Bobby Gould in Hell, by David Mamet
In a sense, everything is real. Deception is real. And a successful deception depends upon its reality for its
success. Real people doing real things look like what they are doing is real.
For example, some Arabic men come to American and travel around the country. They live here. They get real
apartments, under their, "real," names, get real cars and real drivers licences, travel to real places and do real things, buy real
things with real credit cards, have real cell phones and make real calls with them, leaving a real record of where they've
been and what they've done, including, taking real flying lessons at real flying schools.
. But, is their, "learning how to fly," real? Or were they only appearing to learn to fly, in order to answer the questions the
planners of the attacks knew would be asked? Where did the hijackers come from? Who were they? How did they learn
how to fly airplanes into buildings? They knew the questions would be asked, so they provided the answers in advance.
Afghanistan. Mostly Saudis. At American flying schools.
Not asked, were these questions. Why did they call attention to themselves, by. "learning to fly," in America. Why did some
of them, openly and suspiciously, state their intention to only learn how to fly the plane in the air and not how to land. Why were they
mediocre students, at best, and most of them worse than that? Why didn't they learn how to fly in the Middle East, or even in Western
European countries. Why did they need to, "learn," to fly in the first place? Was there no one among the many thousands of al-Qaeda
operatives worldwide, who wanted to crash a plane into an American target, and already knew how to fly?
It is a capital mistake, to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.
--Sherlock Holmes
In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former CIA director, George Tenet, describes a briefing for Condoleezza
Rice and other officials. by a CIA officer identified as Rich B, who stated that a, "spectacular," attack would happen soon
and that it would be by al-Qaeda. As evidence, he cited a number of items of intelligence:
"A mid-June statement from UBL to trainees that there will be an attack in the near future.
Information that talked about moving toward decisive acts.
Late June information that cited a "big event" that was forthcoming.
Two separate bits of information collected only a few days before our meeting in which people were predicting
a stunning turn of events in the weeks ahead."
Note the general and vague nature of this intelligence. No specifics as to when, where or how. Only enough information to say that
al-Qaeda was going to attack soon and that it would be big. "Spectacular."
"Rich had assured the group gathered in Condi's office that day that the NSA strongly discounted the possibility of disinformation.
'Throughout the Arab world,' he said, 'UBL's threats are known to the public. There will be loss of face, funds, and popularity if
UBL's attacks are not carried out.'"
Later, Steve Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence asked Tenet, " if I had considered the possibility that al-Qaeda's
threats were just a grand deception, a clever ploy to tie up our resources and expend our energies on a phantom enemy that lacked
both the power and the will to carry the battle to us. 'No," I said to Steve, 'This is not a deception, and, no, I do not need a second
opinion. I have been living with this for four years. This is real.'" [emphasis added]
It was real. Everything is real. But everything that is real is not true.
Disinformation is always partly true, to make the parts that are not true, believable. The attacks were real. The, "chatter,"
that said they were coming, was real. The, "chatter," that said that UBL and al-Qaeda were solely responsible for them, was
also real, but untrue. The true responsibility for the 9/11 attacks was with a state sponsor of terrorism, that did have, "both the power
and the will to carry the battle to us." A power, that as Cambone suggested, al-Qaeda lacked. Even though Cambone apologized to
Tenet later for having, "been wrong," on the issue, it was Cambone who had been right and Tenet who was wrong on the role of
deception in the 9/11 attacks.
To be continued.