RECENT ADDITIONS
WEST - MAY 1990
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
THE WIZARD OF BACA GRANDE
A story about a burning bush, Shirley MacLaine, Zen Monks, and mystic crystals.
A story about the biggest water deal ever.
A story of how a boy from Oak Lake Manitoba set out to change the world.
THE WIZARD OF BACA GRANDE
Maurice Strong has gained more respect and influence than any other Canadian alive today. Now he's risking it on a bold experiment that could save us all from ourselves - or just blow up in his face. By Daniel Wood
These are the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry, baby, don't cry, don't cry - Paul Simon, "The Boy in the Bubble"
Highway 17 is a blue line on the map of southern Colorado that runs between nowhere and nowhere. It crosses the Rio Grande outside of Alamosa and cuts due north through the San Luis Valley, a bleak expanse of dust and sagebrush. The surrounding flatness is broken by the distant Sangre de Cristo - "Blood of Christ" - Mountains, which rise in 2,100-metre cliffs along the valley's eastern flank, 24 kilometres away. Other than that nothing. A rabbit dead on the two-lane asphalt. A high blue sky.
There's nothing to indicate, nothing except the words of my companion, 60-year-old Canadian Maurice Strong, that up ahead a few kilometres, past the obscure right turn marked "Crestone", past the Lazy U Ranch and its yard of derelict farm equipment, beyond Crestone itself, population 60, a village of God-fearing Baptists and a couple of recently arrived New Agers, up there in the aspen-covered foothills below towering Mt. Kit Carson, lies tangible evidence of a great-some would say preposterous- utopian dream. Its goal is nothing less than to alter, utterly, the history of the world.
The dream belongs to multi-millionaire Strong, who grew up in Oak Lake, Manitoba, dirt-pore, eating pigweed and dandelions for vegetables during the worst Depression times, and who decided one day in the early 1940s that he would make his mark on the world. Today, his resume reads like the lives of a dozen great men. At the age 25, he was vice-president of Dome Petroleum. At 31, he became president of the Power Corporation of Canada. He went on to found and head CIDA (the Canadian International Development Assistance program) and later Petro-Canada. At the global level, where he's better known than in his own country, he is considered one of the world's leading environmentalists.
The dream also belongs to Strong's mystical, 48-year-old Danish-born wife, Hanne, whose visions have propelled the plan. Together, they have established in the Colorado desert a place they call the Baca, an international spiritual community which they hope will serve as a model for the way the world should be - and, they say, must be - if humankind is to survive.
It all started in 1978 when a mysterious man visited Hanne bearing a prophecy of the coming apocalypse. The dream grew amid omens that defy belief. It has been nourished by the Strongs' friends, such people as Rockefeller, Trudeau, the Dalai Lama, and Shirley MacLaine. And its future is now entwined with political realities as bizarre - and troublesome - as the prophecies and omens from which the dream began.
Needless to say, there are men out here on this high plain who do not line the sound of these things any more than those of previous generations liked the earlier dreamers who tried to occupy this place. In a region perennially poor, in a land barely tamed since vast herds of buffalo roamed here over a century ago, people with dreams can be seen as intruders and a threat to the way things are. If those people are rich, if they are foreigners, and if they are talking about global harmony and a new world order - well, it conjures up in the minds of many of the locals the kind of xenophobic suspicion that rural America sometimes feels toward strangers. And if these foreigners set out to establish within the morning shadows of the Sangre de Cristo peaks and international community of spiritual seekers - a sort of United Nations of religious beliefs - complete with monasteries and devotees of the Vedic mother goddess and amulet-carrying native American shamans and even Shirley MacLaine and her New Age followers, then such dreams can be seen as an affront to the Baptists and born-again evangelicals for whom Jesus Christ is the Answer. And if, again, these foreigners were to discover, quite to their surprise, that the enormous tract of land they've acquired to fulfil their plan happens to sit atop what could be the largest untapped reservoir of water in the U.S.A. - smack in the middle of the parched and booming south-west - and the couple, together with some partners, from a company to sell some of the billions of dollars' worth of new-found water to folks in Denver and downstream along the Rio Grande, envy and suspicion and bigotry can combine into a potent force.
And that is exactly what has happened. There have been strange rumors and public protests. There have been death threats. Mistrust and the water may jeopardize the dream.
The Strongs are the latest in a line of dreamers who have come to the San Luis Valley pursuing a vision. The Anazasi Indians and the Spanish conquistadors passed this way centuries ago on the trail to oblivion. In the 1880s, miners came, believing they'd found El Dorado in the veins of gold that ran into the grey quartzite along Cottonwood and Willow and Spanish creaks. But the gold ran out. The boom town of Crestone withered. Next came a scheme in the 1970s to build a giant retirement community, called Baca Grande after the nearby 57,760-hectare Baca Grant ranch. Thirty million dollars were sunk into roads and utilities to service the 10,000 lots. But only a few hundred settled. Few now remain.
In 1978, together with the other investors, Strong bought the Baca Grant - sight unseen - as part of a much larger land purchase. He and his wife walked the aspen-lined creeks and climbed among the 4,200-metre peaks above the Baca. They liked the solitude, the silences, the sunsets. They knew nothing about the hidden water. They couldn't have imagined what trouble it would bring.
One evening a gray-bearded stranger arrived uninvited at their townhouse. He introduced himself as Glen Anderson and told Hanne, "I've been waiting for you." He described to her the visions he had had while wandering in the nearby mountains. He saw that the leaders of all the worl's religions would gather at the Baca. They'd build their temples and monasteries and churches, and political, educational, and corporate leaders would follow. Together, he told Hanne, these people would give shape to a new planetary order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years ahead.
Hanne grew up amid wealth and risk in wartime Copenhagen. Her mother worked in the Danish Resistance, helping to ferry European Jews out of Germany. And Hanne knew from earliest childhood that she was different, that she had mystical abilities. She saw angels. She could recall past lives. Something made her feel she was once and Indian and that she should go to the U.S. to find her ancestral home. After an education of industrial and interior design. she went to America.
And so when she heard Anderson telling her about his voices, she took it as prophecy. She headed alone uphill into the mountains carrying and Indian pipe and a pouch of medicinal herbs and found a promontory above the Baca. For three days she stayed there, fasting, meditating, observing the land. It was no coincidence, she felt, that "The Old Man" - as she calls Anderson now - came to her. His message could not be ignored. She would - with her husband's support and his international connections - try to do what Anderson directed.
When Strong heard this, he thought it outrageous. He called the plan grandiose and impractical. But then, these qualities had always been part of his attraction to her. She wasn't afraid of thinking big. Hanne heard her husband's doubts and knew enough about the man to know that he, too, had had unrealistic dreams, that he had global visions, that he could be won over.
Strong grew up beside the railroad tracks that passed through Oak Lake, a town of 400 people, 56 kilometres west of Brandon. His father worked for the CPR until the Depression hit, then odd jobs until the war came. Maurice's school-teacher mother filled his mind with stories from history and images of the world beyond Manitoba, and he recalls watching with a mixture of sadness and thrill the passing freights covered with destitute people travelling someplace else. He longed to see the world. When the Second World War came - and life on the prairies gradually got better - he remembers asking his mother why it was the world worked that way. Why the suffering of the '30s? Why the war and economic recovery now? She told him it didn't have to be that way. She told him that, if he put his mind to it, he could change the world. You'd be surprised, she'd said, at how far you can go if you don't accept the limits, if you don't set any barriers for yourself.
Hanne knew these words, for her husband occasionally repeated them. She hoped that at the Baca the two of them, together, might - just might - be able to change the world.
If a visitor turns right at the Y intersection just outside Crestone, as I did many times during my stay, the road climbs into the forested hills overlooking the San Luis Vally, where the dreams of previous occupants are turning to dust. Circles of stones mark long-abandoned native sites from which attacks on the buffalo were launched. Collapsed cabins, rusting machinery, and mounded trailings piles indicate the deserted gold mines. And everywhere, spreading downhill onto the plain, an intricate network of crumbling roads attests to the scale of the retirement community's failure. Scattered across this landscape is evidence of the newest utopian settlement: an exquisite Catholic monastery for members of the monastic Carmelite order; a $175,000 solar-powered Hindu temple; a strange, mustard-yellow tower called a ziggurat; a mud-caulked southwest Indian hogan; a subterranean Zen Buddhist centre complete with a computer and organic gardens; a house of thousands of crystals, another occupied by an 85-year-old native shaman, This is the Baca today. But today, I'm discovering, is only the beginning. For the Strongs, it is a lifetime project.
I find myself wondering what dedication, what idealism compels them toward such an unlikely dream. And the more i learn, the more aware I become that I've entered a world of illusions, where the sufrace conceals things unfathomable. I can't believe - though I would like to - the supernatural stories Hanne tells. I wonder how an aggressive and calculating businessman like Strong can also be a mystic. I can't figure out how Shirley MacLaine will affect the Baca when she moves in. And I can't get the water - the billions of dollars' worth of water - out of my mind.
I keep going over the conversation in which the Strongs described to me the very first words that passed between them. At the party in New York City over 20 years ago where they'd been introduced, Hanne, well aware of Strong's reputation, had said to her future husband, "Some people say you're a genius. And some people say you're a fake." Hanne laughed at the memory and laughed harder at her husband's rebuttal. Strong looked at me at that moment and said, "And she's still wondering!"
I get the impression that they enjoy this ambiguity, this flirtation between reality and illusion. I get the impression that the tables could have been turned, that Strong could have confronted Hanne: genius? or fake? The magus and the mystic, I tell myself. It's important to figure it all out. The answers matter. For, as the Strongs mention, they see the Baca as a paradigm for the entire planet and say that the fate of the earth is at stake.
When Strong left Oak Lake in 1943, having skipped four grades for his scholastic abilities and graduated at age 14, he carried with him an abiding sense of the world's injustices and a desire never again to be poor. He bought a ticket on a train out of town. For a while, adding five years to his age and darkening his pubescent mustache for effect, he worked with the merchant marine along the B.C. coast. He then became an apprentice fur trader in the High Arctic. He did a little prospecting. He lived among the Inuit. He wandered. on day in 1943, after a long rainy ride in an open coal car, he found himself back at Oak Lake, cold, lonely. He could see the lights in the window of his house, but something told him he could not go home again. He rode further on, stopping in Broadview, Saskatchewan. As he sat beside the tracks, a newspaper blew past. He caught it. On the front page he read that Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed that they would, after the war, form a new international organization dedicated to world justice and peace. It would be called the United Nations.
The concept hit him like a thunderbolt. "I knew at that moment," Strong told me, "I wanted to be part of it."
In the two decades that followed, he discovered that although his lack of university education prevented him from doing something of consequence at the international level, his shrewdness brought him success in money matters. He arrived in Alberta during the boom of the early '50s as a young financial analyst specializing in resource development. He befriended oil entrepreneur Jack Gallagher and later joined Dome Petroleum as its third employee. He met and married Pauline, his first wife, with home he had four children. By investing in oil and gas properties and founding a series of resource-based companies, he earned his first million within a few years. He then moved on to the presidency of the Power Corporation of Canada, a leading energy-investment firm. Financial success, corporate connections, and power were his - and he hadn't turned 32.
But inside him, still unfulfilled, lay the seed planted by his mother - that he could do something to better the world. Then, in 1965, he was asked to meet Prime Minister Lester Pearson. The PM wanted to know if Strong was interested in bringing his managerial skills and his long-held international concerns to the organization now known as CIDA. Strong became director-general of External Aid, which put him in charge of all Canadian foreign aid. He left, willingly, a $200,000-a-year job as a corporate executive for a $27,000-a-year job as a civil servant. It didn't matter. He knew he would finally get to fulfil his dream of becoming involved with the United Nations.
From there, though his subsequent friendship with Pearson's successor, Pierre Trudeau, the millionaire energy entrepreneur-turned-international do-gooder found the cause that has come to dominate the past 20 years of his life. With the support of the Canadian government, he has participated in or directed practically every major environmental initiative that has come out of the United Nations from that time to this. He organized the first World Conference on the Environment in 1972. Then he moved to Kenya, where he established and headed the U.N. Environment Program. After that, he joined the World Commission on the Environment, which produced the epochal 1987 Brundtland Report, the incendiary that has ignited the present global "green" movement. Three months ago, he was appointed secretary-general of the U.N.'s world conference on the environment and development to be held in Brazil in 1992. From such platforms, he has proposed a new economic order based on the redistribution of the developed world's industries and wealth to the Third World. He has called for a massive retooling of western economies away from short-sighted consumption and toward long-term conservation. On occasion, he has said that the one factor that may spare humanity from its environmental folly is a worldwide spiritual reawakening. He hopes the Baca can serve as a seed.
"I believe the great frontier of the future is the frontier between the individual spirit and the Spirit, the cosmos," he confides to me on one of our many drives through the San Luis Valley. "At our highest moments, we feel a sense of unity with the cosmos. A lot of us have static, though. Our society runs on people feeling unfulfilled, unconnected. The process of atunement is the trick. It takes practice. I remember asking a monk in Sikkim, who'd just come out of three years, three months, and three days of silent meditation, how his efforts had benefitted the world. He asked me: 'Why isn't it as important to develop one's spiritual nature as, say, an athlete in the west developing his physical prowess or an intellectual developing his intellectual abilities?'"
Here is a man, I tell myself, who has fulfilled many, perhaps most, of his ambitions and dreams. He has made millions. He has sat at the table with many of the earth's most powerful people. He has tried - in a rational and political way - to change the world. And yet, he shared with Hanne a sense of the profound mystical possibilities that exist for those tho are prepared to retreat from the hubbub and listen to the moaning of the wind. The more questionable New Age practices - belief in things like crystals or omens - heaves to Hanne and her occult faith. His is a more sceptical mind.
Nevertheless, he confesses that a few years ago, while walking with the famed author and journalist Bill Moyers in the desert nearby, something strange, something inexplicable happened. According to Strong: "We'd been walking, talking, heading back to my parked car. Suddenly, this bush - some sagebrush - erupted in flames in front of us! It just burst into flames. I was astounded. Moyers was, too. A bush bursting into flames!" He shakes his head at the memory. He knows it sounds, well, flaky. But it did happen, he reassures me. It is the most impressive mystical experience he has had.
He is concerned, above all, about man's extinction. The words of Percy Shelley's ironic 19th-century poem Ozymandias - memorized in his youth - have seemed, of late, more and more like the epitaph of human civilization:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkles lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on the lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear -
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sand stretch far away
Along the way during the past 20 years, not unnoticed in his home country, he agreed in 1976, at Pierre Trudeau's request, to set up and become CEO of Petro-Canada. The country was in the midst of the OPEC-induced oil crunch. Strong had energy-industry connections and well-known doubts about unfettered capitalism. He took the job. His old Alberta Oil Patch friends were aghast. Strong, an apparent free-enterprise pal, was helping the loathed Liberals nationalize parts of the country's oil and gas industries.
"I'm a maverick," says Strong, explaining his willingness to leave the international field for controversial corporate job. "I've always been regarded as a peculiar type. I've been in it, but not necessarily of it.
This observation, I soon discover, holds true for Strong's involvement in the Baca spiritual community: he is in it, but not necessarily of it. By nature, he is a philosophic and a little shy. He stammers at times. At the Baca, he affects the look of a westerner - cowboy ha, string tie, pointy boots. But his interests are primarily global. He travels endlessly, speaking on the need for environmental legislation in one place, attending a board meeting in a second, visiting influential friends along the way.
As Hanne says, explaining their unusual relationship, "Maurice is out there, trying to save the world. He's out there, speaking, his diplomacy, his global visions. But you've got to have examples. There have to be places where his ideas come to earth. His is the macro - the world. The Baca's the micro. If there's a glimmer of hope for the future, that's what this place is about."
Hanne prefers to remain in the couple's new adobe house that sits on the lowest slopes of the Sangre de Cristo foothills. The two-bedroom building, like the Baca itself, is a prototype for the future: the basement, a large cold cellar for storing vegetables, fruit, and Hanne's growing collection of seeds from rare and endangered plants; in the pantry, a mulching system with its compost-digesting earthworms; throughout the house, passive solar headings and triple-glazed windows. As well, the house is crammed with religious objects: African masks, sacred Nepalese stones, a half-dozen antique Tibetan wall-hangings called tankas. It was beneath one of these, I'm informed, that a visiting associate of the Dali Lama, the Ta Lama, died nine years ago while sitting cross-legged in deep medication. According to Tibetan custom, Hanne tells me, the dead lama was left untouched in an upright position for four days until his spirit had departed. When the body was finally moved, she adds, the attending doctor noted that it didn't smell and that it heard - and she put her fist against her chest - was still warm.
From the house and the nearby ranch headquarters, the Strongs oversee the religious community's development, the progress of which has not always been smooth. In 1979, at the Strong's invitation, the first groups moved to the Baca - the Aspen Institute and the Lindisfarne Association, a humanistic American think-thank and a spiritual society, respectively. Later, they withdrew in the face of the site's remoteness. Some of the locals were happy to see them go, for they imagined - in the presence of such visitors as Henry Kissinger, the World Bank's Robert McNamara, and the presidents of the organizations like IBM, Pan Am, and Harvard University - a clandestine, left-wing conspiracy to establish the Baca as the base for a world government. Rumors circulated for a while that Strong had a huge warehouse in Canada full of newly designed and minted currency, ready to issue when the "internationalist conspiracy" was initiated.
The truth is less grand. During the last decade, the Strongs have donated 600 hectares and about $1 million to various religious groups to encourage them to settle in the Baca. As well, several wealthy friends of the Strongs, including Shirley MacLaine, plus 100 or so other practitioners of New Age beliefs, have in the last few years purchased land or homes amid the widely scattered buildings of the traditional religions.
But it isn't until I see Hanne's map labelled "The valley of the Refuge of the World Truths", that I glimpse the Big Picture. We unroll it on the floor of her study, directly beneath the tanka where the lama died. "Here's where the Tibetan monastery's going to go," she says, pointing. "Here's where a rabbi from Israel's going to do a centre for the study of Jewish Mysticism. The Taoists are coming in 1990. So's a Sufi leader and his group. And here's Shirley MacLaine's place"
I look. They're all there, on the map. So are the names of a score more religious groups and humanistic associations that are slated for 1991 and beyond. "This is still an infant," she says, her voice motherly. "It's still a seed. It's a 20-, 30-, 40- year project. To bring the world's religions together - that's a very long road. To create an example of a new future - that, two takes time. But this place will have a key role in the future of mankind."
I wan to believe her. I know, however, that fulling her determination are terrible fears that forces beyond her control may overwhelm both the Baca and the planet.
She eyes me, smiling at my scepticism. I comment on her conviction as she begins rerolling the map. "My only worry," she says, "is that the gurus and hucksters will come here and it becomes a sort of mecca. That's why I've hesitated so long about Shirley. I told her 'If you come here, it'll be overrun with crystal people.' But Shirley feels the Baca's the place for her. Her astrologer told her to move here. Some people say it'll become a 'spiritual supermarket'. I guess it'll by my job to protect it. The Baca's a place for the contemplative life. It's not a place for a quick fix"
However, I noticed, in the lower left-hand corner of the map, one more unmentioned thing: a tiny, long, and narrow rectangle drawn in blue, and the word Airport. The sun is almost setting. Its light blazes above the mountains of distant New Mexico and sets the rabbit brush beyond the windows aflame. Hanne invites me to join her in her daily ritual of singing the sun down. We go outside and stand side by side on the porch, facing est. She chants her mantra, and ancient Vedic text, she explains, that goes back to the dawn of civilization. I don't understand a word, but I know that Hanne feels it aligns her with natural forces. I stand there, mirroring Hanne, my arms raised before my face, palms turned from the sun, listening to her chant and thinking this: yes, we live in a self-centered and cynical age. The diseases of our times - the loneliness, the secret yearnings, the drugs, the materialism and money-hunger - are measures of the alienation we feel from the natural rhythms and the possibility of epiphanies that orders at other times have felt. And yet...and yet, I saw the word: Airport. Is the Baca really a grand spiritual experiment, or a clever real estate scheme for aging New Agers? And what will happen with the water?
In the earliest stages of the Baca project, many of the local people viewed the arrival of the Strongs and their worldly friends much as they would an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. The place was called "Cult City" by kinder folk, and a centre of cannibalism, ritual deaths, and communism by those of a more fanciful mind. In time, according to Crestone's grey-haired historian and lifetime resident, Gladys Sisemore, most people have come to accept the newcomers. "You have to take the bitter with the sweet," she says as she sits crocheting, describing her reaction to the strangers she occasionally meets on Main Street. But practically no one in Crestone - practically no one, in fact across the entire San Luis Valley - has accommodated himself to plans to sell the water.
American Water Development associates, Alabama-born Buddy Whitlock, reminding valleys residents he's and environmentalist, that he has his home there, that he wouldn't jeopardize the region's ecosystem. He has reassured people that - if water is pumped out - its first use will be to revitalize the valley. But the ranchers, farmers, and local landowners remain unimpressed. They don't trust him.
They have formed a coalition, called Citizens for San Luis Valley Water, under the leadership of 52-year-old grain and cattle farmer Greg Gosar. "We know they've applied to put in 100 wells, pumping from 2,500 feed deep, We know they've already offered to sell 25,000 acre feet to Denver. People feel Maurice misled them. He said the water would be used at first to benefit the valley. The people here are at least 99 percent opposed to the water development. It's an affront to us. It will devastate the valley. It will depopulate it. There are people who are narrow-minded enough to resort to violence."
If the local people knew what was really going on behind the scenes between Strong and his financial partners, including wealthy Vancouver investment financier Sam Belzberg, they would be even more worried.
The fact is: Strong, as chairman of the board of American Water Development, has had a series of disagreements over his management of the Baca property in the last three years. Several other board members didn't like the idea of the spiritual community in the first place. But Strong was the largest individual investor. He'd cajoled them to go along with the scheme. However, when word circulated that Shirley MacLaine might move there, some of the Christian fundamentalists on the board and the hard-headed, bottom line-oriented Belzberg resisted. Belzberg feared that MacLaine could antagonize the locals. The conflict reached a head last year when Strong, under pressure from his board, removed 640 hectares for the spiritual community from the larger Baca Grant Ranch property and handed these to Hanne for her to control. He then donated his shares in American Water to a Michigan-based bio-energy research foundation and later quite the board, relinquishing any future influence over the water development plans.
Despite the imbroglio within American Water Development's board, the project continues. The company is moving ahead on its $126-million proposal to drill the wells and construct a pipeline to serve Denver. The local coalition plans to fight every step along the way. The irony is that Strong, as a longtime spokesman for the water project, is till seen as a target for criticism and suspicion. Local people feel he betrayed them and is now trying to salvage things for himself and Hanne. In a poor desert region, you can - so the saying goes - mess with a man's wife perhaps, but you don't mess with his water. Strong would rather not talk - nor have me talk - about the recent death threats made against his friend and former business associate, Buddy Whitlock.
It is with this sobering perspective that I explore the territory of the utopian dream, trying to weigh the significance of the occasional passing pickup truck with a rifle slung in a rack across the rear window.
I stop and climb uphill to visit the Haidakhandi Universal Ashram, a Vedic temple that sits on a high bluff amid a pinon pine forest. It's impossible to overlook the adjacent 14-square-metre solar panel, which heads the stone floors within the ashram. In the future, says Ram Loti, a priestess of the temple, there'll be hydro-electric power from a small turbine in nearby Spanish Creek, high-tech toilets, and drip-water-fed organic gardens. But as of now, only three devotees live here. She gives me a glossy brochure that tells about future plans. I stop at the Carmelite Monastery, where eight Catholic monks - women and men, all fairly young - spend half their time in total seclusion. For $35 a night, a visitor can stay in one of the hermitage's 10 small adobe bungalows, joining the monks - if he wishes - at meals and pray and labor.
I stop at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center, where a half-dozen students and Buddhist monks sit. The discussion turns to Shirley MacLaine. Randy Fox, a long-time student of Zen, acknowledges that the actress is a door for millions to a more spiritual world. But, he adds, "The spiritual path takes the whole life. It's not found in a weekend."
I also stop at some of the homes of the 100 or so New Agers who have in recent years been buying the properties of the initial Baca retirees. They have come of their own accord, unbidden and unassisted by the Strongs. They have spurned the trendiness of Taos, New Mexico, or Arizona's popular psychic centre, Sedona, where thousands arrive daily hoping to get their astrological charts read and to find their bliss. Nevertheless, at the Baca these days, psychic Dawn Taylor Carlson offers in-depth instruction in other-world communications. Semu Huaute, 85, gives instruction in native American shamanism and myths. At Barbra Vail's home, I am assaulted by crystals - thousands of them. They crowd porch railings, windowsills, shelves, and altars. They hang from Vail's neck and ears. She is thrilled to hear that MacLains has decided to build nearby a New Age study centre where people can take short, week-long courses on the occult. Vail hopes to sell MacLaine one of the biggest crystals.
Toward evening, I arrive at the base of a sand dune toward the southern end of the Baca lands. Ahead of me, rising absurdly from the dune's crest, is the Islamic ziggurat, built by the Strongs' friend Najeeb Halaby, former chairman of Pan Am and the father of the Queen of Jordan. I ascend to the tower's top, where i notice weeds have begun to sprout. Around me: a vast emptiness. In my ears: an engulfing silence. Someplace to the north, I tell myself, one of the world's most famous actresses and a leading popularizer of things occult will soon settle. She will, inevitably, draw to this special place all the New Age star-chasers, Winnebago-bound celebrity hounds, and cynical journalists that Hanne fears will come. To the south, I know, another of the Strong's friends, Hisayoshi Ota, a 34-year-old architect and the son of a Japanese tycoon, lives the live of an American cowboy, running a heard of 1,400 buffalo on a ranch adjacent to the Baca. He has decided to forsake the pell-mell life of New York to join the Strongs in their spiritual quest. Below me, beneath the desert's dust: a sea of fresh water, hidden, untapped, unfathomable.
dreams and reality, dreams and reality, I think. But where does the truth lie? I wait for an answer, a portent, a voice. I know Hanne would hear something. But nothing. Just the faintest whisper of wind in the cottonwoods along the dry bed of Cottonwood Creek far below. Then, the lines from Strong's recitation of Ozymandias come back: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" I pick at the pealing paint on the ziggurat. I wonder how long it will take for the roots of the weed to widen the tower's first, tiny cracks. Why should the latest dream to be dreamt here fare any better than those of the retirement community's developers and the gold miners and the Indian hunters and even the dreams of the wild buffalo themselves?
I leave the Baca with Strong, retracing our route of a week earlier. We pass the Lazy U Ranch and turn south on Highway 17. The desert slides by. Strong tells me he has often wished he could write. He has a novel he'd like to do. It's something he has been thinking about for a decade. It would be a cautionary tale about the future.
Each year, he explains as a background to the telling of the novel's plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leadings academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then says: "What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich counties? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it?" And Strong, driving as I take notes, looks at me. Then his eyes go back to the Highway 17. The man who founded the United Nations Environment Program and who wrote parts of the Burndtland Report and who in 1992 will try to get the world's leaders, meeting in Brazil, to sign just such an agreement, savors the questions hanging in the air. Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?
Strong resumes his story. "The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
"This group of world leaders," he continues, "form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It's February. They're all at Davos. These aren't terrorists. They're world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world's commodity and stock markets. They've engineered, using their access to stock exchanges and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then, they prevent the world's stock markets from closing. They jam the gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostages. The markets can't close. The rich countries..." And Strong makes a light motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out the window.
I sit there spellbound. This is not any storyteller talking. This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.
"I probably shouldn't be saying things like this," he says.
Highway 17 cuts straight across the desert, heading out of the land of dreams
When the truth is finally told, Maurice and Hanne Strong fear the world will come to this. No secret societies. No hostage-takings at Davos. But it will come to the same conclusion: the global economy, sapped by credit and debt loads and environmental disasters, will simply come unstuck. And nothing - not even the inspiration of the Baca - can save humankind from itself. They see the struggles and problems at the Baca as reflections of the problems assaulting the planet. They fear the Baca will be, at best, an oasis in the desert of the future - and at worst, a place where dreams die.
They go on to say that the Illuminati and Freemasonry are outdated conspiracy theories, but that the Project for the New American Century, 9/11, the Federal Reserve, the WTO, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Groups may need “objective investigation”. Those that have researched the truth know that these events and groups are visible operations of the Illuminati.
Quote From Article:
These uprisings by “we, the people” can be said to reflect rejection of domination by the 1%. The citizenry has become aware of the corruption in financial institutions. They protest increasing militarization, perpetual war, environmental destruction, and violation of basic human rights.
The “new” world order is really the old world order
When one thinks of the so-called “new” world order, we must remind ourselves that the NWO is really the old world order--an oligarchy consisting of a small group of powerful people who have had undue influence on world affairs throughout history--unelected, operating often in secret, and not representing the will of “we, the people.”
Power has rested in the hands of different types of rulers: kings, popes, military dictators, or the rich. Thus, it is no longer a question of whether or not we want a world government -- we have had what amounts to a “world” (shadow) government by the few throughout history including up to the present.
...
Wikipedia. See “New World Order” for a history of thought particularly on the subject of conspiracy theories. Conspiracies, may be fact, or fantasy. The fear of the Illuminati or Freemasonry seem outdated whereas the Project for the New American Century, 9/11, the Federal Reserve, World Trade Organization, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group are examples of events or institutions needing objective investigation.
Frantic man: "Definitely Devices Here! I Need Officers! Definitely Devices Here!"
Another Officer: "Units stay off the air and make your way over there" - not sure if he means to the man who said he found devices, or to the site of the explosion
U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, D-Massachusetts, said an unexploded device was found at a hotel on Boylston Street, and another unexploded device was found at an undisclosed location.
Keating, who is a member of the House Homeland Security committee and has spoken to law enforcement sources, tells CNN’s Dierdre Walsh that the incidents were a "sophisticated, coordinated, planned attack."
"you obviously have two that were detonated, and two others that may have been secured" - Sullivan
"what does that does the number of devices tell you? you know two that went off probably two others that didn’t go off so you’re talking about four maybe more now, what does that say?" - CNN interviewer
Also interesting is the "BREAKING NEWS" at the bottom of the screen stating "Mass. lawmaker says 2 unexploded devices found"
And according to the Boston Globe an un-named "senior official" stated that the bombers had admitted to the bombings early Friday before the brothers were even found:
“we already knew these guys had admitted to killing three civilians and a police officer, and that they were prepared to kill many others,”
Also friends of his post on his account saying that they cannot believe it was him, and even insinuate that he was setup stating the story is bull-shit.
According to legend de Molay said that Pope Clement V and King Philip would have to give an account to God with in a year. Clement died a month later, and Philip died that November during a hunting expedition.
Quotes From The Papal Bull:
"As for the things that you will receive from the spoils, you can confidently put them to your own use, and we prohibit that you be coerced against your will to give anyone a portion of these. We establish that the house or ’the Temple’ in which you are gathered, for the praise and glory of God and the defense of his faithful ones, as well as liberation of the church of God, with all your goods and possessions that it is known to legitimately have at the present time or may acquire in the future through concessions of bishops, generosity of kings and princes, gifts of the faithful or in any other just away, with God’s help, shall be under the guardianship and protection of the Apostolic See for all time to come. We also establish in this present decree that the religious life that has been instituted in your house, inspired by divine grace, shall be observed inviolably and the brothers who serve the Lord therein shall live chastely without personal property, and, confirming their profession by words and morals, shall be subject and obedient to their master and to those whom he ordains. Moreover, since this house of your sacred institution merited to be the source and origin of the order, it shall likewise forever be considered the head and principal of all the places that belong to it."
"And because those who are defenders of the Church should live and be sustained from the goods of the Church we by all means prohibit the exaction of tithes against your will from all moveable and unmovable possessions and anything that belongs to your venerable house. But we confirm with apostolic authority the tithes that you might extract by your zeal, with the advice and consent of the bishops from the hands of clerics and laymen, and even those that you obtain with the consent of bishops and their clerics."
"While also reserving for bishops episcopal rights, in regard to tithes, as well as religious services and burials, we likewise grant permission to build places of worship in locations given to the Holy Temple, where your community resides, in which religious services would certainly be held and where, if any one of your or your community should die, they may be buried. For it is not unbecoming and constitutes clear danger to the souls if the brothers of the order commingle with multitudes of men and crowds of women, under the pretext of going to church."
Full Speech:
Some one remarked that the best way to unite all the nations on this globe would be an attack from some other planet. In the face of such an alien enemy, people would respond with a sense of their unity of interest and purpose. We have the next thing to that at the present time. Before a common menace, North and South America, the Occident and Orient have done an unheard of thing, a wonderful thing, a thing which, it may well be, future history will point to as the most significant thing in these days of wonderful happenings. They have joined forces amply and intimately in a common cause with one another and with the European nations which were most directly threatened. What a few dreamers hoped might happen in the course of some slow coming century has become and accomplished fact in a few swift years. In spite of geographical distance, unlike speech, diverse religion, and hitherto independent aims, nations from every continent have formed what for the time being is nothing less than a world state, an immense cooperative action in behalf of civilization.
It is safe to say that, with all its preparedness, Germany never anticipated this result. Even now the fact is so close to us that even we, who have been brought together, are too much engaged in the duties which the union imposes to realize the force of the new and unique creation of a union of peoples, yes, of continents. The imagination is not yet capable of taking it in.
It has been more than once noted that Germany has exhibited an extraordinary spectacle to the world. It has stood for organization at home and disorganization abroad, for cooperative effort among its own people and for division and hostility among all other peoples. All through the earlier years of the war the intellectuals of Germany appealed for sympathy in this country because of what Germany had done in the way of social legislation and administration to promote the unity of all classes, because of its efficiency in organization, because of the intelligent efforts it had made to secure domestic prosperity. but, at the same time, as events have since only too clearly demonstrated, it was bending every energy of corrupt and hateful intrigue to disunite the American people among themselves and to incite suspicion, jealousy, envy, and even active hostility between the American nation and other nations, like Mexico and Japan, with whom we had every reason to live in amity and no reasons of weight for anything but amity. In the light of this exhibition, German love of organization and cooperative unity at home gains a sinister meaning. It stands convicted of falsity because born of a malicious conspiracy against the rest of the world. It loved unity and harmony, not for themselves, but simply as a means of bringing about that dominion of Germany over the world of which its remorseless and treacherous efforts to divide other people are the other half.
The rest of the world, of the once neutral world, was, it must be confessed, slow to awake to Germany’s plots and purposes. They seemed fantastic, unreal, in their unbridled lust for power and their incredibly bad faith. It was especially hard for us in this country, who have never been trained to identify our loyalty to our own country with hatred of any other, to realize that Germany’s genius for efficiency and organization had become a menace to domestic union and international friendliness over the world. But finally in North America, as in South America, and in Asia, when the case became to clear for further doubt, Germany’s challenge was met. Against Germany’s efforts to disunite there arose a world united in endeavor and achievement on a scale unprecedented in the history of this globe, a scale too vast not to endure and in enduring to make the future history of international relationships something very different from their past history. In struggling by cunning and corruption to separate and divide other people, Germany has succeeded in drawing them together with a rapidity and an intimacy almost beyond belief. Nations thus brought together in community of feeling and action will not easily fall apart, even through the occasion which brought them together passes, as, pray God, it will soon pass. The Germany which seems finally to be breaking up within has furnished the rest of the world with a cement whose uses will not easily be forgotten.
Formal alliances, set treaties, legal arrangements for arbitration and conciliation, leagues and courts of nations, all have their importance. But, gentlemen, their importance is secondary. They are effects rather than causes, symptoms rather than forces. You may have them all, and if nations have not discovered that their permanent interests are in mutuality and interchange, they will be evaded or overridden. They may be lacking, but if the vital sap of reciprocal trust and friendly intercourse is flowing through the arteries of commerce and the public press, they will come in due season as naturally and inevitably as the trees put forth their leaves when their day of spring has come. It is our problem and our duty, I repeat, especially of you gentlemen of diplomacy and of what I shall venture to call the even more powerful instrument of good will and understanding, the public press, to turn our immediate and temporary relation for purposes of war into an enduring and solid connection for all the sweet and constructive offices of that peace which must some day again dawn upon a wracked and troubled world.
Where diversity if greatest, there is the greatest opportunity for a fruitful cooperatoin which will be magnificently helpful to those who cooperate. This meeting this evening is a signal evidence of the coming together of the portions of the earth which for countless centuries went their own way in isolation, developing great civilizations, each in their own way. Now in the fulness of days, the Orient and the Occident, the United States and Japan, have drawn together to engage in faith in themselves and in each other in the work of building up a society of nations each free to develop its own national life and each bound in helpful intercourse with every other. May every influence which would sow suspicion and misunderstanding be accursed, and every kindly power that furthers enduring understanding and reciprocal usefulness be blest. May this meeting stand not only as a passing symbol, but as a lasting landmark of the truth that among nations as among men of good will their shall be peace, not a peace of isolation or bare toleration which as become impossible in this round world of ours, not a peace based on mutual fear and mutual armament, but a virile peace in which emulation in commerce, science, and the arts bespeaks two great nations that respect each other because they respect themselves.
Law:
§ 6704. Fraud on association having grand lodge.
A person is guilty of a summary offense if, without the authority of the grand lodge described in this section, he:
(1) fraudulently uses, in any manner, the name or title of any secret fraternal association, which has had a grand lodge having jurisdiction in this Commonwealth for at least ten years;
(2) imitates such name or title with intent to deceive;
(3) wears or uses any insignia of such association with intent to deceive;
(4) publishes or distributes, in any manner, any written or printed matter soliciting applications for membership in such secret fraternal association, or any alleged association claiming to be known by such title, or by a title in imitation or resemblance of such title; or
(5) sells or gives or offers to sell or give any information as to how any alleged degree, secret work or secret of such fraternal association or of any alleged association, claiming to be known by such title, or by a title in imitation or resemblance of such title may be obtained.
Quote from Danforth in the book Life of Nathan Smith Davis - "In the month of April, 1834, when he was only seventeen years old, Nathan Smith Davis commenced the study of medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. Daniel Clark, of Chenaugo County, New York, and ’worked’ for his board. It would be hardly possible to make a more drastic commentary on the system of medical education as it was carried on seventy years ago than the simple statement of the above fact. A youth seventeen years old, with practically no previous preparatory training, is allowed to enroll himself as a medical student, complete the required course in less than three years, and assume the highest responsibilities in the reach of man, while he is yet a beardless youth; and in the present case such was the literal fact, for young Davis graduated from the ’College of Physicians and Surgeons of Western New York’ in January, 1837, ’with distinguished honor’ says one of his eulogists. Between the date of his registration as a medical student under Dr. Clark, his preceptor, and his graduation ’with distinguished honor’ there was a period of two years and nine months, and at his graduation he was just twenty years old; in other words, and ’infant’ in the eyes of the law. Yet the ’College of Physicians and Surgeons of Western New York’ - a school which perished of inanition long ago - never did a greater or worthier thing than when it created Nathan Smith Davis a doctor of medicine, and the 31st of January, 1837, provided to be an epoch-making day in the history of American medicine. ... Many eminent men occupied its professorships, and many eminent men received its diplomas."
A little too "amazing" seeing that around staged terror attacks there are usually "drills" being setup and or run at the same time of the terror attack. This is in case the mission gets compromised in which case the handlers of the mission can just claim it was part of the drill - plausible deniability.
In another article Pastor Scott Bloyer of this church Holmes was so "heavily involved in" said that "We think he might’ve visited in the last month" - hardly "heavily involved". He also had his wife look at the membership of the church and Holmes never gave his contact information.
This is becoming standard operation when a there is a mass murder. The media claim that the shooter is a right wing Christian member of the Tea Party. Then when the truth comes out the shooter usually turns out to be a left wing socialist.
Michael Ben-Ari tearing the pages of the Christian Bible.
Ben-Ari also stated in true NAZI form (whom burned copies of Jewish books including their "holy" Talmud) that "This is an ugly missionary provocation by the church; this book and its senders should be in history’s trash can".
Witness 1 - "As I was sitting down to get my seat, I noticed that a person came up to the front row, the front right, sat down, and as credits were going, it looked like he got a phone call. He went out toward the emergency exit doorway, which I thought was unusual to take a phone call. And it seemed like he probably pried it open, or probably did not let it latch all the way. As soon as the movie started, somebody came in, all black, gas mask, armor, and threw a gas can into the audience, and it went off, and then there were gunshots that took place."
Witness 2 - "we don’t know, we have ideas, we- from what we saw he had someone with him, because the second can of teargas did not come from his side. he was completely dressed in black - head to tow. from what we saw it seemed he had something over his face probably to prevent him breathing it in we can only assume someone got him in, because whatever he was wearing was thick, so i think he would stand out in a crowd."
From the two above quotes we can see that the shooter knew which theater the movie was playing in which would be hard to do from the outside unless all theaters were playing the film (we know at least one other theater was playing the film). Secondly that he waited until the very start of the movie (after the credits) how would he know how long to wait till the movie actually started. Last that there would be no way for him to enter in the emergency exits unless someone had the door cracked open for him. Emergency exits in theaters do not always have alarms on them because I have seen people use them to walk out of the theater when a film is over with no alarm sounding.
Quote:
members object strongly to [Kieninger’s] continued personal control and do not want to live in a residential community where the land is controlled by [Kieninger] as former chairman and former member of [the Organization]. Thus the development of the community has been brought to a standstill.
If you are a global business leader - you need to understand that the future of the world is not secularism, it is religious pluralism. You may not like that, but your going to have to deal with it. The world is becoming more religious not less. The myth that as education rises religion would go down is that literary, a myth. And if you happen to be in a country where either houses of worship are not strong you have no idea of the vitality of faith around the world. And see how influential it really is.
There are major problems on our planet, I call them the global giants. They effect not millions of people but billions of people. Pandemic diseases, extreme poverty, illiteracy, corruption, Global Warming, spiritual emptiness - we can not solve these problems without involving people of faith and their religious institutions. It ain't going to happen any other way.
On this planet there are about 20 million Jews, 600 million Buddhists, there are about 800 million Hindus, there are over one billion Muslims, and there are 2.3 billion Christians. If you take people of faith out of the equation you've ruled out 5/6th of the world. And if we only leave it up to secular people to solve these major problems it isn't going to happen.
Now I've been coming to Davos for sometime and we always talk about partnerships. And I'm in-favor of partnerships, but we have been missing the third leg of the stool. When we talk about partnerships at Davos we basically talk about public and private. Or public being government and non-government organizations, and private meaning the for profit organizations. A one legged stool will fall over, and a two legged stool will fall over - you have to have three legs. And the third leg of the stool are the people representing faiths on this stage and others, it is the faith component. government has a roll that only government can do, profit has a roll that only profit can do, and churches and mosque, and synagogues, and temples have a roll that only they can do.
There are some things that churches have, let me take mine own faith as a christian pastor. Let me give you somethings that government or business will never have that the church has.
Number one we have universal distribution. I could take you to ten million villages around the world and the only thing in it is a church. They don't have a school, they don't have a business, they don't have a program, they don't have a fire department, they don't have any government - but they got a church. The church was global 200 years before Davos even started talking about globalization. It is truly the only global organization, it speaks more languages than the united nations. Its in a thousand more people groups than the U.N. It is the only truly global organization.
So we have universal distribution and we have used this in disaster relief very effectively. I lead a very small network of 500 thousand churches in a 162 countries. That's one little network - compared to the catholic church which if you go to Africa thirty percent of the health care down on that continent is done by the catholic church - you can not ignore that. You take the Catholic church out of Africa you just lost the number one provider of health care on that continent. So we have universal distribution.
The second thing we have is the largest pool of man power, not accounting all the brothers and sisters who are Jews and Muslims and other faiths Hindus, Buddhists, if I could get just one half of Christianity involved in these major conflicts that would be a billion people. Hundreds of millions of people serve through their congregation every week at no cost. No government, and no business will ever match the commitment of volunteers to faith. None ever - you need to understand that as a business leader.
The third thing we have is local credibility. last year I did a world tour where I did 46 thousand miles in 45 days. And in every country, I literally went around the world. And in every country I met with the government leaders, usually the president or prime minister, the top business leaders, and the religious leaders. And in every one of those countries what I found was when you get down to the local city level the credibility lies with the imam, the pastor, the priest, the rabbi - why? because that person is marrying, burring, they are there in seasons of life, they care for the sick, they help the people when the wars come every one else leaves, all the NGO's pull out, but the church and the mosque stays - why? it is the community. You can't talk community development with out with out talking churches and mosques and temples and synagogues - you just can't talk about it because they are the community.
So my challenge to you is can we not all get along? Can we not just work together? I don't have to share your motivation, and you don't have to share mine for us to work on poverty and disease, and literacy and things like that. Frankly I don't care why you do good as long as you do good. Now there are some people who do good for political reason. I happen to be on the Council on Foreign Relations in America and we've learned that when you help people with health care in a country they tend to like your country. You help people get well they like you now that's not my motivation, but it's a good motivation. I don't have a problem with political motivation - helping people get well they like your country - fine. You may have a profit motivation, you maybe a pharmaceutical and say we're going to make drugs and we are going to do good and make money at the same time - great I wish more companies would do that, I wish they would make profit and do good at the same time. It's not my motive, but it's not a bad motive. You may have a personal motivation and say well I've had cancer so I care about people that have cancer, or I've have AIDS so I care about people that have AIDS - that's fine. My motivation is I have a Savior named Jesus Christ that said love your neighbor as yourself, it doesn't have to be your motivation, it has to be mine.
Can we not work together in building the three legs of the stool. for the last three years I've been working on a prototype of this it's called the peace plan, P-E-A-C-E. Promote reconciliation, Equip ethical leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, Educate the next generation. In my own church I have had over 700,700 of my members overseas in in 68 countries doing this peace plan. We learned a thousand ways that don't work, but we learned a few dozen that do. And we are learning how to work with business, and how to work with governments, and how to work with churches, and mosques.
Ill end with this story. Last December I was asked by president Bush to be the closing speaker at the global summit on malaria. And I said I just want to show you why we cannot eliminate malaria much less any other problem without houses of worship. Let me show you just one example. So I said I'll show you three slides, I put up the first power-point slide, and it was a slide of western Rwanda, and said there are 700,000 people in this province. Here are the three hospitals and a pointed them out on the map. only three hospitals for 700,000 people. It's a two days walk to any hospital. That means if you get sick you've got to walk over mountains for two days. Two of those hospitals are faith based, and one of them secular, it's government based. So you don't even have two thirds of that without faith. Then I said let me show you this, then I showed him the 18 clinics in the western province. It's still a days walk to any of these clinics, and many of these clinics have just a bottle of aspirin on the shelf - that's it. 16 of those clinics are faith based, actually church based, and two of them were government based. Then I said watch this, and I threw up a map with dot's all over the map - everywhere. Here are the 726 churches in this providence. If your sick, say you have AIDS where would you go to get your ARVs. After it was over Melinda Gates came up to me and says "I get it Rick, Houses of worship are the distribution center for all we need to do".
It is on this day that Ron Paul decides to announce his presidential run.
Rieckermann: “I went to one, one time I seen some really bad shit .. I think they, They actually killed people there and stuff ... they pay up to a hundred thousand big ones to see people get... I’m not kidding. I went to another one where literally I saw like the grossest - I wanted to throw up”
The young boys at TMZ show their immaturity and lack of respect for human life when they laugh at the thought of people being murdered.
Lanz is taken to a near by chapel by concerned citizens but he is already dead. Bavarian authorities search the body and find secret documents that according to Illuminati researcher Terry Melanson contained:
"(1) the names of Lodges and villages or towns in which they are located;
(2) the name of the Master of the Chair, the two wardens directly below him, and any other influential members of the Lodge;
(3) what system does it practice;
(4) how long has the Lodge been active;
(5) the manner in which it is directed or operated;
(6) how many degrees it confers above that of the three symbolic grades;
(7) if they are aware of the Order of the Illuminati;
(8) what opinion they have formed of it;
(9) what are their thoughts concerning the persecutions of the Freemasons and Illuminati in Bavaria, and who they think is responsible;
(10) what they say about the Disciples of Loyola and the Jesuits. He was also instructed not to reveal his status as an Illuminatus, with hope of provoking genuine responses."
Another interesting point Melanson makes is that Lanz was a supposed priest of God, and this looks like a clear cut case of divine retribution against Lanz, and the order of the Illuminati.
*Note some Freemasons deny this historical event such as the article "A Bavarian Illuminati primer" by Trevor W. McKeown, but other oculists such as Mark Booth state it as fact in his new age book "The Secret History of the World". It is important to keep in mind that these secret societies have sworn upon death to protect the secrets of the order and even lying about events is an acceptable practice to them.
It is believed by researcher Jüri Lina that Kolmer so impressed Weishaupt with his knowledge of the Egyptan mysteries that this was the reason Weishaupt chose the pyramid with the all-seeing-eye as the symbol for the Illuminati.
Conspiracy researcher Nesta Webster thought that Kolmer was another name for a mystic known in Italy as Altotas.
Matthijs was killed three months after the uprising, and the Jew Bockelson took his place - at which time he renamed the city to "new Zion", and then proved he was delusional by proclaiming his rule as the start of the "thousand year reign of peace" spoken of in the Bible that will happen at the second coming of Jesus. He even went as far as approving polygamy and took many wives.
The rule of the group came to an abrupt end when the Catholic church sent in troops. The leaders were quickly captured, tortured to death, and then the rotting bodies of the three most prominent rebel leaders were hung on the Catholic St. Lambert’s Church. The cages remain to this day minus the bones.
Other attendees: Author George Eliot, philologist F. W. H. Myers (who was so enthused by this experience he founded the Society of Psychical Research a few years later).
First version: in a “face to face” interview with Charles Turley, Turley asks the question “Why was the Apple 1, priced for sale at $666.66? surely it’s not something that has to do with the number of the beast or some such satanic meaning is it?”
Turley wrote Woz’s response: He laughed and told me that when he and Jobs came to an agreement on the retail sales price for the Apple 1 of $666.66 - he didn’t even realize that the 666 number was in any way related to Satan and it had nothing to do at all with the ’666’ number of the beast or anything pertaining to satanic stuff. He said: “I simply like triple digit numbers with all the things I’m involved with, the cost of making the Apple 1 was around $540 or there a bouts and we agreed on the best markup, retail price above the cost of building it, which worked out to $666. Jobs then tacked on the 66 cents to make it an eye-catcher price for the ads with the sale and promotion publications of it to the public.”
Second Version: In a QA posted on CNET Wozniak was asked why him and Steve Jobs decided to sell the Apple 1 for $666.66 his response was “I was into repeating digits, and then we came up - Steve worked a deal to sell his computers wholesale price to the store for $500 bucks. what should the retail be? add a third on. that puts it at about 667 plus its 666.66 because its all one digit, to me that's just an easier way to type. We didn’t - we didn’t know the number had religious significance, we found out.
The question: did they sell the computer to the store for $500? which would mean it cost less than $500 dollars to build? or did it cost them $540 to build as Woz states in the 1999 interview? Was the mark up a third of 500 bringing it to an even 666.66? or was it with a 19% markup and then Jobs had to add the 66 cents to come up with the final price?
Also the claim that they had no idea 666 had any significant meaning, despite the occult logo and advertising they came up with through the years is slightly absurd especially seeing that he was initiated into the Freemasons just a few years later in 1980.
What is the best use of an apple since Lucifer used one in the garden of eden?
Newt Gingrich “Lakeside” in leaked Bohemian Grove annual.
Gingrich writes foreword for New Age, Anti-Constitution book.
According to Ken Stalder of KSA Consulting Aeptec was outsourcing the jobs to Taiwan. From this we gather that Aeptec was stating they were paying American’s high wages to do the job, but in actuality they were paying people from Taiwan next to nothing.
Ianieri also pleaded guilty to creating fraudulent purchase orders to the Air Force that he knew were as court documents state "false, fictitious and fraudulent".
Which KGC was raided by FBI and IRS in 2007, and CSI’s CEO Richard Ianieri plead guilty to taking kickbacks.
A John Murtha spokesman stated they knew nothing about why the Feds were raiding this company that Murtha funned so much earmark money into.
The investigation never went anywhere because no one from KSA Consulting was ever brought up on charges.
Full Article (Emphases added by NWODB.com):
Coleen Rowley’s Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
This is the edited version of Coleen Rowley’s 13-page letter from Time magazine online dated May 28, 2002.
May 21, 2002
FBI Director Robert Mueller
FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Dear Director Mueller:
I feel at this point that I have to put my concerns in writing concerning the important topic of the FBI’s response to evidence of terrorist activity in the United States prior to September 11th. The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY and go to the heart of the FBI’s law enforcement mission and mandate. Moreover, at this critical juncture in fashioning future policy to promote the most effective handling of ongoing and future threats to United States citizens’ security, it is of absolute importance that an unbiased, completely accurate picture emerge of the FBI’s current investigative and management strengths and failures.
To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring. The term "cover up" would be too strong a characterization which is why I am attempting to carefully (and perhaps over laboriously) choose my words here. I base my concerns on my relatively small, peripheral but unique role in the Moussaoui investigation in the Minneapolis Division prior to, during and after September 11th and my analysis of the comments I have heard both inside the FBI (originating, I believe, from you and other high levels of management) as well as your Congressional testimony and public comments.
I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons:
1) The Minneapolis agents who responded to the call about Moussaoui’s flight training identified him as a terrorist threat from a very early point. The decision to take him into custody on August 15, 2001, on the INS "overstay" charge was a deliberate one to counter that threat and was based on the agents’ reasonable suspicions.
While it can be said that Moussaoui’s overstay status was fortuitous, because it allowed for him to be taken into immediate custody and prevented him receiving any more flight training, it was certainly not something the INS coincidentally undertook of their own volition. I base this on the conversation I had when the agents called me at home late on the evening Moussaoui was taken into custody to confer and ask for legal advice about their next course of action. The INS agent was assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and was therefore working in tandem with FBI agents.
2) As the Minneapolis agents’ reasonable suspicions quickly ripened into probable cause, which, at the latest, occurred within days of Moussaoui’s arrest when the French Intelligence Service confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups and activities connected to Osama Bin Laden, they became desperate to search the computer laptop that had been taken from Moussaoui as well as conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects. The agents in particular believed that Moussaoui signaled he had something to hide in the way he refused to allow them to search his computer.
3) The Minneapolis agents’ initial thought was to obtain a criminal search warrant, but in order to do so, they needed to get FBI Headquarters’ (FBIHQ’s) approval in order to ask for DOJ OIPR’s approval to contact the United States Attorney’s Office in Minnesota. Prior to and even after receipt of information provided by the French, FBIHQ personnel disputed with the Minneapolis agents the existence of probable cause to believe that a criminal violation had occurred/was occurring. As such, FBIHQ personnel refused to contact OIPR to attempt to get the authority.
While reasonable minds may differ as to whether probable cause existed prior to receipt of the French intelligence information, it was certainly established after that point and became even greater with successive, more detailed information from the French and other intelligence sources.
The two possible criminal violations initially identified by Minneapolis Agents were violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b (Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, which, notably, includes "creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury to any other person by destroying or damaging any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States or by attempting or conspiring to destroy or damage any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States") and Section 32 (Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities).
It is important to note that the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th was based on probable cause of a violation of Section 32. (1) Notably also, the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th did not include the French intelligence information. Therefore, the only main difference between the information being submitted to FBIHQ from an early date which HQ personnel continued to deem insufficient and the actual criminal search warrant which a federal district judge signed and approved on September 11th, was the fact that, by the time the actual warrant was obtained, suspected terrorists were known to have hijacked planes which they then deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
To say then, as has been iterated numerous times, that probable cause did not exist until after the disastrous event occurred, is really to acknowledge that the missing piece of probable cause was only the FBI’s (FBIHQ’s) failure to appreciate that such an event could occur. The probable cause did not otherwise improve or change. When we went to the United States Attorney’s Office that morning of September 11th, in the first hour after the attack, we used a disk containing the same information that had already been provided to FBIHQ; then we quickly added Paragraph 19 which was the little we knew from news reports of the actual attacks that morning.
The problem with chalking this all up to the "20-20 hindsight is perfect" problem, (which I, as all attorneys who have been involved in deadly force training or the defense of various lawsuits are fully appreciative of), is that this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences. It is obvious, from my firsthand knowledge of the events and the detailed documentation that exists, that the agents in Minneapolis who were closest to the action and in the best position to gauge the situation locally, did fully appreciate the terrorist risk/danger posed by Moussaoui and his possible co-conspirators even prior to September 11th.
Even without knowledge of the Phoenix communication (and any number of other additional intelligence communications that FBIHQ personnel were privy to in their central coordination roles), the Minneapolis agents appreciated the risk. So I think it’s very hard for the FBI to offer the "20-20 hindsight" justification for its failure to act!
Also intertwined with my reluctance in this case to accept the "20-20 hindsight" rationale is first-hand knowledge that I have of statements made on September 11th, after the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already occurred, made telephonically by the FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) who was the one most involved in the Moussaoui matter and who, up to that point, seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents’ efforts (see number 5). Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui’s computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis’ prior suspicions about Moussaoui. (2)
4) In one of my peripheral roles on the Moussaoui matter, I answered an e-mail message on August 22, 2001, from an attorney at the National Security Law Unit (NSLU). Of course, with (ever important!) 20-20 hindsight, I now wish I had taken more time and care to compose my response. When asked by NSLU for my "assessment of (our) chances of getting a criminal warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer", I answered, "Although I think there’s a decent chance of being able to get a judge to sign a criminal search warrant, our USAO seems to have an even higher standard much of the time, so rather than risk it, I advised that they should try the other route."
Leaked news accounts which said the Minneapolis Legal Counsel (referring to me) concurred with the FBIHQ that probable cause was lacking to search Moussaoui’s computer are in error. (Or possibly the leak was deliberately skewed in this fashion?) What I meant by this pithy e-mail response, was that although I thought probable cause existed ("probable cause" meaning that the proposition has to be more likely than not, or if quantified, a 51% likelihood), I thought our United States Attorney’s Office, (for a lot of reasons including just to play it safe) in regularly requiring much more than probable cause before approving affidavits, (maybe, if quantified, 75%-80% probability and sometimes even higher), and depending on the actual AUSA who would be assigned, might turn us down.
As a tactical choice, I therefore thought it would be better to pursue the "other route" (the FISA search warrant) first, the reason being that there is a common perception, which for lack of a better term, I’ll call the "smell test" which has arisen that if the FBI can’t do something through straight-up criminal methods, it will then resort to using less-demanding intelligence methods. Of course this isn’t true, but I think the perception still exists. So, by this line of reasoning, I was afraid that if we first attempted to go criminal and failed to convince an AUSA, we wouldn’t pass the "smell test" in subsequently seeking a FISA.
I thought our best chances therefore lay in first seeking the FISA. Both of the factors that influenced my thinking are areas arguably in need of improvement: requiring an excessively high standard of probable cause in terrorism cases and getting rid of the "smell test" perception. It could even be argued that FBI agents, especially in terrorism cases where time is of the essence, should be allowed to go directly to federal judges to have their probable cause reviewed for arrests or searches without having to gain the USAO’s approval. (4)
5) The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism investigations and the obtaining and use of FISA searches (and who theoretically were privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field division agents), continued to, almost inexplicably, (5) throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis’ by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause. (6) In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!
Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval!
6 ) Eventually on August 28, 2001, after a series of e-mails between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, which suggest that the FBIHQ SSA deliberately further undercut the FISA effort by not adding the further intelligence information which he had promised to add that supported Moussaoui’s foreign power connection and making several changes in the wording of the information that had been provided by the Minneapolis Agent, the Minneapolis agents were notified that the NSLU Unit Chief did not think there was sufficient evidence of Moussaoui’s connection to a foreign power. Minneapolis personnel are, to this date, unaware of the specifics of the verbal presentations by the FBIHQ SSA to NSLU or whether anyone in NSLU ever was afforded the opportunity to actually read for him/herself all of the information on Moussaoui that had been gathered by the Minneapolis Division and the French intelligence service. Obviously verbal presentations are far more susceptible to mis-characterization and error.
The e-mail communications between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, however, speak for themselves and there are far better witnesses than me who can provide their first hand knowledge of these events characterized in one Minneapolis agent’s e-mail as FBIHQ is "setting this up for failure." My only comment is that the process of allowing the FBI supervisors to make changes in affidavits is itself fundamentally wrong, just as, in the follow-up to FBI Laboratory Whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst’s allegations, this process was revealed to be wrong in the context of writing up laboratory results.
With the Whitehurst allegations, this process of allowing supervisors to re-write portions of laboratory reports, was found to provide opportunities for over-zealous supervisors to skew the results in favor of the prosecution. In the Moussaoui case, it was the opposite – the process allowed the Headquarters Supervisor to downplay the significance of the information thus far collected in order to get out of the work of having to see the FISA application through or possibly to avoid taking what he may have perceived as an unnecessary career risk. (7)
I understand that the failures of the FBIHQ personnel involved in the Moussaoui matter are also being officially excused because they were too busy with other investigations, the Cole bombing and other important terrorism matters, but the Supervisor’s taking of the time to read each word of the information submitted by Minneapolis and then substitute his own choice of wording belies to some extent the notion that he was too busy.
As an FBI division legal advisor for 12 years (and an FBI agent for over 21 years), I can state that an affidavit is better and will tend to be more accurate when the affiant has first hand information of all the information he/she must attest to. Of necessity, agents must continually rely upon information from confidential sources, third parties and other law enforcement officers in drafting affidavits, but the repeating of information from others greatly adds to the opportunities for factual discrepancies and errors to arise.
To the extent that we can minimize the opportunity for this type of error to arise by simply not allowing unnecessary re-writes by supervisory staff, it ought to be done. (I’m not talking, of course, about mere grammatical corrections, but changes of some substance as apparently occurred with the Moussaoui information which had to be, for lack of a better term, "filtered" through FBIHQ before any action, whether to seek a criminal or a FISA warrant, could be taken.)
Even after September 11th, the fear was great on the part of Minneapolis Division personnel that the same FBIHQ personnel would continue their "filtering" with respect to the Moussaoui investigation, and now with the added incentive of preventing their prior mistakes from coming to light. For this reason, for weeks, Minneapolis prefaced all outgoing communications (ECs) in the PENTTBOM investigation with a summary of the information about Moussaoui. We just wanted to make sure the information got to the proper prosecutive authorities and was not further suppressed! This fear was probably irrational but was nonetheless understandable in light of the Minneapolis agents’ prior experiences and frustrations involving FBIHQ. (The redundant preface information regarding Moussaoui on otherwise unrelative PENTTBOM communications has ended up adding to criminal discovery issues, but this is the reason it was done.)
7) Although the last thing the FBI or the country needs now is a witch hunt, I do find it odd that (to my knowledge) no inquiry whatsoever was launched of the relevant FBIHQ personnel’s actions a long time ago. Despite FBI leaders’ full knowledge of all the items mentioned herein (and probably more that I’m unaware of), the SSA, his unit chief, and other involved HQ personnel were allowed to stay in their positions and, what’s worse, occupy critical positions in the FBI’s SIOC Command Center post September 11th. (The SSA in question actually received a promotion some months afterward!)
It’s true we all make mistakes and I’m not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes. I’m relatively certain that if it appeared that a lowly field office agent had committed such errors of judgment, the FBI’s OPR would have been notified to investigate and the agent would have, at the least, been quickly reassigned. I’m afraid the FBI’s failure to submit this matter to OPR (and to the IOB) gives further impetus to the notion (raised previously by many in the FBI) of a double standard which results in those of lower rank being investigated more aggressively and dealt with more harshly for misconduct while the misconduct of those at the top is often overlooked or results in minor disciplinary action. From all appearances, this double standard may also apply between those at FBIHQ and those in the field.
8) The last official "fact" that I take issue with is not really a fact, but an opinion, and a completely unsupported opinion at that. In the day or two following September 11th, you, Director Mueller, made the statement to the effect that if the FBI had only had any advance warning of the attacks, we (meaning the FBI), may have been able to take some action to prevent the tragedy.
Fearing that this statement could easily come back to haunt the FBI upon revelation of the information that had been developed pre-September 11th about Moussaoui, I and others in the Minneapolis Office, immediately sought to reach your office through an assortment of higher level FBIHQ contacts, in order to quickly make you aware of the background of the Moussaoui investigation and forewarn you so that your public statements could be accordingly modified. When such statements from you and other FBI officials continued, we thought that somehow you had not received the message and we made further efforts.
Finally when similar comments were made weeks later, in Assistant Director Caruso’s congressional testimony in response to the first public leaks about Moussaoui we faced the sad realization that the remarks indicated someone, possibly with your approval, had decided to circle the wagons at FBIHQ in an apparent effort to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny. Everything I have seen and heard about the FBI’s official stance and the FBI’s internal preparations in anticipation of further congressional inquiry, had, unfortunately, confirmed my worst suspicions in this regard.
After the details began to emerge concerning the pre-September 11th investigation of Moussaoui, and subsequently with the recent release of the information about the Phoenix EC, your statement has changed. The official statement is now to the effect that even if the FBI had followed up on the Phoenix lead to conduct checks of flight schools and the Minneapolis request to search Moussaoui’s personal effects and laptop, nothing would have changed and such actions certainly could not have prevented the terrorist attacks and resulting loss of life.
With all due respect, this statement is as bad as the first! It is also quite at odds with the earlier statement (which I’m surprised has not already been pointed out by those in the media!). I don’t know how you or anyone at FBI Headquarters, no matter how much genius or prescience you may possess, could so blithely make this affirmation without anything to back the opinion up than your stature as FBI Director. The truth is, as with most predictions into the future, no one will ever know what impact, if any, the FBI’s following up on those requests, would have had. Although I agree that it’s very doubtful that the full scope of the tragedy could have been prevented, it’s at least possible we could have gotten lucky and uncovered one or two more of the terrorists in flight training prior to September 11th, just as Moussaoui was discovered, after making contact with his flight instructors.
It is certainly not beyond the realm of imagination to hypothesize that Moussaoui’s fortuitous arrest alone, even if he merely was the 20th hijacker, allowed the hero passengers of Flight 93 to overcome their terrorist hijackers and thus spare more lives on the ground. And even greater casualties, possibly of our Nation’s highest government officials, may have been prevented if Al Qaeda intended for Moussaoui to pilot an entirely different aircraft. There is, therefore at least some chance that discovery of other terrorist pilots prior to September 11th may have limited the September 11th attacks and resulting loss of life.
Although your conclusion otherwise has to be very reassuring for some in the FBI to hear being repeated so often (as if saying it’s so may make it so), I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs. I think the only fair response to this type of question would be that no one can pretend to know one way or another.
Mr. Director, I hope my observations can be taken in a constructive vein. They are from the heart and intended to be completely apolitical. Hopefully, with our nation’s security on the line, you and our nation’s other elected and appointed officials can rise above the petty politics that often plague other discussions and do the right thing. You do have some good ideas for change in the FBI but I think you have also not been completely honest about some of the true reasons for the FBI’s pre-September 11th failures. Until we come clean and deal with the root causes, the Department of Justice will continue to experience problems fighting terrorism and fighting crime in general.
I have used the "we" term repeatedly herein to indicate facts about others in the Minneapolis Office at critical times, but none of the opinions expressed herein can be attributed to anyone but myself. I know that those who know me would probably describe me as, by nature, overly opinionated and sometimes not as discreet as I should be. Certainly some of the above remarks may be interpreted as falling into that category, but I really do not intend anything as a personal criticism of you or anyone else in the FBI, to include the FBIHQ personnel who I believe were remiss and mishandled their duties with regard to the Moussaoui investigation.
Truly my only purpose is to try to provide the facts within my purview so that an accurate assessment can be obtained and we can learn from our mistakes. I have pointed out a few of the things that I think should be looked at but there are many, many more. (8) An honest acknowledgment of the FBI’s mistakes in this and other cases should not lead to increasing the Headquarters bureaucracy and approval levels of investigative actions as the answer. Most often, field office agents and field office management on the scene will be better suited to the timely and effective solution of crimes and, in some lucky instances, to the effective prevention of crimes, including terrorism incidents. The relatively quick solving of the recent mailbox pipe-bombing incidents which resulted in no serious injuries to anyone are a good example of effective field office work (actually several field offices working together) and there are hundreds of other examples.
Although FBIHQ personnel have, no doubt, been of immeasurable assistance to the field over the years, I’m hard pressed to think of any case which has been solved by FBIHQ personnel and I can name several that have been screwed up! Decision-making is inherently more effective and timely when decentralized instead of concentrated.
Your plans for an FBI Headquarters’ "Super Squad" simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI’s pre-September 11th failures. The Phoenix, Minneapolis and Paris Legal Attache Offices reacted remarkably exhibiting keen perception and prioritization skills regarding the terrorist threats they uncovered or were made aware of pre-September 11th. The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters’ bureaucracy and you want to expand that?! Should we put the counterterrorism unit chief and SSA who previously handled the Moussaoui matter in charge of the new "Super Squad"?!
You are also apparently disregarding the fact the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), operating out of field divisions for years, (the first and chief one being New York City’s JTTF), have successfully handled numerous terrorism investigations and, in some instances, successfully prevented acts of terrorism. There’s no denying the need for more and better intelligence and intelligence management, but you should think carefully about how much gate keeping power should be entrusted with any HQ entity. If we are indeed in a "war", shouldn’t the Generals be on the battlefield instead of sitting in a spot removed from the action while still attempting to call the shots?
I have been an FBI agent for over 21 years and, for what it’s worth, have never received any form of disciplinary action throughout my career. From the 5th grade, when I first wrote the FBI and received the "100 Facts about the FBI" pamphlet, this job has been my dream. I feel that my career in the FBI has been somewhat exemplary, having entered on duty at a time when there was only a small percentage of female Special Agents. I have also been lucky to have had four children during my time in the FBI and am the sole breadwinner of a family of six.
Due to the frankness with which I have expressed myself and my deep feelings on these issues, (which is only because I feel I have a somewhat unique, inside perspective of the Moussaoui matter, the gravity of the events of September 11th and the current seriousness of the FBI’s and United States’ ongoing efforts in the "war against terrorism"), I hope my continued employment with the FBI is not somehow placed in jeopardy. I have never written to an FBI Director in my life before on any topic. Although I would hope it is not necessary, I would therefore wish to take advantage of the federal "Whistleblower Protection" provisions by so characterizing my remarks.
Sincerely,
Coleen M. Rowley
Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel
Notes
1) And both of the violations originally cited in vain by the Minneapolis agents disputing the issue with FBIHQ personnel are among those on which Moussaoui is currently indicted.
2) Just minutes after I saw the first news of the World Trade Center attack(s), I was standing outside the office of Minneapolis ASAC M. Chris Briesse waiting for him to finish with a phone call, when he received a call on another line from this SSA. Since I figured I knew what the call may be about and wanted to ask, in light of the unfolding events and the apparent urgency of the situation, if we should now immediately attempt to obtain a criminal search warrant for Moussaoui’s laptop and personal property, I took the call. I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the "hugest coincidence" at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The SSA stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, "coincidence" and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their (HQ’s) permission because we might "screw up" something else going on elsewhere in the country.
4) Certainly Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which begins, "Upon the request of a federal law enforcement officer [I {or}] an attorney for the government" does not contain this requirement. Although the practice that has evolved is that FBI agents must secure prior approval for any search or arrest from the United States Attorneys Office, the Federal Rule governing Search and Seizure clearly envisions law enforcement officers applying, on their own, for search warrants.
5) During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre-September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone’s first question was "Why? Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn’t be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hanssen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis’ effort.) Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all "unnecessary" actions/decisions by FBIHQ managers (and maybe to some extent field managers as well) has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course.
Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions. In a large hierarchal bureaucracy such as the FBI, with the requirement for numerous superiors approvals/oversight, the premium on career-enhancement, and interjecting a chilling factor brought on by recent extreme public and congressional criticism/oversight, and I think you will see at least the makings of the most likely explanation.
Another factor not to be underestimated probably explains the SSA and other FBIHQ personnel’s reluctance to act. And so far, I have heard no FBI official even allude to this problem – which is that FBI Headquarters is staffed with a number of short term careerists* who, like the SSA in question, must only serve an 18-month-just-time-to-get-your-ticket-punched minimum. It’s no wonder why very little expertise can be acquired by a Headquarters unit! (And no wonder why FBIHQ is mired in mediocrity! That’s maybe a little strong, but it would definitely be fair to say that there is unevenness in competency among Headquarters personnel.)
(It’s also a well-known fact that the FBI Agents Association has complained for years about the disincentives facing those entering the FBI management career path which results in very few of the FBI’s best and brightest choosing to go into management. Instead the ranks of FBI management are filled with many who were failures as street agents. Along these lines, let me ask the question, why has it suddenly become necessary for the Director to "handpick" the FBI management?) [B {It’s quite conceivable that many of the HQ personnel who so vigorously disputed Moussaoui’s ability/predisposition to fly a plane into a building were simply unaware of all the various incidents and reports worldwide of Al Qaeda terrorists attempting or plotting to do so.}]
* By the way, just in the event you did not know, let me furnish you the Webster’s definition of "careerism" – the policy or practice of advancing one’s career often at the cost of one’s integrity". Maybe that sums up the whole problem!
6) For example, at one point, the Supervisory Special Agent at FBIHQ posited that the French information could be worthless because it only identified Zacarias Moussaoui by name and he, the SSA, didn’t know how many people by that name existed in France. A Minneapolis agent attempted to surmount that problem by quickly phoning the FBI’s legal Attache (Legat) in Paris, France, so that a check could be made of the French telephone directories. Although the Legat in France did not have access to all of the French telephone directories, he was able to quickly ascertain that there was only one listed in the Paris directory. It is not known if this sufficiently answered the question, for the SSA continued to find new reasons to stall.
7) Another factor that cannot be underestimated as to the HQ Supervisor’s apparent reluctance to do anything was/is the ever present risk of being "written up" for an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) "error." In the year(s) preceding the September 11th acts of terrorism, numerous alleged IOB violations on the part of FBI personnel had to be submitted to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) as well as the IOB. I believe the chilling effect upon all levels of FBI agents assigned to intelligence matters and their manager hampered us from aggressive investigation of terrorists. Since one generally only runs the risk of IOB violations when one does something, the safer course is to do nothing.
Ironically, in this case, a potentially huge IOB violation arguably occurred due to FBIHQ’s failure to act, that is, FBIHQ’s failure to inform the Department of Justice Criminal Division of Moussaoui’s potential criminal violations (which, as I’ve already said, were quickly identified in Minneapolis as violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b [BRACKET {Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries}] and Section 32 [BRACKET {Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities}]).
This failure would seem to run clearly afoul of the Attorney General directive contained in the "1995 Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations" which mandatorily require the FBI to notify the Criminal Division when "facts or circumstances are developed" in an FI or FCI investigation "that reasonably indicate that a significant federal crime has been, is being, or may be committed."
I believe that Minneapolis agents actually brought this point to FBIHQ’s attention on August 22, 2001, but HQ personnel apparently ignored the directive, ostensibly due to their opinion of the lack of probable cause. But the issue of whether HQ personnel deliberately undercut the probable cause can be sidestepped at this point because the Directive does not require probable cause. It requires only a "reasonable indication" which is defined as "substantially lower than probable cause."
Given that the Minneapolis Division had accumulated far more than "a mere hunch" (which the directive would deem as insufficient), the information ought to have, at least, been passed on to the "Core Group" created to assess whether the information needed to be further disseminated to the Criminal Division. However, (and I don’t know for sure), but to date, I have never heard that any potential violation of this directive has been submitted to the IOB or to the FBI’s OPR. It should also be noted that when making determinations of whether items need to be submitted to the IOB, it is my understanding that NSLU normally used/uses a broad approach, erring, when in doubt, on the side of submitting potential violations.
8) For starters, if prevention rather than prosecution is to be our new main goal (an objective I totally agree with), we need more guidance on when we can apply the Quarles "public safety" exception to Miranda’s 5 Amendment requirements. [B {We were prevented from even attempting to question Moussaoui on the day of the attacks when, in theory, he could have possessed further information about other co-conspirators.}] (Apparently no government attorney believes there is a "public safety" exception in a situation like this?!)
The committee commended the memo’s author Kenneth Williams for such a through document, but questioned the FBI Director Robert Mueller how the memo was not followed up on even though it was sent to around twelve other people in the FBI. Mueller who claimed he was only made aware of the memo days after September 11th that no one in the FBI knows why the memo was not acted upon.
The anti-aircraft battery was put on ready status, and a Black Hawk helicopter was dispatched to check out the cloud which turned out just to be a cloud.
The alert lasted about twenty minutes and then the president and vice-president were released from their safe places.
This is in spite of what many Bush appointees (including Bush himself) said about no one ever considered terrorist hijacking planes and hitting targets with them.
Article also states that while the Pentagon does not have anti-aircraft batteries the White House does.
[transpired sometime between 2002 and 2003, source does not specify date]
In Public Law 107-306 of the 107th Congress the 911 Commission is created, but only alloted with a three million dollar budget.
This amount can be compared to the 30 million Ken Starr spent on the Bill Clinton sex scandal in which no one died, and did not lead the United States into multiple wars in the middle east.
They say this in spite of Delaney’s statement given to the FAA in 2003 where he says that no one listened to the tapes - so how could the FAA say that they found “no indication there was ... something to hide”?
He also tried to downplay why it took so long to report the hijacked planes to NORAD. The report summarizes him saying "an aircraft’s course does not necessarily translate in the mind of a controller to the possibility of a hijack ... but the thought of a hijack would eventually creep back into the controller’s thought process"
On another note Delaney stated that he believed that United flight 93 was shot down based on the eight mile span of the airplane’s debris.
The families also challenge what they call the "Mainstream Media’s Disregard" for truth, and the failure of the press to question the commission on the important issues that were raised, but ignored by the Commission..