones and Watson discuss the
email that Power tends to send
lately to people who ask him
questions about this particular
exercise. The reaction contains
indications that confirm what
the authors wrote earlier,
namely that the attack on London
was a
false flag operation,
thus an operation that blames
the attack on the enemy.
Power
writes in his reaction: 'In
short, our exercise (which
involved just a few people as
crisis managers actually
responding to a simulated series
of activities involving, on
paper, 1000 staff) quickly
became the real thing and the
players that morning responded
very well indeed to the sudden
reality of events'. Jones and
Watson react a bit puzzled:
'As
we have asked before, if the
exercise was a mere coincidence
and was not related to any
government agency or
command
structure which was involved in
managing the aftermath of the
attacks, then
why did the crisis managers
respond to the real thing?
If they were actively involved
in the command structure that
managed the crisis, then they
must have been hired by a sector
of government in the first
place. Power himself has
worked for Scotland Yard'.
Jones and Watson
note the only
tentatively possible conclusion:
'The company that Visor were
running the exercise
for is not
named by Power. If Visor
switched to real time management
of the bombings, who else could
the company
be but London
Underground or one of their
affiliates'? If the
exercises were actually carried
out for and with the
employees
of the London Underground or one
of their affiliates, then it
means that the planner of this
exercise
is directly connected
with the attacks. The planner
could have used the participants
in the exercise with or
without
their knowledge. The thought
behind the conclusion of Jones
and Watson is that the director
of the exercises
must be the
mastermind behind the attacks.
If this is the truth, it
automatically means that the
bombing suspects are
innocent
and part of a cover story with
two possible scenarios:
Bombing suspects possibly part
of cover story 7/7
1. The bombing suspects
did not place any bombs at all
and fell prey to bombs that were
placed earlier, just like the
other victims.
2. The bombing suspects
joined the exercise, and without
realizing it they carried real
explosives instead of dummy
explosives.
The first scenario comes
to mind when you see the footage
of the families of the alleged
bombing suspects. Their
disbelief is so large that it
lessens the acceptability that
the offenders were the culprits.
The bombing suspects were
people
of whom it was totally unknown
that they were the least bit
fanatical, "He didn't do
anything other than British
culture",
cites CNN. Interviews on
television showed total
disbelief; it was said that
Shehzad Tanweer was only
interested in watching cricket
on T.V. A BBC
article went over it again:
'Parents at the school told the
BBC the teaching
assistant had
been highly regarded by both
children and parents'. The man
had a child, just
like another team member.
'One neighbor said: "He didn't
seem to be an extremist. He was
not one to talk about religion.
He was generally a
very nice
bloke". Despite the tributes,
Mohammad Sidique Khan detonated
enough explosives on a Circle
Line train to
kill seven people.
Documents belonging to him were
found near the Edgeware Road
blast'. One of the four wore
long
garments and another was
described as being very
religious... In the recent past
there have been Palestinians
who,
despite a good education,
even despite having young
children, committed suicide
missions anyway. So also the
four alleged London perpetrators
could have done it, but it does
not sound very convincing.
The
four also had
no
file with the British
secret service either. Be that
as it may, Muslims in England
and in the
U.S. expressed
themselves strongly against
the attacks and in doing so
tried to limit the damage that
was done to
their image.
 The
second scenario starts to
take shape when
reading this sentence: 'The
four were captured
on CCTV
cameras at King’s Cross
Thameslink station, laughing
together and carrying rucksacks,
minutes before they set off for
their targets at 8.30 am on July
7'. '[The] men were chatting "as
though they were going on a
hiking holiday"', writes
Sky News. This second scenario
becomes
clearer with the
remarkable news that the English
newspaper The Mirror opens
with today, namely
that the
bombing suspects had return
train tickets on them:
'EXCLUSIVE: WAS IT SUICIDE? Why
did they buy return train
tickets to Luton? Why did they
buy pay and display tickets for
cars? Why were there no usual
shouts of 'Allah Akhbar'?
Why
were bombs in bags and not on
their bodies?'
The
newspaper deduces in a neatly
politically correct way that the
bombing suspects were deceived
by Al-Qaeda.
But Al-Qaeda
does not exist - Bin-Laden
videos are bogus - Osama bin
Laden is dead we wrote
earlier and so
says
also Tony Blair: '"Al-Qaeda is
not an organization. Al-Qaeda is
a way of working ... but this
has the
hallmark of that
approach."' The Mirror: 'A
security source said: "If the
bombers lived and were caught
they'd
probably have cracked.
Would their masters have allowed
that to happen? We think not".
The evidence is compelling:
The terrorists bought return
rail tickets, and pay and
display car park tickets, before
boarding a train at Luton for
London. None of the men was
heard to cry "Allah Akhbar!" -
"God is great" - usually
screamed by suicide bombers
as
they detonate their bomb. Their
devices were in large rucksacks
which could be easily dumped
instead of being
strapped to
their bodies. They carried
wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other
personal items.
Suicide bombers
normally strip themselves of
identifying material.[...]
Our source disclosed: "The
theory that they were not a
suicide squad is gathering pace.
They were the weakest link.'
Even before it was known that
the bombing suspects carried
return train tickets, Jones and
Watson write in
point two of
How
the Government Staged the London
Bombings in Ten Easy Steps:
'Hire four Arabs and tell them
they're taking
part in an
important exercise to help
defend London from terrorist
attacks. Strap them with
rucksacks filled with
deadly
explosives. Tell the Arabs the
rucksacks are dummy explosives
and wouldn't harm a fly.
[...] If at any stage of the
attack your Arabs get caught,
tell the police it was part of
an exercise.' But if all goes
well, it is a question of a push
of the
button. This last
possibility is supported by
information from Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of
the CIA's counter-
terrorism
center [who]
told The Guardian that "two
unexploded bombs" were recovered
as well as "mechanical timing
devices".'
London bombing suspects victims
of roleplay exercise
These days all sorts of people
are being arrested
in Pakistan and Egypt. This fits
into the working methods of
Western
secret services who
often work together with foreign
agents. Something similar could
be seen with the
bomb attack on
the WTC in 1993
when six people were killed.
We reported
earlier that the plan at the
time was for bombing expert
and
FBI informant Emad Salem to
secretly use dummy explosives in
the bomb that he fabricated
together with the group
he had
infiltrated. 'The FBI did not
stick to the deal. The bomb
exploded, so to speak, with the
knowledge of the FBI.
The
official story of the crime was
quickly found: The criminals
were evil Muslims', says
the German ex-Minister
and
secret service expert Andreas
von Bülow.
Evil muslims are exactly
what the FBI again is looking
for, to carry out
exercises
together. That came out
Wednesday in the document-of-the-week
of the document site The Smoking
Gun:
'The bureau is seeking bids from
firms that can provide at least
60 civilian role players to
staff these training scenarios
[...]'. The conclusion of
Jones and Watson about
the London bombing suspects
follows that line. They write in
their
newsletter:
'It's beyond doubt that these
four Muslims were framed. They
were most likely hired as MI6
spies, sent to
Pakistan and then
brought back and told they were
to take part in an important
exercise to test national
security.
Give them the
rucksacks, get them on the
trains and then detonate the
bombs remotely. Do you really
believe for a
second that guys
with 8 month babies and guys who
taught disabled schoolchildren
would want to blow themselves
up
and kill other innocent people'?
London exercise ideal cover for
criminal plot
John Leonard continues with
the scenario in which an
exercise is used as a cover. He writes:
'Terrorism expert
Webster G. Tarpley gives an example in his
9/11 Synthetic Terror:
'Staff exercises or command
exercises are perfect for a
rogue network which is forced to
conduct its operations using
the
same communications and computer
systems used by other officers
who are not necessarily party to
the illegal
operation, coup or
provocation as it may be.
A putschist officer may be
working at a console next to
another officer who is not in on
the coup, and who might indeed
oppose it if he knew about it.
The putschist's behavior is
suspicious: what the hell is he
doing? The loyal officer looks
over and asks the putschist
about it. The putschist cites a
staff maneuver for which he is
preparing. The loyal officer
concludes that the putschist's
activities are part of an
officially sanctioned drill, and
his suspicions are allayed. The
putschist may even explain that
participation in the staff
exercise requires a special
security clearance which the
loyal officer does not have. The
conversation ends, and the putschist can go on with his
treasonous work'.
This could well be the way it
went on September 11 when the
war games made possible what
otherwise would
have been
impossible. You cannot make
thousands of people who are
responsible for the defense of
the U.S. part
of your
conspiracy. But you can disable
their systems by carrying out
massive exercises that happen to
mimic exactly
what then suddenly
starts to happen for real, and
people who want to come into
action realize for instance that
because
of the exercise the jet
fighters are not available, etc.
But that concerns September 11
about which we already filled
many
pages.
The question is now:'
How
could this have worked in
London? Mr. Powers would be like
the loyal agent without the
super secret clearance;
his job
in the drill was to unwittingly
help provide camouflage. Several
participants could be given the
"play-acting"
role of terrorists
who plant bags with "fake" bombs
in them at the appropriate point
in the scenario—but this time,
real bombs were substituted.
Whether witting or not, they
would run no risk of arrest—it
was "just a drill".
[...]', writes
John Leonard.
Bombs made with military
explosives
Another indication for
the suspicion that 7/7 concerns
a false flag operation, comes
from The Times which
writes on
July 12: 'A SINGLE bombmaker using
high-grade military explosives
is believed to be responsible
for building the four
devices
that killed more than 50 people
last week, The Times can reveal.
[...] “The nature of the
explosives appears to
be
military, which is very
worrying,” said Superintendent
Christophe Chaboud, the chief of
the French anti-terrorist
police, who was in London to
help Scotland Yard'. Earlier,
the English police said
that the bombs consisted of 'not
homemade material'. But
eight days after the
attacks, the Dutch NRC writes in
an article on the front page
that
English police sources have
stated that the bombs
were 'probably made with
explosive materials that
commonly are
for sale at
pharmacists or druggists'. This
reeks of damage control,
glossing over of indecorous
information. In his
book
9/11 - Synthetic Terror Made in
USA, author Webster
Tarpley points out the
phenomenon of honest reporting
in the hours and days after an
attack, information that is
later amended and affected by
spin and damage control.
Think
also of the news about bomb
explosions in the WTC before the
towers collapsed on September
11.
Train bombings a trademark of
Western psy-war units
'Train bombings like London 7/7
and Madrid 3/11 are a speciality
of NATO psy-war units.
The expert on this since 1978
has been Webster Tarpley, who
shows in his latest book,
9/11 Synthetic Terror,
how the bombing of Bologna
Stazione
Centrale in 1980 by the
so-called Red Brigades is of one
cloth with the Madrid bombings.
The supposed "communist
terrorist" Red Brigades were
phonies, a patsy outfit created
by Lodge P2, the neofascist
shadow government with
Italy in
its grip. The Madrid train
bombing suspects were police
agents, also run by a
neo-fascist falange: as Tarpley
notes, one suspect admitted he
worked for the old guard, the
Guardia Civil, Unidad Central
Operativa', writes
John
Leonard, the editor of Tarpley's
book [Also see:
Coverage of speeches
by DaanSpeak and Webster Tarpley
about
September 11 in the Rode
Hoed, May 2005].
Former
Mayor of
New York
Rudolph
Giuliani,
the
ultimate
expert
on
exercises-that-coincidentally-become-reality,
could
assist
London
since he
happened
to be
there at
the
moment
of the
explosions,
even
right by
the
place
where
the
first
bomb
went
off.
 The
exercises-that-coincidentally-became-reality*
in New
York on
September
11
produced
an
extremely
valuable
expert,
namely
Rudolph
Giuliani,
the
city's
mayor at
the
time.
The
man
who then
managed
the
crisis
in his
city was
at the
moment
of the
bombings
in
London
present
right by
the
subway
station
where
the
first
bomb
went off
and
thus,
with his
unique
expertise,
could be
of
immediate
service
to the
Brits.
Giuliani
turned
the
emergency
of
September
11 into
a
feather
in his
cap and
established
'Giuliani
Partners
[...], a
security
consultancy
and
investment
bank,'
following
thereby
the same
path as
former
member
of
Scotland
Yard's
anti-terrorism
unit
Peter
Powers,
mentioned
in the
previous
part of
this
article,
who led
the
exercise-that-became-reality
with his
Visor
Consultants
on July
7 in
London.
Powers
had to
experience
what
Giuliani
had
already
gone
through,
and
luckily
Giuliani
was
around.
*
Read
in
DeepJournal
more
about
the
wargames
that
brought
down
U.S.
defenses
on
September
11,
2001.
Exercise
2004 as
Preparation
for
Exercise
2005
Giuliani
in
London
to
MSNBC:
'It
seems to
me that
the
emergency
services
here in
London
were
prepared
for
this.
I don't
mean
prepared
for the
exact
day, but
prepared
for
something
like
this
happening.
I think
they
expected
this to
happen.
Unfortunately,
they
didn't
know the
day or
the
hour,
but they
expected
this
to
happen."
The
planners
of the
London
exercise-that-coincidentally-became-reality
were not
totally
unprepared.
In April
of this
year a
transatlantic
exercise
was held
'which
included
'bombs'
being
placed
on buses
and
explosives
left on
the
London
underground',
wrote
The
Observer:
'The
anti-terror
drill,
codenamed
Exercise
Atlantic
Blue
[...]
concentrated
on
testing
security
weaknesses
in the
transport
system.'
London,
July
2005:
Giuliani
and
ex-CIA
Agent
Robert
Kiley
Giuliani
was
'just
yards
from
Liverpool
Street
[...]
station,
when the
bombs
went
off',
wrote
Fox
News.
When
asked
how he
felt
Giuliani
said
in
London:
'I'm not
sure,
Lester.
I don't
know.
There is
a
certain
question
I have
in my
mind:
Why was
I so
close
both
times?
...
Obviously
there
was no
connection,
but only
God can
answer
questions
like
that, I
guess.'
Fox News
quotes
Giuliani
when he
says
about
the
bombings:
'"They
are a
very
eerie
reminder
of Sept.
11.
I
was
right
near
Liverpool
[Street]
station
when the
first
bombing
took
place,
so I
could
hear the
sirens
and then
kept
hearing
reports
of
different
bombings,
in
different
parts of
the
city,"
he told
Sky News
television.
Mr.
Giuliani
was in
the City
as the
Underground
system
was
evacuated
and
roads
were
closed
in a
rush of
emergency
vehicles
and
evacuations.'
That
things
ran as
smoothly
as
Giuliani
said may
be due
in part
to
Bob
Kiley,
currently
Commissioner
of
Transport
for
London,
in
earlier
days
a fairly
high-ranking
CIA
agent.
Giuliani
is no
stranger
to Kiley,
the
savior
of the
London
Underground;
more
than
that, he
really
likes
him:
'London
Mayor
Ken
Livingstone
today
welcomed
the
intervention
of his
New York
counterpart
after he
backed
London's
Transport
Commissioner
Bob Kiley.
New York
Mayor
Rudolph
Giuliani
defended
Transport
Commissioner
Robert
Kiley
after
Deputy
Prime
Minister
John
Prescott's
office
released
figures
claiming
the New
York
subway
was far
less
safe
than the
Tube.
Mayor
Giuliani's
press
secretary
said Mr
Kiley
was "an
incredible
asset
to
New York
City"',
according
to this
press
release
from
the
mayor of
London.
Speaking
of the
CIA and
the
London
Underground:
the CIA
and
Bechtel
have
often
collaborated;
Bechtel
is
part
of a
trio of
firms
that the
Underground
is going
to
freshen
up.
Giuliani's
Right-Hand
Man
Associated
with
Peter
Power
The
statements
of Peter
Power
-the man
behind
the
exercise-that-coincidentally-became-reality
in
London-
figured
centrally
in the
last two
parts of
this
article
series.
Rudolph
Giuliani
and
Peter
Power
have a
mutual
friend,
namely
Richard Sheirer.
Sheirer
was
Giuliani's
right-hand
man and
on and
around
September
11, 2001
was the
boss of
OEM,
'the
major's
Office
of
Emergency
Management',
writes
Mike
Ruppert
on page
406 of
his
book
Crossing
the
Rubicon.
'He's
the guy
Giuliani
calls
"the man
behind
the
curtain."
He's the
wizard
of OEM',
writes
New York
Metro.
Sheirer
and
Power
sat
together
on the
advisory
commission
CCEP,
the
Canadian
Centre
for
Emergency
Preparedness.Knight
Commander
of the
Order
of
the
British
Empire. Sheirer
is
Commander
of the
Most
Excellent
Order of
the
British
Empire.
And:
'Mr. Sheirer
is a
Senior
Vice
President
at
Giuliani
Partners
Giuliani
is '.
Suspected
Roles of
Giuliani
and
Sheirer
on
September
11
On
September
11
Giuliani
was
operating
out of
the
Emergency
Command
Center
on the
23rd
floor of
World
Trade
Center
Building
7. The
command
center
had its
own air
supply,
fuel
tanks
and
bomb-proof
windows.
WTC 7
was a
large
building
over
forty storeys
high,
was not
hit and
yet fell
in on
itself,
straight
down in
the
manner
of a
controlled
demolition
[see
video
1
2,
WMV].
As if he
had
foreseen
this
drama,
Giuliani
and his
team
could
simply
continue
functioning
because
by
chance a
large
backup-operation
center
had been
created
in
connection
with the
Tripod
II
exercise
scheduled
to take
place
the
following
day,
also
under
the
direction
of
Giuliani
and Sheirer.
Also
earlier
on 9/11
Giuliani
must
have
enjoyed
a sort
of
prophetic
power,
namely
concerning
the
collapse
of the
WTC
towers.
Considering
the
solid
structure
of the
towers,
their
collapse
was
unimaginable,
and the
collapse
remains
contested
to this
day
because
bombs
would be
what
brought
the WTC
towers
down.
'Before
either
of the
twin
towers
collapsed,
Mayor
Rudolph
Giuliani
and his
associates
were
told to
leave
the
headquarters
they had
set up
within
Building
7. 'We
were
operating
out of
there
when we
were
told
that the
World
Trade
Center
was
gonna
collapse,'
Rudolph
Giuliani
told
Peter
Jennings
of ABC
News
that
morning,
"and it
did
collapse
before
we could
get out
of the
building."
Despite
this,
Giuliani
fled WTC
7 at
least
eight
hours
before
it
collapsed.
How did
he know
that the
twin
towers
were
going to
collapse
if it
was such
an
unprecedented occurance?
Why
didn't
the
firefighters
on the
ground
get the
same
warning?',
wrote
Prison
Planet.
Giuliani
and
Anthrax
Another
Giuliani
company
participated
in the
cleanup
of the
anthrax
sent to
the
tabloid
Sunday;
the
attack
on the
paper
was part
of a
series
of
attacks
that for
a time
terrorized
the U.S.
CBS
wrote:
'The
cleanup
is being
led by BioONE,
a
company
established
by
former
New York
City
Mayor
Rudolph
Giuliani
and
Sabre
Technical
Services,
which
decontaminated
other
buildings
hit by
anthrax
attacks.'
Earlier
we
wrote
that
according
to the
Washington
Post
the
anthrax
spores
were
consistent
with
those
from the
Army
base
Fort
Detrick.
This
correlation
of
attacks
and Army
may be
read
about
also in
a
section
of the
previous
part
of our
series
on the
bombings
in
London:
Bombs
Made
with
Military
Explosives.
The official story of 7/7
collapses further and further:
The great mastermind behind
7/7 is a co-worker of the
British secret
service MI6;
large money transactions have
taken place that point to
foreknowledge of the attacks;
the British government
shares
a rich history with
terrorists; news about a bomb under
a railway carriage points to
more than fanatical rucksack
tourists.
By Daan de Wit
The Dutch in the original
article has been translated
into English by Marienella
Meulensteen.
With the arrest of the
notorious Haroon Rashid Aswat,
a big fish was caught. The
press gladly ran with the
story and
readers were
impressed by the success of
the terrorist sleuths. 'The
British counterpart
of Osama bin Laden' now
becomes the possible mastermind
and the
missing link behind the
attacks of 7/7, accused in a
court case that is filed
against him. The thing is that
it is not what it appears to
be.
Alleged mastermind behind 7/7
attacks is MI6 co-worker
Forbes writes
:'Aswat has been named in US
and British media reports as
the alleged mastermind behind
the July 7
suicide bomb
attacks in London, but this
has not been confirmed by
police.' The case is getting a
remarkable amount
of play in
the U.S., but not in England.
The English let him walk time
after time. According
to terrorism expert
John Loftus,
the reason is
that Aswat is an employee
of MI6, the British secret
service. In an
interview with
Dayside of TV channel Fox
he says that the British first
told the Americans that Aswat
was dead. They believe it and
discontinue the lawsuit
against
him. But also the
American Department of
Justice is
obstructive and 'blocked
efforts [to have Aswat
convicted] by its
prosecutors
in Seattle in 2002'. However,
the man surfaces alive and
well in South Africa. Loftus:
'[...] the Brits know that
the
CIA wants to get ahold of
Haroon. So what happens? He
takes off again, goes right to
London. He isn't arrested
when
he lands, he isn't arrested
when he leaves'. Interviewer
Mike Jerrick exclaims: 'Even
though he's on a watch list'.
The
transcript of the show
continues:
'LOFTUS: He's on the watch
list.The only reason he could
get away with that was if
he was working for British
intelligence.
He was a
wanted man.
JERRICK: And then takes off
the day before the bombings, I
understand it--
LOFTUS: And goes to Pakistan.
JERRICK: And Pakistan, they
jail him.
LOFTUS: The Pakistanis arrest
him. They jail him. He's
released within 24 hours.
[...]'. Aswat is a free man
again, returns to
South
Africa, then to Zimbabwe and
subsequently to Zambia where
he is arrested. He is now in
London where he is awaiting
an
American trial because he is suspected
of planning to establish a
training camp for terrorists
in 1999 in the American
state
of Oregon. While only last
month the Sydney Morning
Herald wrote
that Scotland Yard was hunting
for Aswat, it now
appears that
the Brits have no interest in
the alleged mastermind. Maybe
it is also in this case that
having the situation
under
control means the end of the
fun: Scotland Yard was 'not
interested in speaking to Aswat about the London
attacks', writes
the N.Y. Post on August 8.
U.S. Federal Reserve conducts
extraordinary transactions
before 7/7
Besides the
exercises-that-suddenly-became-reality
and the presence in London of
experience expert Rudolph
Giuliani,
there are another
two clear links between 9/11
and 7/7, and they concern money
and foreknowledge. On
September 11,
millions were
earned by extraordinary
speculation on, among others,
two airline companies that
were involved in the
attacks.
As we wrote in our Panorama
magazine
article about September
11, that money has never been
cashed in on.
Also, just
before the attacks of 7/7 it
was speculated with success
that the stocks would plummet;
besides that, the
Federal Bank
of the U.S. conducted
remarkable financial
transactions.
Just before 7/7 a number of
conspicuous transactions took
place. Large
amounts of money were poured
into the financial
markets so
that Wall Street converted the
reaction of the exchanges on
7/7 from a large loss to a
small gain: 'The one
virtuoso performance of July 7
was that of the Federal
Reserve, the Bank of England,
and the European Central Bank,
which flooded equity and
capital markets with liquidity
through such vehicles as the
Plunge Protection Team (PPT),
turning a big Wall Street loss
into a small gain',
writes Webster Tarpley. A
blogger named The Cunning
Realist has done
some
research and proves with
some remarkable statistics (1
2) that the Federal Bank
of the U.S., shortly before
the
attacks on July 7, pumped $35
billion into the market to
soften eventual blows. The
blogger who publicizes this
news
has a job looking at
charts like these and compared
the transactions of the Fed
with other years, but had to
conclude
that in this case it
showed 'extraordinary
activity'. 'The terrorist
attacks in London took place
on Thursday. The Fed
dramatically increased the
pool of liquidity available
for stocks to a multi-year
high 48 hours before that ---
an ideal
amount of time for
that liquidity to filter into
the market --- and kept it
elevated for the next few
days. And indeed, it
worked'.
Speculators profited from the
attacks on 7/7
before 7/7
Insider Joseph Farah
writes about the
successful stock speculations
just before 7/7: '[...] it
appears some profited by
short
selling the British pound in
the 10 days leading up to the
attacks. The pound fell about
6 percent (approximately
1.82
to 1.72) against the dollar
for no apparent reason -
until, of course, the terror
attacks sent the British
markets reeling
still further.
[...]
"This was an almost
unprecedented weakness and far
too sharp to be a
coincidence,"
One
economist with more than 35
years of experience in the
investment industry [said
...].
The problem is that short
selling of this kind can be
done with near total
anonymity.
"Trade
currency futures through a
Swiss or Austrian bank via an
offshore company incorporated
in Cre te and you have
a
totally untraceable
transaction," the economist
noted. "No one will ever know
who made the really big money
off this
situation, but I
guarantee you this - someone
did."'
The question now is whether
this was a dead
Bin Laden from a cave
in Pakistan or Western
Financial experts who followed
the markets hand-in-hand with
the CIA.
Close ties between MI5 and
terrorists
The close ties between the
British secret service and
Arabic terrorists like the
aforementioned Haroon Rashid
Aswat are
not particularly
unique. Already in 2002 we
wrote in our September 11
article for Panorama that
Bin Laden had paid a visit
in
1996 to the British secret
service MI5. Also
in 2002, the BBC
writes about the ties
between MI5 and
Abu Qatada, who is
described in the article
as 'Osama Bin Laden's European
Ambassador'. 'He pledged to
MI5 that he would not "bite
the
hand that fed him".' That
'fed' can also be taken
literally: 'Mr Qatada and his
family are being lodged, fed
and clothed by
British
intelligence services',
reports the BBC in
quoting Time Magazine. 'He
also promised to "report
anyone damaging
the interests
of thi s country". Instead, he
was recruiting for Al-Qaeda
training camps', writes
The Times.
'Tony Blair is bound to be
asked about MI5's history with
Abu Qatada and other militant
clerics who have used Britain
as their base'.
MI6 pays Al-Qaeda £100,000 to
murder Qadaffy
Also in 2002, former MI5
agent David
Shayler revealed that 'In
1996 Britain's exterior
intelligence service, MI6,
actually
funded and worked
with Al-Qaeda in a plot to
assassinate and overthrow
Libya's Muhammar Qaddafy',
writes Mike
Ruppert on page
137 of his
book
Crossing The Rubicon.
It cost Shayler
six months in jail, and
Tony Blair even issued a
D[efense]
notice to keep the
information under wraps, notes
Ruppert, who refers to an article
in The Observer, where
despite
that notice, information is
still to be found: 'British
intelligence paid large sums
of money to an Al-Qaeda cell
in
Libya in a doomed attempt
to assassinate Colonel Qadaffy
in 1996 and thwarted early
attemp ts to bring Osama bin
Laden
to justice'.
It concerned £100,000,
according to Shayler in the
Observer article. While it was
Qadaffy, mind you, who two
years earlier
was the first
who had Bin Laden put on the
wanted list of Interpol,
writes Ruppert. Qadaffy
held Bin Laden responsible
for
the murder of two German
anti-terrorism agents in
Libya. One of the members of
the assassination cell was Anas
al-Liby, a
notorious terrorist with an
American bounty on his head to
the tune of $25 million. The
Observer:
'Astonishingly,
despite suspicions that he was
a high-level Al-Qaeda
operative, al-Liby was given
political asylum in
Britain
and lived in Manchester
until May of 2000 when he
eluded a police raid on his
house and fled abroad. The
raid
discovered a 180-page
Al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad'
containing instructions for
terrorist attacks'.
Also
part of the case against David
Shayler was his statement that MI5 withheld information
that could have prevented
the
attacks in London in 1993 and
1994,
writes The Scotsman.
Londonistan recruiting
ground for fanatical black
sheep
'"MI-6 is in bed with al
Qaeda", Shayler told the
crowd',
writes Webster Tarpley in
his account of the London part
of the
9/11 tour of truth (see
also this
report of the speeches by Tarpley
and DaanSpeak in Amsterdam).
In his book
9/11 -
Synthetic Terror - Made
in USA, Tarpley writes
in a chapter titled Al-Qaeda
and Londonistan:
'There is every reason to
believe that London is one of
the main recruiting grounds
for patsies, dupes, fanatics,
double
agents, and other
roustabouts of the terrorist
scene'. To prove this he gives
various examples, like
this citation from the
Daily
Telegraph: 'Britain is now an
international center for
Islamic militancy on a huge
scale [...] and
the capital is the home to a
bewildering variety of radical
Islamic fundamentalist
movements, many of which make
no
secret of their commitment
to violence and terrorism to
achieve their goals'.
In an
article from October 2001
with the title
Why the Real Name Is 'Osama
Bin London', the often
well-received EIR
cites
someone who speaks
for Bin Laden in a
London-based Arabic newspaper
as saying: 'that "we have a
covenant of peace
with the
British government"'. In
2000 EIR wrote a memo
to the then American Secretary
of State, titled: 'Put
Britain on the
List of States
Sponsoring Terrorism'.
Tarpley in his book: 'Imam
Qureshi of Brixton and others
were allowed by the British
authorities to preach anti-US
sermons to the some 4,000
Muslim inmates in British
prisons, and thus to recruit
new parties
for the world-wide
terror machine'. The examples
are so numerous that it is a
subject in and of itself.
Bomb
under rail carriage
on 7/7 undermines official
version of attack
On his
website, Alex Jones refers
to an interesting
article by the Cambridge
Evening News in which an
eyewitness testifies:
'As they
made their way out, a
policeman pointed out where
the bomb had been. "The
policeman said 'mind that
hole, that's
where the bomb
was'.
The metal was pushed upwards
as if the bomb was underneath
the train. They seem to
think the
bomb was left in a
bag, but I don't remember
anybody being where the bomb
was, or any bag," he said.'
Mark Honigsbaum of The
Guardian also
talks in this
radio report [RealPlayer]
with witnesses about a bomb
under the rail
carriage.
If indeed this is about bombs
under carriages, then the
official story of the four
rucksack terrorists falls
apart even more.
A bomb under
a carriage requires that the
bomber can enter a part of
the London Underground where
outsiders are not
allowed to
enter. This points even more
in the direction of previous
articles in this series that
stressed facts indicating that
an exercise was prepared that
very accidentally became
reality. In this scenario, the
bombers, under the guise of
preparing
an exercise, can do
their work without being
disturbed. The rucksack
terrorists would only serve as
patsies, just like the
hijackers on September
11, who did not destroy
the three WTC towers with
their planes (there also it
probably involved
preset
bombs, and possibly remote
controlled airplanes).
By openly preparing for a
so-called exercise, you don't
have to set up an enormous
conspiracy: 'Thus the drill
also helps
keep the number of
witting accomplices small. You
don't need an entire agency
made up of homicidal
sociopaths',
writes
John Leonard. Then
you place a short message from
an unknown jihad organization
on an obscure web page, in
which
you even misquote the
Quran, and everyone will
accept straight away that the
Islamic warriors are the
perpetrators. The
text was on
a server about which The
Guardian
writes: 'The server in
Houston has intriguing
connections. Everyone's
Internet was founded by
brothers Robert and Roy Marsh
in 1998 and by 2002 had an
income of more than $30m (now
about £17m). Renowned for his
charitable work, Roy Marsh
counts among his friends
President George Bush's former
sister-in-law, Sharon Bush,
and the president's navy
secretary'.
Wild stories in the press are
retracted
Magdy el-Nashar is, alongside
the aforementioned Haroon
Rashid Aswat, another alleged
mastermind of the attacks
on 7/7,
as appears from
various press bulletins.
Meanwhile, he has been
found innocent after
questioning in Egypt where he
was
on holiday: 'El-Nashar
called his detention "a
nightmare," especially when
interrogators suggested he was
"the mastermind behind the
London bombings."',
writes Newsday. He now
wants to return to London: '"I
want to go back
again. But I
am afraid, honestly, I am
afraid. Propaganda against me
made people think I am
terrorist. My
picture is
everywhere.
Some said I am the first man
(behind the attacks). The
most-wanted man. If I walk
down the street and
someone
recognizes me, he might kill
me," el-Nashar said. "I am
innoce nt". The bulletin was
hard for el-Nashar at first.
To give an example, Het Parool
wrote on July 15 on the
front page with the headline
''Mastermind attacks arrested
in Cairo'':
'In a suburb
of Cairo, an Egyptian
biochemist was arrested who
possibly was the mastermind
behind the terror attacks in
London'.
Another example of
journalistic damage is the
item about
the English boy who was
wrongfully presented as a
bombing
suspect. With
the surfacing of this
information, another little
fact proved to be an illusion:
'Evidence showing that all
three
of the London bombers of
Pakistani descent visited
Pakistan last year has been
thrown into doubt',
writes the BBC,
because it
was not a third alleged
terrorist who had been to
Pakistan, but instead a
16-year old boy who happens to
have
the same last name.
Both wild news items turned
out to be incorrect after all
and had to be retracted, but
that does not help very much.
The
man-in-the-street knows
only that two dangerous types
from the Middle East have once
again been picked up. Bad news
has more of an impact and
distribution than a story that
is retracted, plus a
correction never completely
erases the
impression that was
created in the first place.
Exercise-that-becomes-reality
is repeated phenomenon
The attacks in London on 7/7
were not the first example of
exercises-that-just-happened-to-become-reality.
Earlier there
were the
war games on September 11,
partly under the supervision
of Mayor Giuliani
- the man who happened to be
in
London during the attacks.
Tarpley adds another example:
'So it was with the Hinckley
attempt to assassinate Ronald
Reagan, when a presidential
succession exercise was
scheduled for the next day,
as I showed in my
George Bush: The
Unauthorized Biography
(1992;
reprint by Progressive
Press, 2004)'.
In the case of Reagan's
demise, Bush would have become
president. While
Vice President Bush revealed a
plaque at the
hotel where
President Kennedy spent his
last night, John W. Hinckley
Jr. [AVI]
shot President Reagan,
after which the
rehearsal for
the presidential succession
for the next day was
cancelled. Tarpley
writes in his book that
the day after the
assault it
came out that the shooter's
brother was invited for dinner
by Neil Bush, the son of
the vice president. Neil's
wife
said to the Houston Post
that the Hinckley family had
donated a lot of money to
the Bush campaign. The parents
of the
shooter Hinckley write
in their memoirs that their
son, after the assault in his
cell before being transferred
to an institution,
in a series
of notes "described an
imaginary conspiracy --either
with the political left or the
political right [...] to assasinate
the President."' The
notes, together with dozens of
other pages, were withheld by
the FBI and were not admitted
in the
trial against the
shooter.
DoD Helps Local, State, Federal Agencies in Disaster-Response
Exercise
By Petty Officer 1st Class Beverly K. Allen, USN
Special to American Forces Press Service
|
PETERSON AIR FORCE
BASE, Colo., Aug. 12, 2004 – It was a nightmare worst-case scenario. But
that's what U.S. Northern Command officials had intended for "Determined
Promise '04."
Firefighters, police and military personnel from Los Angeles and
the surrounding areas participated in the NORAD/NORTHCOM-sponsored
exercises Determined Promise '04 and Amalgam Virgo '04. Photo by
Petty Officer 1st Class Shane Wallenda, USN
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution
image available. |
|
This year's exercise was combined with
North American Aerospace Defense Command's Amalgam Virgo '04, a
binational, multi-agency air-security exercise. The simulated attacks
came from land, sea and air.
Scenarios in Virginia involved the simulated release of sarin, a
nerve agent, and mustard gas, as well as tunnel and bridge explosions
and the crash of a truck hauling chlorine. Other targets were unmanned
aerial vehicles launched from an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and
multiple airliners with terrorists on board headed for Portland, Ore.,
and Ottawa.
The exercise also involved numerous incidents in California,
including the simulated detonation of a "dirty bomb" in a Los Angeles
harbor, derailment of a train loaded with hazardous chemicals in Ventura
County, and business jets swarming over San Diego in preparation for
attack.
From Virginia to California and Florida to Canada, the exercise
tested the capabilities of NORAD and NORTHCOM and other local, state and
federal agencies, said Marine Col. Gene Pino, NORAD and USNORTHCOM
director of training and exercises.
"We are at war with a smart, thinking enemy, and we must continue
to stay just as smart and think just as hard about these events as they
do. When we stop doing that, I think that's when we'll be in danger,"
said Pino.
He noted that every exercise scenario was built on a strong
intelligence platform to test the synchronization and sharing of
information from local to national levels to ensure "we are poised to
engage a threat."
More than 60 agencies, including local first responders and state
and federal emergency services, participated in the exercise, along with
the Defense Department.
"The exercise was an extraordinary success, improving the seamless
interaction of these agencies," said Army Lt. Gen. Joseph R. Inge,
NORTHCOM's deputy commander. "From intelligence gathering and sharing to
consequence management, America is much safer today from the terrorist
threat, due to the all-out effort of each and every participant in this
massive exercise," Inge said.
The exercise was the fifth semiannual training session for NORAD
and NORTHCOM since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
NORAD is a binational Canadian and American command responsible
for the air defense of North America. NORAD has jet fighters on alert
throughout North America, supported by air-to-air refueling tankers,
airborne and ground-based radar, surveillance systems and satellites.
NORAD officially began operations on May 12, 1958, to defend the
airspace of the United States and Canada from long-range Soviet bombers.
NORAD's mission continues to evolve to protect the citizens of the
United States and Canada.
NORTHCOM has a two-fold mission: homeland defense and civil
support. Specifically, it conducts operations to deter, prevent, and
defeat threats and aggression aimed at the United States, its
territories, and interests within the assigned area of responsibility.
Also, as directed by the president or secretary of defense, the command
provides military assistance to civil authorities, including consequence
management operations, to help mitigate crisis situations.
(Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Beverly K. Allen works for NORAD and
NORTHCOM Public Affairs.)
Our view: Did ya hear the one about
America’s disaster planning?Federal effort to compile list of
critical assets provides comic fodder.
If you were building a database of the
nation's critical assets, would the
Amish Country Popcorn factory near
Berne, Ind., or a petting zoo in Woodville,
Ala., or
Georgia's Kangaroo Conservation Center
make the list?
Of course not, you say?
Then you couldn't work for the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or for
some of the states that fed it information.
For a time, all
three sites, plus dozens of similarly
obscure ones, were part of the DHS National
Asset Database, which was supposed to be, in
the department's words, a catalog of the
nation's critical infrastructure and key
resources.
Now, a top DHS official says such
spots are off the list. Nearly five years
after 9/11, that's a relief. Even so, their
original inclusion is so absurd that it
leaves you wondering whether some of the
nation's security planning is being handled
by late-night comedy writers.
This particular gag took three years
and $32 million to write. It lists 77,069
assets. Yes, 77,069, suggesting that
government officials at every level aren't
willing to set priorities. Pretending to
protect everything means that nothing is
protected well.
You don't need to be a terrorism
expert to know that al-Qaeda targets the
premier symbols of America's political and
financial might. Yet, a
report by Homeland Security's inspector
general last month found that the huge
database contains "an abundance of unusual,
or out-of-place, assets" and other
distortions, hampering its value.
One example: Washington state lists 65
"national monuments and icons," 28 more than
Washington, D.C.
How did this happen?
After starting with a list of 1,849
assets in 2003, the department put out two
calls to states for input on "critical
infrastructure and key resources." The
department provided "guidance" on what to
include, but it did not provide caps. In
some cases, Washington got back exactly what
it asked for.
Indiana listed the popcorn factory
because it met this criteria: agricultural
facilities that ship to at least five
states, according to state Homeland Security
Director Eric Dietz.
A spokesman for Alabama's Homeland
Security Department said the data call went
to counties, which then thought they were
competing for grants and loaded up on
critical assets.
Robert Stephan, assistant secretary
for infrastructure protection at the
Homeland Security Department, says the
database doesn't drive funding decisions.
It's really a catalog of faci a phone book for
disaster planning shouldn't be an exercise
in mindless bureaucracy. And choosing the
nation's most vulnerable and consequential
terrorist targets shouldn't be much more
complicated than calling the governors,
giving them a deadline and putting someone
smart and impatient in charge. Chances are
they'd produce a better list for closer to
$32 than $32 million.
And hold the popcorn.
CSIS “Silent
Vector” Energy
Terrorism
Exercise Finds Nuclear Power Plants “Best Defended
Targets”
October 21, 2002,
CSIS Press Conference,
Washington,
D.C.—“Silent
Vector” was a two-day national security simulation that
focused on the pre-attack phase of a major terrorist incident
on the American homeland. The
exercise
was designed to explore difficulties and reveal
vulnerabilities that might arise if the nation were faced with
a credible, but ambiguous, threat of a terrorist attack on
American soil.
“Silent Vector”
was developed and produced by CSIS (Center for Strategic and
International Studies) in partnership
with the ANSER Institute and the
Oklahoma City
National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of
Terrorism.
The
exercise employed a simulated emergency meeting of the
National Security Council at Camp David, played by former
senior government officials with relevant experience,
including former Senator Sam Nunn acting as President.
Throughout the course of the
exercise,
participants were given increasingly credible and specific
intelligence of a large-scale attack on the nation’s critical
energy infrastructure. Potential targets included refineries,
large LNG/LPG storage operations, pipeline infrastructure,
petroleum terminals, nuclear power plants, chemical
operations, and dams.
CSIS and ANSER Comments on Nuclear Power Plant
Security
“Nuclear power plants have become of great concern to
everybody. But they are probably our best defended targets.
There is more security around nuclear power plants than
anything else we’ve got. When confronted by an aviation
attack, there is some concern. But one of the things that we
have clearly found in this
exercise
is that this is an industry that has taken security pretty
seriously for quite a long time, and its infrastructure,
especially against these kinds of terrorist threats, is
extremely good.”—John
Hamre, President and Chief Executive Officer, CSIS
“Ultimately, we hope that a new Department [of Homeland
Security] is going to establish the foundation for improved
communication. That is not something that we necessarily
looked at in this
exercise.
Clearly, there is a very well established connection between
the senior leadership
and the nuclear power industry through the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. But other than that, the apparatus doesn’t
necessarily exist to effectively deal with a scenario like the
one that we employed in the
exercise.”—Phil
Anderson, Director, CSIS Homeland Security Initiatives
“I guess the thing that surprised me most is there were
some problems that did not develop that we anticipated. During
the eight months of research that went into this, there were
some issues like that [communication and coordination] that
turned out not to be as great as we thought. And the nuclear
industry was one of those that turned out to be much better
connected—much more progressive, frankly—than I’d anticipated
when we began the research.”—David McIntyre, Deputy Director,
ANSER Institute for Homeland Security
Press Coverage of “Silent Vector”
"The scenario avoided the issue of actual damage to
critical infrastructure, [CSIS President and CEO John] Hamre
said, but the CSIS staff did draw up a chart of each target
type's vulnerability to heavy, medium and light attacks from
land, sea and air. Nuclear plants remain the best-defended
parts of the energy infrastructure, he said, while liquefied
natural gas facilities and chemical storage sites remain a
problem."--United Press International,
Oct. 21, 2002.
"The CSIS-organized
group said it found the country's nuclear power plants are
among the best-guarded U.S. facilities for terrorist attacks,
and the nuclear power industry's relationship
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a model of close
government-industry communication on security matters."--Dow
Jones Newswires, Oct. 21, 2002.
"In the
exercise,
called Silent Vector, a mock National Security Council
confronted credible -- but ambiguous -- intelligence about a
planned attack on a part of the U.S. energy network...Because
the nation's 43 [sic: actually 103] nuclear power plants are
among the best guarded sites, the participants focused on oil
and gas refineries, storage facilities and
terminals."--Aviation Week's Homeland Security and Defense,
Oct. 23, 2002.
"Nuclear power plants are "probably our best defended
targets" among energy facilities that would likely be targeted
for terrorist attacks, according to findings released today by
a public policy research group. CSIS President /CEO John Hamre
said the organization did not want to reveal information about
vulnerabilities of the country's infrastructure. He did,
however, say nuclear plants have more security around them
than other energy facilities in the scenario."--Platts,
the energy division of McGraw-Hill Companies, Oct. 21, 2002.
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:GZpo8UPdcagJ:www.nei.org/doc.asp%3Fcatnum%3D3%26catid%3D959+exercise+america+terrorism+-Portland+-hurricanes+-2005+-2000+-2001+-1999+-1998+-health+-pain+-cross&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us
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Protocol Of Intentions Between The Government Of The United
States Of America And The Republic Of The Philippines Concerning
Cooperation In Disaster Prevention And Management
Release Date: November 20, 2001
Release Number: HQ-01-167
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Washington, D.C., November 21, 2001 -- Ambassador Albert Del
Rosario and FEMA Chief of Staff Elizabeth DiGregorio shake hands
yesterday after signing a protocol between the U.S.A. and the
Republic of the Philippines concerning disaster prevention and
management. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Secretary
Colin Powell look on during the event, held in the Department of
State Treaty Room.
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The Government of the United States of America and the
Government of the Republic of the Philippines, hereinafter referred
to as "the Participants;"
Desiring to further expand and enhance the existing friendly
relations between their Peoples, on the basis of equality, mutual
respect and benefit;
Recalling the discussions and coordination activities of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency of the United States of America
and the Office of Civil Defense of the National Disaster
Coordinating Council of the Republic of the Philippines; and
Desiring to further cooperative activities in disaster
prevention and management through a framework of collaboration that
facilitates the exchange of expertise, knowledge, and information,
and the transfer of new technology in emergency management.
Have reached the following understandings:
Article 1
General Cooperation Objectives
The Participants intend to pursue cooperative activities in
disaster prevention and management, including:
1. Designing and initiating prototypes of cooperation that aim
to strengthen the emergency management linkages between the
Participants as well as enhancing the emergency management
capabilities of the National Disaster Coordinating Council of the
Philippines;
2. Organizing the exchange of emergency management
professionals and practitioners in order to facilitate the
development of programs and activities, including the sharing of
expertise, experience, and information as well as the transfer of
new technology in emergency management; and
3. Proposing the conduct of forum and training seminars,
reciprocal visits, and disaster management exercises to be
participated in by representatives of the Participants.
Article 2
Cooperation in Emergency Preparedness and Response Training
Exercises
In the field of emergency preparedness and response training
and exercises, the Participants may:
1. Facilitate the exchange of emergency management experts and
instructors for the development of training modules and
instructional materials that promote best practices in emergency
management; and
2. Participate in emergency management training programs,
seminars, workshops, and simulation exercises.
Article 3
Exchange of Information and Scientific and Technical Cooperation
In the field of information exchange, scientific and technical
cooperation, the Participants plan to:
1. Facilitate the exchange of emergency management information
and transfer of technology for effective disaster management and
prevention, and emergency preparedness and responses;
2. Exchange information on lessons learned from emergency
responses of the Participants to natural and man-made disasters,
including technology-related emergencies; and
3. Facilitate the exchange of knowledge and information on
natural and man-made hazards and risk management.
Article 4
Implementing and Subsequent Arrangements
1. The Participants should directly communicate through the
Federal Emergency Management Agency of the United States of America
and the Office of Civil Defense, as the Executive Agency of the
National Disaster Coordinating Council of the Republic of the
Philippines, and should initiate meetings to plan and develop annual
program activities.
2. Subject to authority and the availability of funds and
resources, the Participants may decide to formulate and implement,
on the basis of subsequent arrangements between them pursuant to
this Protocol of Intentions, work plans for the annual program
activities.
Article 5
Amendment
The Participants may, by written agreement through diplomatic
channels, decide to amend or revise any provision of this Protocol
of Intentions. The activities under any such amendment or revision
should commence in accordance with the provisions of Article 6.
Article 6
Commencement of Activities
Activities under this Protocol of Intentions commence on the
date of the latter written communication by the Participants through
diplomatic channels, indicating compliance with their respective
domestic legal requirements.
Article 7
Validity
This Protocol of Intentions should remain valid for a period
of three years from the date of the commencement of activities and
should remain valid for subsequent periods of two years, unless
either Participant notifies the other Participant, through
diplomatic channels, of its intention to terminate the same in
writing. Such termination should take effect after three months
following the receipt by such other Participant of the said notice.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the undersigned have signed this Protocol
of Intentions.
DONE at Washington, on the 20th day of November 2001, in
duplicate, in the English language.
FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
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Elizabeth L. DiGregorio
Chief of Staff for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency of the United States of America
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FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE
REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES:
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Albert Del Rosario
Ambassador of the Republic of the
Philippines to the United States
of America |
Last Modified: Tuesday, 23-Sep-2003 14:03:16
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