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Unanswered Questions of 9/11: 911 Prewarnings, Building 7 Collapse, Flight 77 and the Pentagon, Israeli Involvement, United Airlines Put-options, War games, Atta and the $100,000, 9/11 Terrorists Still Alive By Peter Phillips, Ambrosia Pardue, Jessica Froiland, Brooke Finley,
Chris Kyle, Rebekah Cohen, and Bridget Thornton with Project Censored
and Guest Writer Jack Massen
Project CensoredFor many Americans, there is a deep psychological desire for the 9/11 tragedy to be over. The shock of the day is well remembered and terrorist alerts from Homeland Security serve to maintain lasting tensions and fears. The 9/11 Commission report gave many a sense of partial healing and completion — especially given the corporate media's high praise of the report. There is a natural resistance to naysayers who continue to question the US government's version of what happened on September 11, 2001. This resistance is rooted in our tendency toward the inability to conceive of people we know as evil; instead evil ones must be others, very unlike ourselves.
We all remember, as young children, scary locations that created deep fears. We might imagine monsters in the closet, dangers in a nighttime backyard, and creepy people in some abandoned house down the street. As we get older we build up the courage to open the closet, or walk out into the backyard to smell the night air. As adults there are still dark closets in our socio-cultural consciousness that make it difficult to even consider the possibility of certain ideas. These fearful ideas might be described as threshold concepts, in that they may be on the borders of discoverability, yet we deny even the potentiality of implied veracity — something is so evil it is completely unimaginable.
A threshold concept facing Americans is the possibility that the 9/11 Commission Report was on many levels a cover-up for the failure of the US government to prevent the tragedy. Deeper past the threshold is the idea that the report failed to address sources of assistance to the terrorists. Investigations into this area might have led to a conclusion that elements of various governments — including our own — not only knew about the attacks in advance, but may have helped facilitate their implementation. The idea that someone in the Government of the United States may have contributed support to such a horrific attack is inconceivable to many. It is a threshold concept that is so frightening that it brings up a state of mind akin to complete unbelievably.
Philosophy/Religion professor David Ray Griffin has recently published his findings on the omissions and distortions of the 9/11 Commission report. Griffin notes that the 9/11 Commission failed to discuss most of the evidence that seems to contradict the official story about 9/11— for example, the report by Attorney David Schippers that states that some FBI agents who contracted him had information about attacks several weeks prior to 9/11, along with evidence that several of the alleged hijackers are still alive. Griffin's book brings into question the completeness and authenticity of the 9/11 Commission's work. Griffin questions why extensive advanced warnings from several countries were not acted upon by the administration, how a major institutional investor knew to buy put-options on American and United Airlines before the attack, and how an inexperienced terrorist pilot could have conducted a complicated decent into an unoccupied section of the Pentagon.
Additionally, Griffin notes questions remain on why the 9/11 Commission failed to address the reports that $100,000 was wired to Mohamed Atta from Saeed Sheikh, an agent for Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), under the direction of the head of ISI General Mahmud Ahmed. General Ahmed resigned his position less than one month later. The Times of India reported that Indian intelligence had given US officials evidence of the money transfer ordered by Ahmad and that he was dismissed after the "US authorities sought his removal."
Also, the 9/11 Commission report failed to address the reasons for the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) building 7 more than six hours after the attack. WTC-7 was a 47-story, steel frame building that had only small fires on a few floors. WTC buildings 5 & 6 had much larger fires and did not collapse. This has led a number of critics to speculate that WTC 7 was a planned demolition.
Overall concerns with the official version of 9/11 have been published and discussed by scholars and politicians around the world including: Jim Marrs, Nafeez Ahmed, Michael Ruppert, Cynthia McKinney, Barrie Zwicker, Webster Tarpley, Michel Chossudovsky, Paul Thompson, Eric Hufschmid and many others (see: http://www.911forthetruth.com). The response to most has been to label these discussions as “conspiracy theories” unworthy of media coverage or further review. Pursuit of a critical analysis of these questions is undermined by the psychological barrier about 9/11 issues as threshold concepts — too awful to even consider.
We may be on the borders of discovery regarding the possibility of a great evil within our own government, and perhaps others outside as well. We must step past the threshold and have the courage to ask the questions, demand answers, and support research into all aspects of this American tragedy. Perhaps the closet isn't as dark and as fearful as we envision. If we don't courageously look and search into the deepest regions of our fears how can we assure our children and ourselves a safe and honest future?
In Censored 2003, Project Censored lists the most important unanswered questions about 9/11. Most of those questions remain unanswered today. Since 2001, researchers have expanded the depth of concerns and the reliability of information that continue to encourage the questioning of the official government version of the 9/11 tragedy. The following is Project Censored's effort to cross the threshold and address the questions that are so difficult to imagine.
9/11 Pre-Warnings by Jessica FriolandPaul Thompson’s Terror Timeline, as well as his updated version of the 9/11 timeline located at www.cooperativeresearch.org, was the key reference material used. For further information regarding the information presented, see original articles used in Thompson’s research, mentioned throughout.
In a press conference on April 13, 2004, President Bush stated, “We knew he [Osama bin Laden] had designs on us, we knew he hated us. But there was nobody in our government, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.” [Guardian, 4/15/04] He also said, “Had I any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country.” [White House, 4/13/04; New York Times, 4/18/04 (C)]
This statement is in direct conflict with a May 15, 2002, statement wherein the White House admitted that Bush was warned about bin Laden’s desire to attack the U.S. by hijacking aircraft in August 2001. [New York Times, 5/16/02, Washington Post, 5/16/02, Guardian, 5/19/02]. There is a massive and growing body of evidence that asserts that the United States government was not only aware of the possibility of the specific scenario of a terrorist air strike/suicide attack, but that it had also received dozens of credible warnings from both international and domestic sources.
Many countries warned the US of imminent terrorist attacks: Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, and Russia. Warnings also came from within the United States. Information from our own communications intercepts regarding particular individuals with foreknowledge, previous similarly attempted attacks, and from our own intelligence agents in charge of the investigations of al-Qaeda.
While many of these warning have been covered in the world media a collective analysis and summary context has been avoided by the US corporate media.
The Actual 9/11 Pre-Warnings
1993: An expert panel commissioned by the Pentagon raised the possibility that an airplane could be used to bomb national landmarks. [Washington Post, 10/2/01]
1994: Two attacks took place that involved using hijacked planes to crash into buildings, including one by an Islamic militant group. In a third attack, a lone pilot crashed a plane at the White House. [New York Times, 10/3/01]
1996-1999: The CIA officer in charge of operations against Al Qaeda from Washington writes, “I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers) when I state categorically that during this time senior White House officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden.” [Los Angeles Times, 12/5/04]
1996-2001: Federal authorities had known that suspected terrorists with ties to bin Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the US and abroad. An Oklahoma City FBI agent sent a memo warning that "large numbers of Middle Eastern males" were getting flight training and could have been planning terrorist attacks. [CBS, 5/30/02] One convicted terrorist confessed that his planned role in a terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. [Washington Post, 9/23/01]
Dec 1998: A Time magazine cover story entitled "The Hunt for Osama," reported that bin Laden may be planning his boldest move yet—a strike on Washington or possibly New York City. [Time, 12/21/98]
February 7, 2001: CIA Director Tenet warned Congress in open testimony that “the threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving.” He said bin Laden and his global network remained “the most immediate and serious threat” to US interests. “Since 1998 bin Laden has declared that all US citizens are legitimate targets,” he said, adding that bin Laden “is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning.” [Associated Press, 2/7/01; Sunday Herald, 9/23/01]
In June of 2001, German intelligence warned the CIA, Britain's intelligence agency, and Israel's Mossad that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack “American and Israeli symbols which stand out.” A later article quoted unnamed German intelligence sources, stating that the information was coming from Echelon surveillance technology, and that British intelligence had access to the same warnings. However, there were other informational sources, including specific information and hints given to, but not reported by, Western and Near Eastern news media six months before 9/11. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01; Washington Post, 9/14/01; Fox News, 5/17/02]
June 28, 2001: George Tenet wrote an intelligence summary to Condeleezza Rice stating: “It is highly likely that a significant al-Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks” [Washington Post, 2/17/02]. This warning was shared with “senior Bush administration officials” in early July. [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 9/18/02]
July 5, 2001: Richard Clark gave a direct warning to the FAA, to increase their security measures. The FAA refused to take such action. [New Yorker, 1/14/02; www.cooperativeresearch.org].
June-July 2001: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and national security aides were given briefs with headlines such as “Bin Laden Threats Are Real” and “Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks.” The exact contents of these briefings remain classified, but according to the 9/11 Commission, they consistently predicted upcoming attacks that would occur “on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple—but not necessarily simultaneous—attacks.”
CIA Director Tenet later recalled that by late July, he felt that President Bush and other officials grasped the urgency of what they were being told. [9/11 Commission Report, 4/13/04 (B)] But Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin, later stated that he felt a great tension, peaking within these months, between the Bush administration's apparent misunderstanding of terrorism issues and his sense of great urgency. McLaughlin and others were frustrated when inexperienced Bush officials questioned the validity of certain intelligence findings.
Two unnamed, veteran Counter Terrorism Center officers deeply involved in bin Laden issues, were so worried about an impending disaster, that they considered resigning and going public with their concerns. [9/11 Commission Report, 3/24/04 (C)] Dale Watson, head of counter terrorism at the FBI, wished he had “500 analysts looking at Osama bin Laden threat information instead of two.” [9/11 Commission Report, 4/13/04 (B)]
July 5, 2001: At issue is a July 5, 2001 meeting between Ashcroft and acting FBI Director Tom Pickard. That month, the threat of an al-Qaida attack was so high; the White House summoned the FBI and domestic agencies and warned them to be on alert. Yet, Pickard testified to the 9/11 commission that when he tried to brief Ashcroft just a week later, on July 12, about the terror threat inside the United States, he got the “brush-off. "[MSNBC, 6/22/04]
July 10, 2001: A Phoenix FBI agent sent a memorandum warning of Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons. He suspected bin Laden's followers and recommended a national program to check visas of suspicious flight-school students. The memo was sent to two FBI counter-terrorism offices, but no action was taken. [9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03] Vice President Cheney said in May 2002, that he was opposed to releasing this memo to congressional leaders or to the media and public. [CNN, 5/20/02]
July 16, 2001: British spy agencies sent a report to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top officials warning that al-Qaeda was in “the final stages” of preparing a terrorist attack in the West. The prediction was “based on intelligence gleaned not just from [British intelligence] but also from US agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency”. The report stated that there was “an acute awareness” that an attack was “a very serious threat.” [Times of London, 6/14/02]
In July of 2001: President Bush took the unusual step of sleeping on board an aircraft carrier off the coast of Italy after receiving a warning from the Egyptian government that the summit of world leaders in the city of Genoa would be targeted by al Qaeda. [New York Times, 9/26/01] The Italians meanwhile highly publicized their heightened security measures of increased police presence, anti-aircraft batteries, and flying fighter jets. Apparently the press coverage of defenses caused al-Qaeda to cancel the attack. [BBC, 7/18/01, CNN, 7/18/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01]
On July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment. [CBS, 7/26/01] The report of this warning was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report [Griffin 5/22/05].
Late July 2001: CBS reported, “Just days after [Mohamed] Atta return[s] to the U.S. from Spain, Egyptian intelligence in Cairo says it received a report from one of its operatives in Afghanistan that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four of them had received flight training on Cessnas.” Egypt passed on the message to the CIA but never received a request for further information. [CBS News, 10/9/02]
Late July 2001: Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was given information regarding a large attack on targets inside America, from the leader of the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Tahir Yildash. Muttawakil relayed this information to the U.S. consul general, yet wasn’t taken seriously. One source blamed this on the administration’s “warning fatigue.” [Independent, 9/7/02; Reuters, 9/7/02]
Aug 6, 2001: President Bush received a classified intelligence briefing at his Crawford, Texas ranch, warning that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The memo was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”. The entire memo focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US and specifically mentioned the World Trade Center. Yet Bush later stated that the briefing “said nothing about an attack on America.” [Newsweek, 5/27/02; New York Times, 5/15/02, Washington Post, 4/11/04, White House, 4/11/04, Intelligence Briefing, 8/6/01] .
Early August 2001: Britain gave the US another warning about an al-Qaeda attack. The previous British warning on July 16, 2001, was vague as to method, but this warning specified multiple airplane hijackings. This warning was said to have reached President Bush. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02]
August, 2001: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the US that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02] The head of Russian intelligence also later stated, “We had clearly warned them” on several occasions, but they “did not pay the necessary attention.” [Agence France-Presse, 9/16/01]
Late Summer, 2001: Jordanian intelligence (the GID) made a communications intercept and relayed it to Washington. The message stated that a major attack, code-named “The Big Wedding,” had been planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used. “When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before September 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations.” [International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02; Christian Science Monitor, 5/23/02]
On September 10, 2001, a group of top Pentagon officials received an urgent warning which prompted them to cancel their flight plans for the following morning. [Newsweek, 9/17/01] The 9/11 Commission Report omitted this report. [Griffin, 5/22/05]
Given all the pre-warnings and information available before 9/11 it seems unconscionable that on May 16, 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice could still claim to the press: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” She added that “even in retrospect” there was “nothing” to suggest that. [White House, 5/16/02] On June 7, 2002, President Bush stated, “Based on everything I’ve seen, I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th.” [Sydney Morning Herald, 6/8/02]
With so many warnings, it is difficult to explain inaction as mere incompetence. The existence of all of these warnings suggests, at least, that people within the US government knew the attacks were coming and deliberately allowed them to happen. This evidence would, however, be consistent with an even more frightening scenario— that the attacks were orchestrated by, or with the help of, people within our government.
Additional Sources:
Paul Thompson, “The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11—and America’s Response,” Regan Books, September 1, 2004.
Jim Marrs, “Inside Job: Unmasking the Conspiracies of 9/11,” Origin Press, June 2004.
The 9/11 Commissioners, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States,” W.W Norton & Company, Inc.
Griffin, David Ray, "The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-page lie," www.911truth.org/index.php?topic=911commission, May 22, 2005
The Building 7 Collapse Mystery By Josh ParrishThe collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 is one of the more mysterious events that occurred on September 11, 2001. It was not struck by an aircraft as the Twin Towers were and video of the collapse appears to resemble those of buildings brought down by a controlled demolition. These facts have led to speculation that the building was brought down deliberately. Deficient investigations that followed only served to fuel this speculation.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted the first official inquiry into the collapse the World Trade Center buildings. The report is merely a collection of supposition and hypotheses arrived at through the examination of photographic evidence and eyewitness interviews. FEMA’s reasoning behind the collapse of Building 7 is as follows: Debris from the collapse of the Twin Towers caused structural damage to Building 7 and ignited fires on several different floors; including floors 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 19.
There were diesel generators located throughout the building to supply electricity in the event of a power outage. These generators were fed by pressurized fuel lines from large tanks on the lower floors. The falling debris also damaged these pressurized lines and provided a continuous source of fuel for the fires. According to FEMA, neither fire nor structural damage alone would have been sufficient to cause the building’s collapse. It was the combination of the structural damage, which diminished the load bearing ability of the structure, and the fire, which weakened the steel, that brought the building down.
While this explanation may sound plausible, it is not based on an examination of any physical evidence. Specifically, the investigators were unable to confirm how much, if any, diesel fueled the fires. “There is no physical, photographic, or other evidence to substantiate or refute the discharge of fuel oil from the piping system. The following is, therefore, a hypothesis based on potential rather than demonstrated fact.”
The investigators seem to have little faith in their own theories, “Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence.” When subjected to critical analysis, the investigation by FEMA appears to be nothing more than an attempt to formulate theories that conform to the official version of the events of September 11th, rather than a rigorous scientific study.
One of the ways in which the FEMA investigation was hampered was by the destruction of evidence. Almost immediately following the disaster, the structural steel was removed from the site and placed on ships headed for Asia to be recycled.
The New York Times reported on 12/25, 2001 that, "In calling for a new investigation, some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made in the chaotic aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have cost investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with which to try to piece together an answer…"
"Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, said he believed the decision could ultimately compromise any investigation of the collapses. 'I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling,' Dr. Mowrer said…"
"Interviews with a handful of members of the [FEMA funded] team, which includes some of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information, like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments."
Even if one accepts the Bush administration’s official version of the events of that day, there were still compelling reasons to study the evidence. The engineering and construction community could have greatly benefited from a thorough examination of the structural steel.
Prior to September 11th, there had never been a fire-induced collapse of a steel framed building. If Building 7 did actually collapse due to fire and falling debris, then a careful examination of the evidence would certainly be warranted; if for no other reason than to learn some valuable lessons about the safety of high-rise buildings in general. Destroying evidence of a disaster of this magnitude is unprecedented. The fact that it occurred raises questions about the motives of those involved in making the decision.
As incomplete and inadequate as FEMA’s investigation was, theirs was not the only one conducted. The World Trade Center was heavily insured, and the companies that were due to pay those claims commissioned their own private investigation. The difference between the insurance investigation and FEMA’s study is quite remarkable.
The insurance companies had unfettered access to the site of the collapse beginning on the very afternoon of September 11th. They were also granted access to powerful computer programs used by the Pentagon for classified research; the FEMA investigators were not. The insurance companies have produced thousands of pages of analysis and an equally staggering number of diagrams and photographs. However, the results of these investigations have remained private.
It is interesting to note that a shareholder in Allianz Group proposed denying payment due to evidence of insurance fraud. Allianz Group carried a significant portion of the insurance policy on the World Trade Center. In response to the shareholders’ claim, the company made the following statement: “When the company makes insurance payments it does so on the basis of careful scrutiny – especially with payments in the order of magnitude referred to here. Two official commissions in the USA have examined the incidents of 11 September 2001 in detail. Their findings provided no indication that the allegations submitted by the proposer are correct.”
The mission of Project Censored is not to draw conclusions in the field of structural engineering; it is to examine mainstream media coverage of newsworthy events. In the case of World Trade Center Building 7, there has been very little coverage of the surrounding issues. The collapse of Building 7 had the appearance of a perfectly executed controlled demolition; it fell straight down into its own footprint, at virtually free-fall speed, yet this issue has hardly been raised in the mainstream media, and was completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission.
The lack of news coverage coupled with the destruction of key evidence and the lack of a credible investigation has given rise to numerous questions and accusations of government complicity in the attacks of that day.
The list of tenants that occupied the building lends itself to these theories. Occupants of the building included: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), The FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Department of Defense, IRS, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management. Some detractors claim that the building was brought down to destroy evidence against Enron and Ken Lay that was contained in the SEC offices. Others claim that the CIA offices housed the evidence of government involvement in the attacks and thus needed to be destroyed.
Investigations into the destruction of Building 7 have been performed and conclusions have been reached. Those who are not inclined to trust the current administration will inevitably find fault with the investigation, but the fact that the administration directed the evidence to be destroyed leaves them open to this criticism. The facts surrounding the destruction of Building 7 will likely remain a mystery, unless there is a full and truly independent investigation, using subpoena power.
Endnotes:
1 World Trade center Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-1
2 World trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-20
3 Chertoff, Benjamin, et al. “9/11: Debunking the Myths”, Popular Mechanics, March 2005. 8 April 2005, http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=&c=y
4 Wor World Trade center Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-1
ld Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-28
5 World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-31
6 Manning, Bill, “$elling Out the Investigation”, Fire Engineering, Jan. 2002 8 Apr. 2005, http://fe.pennet.com/Artilces/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARCHI&ARTICLE_ID=133237&VERSION_NUM=1
7 New York Times, 12/25/01
8 Manning, Bill, “$elling Out the Investigation”, Fire Engineering, Jan. 2002 8 Apr. 2005, http://fe.pennet.com/Artilces/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARCHI&ARTICLE_ID=133237&VERSION_NUM=1
9 Glanz, James, and Eric Lipton, “Vast Detail on Towers’ Collapse May Be Sealed in Court Filings”, New York Times, 30 Sept. 2002 8 Apr. 2005
10 Allianz Group – Shareholder Proposals, 20 Apr. 2005 13 May 2005, http://www.allianzgroup.com/Az_Cnt/az/_any/cma/contents/750000/saObj_750776_05_04_20_Gegenantr_ge_ENGLISH.pdf
11World Trade Center Performance Study, May 2002, pg. 5-2
Concerns About Flight 77 and the Pentagon By Bridget Thornton At 8:20 a.m. on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 left Dulles Airport en route to Los Angeles. Between 8:51 and 8:54, four men hijacked the plane. At 9:38, Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Minutes before impact, the 757, headed for the White House, made a 330 degree turn, while descending 2200 feet, flew over a highway packed with rush hour cars and crashed into the least populated area of the Pentagon which was under construction at the time. This, at least, is the official report as stated in the 9/11 Commission Report.
In the days and months that followed the Pentagon attack, questions arose about the veracity of the investigation and the amount of information available to the public. How could the alleged pilot, with no commercial plane experience, and complaints from his flight school about poor performance, maneuver the airplane with such precision? Why did the White House oppose an independent investigation? Why did mainstream media fail to provide investigative coverage of the attack? Could the government be complicit?
The main question is whether the government knew about or assisted in the attacks. In fact, a Zogby International Poll in August 2004 revealed that 66% of New Yorkers want a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General.1 Many people believe the official investigation lacked public scrutiny and suffered from uncooperative behavior by the White House. The media also failed to provide the American public with significant investigative journalism. Here lie some of the questions concerning the attack on the Pentagon.
Where were our air defenses?
The 9/11 Commission Report states that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into an area of the Pentagon that was under construction, and therefore the least populated area of the complex. This crash occurred at 9:38.2 The report explains that North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) never heard about Flight 77 and Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) concentrated instead on American Airlines Flight 11, which was mistakenly still thought to be aloft.3 The report goes on to say that the Indianapolis air traffic controller reported the missing flight to Langley Air Force Base at 9:08 and that a C-130 cargo plane followed, identified, and witnessed the crash.4 This same cargo plane happened upon the smoking wreckage of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.5 The report concludes that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, likely flown by Hani Hanjour and that fighter jets were called to assistance only four minutes before the impact.
Within this confused document, inconsistencies exist. An audio recording reveals that Langley jets did not follow explicit instructions given to them by their mission crew commander. Based on audio reports, the mission crew commander discovered at 9:34 that the jets headed east, not north as instructed by their crew commander. The reason places blame on lack of information about the position of Flight 77, incorrect assumptions, and generic flight plans that allowed the pilots to follow a due east path.6 However, the mission commander immediately orders the planes to “crank it up” and goes on to say, “I don’t care how many windows you break.” Could this mean the commander ordered the planes to fly at top speed? If so, did they follow the command? The report does not address this.
How did an inexperienced pilot perform an intricate crash landing?
How did the pilot maneuver the plane with such skill that experienced military aviation experts noted skills similar to a ‘crack’ military pilot?7 How did Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker who flew Flight 77, make a 330 degree turn, away from the White House and south towards the Pentagon, while descending 2200 feet, advance to full throttle and perform a crash landing with exact precision into the Pentagon? CBSNews reported, “And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed.”8 There is serious doubt that Hani Hanjour possessed the ability to maneuver a commercial plane in such an experienced fashion. According to another CBSNews report, managers at the flight school placed five complaints with the FAA expressing serious concern about his ability to fly safely.9 The Commission Report acknowledges his performance but does not acknowledge a possible problem with this information. The question remains unanswered by the United States government and invisible on mainstream media.
Where are the media?
The media could have played an important role in the investigation of the Pentagon attack. In the months following the attack, few reports surfaced that questioned the validity of the independent investigation.10 Investigative reports emerged that addressed the skills of the alleged pilot and why Langley jets did not respond to the crisis. Rena Golden, executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International says, “Anyone who claims the U.S. media didn’t censor itself is kidding you.”11
Mainstream media reported the official theory, that four Muslim fundamentalists controlled the plane that hit the Pentagon. The media portrays most deviating explanations as conspiracy theories. A recent article in the March 2005 edition of Popular Mechanics featured an article in which they “debunked the 9/11 myths.”
CNN interviewed Jim Meigs; editor-in-chief of the magazine, on the Anderson Cooper show and the exchange that followed proves there are biases and an unwillingness to investigate the attacks. Mr. Meigs told Anderson Cooper, “Well, you know, one thing that conspiracy theorists do is they ignore mounts of evidence that support the ordinary view, then they seize on one or two little inconsistencies and they say, see, how do you explain this?” Mr. Meigs states further, “What we did at Popular Mechanics was to actually take those claims by the conspiracy theorist, and subject them to ordinary journalistic fact checking. None of them add [sic] up”. 12 Mr. Meigs and CNN exemplify the type of news Americans receive. Questions that search beyond the common theory suffer ridicule and therefore, lack credibility with the public.
Is our government capable of this?
Michael Ruppert includes a document in his book Crossing the Rubicon called the Northwoods Project. This was a report to the Kennedy administration from his National Security Advisors that outlined a similar attack in which the government would shoot down commercial aircraft, blame it on Cuba and use it as a pretext to war.13 Ruppert does not claim that this document is inspiration to the current administration but that we have in our possession historical evidence that proves our government considers covert and complicit attacks.
David Griffin mentions a document by the Project for the New American Century released in September 2000 entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” The document states that “…the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a New Pearl Harbor”.14 Professor Griffin asserts that 9/11 gave the Bush administration a pretext to war and the unquestioned authority to change fundamental institutions in this country. In Crossing the Rubicon, Michael Ruppert offers compelling historical analysis as to why our government has interests in a Middle East war.
The government refuses to examine valid questions and denies information to the American public under the guise of national security. The attack on the Pentagon contains too many unanswered questions about the pilot, the forensics evidence, and the lack of defense for America’s military headquarters.
There is an overwhelming amount of information about the Pentagon attack and the 9/11 Commission did not provide it to the public. For this reason, the Pentagon attack deserves thoughtful media attention and open investigation by our government.
ENDNOTES:
1 SCOPE: The poll covered five areas of related interest: 1) Iraq— do New Yorkers think that our leaders "deliberately misled" us before the war (51.2% do); 2) the 9/11 Commission—did it answer all the "important questions" ( 36% said yes); 3) the inexplicable and largely unreported collapse of the third WTC skyscraper on 9/11— what was its number (28% of NYC area residents knew); 4) the question on complicity; and 5) how many wanted a new 9/11 probe. All inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be directed to Zogby International. SPONSOR: 911truth.org is a coalition of researchers, journalists and victim family members working to expose and resolve the hundreds of critical questions still swirling around 9/11, especially the nearly 400 questions that the Family Steering Committee filed with the 9/11Commission which they fought to create. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855 (Accessed May 8, 2005).
2 9/11 Commission Report, 1st ed. W.W. Norton: New York, 26.
3 9/11 Commission Report, 26.
4 9/11 Commission Report, 26.
5 9/11 Commission Report, 30.
6 9/11 Commission Report, 27
7 Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon. New Society Publishers, British Columbia, 2004.
8 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/national/main310721.shtml
9 Griffin, David. The New Pearl Harbor. Olive Branch Press: Massachusetts, 41.
10 This is based on a Lexis-Nexis search of 9/11 Pentagon coverage in U.S. news sources from September 2001 to February 2005.
11 Griffin, xiv.
12 CNN ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES 7:00 PM EST, February 21, 2005.
13 Northwoods document located at http://aztlan.net/lavoz_northwoods/northwoods2.htm . (Accessed 29 April 2005).
14“Rebuilding America’s Defenses: A report of The Project for the New American Century”, September 2000, www.newamericancentury.org.
Rumors of Israeli Involvement in 9/11 By Brooke Finley After the attacks of September 11, 2001, many stories circulated about Israeli involvement. There was the story of the five Israelis filming the burning of the World Trade Center and the “art student” spy ring that warned of the attacks. While most of this information has been glossed over by mainstream media, the reports remain extremely important to understanding the overall picture of what happened on September 11, 2001. As the writer, I attempt to cover the facts without any bias and hope to be able to present them as clearly as possible to the reader. I used Paul Thompson’s book The Terror Timeline, as a guide for the dates and incidents reported and then used his reference articles and any others that I could find, as research.
In January 2000, a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) document was leaked to the press suggesting that a large Israeli spy ring had congregated in the United States. [DEA Report, 6/01] In April of that same year, USA Today reported that certain DEA documents revealed that the Israeli spy ring, now commonly called the Israeli “art student” spy ring, “has been linked to several ongoing [Ecstasy] investigations in Florida, California, Texas and New York.” [Insight, 3/11/02] Members of the “art student spy ring” would go door-to-door, claiming that they were selling artwork. Many of their areas of interest were offices and homes of DEA officials.
Between December 2000 and April 2001, Germany reported that Israeli counter-terror investigators were posing as art students and following terrorist cells within the United States. These “art students” identified Atta and Marwan Alshehhi as possible terrorists, while living within several feet of them in the town of Hollywood, Florida. The “art students” were discovered in April and were immediately deported, supposedly terminating the investigation of Atta and Alshehhi. [Der Spiegel, 10/01/02] It was later reported by Fox News that an additional 80 agents were taken into custody between the months of June and December 2001. [Fox News, 12/12/01]
In related foreign press reports, the Mossad learned of four terrorists, living in the U.S., who appeared to be planning an attack in the near future, on the U.S., through information gathered by its “art student” spy ring. [Die Zeit, 10/01/02; Der Spiegel, 10/01/02; BBC, 10/02/02; Ha’aretz, 10/03/02] By June 2001, close to 120 Israeli “art students” were apprehended. [le Monde, 3/05/02; Salon, 5/07/02] A leaked DEA document titled “Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at DEA Facilities,” described dozens of reports of the “apparent attempts by Israeli nationals to learn about government personnel and office layouts.” [DEA Report, 6/01] “The report connects the spies to efforts to foil investigations into Israeli organized crime activity involving the importation of the drug Ecstasy. The spies also appear to be snooping on top secret military bases.” [www.cooperativeresearch.org]
At some point, between August 8-15, 2001, two high ranking agents from the Mossad came to Washington and warned the FBI and the CIA that an al-Qaeda attack on the United States was imminent. [Fox News, 5/17/02] On September 20, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mossad officials stated that indications point to a “large scale target” and that Americans would be “very vulnerable.” [Telegraph, 9/16/01; Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01; Ottawa Citizen, 9/17/01] The Los Angeles Times retracted this story on September 21, 2001, because a CIA spokesman stated, “there was no such warning” and that the allegations were “complete and utter nonsense.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/01] Israel denied that there was ever a meeting between agents of the Mossad and the CIA. [Ha’aretz, 10/03/02] The United States has denied knowing about Mohamed Atta prior to the 9/11 attacks. [www.cooperativeresearch.org]
Between December 12-15, 2001, the FBI, the DEA and the INS informed Fox News that there were no connections between the “art students” and the incidents of 9/11. They told Fox News that to continue pursuing this topic would be a form of “career suicide.” On December 16, 2001, Fox News pulled any information regarding the “art student spy ring” from its website. Fox never made a formal correction. [www.cooperativeresearch.org]
The mainstream media continued to deny any information about the Israeli spy ring, which turned the original stories into “conspiracy theories” and myths. Jane’s Intelligence Digest blatantly stated on March 13, 2002, “It is rather strange that the US media seems to be ignoring what may well be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks—the alleged breakup of a major Israeli espionage operation in the USA.” [Jane’s Intelligence Digest, 3/13/02]
On March 11, 2002, the Palm Beach Post mentioned the DEA report about the Israeli “art students.” The newspaper stated that the DEA determined that all of the students had “recently served in the Israeli military, the majority in intelligence, electronic signal intercept or explosive ordnance units.” [Palm Beach Post, 3/11/02]
On March 15, 2002, Forward published the claim that “the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism.” [Forward, 3/15/02]
May 7, 2002, Salon carried a story on the “art student” spy ring, mentioning that a government source suggested that the majority of the “art students” were a “smoke screen.” The source suggested that while most were getting caught up in the DEA’s Escasty case, others could complete other missions, such as the monitoring of potential terrorists, without being noticed. [Salon, 5/07/02]
There are other Israeli incidents revolving around September 11, 2001 that should be mentioned. On September 4, 2001, an Israeli-owned shipping company entitled Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co., moved their North American headquarters from inside the World Trade Center, to Norfolk, Virginia— one week before the 9/11 attacks. [Virginian-Pilot, 9/04/01] Zim had announced its move 6 months before the attacks, [Virginian-Pilot, 4/03/01] yet 10 employees were still in the building on Sept. 11, taking care of the final moving arrangements. They were able to escape, unharmed. [Jerusalem Post, 9/13/01; Journal of Commerce, 10/18/01] A year later, a Zim-American ship was caught attempting to ship Israeli military equipment into Iran. [AFP, 8/29/02]
About 2 hours before the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2002, Odigo, one of the world’s largest instant messaging firms, received warnings of “an imminent attack in New York City.” Odigo’s headquarters are located two blocks from the World Trade Center but the warnings were received in their Israel location. The FBI was notified immediately after the attacks began. [Ha’aretz, 9/26/01; Washington Post, 9/27/01] The internet address of the instant message was given to the FBI by Odigo in an attempt to find the name of the sender. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 9/26/01] Two months after the attacks, the FBI reported that they were still in the process of investigating the instant message and reports have been nonexistent ever since. [Courier Mail, 11/20/01]
A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) memo written on Sept 11 explained a situation where a passenger on Flight 11 was shot and killed by a gun prior to the plane crashing into the World Trade Center. The passenger who was killed was Daniel Lewin. On September 17, the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, identified Lewin as a former member of the Israeli special-operations unit, the Israeli Defense Force Sayeret Matkal. [UPI, 3/06/02] The gun story has been denied by officials, claiming that Lewin was most likely, stabbed to death. [UPI, 3/06/02; Washington Post, 3/02/02]
On June 21, 2002, ABC News reported that five Israelis were arrested on Sept 11, 2001 after being caught filming the burning of the World Trade Center from the roof of the “Urban Moving Systems” building, shouting cries of joy. The police found them driving in the company van. [Bergen Record, 9/12/01] Investigators said that there were maps of the city with certain places highlighted, found in the van. The FBI confirmed that two of the five men were Mossad agents and that all five were on a Mossad assignment. [Forward, 3/15/02] They were held on immigration violations, questioned excessively and then released after 71 days in custody. [ABC News, 6/21/02] The owner of Urban Moving System, fled the United States to Israel on Sept 14, 2001. The FBI later told ABC News that the company “may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.” [Forward, 3/15/02; New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, 12/13/01; ABC News, 6/21/01]
While little has been mentioned in the mainstream press about the “art student” spy ring, the questions still remain as to their involvement with the events of 9/11. Were they helping the U.S. government track information regarding the possibilities of an attack within the United States, or were there deeper connections of which the public is unaware? Mainstream media began this story as an investigation, but immediately stopped when officials claimed that it was a farce.
Additional Sources:
Paul Thompson, “The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute”, Regan Books, September 1, 2004.
For the online version of Paul Thompson’s 9/11 Timeline: The Center for Cooperative Research, “Complete 9/11 Timeline: Israeli spy ring, Israeli foreknowledge”,
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&theme=israel
DEA Report, “Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students of DEA Facilities”, http://cryptome.org/dea-il-spy.htm, No date available.
Transcript of Fox News four part Israeli spy ring series, http://cryptome.org/fox-il-spy.htm, no date available.
Michael C. Ruppert, “Crossing the Rubicon: The decline of the American empire at the end of the age of oil”, New Society Publishers, 2004.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed & The Institute for Policy Research & Development, “The War On Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001”, Tree of Life Publications, 2002.
Intelligence Online, “Israeli Spy Operation Confirmed”, http://www.911truth.org/readingroom/whole_document.php?article_id=136, March 14, 2002.
Unanswered Questions about the Put-options and 9/11 By Ambrosia Pardue It was widely reported immediately after 9/11 that insider trading occurred in which trading skyrocketed on put-options that bet on a drop in UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. (parent company to American Airlines) stock in the days before the attacks. According to Bloomberg data, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co. also experienced pre-attack trading twelve, to more than twenty-five times the usual volume of put-options. Morgan Stanley put-options jumped to 2,157 contracts between September 6 and September 10—almost twenty-seven times a previous daily average of twenty-seven contracts. Merrill Lynch’s daily activities previous to September 11th were 252. 12,215 contracts were traded from September 5 to September 10th. Citigroup Inc. had a jump in trading of about 45 percent. One day before the American Airlines planes were hijacked and crashed, 1,535 contracts were traded on options that let investors profit from the American Airlines stock falls. 1 All companies were linked to the hijacked airplanes or to the World Trade Center. Morgan Stanley occupied twenty-two stories of the WTC and Merrill Lynch had offices nearby.2 Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote on September 29, 2001 that as of that date investors had yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits made in these put stock options of United Airlines, and “the uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors—whose identities and nationalities have not been made public—had advanced knowledge of the strikes.”3
A put option is a contract that gives the holder the right to sell a specified number of shares in a particular stock, usually at a predetermined price, called the strike price, on or before the option’s expiration date—these are the stock index or dollar face value of bonds. The buyer (holder) pays the seller (writer) a premium and the buyer profits from the contract if the stock price drops. If the buyer decides to exercise the option, as opposed to selling it, the seller must buy the security. The seller profits when the underlying security’s price remains the same, rises or drops by less than the premium received.4 A short sale is where an investor borrows stock from a broker and sells it, hoping to buy it back at a lower price.5 A put option bets that a stock will fall, and a call option bets that stock will rise; there were far more put options than call options in the days proceeding September 11th.6 Cooperative Research states that “assuming 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these ‘insiders’ would have profited by almost $5 million.”
Of interesting note is that the firm that handled the purchase of many of the put options on United Airlines, the Bank of Alex Brown, was headed by ‘Buzzy’ Krongard until 1998. Krongard was the deputy director of the CIA during G.W.Bush's first four years. Tom Flocco reported on July 16, 2002 that European reporters found most of the suspicious pre-September 11th trading “passed through Deutsche bank and Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions.”7
Cooperative Research reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission published a list that included some thirty-eight companies whose stocks may have been traded prior to September 11th by people who had “advanced knowledge” of the attacks. From the Wilderness reported that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs. Stock trading irregularities could be used to alert national intelligence services of possible terrorist attacks.
CIA spokesman Tom Crispell denied that the CIA was monitoring U.S. equity markets trading activity prior to September 11th. Tom Flocco has found growing evidence that the FBI and other government intelligence agencies were more closely linked to the pre-September 11th insider trading.8 The San Diego Union-Tribune January 5, 2005 article stated that “a former FBI agent admitted that he gave online stock traders confidential details of federal investigations, including a probe of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.”9
The New York Times, on September 28, 2001, reported that the “short positions and volume of put options rose sharply across the travel industry— which has been cited repeatedly in news reports as possible evidence of illegal trading.” The London Telegraph quoted Ernst Weltek, president of Bundesbank, on September 23, 2001 as saying that “there are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets that must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge.”10 Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News said that “this could very well be insider trading at the worst, more horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life. This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence.”11 CBSNews.com quoted McLucas, former Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Director, as saying that “the options trading in particular suggests to me that somebody, somewhere, may have had an inkling that something bad was going to happen to certainly those airlines stocks.”12
The 9/11 Commission report scantly covers the stock options issue. On page 499, footnote #130, the 9/11 Commission reports that, "some unusual trading did in fact occur, but such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation….A single U.S. based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95% of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10." This explanation only addresses the UAL and American put-options, ignores trades in other companies, and fails to identify the purchaser, thereby leaving even more unanswered questions.
This issue cannot be discounted, overlooked, or debunked as a conspiracy theory. The questions remain: who put in the calls for these options, and are the calls tied to Krongard, the CIA, the alleged terrorists, or others?
End Notes:
1 www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-unusualtrading.html
2 www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-unusualtrading.html
3 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
4 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
5 http://66.159.17.51/cooperativeresearch/www/wot/sept11/suspicioustradingact.html
6 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
7 www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/printable311834.shtml
8 scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00119.htm
9 scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00119.htm
10 www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050105/news_1b5elgindy.html.
11 http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main/jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml
12 http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051602_liewontstand.html
13 www.cbs.news.com/stories/2001/09/26/archive/printable 312663.shtml
The 9/11 War Games By Rebekah Cohen Among the many mysteries surrounding 9/11 is the emerging information that several government/military war games were taking place on the morning of 9/11/2001. The military war games on that day could have been a particularly interesting coincidence, or served the much greater purpose of confusing, distracting, and potentially even facilitating the September 11th terrorist attacks.
In May of 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney was nominated to oversee Domestic Counter terrorism Efforts. According to Michael Ruppert’s book, Crossing the Rubicon this position put domestic military control in the hands of Cheney, giving him the power to issue a scramble or a direct stand-down order in the unlikely case of a terrorist attack. Without Cheney’s consent the military would not act. (Ruppert 2004).
Interestingly enough, several “live-fly” (as opposed to simulated) war games were taking place the week of 9/11. “I have an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD that on the day of 9/11, the Joint Chief of Staff (Richard B. Myers) and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijacked Field Training Exercised (FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly more) aircraft under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner,” said Mike Ruppert (Kane 6/8/2004).
The confirmed war game taking place on 9/11 was ‘Vigilant Guardian.’ An annual drill in its second day, Vigilant Guardian was allegedly an exercise focusing on old Cold War threats and was conducted by NORAD. This “live-fly” war game was actually being used to test national air response systems – involving hijacking scenarios (Kane 6/8/2004).
Another drill taking place on 9/11 was titled ‘Northern Vigilance.’ This exercise was also conducted by NORAD once a year and involved deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and Northern Canada (Ruppert 2004). This drill succeeded in pulling military personnel and equipment north, away from the East Coast and away from the pending terrorist attacks. There is also evidence suggesting a war game, titled ‘Vigilant Warrior,’ was also being played on 9/11. This is a drill from the 1996 Persian Gulf. The name ‘Vigilant’ in both ‘Vigilant Guardian’ and ‘Vigilant Warrior’ suggests a possible connection between the two drills. The common first name suggests the possibility of the two games playing opposing forces (Ruppert 2004).
Another potential drill going on was hosted by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). They have claimed to have been “running a drill for the scenario of an errant aircraft crashing into its NRO headquarters (coincidentally, located only four blocks from Dulles airport in Washington D.C.)” (Kane 6/8/2004).
As early as 8:30 A.M., on the morning of September 11th, air force Major General Larry Arnold, involved with the Vigilant Guardian war game, questioned the validity of the calls in regards to possible terrorist activity. Upon hearing of the hijackings, he wondered if it was all apart of the exercise or the real thing. It was apparently around this time that the FAA, NORAD, and other agencies (FBI and CIA) were on an open line discussing the possibility of a hijacked plane. When the whereabouts of the taped conversation between these various agencies was questioned, it was revealed that FAA manager Kevin Delaney, destroyed the air traffic control tapes just months after 9/11. No reason was stated and the issue has gone un-pressed (Haupt, 5/30/2004).
Also taking place around 8:30 A.M., Colonel Deskins, Head of Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) and mission crew chief for ongoing exercise Vigilant Guardian, was quoted as saying “uh, we have a hijacked aircraft and I need you to get some sort of fighters out here to help us out.” Although, contrary to Colonel Deskins, Major General Eric Findley, who was in charge of NORAD on 9/11 in Colorado, claimed that no calls for help took place until 10:01 A.M. Another conflicting statement made by General Rick Findley claims that he commanded fighters into the air as early as 8:46 A.M (Haupt, 5/30/2004).
The controversial 2003 9/11 hearing revealed that their logs indicated 8:40 to be the first time the FAA reported a possible hijacking. Although, the “tower logs” were not physically present at the hearing and the fact was based on recollection only. Other reports claimed that NEADS was most likely aware of a potential hijacking as early as 8:20 A.M (Haupt, 5/30/2004).
There was never a direct mention of war games on 9/11 in the 9/11 Commission hearings. So the names of the possible war games and the people in charge of them on September 11th were not overtly specified or further subjected to mainstream criticism. However, when General Eberhart was questioned about the authority heads behind the war games, he replied with, “No comment.” His unwillingness to divulge names of the people in charge is highly suspicious and warrants further explanation (Kane 1/18/2005).
Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Altanta) attempted to bring some attention to the 9/11 war games during the House Hearing on FY06 Department of Defense Budget, on March 11th, 2005. She questioned Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Richard Myers about the four war games that took place on September 11th. Myers responded to the question with very ambiguous explanations. He claimed that war gaming was being held by several different departments and it was not NORADs overall responsibility to respond to the attacks, but the FAA’s. Nonetheless, he felt the gaming actually provided “an easy transition from an exercise into a real world situation” and contributed to a quick response. Myers failed to comment on McKinney’s question of who was actually in charge of managing the war games on 9/11 (Kane 3/1/2005).
SOURCES:
Michael Kane, “Mr. Chairman, I have a Question: Representative Cynthia McKinney
Rocks Rumsfeld on War Games”, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030105_mckinney_question.shtml , March 1, 2005
Michael Kane, “Crossing the Rubicon simplifying the case against Dick Cheney”, http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml, Jan. 18, 2005
Michael Kane, “9/11 War Games – No Coincidence”, http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/print.php?storyid=387, June 8, 2004
Nico Haupt, “The lost war drill? (Chapter 9)”, http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/print.php?storyid=325, May 30, 2004
Michael Ruppert, “Crossing the Rubicon: The decline of the American empire at the end of the age of oil”, New Society Publishers, 2004.
Atta and the $100,000 By Rebekah Cohen and Ambrosia Pardue General Mahmoud Ahmad, Chief of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), secret service, is said to have had connections to the alleged terrorist “ring leader” and hijacker Mohamed Atta, as reported by the Times of India (October 9, 2001).1 Times of India also reported that the $100 thousand wired to Atta six months prior to 9/11 from Pakistan by Ahmad Uhmar Sheikh was at the instance of General Ahmad.2
Michel Chossudovsky reported that General Mahmoud Ahmad was in the United States from September 4th until several days after 9/11. He had meetings at the State Department and with CIA and Pentagon officials during the week prior to September 11th. The nature of his visit has not been disclosed. There has been no evidence confirming his pre-September 11th consultations were routine, or if they were in any way related to his subsequent post-September 11th consultations pertaining to Pakistan’s decision to cooperate with the White House.3
According to the Indian government intelligence report, the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks had links to Pakistan’s ISI, which in turn has links to US government agencies. This suggests that key individuals within the US military intelligence establishment may well have known about the ISI contacts with the September 11 terrorist “ring-leader” Mohamed Atta and failed to act.4 The Times of India further reported the possibility of other ISI official’s contacts with terrorists, suggesting that the attacks were not an act of “individual terrorism,” but rather were part of a coordinated military intelligence operation stemming from the ISI.
Nicholas Levis of 911Truth.org raises the question about the reports that the ISI wired $100k to Mohamed Atta. Saying that the “ISI has often been credited as the creator of the Taliban, and its operatives have been linked to the bin Ladin networks. ISI is also linked to CIA as a historically close ally”.5
The 9/11 Commission report claims that "between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct the attack….was funded by alQaeda…" (pg.172). There is no mention of the Times of India report.
Early October 2001, General Ahmad was dismissed from his position of Chief of ISI at the request of the FBI.6
Though one would think that this topic would cause a stir among journalists, it has barely been touched and has remained stagnate. The links are there, but unexamined. One can only speculate as to the connections between General Mahmoud Ahmad, Mohamed Atta, the $100k, and the United States government.
Endnotes
1 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CH0111A.html#c
2 www.globalresearch.ca
3 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
4 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
5 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
6 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
Some 9/11 Terrorists Still Alive? And Other Troubling Inaccuracies By Chris KyleIn the 9/11 Commission Report, the original list of hijackers is repeated, and their pictures are presented. However, at least six of the named hijackers are confirmed to be alive. Waleed al-Shehri is reported to have been on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the North Tower. Yet he was interviewed by a London based Arab-language daily, Al-Quds al Arabi, after September 11, 2001.
Among the named hijackers are Salem al-Hazmi, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Waleed al-Shehri. Al-Hazmi lives in Saudi Arabia and works for a petroleum/chemical plant in Yanbu. At the time of the events of 9/11, he had not left Saudi Arabia for two years. Al-Ghamdi is alive in Tunisia and had not left the country for ten months prior. He is learning to fly an air bus. Al-Nami, meanwhile, is an administrative supervisor for Saudi Arabian Airlines and lives in Riyadh. Both al-Ghamdi and al-Nami told David Harrison of the Telegraph (London 9/23/01) that they were quite shocked to hear that they had died in Pennsylvania, a place they had not heard of.
Al-Shehri lives in Casablanca, Morocco, and was there during the attack. He is a pilot for Royal Air Marco.Then there is the case of Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader of the attack. The Commission describes him as a devout Muslim. However, various accounts prove this not to be the case. Atta gambled, drank alcohol, and paid for lap dances. According to reporter Daniel Hopsicker, Atta at one time lived with a prostitute in Florida. While there, he drank heavily, used cocaine, and ate pork chops. None of these acts are those of a devout Muslim. (Griffin, 2005)
There is also the matter of Atta's bags. Two bags supposedly belonging to Mohamed Atta failed to get on Flight 11. In these bags were a copy of the Koran, Boeing flight sim manuals, a religious cassette, a note to other hijackers regarding mental preparation, his personal will, passport, and international driver's license. The rest aside, who tries to bring their Will aboard a plane they know, is going to explode? This is a question the Commission could have looked into, but instead ignored. (Griffin, 2005)
Of course, this is not the only matter which the Commission ignored. There is also the matter of the flight manifests for the hijacked planes. The manifests that have been released have no Arab names listed. Efforts have been made by independent researchers to get the final flight manifests from these planes, but all such requests have been refused. (Griffin, 2005)
Work Cited:
David Ray Griffin, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions”, Olive Branch Press, 2005
The Democratic Party, Like The Republican Party and The Media, Covered Up The Deep Complicity In The 9/11/01 Attack By Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Myers By John B. Massen, Guest Writer — Summary Analysis
On March 11, 2003, Congressman John Conyers, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, called an emergency meeting of 40+ top advisors, mostly lawyers, to discuss immediately initiating impeachment against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft, to head off the impending war against Iraq, which began eight days later. Also invited were Francis A. Boyle, professor of law at University of Illinois School of Law, and Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, both of whom had drafted Bills of Impeachment, to argue the case for impeachment. The meeting ended with a second revised draft Bill of Impeachment, because eminent lawyers believed that Bush et al deserved impeachment for multiple violations of international treaties and laws. However, influential Democrats opposed impeachment on the ground that the effort would hurt their party's interest in gaining control of the federal government in the 2004 election.
On 9-13-01, the Senate Armed Services Committee, with a Democratic Chairman and majority membership, heard General Richard Myers testify that fighter aircraft responded to an apparently hijacked plane inbound to the U.S. and forced it to land in a remote base in Canada. Standard operating procedures were clearly in effect outside, but not inside, the U.S. on 9-11-01. If there had been no advance warning of the attack, fighter planes responding under standard operating procedures would have prevented all attacks inside the U.S. The Bush regime must have decided to permit the attack to succeed.
A comprehensive report was written, by myself, which cited Myers' testimony, the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, Bush's behavior at the Florida school, and evidence of planning, long before 9/11/01, aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. The report was sent, by myself, to Conyers on 11/17/03, to Rep. Barbara Lee on 1/3/04, and to all 257 Democrats in the House and Senate plus DNC Chairman McAuliffe on 1/26/04. The transmittal letters all strongly appealed for impeachment of the Bush regime for complicity in permitting the 9/11 attack to occur, and stressed that Democrats might receive, and should request, effective political support by a comprehensive political-educational campaign by MoveOn.Org and United For Peace and Justice that would assure a majority vote in the House and a 2/3 vote in the Senate. The Report was sent to MoveOn.Org and UFPJ, for use as they wished to inform and motivate their members.
David Ray Griffin's vital book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, was released in April 2004. It presented comprehensive evidence indicating deep complicity by the Bush regime in the 9/11 attack. The simplest "snapshot" of that evidence is this: (a) the North Tower (WTC-1) was struck at 8:46 AM, and collapsed 102 minutes later at 10:28 AM; (b) the South Tower (WTC-2) was struck at 9:03 AM and, with a much smaller fire, collapsed 56 minutes later (55% of WTC-1 time) at 9:59 AM; and (c) the 47-story WTC-7, which was two blocks away and not struck by a plane and had smaller interior fires, collapsed at 5:20 PM. (p.12) The collapse of WTC-2 before WTC-1 indicates the cause was not fires, but controlled demolition. (p.17)
Copies of Griffin's book were sent by myself to these Democrats: Dennis Kucinich on 3/27/04 with an impassioned plea; DNC Chair McAuliffe, Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi, and Senators Daschle, Feinstein and Boxer on 3/31/04; Congress members John Conyers, Elijah Cummings (Black Caucus Chair), Ciro Rodriquez (Hispanic Caucus Chair), Barbara Lee, Louise Slaughter (Co-chair of Women's Issues Caucus), and Tom Udall, between 4/05 and 4/28/04. All transmittal letters urged impeachment action, contending that such action and injecting the "complicity issue" into the 2004 presidential campaign was the only way to assure Bush's defeat; and repeated that Congressional Democrats might receive, and should request, effective political support from a comprehensive political-educational campaign waged by MoveOn.Org and UFPJ.
Of course, many Congressional Democrats received, from other persons, much information about the Bush regime complicity in addition to that reported above.
All Congressional Democrats and especially its leaders, and DNC Chair MCAuliffe, were adequately informed of the Bush regime complicity and had staff and other resources to investigate further. Congressional Democrats had sworn to protect and uphold the constitution. They utterly failed in their obligations to the constitution and to their constituents to be an effective opposition party. The title of this essay is fully justified: the Democratic Party, like the Republican Party and the Media, covered up the deep complicity in the 9/11/01 attack by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Myers.
Why does the principal opposition party join the ruling party in covering up what are probably the worst presidential crimes in U.S. history? In response to my request for his evaluation of my report (cited above), Michael C. Ruppert, on 1/1/2004, provided an astute evaluation of how Congress operates:
"The flaw in your work is not in the legal foundation or in the way the evidence is presented, [but] in your basic assumption that the system functions and operates as you think it should or the way it is described in textbooks. History is replete with instances of impeachable or prosecutable conduct which are much better documented, more easily proven, and more glaring than what you have described."
"In Watergate, there was an abundance of evidence that Richard Nixon had committed offenses far greater than the one which brought him to the brink of impeachment—obstruction of justice. The issue was not what offense would be used to remove him, but (as far as Congress was concerned) finding an offense which could remove a sitting president without destroying the entire American system of government. The same question governs Congressional response to 9/11," Ruppert wrote.
Ruppert went on to write, "The entire system is corrupt. Those who participate in it rationalize— in order to protect their seat at a crap table— that when one player gets out of line the primary objective is to protect the crap game. (I thank Peter Dale Scott for this analogy). I can guarantee you that many members of Congress are aware of every detail you have documented, and much, much more. . . To impeach Bush et al on the grounds you have delineated would open a can of worms that would call into question the legitimacy of the entire government. That will never be permitted.
“In the late 1990s I secured hard documents (much better evidence than you have presented from a legal standpoint) showing an active conspiracy to protect drug traffickers by the CIA that was sanctioned by the White House. An impeachment trial would have been open and shut. It never came about for the reasons I have stated above.
“In the case of the Clinton impeachment, while there were perhaps ten (or more) offenses upon which that president could have been removed and jailed, none of them were ever pursued. Why? Because they involved the simultaneous exposure of Republican corruption and/or demonstrated that the entire government was complicit in one degree or another. So what did they go after Clinton on? Extramarital sex and lying about it. It was the only charge available that did not bring down the whole system.
“I believe that (as it was with Watergate) Bush will likely be impeached after winning the 2004 election. On what charge? The forged Niger documents about alleged attempts by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program and the malicious exposure of Valerie Plame (wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson who was critical in exposing that lie) as a CIA case officer. That offense does not expose the whole crap game.
“There is no legal argument you can make that will make a broken system function the way that you want it to function."
Another valuable insight about the Democratic Party was provided on 2/20/05 by Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Gagnon writes:
"Hillary Clinton, who hopes to become president, is on the Sunday morning talk shows saying that our troops might be in Iraq for some time to come. ‘We've been in Korea for 50 years,' she said. ‘We are still in Okinawa,' she told the TV cameras.
“That is it. Pack up your bags, peace movement, and just go home. Hillary has made the pronouncement. She is in sync with George W. Bush, the neo-con crowd, Haliburton, Bechtel....she wants to be president and she knows that the road to the White House has to pass through the gates of the military industrial complex....and the oil corporations....and the globalization crowd that intends to create a ‘market economy' in Iraq (read privatization of everything there.) Hillary has totally sold out.
"The war in Iraq, and the very long presence of U.S. troops there, will bleed America to the bone. The Democratic party, with few very noble exceptions, is on their knees in loyal complicity with the war machine. How can any self-respecting peace activist contemplate for a moment supporting such a party in the next election?”
Obviously, our nation is in very deep trouble. All citizens must unite and take back our nation from the corporate oligarchs!
John B. Massen finally retired at 90 in San Francisco this year. Massen's peace activism was principally in the United Nations Association of the USA, climaxed by his creation in 1980 and wide distribution of his highly acclaimed 16-poster exhibit on the Effects and Dangers of Nuclear War, co-sponsored by seven national organizations.
E-mail: JackMassen@aol.com
1 www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-unusualtrading.html
2 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
3 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
4 http://66.159.17.51/cooperativeresearch/www/wot/sept11/suspicioustradingact.html
5 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128
6 www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/printable311834.shtml
7 scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00119.htm
8 scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00119.htm
9 www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050105/news_1b5elgindy.html.
10 http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main/jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml
11 http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051602_liewontstand.html
12 www.cbs.news.com/stories/2001/09/26/archive/printable 312663.shtml
13 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CH0111A.html#c
14 www.globalresearch.ca
15 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
16 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
17 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
18 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.co…
Recommended 9/11 Resources:
Global Research- Michel Chossudovsky's site:
http://www.globalresearch.ca
Center for Cooperative Research- Paul Thompson's Timeline
www.cooperativeresearch.org
9-11 Review- Jim Hoffman's Site
http://www.911review.com
RICO- Rodriguez Versus Bush
http://www.911forthetruth.com
International Citizen's Inquiry into 9-11
http://www.911inquiry.org
From the Wilderness- Michael Ruppert's Site
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Questioning the War on Terrorism- Carol Brouillet's Site
http://www.communitycurrency.org/9-11.html
9-11 Truth Alliance
http://www.911truth.org/
Crimes Against Humanity- Dave Ratcliffe's Site
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH
Online Journal-
http://www.onlinejournal.com
Justice for 9-11- Spitzer Complaint
http://www.justicefor911.org
The Great Conspiracy- Barrie Zwicker's site
http://www.greatconspiracy.ca
Global Outlook
http://www.globaloutlook.ca
Guerrilla News Network
http://www.gnn.tv/
Citizen's for Legitimate Government-
http://legitgov.org/
Oil Empire
http://www.oilempire.us/
New York 9-11 Truth
http://www.ny911truth.org/
The Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance-
http://www.sf911truth.org
What Really Happened?
http://whatreallyhappened.com
9-11 Visibility Project
An activist oriented site...
http://www.septembereleventh.org
MUJCA-NET: Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth
A new Interfaith group, based in Milwaukee
http://mujca.com
9-11 Citizen's Watch
http://www.911citizenswatch.org/
Propaganda Matrix
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/archiveprior_knowledge.html
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. For a listing of current censored news stories see http://www.projectcensored.org/
Web www.projectcensored.org
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