Spain's Aznar-Bush Pact Theory Links US Units to 11-M Attacks

Aznar, Bush and the 11-M Thesis: What the Accusation Claims

A 78-page PowerPoint of which only the first 29 are public. A loose page, number 52, marked classified. And an expression—land, sea and air unit—that appears redacted in the BOE (Official State Gazette) but not in a Ministry of Defence publication. These pieces form the basis of the thesis that the 11-M attacks were carried out by a US special operations unit with the complicity of José María Aznar's government, and that the official version, jihadist authorship, served to cover it up. The hypothesis has circulated for years, has found no judicial backing, and almost two decades after the attacks, continues to fuel a debate far beyond newspaper archives.

The 2001 Pact and the P2OG Unit

The starting point of this accusation is an agreement signed in 2001 by the then Prime Minister with Washington. According to this reading, the text authorized US covert operations units to act on Spanish soil outside judicial control. The previous step, they add, was the free movement of the CIA, also supported by decisions from the same Executive. The documentation cited to support this is the book La CIA en España (The CIA in Spain), by Alfredo Grimaldos, specifically pages 248 and 249.

A year later, in 2002, the US government authorized the creation of the unit known as P2OG, whose declared purpose would be, according to this thesis, the preparation of false flag attacks, incentivized or consented attacks—what is known in jargon as the faucet theory—and mixed operations through infiltrated provocateur agents. From there, one jumps to the SEAL units, whose full name appears in official documentation in a curious way: the Official State Gazette redacts the expression, while another Ministry of Defence publication leaves it visible.

The Coincidence of Two Hundred

The most circulating argument is numerical. On March 10, 2004, NATO maneuvers simulating a jihadist terrorist attack with 200 victims were scheduled. The next day, the Atocha attacks occurred which, adding those who died in the Leganés raid—also considered victims of the plot by proponents of this version—resulted in exactly 200 dead, according to that circulating calculation. The identity of the number is, for this current, the most eloquent circumstantial evidence of the operation.

How much weight does a coincidence carry? It depends on who you ask. The complete argumentative development, from the maneuvers to the unit and from the unit to the pact, occupies much more than the lines of this summary.

Cracks Pointing Elsewhere

The thesis has critics within and outside its own orbit. The most repeated reproach: if the goal was a false flag attack to consolidate an agenda, the result was the opposite. The attack handed the government to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the leader furthest from Washington in Europe at that time, and left Aznar's party out of power in the elections held three days after the attacks. Such an operation does not harm one of the firmest allies of the then-US administration, this objection argues.

There is a third path that has also gained ground: that of those who claim the 11-M was a coup d'état intended to begin the demolition of Spain through Zapaterismo. And a fourth, that of those who maintain the PSOE was behind the attacks. Each version disqualifies the previous one with the same enthusiasm with which it defends its own.

From the ETA Lead to the Segarro Lead

Before getting here, there were other "movies." The first, that of ETA authorship, sustained in the hours trinc the attack and denied afterwards. The second, attributing the events to Segarro and France—a NATO member country, it is emphasized—spread through commissioner Villarejo, placed in the same structure allegedly directed by commissioner Enrique García Castaño.

Judge Coro Cillán attempted to reopen the case when the official version was already eroded. According to this reconstruction, Villarejo pursued her to the point of securing her internment in a psychiatric facility and spreading a new narrative aimed at protecting the ultimate responsible parties. None of these extremes have a judicial resolution supporting them.

The Open Trail: Villarejo, Maza and the Royuela File

The conversation drifted, over time, to another matter. A recording between Villarejo and prosecutor Maza in which both comment on Mena's psychological profile, the structure allegedly built in Catalonia, the notes with which he commissioned work, and espionage on the private lives of judges and prosecutors to manipulate them. In that tape, the prosecutor speaks the most, and it even raises the possibility of a handwriting expert certifying the script of one of those notes.

It is the same terrain that the Royuela file has claimed for two decades, according to its defenders. Some maintain that the judge is working on it.

And while all this is debated, two hundred. In the March 10 maneuvers and in the deaths of March 11. Exactly two hundred. The figure proves nothing on its own. It remains there, identical, two decades later.