I was reading through this transcript of an interview with Gene Wheaton, and following up on the names mentioned. In particular this:

At that black tie party at the Palm Restaurant on the 4th of December in 1985, I was specifically invited by Neil Livingston and to come in and meet Ollie North, and it was a party to promote Neil Livingston’s(sic) book, called "Fighting Back", and the subtitle was "The War on Terrorism". He and a State Department/CIA spook by the name of Terry Arnold wrote that book together and this was the coming-out party for the book, and all the covert operations community, the real snake eaters, were going to be there with black ties. Ollie North was there and Bud McFarland and I don’t know, 75 or 100 people in black ties, having drinks and dinner and hobnobbing and they felt like ... the atmosphere at that party was one of ‘We are the shadow government running the United States.’ It was almost like a diplomatic party or a State Department coming out party for a regime. These guys were in charge, and that was how they presented it.

When I came across the mention of Fighting Back : Winning the War Against Terrorism by Neil C. Livingstone (Editor) , Terrell E. Arnold (Editor), I figured that these guys might be the "godfathers" of The War on Terror. I found that:

Neil C. Livingstone is the Chairman and CEO of ExecutiveAction LLC. He was the founder and, until November, 2006, CEO of GlobalOptions Inc., which went public in 2005 and currently has sales of more than $80 million.

Livingstone is also Lead Director of Erickson Air-Crane, a $186 million helicopter company headquartered in Central Point, Oregon, and a member of the M&A committee.

Livingstone was described by former NBC anchor Tom Brokow as "one of this nation's preeminent authorities on terrorism." He is a familiar face on the nation's newscasts as a commentator on terrorism, intelligence, and national security issues. A veteran of more than 1300 television appearances, he has appeared on such programs as "Nightline," "Meet the Press," "Today," "The Early Show," "Crossfire," "Newsmaker Sunday," "The Charlie Rose Show," "Hardball," "Dateline," "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer," "The O'Reilly Report," and the evening newscasts on all of the major networks. He served as an on-air commentator for NBC News during the Atlanta Olympics and in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City and 9/11 terrorist attacks. He predicted the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center on CNBC six months before they occurred, said the terrorists would drop both towers, and that Osama bin Laden would be behind the attacks.

He is the author of nine books on terrorism, security, and foreign policy, including Inside the PLO, The War Against Terrorism, and Rescue My Child, which was an NBC movie-of-the-week. In addition, he has published more than 200 articles in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, USA Today, and The Los Angeles Times.

Leading corporations and institutions routinely seek his views on a variety of topics, and he has delivered more than 500 major addresses, both in the U.S. and abroad, including recent talks at the House of Commons and the United Nations. He has advised top government officials and testified before Congress.

So it looks like he has profited nicely from The War on Terror. I note the conspicuous name of his company. Executive Action was the CIA term used to refer to their assassination operations in the 1950s and 1960s. Some say that John F. Kennedy was one of the targets. His prescience in naming the target and the alleged lead perpetrator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is noteworthy.

What I was pleasantly surprised to see is that his co-author has taken a different stand regarding 9/11.

Terrell E Arnold

* Intelligence

Bio:

In his diplomatic career of nearly 30 years, Terrell E. Arnold served as an analyst in the State Office of Intelligence and Research, in five diplomatic postings including Consul General, Sao Paulo, Brazil, as a Senior Inspector who evaluated the operations of 24 US diplomatic missions, as Principal Deputy Director of the State Office of Counterterrorism and as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College.

Statement:

In my view there are too many unanswered questions both about the individuals allegedly involved in the attacks and the physics of the damages. I am not satisfied with the pat Al Qaida answer, and I think the story of the gathering of the hijacker team reads a bit like Groucho Marx. Somehow we need to get across the point that persistent and bullying US meddling abroad has potential dire consequences only one example of which was 9/11.

This is from the homepage:

Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth (io911truth.com)

Statement:

The tragic events of 9/11 have been used to justify the unending “war on terror”, illegal wars in the Middle East in which millions of innocent people have been maimed, killed and displaced, and the erosion of our traditional freedoms and values. Furthermore, in the name of protecting national security post-9/11, spy agencies across the world have been given sweeping new powers and resources. Their intelligence has been politicised to build a case for the disastrous war in Iraq, they are failing to stop terrorist attacks, and they have colluded in illegal acts of internment, kidnapping and torture.

However, many intelligence officers are joining the growing numbers of professionals with various kinds of expertise - including architects, engineers, firefighters, politicians, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots; who have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

These conclusions demonstrate the urgent need for a new, independent enquiry. We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media.

As people who have sought to protect the democratic way of life in our countries by serving in the intelligence community, we urge anyone who has served with an intelligence agency, military intelligence, intelligence oversight or in the counter-terrorism departments of law enforcement agencies to sign the petition demanding a new, independent enquiry.

Petition:

- WHEREAS the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks has had radical, largely negative, consequences for the United States of America and the world as a whole; and

- WHEREAS the official investigations of these attacks that have been carried out thus far were led by individuals closely aligned with, or even employed by, the Bush-Cheney administration; and

- WHEREAS the conclusions of these investigations differ radically from those that have been reached by independent researchers with various kinds of professional expertise; and

- WHEREAS organizations of such researchers---including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Veterans for 9/11 Truth, and Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth---have called for a new, truly independent, investigation; and

- WHEREAS we believe it is long past time for intelligence professionals to heed these calls;

- THEREFORE we, the undersigned members of Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, ask President Barack Obama to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11.

Signatories:

Ray McGovern has 30 years experience as an Army Intelligence officer and CIA analyst. He prepared the President's Daily Brief for presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and conducted one-on-one morning briefings of Vice President Bush and other senior advisers to President Reagan.

Bill Christison (CIA retired) worked at the Agency for over 28 years. He served in Germany in the 1950s and in Vietnam in the early 1970s. Later he was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

Wayne Madsen has twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Annie Machon served as an intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, before resigning in 1996 to help blow the whistle on the spies' incompetence and crimes. She served in the counter-subversion department, the Irish counter-terrorism section and finally against international terrorism.

Terrell E. Arnold served as an analyst in US State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research, then became the Principal Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism.

Senator Mike Gravel served in the Communications Intelligence Section in Germany and in the Counter-Intelligence Corps in France in the 1950s. Representing Alaska for two terms in the US Senate, he became famous in 1971 for entering over 4,000 pages of the (secret) Pentagon Papers into the US Senate record, thereby increasing the support for the ending of the Vietnam war.

Captain Eric H. May, former US Army Intelligence Officer, who served as a Russian-fluent expert on the Soviet military; also served as a WMD inspector and interpreter for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty team.