The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby ninakat » Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:37 am

Thanks for that Greenwald piece, Laodicean. Very damningly true. My disgust with Obama has depths I didn't even know existed. Greenwald was on Democracy Now too (link at the end of the article you posted), although I haven't watched that yet.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Nordic » Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:41 am

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera says the killing, if confirmed, is significant, because Awlaki's use of modern media meant he was able to reach out and inspire people susceptible to radicalisation.


That's a crime? Oh goody, when do we hit Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and Rush Limpballs with drone strikes?

Maybe I could get behind this after all!
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 01, 2011 5:18 pm

Absence of Evidence: The Progressive Policy of Imperial Murder
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 30 September 2011 15:46

The president of the United States murdered two American citizens this morning. He had some nameless functionary -- who was sitting comfortably and safely at a computer console somewhere on a well-guarded, probably secret military base -- push a button. A missile was then fired from a robot drone buzzing maleovently in the sky over Yemen. The missile then murdered two American citizens who -- let it be carefully noted -- had not even been charged with a crime, much less tried and convicted in a court of law of any offense.

The New York Times story on the murders relates a number of accusations against the chief target of the attack, Anwar al-Awlaki. Assertions are made, mostly by anonymous officials, that al-Awlaki was "operationally" involved in terrorist plots, although not a shred of evidence for this "operational" involvement has been offered. (Another American, Samir Khan, was also reported to have been killed in the drone hit. It goes without saying that Khan had also not been charged with any crime nor was there any evidence that he ever took part in a terrorist operation.)

It is true that the two American citizens murdered by the president did engage in a great deal of fiery rhetoric urging violent uprising against the American state. This might not be very nice -- but it does happen to be protected speech under the Constitution of the United States. Of course, that quaint document from the horse-and-buggy era has long since ceased to apply, even fitfully and imperfectly, to the operations of the United States government.

It may well be true that with their words Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan "inspired" someone to commit, or attempt to commit, heinous deeds. So has the Bible. So have The Beatles. But to inspire is not to command. Again, no evidence and certainly no proof has been offered that al-Awlaki or Khan ordered anyone to do anything, or that they were in any "operational" role to do so. (Unlike, say, the Nobel Peace Laureate who holds the top "operational" role in the American war machine, which has killed vastly more innocent people than even the most inspired terrorist groups.) If such proof existed that al-Awlaki or Khan played such a role, they easily could have been charged.

But they were not charged -- and were never going to be charged -- with any crime that would have brought their cases into the judicial system. The whole point of these high-profile murders was to establish, yet again, the "right" -- and the power -- of the U.S. president to kill anyone on earth, including American citizens, at his arbitrary command.

The open assertion of this arbitrary power is not an innovation of Barack Obama, of course. He is merely faithfully following in the bloodsoaked footsteps of his imperial predecessors. As I noted in a piece in a piece five years ago:

Bill Clinton's White House legal team had drawn up memos asserting the president's right to issue "an order to kill an individual enemy of the United States in self-defense," despite the legal prohibitions against assassination, the Washington Post reported in October 2001. The Clinton team based this ruling on the "inherent powers" of the "Commander in Chief" -- that mythical, ever-elastic construct ....

The practice of "targeted killing" was apparently never used by Clinton, however; despite the pro-assassination memos, Clinton followed the traditional presidential practice of bombing the hell out of a bunch of civilians whenever he wanted to lash out at some recalcitrant leader or international outlaw -- as in his bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998, or the two massive strikes he launched against Iraq in 1993 and 1998, or indeed the death and ruin that was deliberately inflicted on civilian infrastructure in Serbia during that nation's collective punishment for the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic. Here, Clinton was following the example set by George H.W. Bush, who killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Panamanian civilians in his illegal arrest of Manuel Noriega in 1988, and Ronald Reagan, who killed Moamar Gadafy's adopted 2-year-old daughter and 100 other civilians in a punitive strike on Libya in 1986.

In an earlier piece, in 2005, I noted how the clackety bones of the Clinton Doctrine of Unrestrained Murder was given flesh and blood by George W. Bush after 9/11 (scroll down for 2005 extract, and links):

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. [This was Kamal Derwish, born and raised in Buffalo, New York, who was killed in a drone attack targeting alleged al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi.] ....

But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."

The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: " Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others."

Indeed, like the "inherent powers" of the "commander-in-chief," the definition of an "enemy" subject to arbitrary assassination is most elastic, as I noted in that 2006 article:

In an December 2002 story in the Washington Post, then-Solicitor General Ted Olson described the anarchy at the heart of the process with admirable frankness:

"[There is no] requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant," Olson argues.

"'There won't be 10 rules that trigger this or 10 rules that end this," Olson said in the interview. "There will be judgments and instincts and evaluations and implementations that have to be made by the executive that are probably going to be different from day to day, depending on the circumstances."

In other words, what is safe to do or say today might imperil your freedom or your life tomorrow. You can never know if you are on the right side of the law, because the "law" is merely the whim of the Leader and his minions: their "instincts" determine your guilt or innocence, and these flutterings in the gut can change from day to day. This radical uncertainty is the very essence of despotism -- and it is now, formally and officially, the guiding principle of the United States government.

The murders of Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan are simply more public confirmations of this firmly established truth. As I wrote back then, "it's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is exactly what the great and good in America have done. Like the boyars of old, they not only countenance but celebrate their enslavement to the ruler."

In the coming days, we are certain to hear loud, full-throated praise of Barack Obama's murder of uncharged, untried American citizens. And most of these encomiums will come from heartsworn, true-blue "progressives" -- the very people who savagagely denounced George W. Bush for his "murderous tyrannny" when he carried out the very same crimes, in the very same way, in the very same place.

And they will be telling us, yet again, why we must must must support Barack Obama in his quest to win one more term atop the greasy pole of power. They will tell us, yet again, that we must forget these murders -- and the killing of many hundreds of innocent people in similar robo-slaughters in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan -- and work hard to perpetuate and entrench our own slavery in a lawless system whose leaders can kill any one of us at the push of a button, at the pulse of a whim, without charges, without trial, without mercy.

This is not just the usual partisan amnesia, this is not just moral blindness: it is active, open, undeniable complicity with evil.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Sun Oct 02, 2011 2:52 pm

I remember the utter cheesiness of that 'slick' Inspire website. I'd seen better parody in National Lampoon. 'Do It Yourself IED devices' indeed. I always wonder if the directions for those were slightly flawed- like that infamous c-4 recipe in Anarchist Cookbook that will blow you up if you attempt it.

My personal feeling is that these guys were a couple of operatives who either slipped their tether or simply had to be eliminated. Just a gut feeling, but it was too expensive on some level to allow them to keep running around because, IMO, they knew too much.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby nashvillebrook » Sun Oct 02, 2011 4:42 pm

regarding this assassination of CIA asset, er terrorist...if you haven't seen Jake Tapper's questioning of Jay Carney from Friday...it's a must-see. I mean, really...you MUST watch this.




here's the transcript...but it doesn't do justice to seeing Tapper's performance. this is what a real journo looks like. and, why the fuck does (did) the ACLU have to ask permission from the Treasury Dept to represent Al Awlaki? Treasury?


http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off ... jay-carney


Jake.

Q You said that Awlaki was demonstrably and provably involved in operations. Do you plan on demonstrating --

MR. CARNEY: I should step back. He is clearly -- I mean "provably" may be a legal term. I think it has been well established, and it has certainly been the position of this administration and the previous administration that he is a leader in -- was a leader in AQAP; that AQAP was a definite threat, was operational, planned and carried out terrorist attacks that, fortunately, did not succeed, but were extremely serious -- including the ones specifically that I mentioned, in terms of the would-be Christmas Day bombing in 2009 and the attempt to bomb numerous cargo planes headed for the United States. And he was obviously also an active recruiter of al Qaeda terrorists. So I don't think anybody in the field would dispute any of those assertions.

Q You don't think anybody else in the government would dispute that?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I wouldn’t know of any credible terrorist expert who would dispute the fact that he was a leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and that he was operationally involved in terrorist attacks against American interests and citizens.

Q Do you plan on bringing before the public any proof of these charges?

MR. CARNEY: Again, the question makes us -- has embedded within it assumptions about the circumstances of his death that I’m just not going to address.

Q How on earth does it have -- I really don't understand. How does -- he’s dead. You are asserting that he had operational control of the cargo plot and the Abdulmutallab plot. He’s now dead. Can you tell us, or the American people -- or has a judge been shown --

MR. CARNEY: Well, again, Jake, I’m not going to go any further than what I’ve said about the circumstances of his death and --

Q I don't even understand how they're tied.

MR. CARNEY: -- the case against him, which, again, you’re linking. And I think that --

Q You said that he was responsible for these things.

MR. CARNEY: Yes, but again --

Q Is there going to be any evidence presented?

MR. CARNEY: I don't have anything for you on that.

Q Do you not see at all -- does the administration not see at all how a President asserting that he has the right to kill an American citizen without due process, and that he’s not going to even explain why he thinks he has that right is troublesome to some people?

MR. CARNEY: I wasn’t aware of any of those things that you said actually happening. And again, I’m not going to address the circumstances of Awlaki’s death. I think, again, it is an important fact that this terrorist, who was actively plotting -- had plotted in the past, and was actively plotting to attack Americans and American interests, is dead. But I’m not going to -- from any angle -- discuss the circumstances of his death.

Q Do you know that the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU tried to get permission to represent Awlaki? And his father had asked them to do that. But they needed to get permission from the Treasury Department so that they could challenge his being on this targeted killing list. And the administration, the Obama administration refused to let them represent him, to not even -- he couldn't even have the ACLU representing him.

MR. CARNEY: Well, I would send those questions, or take those questions to Treasury or Justice. I don't have anything on that for you.

Q What do you think constitutional law professor Barack Obama would make of this?

MR. CARNEY: I think he spoke about it today.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Nordic » Sun Oct 02, 2011 11:42 pm

Thanks for that, nashville brook. I saw a youtube of that elsewhere but couldn't watch it, so I'm glad you provided the pathetic comical-if-it-weren't-so-hair-raising transcript.

I'm actually shocked how people in general here are completely unfazed by this. I even got into it with a guy I know on facebook, who was just fine with the whole thing. And this guy is a supposed liberal and a professional writer, and seems to normally a very nice and smart guy. I kept sayinf basically "why are you believing what the pentagon is telling tyou about this guy?". They were all like "meh. He was a dangerous homicidal traitor".

The brainwashing is so complete in this country .....
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:46 am

nashvillebrook wrote:regarding this assassination of CIA asset, er terrorist...if you haven't seen Jake Tapper's questioning of Jay Carney from Friday...it's a must-see. I mean, really...you MUST watch this.



So this is what we've come to in the formerly functioning democracy of Amerika; a fucking greasy P.R. asshole tap dancing and obfuscating for the Emperor in Chief, who just assassinated two Amerikan citizens with absolutely zero due process.

I'm actually surprised that Carney's not wearing a suit jacket loaded with corporate and bank advertisements.

Consider this the official welcome to Oceania.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Nordic » Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:28 am

Yemen: No Evidence Awlaki Was Actually Killed


US drones are praised by officials for their reliability, but quite often high-profile militants reported slain have turned up later, unharmed. Though this hasn’t happened yet in the case of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni government is reporting they don’t have any actual evidence that Awlaki was killed either. According to security officials, the last information that have is that he was in the motorcade when the US attacked it, but two of the three cars escaped, and Awlaki’s body was never found.




http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/06/yeme ... ly-killed/


Maybe he's us gone into some deeeeeeep cover.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby stickdog99 » Sat Oct 08, 2011 3:13 pm

You can never tell with slimy traitors like Emmanuel Goldstein.
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby bks » Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:52 pm

Interesting article from Tom Burghardt on what might have been behind the killing of Al-Awlaki. Links at original:

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2011/10/dead-men-tell-no-tales-cia-911-and.html

Dead Men Tell No Tales

As toxic to democratic norms and the rule of law as the Awlaki affair clearly is, there are underlying parapolitical themes surrounding his murder which strengthen suspicions that what took place in Yemen on September 30 is more than just another story about an overt power grab by the Executive Branch.

While the government and media continue to cover-up the role played by the CIA and other secret state agencies in alleged intelligence "failures" leading up to the 9/11 attacks, evidence suggests that the Awlaki killing, as with last May's murder of former bête noire and on-again, off-again ally, Osama Bin Laden, may have been a "clean-up" operation designed to remove inconvenient witnesses with knowledge of Agency involvement in the plot.

As Antifascist Calling reported nearly two years ago in the wake of the aborted 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day over Detroit, a plot for which Awlaki was accused of orchestrating, though evidence can't be supplied because it's "secret," The Washington Post disclosed that Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar and Hani Hanjour who "had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church."

In a series of 2010 articles (here, here, here and here), I reported on the stark parallels between September 11 and the Flight 253 affair.

And as with the 2001 attacks we were told "changed everything," far from being a failure to "connect the dots," intelligence and law enforcement officials possessed sufficient information that should have prevented accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding that plane and placing the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk.

And wile Awlaki wasn't given a free pass by the administration in that botched attack, earlier government failures to apprehend him certainly set the stage.

According to History Commons, "shortly before the [FBI] investigation [into Awlaki's alleged ties to the now-shuttered Holy Land Foundation] is closed," in 2000, Awlaki "is beginning to associate with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar shortly before the investigation ends."

"For instance," History Commons avers, "on February 4, one month before the FBI investigation is closed, al-Awlaki talks on the telephone four times with hijacker associate [and suspected Saudi intelligence agent] Omar al-Bayoumi."

"The 9/11 Commission will later speculate that these calls are related to Alhazmi and Almihdhar, since al-Bayoumi is helping them that day, and that Alhazmi or Almihdhar may even have been using al-Bayoumi's phone at the time. Al-Bayoumi had also been the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation in 1999."

Keep in mind that at least two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, figure prominently in recent revelations by researcher Kevin Fenton, the author of Disconnecting the Dots.

In a recent conversation with Boiling Frogs Post's Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins, Fenton said that during the course of his investigation, drawn from the Congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry, the 9/11 Commission, the Justice Department's Inspector General's report, and the CIA's still-redacted Inspector General's report, he discovered that the CIA had deliberately withheld information from the FBI that the future hijackers had entered the United States with multiple entry visas issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Even though the Agency had identified the pair as international terrorists who attended a 2000 Al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia where they and others, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Khallad Bin Attash, one of the principle architects of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, planned the assault on the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks, they kept this from the FBI, information that could have led straight to the heart of Al-Qaeda's "planes operation."

Fenton provides substantial evidence that the CIA's Alec Station Director Richard Blee and deputy, Tom Wilshire, concealed intelligence from investigators, concluding this "information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States."

As part of this continuing cover-up, Awlaki's ties to the 9/11 hijackers were far more extensive than secret state officials have led us to believe.

In fact, although the Obama administration has justified killing Awlaki with false claims that he was AQAP's "external operations" chief, his role before 9/11 was substantially more significant from an investigatory perspective: that of a "fixer," first in San Diego where he assisted Saudi spook Omar al-Bayoumi in "settling" Alhazmi and Almihdhar, and later in Falls Church, Virginia, where he did the same for Hani Hanjour.

In 2002, Newsweek revealed that "some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives."

"Two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar," Newsweek disclosed, "al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

Payments arrived "in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family."

With startling similarities to the Awlaki case, ten days after the attacks, al-Bayoumi is picked up by British authorities in London, where he had relocated in July 2001, at the request of the FBI. Although his phone calls, bank accounts and associations are scrutinized, the Bureau claim they found no connections to terrorism.

The Washington Post will report that by 2002 the FBI had concluded, the same year Awlaki leaves the U.S., "that no evidence could be found of any organized domestic effort to aid the hijackers."

Recall that new information linking some members of the Saudi royal family and its intelligence apparatus to the attacks has recently surfaced. Last month, The Miami Herald revealed that two weeks before the kamikaze assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a Saudi family "abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter--and an open safe in a master bedroom."

Investigative reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen learned that "law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights--including leader Mohamed Atta--in discoveries never before revealed to the public."

"Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil," Summers and Christensen wrote, "new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn't reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report."

In a follow-up piece that significantly advanced the story, researcher Russ Baker reported on the WhoWhatWhy web site "that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite."

Building on information first disclosed by the Herald, Baker, the author of Family of Secrets, reports that this "now-revealed link" between those who consorted with the hijackers in Florida "and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment, reopens questions about the White House's controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement--despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis."

Is there a pattern between the hands-off treatment afforded well-connected Saudis and Anwar al-Awlaki's casual, and inexplicable, flight from the United States?

"After 9/11" History Commons points out, "the FBI will question al-Awlaki, and he will admit to meeting with Alhazmi several times, but say he does not remember what they discussed. He will not claim to remember Almihdhar at all." Other accounts suggest that the relationship was much closer.

"The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry," History Commons avers, "claim that Alhazmi and Almihdhar 'were closely affiliated with [al-Awlaki] who reportedly served as their spiritual adviser during their time in San Diego. ... Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with Almihdhar, Alhazmi, and another individual, whom al-Bayoumi had asked to help the hijackers'."

"Around August 2000," History Commons reports, "al-Awlaki resigns as imam and travels to unknown 'various countries.' In early 2001, he will be appointed the imam to a much larger mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. During this time frame, Alhazmi, Almihdhar, and fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour will move to Virginia and attend al-Awlaki's mosque there."

Anecdotally, in 2003 Newsweek reports: "Lincoln Higgie, an antiques dealer who lived across the street from the mosque where Aulaqi used to lead prayer, told Newsweek that he distinctly recalls the imam knocking on his door in the first week of August 2001 to tell him he was leaving for Kuwait. 'He came over before he left and told me that something very big was going to happen, and that he had to be out of the country when it happened,' recalls Higgie."

The antiques dealer later told The New York Times, that when he learned that Awlaki would be permanently leaving San Diego, "he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area--and got a strange response." Higgie said, "'I don't think you'll be seeing me. I won't be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you'll find out why'."

Although the FBI suspected Awlaki "had some connection with the 9/11 plot," authorities claim there wasn't enough evidence to charge him, nor can he be deported because he's an American citizen. And when the Bureau hatched an ill-conceived plan to arrest him on an obscure charge of "transporting prostitutes across state lines," that plan collapsed when Awlaki left the U.S. in March 2002.

"But on October 10, 2002," History Commons reports, "he makes a surprise return to the U.S." Although his name is on a terrorist watch list and he is detained by Customs' officials when he lands in New York, they are informed by the FBI that "his name was taken off the watch list just the day before. He is released after only three hours."

"Throughout 2002," History Commons informs us, Awlaki is the "subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest, but he is not arrested for this either, or for the earlier contemplated prostitution charges. At the time, the FBI is fighting Greenquest, and Customs officials will later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Greenquest investigations."

Awlaki again leaves the U.S., this time for good. Although the FBI admits they were "very interested" in Awlaki, they fail to stop him leaving the country. One FBI source told U.S. News and World Report, "We don't know how he got out."

Inexplicably however, it was not until 2008 that secret state officials concluded that Awlaki was an Al-Qaeda operative! This beggars belief, and raises the question as to why he was allowed to leave in the first place. It certainly can't be for lack of evidence or that when Awlaki set-up shop, first in London and finally in Yemen, he is continually under surveillance by British, Yemeni and American intelligence agencies.

Although interviewed four times by the FBI after September 11, the Bureau concluded, according to The New York Times, that Awlaki's "contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random."

Other investigators however, disagreed. "One detective," the Times reported, whose name has been scrubbed from 9/11 Commission files, told staff that he believed Awlaki "was at the center of the 9/11 story." At the time of the Flight 253 affair, I wrote that "despite, or possibly because of these dubious connections he was allowed to leave the country."

In fact, the curious disinterest exhibited by authorities in bringing Awlaki to ground following September 11, were neither "errors in judgement" nor "mistakes" by overtaxed investigators but are rather, a modus operandi which suggests that Awlaki and others were part of a CIA domestic operation which allowed the 9/11 plot to go forward.

• • •

Nothing in what I have written above should be construed as justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. In fact, the opposite conclusion can be drawn. The available evidence indicates that Awlaki could have been arrested multiple times. At the least serious end of the criminal justice spectrum he could have been charged with providing "material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," to whit, Al-Qaeda, and legally taken out of circulation.

That he wasn't and continued to operate freely as a propagandist, despite substantial corroboration from multiple law enforcement sources that he was a key figure in the pre-9/11 domestic support network, suggests that Awlaki may have been a double agent, albeit one who had decidedly gone "off the reservation."

Awlaki's handling by authorities raise serious questions about just how extensive U.S. support for Al-Qaeda was prior to, and possibly even after the September 11 attacks, particularly in resource-rich global hot-spots.

As numerous journalists and researchers have painstakingly documented, Al-Qaeda, allied terrorist outfits and international narco-trafficking networks have a long, sordid history of supporting U.S. covert operations that targeted America's geopolitical rivals even as Bin Laden's far-flung organization plotted to attack the United States itself.

In this light, Awlaki's "targeted killing" as with the earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, may be part of a larger CIA/Pentagon operation to remove inconvenient participants and witnesses from the scene who might have a thing or two to say about the crimes and intrigues hatched by the imperialist Empire.

After all, dead men tell no tales...
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Nordic » Tue Oct 11, 2011 3:31 am

Wow, very interesting. I wonder if Sibel Edmonds has heard of this yet .....
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Oct 11, 2011 2:19 pm

So, the obvious exploratory question about the Department of the Treasury being responsible for deciding whether or not the ACLU could represent Awlaki - does this revolve around funding?
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby MinM » Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:42 am

Sunday, January 06, 2013

The Awlaki mystery: Was he one of ours? Is he really dead?

Here's what you think you know:

Anwar al-Awlaki was an American civil engineer who became an Imam, an Al Qaeda propagandist, an associate of terrorists (including the 9/11 attackers and the underwear bomber), and an alleged operational agent of the world's most notorious terror organization. Despite his American citizenship, Awlaki made this administration's "kill" list; a drone took him out in Yemen in September, 2011. Two weeks later, his 16 year old son (also an American) was also killed by a drone.

Or so we have been told. Is it possible that what you think you know just ain't so?

...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2013/01/ ... -ours.html

Follow-up post on the Awlaki mystery
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Jan 18, 2013 5:58 pm

Great great article. Like Moussaoui, Awlaki remains such a central cipher to the whole saga. We're now hearing he bought the plane tickets for some of the hijackers, was in contact via phone
with Ramzi bin alshidh, was getting orders from the Saudis...and the FBI mysteriously releases him in 2002, months after he appears at the Pentagon.

I remember doing a lot of deep research into "Aulaqi" as he was known in 2007, and I felt something was up with him. Lo and behold, one year later he becomes
"the new bin Laden" and is Forest Gumpingly tied to every "Terror plot" out there.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 05, 2013 8:13 pm

Feds cagey on early Anwar Al-Awlaki ties

By JOSH GERSTEIN | 10/4/13 3:56 PM EDT
Lawyers for a Virginia man serving a life sentence for supporting jihad against the United States pushed Friday to pry more information out of the federal government about the possibility that cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki may have been recruited as a government informant a decade ago.

During a federal court hearing in Alexandria, Va., U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema didn't sound inclined to grant motions by former cancer researcher and Muslim scholar Ali Al-Timimi seeking more details on the government's relationship with Al-Awlaki, as well as other facts Al-Timimi's lawyers say were withheld prior to and during his 2005 trial on charges such as aiding the Taliban and soliciting treason.

Al-Timimi lawyer Jonathan Turley said Al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011, visited Al-Timimi at his home in October 2002 and "encouraged him to recruit....and actually raised issues of possible terrorist acts." The defense lawyer said that recently-released FBI files suggest that Al-Awlaki may have been acting as an "asset" for some government agency when he returned to the U.S. from abroad just prior to his meeting with Al-Timimi.

There was an outstanding warrant for Al-Awlaki's arrest on a fraud charge when he flew back into the U.S. in 2002, but he was admitted at JFK airport in New York after only a short delay.

However, prosecutor Gordon Kromberg insisted that the government turned over all information it was obligated to prior to Al-Timimi's trial and had no duty to detail its dealings with Al-Awlaki.

"Mr. Turley has no right to know [whether the government] had an asset into Awlaki at that time. Mr. Turley has no right to know if Mr. Awlaki was an asset at that time," Kromberg told Brinkema. The prosecutor did say the government had no recording of the meeting and Al-Timimi's defense was told that prior to his trial. "I don't know what happened at that meeting," Kromberg said.

The bearded Al-Timimi, clad in a blue Northern Neck Regional Jail jumpsuit, was in court for the hearing and passed a series of notes to Turley as he made his points to the judge.

Al-Timimi's motion seeking evidence about Al-Awlaki was made public for the first time on Friday (and is posted here). The government's response was released in July and is posted here.

Brinkema did not rule immediately on Al-Timimi's motions. However, the judge sounded skeptical about all of them. She initially said she wanted to hear more from the government about the Al-Awlaki issue, but later in the 40-minute session she suggested that if Al-Awlaki wasn't wearing a wire when he met with Al-Timimi in 2002 then it wouldn't have helped the defense to know that Al-Awlaki might have been an informant.

In the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Al-Awlaki—then the head imam at a mosque in Falls Church, Va.—was regarded by many in the government and the media as a voice for moderate Islam. He made a presentation at the Pentagon and did interviews with news outlets like National Public Radio.

However, he was also under intense surveillance by the FBI, apparently because of indications he had ties to the September 11 hijackers. Al-Awlaki left the U.S. for London in 2002 and eventually made his way to Yemen, emerging as one of the most strident English-language voices for Al Qaeda.

Some of Al-Timimi's motions seek information on whether he was subject to surveillance by the National Security Agency prior to his 2005 trial. Brinkema suggested Friday that part of the answer to those concerns is so highly classified that she is the only person at the court who is allowed to see it even though a number of other personnel are cleared to see "top secret" information.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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