SEPTEMBER 11TH / 911 : PUTIN'S CALL AND THE THREAT ON AIR FORCE ONE "ANGEL" WERE PHONED IN AT THE SAME TIME.

SEPTEMBER 11TH / 911 : PUTIN'S CALL AND THE THREAT ON AIR FORCE ONE WERE PHONED IN AT THE SAME TIME. 

(10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: White House Receives Phone Call in Which Caller Threatens Air Force One

Between 10An anonymous phone call is received at the White House in which the caller says Air Force One, the president’s plane, will be the next terrorist target and uses code words indicating they have inside information about government procedures. [CHENEY, 9/11/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/13/2001; WOODWARD, 2002, PP. 18] Air Force One is currently flying toward Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, with President Bush on board (see (10:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 325] The White House receives a call from an anonymous individual, warning that the next target of the terrorist attacks will be Air Force One. The caller refers to the plane as “Angel.” [SAMMON, 2002, PP. 106-107; WOODWARD, 2002, PP. 18; 9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 554; DARLING, 2010, PP. 60-61] “Angel” is the Secret Service’s code name for Air Force One. [WILLIAMS, 2004, PP. 81; CBS NEWS, 11/25/2009] An unnamed “high White House official” will later say the use of “American code words” shows the caller has “knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/13/2001]

Government Officials Told about Threat - News of the threatening call is promptly passed on to government officials in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)—a bunker below the White House—and reported on the Pentagon’s air threat conference call. [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 9/11/2001 pdf file; NEWSWEEK, 12/30/2001; 9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 554; DARLING, 2010, PP. 60-61] Vice President Dick Cheney, who is in the PEOC, will comment that the news “reinforced the notion here… that the government has been targeted and that we need to be extra careful about making certain we protected the continuity of government, secured the president, secured the presidency.” [WHITE HOUSE, 11/19/2001] According to Major Robert Darling of the White House Military Office, who is also in the PEOC, “The talk among the principals in the room quickly determined that the use of a code word implied that the threat to Air Force One and the president could well be from someone with access to [the president’s] inner circle—possibly someone who was near the president at that very moment.” [DARLING, 2010, PP. 61]

Accounts Conflict over Who Receives Call - It is unclear who at the White House answers the call in which the threat against Air Force One is made. The call is received by the White House switchboard, according to some accounts. [SAMMON, 2002, PP. 106; FLEISCHER, 2005, PP. 141-142] Other accounts will indicate it is received by the White House Situation Room. [9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 554; DARLING, 2010, PP. 60-61] Eric Edelman, a member of Cheney’s staff who is in the PEOC, will say the call is received by the Secret Service. [WHITE HOUSE, 10/25/2001] But two Secret Service agents who are on duty today will deny “that their agency played any role in receiving or passing on a threat to the presidential jet,” according to the Wall Street Journal. [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/22/2004 pdf file] However, a Secret Service pager message will be sent at 10:32 a.m., which states that the “JOC”—the Secret Service Joint Operations Center at the White House—has received an “anonymous call” reporting that “Angel is [a] target.” [CBS NEWS, 11/25/2009]

Military Officer Passes on Details of Threat - Officials in the PEOC reportedly learn about the threat to Air Force One from a military officer working in the center. Although Cheney will say the threat “came through the Secret Service,” he will say later this year that he is unsure who passed the details of it to those in the PEOC. [MEET THE PRESS, 9/16/2001; WHITE HOUSE, 11/19/2001] An official in Cheney’s office will say in 2004 that Cheney was informed of the threat by “a uniformed military person” manning the PEOC, although Cheney and his staff are unaware who that individual was. [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/22/2004 pdf file] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will say that those in the PEOC are told about the threat by a “communicator,” meaning one of the military officers who works in the PEOC, and is responsible for “establishing phone lines and video lines, and staying in touch with the National Military Command Center” at the Pentagon. [WHITE HOUSE, 11/1/2001] The military officer Rice is referring to may be Darling. Darling will recall that he answers a call from the White House Situation Room about the threat to Air Force One and then passes on the information he receives to Rice, telling her, “Ma’am, the [Situation Room] reports that they have a credible source in the Sarasota, Florida, area that claims Angel is the next target.” Rice immediately passes on the news to Cheney, according to Darling. [DARLING, 2010, PP. 60-61] Cheney will subsequently call Bush and tell him about the threat (see (10:32 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [SAMMON, 2002, PP. 106-107; CBS NEWS, 9/11/2002]

Reason for 'Bogus' Threat Unclear - The threat will be determined to be “almost surely bogus,” according to Newsweek. [NEWSWEEK, 12/30/2001] The Secret Service’s intelligence division tracked down the origin of this threat,” the 9/11 Commission Report will state, “and, during the day, determined that it had originated in a misunderstanding by a watch officer in the White House Situation Room.” Although the 9/11 Commission will say it found the intelligence division’s “witnesses on this point to be credible,” Deborah Loewer, the director of the White House Situation Room, will dispute this account. [9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 554] By the end of 2001, White House officials will say they still do not know where the threat came from. [NEWSWEEK, 12/30/2001] Darling will write in 2010, “To this day, it has never been determined why either the ‘credible source’ or Situation Room personnel used that code word [i.e. ‘Angel’] in their report to the PEOC.” [DARLING, 2010, PP. 62] “The best we can tell,” Rice will say, is that “there was a call that talked about events—something happening to the president on the ground in Florida. And that somehow got interpreted as Air Force One.” She will say that the fact the caller knew the code name for Air Force One is “why we still continue to suspect it wasn’t a crank call.” [WHITE HOUSE, 11/1/2001] However, former Secret Service officials will say the code name wasn’t an official secret, but instead “a radio shorthand designation that had been made public well before 2001.” [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/22/2004 pdf file]

Entity Tags: Eric Edelman, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Deborah Loewer, US Secret Service, Robert J. Darling, White House

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline:32 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. September 11, 2001: Russian President Calls the White House

Russian President Vladimir Putin phones the White House, wanting to speak with the US president. With Bush not there, Condoleezza Rice takes the call. Putin tells her that the Russians are voluntarily standing down a military exercise they are conducting, as a gesture of solidarity with the United States. [WASHINGTON POST, 1/27/2002] The Russian exercise began on September 10 in the Russian arctic and North Pacific oceans, and was scheduled to last until September 14. [NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND, 9/9/2001; WASHINGTON TIMES, 9/11/2001] It involved Russian bombers staging a mock attack against NATO planes that are supposedly planning an assault on Russia. [BBC, 2001, PP. 161] Subsequently, Putin manages to talk to Bush while he is aboard Air Force One (see (After 11:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Late March 1989 and After: Defense Secretary Cheney Advocates Enforced Regime Change in Soviet Union

Late March 1989 and After: Defense Secretary Cheney Advocates Enforced Regime Change in Soviet Union

When Dick Cheney becomes defense secretary (see March 20, 1989 and After), he brings into the Pentagon a core group of young, ideological staffers with largely academic (not military) backgrounds. Many of these staffers are neoconservatives who once congregated around Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (see Early 1970s). Cheney places them in the Pentagon’s policy directorate, under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, himself one of Jackson’s cadre. While most administrations leave the policy directorate to perform mundane tasks, Wolfowitz and his team have no interest in such. “They focused on geostrategic issues,” one of his Pentagon aides will recall. “They considered themselves conceptual.” Wolfowitz and his team are more than willing to reevaluate the most fundamental precepts of US foreign policy in their own terms, and in Cheney they have what reporters Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman call “a like-minded patron.” In 1991, Wolfowitz will describe his relationship to Cheney: “Intellectually, we’re very much on similar wavelengths.”

A Different View of the Soviet Union - Cheney pairs with Wolfowitz and his neoconservatives to battle one issue in particular: the US’s dealings with the Soviet Union. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has been in office for four years, and has built a strong reputation for himself in the West as a charismatic reformer. But Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the others see something far darker. Cheney opposes any dealings with the Soviets except on the most adversarial level (see 1983), and publicly discusses his skepticism of perestroika, Gorbachev’s restructuring of the Soviet economy away from a communist paradigm. In April, Cheney tells a CNN news anchor that Gorbachev will “ultimately fail” and a leader “far more hostile” to the West will follow in his footsteps. Some of President Bush’s more “realistic” aides, including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Bush himself, have cast their lot with Gorbachev and reform; they have no use for Cheney’s public advocacy of using the USSR’s period of transitional turmoil to dismember the nation once and for all.

Cheney's Alternative Policy - Cheney turns to the neoconservatives under Wolfowitz for an alternative strategy. They meet on Saturday mornings in the Pentagon’s E ring, where they have one maverick Sovietologist after another propound his or her views. Almost all of these Sovietologists echo Cheney and Wolfowitz’s view—the USSR is on the brink of collapse, and the US should do what it can to hasten the process and destroy its enemy for good. They assert that what the Soviet Union needs is not a reformer guiding the country back into a papered-over totalitarianism, to emerge (with the US’s help) stronger and more dangerous than before. Instead, Cheney and his cadre advocate enforced regime change in the Soviet Union. Supporting the rebellious Ukraine will undermine the legitimacy of the central Soviet government, and supporting Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, will strike at the heart of the Gorbachev regime. Bush and his core advisers worry about instability, but Cheney says that the destruction of the Soviet Union is worth a little short-term disruption.

Failure - Bush will not adopt the position of his defense secretary, and will continue supporting Gorbachev through the Soviet Union’s painful transition and eventual dissolution. After Cheney goes public one time too many about his feelings about Gorbachev, Baker tells Scowcroft to “[d]ump on Dick” with all deliberate speed. During the final days of the Soviet Union, Cheney will find himself alone against Bush’s senior advisers and Cabinet members in their policy discussions. [NEW REPUBLIC, 11/20/2003]

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Boris Yeltsin, Franklin Foer, US Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, James A. Baker, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Spencer Ackerman

Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence

POTUS BUSH WAS BEING BRIEFED AT 17:20 (5:20PM) OF SECOND ROUND OF ATTACKS SAME TIME WTC 7 IS BOMBED

It's not a coincidence that WTC 7 drops at the same time Bush is being briefed on a second round of attacks. WTC 7 was the beginning of a second wave of attacks.  

(5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001: CIA Briefer Tells President Bush about a Possible Second Wave of Attacks

Mike Morell, President Bush’s CIA briefer, passes on to Bush all the information the CIA currently has relating to today’s terrorist attacks, which includes a warning the agency received about the possibility that a group of al-Qaeda terrorists is in the United States, preparing for a second wave of attacks. [TENET, 2007, PP. 169; BUSH, 2010, PP. 136; POLITICO MAGAZINE, 9/9/2016] While he was at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, Bush conducted a meeting of the National Security Council in a secure video teleconference (see (3:15 p.m.) September 11, 2001). During the meeting, CIA Director George Tenet said the CIA had information linking al-Qaeda to today’s attacks. [WOODWARD, 2002, PP. 26-27; 9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 326; PRIESS, 2016, PP. 243] Before the meeting ended, Morell slipped out to phone Ted Gistaro, Tenet’s executive assistant, at the CIA’s operations center and asked to have the information Tenet provided to Bush sent to Air Force One. [TENET, 2007, PP. 169; MORELL AND HARLOW, 2015, PP. 57]

Fax Includes All of the CIA's Information on the Attacks - A few minutes after Air Force One took off from Offutt, heading for Washington, DC (see (4:33 p.m.) September 11, 2001), Morell received a six-page fax that included all the intelligence the CIA had relating to the attacks. It included the talking points Tenet used to brief Bush during the teleconference, along with a lot of information Tenet was unable to cover in the meeting. Morell read through the material several times and highlighted several passages.

Briefer Goes Over the CIA's Information with Bush - Now, about 30 minutes later, Andrew Card, Bush’s chief of staff, comes to the staff cabin and tells Morell that Bush will see him to go through the information. Morell therefore accompanies Card to the conference room on the plane and the two men meet with Bush there. Morell goes over the material he has been sent with the president, allowing Bush to read as much of it as he wants. [STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE, 9/2006 pdf file; MORELL AND HARLOW, 2015, PP. 57; POLITICO MAGAZINE, 9/9/2016]

Briefer Reports the Possibility of a Second Wave of Attacks - The material includes information provided by French intelligence, explaining that it has detected signs that al-Qaeda has “sleeper cells” in the US that are planning a second wave of attacks. Bush is concerned when he learns this. He will later describe receiving the information as “one of the darkest moments of the day.” “I believed America could overcome the September 11 attacks without further panic,” he will write. “But,” he will add, “a follow-on strike would be very difficult to bear.” [TENET, 2007, PP. 169; BUSH, 2010, PP. 136; POLITICO MAGAZINE, 9/9/2016] After Morell has finished briefing the president, Bush thanks him and he returns to his seat in the staff cabin. This meeting apparently takes place at around 5:20 p.m., since Morell will comment that Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses while he is briefing the president and this incident occurs at 5:20 p.m. (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE, 9/2006 pdf file; NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 11/2008, PP. 15]

Entity Tags: Andrew Card, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, George W. Bush, Michael J. Morell

Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, George Bush

Lebed attack on Russia's handling of Chechen War

 Lebed attack on Russia's handling of Chechen War

13 Aug 1996

By Marcus Warren in Moscow

RUSSIA'S security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, took charge of policy towards Chechnya yesterday, meeting the Chechen chief of staff near Grozny before launching an outspoken attack on Russia's military and politicians for their conduct in the war. Russian commanders announced a halt to air strikes against rebels but fighting continued for a seventh day, with Chechen irregulars retaining control of much of the city.

Gen Lebed also voiced suspicions that his appointment as President Yeltsin's special representative to Chechnya last weekend was "part of some bureaucratic games" designed to ruin his political career. "I am not against my being appointed, but I am against the way my appointment has been interpreted," he said. "Someone really wants to wring my neck with this one."

Gen Lebed, returning from a lightning visit to Chechnya, where he held three hours of talks during the night with Gen Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen military commander, announced that there was a real chance of ending the current bloodshed in the rebel republic soon. Its capital, Grozny, is suffering its heaviest fighting in 18 months, the result of a shock offensive by Chechen rebels and Moscow's attempts to win back control of the city and relieve hard-pressed Russian positions.

Russian officials have admitted more than 180 soldiers have been killed and 618 wounded in the battle, which shows no sign of abating a week after the rebels entered the city. Neither is there any evidence that the rebels intend to withdraw. In typical Lebed fashion, the former paratrooper was blunt about the shortcomings of the Russian troops he met on his brief visit to Chechnya, calling them "little runts".

The young conscripts manning Russian checkpoints are invariably demoralised and badly turned out, some even missing buttons from their tunics."These little runts, hungry, frail, half-dressed, cannot represent the Interior Ministry or the Defence Ministry," Gen Lebed said. "Partisans in World War Two were better dressed."

The Chechens, by contrast, were "good warriors", he added. The Russian soldiers are also trigger-happy and highly dangerous to all sides. As Gen Lebed travelled to his meeting with the Chechen leadership, his motorcade was fired at twice. Agency reports implied that Russian troops were to blame. Gen Lebed was scathing in his criticism of the lack of command and control among the Russian military in Chechnya and their low morale. He called for the withdrawal of those units that had been deployed there as "cannon fodder".

He was equally contemptuous about the politicians who have been trying to negotiate peace in the war, which has raged since the end of 1994. Senior figures in the pro-Moscow Chechen government were displaying symptoms of "megalomania" and the state commission on Chechnya had been "extremely passive".

Gen Lebed's trip to Chechnya and his outspoken remarks on his return marked his most striking move since being appointed the Kremlin's security chief nearly two months ago. He seemed almost to have disappeared from public view after being co-opted by President Yeltsin following his strong performance in Russia's elections. There may be some truth in his assertion that he has been passed the poisoned chalice of Chechnya to damage his political future.

Few details emerged about his talks with Gen Maskhadov, although a Chechen spokesman described them as "constructive". After being briefed by Mr Lebed, Mr Yeltsin, who had been expected to leave Moscow on his summer holiday, postponed his trip for a week.

12 August 1996: Yeltsin demands heads roll for Grozny debacle

Lebed Says Russia Has Lost Track of 100 Nuclear Bombs

Sections

WORLD & NATION

Lebed Says Russia Has Lost Track of 100 Nuclear Bombs

BY RICHARD C. PADDOCK

SEPT. 9, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW —  Alexander I. Lebed, the former Russian general and presidential hopeful, has been broadcasting his claim over the past week that Russia has lost track of 100 nuclear bombs the size of suitcases. “A very thorough investigation is necessary,” Lebed reiterated to reporters Monday. “The state of nuclear security in Russia poses a danger to the whole world.” The general’s allegations are roundly denied by Russian officials, who contend that all of Russia’s nuclear weapons are safely under control.

In his previous post as President Boris N. Yeltsin’s top security advisor, Lebed might have been in a position to know about such secrets. But the president fired him nearly a year ago. Now Lebed--who negotiated last year’s peace accord with Chechnya--is a political outsider who is trying to revive his career and build a base for a potential run for the presidency in 2000, when Yeltsin must step down.

“How can a serious politician make such a sensational statement without checking the facts first?” asked Vladimir F. Uvatenko, chief spokesman for the Defense Ministry. “This scandalous statement was clearly made by Alexander Lebed to get the attention of the press and boost his waning political image and declining popularity.”

Despite the official denials, Lebed is pursuing his allegations undeterred. In an interview on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” aired Sunday, Lebed said the suitcase bombs were ideal weapons for terrorists because they could be armed and detonated by a single person within half an hour. One of the 1-kiloton bombs could kill 100,000 people, he said. Of 250 suitcase devices made by the former Soviet Union, he said, 100 are unaccounted for.

On Monday, Lebed told the Interfax news agency in Moscow that he had learned of the existence of the bombs 11 months ago when he was Yeltsin’s security advisor. Since that time, he said, he has been able to prove to his own satisfaction that the weapons were real. “I started to look into the matter and managed to find out that such cases do exist,” he said. However, he added, he “did not have time to find out how many such nuclear charges there were.”

According to Lebed, the suitcase bombs, measuring about 23 by 16 by 8 inches, were deployed by the Soviet Union in special brigades in some of the empire’s remote regions. After the breakup of the Soviet state, many of the suitcases vanished in what became independent republics, where they could fall into the hands of terrorists, he said.

“We should realize that a moron with such a device in New York is ‘great fun’ for all humankind,” he said.

In Washington, U.S. officials said they had no information that any of Russia’s nuclear weapons, whatever their size, have been offered for sale on the world’s black markets. Lebed’s U.S. broadcast brought denunciations from a host of officials, including Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who called his contention “absolutely impossible.”

COINCIDENCES FROM 1979 TWO MOVIES STARRING JAMES BOND ACTORS WITH SPACE WEAPONS

29 JUNE 1979 release date

MOONRAKER starring Roger Moore as James Bond.

19 OCTOBER 1979 release date

METEOR starring Sean Connery a former James Bond. 

The shuttle can be clearly seen here behind Karl Malden.

The true star of both of these movies was the space shuttle. In the movie METEOR the role was more subliminal. The shuttle appears in artwork in an early scene. The space shuttle was a weapon system hidden in plain sight. It was built to service two satellites - the KH-9 (orbital bombardment system) and the KH-11 (Space Based Laser). The interesting thing about "METEOR" is that it features an orbital bombardment system. One way to cloak a sneak attack from orbit is to hide your warheads in a meteor shower. So, we believe that both of these movies were meant to send a chilling message to the Soviets. 

The Soviets knew the Shuttle was a weapons system and protested its deployment. This article by "James Oberg", a pseudonym for a CIA spook lampooned Soviet claims about the Space Shuttle & attempted to gaslight them as paranoid.   

This article from Mechanix Illustrated 16 years prior to the movies released, claimed the US would have a deployable laser weapon by 1971. 

https://thearea51blog.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-miracle-light-beam-from-mechanix.html