The Darkened Hour

Ben Howard is an independent researcher. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. You can follow Ben on Twitter: @housetrotter. Howard has been an ardent, often anonymous, 9/11 and geopolitical writer and student. Just last year he would so-author a 3 part series entitled "The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11" along with Aaron Good and Peter Dale Scott. In this episode, Ben and i discuss th...

21 years after the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC, the United States government had announced it assassinated the elusive Egyptian radical cleric and emir of Al Qaeda, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, on July 31st 2022. According to a senior administration official who said "The United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan."...

In 1996, Osama Bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, has started funding a militant group in Yemen called "The Islamic Army Of Aden", named after the port city Aden. By mid 1998, the group starts operations and making political statements and carries about kidnappings and assaults on local law enforcement, similar to what was transpiring in the Philippines, in which Khalifa also runs...

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured p...

Shayna Steinger, was a US visa official working in the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia US consular office, who issued visas to 12 of the 19 hijackers blamed for the attacks of September 11th 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report does not mention her by name, but states that a single official gave visas to 11 of the hijackers - though other information included in the report suggests that the correct number should...

Adam Taylor has been researching the events of September 11th since August of 2007. From 2010 to 2014 he contributed to the blog "Debunking the Debunkers of the 9/11 Truth Movement". He has also contributed technical articles to sites such as AE911Truth.org and ScientificMethod911.org. He is the author of the AE911Truth multi-part essay "Debunking the Real 9/11 Myths: Why Popular Mechanics Can't F...

The Energy of Empire series by Richard Cox touches on the history of imperialism and questions wether we live in the age of empire still, or have we "evolved" past this age? Yet the United States currently the world empire, seemingly have not "evolved". Richard Cox questions the American political motivations, under the administrations of William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, where he suggests t...

Ed Brotherton served in the United States Air Force in the mid 90's. He served with the 60th Security Police Squadron at Travis AFB. He was a member of the Travis Air Face base Emergency Services Team and participated in Operation Sea Signal Joint Task Force 160 providing humanitarian relief for thousands of Haitian and Cuban Refugees.  Since leaving the military Ed has taken an interest in legisl...

Mark Fallon government service spans more than three decades, and includes serving as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, NCIS Chief of Counterintelligence Operations for the Europe, Africa and Middle East Division, and as a Senior Executive in the Department of Homeland Security, as the Assistant Director for Training of the Federal Law...

After years of Egyptian state repression on it's most fervent Islamist sects such as Gamma Islamiyyah and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the followers of one notable Gamma Islamiyah leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, saw fit to exact revenge on the Hosni Mubarak led Egyptian government in attacking it's tourism industry. The Luxor massacre was the killing of 62 people, mostly tourists, on 17 November 1997...

In this episode we follow up our previous talk about the Ukrainian uprisings of the last 30 years which led to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin covert operations that involved far-right separatist groups who began spying on Soviet influences in the region. Myself and Richard Cox, speak about Operation Aerodynamic, and Mykola Lebed and the nefarious connection with the CIA and how the...

In today's episode, i interview my co-host of The Darkened Hour, Richard Cox. We speak on Richard's first book, available on Amazon, "Contemplating Conspiracy: Excursions Into Undiluted Madness" . The book covers the elements of fringe conspiracies and realism. Richard's experience into the realm of fringe conspiracy, becoming introduced with known British sports announcer who later delved into th...

Adam Fitzgerald, and co-host, Richard Cox speak about the latest 510 page cache of declassified documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (PENTTBOM) into Saudi financing of two Al Qaeda operatives living inside the United States in the year 2000. After the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001, FBI officials, as well as 9/11 Commission panelists, interviewed Saudis such as Omary al-Bay...

Nick Fielding is a journalist and author. He has worked for the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Independent. At the Mail on Sunday he broke the story of the renegade MI5 officer David Shayler, and for the Sunday Times he covered the story of Richard Tomlinson, a MI6 whistleblower (Fielding is the author of the introduction to Tomlinson's book The Big Breach). He was launch editor for the...

In this special episode, Richard Cox and Adam Fitzgerald, speak on the Ukrainian-Russian crisis. Richard opens up the dialogue by explaining the Holodomor Genocide, which was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. From there, we speak on the Orange Revolution which took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of...

In todays episode, The Taliban and the war for Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union negotiated a retreat out of Afghanistan in 1979, it was Pakistan who mediated the talks. However, the civil war between the Afghan factions, most notably, the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leftover communists and the Taliban with Mohammad "Mullah" Omar began as the fight for control of the country l...

James Schwartz is a senior fellow with the Program on Crisis Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and teaches in the Executive Education programs including, Leadership in Crises, the General and Flag Officer Homeland Security Executive Seminar, and Leadership in Homeland Security. Schwartz is a member of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Committee on Terrorism and Home...

After the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headed a multi-operational attack on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The CIA's hunt for Bin Laden however predated the attacks upon the nation, according to news articles and documented intelligence reports, the agency were monitoring the embittered Saudi for many y...

In this episode i discuss how the Salafi/Wahhabi ideology which had manifested into a reactive, political Islamic response to Western foreign policy which is often dictated thru Israeli-Gulf lobbyists and their agendas for the Middle East. The responses from terrorist groups led by the Salafi such as the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and most infamously the Septem...

The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 was the the official name of the inquiry conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks. The selected co-chair...

In this episode, Richard Cox and myself talk about the story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi and the film based on his life and time while imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba, "The Mauritanian". Slahi was accused of being involved with Al Qaeda and also being the conduit between members of the "Hamburg Cell" at Al Quds mosque in Germany who were allegedly involved with the September 11th 2001 atta...

Coleen Rowley had served as a Special Agent with the FBI and was assigned to the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi divisions. Beginning in 1984, she spent six years working in the New York City field office on investigations involving Italian organized crime and Sicilian heroin. During this time she served three temporary assignments in the U.S. embassy in Paris and the consulate in Montrea...

Robbie Martin is a journalist and filmmaker. He writes for the magazine White Fungus and Oakland-based news website Media Roots founded by his sister Abby Martin whom he also co-hosts a regular podcast with. He is the behind the documentaries American Bisque, American Anthrax and A Very Heavy Agenda. Robbie has made appearances on Buzzsaw TV, KPFA’s ‘Project Censored’, Russia Today, The Corbett Re...

Julie Sirrs is a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (1992-1999). An ardent student of Afghanistan culture, she began by visiting the war torn country after graduating from Georgetown University. After college, she joined the Defense Intelligence Agency. Her analytic experience of Afghanistan and the Taliban was valuable to the DIA and in 1998 she went back to Afghanista...

Co-host of The Darkened Hour, Richard Cox, returns to interview Adam Fitzgerald regarding the current state of Afghanistan and the United States military withdrawal of the capitol Kabul in recent weeks leading the Taliban to take complete control of the country. We delve into the history of what precipitated the US invasion in the first place which led to various points starting with the Unocal Pi...