The Q & A format allowed for oral as well as written questions from a highly engaged audience. A large number of written questions were received and oral questions and comments came in from various sides. The session was able to accommodate a representative sample of questions of both types and from every part of the auditorium. However, when the meeting concluded after three hours, it was clear that the questions could have kept the lecturer on his feet for at least another hour.

Q1: Sashi Kumar: Now we'll take some questions. We have one question from the organisers here, perhaps we could kick off with this: ``Please go into the question of what explains the September 11 crimes, the likely perpetrators and the reservoir of support. And, finally, what are the policy options?''

A1: Noam Chomsky: Well, who carried out the crimes? We know a number of them, the ones who killed themselves. So those are known. They were mostly middle class, urban, educated people, mostly from Saudi Arabia. They certainly were not people who'd been hiding in caves in Afghanistan.

The United States decided that you have to personalise these things, so you can carry out a `Crusade'. So they picked Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who have interacted with him, which could be true. But they have apparently no evidence for it. If there were any evidence, it would be presented, you could be sure of that. Just simply to mobilise support.

The United States selected an increasingly comical client named Tony Blair [audience laughter and applause] to present the case to the world, while sort of hiding in the background. I suppose the public relations purpose there was to convey the image that we really have lots of secret information that this little boy doesn't know about [audience laughter] but we`ll let him do it. But whatever the purpose was, they basically have no information, pretty clearly, and that's not very surprising.

I think it's not at all unlikely that these networks are indeed responsible. That was everybody's first assumption, mine too, and I think it's the plausible assumption. But there's a big difference between plausible assumptions and evidence.

And networks like that are very hard to penetrate. They are decentralised, non-hierarchic, don't have much communication. They follow a policy that's actually called `Leaderless Resistance'. It's also used by Christian Right terrorists in the United States. That's why the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] can never penetrate those groups. Leaderless Resistance means there's a kind of a shared point of view, maybe established by spokespersons, but then actions are initiated and carried out in small groups. Maybe consistent with those policies, but then actions are carried out in small groups. Anyone who's been involved in, say, anti-war activities or resistance activities knows exactly how this works because that's always the way it's done. Just automatically, resistance activities are always, if they're serious, going to be carried out with Leaderless Resistance, which is impenetrable. The FBI was never able to discover the people involved in the anti-war resistance in the United States, for example – not for lack of trying. These are just hard groups to penetrate.

So they probably won't be able to find evidence, although it's likely that's roughly the range in which the perpetrators lie. And if anybody knows about this, it's the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] because they helped set them up! They nurtured them for ten years. Not alone, together with British intelligence, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. They mobilised the best killers they could find from around the Muslim world who happened to be radical Islamists and they created a powerful mercenary army – not small, but a hundred thousand people maybe. Armed them, trained them, gave them manuals, showed them how to carry out terrorist acts, nurtured them for about ten years -- not in order to help the people of Afghanistan, on the contrary it helped destroy the country. And when they were done with them, they said goodbye.

But these guys had their own agenda and it was no secret. Remember that twenty years ago, in 1981, they assassinated the President of Egypt, who was one of the most enthusiastic of their creators. In 1983, one suicide bomber who may have been connected with these networks drove the U.S. military out of Lebanon. And right through the 1980s, it continued. After 1990, it spread around the world. They tell you exactly what they're doing. It's not a big secret. And within their framework, it's as rational as the framework that's leading to the destruction of the world within the Western framework. Both frameworks are rational internally, maybe lunatic looked at from some other point of view, but internally rational and we know what they are.

So I presume these are the perpetrators and they're doing it for exactly the reasons they say. Speaking from their point of view, you've heard it all: to overthrow the oppressive and brutal and corrupt regimes of the Arab-Islamic world in general, to drive out the infidels, the foreigners who've invaded Muslim lands, and to protect Muslims everywhere from attack. Okay? That's it. And they say it pretty straight, they've been saying it for twenty years. That's the likely perpetrators.

They do draw on a reservoir of support. The support may come from people who despise them, like, in fact, their targets. You know, rich Muslims in the Arab world are their targets but they still resonate to their message. They too are opposed to the corrupt and brutal and oppressive regimes in the Arab world. Even those who are very strongly supportive of the United States and closely linked to it despise the United States because of its support for these corrupt regimes, its undermining of any steps towards democracy, its, in fact, blocking any independent economic development. And they say it. To its credit, The Wall Street Journal, our main business journal, after September 11^th began looking at this question. It had some good studies of the opinions of what it called ``moneyed Muslims,'' rich Muslims – bankers, international lawyers and people like that, and this is what they say.

On the streets, it's much harsher of course. But this is basically what they say and they also point to specific policies – the policy of devastating the civilian society of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein. And although the West prefers to forget it, it supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds and all the rest. That they remember. And when bin Laden says that, they remember what it means. So Saddam's being strengthened, civilian society is being destroyed. A little bit to the South, the U.S. alone has been maintaining the harsh and brutal Israeli occupation in the Occupied Territories, now going into its thirty-fifth year.

Well, you know these things arouse enormous antagonism. And out of that comes a kind of reservoir of support, even by those who despise the terrorism and its likely perpetrators.

What are the policy options? Well, what are the options when a crime is committed? So, for example, let's take a much worse terrorist attack – the U. S. attack on Nicaragua. Far worse, practically they destroyed the country. It wasn't an instant destruction (it's different in that respect) but, over a couple of years, much worse.

Nicaragua pursued the right policy options. It went to the International Court of Justice; presented evidence, which wasn't hard in that case; the Court considered its case; considered the U. S. case; accepted Nicaragua's case; condemned the United States for international terrorism. The Court wasn't going to punish anybody, but it called on the United States to terminate the crime, to pay reparations. When the U. S. refused, Nicaragua went to the [U. N.] Security Council, which did try to pass a resolution calling on states to observe international law. That was vetoed. Nicaragua then went to the [U. N.] General Assembly. They could get a unanimous vote practically but it didn't mean anything. But at that point the options were finished – for a law-abiding state! If the United States were to pursue those measures, nobody would stop it. In fact, there'd be universal applause.

It's kind of striking that the U. S. could easily have got a Security Council resolution to legitimate even its crimes – and they are major crimes -- in Afghanistan. The attack on Afghanistan is a major crime, in my opinion far worse than September 11^th [audience applause for the statement], but the U. S. could have got authorisation for that. It also happens to be illegal, but it could have been legal. You know, crimes can be carried out under authorisation of law, unfortunately.

The U. S. could easily have got Security Council support for ugly reasons. The five countries that have veto powers would have supported the U. S. because they're terrorist states [audience applause] and they all support massive terrorism. They all want U. S. authorisation for their own terrorist acts. Actually, India is similar, wants authorisation for its own state terrorism. And that's true quite generally, that's true of Turkey and Algeria. Everybody in the Coalition of the Just joined it pretty much for this reason.

So they could have got authorisation, but they didn't want it. Because to get Security Council authorisation would imply that you need Security Council authorisation, that is, that there is an authority to which you have to defer. And if you're seeking hegemony, you don't want that principle. You want to be able to act unilaterally, without any authority.

This is not Bush, this is traditional policy. Clinton said this in his first speech to the United Nations, in 1993. He said: We will act multilaterally when it works but if it doesn't, we will act unilaterally in support of our interests. And that's the way you should expect a great power to act if it can get away with it. So they preferred to do it illegally.

But there are options and the options are hard to pursue. I noticed in the newspaper this morning that India was very pleased that the United States was pressuring Pakistan to turn over an accused criminal responsible for crimes in India and they want Pakistan to extradite him {Query for Noam: extradite rather than indict? YES}.They [the United States] could probably have obtained the extradition of Osama bin Laden. We can't be sure, but the Taliban were making gestures in that direction.

There was only one way to find out whether they were meaningful and that was to pursue them. But they didn't want to do that because they might have been meaningful and that would have been a problem. Because then what do you do with him after you've got him? You don't have the evidence, you don't have the case and so on. Besides, it opens dangerous directions. Same with the extraordinary request for Pakistan. If you begin to open that door, there are a lot of questions waiting right behind it.

For example, the U. S. harbours major war criminals and refuses to extradite them. Much worse ones than the one in Pakistan. To mention just the obvious case, the Government of Haiti – poorest country in the hemisphere – for years has been asking the United States to extradite Emmanuel Constant, who's a killer and a murderer, the leading figure in the paramilitary forces in Haiti that murdered four or five thousand people in the 1990s with the tacit support of the first Bush {Query to Noam: you actually say, in the tape, ``in the mid-1990s,'' which must be correct: but is "the Bush…administration'' a reference to the administration of Bush Sr. ? YES; I ADDED "FIRST"} and Clinton administrations. That's not what you read in the newspapers but, in fact, it's true. He's been convicted in absentia in Haiti (they didn't have much trouble finding evidence) and now they want him returned. The U. S. refuses, presumably because it is afraid of what will happen if he stands up in open court and tells people about his connections with international terrorism, mainly the CIA. And they don't want that out. So he's not extradited. And there are other cases. When you begin pushing these questions, all sorts of unpleasant possibilities arise.

But there are options. Those are options if you want to find the perpetrators of the crime and punish them. If you just want to show you can slaughter a couple of hundred thousand people and get away with it and have everybody applaud in the West, well, you do it a different way.

Incidentally, let me mention that this case of Emmanuel Constant has scarcely been reported in the United States. And it's been going on for years.

Q2: [Questioner unidentified]: Professor Chomsky, this question is specifically about what's happening in Afghanistan. The United States has an economic interest in a political cleavage to ensure its oil resources in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other countries. But militarily speaking, they are bombarding places that have no relevance whatsoever. That is because, if you look at the successive U. S. governments, it started with Korean War in 1950, it went on to Vietnam and Iraq, then to Kosovo and now to Afghanistan. Is it that the U. S. government is trying its new armaments in these enlarged areas just to test them?

A2: Noam Chomsky: There is an oil interest. Oil is behind anything that happens in that part of the world. If this were something with the Antarctic, nobody would care what was going on. But these are the major sources of oil in the world, energy. Not Central Asia, but the Gulf. That's where most of the oil is. Central Asia is important but secondary. So yes, that's in the background. And there have been efforts by U. S. oil companies to push in a pipeline through Afghanistan from the Central Asian countries for some years. But that can't be the reason for what's going on because those issues were always there and they didn't decide to bomb Afghanistan. But they are in the background, you're right.

Is the United States trying to test its armaments? Really doubt it. We don't have internal documents now to tell you what they are planning in Washington, but you can make out a pretty good guess. It's probably the standard procedure, not just for the United States, but for anyone with substantial power. Criminal organisations work this way too… say, the mafia. Suppose you're a mafia don and a storekeeper doesn't pay you protection money, well what do you do? You don't go to the court and get a court order and send the police to make them pay the money.

That's the parallel to going to the U. N. Security Council for getting authorisation. You can't do that. What you do is you send your goons and then you beat him to a pulp. And the purpose is to establish what's called `credibility'. Actually, that's the term that's used in the international affairs literature and it's the term governments use. For example, the bombing of Serbia. You know intellectuals have to make up stories to make it look good, that's their job, but the governments were pretty straight about it, Britain and the United States, particularly. They said: ``We have to maintain the credibility of NATO.''

"NATO" doesn't mean NATO. Nobody cared about the `credibility' of Belgium, for example. What it means is the `credibility' of the United States and its attack dog -- those are the two states whose credibility has to be maintained --and credibility means just what it means for a mafia don. Everyone has to be frightened. That's the meaning of those statements I was reading from the major planning document called the ``The Essentials of Post-War Deterrence.'' `Our national persona must be irrational and vindictive…otherwise people might not be afraid enough to do what we tell them to do …and you regularly have to demonstrate this'. I presume that's the background thinking in this case too and it's perfectly reasonable.

No, I'm not suggesting there's anything unreasonable about it. It's reasonable for the mafia don. It's reasonable for world leaders. It's reasonable for respectable intellectuals to make up stories about how marvellous their leaders are and committed to benevolence and so on and so forth. All that goes right back through history. There's practically no exception, I don't even know of any exceptions to this. Now again this is speculation, we don't have internal documents in this case but I'm willing to wager that's what it is.

Q3: Vikram: Professor Chomsky, you have presented a very good overview of the state, looking outside from the United States. How do you see the current laws being passed in the U. S., including the USA Act, Patriot Act and the revocation of the confidentiality of communication even between lawyer and client? How do you see the curtailment of civil liberties in the U. S. against the backdrop of the U. S. looking outside at the world for enemies and somebody to pin it in?