citizens. It is not just liberation movements and radical groups that deploy terrorist tactics for offensive ends. States use terror defensively to directly intimidate their citizens, and to indirectly attack themselves or harm their citizens under a false flag. Their motivation? To provide pretexts for otherwise unwanted wars, or to gain increased police powers. Statesmen have executed indirect terrorism in various ways, but most plots tend to involve the pretence of blind eyes, misdirection, and cover-ups that give the statesmen plausible deniability. The shrinking of the 'Lusitania', the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the October Surprise, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and other well-known incidents suggest that terrorism is often successfully used by states to take the offensive against enemies at home and abroad. Was 9--11 such an indirect defensive attack?Len Bracken traces the clues circumstantially connecting a multi-armed hydra of oil interests, the CIA, FBI diplomats and statesmen to the September 11 attacks and examines whether they were engineered or allowed as a pretext for the war in Afghanistan. The subsequent anthrax attack targeting Democratic senators is considered in light of the controversial USA Patriot Acts rights-encroaching measures and the act's easy passage under conditions of terror. A shadow government appears to have covered the land like black ice.

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