"Events come and go like waves of a fever, leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality, but those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow. This is a film about why those stories have stopped making sense, and how that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive force in the world. It is told through the prism of a country at the center of the world: Afghanistan." - Adam Curtis
“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”
― Lenin
"I am The Walrus"
― Lennon
"Establishment Contrarian"
"The Power of Nightmares. The Century of the Self. Pandora’s Box. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. If you’re familiar with the alternative media, you’ve doubtless come across references to the documentary work of Adam Curtis. But besides the well-known examples of brilliance within Curtis’ work is a deeply doctrinaire strain that seeks to normalize mainstream history and convince us that the driving ideologies of the political elite are exactly what they say they are. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we deconstruct Curtis’ documentaries and look for the deeper meaning behind the globalist ideology."
https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-adam-curtis-establishment-contrarian-video/
Another company of interest, on floor 91 just above the impact zone for the south tower, was Washington Group International (Washington). This company was known primarily as a construction and mining firm, and it had just acquired Raytheon Engineers in July 2000. Raytheon was reported to have also occupied floor 91.
Washington had an interesting history. It had been a contractor for the DOE and its predecessor agencies since 1942, when it was involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1995, a management shake-up at Washington resulted in the temporary installment of William Clark as acting chairman. Clark was a member of the Center for Security Policy, along with many neo-cons including Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Norman Augustine (In-Q-Tel), Douglas Feith, and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. After re-organizing the management at Washington, in just a few months, Clark resigned.
In 1996, Washington took over Morrison-Knudsen, an engineering and construction company that had a history of working on large projects around the world, including in China, Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In Vietnam, Washington led the RMK-BRJ construction project with Brown & Root. During the 1980s, it worked closely on hazardous clean-up projects for the DOE. The Army Corps of Engineers hired Morrison-Knudsen to demolish over 200 buildings in 1995. [52]
In 1999, Washington acquired Westinghouse Government Environmental Services Company (WGESC), a firm that provided management services to the DOE and DOD. In July 2001, E. Preston Rahe, Jr, the President of WGESC, was promoted to Executive Vice President of Business Development for Washington Group's Government operating unit. Rahe went on to form a new company called Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, along with General John A. Gordon.
Gordon was George H. W. Bush's Senior Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council, and he worked with George Tenet at the CIA from September 1996 to October 1997, as associate director of central intelligence for military support, and as deputy director of the CIA from October 1997 to 2000. During this time, Gordon would have worked closely with A.B. Krongard, who was Tenet's counsel from 1998 to 2001. Later, in 2003 and 2004, Gordon was George W. Bush's Homeland Security advisor.
Apart from Lawrence Livermore labs (LLNL), one of the DOE facilities for which Washington was responsible, well before 9/11, was the Savannah River site near Aiken, SC. In February 1997, LLNL and the Savannah River site signed an agreement of cooperation to share technology. Savannah went on to add "Developing sol gel technology for fuels and other applications" to its portfolio. [53, 54] Sol-gel technology is utilized by LLNL for making nanothermites. [55] In another coincidence, Savannah River Technology staff participated in the search and rescue operations at Ground Zero by providing unique tools. [56]
Today, Washington is owned by URS Corp, and they still "help manage and operate Idaho NL, LANL and LLNL," through a partnership with Battelle. [57] But just before 9/11 they were going through a tough time financially, and sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents show that Washington made court-ordered pre-petition payments, as part of these proceedings, to a number of companies including Komatsu. Washington also made payments to Greenhorne & O'Mara, whose employee Theresa McAllister was a lead author for the FEMA and NIST reports on the WTC disaster, and to Sumitomo Bank. [58] Sumitomo Bank was closely allied with Komatsu, and was involved with defense-related production. [59]
Sources:
[52] Mark MacIntyre, Bunker Hill: light at the end of the tunnel, The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, August 20, 1998, http://www.djc.com/special/enviro98/10043970.htm
[53] The agreement between LLNL and Savannah River can be found here - https://www.llnl.gov/str/News597.html
[54] Savannah's reference to developing sol-gels can be found here - http://srnl.doe.gov/mat_sci.htm
[55] Randy Simpson webpage at LLNL - https://www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html
[56] News from the Savannah River National Laboratory, September 20, 2001, http://srnl.doe.gov/newsroom/2001news/nyc_911.pdf
[57] URS Website - http://www.urscorp.com/Divisions/index.php?s=102
[58] SEC document for Washington pre-payments - http://www.secinfo.com/dRqWm.4G1Vx.c.htm
[59] The Ties That Bind, Descended from family business empires, six huge business groups dominate the Japanese economy, Multinational Monitor, October 1983 - http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1983/10/ties.html
History of Morrison - Knudsen to the end of WWII from the company website
Morrison Knudsen Corporation (MK) has long stood as one of the world's largest engineering and construction organizations. A 1954 feature article in Time identified cofounder Harry Morrison as "the man who has done more than anyone else to change the face of the earth." Such words reflect the magnitude and scope of the company's projects, ranging from work on the Hoover Dam to the construction of the then largest building in the world, the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, to the building of portions of the transAlaska pipeline. Today, MK is active in more than 35 countries, serving the environmental, heavy civil, industrial, mining, operations and maintenance, power, process, transportation, and logistics markets.
Dams Marked Early Years
The company's origin dates back to Idaho's Boise Valley at the turn of the century, when Morris Hans Knudsen and Harry W. Morrison teamed up to exploit business opportunities introduced by the National Reclamation Act of 1902. The U.S. government was subsidizing projects to irrigate vast tracts of desert. Knudsen, a native of Denmark, moved to Idaho with his wife in 1905. He became well known for his skill using horses and basic scrapers to haul dirt. Morrison, a native of Illinois, moved to Idaho in 1904 as a concrete superintendent for water reclamation projects. In 1912 Morrison and Knudsen collaborated on their first job, a subcontract for approximately $14,000 worth of work at a pumping station along the Snake River near Grand View, Idaho. This and other early jobs generated little, if any, profit. The first financially successful endeavor for the duo was the 1914 construction of Three-Mile Falls Dam in Oregon. In addition to yielding a profit, the Three-Mile job established the company as a legitimate player in dam construction, which became one of the company's hallmarks. (By the 1980s MK had built more than 150 dams, including Brownlee, one of three dams erected across the Snake River in Hells Canyon for Idaho Power; Karadj, near Teheran, Iran; San Luis, in California, with a crest length of more than three miles; and Hungry Horse and Yellowtail, both in Montana.)
One of the most significant milestones in the growth of Morrison-Knudsen Company was, in fact, construction of yet another dam, the Hoover (Boulder) Dam, contracted in 1931. The magnitude of the job led to the 1932 incorporation of Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc. The project was massive, drawing on 5,000 workers. It called for 4.5 million yards of concrete (enough to pave a four-lane highway from Seattle to Miami, according to company sources) and reached a height of 726 feet upon completion. To handle such a formidable task, Morrison brought together a consortium of different companies, Six Companies, Inc., thus introducing the now commonplace practice of joint-venture construction. The dam was completed in 1935, two years ahead of schedule.
Having survived the Great Depression, due, in part, to its success with the Hoover Dam project, MK was prepared to meet the business demands of World War II. The company joined other contractors in a joint venture known as Contractors, Pacific Naval Air Bases. Building airfield facilities on Midway and Wake islands in late 1941, more than 1,200 company workers were captured by the Japanese. On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, MK was also engaged in the construction of 20 huge naval fuel-storage vaults, each 250 feet high and 100 feet in diameter. MK launched its company magazine, the eMKayan, in March 1942, a strategic time to reinforce public relations.
These and other World War II projects established long-lasting ties for MK in the area of military contracting. In addition to extensive building contracts in Vietnam, the company procured a substantial amount of business outside of active battle zones. The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, a chain of bases and radar installations, was constructed and maintained across northern Canada, as was the "White Alice" communications system in Alaska. In the 1960s MK became a leading builder of missile facilities, including the first U.S. underground Titan missile installation at the Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado. The company sponsored a joint venture for the Aeropropulsion Systems Test Facility, an advanced jet engine center for the U.S. Air Force, which was completed in 1984. The company also was involved in the reconstruction of Kuwait following the 1991 Gulf War. According to U.S. News and World Report, such an expensive national reconstruction effort had not been launched since the Marshall Plan molded a new Europe after World War II.
"Matt Albie certainly doesn't speak for the cast, crew and staff of Studio 60, whose thoughts and prayers are with the brave men and women who lost their lives on September 11th."
My Rebuttals to Curtis and the BBC :
No comments:
Post a Comment