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PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. On this 10th anniversary
of 9/11, many questions remain unanswered. One of the big ones, of course, is: just what
and when did senior White House officials know about what took place? Now investigative
work done by Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold at the independent news site Truthout has
uncovered that there was a special division within the Joint Forces Intelligence Command
known as DO5 that had developed intelligence prior to 9/11 that likely targets of a terrorist
attack would be the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those attacks would be conducted
by air, even went so far as to say one tower might collapse, falling into another The intelligence
also developed was the tracking of Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. And that tracking, according
to a whistleblower, was stopped. And three, when congressional investigators asked JFIC
what they knew, we're told that none of this actually had been developed, none of this
intelligence. And we know all this because a whistleblower that was part of DO5 claims
that in fact all this is true. And that whistleblower was known as Iron Man. Now joining us to talk
about his investigative work and what they found is in fact Jeffrey Kaye. Jeffrey is
a psychologist practicing in San Francisco. He's done psychological assessments and works
with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco. And he works with Truthout.
Thanks very much for joining us.
JEFFREY KAYE: Hi, Paul. Thanks.
JAY: Start us off with the story. But before we get into the details of the story, how
did you, a psychologist, get into this, and how did you come in contact with Iron Man?
KAYE: Well, because of my work with torture victims, I--some years ago--and this work
goes back pre-9/11--as the information came out about the United States being involved
in torture, I began doing--reading about it, writing about it, ultimately doing my own
research and writing articles at Truthout, Firedoglake, and other sites. As part of this
research, I came across an inspector general report by the Department of Defense that was
released last year, and this report had to do with the tracking of Osama bin Laden by
a little-known (in fact never really written about) intelligence agency known as the Asymmetric
Threats division, which belonged to the Joint Forces Intelligence Command, which itself
was part of a huge US--one of the major US commands from the Pentagon, the Joint Forces
Command itself. I was very surprised to read--again, this was right after Osama bin Laden was killed--that
there were allegations by a former acting chief of this division within the military
that was complaining that they had been stopped in the spring, actually, of 2001 from tracking
Osama bin Laden and other--gathering information on other terrorist groups in camps in Afghanistan,
and essentially were shut down, and that when congressional investigators came around in
the year after 9/11 looking to find out what in the world had happened, trying to put it
all together, the information about the work his group had done was deliberately kept from
congressional investigators.
JAY: So you wrote a piece about this. And then what happens?
KAYE: Well, a few weeks after I wrote the piece I received an email from a man within
the inspector general report who had made the original complaint, who the inspector
general themselves dubbed "Iron Man"--that was not his own name for himself; that was
the name the government gave him as a whistleblower who worked in a classified--still works, in
fact, for the intelligence community, and at the time of the IG complaint and the report,
apparently was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He sent me sent me a copy of his original
complaint, and to show that in fact what the work was that he had done, and to give me
some context in which I could look at the inspector general report and make a thorough
examination of its claims.
JAY: Now, he has a copy of this complaint through a Freedom of Information Act request.
What's in this complaint of his?
KAYE: Well, the complaint goes through exactly who this man is. He was from--a human intelligence
analyst from the Naval NCIS, which people may know from the television show, who had
been detailed to this special unit which was formed within Joint Forces Command's intelligence
component as an all-source fusion and analysis group. It had nine members, about half military,
half civilian, to work on tracking terrorism worldwide and to create original analytic
material about where these people would strike, when they would strike, how they would strike,
as the document he recently sent me indicates and which I'm writing up a new article for
Truthout to be published around 9/11.
JAY: This Joint Forces Intelligence Command, it's under the roof of the Department of Defense
or under the CIA?
KAYE: Well, it's part of the Department of Defense.
JAY: So at some point, all this reports to Donald Rumsfeld.
KAYE: I imagine who it reports to is the Joint Chiefs of Staff is my reading. I'm not from
the military, but it seemed that up the chain of command is the way this information goes.
It went from Iron Man in his group up to United States Joint Forces Command briefings, and
then, presumably, they would have briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, of course,
the office of the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
JAY: Okay. So let's go through. What are the big points of what was in this complaint,
which reveals--Iron Man reveals what he says was known?
KAYE: Well, I think the major point is this, that by the summer of 2000, Iron Man's group,
the Asymmetric Threats Division, had developed a number of reports, and they were briefing
a number of different agencies, not just United States Joint Forces Command, but also members,
personnel from the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,
and they were telling them that they had derived, by using intelligence from NSA and CIA reports,
from geospacial imagery data, from open-source information, and from human intelligence that
al-Qaeda terrorists were planning attacks, primarily against Washington, the Pentagon,
Wall Street area, in particular World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2, and at the time,
Los Angeles. And they indicated that they wanted to in fact notify civilian security
people at the World Trade Center, but they could not do that, because, as Iron Man put
it, the command environment wouldn't allow such communications.
JAY: Then the other big point was that they were tracking bin Laden around this time and
were told not to, according to Iron Man.
KAYE: Yes. I'm not sure when the tracking began. That could go back as far as 1999.
But it was continuing into the early months of 2001 when a new commander, apparently,
of intelligence at Joint Forces Intelligence Command essentially shut them down, telling
them that such work was outside the area of responsibility for Joint Forces Command, and
subsequently it was shut down.
JAY: Now, to put this into context, at the time this happens, when they're closed down,
Osama bin Laden is number one on the FBI Most Wanted list. So it's not like there isn't
some interest in him.
KAYE: Right. Absolutely. In fact, he had been indicted. And furthermore, in October 2000,
the USS Cole had been attacked by al-Qaeda. I believe some 17, or more Navy personnel
were killed and others wounded in this attack. It had certainly made al-Qaeda, in attacks
against US forces--and remember, JFCOM's mission is to protect US forces, among their other--among
their central missions. And to pull back from this hunt for bin Laden and other al-Qaeda
terrorists and what they were planning makes absolutely no sense when you consider what
JFCOM's mission actually was.
JAY: Okay. Now, there's a briefing that takes place with a guy named Meyer, who's a, what,
vice admiral, who's a--and is he the deputy commander of DO5? Tell us about who he was
and what the briefing--what happened at this briefing.
KAYE: Right. There was a briefing in 2000, probably late July of 2000, on the WMD threat
to the United States. And at this meeting was, so far as I can tell, the highest official
to whom this information was briefed to, and that was the deputy commander in chief of
US Joint Forces Command Vice Admiral Meyer.
JAY: We know it was Meyer, because in Iron Man's complaint he says it's the deputy commander,
and then you've put two and two together and you come up with Meyer. At the very least,
it is the deputy commander, and as far as you know, Meyer is the deputy commander when
this meeting takes place.
KAYE: Yes. Meyer's own biography from the Department of Defense states that at this
time he was the deputy commander in chief of JFCOM. And Iron Man's complaint says that
at the briefing was in fact what--he abbreviates it again, of course, the DCINC. But [crosstalk]
JAY: So who does Meyer meet with, and what happens at the meeting?
KAYE: I don't know who Meyer talks to after this occurs, but one person he talked to was
the commander of NORAD, who he told--and this was written in a book by the commander of
NORAD subsequent to 9/11. And he, according to this NORAD commander, is told by Vice Admiral
Meyer that al-Qaeda is, you know, not--is way overblown and that it's something CNN
talks about to get ratings and just don't worry about bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
JAY: So up the food chain, then, goes information that in fact there is no threat from bin Laden,
at least as far as we know about this meeting.
KAYE: That's certainly what Meyer said. Of course, other--you know, I'm sure they were
getting other information from other people, but it is certainly interesting that Meyer
knew what was being planned, or had been briefed by this by Joint Forces Intelligence Command,
and then subsequently is telling people at NORAD that al-Qaeda is not a threat.
JAY: Now, just to be clear, was the information or intelligence that they actually thought
this was being planned? Or this was a hypothetical scenario that if terrorists were planning
something, this is what they're likely to do?
KAYE: Right. I don't believe that they had knowledge of the specific--at least I have
not been told that, and it is not written in Iron Man's complaint that they had knowledge
of the specific 9/11 plot. Instead, they had developed intelligence that said that this
was the type of plot that the terrorists were looking at and that these were the targets
that the terrorists were after. I don't believe they had--at least, I have no knowledge that
they had more specific information developed. However, I did ask Iron Man if he was aware
of the original--excuse me--of the recent allegations on a video interview by former
counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke that the CIA had let two terrorists, al-Qaeda terrorists,
into the United States in January 2000. They knew they were coming, but they refused to
inform the FBI or the State Department no-fly watch list, and that these people came--one
of them in particular went in and out of the United States, probably being tracked by the
CIA, and nothing was ever said to law enforcement personnel. And, of course, those terrorists
ended up being two of the 19 terrorists who blew up the Pentagon [crosstalk]
JAY: Right. And Richard Clarke went public with this just recently.
KAYE: Well, he wrote about it in his book about a year ago or so. And then a video that
was made, I think last year, was--just recently went public, yes. Asked him if he could comment
as to whether or not any of the CIA officials who they briefed or whether or not information
on Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was one of the terrorists, had shown up in the kinds of all-source intelligence
gathering that their department was doing, and he indicated that he couldn't speak of
it, but that they would like to speak about it to Congress if, you know, they were to
be asked by the government.
JAY: This is Iron--you're still talking about--"he" being Iron Man.
KAYE: Yes. They have a lot more that they would like to say but they feel they can't
say because the information is classified.
JAY: So, I mean, the restrictions Iron Man is under in talking to you is he can't talk
outside of what came out through this request for information document, his complaint. He
can speak about that, but when he goes past that, he's violating Official Secrets Act.
KAYE: Correct. I think he's walking a very fine line and he's trying to get what information
out he can. He recently sent me--and this will go into the news story at Truthout--copies
of slides of briefings that were made while he was the deputy chief of DO5. He wasn't
just a member; he was the actual deputy chief and later acting chief of this unit. And that
slides demonstrate that DO5 was, in fact, and their parent agencies were, as the slides
make quite clear from this 2000 briefing, specifically tasked with tracking Osama bin
Laden and with counterterrorism analysis, which is precisely what the IG report said
they were not.
JAY: Yeah, just to be clear--and I'm not sure we've talked about that--there was an inspector
general report responding to this complaint, and it cleared JFIC of everything, saying
that they in fact had not been involved in this kind of work. And so the importance of
these slides is that it shows that they in fact were. Have I got that correctly?
KAYE: Yes, yes, yes. He gave other information that he had requested via Freedom of Information
Act, and now those records have been declassified and we can write about them and disseminate
them in the press to show that in fact the inspector general report, which is one of
the most amazing pieces of obfuscation that I have ever read--.
JAY: We don't know whether Meyer for some reason--one would have to presume he sat on
this information or blocked it all on his own--or, if you want to give him the benefit
of the doubt, for some reason didn't think it was worth pursuing, which seems hard to
believe, again, because bin Laden is number one on the FBI Most Wanted list. But other
than that, is there any evidence this information ever got higher, like, for example, either
worked its way up to Joint Chiefs, to Rumsfeld? It's supposed to all have gone to Richard
Clarke, but he's never, certainly, acknowledged in any way that he got this information. Am
I correct?
KAYE: Yeah, that's right. And I did a long search and could find almost no information
about this group in any writings on 9/11, no matter, you know, how conspiratorial or
whatever. Nothing. We do know that when Iron Man heard that the information was being withheld
from congressional investigators, he went to the Congressional Affairs Office of the
Defense Intelligence Agency. That was actually the office that was coordinating with Congress
between military intelligence and congressional investigators. And he said, hey, I heard that
you didn't get this info, and I've got it and my own copies; let me give them to you.
And the guy said, okay. And he in fact sent the copies of materials, like his original
complaint, the slides of briefings, etc., to the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency's
Congressional Affairs Office, and presumably that would have been passed on to Congress.
But, unfortunately, we don't know whether it was or not. It certainly never turns--that
information never turns up in Congress's Joint Inquiry report published in December 2002,
nor in the 9/11 Commission, nor anywhere ever [crosstalk]
JAY: Right. So the significance of all this, at least one piece of significance, is that
if you then take the memo that Condoleezza Rice reads that says Osama bin Laden plans
to attack America, and if someone at a senior level, whether it's Rice or someone else,
or even a lesser level, puts this together with the intelligence developed by JFIC, then
one would say there's some kind of foreknowledge that something's coming, and they actually
did have some sense of what the targets are. I'm not suggesting right now there's a direct
line that conclusion could be drawn, but one would think it should be at the very least
investigated. Is that the point here?
KAYE: Yes, that's exactly the point. I can't certainly say I know what went on in all details
in the leadup to 9/11. However, more than enough has come out over the past years, going
all the way back to Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, other recent books by authors
Kevin Fenton and--on how--about the Richard Clarke material, in terms of not--the CIA
withholding information on terrorists entering the United States. There of course was information
about screwups or perhaps of obstruction happening at high levels of the FBI in terms of information
about terrorists trying to learn to fly in the United States. I'm sure many of the listeners
have listened or heard or read about this. And so now we have what we have, and the significance
of this story is we have from within the world of military intelligence somebody standing
up--and, in fact, military intelligence has been left totally out of the 9/11 narrative.
It's quite amazing when you consider that 80 percent of the intelligence budget of the
United States goes to military intelligence--now, a lot of that to spy satellites and the NSA,
but military intelligence that nobody appears to have been interested or curious about what
the Defense Intelligence Agency or other defense intelligence units, such as Joint Forces Intelligence
Command, was doing around 9/11, or looking at al-Qaeda terrorists, particularly since
they were targeting military targets--the USS Cole, the Pentagon. That's their job.
And yet nobody asked and no report has yet come out, with the exception, oddly, of this
inspector general reply to Iron Man's complaint, that even addresses this issue.
JAY: As far as you know, Iron Man's still working in the defense intelligence establishment.
This document that we're referring to was released under the Freedom of Information
Act. So the obvious question is: why? Why did they release the document? And why are
they letting this guy communicate with you?
KAYE: Well, Iron Man has shown that he's not going to give up. Maybe he's not called Iron
Man for nothing. When the inspector general got his original complaint back in 2006, they
ignored it, they dropped it, they didn't reply. And Iron Man went to the office of the new
director for national intelligence office, who then wrote back to be inspector general,
said, hey, are you going to do something about this? And only at that point did the Department
of Defense Inspector General take up their, quote, "investigation". I think that there
are also a number of people within the military intelligence establishment who know what went
on, whatever exactly that was, and they would very much like to talk. But Congress apparently
doesn't seem interested in listening. Certainly, Barack Obama's administration isn't interested
in investigating. And, in fact, I had contacted the former congressional leadership of the
Joint Inquiry, with the exception of Porter Goss, after this information came to me--and
that would be Nancy Pelosi, senators Richard Shelby and Bob Graham. And none of them got
back to me. None of them. In fact, Congresswoman Pelosi's office told me, don't even bother
sending us an email. So, amazingly, these people seem very disinterested in the fact
that information that was meant for them in 2002 was withheld from them about 9/11, about
this tragedy that has truly terribly affected the course of history in the United States
and, until the truth about it is really known, will be continued to be used as propaganda
fodder for antiterrorism and attacks on civil liberties that have been going on under the
Bush and Obama administrations.
JAY: Well, I guess all this is just one more reason why there needs to be an independent
inquiry. Thanks very much for joining us, Jeff.
KAYE: Okay. Thanks very much.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And you will see more of this
in future Real News reports. We're going to post the documents related to this story here.
And you can obviously--and will want to go to Truthout to see the next story that Jeff's
working on. Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.