Peter Dale Scott - The Road to 9 11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

Praise for Peter Dale Scotts The Road to 9/11

Peter Dale Scott exposes a shadow world of oil, terrorism, drug trade, and arms deals, of covert financing and parallel security structuresfrom the Cold War to today. He shows how such parallel forces of the United States have been able to dominate the agenda of the George W. Bush administration, and that statements and actions made by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before, during, and after September 11, 2001, present evidence for an American deep state and for the so-called Continuity of Government in parallel to the regular public state ruled by law. Scotts brilliant work not only reveals the overwhelming importance of these parallel forces but also presents elements of a strategy for restraining their influence to win back the public state, the American democracy.

Ola Tunander, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

The Road to 9/11 is vintage Peter Dale Scott. Scott does not undertake conventional political analysis; instead, he engages in a kind of poetics, crafting the dark poetry of the deep state, of parapolitics, and of shadow government. As with his earlier work Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Scott has no theory of responsibility and does not name the guilty. Rather, he maps out an alien terrain, surveying the topography of a political shadow land, in which covert political deviancy emerges as the norm. After reading Scott, we can no longer continue with our consensus-driven belief that our so-called liberal order renders impossible the triumph of the politically irrational.

Eric Wilson, Senior Lecturer of Public International Law, Monash University, and co-editor of Government of the Shadows

A powerful study of the historic origins of the terrorist strikes of September 11, this book offers an indispensable guide to the gluttonous cast of characters who, since Watergate and the fall of Nixon, fashioned an ever-more-reckless American empire. By exposing the corrupt U.S. deep statetransfer of public authority to Americas wealthy and to the nations unaccountable secret intelligence agenciesPeter Dale Scotts The Road to 9/11 illuminates the path toward a more democratic and inclusive republic.

David MacGregor, Kings University College at the University of Western Ontario

The Road to 9/11 provides an illuminating and disturbing history of the American government since World War II. Scotts account suggests that the 9/11 attacks were a culmination of long-term trends that threaten the very existence of American democracy, and also that there has been a massive cover-up of 9/11 itself. This book, which combines extensive research, perceptive analysis, and a fascinating narrative, will surely be considered Scotts magnum opus.

David Ray Griffin, author of Debunking 9/11 Debunking

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of Stephen M. Silberstein as a member of the
Publishers Circle of University of California Press.

THE ROAD TO 9/11

BOOKS BY PETER DALE SCOTT

9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited with David Ray Griffin (2007)

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (2003)

Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000 (2000)

Crossing Borders: Selected Shorter Poems (1994)

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993, reissued 1996)

Listening to the Candle: A Poem on Impulse(1992)

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, with Jonathan Marshall (1991, reissued 1998)

Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror (1989)

The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, with Jonathan Marshall and Jane Hunter (1987)

Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (1977, reissued 1993)

The Assassinations: Dallas and BeyondA Guide to Cover-Ups and Investigations, edited with Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler (1976)

The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War(1972)

Zbigniew Herbert: Selected Poems, translated with Czeslaw Milosz (1968, reissued 1986)

The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, with Franz Schurmann and Reginald Zelnik (1966)

WEALTH, EMPIRE,
AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA

Peter Dale Scott

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu .

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2007 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scott, Peter Dale.
The road to 9/11 : wealth, empire, and the future of America / Peter Dale Scott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-23773-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Transparency in governmentUnited States. 2. Privacy, Right ofUnited States. 3. War on Terrorism, 2001Political aspects. 4. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001Political aspects. 5. United StatesPolitics and government19451989. 6. United StatesPolitics and government1989 7. DemocracyUnited States. 8. Elite (Social sciences)United States. 9. National securityUnited States. 10. Political corruptionUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.
JK468.S4S36 2007
973.931dc22 2007018905

Manufactured in the United States of America

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This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% postconsumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

To the many trailblazers for a sane society, whose message must be rediscovered by each generation. And among them in particular to

William Lloyd Garrison (18051879)

Leo Tolstoy (18281910)

Carl Schurz (18291906)

David Graham Phillips (18671911)

W. E. B. DuBois (18681923)

Mahatma Gandhi (18691948)

Scott Nearing (18831983)

A. J. Muste (18851967)

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Badshah Khan) (18901988)

Franz Jgersttter (19071943)

I. F. Stone (19071989)

Simone Weil (19091943)

Czeslaw Milosz (19112004)

Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)

Paolo Freire (18671911)

Fred Shuttlesworth (b. 1922)

Martin Luther King Jr. (19291968)

Mario Savio (19421996)

Adam Michnik (b. 1946)

It has taken more than five years to write this book, longer than any other nonfiction book project I have ever undertaken. It draws on many years of research and discussion that have led me to the positions I articulate here for the first time. My first debt of gratitude is to the University of California Press for supporting me in this project, despite warnings about the risk the press was undertaking and attacks on the press for publishing two earlier books of mine. In particular, I want to thank my longtime editor Naomi Schneider for her inspiration, editorial skills, and patience. Thanks also to her helpful assistant, Valerie Witte. Two other editors have also provided invaluable help: Russell Schoch and Karen Croft. I am grateful to my agent, Victoria Shoemaker, to David Peattie of BookMatters, for overseeing the books production, to my copyeditor, Amy Smith Bell, and my indexer, Leonard Rosenbaum, as well as to Lisa Macabasco and my other fact-checkers. I am grateful also to Global Research.com,