OK: Secret Rogue Faction that Runs the Bush Administration

Note: Please read this previous post first: "Webster G. Tarpley’s Toxic Waste is Polluting the Antiwar Movement" and then this post will make more sense. I am an opponent of conspiracy theories in general and this one about the Bush Administraion in particular. This was meant as a clarification of wording in my previous post, not an endorement of a conspiracy theory. -cb

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In my recent post on Webster Tarpley I wrote that:

“In 2005 Tarpley published a book that alleged the Bush Administration staged the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.”

Critics have suggested this meant I had not actually read Tarpley’s book. I have read the book. In it Tarpley contends that the Bush Administration is controlled by a secret invisible government, and that 9/11 was part of a plan to put pressure on George W. Bush as President to ensure that he continued to follow the foreign policy and economic game plan provided to him by the oligarchic faction known as the neoconservatives. Tarpley goes out is his way to make it clear that he thinks Bush himself is incapable of being part of the staged “Synthetic Terror” event the rest of us call the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

So I specifically did not suggest Bush was behind staging the attacks, I said the Bush Administration. As Tarpley himself points out, if 9/11 was a staged event, it would have been impossible to have been carried out without the complicity of high-ranking government agency and Administration officials, or as he calls it: the “rogue networks of the US invisible government” (p. 432). Specifically, Tarpley writes that the sponsors of 9/11 “were not located in a cave in Afghanistan, but were rather a network located high within the US government and military”(p. 280).

According to Tarpley, in 2004, “with the desperados of the neocon faction calling the shots” the “rogues were once again inclined to” stage another terrorist attack on US soil (p. 397). Tarpley also indicates that he thinks the necons are part of the invisible government apparatus, and that this includes “Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Luti, Schulsky, Scooter Libby, Cambone, Hadley and others who run the Bush administration.” If the neocons run the Bush Administration, and the neocons are part of the secret plot, then the Bush Administration staged the attacks, even if every person in the Administration was not part of the plot. I find all these claims ludicrous, but I can see there is room for misinterpretation due to my shorthand description.

In the future I will make sure I state that Tarpley has written that a secret invisible government which runs the Bush Administration through the neocon-Straussian oligarchic network staged the 9/11 attacks; or at least use the phrase ‘a secret rogue faction that runs the Bush Administration,’ which is what I will insert in the text. My apologies to Mr. Tarpley if he was offended by my summary of his claims about the alleged conspiracy.

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Webster G. Tarpley’s Toxic Waste is Polluting the Antiwar Movement

There is no question that author Webster Griffin Tarpley has become a divisive and destructive force within the U.S. antiwar movement. The real question is why antiwar activists would pay him any attention in the first place. Activists are in an uproar over an incident at a peace encampment in Keenebunkport, Maine where Tarpley is implicated in a stunt where well-known peace activists such as Jamilla El-Shafei, Cindy Sheehan, Dahlia Wasfi, and Ann Wright were tricked into signing a document they thought was merely a call for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The fine print in the document echoes Tarpley’s claim that Cheney is plotting a pre-election coup using a domestic terrorist attack as an excuse.

Tarpley is a former acolyte of crackpot and convicted felon Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. You remember LaRouche. He is generally described as a perennial Presidential candidate who once said the Queen of England ran the global drug trade. Tarpley may have left the LaRouche group, but it has not left him. Tarpley acts as a sockpuppet for LaRouche, spreading delirious venom throughout the antiwar movement. The LaRouche group has a long history of conning people into signing statements based on misleading descriptions of the actual text. Déjà vu.

With so much factual evidence of wrongdoing, incompetence, malfeasance, and just plain lying on the part of the Bush Administration, there is no reason to spread Tarpley’s gossip. The dramatic erosion of civil liberties in the United States is bad enough without embracing the delusional warnings by Tarpley that “neocons always prefer a coup d'etat to an election.”{1}

The current tempest traces back to July 4 th, 2007 when Philadelphia peace activists held an Emergency Antiwar Convention. It was an attempt to merge the movement against the war in Iraq with the “9/11 Truth” movement. The event featured 9/11 conspiracy films, as well as presentations from Tarpley and another former LaRouchite activist, Lewis DuPont Smith. Attendees issued a Call “In the spirit of our Declaration of Independence” urging others to join activist organizations throughout the country to collaborate and forge common strategies and actions.”{2} The statement included the phrase: “ Government by the People, not by cliques of bankers and financiers,” which could have been copied from a number of Nazi publications from the 1930s which identified the culprits as Jews.

Tarpley has introduced similar statements at other meetings, including one in Chicago.{3}  A few weeks later, with his star rising in the antiwar movement, Tarpley posted a long article on the Jeff Rense website warning: "Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer, Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him."{4}  

According to Tarpley, antiwar activists needed to quickly confront “the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a new super 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction in the US, to be used as the pretext for a nuclear attack on Iran and for martial law at home.”{5}

This is not the first time Tarpley has predicted an apocalyptic political event. In 2004, he posted a warning: "Bush Regime working out Procedures for postponing November Election."{6} The election, needless to say, actually took place as scheduled, although there were legitimate complaints about vote suppression to benefit Republican candidates.

Tarpley is co-author (with LaRouche researcher Anton Chaitkin){7}, of the book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, originally published by the LaRouche publishing house.{8} Progressive author and blogger David Neiwert reviewed the book, noting that “Like most LaRouche texts:”

...the Bush "biography" is a mélange of fact and distortion, written in a highly suppositional style that makes numerous leaps of logic and asserts connections where there is no real evidence to support it, at other times omitting exculpatory or contrary information that reveals a more complete picture. Sifting through it requires a great deal of work, but there are nuggets of fact woven into their text that are substantiated and which deserve proper consideration.{9}

In 2005 Tarpley published a book that alleged the Bush Administration staged the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.{10} [Note: specifically a secret rogue faction that runs the Bush Administration - see blog post that follows] LaRouche takes a similar position. According to LaRouche the attacks on 9/11 should be:

”recognized, sooner or later, as the product of a witting "inside job." Finally, my detailed knowledge of the onrushing strategic crisis within which those attacks were situated, allowed no other conclusion, than that this was an attempted military coup d'état with a global strategic purpose of the most ominous implications imaginable.”{11}

While continuing to follow the polluted path blazed by notorious crackpot and homophobic antisemite Lyndon LaRouche, Tarpley is a regular contributor and featured poster on the Jeff Rense website. If we can set aside the UFO mania found on Rense.com, there is still the promotion of Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

At some point leaders of the antiwar movement need to have a discussion about the larger issue of conspiracism. Right now, however, it is clear that some progressives have been snared by Tarpley’s mesmerizing presentations. This could undermine the credibility of the antiwar movement, alienate its existing base, and jeopardize its relationship with existing allies. This should be obvious no matter what your individual position is on the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11. The antiwar movement needs to welcome individuals from a broad range of political beliefs who share the goal of ending the war in Iraq. However this open door policy should not include allowing charlatans and hucksters to disrupt the movement. It is time to slam the door in the face of Webster G. Tarpley and his ilk.

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Sources:

{1} Webster G. Tarpley, “Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer: Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him,” 7-21-7, http://www.rense.com/general77/chens.htm.

{2} “The ‘Act-Independent United Front Program’, submitted By Webster Griffin Tarpley and approved by The Philadelphia Emergency Anti-War Convention, July 4, 2007’ The Philadelphia Platform,’ http://www.waronfreedom.org/tarpley/philly.html. See the: event described at http://actindependent.org/, and http://actindependent.org/peac.html, and the full statement at http://actindependent.org/philadelphiaplatform.pdf. See http://www.waronfreedom.org/tarpley/chicago-resolution.html.

{3} “9/11 Truth -- The Key To Stopping World War III, Resolution Submitted To The 911 Chicago Truth Conference, June 2-4, 2006. This resolution was presented to the final plenary meeting of the conference by Webster G. Tarpley and acclaimed by voice vote. Tarpley is the author of the book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.”

{4} See also, Tarpley, “Helicopter Ben Unleashes Dollar Hyperinflation,” 8-12-7, http://www.rense.com/general77/ben.htm.

{5} See http://www.rense.com/general77/chens.htm.

{6} As of September 11, 2007, the Tarpley article is still on Michel Chossudovsky's Global Research website: Webster Griffin Tarpley, “Bush Regime working out Procedures for postponing November Election, posted July 10, 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/TAR407B.html.

{7} A recent article by Anton Chaitkin is BAE, Baroness Symons in Black Operations Against LaRouche, July 6, 2007, http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3427bae_antilar_ops.html.

{8} Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin. (1992). George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography. Washington, DC: Executive Intelligence Review.

{9} David Neiwert, "Bush, the Nazis and America," September 07, 2003, http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003/09/bush-nazis-and-america_07.html

{10} Tarpley’s book is published by Progressive Press, http://www.waronfreedom.org, which also publishes a book by Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions . Hufschmid is described as one of the researchers "who openly mix 9/11 skepticism with Holocaust denial or revisionism," see "Holocaust Denial Versus 9/11 Truth," http://911review.com/denial/holocaust.html.

{11} Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "Zbigniew Brzezinski and September 11th", Executive Intelligence Review, January 11, 2001, http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2002/2901zbig_sept11.html.

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