{"id":336747,"date":"2017-11-26T23:37:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T22:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=336747"},"modified":"2017-11-26T23:37:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-26T22:37:38","slug":"iran-came-called-top-state-sponsor-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/iran-came-called-top-state-sponsor-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"How Iran Came to Be Called ‘The Top State Sponsor of Terrorism’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

While I happened to be researching another subject, a central question in the investigation came to be how Iran \u2014 which supplied none of the 9\/11 terrorists and no financing to them and no organizing of them, and which hasn\u2019t been connected with nearly as many terrorist incidents globally as Saudi Arabia has \u2014 came to be officially called by the U.S. <\/b>\u201cthe top state sponsor of terrorism.\u201d<\/span><\/a> The following is the portion of my resulting article that happens to concern this very question, and it\u2019s modified slightly here, so as to focus only on this exact question:<\/span><\/p>\n

The lie about this matter began, actually, with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in the Saudi city of Khobar, which killed 19 U.S. military, who worked at the Dharan air base<\/span><\/a> three miles away.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to that incident, I am not able to find any such reference as \u201cIran is the top state sponsor of terrorism\u201d or \u201cIran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism\u201d or anything like it.<\/span><\/p>\n

This incident \u2014 the Khobar Towers bombing \u2014 became the lynchpin of the accusation by the Saudi royal family, the U.S. State Department<\/span><\/a>, and the CIA<\/span><\/a>, that Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism<\/span><\/a>. Both Robert Mueller and his longtime ally James Comey<\/span><\/a> (the latter of whose firing as the FBI chief, by U.S. President Trump, had sparked the appointment of Mueller to become the Special Counsel investigating the U.S. President) had performed crucial roles in establishing that the Khobar Towers bombing was a Hezbollah operation run by the Iranian Government \u2014 and, starting upon this basis, in helping to develop the case that Iran \u201cis the foremost state sponsor of terrorism.\u201d<\/span><\/a> However, as has been made clear by several great independent investigative journalists, on the basis of far more-solid documentation than the official account, the Khobar Towers bombing was instead entirely a fundamentalist-Sunni operation, specifically perpetrated by Al Qaeda, which hates Shia and which also hates America\u2019s military presence in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden\u2019s claim<\/span><\/a> of the bombing’s having been done by Al Qaeda, was, in fact, entirely honest and accurate.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s \u201cDeep State,\u201d which extends to Saudi Arabia and to a number of other Governments \u2014 it\u2019s an international network \u2014 is deeply committed to supporting the fundamentalist-Sunni war to conquer and destroy Shia Islam, and not merely to conquer the leading Shia nation, which is Iran. The U.S. Government has intensely taken a side in the Sunni-Shia religious war. That war is comparable in some respects to the 30 Years\u2019 War (1618-1648) between Catholics and Protestants<\/span><\/a>, which killed an estimated eight million Europeans; and, both the United States and Israel have clearly joined with the fundamentalist-Sunni leaders, against Iran, and against Shia generally. <\/span><\/p>\n

The reasons behind the prevailing lies about this matter will also be documented here. Discrepancies between the official story and the solidly documented facts, need to be explained, in order for a reader to be able to understand truthfully why Mueller (who cooperated with Comey in order to rig the official account of the bombing, so as to condemn Iran and Hezbollah instead of Al Qaeda) received his appointment. This is also important in order to understand why Trump, though rabidly anti-Iranian himself, is nonetheless insufficiently anti-Iranian to satisfy the Sauds, Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or the rest of the U.S.-and-allied Deep State.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before proceeding further here, however, the statistical falseness<\/i> of the allegation that Iran is the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism has to be clearly recognized as being the ultimate fact; because, if this entire question \u2014 to which Mueller and Comey contributed so importantly to answering by their identifying Iran (and Shia generally) as being precisely that (\u2018the foremost state sponsor of terrorism\u2019) \u2014 can be assessed at all objectively, then the statistical answer to it would certainly be the objective one.<\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n

Wikipedia\u2019s article on \u201cIran and state-sponsored terrorism\u201d<\/span><\/a> says: \u201c<\/span>According to the Global Terrorism Database<\/span><\/a>, the majority of deaths, more than 94% attributed to Islamic terrorism since 2001, were perpetrated by Sunni<\/span> jihadists<\/span><\/a> of the Islamic State<\/span><\/a>, al-Qaeda<\/span><\/a> and others.[3]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>[4]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u201d Only 6% were Shiites, at all \u2014 from any country. Similarly, my own independent study of 54 especially prominent global instances of Islamic terrorism was headlined (and reported that) “All Islamic Terrorism Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis,<\/span><\/a> Except Terrorism Against Israel.\u201d (The anti-Israel terrorist instances might constitute the \u201c6%\u201d which was referred to in the Wikipedia article, but that article provided no good link to its source for the \u201c6%\u201d figure.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So: the basic allegation is false, that Iran is the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism<\/b>; the general allegation isn\u2019t anywhere near to being true. It\u2019s a lie. More specifically, now, regarding the Khobar Towers incident, which triggered the start of this fraudulent generalization: <\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi royal family asserted, immediately after the bombing, that the attack had been perpetrated by jihadists who had returned from Afghanistan and who were now fighting to overthrow Saudi Arabia\u2019s Government (the royal Saud family). <\/span><\/p>\n

For example, on 15 August 1996, the New York Times<\/i> headlined “Saudi Rebels Are Main Suspects In June Bombing of a U.S. Base\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reported that, \u201cThe Government of Saudi Arabia now believes that native Saudi Islamic militants, including many veterans of the Afghan war, carried out the June 25 bombing that killed 19 American servicemen at a base in Dhahran, Saudi officials said today.\u201d However, the \u201cmujahideen\u201d who had fought in Afghanistan were paid and backed both by the Sauds and by the U.S. Government. For example, as early as 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski flew into Pakistan and exhorted the Taliban there to become mujahideen in Afghanistan because \u201cThat land over there is yours; you\u2019ll go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail, and you will have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Then, starting in 1980, \u201cFrom the Pakistani border, bin Laden raises funds and provides the mujahedeen with logistical and humanitarian aid.\u201d<\/span><\/a> So, the Sauds\u2019 allegation that the Khobar bombers had been \u201cveterans of the Afghan war\u201d would have meant that they had been foot-soldiers for the U.S.-Saudi operation in Afghanistan. Both the U.S. Government and the Saud family (who own the Saudi Government) hate Shia and especially hate Iran. Hezbollah are Shia, and they are extremely pro-Iran. How likely is it that Hezbollah, anywhere, would have been fighting under the command of Al Qaeda, or of any other fundamentalist-Sunni jihadist organization that calls all Shia \u201cinfidels\u201d? So, the Sauds\u2019 account of the Khobar Towers bombing is fishy, at best.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, a Google-search for the phrase \u201cHezbollah in Afghanistan\u201d<\/span><\/a> turns up only \u201c6 results,\u201d and all of them say nothing about any \u201cHezbollah in Afghanistan.\u201d No report comes up about such a thing, for any year, or any period. The only countries where Hezbollah was reported to exist were Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. One of the links in that Google search was globally comprehensive for the year 2007, the Center on International Cooperation\u2019s \u201cAnnual Review of Global Peace Operations \u2014 2007\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It included reports on wars during that year, in 26 countries, and the chapter for Afghanistan (pages 52-58) doesn\u2019t mention Hezbollah even once. However, a search for the phrase \u201dHezbollah Afghanistan\u201d does bring up \u201cSyria’s Other Foreign Fighters: Iran’s Afghan and Pakistani Mercenaries\u201d<\/span><\/a>, at the neoconservative (and thus favoring not only the American aristocracy but its allied aristocracies \u2014 especially in Saudi Arabia and Israel) The National Interest<\/i>, dated 20 November 2015. That article says, \u201cThe liwa\u2019 fatimiyun (Fatimiyun Brigade) is composed exclusively of Afghans and fights under the auspices of Hezbollah Afghanistan,\u201d based in Syria. Other supposed foreign Shiites trying to overthrow Syria\u2019s Government are mentioned, as being supposedly \u201cPakistanis fighting in Syria under the Hezbollah flag.\u201d However, if these allegations are true, then those men would be opponents of Syria\u2019s secular government, which is headed by the secular Shiite Bashar al-Assad, who is being attacked by fundamentalist Sunnis \u2014 including both ISIS and Al Qaeda there \u2014 who are trying to kill Hezbollah in Syria, who are, in fact, defending Assad. (Such illogical \u2018historical\u2019 accounts as that, are normal in neoconservative publications \u2014 counterfactuality is entirely acceptable to them.) Either that, or else the alleged Shiite Pakistanis who are fighting in Syria to overthrow the Shiite Assad and replace him with a fundamentalist Sunni regime, would be \u2014 not actually members of Hezbollah, but instead \u2014 Shiites from Pakistan who came to Syria in order to help actually not to overthrow the Government but to defend it against its rabidly anti-Shia attackers. That\u2019s the opposite of the assumption that The National Interest<\/i> made, but it conceivably could be the case. A Pew survey<\/span><\/a> scientifically randomly sampled 1,512 Pakistanis, and found that 1,450 of them declared themselves to be \u201cMuslim,\u201d which is 96%. It also found that 94% of Pakistanis (of any or no faith) say that religion is \u201cvery important\u201d in their lives, and found that 81% of the Muslims said they were \u201cSunni,\u201d 6% said they were \u201cShiite,\u201d and 12% said they were \u201cJust a Muslim.\u201d So, only 6% of Pakistanis identified themselves specifically as \u201cShia.\u201d<\/i> That is such a small percentage of Shiites in Pakistan, as to make unlikely any significant contribution that Pakistanis would be providing to the defense of Syria, which is at least 1,800 miles or 2,900 kilometers, away \u2014 not even in the same general region. But, in any case, that neoconservative magazine\u2019s assumptions regarding the entire matter are clearly false. <\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, then, the logical feasibility of the U.S. Government\u2019s case against Iran is so tiny as to constitute almost an absolute impossibility of that case being true. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, then, let\u2019s consider the specifics of the case:<\/span><\/p>\n

The great investigative journalist Greg Palast, in his 2003 The Best Democracy Money Can Buy<\/i><\/span><\/a> (pages 101-102), wrote: <\/span><\/p>\n

True-blue Democrats may want to skip the next paragraphs. If President Bush put the kibosh on investigations of Saudi funding of terror and nuclear bomb programs, this was merely taking a policy of Bill Clinton one step further.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Following the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Clinton hunted Osama with a passion \u2014 but a passion circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline. In 1994, a Saudi diplomat defected to the United States with 14,000 pages of documents from the kingdom\u2019s sealed file cabinets. This mother lode of intelligence included evidence of plans for the assassination of Saudi opponents living in the West and, tantalizingly, details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program \u2014 the first attempt to build an Islamic bomb. The Saudi government, according to the defector, Mohammed Al Khilewi, slipped Saddam the nuclear loot during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years when our government still thought Saddam too marvelous for words <\/i>[because he was trying to slaughter Shiite Iran]. The thought was that he would only use the bomb to vaporize Iranians <\/i>[which the rulers of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia \u2014 and of Israel \u2014 would love].<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton granted the Saudi defector asylum, but barred the FBI from looking at the documents. Al Khilewi\u2019s New York lawyer, Michael Wildes, told me he was stunned. Wildes handles some of America\u2019s most security-sensitive asylum cases. \u201cWe said (to the FBI), \u2018Here, take the documents! Go get some bad guys with them! We\u2019ll even pay for the photocopying!\u201d But the agents who came to his office had been ordered not to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on U.S. soil.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1997, the Canadians caught and extradited to America one of the<\/i> [Saudi-Government-alleged] Khobar Towers attackers. In 1999, Vernon Jordan\u2019s law firm stepped in and \u2014 poof! \u2014 the <\/i>[Saudi-alleged] killer was shipped back to Saudi Arabia before he could reveal all he knew about Al Qaeda (valuable) and the Saudis (embarrassing). I reviewed but was not permitted to take notes on, the alleged<\/i> [finally, Palast is getting that right] terrorist\u2019s debriefing by the FBI. To my admittedly inexpert eyes, there was enough on Al Qaeda to make him a source on terrorists worth holding on to. Not that he was set free \u2014 he\u2019s in one of the kingdom\u2019s dungeons<\/i> [likelier dead soon after arriving back in Saudi Arabia] \u2014 but his info is sealed up with him. The terrorist\u2019s extradition was \u201cClinton\u2019s.\u201d \u201cClinton\u2019s parting kiss to the Saudis,\u201d as one insider put it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Another great investigative journalist is Seymour Hersh, who in the 22 October 2001 issue of the New Yorker<\/i>, headlined \u201cKing\u2019s Ransom\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 1994 or earlier, the National Security Agency has been collecting electronic intercepts of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, which is headed by King Fahd. The intercepts depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country’s religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The intercepts have demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Central Asia, and throughout the Persian Gulf region. “Ninety-six is the key year,” one American intelligence official told me. “Bin Laden hooked up to all the bad guys \u2014 it’s like the Grand Alliance \u2014 and had a capability for conducting large-scale operations.” The Saudi regime, he said, had “gone to the dark side.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Subsequently, he noted:<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1994, Mohammed al-Khilewi, the first secretary at the Saudi Mission to the United Nations, defected and sought political asylum in the United States. He brought with him, according to his New York lawyer, Michael J. Wildes, some fourteen thousand internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal family’s corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for terrorists. He claimed to have evidence that the Saudis had given financial and technical support to Hamas, the extremist Islamic group whose target is Israel. There was a meeting at the lawyer’s office with two F.B.I. agents and an Assistant United States Attorney. “We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on the table,” Wildes told me last week. “But the agents refused to accept them.” He and his client heard nothing further from federal authorities. Al-Khilewi, who was granted asylum, is now living under cover.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudis were also shielded from Washington’s foreign-policy bureaucracy. A government expert on Saudi affairs told me that Prince Bandar dealt exclusively with the men at the top, and never met with desk officers and the like. “Only a tiny handful of people inside the government are familiar with U.S.-Saudi relations,” he explained. “And that is purposeful.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Both Mueller and Comey were high enough \u201cat the top\u201d so as to know what the people below them needed to hide in order to succeed in their careers. <\/span><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/i>\u2019s report<\/span><\/a>, on 15 August 1996, quoted a leading Saudi dissident in London as asserting that, \u201cAs far as I know, Prince Nayef is keeping the Americans away from all the details at this point.\u201d This report went on: \u201cIn a statement responding to the earlier reports of confessions, Prince Nayef said Saudi Arabia would make an announcement as soon as the investigation is completed. His comments were also viewed as refuting earlier suggestions by Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who had said that Saudi investigations might point to an Iranian connection.\u201d In other words, at that time (as of August 15th), the U.S. official was suggesting \u201can Iranian connection\u201d but the Saudi official wasn\u2019t \u2014 at least, not yet \u2014 and the expectation was that \u201cconfessions\u201d would be providing the decisive \u2018evidence\u2019. However, these \u2018confessions\u2019, in Saudi cases are typically \u2018information\u2019 extracted under torture, and, where that fails to obtain the \u2018information\u2019 that\u2019s desired by the Government, then threats to destroy the person\u2019s immediate family are applied; so, the Sauds famously usually do get exactly the \u2018information\u2019 that they want (regardless of whether it\u2019s true).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wikipedia article \u201cKhobar Towers bombing\u201d<\/span><\/a> summarizes the \u2018findings\u2019 by the U.S. FBI and courts, and ignores the Sauds\u2019 \u2018investigation(s)\u2019, because nothing was ever made public from the Sauds\u2019 Government or officials or anyone there, about what they \u2018found\u2019 (other than \u2018found\u2019 by torture). Wikipedia\u2019s article, which is based entirely upon the U.S. Government (the first party to broach publicly the possibility of \u201can Iranian connection\u201d) states flatly, right up front, \u201cPerpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz).\u201d<\/b> In common parlance, that\u2019s Hezbollah, an \u201cIranian connection\u201d \u2014 exactly what the U.S. Government wanted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what that article asserts regarding the operations of the alleged mastermind:<\/span><\/p>\n

In June 2001, an indictment was issued in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia charging the following people with murder, conspiracy, and other charges related to the bombing:[18]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/i><\/b> <\/i>Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil<\/i><\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

Al-Mughassil disappeared from the \u2018news\u2019 after the Sauds announced his capture in 2015, but Wikipedia on 6 November 2017 closed its bizarre article about him by saying, without comment, \u201cAl-Mughassil was believed to be living in Iran.[1][2]\u201d<\/span><\/a> That footnote [1] linked to Front Page mag. in 2005, which actually said nothing of the sort<\/span><\/a>; footnote [2] linked to FDD in 2006, which actually said nothing of the sort<\/span><\/a>. The obvious likeliest explanation for Wikipedia\u2019s blatant falsehoods there is Wikipedia\u2019s being edited by the CIA<\/span><\/a>, which serves the Sauds, just like the rest of America\u2019s federal Government does.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wikipedia article then continued by listing the other alleged defendants:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoorie<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Hani al-Sayegh who had been previously in U.S. custody but deported to Saudi Arabia, when charges against him were dropped due to a lack of evidence.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Eight other Saudis<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 One Lebanese man listed as “John Doe”.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In July 2001, Saudi Arabia said that eleven of the people indicted in the US were in custody in Saudi prisons, and were to be tried in Saudi court, as the country refused to extradite any of them to the United States to stand trial.[19] The government has not since made public the outcome of the trial or the whereabouts of the prisoners.[20]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

All six of the named persons there were Shiites in Saudi Arabia. The respective Wikipedia articles on each provide no evidence that any of them was at all involved in the bombing. However, the article on Hani al-Sayegh<\/span><\/a>, who was living in Canada, is extraordinarily honest: it indicates that he said he had had nothing whatsoever to do with any bombings, nor any terrorism at all, and that the U.S. Government tried to get him to confess to something on the basis of which he could be tried and convicted in the U.S., but that he continued to resist all plea-offers, and to maintain that they were seeking to get him to lie, which he would not do. So, since the U.S. would not torture him on U.S. soil, the U.S. deported him \u201cto Saudi Arabia on October 10, 1999 where it was assumed he would be executed upon arrival.[3][12].\u201d But the Saudi regime never announced anything about any of the men they were charging in the Khobar Towers bombing. <\/span><\/p>\n

The FBI issued charges against al-Sayegh and 12 others (all allegedly Hezbollah) on 21 June 2001<\/span><\/a>, for the bombing; and, since that time, the only publication of their names has been in regards to the mere presumption that they were guilty. Their indictments in the U.S.<\/span><\/a> (without evidence), and (since the Saudi Government wouldn\u2019t say anything about them \u2014 not even whether they were in prison or free there) the charges in U.S. courts that Iran had helped them to do it, were 100% based upon that \u2018evidence\u2019. Therefore, Iran was declared guilty in U.S. courts, and fined, again<\/span><\/a>, and again<\/span><\/a>, over $500 million in all, without any reliable evidence, at all, that Iran had anything to do with the Khobar Towers bombing. And, not a cent of those fines was paid; but the U.S. Government\u2019s purpose was served nonetheless: getting Iran\u2019s \u2018guilt\u2019 onto the official record, such that Wikipedia, for example could say \u201cPerpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing closed, however, by saying:<\/span><\/p>\n

William Perry, who was the United States Secretary of Defense at the time that this bombing happened, said in an interview in June 2007 that “he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.\u201d[25]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

On December 22, 2006, federal judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for the attack, stating that the leading experts on Hezbollah presented “overwhelming” evidence of the group’s involvement and that six captured Hezbollah members detailed the role of Iranian officials in providing money, plans, and maps.[4] This decision was reached as a default judgment, however, in which the Iranian government was not represented in court, and had no opportunity to challenge the allegations.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

People who trust the U.S. Government\u2019s honesty will interpret the outcome as displaying legal and judicial incompetency, not as displaying political and propagandistic competency. However, any legal and judicial system that accepts, as fundamental or even any \u2018evidence\u2019 in a case, testimony that was extracted from someone who had been placed under torture in order to get that person to say those things, is profoundly incomepetent except as a tool of the dictators in order to \u2018justify\u2019 their dictates \u2014 to satisfy them so that the torture would stop.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Perry announced his opinion that \u201cal-Qaeda rather than Iran was behind\u201d the Khobar Towers attack, only after the 2006 court \u2018finding\u2019 of Iran\u2019s \u2018guilt\u2019 in the case. The UPI article<\/span><\/a> on this statement from Perry opened and closed as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

Perry: U.S. eyed Iran attack after bombing<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Published: June 6, 2007 at 4:25 PM<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) — A former U.S. defense secretary says he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Former Defense Secretary William Perry said he had a contingency plan to attack Iran if the link had been proven, but evidence was not to either his nor President Bill Clinton’s satisfaction.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The attack would have struck “at a number of their military facilities that would have weakened — substantially weakened … the Iranian navy and air force,” he said in New York Tuesday during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

“I believe that the Khobar Tower bombing was probably masterminded by Osama bin Laden,” Perry said. “I can’t be sure of that, but in retrospect, that’s what I believe. At the time, he was not a suspect. At the time … all of the evidence was pointing to Iran.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

He said al-Qaida did not emerge as a major threat until Clinton’s second term.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

“We probably should have been more concerned about it at the time than we were but in the first term we did not see Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida as a major factor, or one that we were concerned with,” he said.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced a 46-count indictment against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man in the bombing. All were allegedly connected to Hezbollah, a terrorist group the United States believes is linked to Iran.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Perry said the FBI strongly believed at the time the bombing was ordered by Iran, but Saudi officials tried to discourage that theory.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

“They feared what action we would take. They rightly feared it. In fact, I had a contingency plan for a strike on Iran, if it had been if it had been clearly established. But it was never clearly established, and so we never did that,” Perry said.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So, although Wikipedia started by alleging \u201cPerpetrators: Hezbollah Al-Hejaz (English: Party of God in the Hijaz)\u201d \u2014 and in plain language, that\u2019s Hezbollah \u2014 it ended by kiboshing that very theory of the case, which the Wikipedia article had been \u2018documenting\u2019 (with bad logic and some false \u2018facts\u2019).<\/span><\/p>\n

Subsequently, the fine investigative journalist Gareth Porter explained how Perry had come to think that Iran and Hezbollah had been the culprit. Perry had trusted the head of the FBI, Louis Freeh<\/b>. Perry didn\u2019t know that, behind the scenes, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud<\/b> (who was his family\u2019s U.S. Ambassador) had told Freeh that Iran and Hezbollah did it. Furthermore, the Sauds had actually blocked the FBI\u2019s own investigators from having access to the site or to any of the evidence (other than by providing Freeh himself access to the torture-extracted \u2018confessions\u2019). Initially, in fact, the Sauds even started bulldozing the site.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first part of Porter\u2019s five-part report was titled \u201cEXCLUSIVE \u2014 PART 1: Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It said: \u201cThe Saudi bulldozing stopped only after Scott Erskine, the supervisory FBI special agent for international terrorism investigations, threatened that Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who happened to be in Saudi Arabia when the bomb exploded, would intervene personally on the matter.\u201d It said there was: \u201ca systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing. The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi\u2019a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organiser.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The second part was titled \u201cEXCLUSIVE \u2014 PART 2: Saudi Account of Khobar Bore Telltale Signs of Fraud\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The third part was titled \u201cEXCLUSIVE \u2014 PART 3: U.S. Officials Leaked a False Story Blaming Iran\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fourth part was titled \u201cEXCLUSIVE \u2014 PART 4: FBI Ignored Compelling Evidence of bin Laden Role\u201d<\/span><\/a>. It noted that, \u201cIn October 1996, after having issued yet another fatwa calling on Muslims to drive U.S. soldiers out of the Kingdom, bin Laden was quoted in al Quds al Arabi<\/i>, the Palestinian daily published in London, as saying, \u2018The crusader army was shattered when we bombed Khobar.\u2019”<\/span><\/p>\n

The fifth part was titled \u201cEXCLUSIVE \u2014 PART 5: Freeh Became “Defence Lawyer” for Saudis on Khobar\u201d<\/span><\/a>. This part had the most hair-raising details:<\/span><\/p>\n

The key to the success of the Saudi deception was FBI director Louis Freeh, who took personal charge of the FBI investigation, letting it be known within the Bureau that he was the “case officer” for the probe, according to former FBI officials.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Freeh allowed Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to convince him that Iran was involved in the bombing, and that President Bill Clinton, for whom he had formed a visceral dislike, “had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the towers,” as Freeh wrote in his memoirs.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The Khobar Towers investigation soon became Freeh\u2019s vendetta against Clinton. “Freeh was pursuing this for his own personal agenda,” says former FBI agent Jack Cloonan.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A former high-ranking FBI official recalls that Freeh “was always meeting with Bandar”. And many of the meetings were not in Freeh\u2019s office but at Bandar\u2019s 38-room home in McLean, Virginia.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Saudis were refusing the most basic FBI requests for cooperation. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Freeh quickly made Iranian and Saudi Shi\u2019a responsibility for the bombing the official premise of the investigation, excluding from the inquiry the hypothesis that Osama bin Laden\u2019s al Qaeda organisation had carried out the Khobar Towers bombing. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s bin Laden unit, which had only been established in early 1996, was also excluded by CIA leadership from that Agency\u2019s work on the bombing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, in order to bring his exhaustive investigation up-to-date, Porter headlined on 1 September 2015, \u201cWho Bombed Khobar Towers? Anatomy of a Crooked Terrorism Investigation\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Here\u2019s one particularly forceful portion of it:<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to build a legal case against Iran and Shi’a Saudis, Freeh had to get access to the Shi’a detainees who had confessed. But the Saudis never agreed to allow FBI officials to interview them. In early November 1998, Freeh sent an FBI team to observe Saudi secret police officials asking eight Shi’a detainees the FBI’s questions from behind a one-way mirror at the Riyadh detention center.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

By then Saudi secret police had already had two and half years to coach the detainees on what to say, under the threat of more torture. But Freeh didn’t care. “For Louis, if they would let us in the room, that was the important thing,” a senior FBI official involved in the Khobar investigation told me. “We would have gone over there and gotten the answers even if they had been propped up.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But the Justice Department refused to go ahead with an indictment based on the information the FBI team brought back. Department lawyers knew the Shi’a detainees had been subject to torture, so they have ruled that the confessions were not valid.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: the head of the FBI believed torture-extracted \u2018confessions\u2019 as if such would meet U.S. rules of evidence \u2014 which they don\u2019t. And coaching of witnesses is likewise prohibited \u2014 under U.S. laws. This just goes to show that at the very top of the U.S. regime there is no respect whatsoever for the U.S. Constitution or for its strictures (such as against coerced testimony) \u2014 at the top, they are all above the law, and even above the U.S. Constitution itself. They are, after all, a dictatorship<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 30 May 2013, The Washingtonian<\/i> headlined \u201cForged Under Fire \u2014 Bob Mueller and Jim Comey\u2019s Unusual Friendship\u201d<\/span><\/a> and Garrett M. Graff reported:<\/span><\/p>\n

Although they\u2019d been aware of each other for years, sharing their similar orbits, Comey and Mueller were first brought together professionally by then-FBI director Louis Freeh in the opening days of the Bush administration. \u2026 As the Bush administration took office in 2001, Freeh asked Bob Mueller, who was acting as John Ashcroft\u2019s deputy attorney general, to transfer the<\/i> [Khobar] case to Comey.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

When he finally did so, Mueller called Comey<\/i><\/b> with a warning: \u201cWilma Lewis is going to be so pissed.\u201d Indeed, Lewis blasted the decision, as well as both Freeh and Mueller personally, in a press release, saying the move was \u201cill-conceived and ill-considered.\u201d But <\/i>Freeh\u2019s gambit paid off.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Within weeks, Comey had pulled together the indictment.<\/i><\/b> During a National Security Council briefing at the White House, under the watchful gaze of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, <\/i>Comey presented overwhelming evidence of Iran\u2019s involvement.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

On the eve of the expiration of the statute of limitations, fourteen individuals were indicted for the attack. Freeh, who stepped down the next day, said the indictment was \u201ca major step.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

So, Comey and Mueller were brought in by Freeh because Freeh was about to retire and he wanted successors who would be committed to the theory of the case, that Freeh had gotten from Prince Bandar. If Comey and Mueller wouldn\u2019t go along with that torture-extracted \u2018testimony\u2019 as \u2018evidence\u2019, then their ability to become appointed to head the FBI would have been zero. Freeh, Comey, and Mueller are a team \u2014 a team that serves the Bushes and the Sauds<\/span><\/a>. But not<\/i> the American public. <\/span><\/p>\n

Our continuing war against Iran is due entirely to their crucial assistance. The Deep State appoints such individuals. <\/span><\/p>\n

And: if one has every reason to distrust the U.S. Government\u2019s repeated allegations that Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism, then what remains of U.S. \u2018justifications\u2019 for being involved at all in hostility against Iran, and in supporting Sunnis and Jews and even many Christians and others who (for Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other U.S.-\u2018allied\u2019 nations) carry on their hateful actions against Iran, and against Shia Muslims generally. Iran and Shia are not at all enemies of the American (or of its vassal nations\u2019) public (except maybe in Israel \u2014 but that Government is an enemy of the American people anyway<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The knowledgeable expert observer on the Middle East, and former editor-in-chief of Al Quds Al Arabi<\/i> newspaper, Abdel Bari Atwan<\/span><\/a>, headlined on November 10th at Information Clearing House, \u201cOn the Brink of War\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and summarized his discussions with other highly respected experts, regarding the convulsions within the royal Saud royal family and the imprisonment by Crown Prince Salman al-Saud, of other Saud Princes, and also of Lebanon\u2019s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri. Atwan noted that, \u201cany U.S.\/Israeli intervention in Syria is unlikely to pass without a collision with Russia. In this case, we can expect a world war.\u201d He concluded: \u201cExperts believe the success of this future, expected, and indeed imminent war lies in the destruction of Iran, regime-change in Qatar, and the eradication of Hezbollah. Its failure lies in the destruction of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE, and Saudi Arabia\u2019s partition into a number of states.\u201d (Atwan gave no indication as to which of the two outcomes he preferred.) Though U.S. President Donald Trump continues to be unflinching in his support of the Saud regime \u2014 which would risk nuclear annihilation \u2014 the American and other nations\u2019 publics must simply observe, powerless, while the aristocracies work out \u2018our differences\u2019. They own the consequences; but we, the public, suffer the consequences \u2014 whatever those will be.<\/span><\/p>\n

After all, what George W. Bush did to Iraqis was barbarous. What Barack Obama did to Libyans was barbarous. What Bush did to Afghans was barbarous. What Obama did to Ukrainians<\/span><\/a> was barbarous. A dictatorship can be a bipartisan regime imposed by two fascist Parties, as well as it can be an overtly<\/i> monolithic regime imposed by one fascist Party. So: here we are<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The real enemies of the American public are, and for decades have been, in control of the U.S. Government \u2014 and they\u2019re not communists (even if in former times some of them were); they are instead fascists, pure and simple, and they spread hatred not only against Iran and against Russia, but against Shia and against people who speak Russian as their primary language.<\/span><\/a> If these lie-based hatreds do not soon stop, then the world itself soon might. Racist fascists<\/span><\/a> are the most dangerous type of all, but that\u2019s what we\u2019ve now got at the top, in the U.S., and in its \u2018allied\u2019 nations. Brainwashers controlling the brainwashed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org While I happened to be researching another subject, a central question in the investigation came to be how Iran \u2014 which supplied none of the 9\/11 terrorists and no financing to them and no organizing of them, and which hasn\u2019t been connected with nearly as many terrorist incidents globally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":336748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,32,96,3604,535,34,907,524,754,92,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-336747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-isis","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-syria","18":"tag-terrorism","19":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}