2001 : The Moult of the American Empire

We begin the publication of the last part of Thierry Meyssan’s book, “Before Our Very Eyes”. He rereads the history of the American Empire. In this episode he comes back to the attacks of September 11 as the seizure of Power by the direct descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers against the descendants of the authors of the Bill of Rights.

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The « Wolfowitz Doctrine » was supposed to prevent a new Cold War and guarantee the United States its place as the « world policeman ». President Bush Sr. massively demobilised his armies, because they were no longer to be anything more than a police force.

And yet what we saw was the opposite of that – first of all with the four wars mentioned above, as well as the war against Syria, then the war in Ukraine against Russia.
– It was in order to demonstrate the « necessary leadership » that Washington decided, in 2001, to take control of all the hydrocarbon reserves in the « Greater Middle East » - a decision that launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
– It was in order to « dissuade [their allies] from challenging [their] leadership », that it modified its plan in 2004 and decided to apply the British suggestions (1) to annex the non-recognised Russian states - starting with South Ossetia - and (2) to overthrow the secular Arab governments for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood – the « Arab Springs ».
– Finally, it is in order to dissuade Russia from playing « a global role » that it is currently using the jihadists and ex-jihadists in Syria, in the Ukraine and in the Crimea.

To be implemented, the Wolfowitz Doctrine thus required not only financial and human means, but also a powerful a powerful hegemonic will. A group of political and military officials hoped to find their man by promoting the candidacy of the son of George Bush Sr. - George Bush Jr. This group asked the Kagan family to create a lobbying group within the American Enterprise Institute - the Project for a New American Century. They were obliged to falsify the Presidential election in Florida - with the help of Governor Jeb Bush, Jr.’s brother – in order to allow W to clamber into the White House. But well before that, the group was actively militant for the preparation of new wars of invasion, particularly in Iraq.

But the new President was not particularly obedient, which forced his supporters to organise a shock for public opinion, which they compared to a « New Pearl Harbor », on September 11, 2001.

The crash of September 11

Everyone thinks that they know about 9/11, and can quote from memory about the planes that hit the Twin Towers and the destruction of part of the Pentagon. But behind these events and their interpretation by the Bush administration, something quite different happened.

When two planes smashed into the World Trade Center, when the offices of the Vice-President were devastated by flames, and explosions were heard in the Pentagon, the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, launched the procedure for « Continuity of Government » (CoG) [3]. Developed during the Cold War, in case of a nuclear confrontation and the decapitation of the centres of Executive and Legislative Power, this procedure was devised to save the country by handing over all responsibility to a provisional authority which had been secretly designated beforehand.

But on that day, none of the elected leaders died.

Nevertheless, by 10 a.m., George W. Bush was no longer President of the United States of America. The Executive Power was transferred from the White House in Washington to site « R », the Raven Rock Mountain bunker [4]. Units of the army and the Secret Services circulated in the capital, to collect and « protect » the members of Congress and their teams. Almost all of them were taken, « for their safety », to another mega-bunker close to the capital, the Greenbrier Hotel Complex.

The alternative government, whose composition had not changed for at least nine years, included – as if by a miraculous coincidence – several personalities who had been in politics for a long time, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-Director of the CIA, James Woolsey.

During the afternoon, Israëli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon interfered in the crisis and addressed the citizens of the United States, while no-one knew anything about the implementation of the Continuity of Government plan, and there was no news of George W. Bush. He declared the solidarity of his people, who had also been long a victim of terrorism. He spoke as if he was convinced that the attacks were over, but without indicating his sources, and as if he represented the American state.

Finally, at the end of the afternoon, the provisional government handed back executive power to President Bush, who made a televised speech, and the Congressional representatives were freed.

These are proven facts, and not the outlandish tales that the Bush administration concocted, with kamikaze warriors hatching a plot in an Afghani cave to destroy the greatest military power in the world.

In a book published thirty years earlier, destined to become the Republicans’ bedside book during the electoral campaign of 2000, Coup d’état - A Practical Handbook, historian Edward Luttwak explained that a coup d’état is all the more effective when no-one realizes that it has happened, and therefore do not oppose it [5] . He should also have added that in order for the legal government to obey the conspirators, it is necessary not only to maintain the illusion that the same team is in « Power », but for the conspirators to be part of it.

The decisions imposed by the provisional government on September 11 were approved by President Bush during the days that followed. Concerning the interior, the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments of the Constitution - was suspended by the USA Patriot Act for all affairs of terrorism. Concerning exterior affairs, régime changes and wars were planned, both to hinder the development of China and to destroy all the state structures of the Greater Middle East.

President Bush held the Islamists responsible for the attacks of 9/11, and declared the « War on Terrorism » - an expression which sounds macho enough, but is nonetheless nonsensical. Indeed, terrorism is not a world power, but a method of action. Within a few years, the terrorism that Washington claimed to be fighting had increased 20-fold throughout the world. George W. Bush qualified this new conflict as an « Endless War ».

Four days later, President Bush presided an implausible meeting at Camp David, during which the principle was adopted for a long series of wars aimed at destroying all the as yet uncontrolled states in the « Greater Middle East », as well as a plan for political assassinations throughout the world. This project was named by the Director of the CIA, George Tenet - he called it the « Worldwide Attack Matrix ». This meeting was first mentioned by the Washington Post [6], then denied by the ex-Supreme Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark. By « Matrix », it is important to understand that this was only the initial phase of a much more far-reaching strategy

Who governs the United States?

In order to understand the institutional crisis which was brewing, we have to take a step back.

The founding myth of the United States claims that a few Puritans, convinced of the impossibility of reforming the British Church and monarchy, decided to build a « New Jerusalem » in the Americas. In 1620, they sailed to the New World on board the Mayflower, where they gave thanks to God for having allowed them to cross the Red Sea (in fact, the Atlantic Ocean) and to escape the dictatorship of Pharaoh (the King of England). This is the origin of the feast of Thanksgiving.

The Puritans claimed to obey God by respecting both the teaching of Christ and the Jewish Law. They did not venerate the Gospels in particular, but the whole of the Bible. For them, the Old Testament was as important as the New. They practised an austere form of morality – they were persuaded that they had been chosen by God, and thus blessed by Him by means of their wealth. Consequently, they considered that no man can improve himself, whatever he does, and that Money is a gift reserved by God for His faithful.

This ideology has many consequences. For example, their refusal to organise a form of national solidarity (Social Security), replacing it with individual charity. Or again, in penal matters, by the belief that some people are born criminals, which led the Manhattan Institute to promote, laws which in many states punished repeat offenders with very heavy prison terms, even for minor infractions, like not having paid for a subway ticket.

Even though the national myth has by now mostly buried the fanaticism of the « Pilgrim Fathers », the truth remains that they set up a sectarian community, established corporal punishment, and obliged their women to wear veils. In fact, there are clearly many similarities between their way of life and that of contemporary Islamists.

The War of Independence unfolded at a time when the populations of the colonies had been profoundly modified. They no longer came exclusively from the British Isles, but now included Europeans from all over. The patriots who fought the King of England hoped to become masters of their own destiny, and create institutions which were both Republican and Democratic. It was for them that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, inspired by the Lumières movement in general and the philosopher John Locke in particular. However, after victory was won, it was a very different source which inspired the Constitution. This was founded on the Mayflower Compact, that is to say the Puritan ideology, and the wish to create institutions comparable to those of Great Britain, but without the element of hereditary nobility. This is why, rejecting popular sovereignty, it instituted the sovereignty of the governors of federal states. As such a system is absolutely unacceptable, it was immediately « balanced » by 10 constitutional amendments which form the Bill of Rights. The final text therefore reserves political responsibility for the elites of the federal states and gives citizens the right to defend themselves in court against the « Reason of State ».

By suspending the Bill of Rights in all affairs which may be connected to terrorism, the USA Patriot Act has dragged the Constitution two centuries in reverse. By depriving citizens of their legal rights, it has once again destabilized institutions. It has submitted Power to Puritan ideology and guaranteed only the rights of the elites of federal states.

The coup d’état of September 11 split these elites into two groups, depending on whether they supported it or pretended to ignore it. The few personalities opposed to it, like Senator Paul Wellstone, have been physically eliminated. A few citizens chose to speak out nonetheless, notably two real estate billionaires. Thus, on the evening of September 11, Donald Trump contested what was becoming the official version on Channel 9 in New York. After having reminded his listeners that the engineers who built the Twin Towers had since joined his company, he considered it impossible that the collapse of such massive towers was due to the impact of planes (and fires) alone. He concluded that there had to be other factors involved which were as yet unknown. Another entrepreneur, Jimmy Walter, spent his fortune buying pages of publicity in the newspapers and distributing DVD’s to analyze the true causes of these destructions.

Over the next fifteen years, these two groups – the conspirators and the passive accomplices - although they were pursuing the same objective of interior and exterior domination – were to confront one another regularly, until both were apparently overthrown by a popular movement led by Donald Trump. (read more)