NSA Had Prior Knowledge of Attack

An extract taken from 'Body Of Secrets' by James Bamford (Century: London, 2001, p 410)

     "Terrorists also frequently use unencrypted communications, because for encryption the caller and the receiver must have compatible systems. Since at least one party is often traveling, carrying encryption equipment can be cumbersome.
     According to information obtained for 'Body Of Secrets', NSA regularly listens to unencrypted calls from suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, in hiding in Afghanistan. Bin Laden uses a portable INMARSAT phone that transmits and receives calls over spacecraft owned by the international Maritime Satellite Organisation. This is the same system used by most ships and some people who travel to remote locations, such as oil explorers. According to intelligence officials, Bin Laden is aware that the United States can eavesdrop on his international communications, but he does not seem to care. To impress cleared visitors, NSA analysts occasionally play audiotapes of Bin Laden talking to his mother over an INMARSAT connection."

     This book came out earlier this year. These are not my words; they are those of James Bamford, the first author ever to be granted extensive access to the NSA and its little known officials. Bamford was, until recently, Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and has written investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. His work was published earlier this year in the British National newspaper The Guardian.

     I notice that there has been no mention whatsoever of the NSA over the past week, only of the intelligence communities of the FBI and the CIA. The NSA is keeping quiet because it knew about this, for god's sake it probably even helped perpetrate the whole thing. Let's increase security because people no longer feel safe, let's have another mock war in order to rescue the economy that's on the brink of recession, get the $20 mil off congress, get the $50 mil off NATO, instigate new US standard security stipulations that will have to be adhered to all over the western world in airports and at borders, get Britain, France, Russia, China, Pakistan ("total compliance"), Italy, Germany, etc, etc, etc, firmly onside now and for the long term future in a "war" led by the pioneers of "freedom" and "democracy" (pass the sick bag), the saviours of our souls, the leading light of the New World Order, the great U S of A. And when the "victory for the world" is won we will have total global unity, no 'rogue states', they will have been eliminated. And then the U.S. will be able to carry on killing millions of innocent people as it has been doing quietly in the Middle East for the last ten years, and in its own country this past week.
     Put this kind of theory forward on a programme like question time and you would be lynched. It must be made clear that what happened on Tuesday is a great great tragedy, horrific and sickening. Yet it must also be stressed that the kind of things being written in the press and said on the news at the moment are equally as horrific and sickening. 'The Sun' today printed a double page spread of an American Flag next to a Union Jack, urging us to stick it in our front windows. One of their major headlines was "Go get 'em George", and one of their columnists decreed that if we as individuals do not show solidarity with "the Americans" then we are "fascists", and left wing fascists at that, whatever they may be. Meanwhile, 'The Times' seems to be proud to take a cautious approach calling for a "measured responsible retaliation" while also printing a double spread feature on the firepower that Bush has at his immediate disposal. The media organisations cannot see the lack of taste and decency in what they are printing because they are owned by people that have none, people who also, incidentally own the U.S. government. The prime suspect in all of this is Bin Laden, a former business partner of the Rockefeller's, who make up a portion of those afore mentioned people.
     There is no doubt that terrorism is evil, yet if America wants to stamp it out for ever then maybe they should start by ceasing to collect money for the IRA and its splinter organisations, by ceasing to fund men like Bin Laden, and by ceasing to sell weapons to People like Saddam Hussain. Bush says that America was targeted because it is "a beacon of liberty and democracy". This sounds very good, but in actual fact to many America is a beacon of greed and exploitation, an economic and military bully, which undermines other nations' cultures and becomes ever richer at the expense of everyone else.
     The American NSA, as has been revealed in the mainstream media this year, is capable of eavesdropping on conversations virtually anywhere on the planet. Using undersea cable taps, satellites, and listening posts the NSA intercept millions of phone calls, e-mails and faxes an hour, and they are proud to admit to this. The NSA complex, nicknamed Crypto City, is the size of a small town. It is a place where time is measured in femtoseconds - one million billionth of a second - and scientists work in secret to develop computers capable of performing more than one septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) operations every second. This is the place where officials hold such titles as 'Chief of anonymity', and others listen in as accused terrorist Osama Bin Laden chats with his mother. And whereabouts is Crypto City? It's in Maryland. Wait a minute, isn't that where the fourth plane was heading before it "crashed" in two pieces eight miles apart from each other? Oh it MUST have been heading for Camp David though because that is a small secluded summer holiday camp for the President, vitally important to the heart of America (Sarcasm).
     I leave you to form your own opinions on the involvement of the NSA, but with all the technology they have revealed to the world in the past six months or so can we really believe that they could not stop eighteen men armed with penknives?

Proteus has nothing more to transmit.