The world “knows” bin Laden did 9/11 – so why isn’t there any evidence?

By Geoffrey O'neill

“A lie told once is a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
—German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

He is arguably the most notorious person in the 21st century.

The world takes for granted that Osama bin Laden was the architect of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But why was this man singled out for this horrific crime? How did we learn of his alleged guilt?. And what evidence exists to support his guilt?

Osama with followers.

These questions are critical because the allegation against bin Laden led, less than a month later [on October 7, 2001], to the launching of the Global War on Terror with the invasion of Afghanistan. The mission called Operation Enduring Freedom, ordered by George W. Bush was specific. The intent was to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

Bremer names bin Laden

Just hours after the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, a man by the name of L. Paul Bremer appeared on an NBC affiliate in Washington D.C. Less than a minute into the interview with host Jim Vance, Bremer mentioned bin Laden as potentially being the mastermind of the event. It appears that the bin Laden myth was created at this point, and it soon went viral.

Who is L. Paul Bremer, and what was he doing in Washington at the time?

Yalie Paul Bremer in Iraq, at the Republican Palace in Baghdad. (April 2004). He was head of the "Provisional Coalition Authority," but in reality an American proconsul for the region.

Bremer, like Bush, is a graduate of Yale and, like Bush, is also a member of the notorious Skull and Bones fraternity. After leaving government in 1989, he became managing director of Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm owned by Henry Kissinger. [ It is worth noting that Henry Kissinger was the original choice to head the 9/11 Commission.]

In May 2003, following the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq, Bremer was named director of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Without question, he was a Republican insider. He was supposed to be on his way to New York City, to his office in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11 but his plane was diverted due to the events of that morning.

In addition to speculating in the interview about bin Laden’s complicity, Bremer said that “terrorists declared war on the United States, and we declared war on the terrorists.” What was this supposed to mean? Would it follow that the United States would have carte blanche to invade any country anywhere if a terrorist or terrorists were thought to be living there? Would that include Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, or France?

Bremer also said, “We can’t throw away democratic freedoms and civil liberties that are the heart of our society.”

But Americans did not throw away a thing. Their freedoms were taken by Bremer’s colleagues in the Bush administration. This happened through the passage of the Patriot Act, the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, the spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, the prosecution of whistleblowers, and the stifling our 1st and 5th Amendment rights. The list is long.

Bremer continued: “There will be consequences. In fact, I hope the most severe military consequences we can come up with.”

In this he was prescient. Using the justification of 9/11, the United States invasion of Afghanistan was followed by the invasion and destruction of Iraq, the bombing of Libya into the Stone Age, the arming and aiding of Saudi Arabia in their mission to destroy Yemen, and the instigation and perpetuation of the Syrian horror. Add in drone wars and proxy wars in God knows how many countries, and Bremer must have swelled with pride over that level of carnage.

Bush names bin Laden

On the evening of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office of the White House and said this: “Today was the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century. We think it’s Osama bin Laden.” For the second time on that day, without a trace of evidence, we hear the name bin Laden from a national bully pulpit.

For all intents and purposes, the Global War on Terror started on 9/11. Without a shred of evidence to support their claim, two high-profile government officials, speaking to Americans from a national bully pulpit, put Osama bin Laden in the crosshairs. He instantly became America’s public enemy number one, a faith based charge, guilty by government decree.

The accusation was further reinforced by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Baruk, who appeared on the BBC the morning of 9/11 [even before the buildings collapsed] and pointed to bin Laden and al-Qaeda as likely being behind the event. He called for the U.S. to launch “an operational concrete war on terror.”

Before the dust had settled from the destruction of the towers, Bremer and Bush, along with Baruk and the worldwide media, implicated Osama bin Laden without evidence. A little more than a week later, on Sunday, Sept. 23, Colin Powell made it official. With host Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Powell named bin Laden the architect of 9/11.

Russert asked Powell for evidence. He responded: “We are hard at work bringing all of the information together, intelligence information, law enforcement information. And I think, in the near future, we will be able to put out a white paper, a document, that will be able to describe quite clearly the evidence we have linking him [bin Laden] to this attack.” He told Russert he would make it available to him once it was completed.

Fleischer slams the door

The day after Powell’s promise, the New York Times devoted a front page article to the evidence they believed was forthcoming citing statements by government officials that “the evidence reaches from the southern tip of Manhattan to the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan

On Monday, Sept. 24, the day after Powell’s interview, Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer met with the media and said Powell’s statement of a white paper was “misinterpreted.” There was no plan to release the information. It is classified.”

A reporter had the audacity to ask, “Is there any plan to present to the public evidence so the average citizen, not just Americans but people all over the world, can understand the case against bin Laden”?

Fleischer's response was predictably condescending: “In a democracy it is always important to provide the maximum amount of information possible. But I think American people understand that there are going to be times when that information cannot immediately be forthcoming.”

On one issue, Fleischer spoke truthfully: the white paper was not immediately forthcoming. In fact, it has never been forthcoming. No white paper exists in the public domain containing forensic evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks.

The arrogance, hypocrisy, and disregard for human life of this man and the entire Bush administration cannot be overstated. American troops were about to be sent to war. Many would die or be seriously injured for life.  Afghan civilians, considered collateral damage, would be killed in large numbers as always happens in war. Yet no soldier, nor any American citizen or Afghan citizen, was allowed to see the evidence justifying why the United States was about to invade one of the poorest countries in the world.

It gets worse.

NATO classifies the evidence

The NATO alliance was formed following WWll, ostensibly to protect east European countries from naked aggression by the Soviet Union. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack against any member nation is an attack against all member nations. Article 5, in its entire history was never invoked until Sept. 11, 2001. It wasn’t a small NATO country that needed help; it was the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world.

On Sept. 12, 2001, NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson summoned the North Atlantic Council to meet in Brussels. All 19 members agreed the attack on the U.S. was an attack from abroad. All Robertson needed to invoke Article 5 was the responsible party with evidence to wage war on the perpetrators. He soon got what he needed, or so he thought.

U.S. State Department representative Frank Taylor met in secret with all NATO representatives on Oct. 2, 2001 and provided documents that supposedly contained “clear and compelling” evidence of bin Laden’s guilt to the Secretary General. After the meeting, Robertson met with the press and predictably said the evidence provided by Taylor was classified. In all, 29 countries joined the U.S. in the invasion of Afghanistan, including Britain, France, and Canada. They joined in the invasion of this tiny impoverished country justified by “evidence” the public was not allowed to see.

It gets even worse.

A revelation from the FBI

On June 5, 2006 investigative reporter Ed Haas from the Muckraker Report noticed that on bin Laden’s Most Wanted Page in the FBI files it did not include the crime of 9/11. He eventually spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity of the FBI and the exchange went like this.

Haas - “Why is there no mention of 9/11 on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page?”

Tomb - “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s web page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”

Haas - “How is this possible”?

Tomb - “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered it is turned over to the Department of Justice who then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a grand jury. In the case of bin Laden he has not been formally indicted and charged because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”

So how does this work? Bremer, hours after the towers collapsed blamed bin Laden. Bush, later that day blamed bin Laden. Colin Powell days later on national television claimed to have solid evidence of bin Laden’s guilt. Frank Taylor from the State department on October 2, 2001 turned over “clear and compelling evidence” of bin Laden’s guilt to the head of the Nato Alliance. Yet, the chief law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI,  said “they have no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” Really?

It would be remiss not to mention that a “confession video “ by bin Laden was found in Afghanistan in December 2001 that was immediately used to bolster the claim of bin Laden’s guilt. The video was soon debunked by a leading expert on bin Laden, professor Bruce Lawrence of Duke University who called the tape ‘bogus.” It also begs the question as to why, if authentic, the tape was not used on bin Laden’s Most Wanted Page in the FBI file. One also has to wonder why this evidence, unlike all the other evidence the Bush administration claimed to have in its possession, was widely disseminated to the public while the rest remained classified.   

And it gets worse yet.

Bush refuses to show proof

The evidence presented to NATO by Frank Taylor was in document form and immediately classified by the U.S. and NATO authorities.

Michelle Obama hugging shameless un-indicted war criminal George W Bush: eloquent proof of the bankruptcy and complicity of liberals and the phony progressive creds of the Obama clan. (But we knew that already).

Before the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan, the country’s Taliban government offered to extradite bin Laden pending receipt of evidence of his guilt. But Bush refused the offer.

Could Bush have avoided the Global War on Terror by turning over the “clear and compelling” evidence in the Frank Taylor documents? The simple answer is no. There was no evidence to turn over.

The State Department documents were declassified in 2008 with little fanfare. Dr. Niels Harrit, a former professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen—now an activist, researcher and writer—uncovered them and in an article in Global Research exposed them for public scrutiny.

According to Harrit’s assessment, “There is absolutely no forensic evidence that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated from Afghanistan.” He goes on: “Only a small part of the introductory text deals with 9/11. The main body of the text deals with the alleged actions of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the nineties.”

There isn’t now, nor was there ever, any evidence to connect Osama bin Laden to 9/11.

Dan Rather Report

An addendum to the story, and certainly red meat for conspiracy theorists, seems to make the government’s case against bin Laden even more contrived. On a segment of CBS EveningNews with Dan Rather on Jan. 28, 2002, foreign correspondent Barry Peterson, standing in front of a military hospital in Pakistan reported that bin Laden was getting dialysis treatment on Sept. 10, 2001, a day prior to 9/11. According to Peterson, “He (bin Laden) arrived at the hospital in Rawalpindi under heavy security provided by the Pakistan secret service (ISI).”

If the report is accurate, one might wonder how an CBS News crew tracked down bin Laden while George Bush with 19 intelligence agencies at his disposal, never had a clue of his whereabouts.

One might ask why Pakistan, an ally of the United States, didn’t turn bin Laden over to U.S. authorities after escorting him to one of his hospital visits. And one might wonder how bin Laden commuted from the mountains in Tora Bora to a hospital and back three times a week for kidney dialysis treatments.

One might also ask why there is not a shred of evidence that supports the claim that bin Laden was killed by a Navy Seals raid  in Abbotabad Pakistan on May 2, 2011 as was reported and heralded by the Obama administration.

Monster - Afterthought - Historical monster

Then there is this. In a press conference in the White House on Sept. 13, 2001 President Bush said, “The most important thing for us is to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we won’t rest until we find him.” It is important to note by that date the government had still not declared publicly that there was evidence against bin Laden. He was guilty because they  told us he was guilty.

Then on March 13, 2002, less than seven months after the beginning of the Global War on Terror, justified by 9/11 and bin Laden, Bush said this: “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It is not our priority. Public Enemy number one is now irrelevant?

Imagine if Winston Churchill had said that, “I really don’t care, it’s not that important, he is not our priority” when speaking of Hitler during the Battle of Britain?

Oh but wait. In a speech delivered to a group of military officers on September 5, 2006 Bush compared bin Laden to Lenin and Hitler. “ The world had ignored the writings of Lenin and Hitler and paid a terrible price. bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them.”

So which is it, demon, afterthought, or historical monster? [Assuming Lenin is in the same monster bag preferred by US anticommunist propaganda, as Hitler.—Eds]

Are Americans so easily manipulated?

Most citizens of the United States are decent hard working and law abiding. Most pay their taxes willingly in a timely fashion. Most try to raise their families and teach them the difference between right and wrong. Most Americans are patriotic. Most would never harm anyone unless provoked. Most have integrity, decency and values. Many have worn the uniform and taken an oath to serve and protect. So is inappropriate to ask why our government and the press treat all of us like children? Can they tell us anything and expect us to believe it? Can they make wild assertions, contradictions and lies and expect no one to pay attention? Apparently so. The bin Laden story is a testament to that along with the entire Global War on Terror, a complete fraud that has caused so much devastation to our reputation in the world and to the lives of millions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

If there is no clear compelling evidence against the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would it be fair to say that the Global War on Terror in its entirety, including the invasions, the bombings, the drone strikes, the millions killed, the tens of millions of refugees, all of the families destroyed, all of the despair and loss of hope the United States has brought to bear in so many parts of the world, is a fraud?

One would think.