Micheal Springmann: CIA Visas for patsies

[theauthor]

Has anybody heard of this guy and do you think he is lying?

J. Michael Springmann, formerly chief of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has testified that he rejected hundreds of suspicious visa applications by Saudi Aabian men similar to those named as the 9/11 HijackersPatsies when we was head of the consular section of the US embassy in Jeddah, but C.I.A. officers repeatedly overruled him and ordered the visas to be issued.

Springmann protested to the State Department, the Office of Diplomatic Security, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and congressional committees, but was told to shut up. He later realized that this was a CIA operation, and wrote about it in the Spring 1997 issue of the journal Unclassified.
After 9/11, Springmann observed that 15 of the 19 Hijackers Patsies got their visas
from the very same CIA controlled consulate in Jeddah

http://911review.org/Wiki/CiaVisasForPatsies.shtml

The problem is that he wrote about this in Spring 1997, so he certainly hasn't just said this in response to 9/11.

[~enigma~]

Has anybody heard of this guy and do you think he is lying?



http://911review.org/Wiki/CiaVisasForPatsies.shtml

The problem is that he wrote about this in Spring 1997, so he certainly hasn't just said this in response to 9/11.
When did he say hijackerpatsies? If you are trying to bring up the old Visa Express issue that was shown to have NOTHING to do with 9/11 I suggest you read the archives on google groups and myspace from 2002 and stop making the entire bowel movement look like they are living in the past.

[Alt+F4]

What's a hijackerpatsie?

[T.A.M.]

you mean this guy...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2624714036214352031

TAM:)

[uk_dave]

What's a hijackerpatsie?


It's an admission by the 'truth' movement that the planes were hijacked and that the hijackers were the people identified by the FBI, but tempered by the need to call them 'patsies' in order to save face and have something of a movement left to play with.

[~enigma~]

What's a hijackerpatsie?
Either it is one of those tasty treats found in northern Michigan or it is one of these heart shaped thingamabobs...

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1325748305727877a2.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=12239)

Oh....that's patsie NOT pastie...nevermind :)

[T.A.M.]

Interesting article at the link you provided...


CBC: And if what you say may be true, many of the terrorists who allegedly flew those planes into those targets got their US visas through the CIA and your US consulate in Jeddah. That suggests an relationship ongoing as recently as September [2001]. What was the CIA presumably recruiting these people for, as recently as September 11th?

Springmann: That I don't know. That's one of the things that I tried to find out through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests starting 10 years ago. And at the time, the State Department and the CIA stonewalled my requests; they are still doing so.

CBC: If the CIA had a relationship with the people responsible for September 11, are you suggesting that they are in some way complicit?

Springmann: Even through omission or failure to act.

CBC: Do you have any evidence, any paperwork from all of these years that might go towards supporting all of this?

Springmann: Regrettably not. I had something at some point. My predecessor in Jeddah had begun a file of people with peculiar attributes who got had got visas. I kept it up, I added to it. I learned later on after I had left, that this file had been mysteriously been shredded.

CBC: But you complained, and you complained and you complained, but what eventually happened to you?

Springmann: My appointment in the State Department was terminated, and I was never given a coherent statement why.

CBC: You will above all will appreciate that conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen these days with regard to September 11th, what makes yours different or any more credible than the others?

Springmann: I have floated around the international affairs community for the past 20 years. I was in the middle of this in Jeddah; I knew people in the foreign service, I knew people out of it, I knew people in the CIA. I had at one time great respect for the CIA, but this operation in Jeddah was so peculiar, so strange, and it went against anything I had ever seen or heard in my 20 years in government, that I thought that what these people were telling me about CIA involvement with Osama, and with Afghanistan had to be true because nothing else would fit. By the attempts to cover me up and shut me down, this convinced me more and more that this was not a pipe-dream, this was not a machination, this was not a conspiracy theory.

CBC: But when you take the events of 1987, when visas were being issued to people unqualified for them, and suggest that happened again to the same people responsible for the attacks in New York and Washington: that's a quantum leap. How do you justify that?

Springmann: For all I know, and for all we know, this might not have been the intended consequence. It could have been a mistake, it could have been a misjudgment. Or for all that we know, it could have been an effort to get the US directly involved in some fashion. I mean it's only a few thousand dead, and what's this against the greater gain in the Middle East.

CBC: But you're quite sure that Mohammed Atta and others had their visas issued in Jeddah?

Springmann: This is what I was told by reading an article in the Los Angeles Times.

[DavidJames]

It's good to see "theauthor" picking things up and filling the void left by LC.

[Alt+F4]

I learned later on after I had left, that this file had been mysteriously been shredded.

Now that's crazy talk! Everyone knows that if the CIA wanted to destroy sensative information they would have just blown up the entire embassy.

[Unsecured Coins]

Either it is one of those tasty treats found in northern Michigan or it is one of these heart shaped thingamabobs...

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_1325748305727877a2.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=12239)

Oh....that's patsie NOT pastie...nevermind :)

Can I get those back when you're done taking pictures of them? Thanks.

[~enigma~]

Now that's crazy talk! Everyone knows that if the CIA wanted to destroy sensative information they would have just blown up the entire embassy.
And they would have used the Bin Laden Demolition...er...Al Qaeda :)

[~enigma~]

Can I get those back when you're done taking pictures of them? Thanks.
Must be some really strong adhesive in those. Did it hurt when it ripped out the hair?

[Unsecured Coins]

Must be some really strong adhesive in those. Did it hurt when it ripped out the hair?


like a mofo, dude... I screamed in a 6 octave range.

[Patriot4life]

Has anybody heard of this guy and do you think he is lying?



http://911review.org/Wiki/CiaVisasForPatsies.shtml

The problem is that he wrote about this in Spring 1997, so he certainly hasn't just said this in response to 9/11.

Yes, his testimony is interesting, It wouldn't surprise me if their is a certain amount of truth to his statements. I guess my first question would be, why would he lie about this?

I think TAM assesment of a link you provided highlights an important detail, that is, he didn't know all that much of what was going on just what he partook in and what he saw, he obviously wasn't and still isn't privy to the classified operation that was happening.

I think at face value his statements butress the notion that, indeed, the CIA did assist elements of the arab afghans the predecessors of Al-qaeda, an idea which many strongly reject.

here is an excerpt from a more recent discussion involvin Springman, actually it is from 8 weeks after the sep 11th attacks

PALAST:
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
MICHAEL SPRINGMAN:
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.

PALAST:
By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA were playing "the Great Game".

SPRINGMAN:
What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?

MICHAEL WILDES, ( LAWYER)
I would never be surprised with that. They're cut off at the hip sometimes by supervisors or given shots that are being called from Washington at the highest levels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

[Bobert]

like a mofo, dude... I screamed in a 6 octave range.
Can you guys pleaes get a room?
:D

[jhunter1163]

I wondered what my dog was barking at.

[~enigma~]

Can you guys pleaes get a room?
:D
Jealous?