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It was almost an afterthought. On March 1, 2003, the War on Terror had finally served up the alleged paymaster of 9/11 - a shadowy Saudi by the name of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi. Yet his arrest just happened to coincide with the capture of a much bigger fish - the reported 9/11 mastermind himself, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Only seventeen months before, a former London schoolboy by the name of Omar Saeed Sheikh was first exposed as the 9/11 paymaster.

Omar Saeed, as reported back then by CNN, was acting under the alias of Mustafa Ahmed. So where is Omar now? Sitting in a Pakistani prison, awaiting his execution for the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl - while another man fills the shoes of his pseudonym.

"The hijackers left no paper trail," proclaimed FBI Director Robert Mueller on April 30, 2002. Yet in the weeks immediately following September 11, Mueller and his FBI had left the public with a very different impression.

For one, there was the infamous handwritten "checklist" found not only in hijacker Mohamed Atta's abandoned luggage, but also in the car rented in hijacker al-Hazmi's name. The treasure trove in al-Hazmi's glove compartment yielded a paper trail that led all the way to London.

On September 30, 2001, British prosecutor Arvinda Sambir announced that authorities had arrested Lotfi Raissi, whose name was found in al-Hazmi's rental. A further search of Raissi's apartment had yielded up a video clip starring Raissi with alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour.

Omar Saeed made his public post-9/11 debut on September 23, 2001, on the very same day that his pseudonym, Mustafa Ahmad, made its own post-9/11 debut through President Bush's Global Terrorist Executive Order, in which a "Shaykh Sai'id (aka Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad)" was mentioned as a financial operative in Al Qaeda.

A week later, on September 30, 2001, David Bamber of the Telegraph reported: "Police also believe that ... Omar [Saeed] Sheikh trained the terrorists in hijacking techniques." As Bamber implied, Omar Saeed was working in cahoots with Lotfi Raissi, who was just recently arrested and charged with training the hijacker pilots.

Now all that remained was to furnish a "smoking gun" link to Al Qaeda by way of a money trail. On the very day that the Telegraph outed Raissi and Omar Saeed as the 9/11 trainers, ABC News announced that a $100,000 money trail had been traced in Florida from hijacker Atta to "people linked to Osama bin Laden."

On October 1, the New York Times reported that hijacker Atta received money from someone using the alias "Mustafa Ahmad".

Maria Ressa of CNN officially unveiled Omar Saeed as the 9/11 money man and went on to report: "Because investigators have now determined that Omar Saeed and Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad (the pseudonym) are the same person, it provides another key link to bin Laden as the mastermind of the overall 9/11 plot."

October 8, was one of the very last times that CNN touched upon Omar Saeed - at least until he bobbed up a few months later, on February 6, as the FBI's main suspect in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl. Yet by then, CNN - and Maria Ressa - was stricken by a curious case of amnesia, neglecting to mention that Saeed was previously outed by them as the 9/11 bag-man. Why this sudden silence? And, more to the point, why did Omar Saeed virtually drop off CNN's radar after October 8?

Perhaps the answer lies in an October 9 bombshell, courtesy of the Times of India:

"While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI (Pakistani intelligence) director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking. Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Center. The U.S. authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 was wired to hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Omar Saeed at the insistence of General Mahmud Ahmad."

In short, the Times of India revealed that Omar Saeed was acting under the direct orders of the head of Pakistani intelligence and not Osama bin Laden.

Tracing the "smoking gun" money trail to General Ahmad created an entirely new smoking gun that led straight back to Washington, D.C. - for General Ahmad had already been reported as having breakfast in the nation's capital with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss on the morning of September 11 (Both Graham and Goss would go on to co-chair the joint Senate-House 9/11 inquiry).

Karachi News September 9:

"ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, General Ahmad's predecessor, was here during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by General Ahmad in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys."

Naturally, in the light of the Times of India's Oct. 9 bombshell, somebody would have to organize a prophylactic strategy of damage control.

General Ahmad's "sudden dismissal" was accounted for by TIME and The Washington Post as being due to his "pro-Taliban" loyalties - leaving out any mention of an Al Qaeda or money trail connection. With General Ahmad thus safely "out of sight", he was also presumably "out of mind."

With the definitive identification of a paymaster now put on hold, the full crystallization of the Official 9/11 Legend would also have to await a more opportune time. In the short term, Omar Saeed would have to disappear, yet due to his prior exposure in the media, and in view of his deep involvement with many of the other players in the legend, his role in all this would ultimately have to be accounted for.

As for the formerly snowballing money trail story, post-October 9, it was gradually being ushered to a slow death of irrelevance, awaiting its temporary replacement with a new "smoking gun." In the meantime, the "Mustafa Ahmad" pseudonym was being passed on to a new owner.

In its November 11, 2001 issue, Newsweek bequeathed the alias to a 33 year-old Saudi named "Shaikh Saiid," who was apparently caught on surveillance video picking up a package in Dubai mailed by hijacker Mohammed Atta. On December 18, 2001, the Associated Press added further details, revealing that "Shaikh Saiid" was also the alias for bin Laden's brother-in-law, Sa'd al-Sharif.

January 22, 2002 was a key date for the plan to carve out a new "legend" for Omar Saeed. FBI Director Robert Mueller just happened to be on scene in India, awaiting his crucial role in the unfolding drama - just one day before Daniel Pearl (Wall St Journal reporter) disappeared off the streets of Karachi.

We may never know the true motivation that set Daniel Pearl on a quest that would ultimately lead to his grisly demise. However, thanks to an invaluable article by Robert Sam Anson in the August 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, we do know which key player was involved in guiding him on his quest for knowledge.

Mansoor Ijaz is not a man widely known outside his circle, but his intimate connections run deep in Washington's power circles. A counter-terror expert, a member of the Council On Foreign Relations, a Fox News analyst, as well as a business partner of former CIA Director James Woolsey, Ijaz is represented by the public relations firm of Benador Associates.

Ijaz's frequent writing partner, James Woolsey, was one of just 17 participants in a July 2001 bio-warfare exercise dubbed "Dark Winter." Among the other participants was Benador client Arnaud De Borchgrave and New York Times journalist Judith Miller, who had co-authored a book with Benador client Mylroie in the early '90's. Mylroie's book - an attempt at linking Iraq to 9/11 - was released just weeks after September 11 with a foreword written by James Woolsey.

The man charged with overseeing President Bush's mass smallpox vaccination policy was another "Dark Winter" alumnus, Jerry Hauer.

Hauer, a former director of Kroll Associates - the security firm at the helm when the Twin Towers fell - is also the man who personally pulled strings in order to get senior FBI official John O'Neill his job as head of security at the World Trade Center.

O'Neill, who had left a 30-year career in the FBI only two weeks before September 11, had perished in the rubble of the Twin Towers on his very first day at the post. Incidentally, O'Neill just happened to have been the main FBI official in charge of investigating all things bin Laden.

Given the above social contacts, from Daniel Pearl's point of view, Mansoor Ijaz was indeed the man to meet. "He (Pearl) wanted me to introduce him to people who could open doors for him," explained Ijaz in Vanity Fair.

One of those doors opened to Khalid Khawaja, a former ISI agent whose militant credentials included a longstanding friendship with Osama bin Laden. But Khawaja was a liberal militant, counting among his acquaintances both Ijaz and Woolsey, with whom he carried on a lengthy correspondence.

As Khawaja spins the tale, when Pearl asked for an introduction to Gilani (leader of an obscure Muslim militant group) in early January, Khawaja's militant toes went cold. With Khawaja now purportedly out of the picture, Pearl was left to scrounge up his own contacts. Eventually, Pearl found a "connected" militant who went by the name of Chaudry Bashir - but who was, in actual fact, Omar Saeed clothed in yet another alias. Or so that is the "official" version.

If true, our man Saeed had his terrorist appointment book just about crammed with militant activities at the time, for he was, according to Indian intelligence, intimately involved with the man who took responsibility for the terrorist attack in Calcutta on January 22, 2002 - just one day before Pearl's disappearance. A militant/gangster by the name of Aftab Ansari called in his claim of responsibility for the carnage.

Within hours of the January 22 attack, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was circulating news that the main suspect in the Calcutta attack, Ansari, had sent money to Omar Saeed, who then sent it on to Mohamed Atta in preparation for the September 11 attacks. No mention was made of the previously reported involvement of the chief of Pakistani intelligence.

The next day - on January 23, 2002 - Daniel Pearl disappeared off the streets of Karachi, Pakistan after setting up an appointment to meet Omar Saeed, alias "Bashir". Also on the day of Pearl's disappearance, the Los Angeles Times reinstated Omar Saeed back into "mainstream" view by citing a report by India Today, which mentioned the new Saeed/Ansari/9/11 Money Trail connection.

FBI Director Mueller said (January 22) that Indian authorities provided leads in the search for Al Qaeda members and cells. The next day - January 23 - Mueller was in Pakistan, just in time for the Pearl kidnapping by Omar Saeed. Of course, Mueller could not have known then that the person who was mentioned to him the day before as being the 9/11 paymaster would be involved in the Pearl kidnapping.

On January 24, Mueller reportedly took up the matter of Omar Saeed with Pakistan President Musharraf. As later revealed by an "anonymous" Bush administration official, Mueller was formally requesting the extradition of Omar Saeed - for a 1994 kidnapping of an American tourist.

According to CNN, Mueller was also the one who first informed Musharraf of the Pearl kidnapping. So, to recap: only two days after Mueller's discussions with the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) concerning the Omar Saeed link to 9/11, Mueller reportedly discussed Omar Saeed with Musharraf, only in connection with an obscure 1994 kidnapping, while broaching a new kidnapping that occurred the day before, which, in a matter of weeks, would publicly be linked to...Omar Saeed.

Mueller, for his part, would deal with this new version of the Omar Saeed/Money Trail Story in the same manner that he dealt with the older version - by ignoring it. While the Indian press was widely presenting the Calcutta attack as an Ansari/ISI production, the Indian government was backing down on pushing an ISI link to Calcutta after consultation with the U.S. government.

World Net Daily - January 30, 2002:

"India's Central Bureau of Investigation is turning up evidence that is proving inconvenient for the Bush administration as it tries to maintain its shaky alliance with Pakistan. As administration officials, led by State Secretary Colin Powell, praises Pakistan for its help in the war on terrorism, FBI agents responding to Indian leads are quietly investigating Pakistan-based terrorist groups connected to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijacking."

Through the Pakistani ISI (an organization, in fact, with close historical ties to the CIA and British intelligence), the Taliban were armed and installed as the resident overlords of Afghanistan.

Under the watchful eye of German intelligence, lead hijacker Mohamed Atta would set up his Hamburg "cell" of conspirators, sharing a flat with senior Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh directly linking Atta to Al Qaeda.

Mohamed Atta had rendezvoused with Ramzi Binalshibh in Spain sometime in July 2001. Around the same time, the FBI's lead point man on Al Qaeda, John O'Neill, was in Madrid to discuss counter-terror issues with Police Chief Juan Cotino (a senior figure in Europol).

Thereafter, O'Neill made his last public appearance (before his retirement the next month) at a counter-terror conference held at a three-star hotel in the Spanish resort town of Salou - coincidentally, only a few days before Mohammed Atta had checked into the very same hotel in his last international trip before September 11.

Atta's previous trip to Madrid had been in January 2001, within days of the very first Europol Conference on Terrorism, also held in Madrid.

Through French authorities, particularly with the assistance of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere (a friend of John O'Neill), Zacarias Moussaoui (arrested August 2001) and senior Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah (the first "big fish" captured in March 2002) would work their way into the official 9/11 Legend. The United Kingdom also served as a major transit point, educational center, and source of "evidence" pointing to the hijackers and various Al Qaeda operatives.

Thus, the very countries that were so prominent in furnishing the various elements of the 9/11 Legend - "burnishing" it with a globalized gloss - also happened to be the same countries that served as senior partners in the War On Terror.

On February 12, 2002, Omar Saeed Sheikh was "officially" arrested by the Pakistani police for the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl after unofficially being held in ISI custody for a week.

Articles that briefly touched upon a paymaster by the name of "Mustafa Ahmad" would reveal nothing about the man, except for the fact that he was still "at large."

The unsealed December 2001 Zacarias Moussaoui indictment set out two "unindicted co-conspirators" who had yet to play their final roles in the unfolding 9/11 Legend - Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-hawsawi (the now "official" 9/11 paymaster).

The Moussaoui indictment laid the groundwork for the eventual Khalid Shaikh Mohammed/ Ramzi Binalshibh/ Mustafa Ahmed nexus that really gets rolling in June 2002, when Khalid is first introduced as the 9/11 "mastermind", then proceeds through Binalshibh's choreographed arrest in September 2002, and culminates with the simultaneous arrest of Khalid and Mustafa Ahmed in March 2003.

FBI Director Mueller uses the details in the Moussaoui indictment to explicitly pair up Khalid and Mustafa Ahmed - a full nine months before these characters end up sharing news space for their own simultaneously choreographed apprehensions.

If, up until the March 2003 arrest of the "official" 9/11 paymaster, the mainstream news media seemed to be going with obscure, conflicting versions of the paymaster role, the Moussaoui indictment exhibited no such confusion.

Where "federal", "intelligence", or "law enforcement" officials were variously reported as identifying the paymaster as either Omar Saeed or bin Laden's brother-in-law (among others), the Moussaoui indictment way back in December 2001 - though well after the controversial Oct. 9 Times of India article - gave the impression that the paymaster role was a settled fact. And the "settled fact" was: the man providing and receiving back funds under the alias of "Mustafa Ahmad" was actually a flesh and blood 33-year old Saudi named Mustafa Ahmed Alhawsawi (or al-Hisawi, depending on the news source).

And sure enough, a bit too far below the radar to really attract notice, existed a thread of articles that referenced the Money Trail Story by means of a paymaster named Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi. In this particular thread of articles, where Hisawi was spelled out as Hawsawi, there was absolutely no doubt as to the mind-numbing details of the 9/11 money transactions - perhaps because they were lifted bodily from the Moussaoui indictments which, in retrospect, may now be considered as the first book of Scripture in the 9/11 Legend. As early as three months after the fall of the Twin Towers, it was all known - the full details, the money trail, the essential players, and their roles.

Around the same time that the joint Senate-House Inquiry was proceeding under the co-chairmanship of Bob Graham and Porter Goss (the September 11 breakfast partners of Omar Saeed's reported ISI "handler"), Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was formally introduced as the operative mastermind behind 9/11.

A June 2002 Associated Press article by John J. Lumpkin in which Khalid was introduced as the new 9/11 mastermind, he was also "accused of working with Ramzi Yousef in the first bombing of the World Trade Center [in '93]" in addition to working with Yousef on a 1995 plot (code-named Bojinka) to bomb a dozen airliners headed to the United States.

But most significantly, Lumpkin's article referenced the 9/11 paymaster, now identified as "Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif, also known as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, who is bin Laden's financial chief." Gone was any mention of a Shaikh Saiid alias Sa'd al-Sharif, bin Laden's brother-in law, as reported by the Associated Press back in December 2001. Now, in Lumpkin's June 5, 2002 version, Shaikh Saiid had been spliced together with al-Sharif, creating a Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif, the "financial chief" - tossing out the Sa'd portion of Sharif's name and any suggestion that bin Laden's brother-in-law had anything to do with this.

Conveniently timed for release on June 6, 2002 - further news followed that, according to National Security Agency intercepts, Khalid was heard talking on the telephone with hijacker Mohammed Atta. Moreover, for the very first time, authorities were now reporting that Khalid was actually the uncle of Ramzi Yousef. In other words, when the nephew failed to bring down the Towers in '93, the uncle took up the slack in '01.

Prior to Khalid's June 2002 public promotion, he was lurking on the official terror lists merely as an indicted conspirator in the 1995 Bojinka plot masterminded by Ramzi Yousef.

One can almost picture sitting in with the members of the National Security Council on a balmy Spring morning in late May 2002, leafing through their photo albums as they argued over the most appropriate candidate to close off the official 9/11 Legend. As it turned out, they chose the guy with the unibrow and the hair shirt.

If habitual coincidence is the mother of all conspiracy theories, then one must surely raise a discerning eyebrow at the revelation that, around this time - after more than a decade of staying hidden in the shadows - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed suddenly was stricken with an urge to conduct his very first interview, with none other than Ramzi Binalshibh at his side. The journalist chosen for this honor was the London bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, Yosri Fouda.

Fouda was taken blindfolded to Khalid's Karachi residence, where he was then given - over the course of two days - a detailed step-by-step account of the planning and execution of the 9/11 hijackings. Binalshibh, apparently concerned with his place in the official history textbooks, instructed Fouda to submit a copy of the interview to the Library of Congress.

It was practically a seamless propaganda extravaganza, except for one small detail - Fouda had gone on record as dating the interview to June of 2002, thereby raising the prospect of two plausible scenarios.

Scenario One: Khalid and Binalshibh's respective roles in the plot were first discovered solely due to Fouda's contact with them; or

Scenario Two: The decision to send Fouda on his interview errand was made at the same time that a decision was made to market Khalid as the new 9/11 mastermind. Of the two scenarios, the first one was far more palatable - from a propaganda perspective - as at least it could be kept within the borders of plausible deniability, and only Fouda would get burned by it. The second scenario, however, would raise the prospect of one of those uncomfortable coincidences that could conceivably expose the 9/11 Legend as a pre-fabricated set-up.

Only two days after the initial broadcast of Fouda's interview with Khalid and Binalshibh - on the first anniversary commemorating the 9/11 attacks - Pakistani forces, accompanied by FBI agents, raided an apartment complex in Karachi. After a "four hour" gun battle involving "hundreds" of Pakistani soldiers and policemen, the authorities captured, among a few others, Ramzi Binalshibh.

Their original target, however, had been Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom they had been tracking for months throughout Karachi. While Khalid had just barely slipped away only a few hours before Pakistani forces had arrived at his door, the authorities were reportedly "surprised" to discover that they had netted Binalshibh in the process. At least that is now the official version of the day's events.

As revealed by Syed Saleem Shahzad in an Asia Times Online article dated October 30, 2002, the shootout ended with the deaths of two Al Qaeda fighters, one of them identified as Khalid. Here was Shahzad's report of the events:

"The FBI, still keen to take [Khalid] Shaikh Mohammed alive, teargassed the area, and a number of people were captured. However, despite instructions to the contrary, a few Pakistani Rangers entered the flat, where they found [Khalid] Shaikh Mohammed and another man, allegedly with their hands up. The Rangers nevertheless opened fire on the pair.

Later, the Pakistani press carried pictures of a message scrawled in blood on the wall of the flat, proclaiming the Muslim refrain of Kalma, in Arabic: "There is no God except Allah, Mohammed is his messenger". An official who was present in the flat at the time of the shooting has told Asia Times Online that the message was written by Shaikh Mohammed with his own blood as his life drained away from him...

...But now it emerges that an Arab woman and a child were taken to an ISI safe house, where they identified the Shaikh Mohammed's body as their husband and father...

... The widow subsequently underwent exhaustive interrogation in the custody of FBI officials..."

Authorities eventually did confirm one crucial portion in Shahzad's account: Khalid's wife and two young sons - aged 9 and 7 - were apprehended in the raid, and immediately handed over (in the later, official version) to Pakistani custody. Yet this information officially would not be revealed until one week after Khalid's later "official" capture on March 1, 2003.

In Binalshibh's telling, the execution of September 11 was mostly the work of a Hamburg-based Al Qaeda cell under the leadership of Mohammed Atta.

Atta's indoctrination and sudden "conversion" in the "Crusader" bowels of Europe has its curious parallels in the sudden conversions of Omar Saeed, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid (a.k.a. the "shoe bomber").

Moussaoui, was indoctrinated into the cause by way of the Finsbury Park mosque in North London. Presiding over the Finsbury Park recruitment drive was a one-eyed, one-handed sheikh with a metal claw who went by the name of Abu Hamza. Hamza, like bin Laden, was a veteran of the C.I.A.-funded drive to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. He eventually became known as one of the key point men in laying the groundwork for Muslim fundamentalism in the United Kingdom.

As a testament to Abu Hamza's glass-eyed charisma and oratorical skills, hundreds of freshly radicalized British Muslim youths were "processed" through the Finsbury Park mosque, and then sent off to Afghanistan - the "finishing school" for the worldwide jihad.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with British authorities rounding up suspected Al Qaeda operatives, it was indeed a curious fact that Abu Hamza was given free rein to continue his indoctrination activities.

As late as September 11, 2002, journalist Farukh Dhondy was raising the question as to Abu Hamza's puzzling status as a free man, given his by now obvious role as a senior - indeed, crucial - recruiter for Al Qaeda:

"Scotland Yard's information office refuses to answer questions as to why Abu Hamza isn't under arrest. Several leaders of the Muslim community in Britain allege that he is working for the British Secret Services - in particular MI5 - as an agent provocateur..."

Abu Hamza's role as an Islamic fundamentalist recruiter (along with that of his counterpart in Hamburg, Mohammed Haydar Zammar - the recruiter of Atta and Binalshibh) must be judged in the light of present demographic realities.

And the reality is this: with a population in excess of one billion adherents, and a geographic span that stretches from the West African Straits of Gibraltar to the far east of Asia, the Muslim World apparently was not up to the task of furnishing the most hardcore, sophisticated operative cells of Al Qaeda.

Contrary to popular wisdom, the inferno of 9/11 was not conceived in fetid slums like Gaza, where deprivation and bitterness has stoked inter-generational hatred of Westerners and Jews.

Rather, the peculiarly sophisticated strain of Muslim terror that has been branded as Al Qaeda was largely incubated among an insular network in the U.K. and the E.U., where a conveniently incriminating trail could be tracked and showcased as definitive proof of the authorship for 9/11.

In this respect, the likes of Atta, Moussaoui, Omar Saeed, and - most importantly - Osama bin Laden stood in stark contrast to the home grown Middle Eastern suicide bombers who pathetically offer themselves up as anonymous solitary firecrackers in a nihilistic gesture of "resistance." Rather, these major players in the 9/11 Legend more closely resembled the likes of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Hinckley - men whose sudden psychopathic "transformations" occurred in the context of curious synchronicities.

On the domestic front, the neo-conservatives headed by Dick Cheney and Richard Perle were being marketed as the true ideological powers behind the Bush administration.

But did these neo-conservatives constitute a mere "rogue element" - an insular "cabal" of pro-Zionist conservatives holding a largely naive President Bush in their sway (as Lyndon LaRouche and the folks at Executive Intelligence Review would have us believe)? Or rather, were they just a group "cut-out" for other, more powerful interests - in other words, the public face that would skew the ultimate responsibility, letting the true masterminds off the hook while the "cut-out" proxies would double as potential patsies?

It had certainly been the case during the Clinton era, when Richard Mellon Scaife's organization took center stage as the most vociferous entity in attacking the integrity of President Clinton. The mainstream focus was kept far from the infinitely more nefarious, and damaging, scandal that was known by the four-letter word Mena, the crucial transit point in Arkansas which, under Governor Clinton, had served to sustain the arms/drug dealing operations that were fed through Iran-Contra and laundered through BCCI.

Thus, with Whitewater as the Scaife-funded public face of the Starr inquiry into Clinton, those Clinton associates who could really provide the dirt on the Clinton/Mena connection were being "purged" in plain sight - through various prosecutions, accidents, murders, or well-timed heart attacks.

Meanwhile, all eyes were directed to the curious stain on the blue dress. Once Clinton was safely out of office (and a leash presumably was no longer needed), Scaife disappeared from public view as suddenly as he entered it - to be replaced by Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, and their coalition of fundamentalist Christian/Jewish Zionists.

In the weeks leading up to January 1, 2000, the news media were swamped with speculations of impending catastrophe. We had already experienced the domestic terror wrought by Timothy McVeigh (representing the right wing militia set) and Ted Kaczynski alias the "Unabomber" (representing the lone wacko set).

Now we were told to expect an apocalyptic meltdown of our technological infrastructure by way of the Y2K "bug", or, alternatively, an attack by America's self-declared Number One Enemy - Osama bin Laden. The expected catastrophe came 21 months later than expected, with the blow struck in New York City.

Yet according to the Official 9/11 Legend, the expected millennial catastrophe was actually averted two weeks before the New Year, with the arrest in Seattle of Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam. Ressam, as was later discovered, was on his way to mastermind a massive terror attack on the West Coast - at Los Angeles International Airport.

It is thus on the West Coast, in the lead-up to the millennial new year, that we have the convergence of a pre-existing domestic threat (i.e. the militias stoked through the legends of Waco and Ruby Ridge) and a pre-existing foreign threat (i.e. the bin Laden minions stoked through the legends of Gulf War '91 and World Trade Center '93). These two threats had actually converged for the first time back in April 1995, with Timothy McVeigh's destruction of the FBI Murrah building in Oklahoma.

Sacramento, though by no means the only West Coast city with an alleged Al Qaeda connection, did seem to have a magnetic pull for this type of convergence. An Al Qaeda operative, Ali A. Mohamed - a former Sacramento resident who was also a U.S. Army sergeant in Fort Bragg, N.C. - had pleaded guilty to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa (the bombings that had garnered bin Laden his most widespread notice up until the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 2000).

John O'Neill's New York circle has recently relocated to the West Coast. In particular, O'Neill's friend, John Miller, has left a lucrative job at ABC News in order to work under William Bratton in the Los Angeles counter-terror office.

Miller, some might recall, was one of the very few Americans to conduct a face-to-face interview with bin Laden before September 11.

Before he had come aboard as a correspondent for ABC News, Miller had worked under Bratton in the NYPD. Bratton, through his acquaintance with O'Neill's friend Jerry Hauer, has also had intimate business dealings with Kroll Associates, the World Trade Center security firm which hired O'Neill.

Security firms like Kroll Associates, Wackenhut, and their ilk should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector. It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.

Moreover, the top people in the private security sector have the authority, prestige, and, most importantly, the skill to carry out - successfully and below the radar - the kinds of domestic operations that have been pegged as the province of shaggy Al Qaeda operatives. Who, after all, could best ensure that 19 terrorists would be able to make it aboard four separate flights without any real danger of detection? And who, after all, would be best placed to ensure a complete and successful implosion of not just the two Twin Towers, but the neighboring building - 7 World Trade Center - which housed a bio-warfare "command and control bunker" under the direction of Jerry Hauer?

With that in mind, we get a bit closer to the "how" of 9/11 - an important consideration in analyzing the Legend of 9/11. A good part of the early work on that legend had been accomplished through the offices of Michael Cherkasky, the managing director of Kroll Associates - in his capacity as a prosecutor working in the New York office of Robert Morgenthau. Cherkasky had worked on the case arising out of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, which had established Ramzi Yousef as the terrorist mastermind behind the attack. Cherkasky had also worked on the John Gotti and BCCI criminal cases, two cases that would not, at first glance, seem to be related, much less to the events of September 11.

Yet there is a curious continuity here - one that highlights the global infrastructure that has made 9/11 such a successful worldwide "op". As Peter Dale Scott has argued in great and persuasive detail, the "deep political structure" of American society is permeated by an interwoven nexus between political/corporate elites and an organized criminal subculture, whereby certain political or business arrangements are made in an extra-legal sphere, beyond the reach of sanction or salience. This dual-purpose netherworld has been with us for over a century and roughly parallels the rise of an American industrial "Establishment".

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, better known as BCCI, was mostly a British intelligence operation using Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as fronts, while C.I.A. elements allied with George H. W. Bush used the banking network to conduct a number of under-the-table operations throughout the '80's.

Before it went under, BCCI served as the cardiovascular system for a global criminal milieu, its laundered arteries servicing the needs of various drug lords, arms dealers, fraudsters, dictators, corrupt politicians, terrorists, and intelligence agencies seeking loose cash for their extra-legal activities.

In short, BCCI was Disneyworld for the New World Order of political/corporate crime. With ample supplies of heroin leaving Afghanistan and heading stateside throughout the '80's, there were ample funds left to underwrite the activities of Osama bin Laden and his mujaheddin, ensconced in a battle to oust the Soviet occupation forces from their midst. And with cocaine coming stateside by way of Colombia, a little pocket money could be set aside to furnish the Nicaraguan Contras with their own anti-Soviet toys.

Could it, then, perhaps have been nothing more than a coincidence that a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Khalid bin Mahfouz, was reported in the early 90's to own a 20% stake in BCCI - and that bin Mahfouz, as reported by the Houston Chronicle on June 4, 1992, had intimate business dealings with James Bath, the personal representative of bin Laden brother Salim who had invested $50,000 in George W. Bush's company, Arbusto? Bin Mahfouz, incidentally, had taken over Salim bin Laden's interest in the Houston Gulf Airport after Salim met his demise in an airplane crash over Houston in 1988.

In the decadent 80's, Bush friend and C.I.A. asset Manuel Noriega served as a critical conduit for the drug transit through Panama. On June 21, 1991, former C.I.A. agent Richard Brenneke gave a sworn deposition before Congressman William Alexander, fingering John Gotti as an active detergent in "laundering" the C.I.A. drug shipments coming into the Mena Airport in Arkansas.

As history has shown, being a friend and/or C.I.A. asset of George H. W. Bush can be an uncertain proposition. In the case of Noriega and Gotti, they were silenced through the capable tools of the American justice system. And overseeing the prosecutions - Noriega, Gotti, and BCCI - happened to be a man who would, years later, be entrusted with overseeing the investigation into the causes of 9/11 - Robert S. Mueller III.

Can it be a mere coincidence that the arteries of the bin Laden strain of terrorism were fed not by Iran or Syria - the "traditional" sponsors of the more low-key types of terrorism in the '80's - but rather by those very countries that have long served as agents and proxies of their American-Anglo cohorts in crime: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates (i.e. the principal countries fronting for BCCI)? Could it be that the mutually corrupt global relationships wrought by BCCI persist to this day, with a bevy of compromised political officials standing ready to make their contribution to the New World Order - and perhaps scam some extra pocket change on the side?

As they say - follow the money. And where are the big movers and shakers of 9/11 - those who are interpreting the threat for you - putting their money? In vaccines, pharmaceuticals, bio-tech, security consulting, and surveillance technologies. In other words, they are shifting their money toward those burgeoning industries where they can simply legislate the market need.

Was it a result of happenstance that Mueller officially had taken up his job as FBI Director only one week before September 11?

Terrorism expert Kenneth Katzman took the opportunity to familiarize the American public with its soon-to-be-infamous nemesis and his "shadowy network," suggesting in an April 21, 1995 article in USA Today that Osama bin Laden was a potential suspect in the Oklahoma bombing: "If there is a Mideast connection, says terrorism expert Kenneth Katzman, it could lead to a shadowy network of former freedom fighters who train in terrorist camps in Sudan and then export their violence to Algeria, Egypt, and the USA."

July 10, 1996, journalist Robert Fisk of the Independent managed to track down bin Laden at his tent headquarters somewhere in Afghanistan (after being booted out of his base in Sudan a few months earlier at U.S. insistence).

There, Fisk recorded for posterity bin Laden's proclamation of "the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States."

This was not Fisk's first encounter with bin Laden. His first encounter dates back to December 6, 1993, when Fisk had the distinction of being the first Western journalist ever to interview Osama bin Laden. At that time, bin Laden was ensconced in Sudan, apparently more obsessed with building a highway for the benefit of his impoverished Sudanese hosts than with launching an international jihad against the American occupiers of cherished Saudi soil.

Perhaps overlooking the self-professed contributions of David Rockefeller's protege, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Fisk made a prophecy in his introductory bin Laden article:

"When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written, Mr. Bin Laden's own contribution to the mujahedin - and the indirect result of his training and assistance - may turn out to be a turning- point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism; even if, today, he tries to minimise his role."

The above statement, more than any other, perhaps reveals why Osama bin Laden was chosen as the most suitable candidate to head up the Official 9/11 Legend - for he was, by this time, more clearly known as the poster boy for the Afghani resistance which had ousted the Soviet occupiers.

The 1993 version of bin Laden was certainly a far cry from the fire-breathing jihadist of 1996. "I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist," he modestly proclaimed to Fisk.

By Fisk's return visit, the "shy man" previously described by Fisk had apparently metamorphosed into a humorless fanatic, droning on about America and jihad - the kind of character one would expect in the months after April 1995.

Though the American military had first set up base on hallowed Saudi territory as early as August 1990 (in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait), it took bin Laden a full six years to work up the nerve to publicly enunciate his fullest fury over the U.S. presence on the sacred Saudi ummah.

Apparently emboldened by his July 1996 verbal declaration of war in Fisk's presence, bin Laden retreated to his tent in order to compose a more proper written declaration of war on America, formally unveiling it on August 23, 1996 - a rambling, mind-numbingly boring 12-page screed against the "Zionist-Crusader" alliance. By that point, the widely marketed public face of that alliance - Richard Perle for the "Zionists" and John Ashcroft for the Christian "Crusaders" - had yet to be assembled within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration (now strangely bereft of the "old-line" Rockefeller/ Baker folks).

With bin Laden's historic declaration of war, a new brand of terrorism was being marketed to the American public - a global terror network with no clear state sponsor, employing "sleeper" agents and coded "go" messages, seeking out suitcase nukes and sophisticated weaponized germs. Marketed by an insular clique of terrorism "experts," Al Qaeda (Arabic for "the Base") seemed to employ the kind of covert techniques that one would normally read about from the standard operating manuals of the C.I.A. or MI6. While the best that the Syrians and Iranians could muster up for Hamas and Hezbollah were car bombs and Katyusha rockets, Al Qaeda was putting the "traditional" terror outfits to shame - and all this on a purportedly "frozen" $300 million investment portfolio (Osama bin Laden's estimated net worth).

If Al Qaeda had one notable failing, it was in its almost obsessive inclination to leave a noticeably untangled trail of its operatives' names and pseudonyms. In other words, we know where Mohammed Atta worked, slept, played, and banked because he was thoughtful enough to scatter his name like bird droppings in the midst of his travels. Even more thoughtfully, when he sent out a package to a "Mustafa Ahmad," it turned out - as the official legend now has it - that the intended recipient really was named Mustafa Ahmad. In the end, one could not ask for a more ideal organization than Al Qaeda in building a clear-cut legend with all the dots connecting.

Mohammed Atta had a peculiar proclivity to "lay tracks" practically in the backyard of his purported pursuers. Europol's very first conference on terrorism took place in Madrid, within days of Atta's arrival. Atta and Binalshibh put the finishing touches on their 9/11 plans in July 2001, with Atta touching down one final time in Madrid - within days of John O'Neill's meeting with Europol bigwig Juan Cotino in Madrid - and then proceeding 500 miles to meet up with Binalshibh at the Spanish coastal resort of Salou, where he checked into a hotel that, only days before, had hosted John O'Neill in a counter-terror conference.

As for his choice for flight training, Atta and his comrades presciently chose to hone their skills within commuter distance of the C.I.A./military MacDill Air Force Base that would later serve as Central Command for the War in Afghanistan. As posted on the CBS News site here was Binalshibh's simple explanation as to why Florida was chosen for its flight schools:

"The prices in America were convenient and the weather was ideal for more flying hours, especially in the coastal states like Florida ... and the term of study wouldn't take long."

As an added bonus, two of Atta's fellow hijackers would also be set up with rental accommodations by the wife of the employee of a C.I.A.-founded company. Gloria Irish, the wife of the tabloid Sun Editor Michael Irish, rented a Delray Beach apartment to hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi and Saeed Alghamdi.

To anyone familiar with covert operations, the above item would perhaps set off alarm bells. In theory, if Atta and his comrades were intelligence assets, they would be handled by resident, intelligence-connected, "babysitters" whose job it would be to set up accommodations and provide support where needed.

In the aftermath of September 11, there is, in fact, a relatively compact group of individuals who have both the means and the personal interest to "mainstream" the circumstantial evidence provided herein - namely, the families of the victims of September 11.

At present, many of these families are cynically being used in order to present a complacency theory behind 9/11, thereby unwittingly lending their imprimatur to the establishment of an over-arching police state apparatus - the manifestation of the "homeland security" blueprint which actually preceded September 11 by several months.

Yet it is my contention that if these families were made aware of the full extent of the various anomalies, coincidences, and well-timed set-ups - and that the interaction of these elements may only be explained within a complicity paradigm - then they may use their moral suasion and political capital in order to tear the veil off the herd mentality which keeps the truth well-hidden from the masses.