The Train Has Left the Station

A federal judge has signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban and al Qaeda liable in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Judge George Daniels in Manhattan signed the judgment Thursday, a week after hearing testimony in the 10-year-old case.

Daniels signed findings of fact saying the plaintiffs had established that the 2001 attacks were caused by the support the defendants provided to al Qaeda. The findings also said Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda by providing a safe haven for al Qaeda leadership and rank-and-file al Qaeda members.

  AP via CBS

Oh? I thought there were only about 100 al Qaeda members left. I thought we won the war with al Qaeda already.

The AP story offers no indication of the nature of the evidence in the case except that former members of the 9/11 Commission and three Iranian defectors provided testimony. What it didn’t say was that at least two of the Iranian defectors have long been dismissed by U.S. intelligence as “fabricators” and that the two “expert witnesses” who were supposed to determine the credibility of those defectors’ claims are both avowed advocates of crackpot conspiracy theories about Muslims and Shariah law who believe the United States is at war with Islam.

  Gareth Porter

Isn’t it?

One of the peculiarities of such cases is that the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court. The witnesses have every incentive, therefore to indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them.

[Purported defector and former Iranian intelligence official Abolghasem] Mesbahi’s story doesn’t hold up, for several reasons, and the most obvious is that, despite his claim that he was warned nearly a month before the 9/11 attacks that civilian airliners would be crashed into buildings in major U.S. cities, including Washington and New York on Sept. 11, he never conveyed that information to the U.S. government before that date.

Well, he probably defected after 9/11 when he realized that the US would squash its attackers like bugs. You know how those people are.

In October 2001, Mesbahi claimed to right-wing journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman, as reported in Timmerman’s 2005 book, that he had tried calling the legal attaché at the U.S. embassy in Berlin but was “unsuccessful in several attempts.” But he did not claim any other attempt to reach a U.S. consulate or the U.S. embassy in Germany by fax, e-mail, or letter before Sept. 11, nor did he go to the U.S. embassy in person to convey this warning. He told Timmerman that he called an Iranian dissident contact in the United States who, he believed, had contacts with U.S. intelligence agencies only some hours after the attacks on New York and Washington.

See?

It wasn’t the first time Mesbahi had claimed inside information about Iranian involvement in a terrorist attack only after the attack had taken place. He had told investigators working on the December 1988 terror bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal to carry out the attack on the personal orders of Ayatollah Khomeini. Unfortunately for his credibility, however, he had not come forward with the allegation until after the bombing had happened.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Hey, you don’t suppose this guy is a CIA agent, do you?

[The] FBI’s Hezbollah Office’s James Bernazzani, who had helped the Argentine intelligence service with the investigation in 1997, told me in a November 2006 interview that American intelligence officials had concluded Mesbahi did not have the continued high-level access to Iranian intelligence officials throughout the 1990s and beyond that he was claiming. They regarded him as someone who was desperate for money and ready to “provide testimony to any country on any case involving Iran,” according to Bernazzani.

Or that. Does the name “Ahmed Chalabi” ring a bell?

Significantly, no reputable retired intelligence analyst on Iran was asked to help judge the testimony of the Iranian defectors. Instead, Clare M. Lopez and Bruce Tefft, both former CIA covert operations case officers, were invited to be “expert witnesses,” in large part to view the videotaped testimony of the three Iranian defectors and assess their credibility.

Hmmmm…the CIA….

This is a lengthy report by Porter, and it includes other supposed proofs of Iran’s complicity in 9/11, along with refutations. Read the whole thing if you have any doubts about another railroading going on.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And, oh yeah, there’s this…

HONOLULU - US President Barack Obama signed a defense funding bill into law on Saturday that imposes sanctions on financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, while allowing for exemptions to avoid upsetting energy markets.

  Jerusalem Post