No George Monbiot, These Are The Facts of September 11th 2001
John Doraemi | 18.02.2007 03:49 | Analysis | Terror War | World
Response to The UK Guardian Hit Piece
Mr. Monbiot has taken the standard media attack approach: conflate the internet film "Loose Change" with the subject of September 11th US government complicity. How brave to redo the same smear that has gone around for several years now focusing on the easily challenged claims, and ignoring the full breadth (and breathtaking amount) of evidence.
DISTURBING FACTS ABOUT THE 9/11 ATTACKS
1. The president of the United States, when informed that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center, continued to read about a pet goat.
2. This same president was moved from his high rise hotel in Genoa Italy two months previously for security reasons, because of a known al Qaeda plot for hijacking and "crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations." The assumption in July 2001 was that there existed a plot that "terrorists would try to crash a plane to kill Bush and other leaders" (LA Times, 9-27-01).
3. The Secret Service did not secure the president, even though his location was publicly disclosed in the press for days before the school photo op on 9/11. This was a break in standard operating procedures that left the president vulnerable in the middle of a purported "attack" on America.
4. NORAD has told three different and conflicting stories explaining why no jet fighters intercepted any of the four hijacked airliners.
5. Vice President Richard Cheney was placed in charge of anti-terrorism training and military preparedness exercises by Bush on May 8, 2001. This gave him command authority during the 9/11 attacks because as many as nine war game exercises involving military and intelligence agencies were occurring simultaneously.
6. The military's "Air Piracy" regulations were rewritten on June 1st 2001 to require the "Secretary of Defense" to give "approval" for military escort aircraft in the event of a hijacking. Donald Rumsfeld gave no "approval" that day.
7. More than an hour and fifteen minutes after the first hijacking was reported by FAA, the US military headquarters at the Pentagon was struck without any defensive action taken to stop the attack. The impact was on the west side, for some reason the only side that had been "hardened" with blast-proof windows and specially reinforced walls. None of the highest ranking military leadership were located on that side.
8. (TRANSCRIPT) Air Force General Richard Myers: "When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked..."
Senator Carl Levin: "Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?"
Air Force General Richard Myers: "That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck."
Reality intrudes. It became "clear what the threat was," the moment the first hijacked airliner struck the North Tower at 8:45am. This congressional testimony is inexcusable and grounds for investigation into criminal negligence, dereliction of duty, and treason.
9. "President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11..." ..."Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request."
10. The Project For a New American Century, which wrote of the need for a "catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," had members throughout the top of the government on 9/11 including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Armitage, Abrams, Wurmser, as well as Bush's brother, the governor of Florida, Jeb.
11. Four days before 9/11, Jeb Bush activated the Florida National Guard, "Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port." (Executive Order 01-261).
12. On 9/11 Jeb Bush declared a "State of Emergency" in Florida (E.O. 01-262). "I hereby delegate to the Department of Law Enforcement the operational authority to coordinate and direct the law enforcement resources and other resources of any and all state, regional and local governmental agencies..." And by 2am on 9/12/01, Jeb Bush was reported to have confiscated the police records in Venice, FL related to the Huffman Aviation flight school. Two rental trucks full of these records drove onto a C-130 military aircraft at Sarasota Airport and flew out with Jeb Bush aboard.
13. Huffman Aviation flight school, where Mohamed Atta and other alleged hijackers trained, had a Lear jet seized by the DEA with "43 pounds of heroin" onboard. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the "biggest drug seizure in central Florida history."
14. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States ("9/11 Commission") was a blatant and obvious cover-up under the control of Bush administration member and "Executive Director" Phillip Zelikow. This cover-up can be proven easily with one example: the time of Dick Cheney's arrival at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center ("PEOC bunker"). Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified under oath that Cheney was present at 9:20am and issuing "orders" related to the plane that struck the Pentagon. Mineta's testimony was completely omitted from their final report, and a fraudulent time of 9:58am for Cheney's arrival was given instead (book pg 40 / .pdf file pg 57).
15. The 9/11 Commission was originally only given $3 million to investigate the greatest terrorist attacks on US soil in our history. The Bush administration then witheld requested documents forcing the Commissioners to issue subpoenas to FAA and the Department of Defense.
16. So many lies were told by Bush administration officials regarding warnings before the attacks, that it is difficult to count them. Ari Fleischer's two word response, "No warnings," aboard Air Force One on 9/11, sums up the administration's claim.
17. Contrary to the Bush administration's claim: "Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the months before September 11th of a blizzard of warnings delivered to the Bush administration from all points on the compass. The German intelligence service BND warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar plane-based plot against Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa last June [2001], a warning taken so seriously that anti-aircraft batteries were placed around Columbus Airport in Italy. Last August [2001], Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered 'in the strongest possible terms' specifically regarding threats to airports and government buildings." -Newsweek, May 20, 2002
18. In July of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black claim to have made a detailed presentation and warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft of imminent attacks on US soil by Al Qaeda operatives. This was also omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report.
19. Many more warnings stretching back to the early 1990s were known to intelligence agencies and to FBI. These warnings expose as a lie National Security Advisor Rice's response: "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, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
20. March 7, 2001: "The Russian Permanent Mission at the United Nations secretly submits “an unprecedentedly detailed report” to the UN Security Council about bin Laden, his whereabouts, details of his al-Qaeda network, Afghan drug running, and Taliban connections to Pakistan and the ISI. The report provides “a listing of all bin Laden’s bases, his government contacts and foreign advisers,” and enough information to potentially locate and kill him. It is said to contain an “astonishing degree of information.” The US fails to use the information in any noticable manner. Alex Standish, the editor of the highly respected Jane’s Intelligence Review, concludes that the attacks of 9/11 were less of an American intelligence failure than the result of “a political decision not to act against bin Laden.” [Jane's Intelligence Review, 10/5/2001; Times of India, 10/8/2001]
21. On August 6, 2001 a CIA briefer went to Bush's Crawford ranch to read the president a briefing called, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (2 redacted pages out of 11 reported). After the briefing, Bush told the CIA man, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Bush then went fishing.
22. Minneapolis FBI Agent and Legal Advisor Colleen Rowley (21 year veteran) said that the FBI Headquarters Special Supervisory Agent, "seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts ...continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. ...Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence. ...HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!"
23. FBI Special Agent Robert Wright (12 year veteran) said: "“[T]here existed a concerted effort on the part of agents conducting counterterrorism intelligence investigations to insulate the subjects of their investigations from criminal investigation and prosecution.” ...“The supervisor ...started yelling at me: ‘You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects.’” ..."(T)here is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States."
"A lawyer speaking for (FBI Special Agent) Wright after 9/11 will blame Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Michael Chertoff for refusing to take Wright’s concerns seriously before 9/11." Chertoff will later be appointed to become head of the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security.
"Larry Klayman, one of two lawyers now representing [FBI Agent] Wright, later says he calls the Justice Department a few days after 9/11 and asks that Wright be allowed to present his issues to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Klayman claims he receives a reply from Michael Chertoff, then head of the Criminal division, who refuses to meet with Wright and says, “We are tired of conspiracy theories.”
FBI Agent Wright says at his press conference: “Corruption is knowing when something is not being done, knowing when the American people are being left unprotected and when you make a decision not to do something to protect the American people... And you effectively allow 9/11 to occur. That is the ultimate form of government corruption—dereliction of duty. That’s subject in the military to prosecution, to court martial.... Frankly, if not treason.”
24. FBI Agent Harry Samit, who before 9/11 sent 70 communications to supervisors warning them of Moussauoi's plan to hijack a commercial jet and crash it -- to no avail -- has said, “...(I)f you’re not going to advance this the FISA route, or if you don’t believe we have enough for a FISA, I shudder to think—and that’s all I got out. And [Supervisory Special Agent Mike Maltbie] cut me off and said, ‘You will not question the unit chief [David Frasca] and you will not question me. We’ve been through a lot. We know what’s going on. You will not question us.’”
25. On July 10, 2001 FBI Agents in Phoenix AZ issued a memo to FBIHQ requesting that headquarters investigate flight schools across the U.S. to look for middle eastern flight students connected to international terrorist organizations. Nothing was done, and the information was not shared.
26. "The [FBI Inspector General] report attributes the inaction and inattention to the lack of resources committed to anti-terrorist activities in the summer of 2001. For instance, there was only a single research analyst assigned to the FBI’s Bin Laden Unit in 2001, and she was transferred to another unit in July 2001."
27. "Although the FBI's counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, its counterterrorism spending stayed fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001" ..."Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard said he appealed to Ashcroft for more money for counterterrorism but on Sept 10, 2001, one day before the attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, Ashcroft rejected the appeal."
28. "At issue is a July 5, 2001, meeting between Ashcroft and acting FBI Director Tom Pickard."
"'Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore,' Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste asked on April 13. 'Is that correct?'"
"'That is correct,' Pickard replied."
..."(A)nother senior FBI official tells NBC News he vividly recalls Pickard returning from the meeting that day furious that Ashcroft had cut short the terrorism briefing. Several sources familiar with the investigation say Garcia confirmed to the commission that Ashcroft did indeed dismiss Pickard's warnings about al-Qaida."
29. FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds has become the most gagged whistleblower in the country's history. In a letter to 9/11 Commissioner Thomas Kean, she said, "“If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents cited ‘direct pressure by the State Department,’ and in other cases ‘sensitive diplomatic relations’ is cited. ...Your hearings did not include questions regarding these unspoken and unwritten policies and practices. Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain US officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so."
Another FBI translator, who had been "shielding" the targets of FBI investigations, told Sibel Edmonds: "“Why are you doing this, Sibel? Why don’t you just drop it? You know there could be serious consequences. Why put your family in Turkey in danger over this?” Sibel Edmonds' sister was reportedly sought by Turkish police shortly after this incident.
30. The FBI's top Al Qaeda investigator, John O'Neill, "resigned in July of 2001 in protest over the obstruction of terrorist investigations."
31. Two of the alleged hijackers lived openly in San Diego with an FBI informant for over a year: "The FBI inspector general’s report reveals for the first time that the CIA not only failed to inform the FBI about [Al] Mihdhar, but that CIA officials intervened to suppress a memorandum drafted by an FBI agent detailed to the CIA-run Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), who wanted to notify the FBI about the suspected terrorist with a US visa."
"One FBI official familiar with the case will later complain, “[The CIA] purposely hid [Almihdhar] from the FBI, purposely refused to tell the bureau. ...And that’s why September 11 happened. ...They have blood on their hands.” [Bamford, 2004, pp. 224, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies]
32. The 9/11 Commission, at the orchestration of Bush administration member and "Executive Director" Phillip Zelikow, wrote: “To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. ...Ultimately the question of the origin of the funds is of little practical significance.”
33. The Times of India reported that Indian Intelligence had traced the wire transfers of over $100,000 from British born terrorist and reported MI6 and ISI asset Omar Saeed Sheikh in the UAE to Mohamed Atta in Florida, on the orders of the head of Pakistani intelligence Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad. This was reportedly confirmed by the FBI. The Pakistani ISI chief Ahmad resigned immediately, but he has never been sought by US authorities for funding and participating in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
34. ISI chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was in Washington DC the week prior to 9/11, meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and other high ranking US officials including Tenet's replacement at CIA Porter Goss.
35. During the ISI chief's stay in Washington, Osama bin Laden was reportedly admitted to the Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi on September 10, 2001 by CBS News.
36. Osama bin Laden was also reportedly admitted to a US MILITARY HOSPITAL in Dubai, UAE, in July of 2001 for kidney dialysis treatment. There bin Laden is said to have met with the CIA station chief, Larry Mitchell.
37. Senator Bob Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments [Plural!] involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States." ..."I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true."
38. Senator Bob Graham also said: "High officials in [the Saudi Arabian] government, who I assume were not just rogue officials acting on their own, made substantial contributions to the support and wellbeing of two of these terrorists and facilitated their ability to plan, practise and then execute the tragedy of September 11." These investigations remain blocked, classified, covered-up and unresolved to this day by the Bush administration's clear Obstruction of Justice.
39. Senator and 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned, saying: "This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I'm not going to be part of that. I'm not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious."
40. At least 7 of the alleged "hijackers" were reported to be still alive. Neither the FBI nor the 9/11 Commission corrected the identities, and the government has treated the issue of who exactly attacked America on September 11th as relatively unimportant. The flight manifests released by the airlines did not contain any of the names of the hijackers (who supposedly bought tickets just like everybody else), and there are discrepancies in the number of persons reported to be onboard the airliners. This also has not been explained by officials, at all.
41. The Dulles Airport security camera video released as evidence of hijackers has no time or date stamp, nor any other coded information, which suggests that it may not be authentic.
42. The aircraft "black boxes" from the World Trade Center site were admittedly recovered by NYC Fireman Nicholas DeMassi. The FBI, NTSB and the 9/11 Commission all deny they were ever recovered at all.
43. Congress shoveled $15 Billion of taxpayer money to the airlines immediately after 9/11 as one of the first responses to the attacks.
44. The autopsy report from the Pentagon crash site contains no mention of any of the hijackers.
45. Up to 200 Israeli agents were arrested and detained in relation to September 11th. This includes five Mossad agents who were celebrating the World Trade Center job with "cries of joy and mockery." The Justice Department (sic) released all of the Israelis, and the entire matter was made "classified."
46. "According to several Weehawken neighbors of the [Israeli MOSSAD front operation] Urban Moving Systems warehouse, the FBI, upon searching the warehouse, discovered fertilizer, other chemicals for making explosives, pipes, caps, and traces of anthrax. After anthrax was discovered, investigators wearing hazardous material suits went through the warehouse."
47. "On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed [the anthrax drug] Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David..." The public was not warned about anthrax or alerted about Cipro for another six weeks, when anthrax-laden letters were sent through the mail to top Democratic congressmen and to others.
48. "Palestinians" were accused of committing the 9/11 attacks by Israeli MOSSAD operatives. One of the arrested MOSSAD agents told the police, “We are Israelis, we are not your problem. Your problems are our problem. Palestinians are the problem.” A phone call to the "Jersey City Police Department ...claimed 'Palestinians' in Arab clothes were seen celebrating the attacks." Was this MOSSAD referring to their own covert agents? At 9:43am on 9/11, "Abu Dhabi television reports it received a call from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claiming responsibility for crashing two planes into the WTC. However leading officials later deny the claim."
49. Israeli instant messaging firm Odigo received warnings of the World Trade Center attacks 2 hours before they occurred.
50. Zim American / Israeli Shipping broke its lease in the World Trade Center and evacuated one week before the attacks. The company is 49% owned by the Israeli government.
51. Although the Israeli government sent MOSSAD officers to "warn" the U.S. about imminent terror attacks in August 2001: "'They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement,' said a senior Israeli security official." Mixing Osama bin Laden together with his enemy Saddam Hussein has been a ridiculous propaganda exercise, and exposed as such.
52. Fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused a steel-framed building to completely collapse. Three gigantic steel-framed skyscrapers were alleged to have collapsed from the effects of fire, including the 47 story building 7 which was not hit by a plane. The Twin Towers and building 7 displayed numerous characteristics of controlled demolition including free fall speed, collapsing into footprints, pulverization of all the concrete, and the sounds and appearances of explosive charges, as reported by many eyewitnesses. Needless to say, this has not been investigated officially, because officials refuse to admit the possibility existed at all.
53. "Fire Engineering [Magazine] has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything."
54. "'The decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses from the WTC in the days immediately after 9/11 means definitive answers may never be known.'[NY Times] The next week, Fire Engineering magazine said: 'We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence ...The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately.'" (Griffin)
55. Ben Fountain, who worked in the South Tower, told People Magazine, "Over the past few weeks we'd been evacuated a number of times, which is unusual. I think they had an inkling something was going on."
56. On Thursday, September 6, 2001 bomb-sniffing dogs were removed and the security threat level at the World Trade Center was downgraded.
57. Scott Forbes who worked in the South Tower described a "power down" on the weekend before 9/11, which was corroborated by WTC janitor William Rodriquez in his RICO lawsuit. The power down knocked out communications, computer systems, and security cameras. Numerous workmen were reported, and the sounds of heavy construction, and a pervasive grey dust was found on the 97th floor by Forbes.
58. William Rodriguez also reported bombs in the basement levels and on various floors. After describing a series of explosions, Rodriguez heard that floor 65 had completely collapsed (nowhere near the plane impact zone). Rodriguez also claims to have heard construction on floor 34 affter the plane impacts, a floor that wasn't in use.
59. President Bush's brother Marvin Bush had been a director for Securacom (now Stratasec) that was in charge of security for the WTC, United Airlines and Dulles Airport (where Flight 77 originated). An Israeli security firm, ICTS International had security responsibilities at Boston Logan airport and other airports involved in the September 11th attacks.
60. On September 10, 2001 Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco, received a warning not to fly. He credited who he called "my security people at the airport." No FAA warnings had been issued however "in recent days."
61. "On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
62. "The author Salman Rushdie believes that US authorities knew of an imminent terrorist strike when they banned him from taking internal flights in Canada and the US only a week before the attacks. On September 3 the Federal Aviation Authority made an emergency ruling to prevent Mr Rushdie from flying unless airlines complied with strict and costly security measures."
63. "The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it provided 15 warnings to airlines regarding possible terrorist attacks -- including al Qaeda hijackings -- in the months leading up to September 11. ...The FAA mentioned Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda in alerts the agency sent to domestic airlines." At this same time, July 2001, the FAA inexplicably terminated a firearms certification program for commercial airline pilots, which had made it legal for pilots to be armed since 1961.
64. A military data mining operation called Able Danger created a presentation chart in 2000 that allegedly included four future 9/11 hijackers. Their recommendation to send the data to the FBI was thwarted by military lawyers and by higher ranking officers. Yellow stickers were placed over the photographs of Mohamed Atta and the others. Although this information was brought directly to several of the 9-11 Commissioners, including Phillip Zelikow, it was never mentioned in their final report.
65. Purported "lead hijacker" Mohamed Atta was already known to US intelligence when he was living in Germany. "He is 'reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives [and/or] for biological warfare.' ...'The US agents reported to have trailed Atta are said to have failed to inform the German authorities about their investigation,' even as the Germans are investigating many of his associates."
66. "Military records show that hijackers Saeed and Ahmed Alghamdi listed their address on driver licenses and car registrations as 10 Radford Blvd., a base roadway where residences for foreign-military flight trainees are located, according to Newsweek (9-15-2001) ...(A) now-mysteriously deceased, Pensacola naval flight instructor from the Royal Saudi Air Force had the same name [Alghamdi] and also lived and worked at the U.S. naval air base."
67. "U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in [the 9/11] terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s."
68. "Ali Mohamed was involved with most of the major al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests: ...the 1993 WTC bombing, the African Embassy bombings in 1998 and, even though he was arrested in late 1998, [Peter] Lance proposes that he also helped train some of the 9/11 hijackers in hijacking techniques. Astoundingly, Mohamed participated in these operations while also being a U.S. citizen, being enlisted in the U.S. military, ...and being an FBI informant in California. Importantly, ...he also had ties to the CIA."
69. While "Loose Change" is attacked for getting some things incorrect, the film does correctly describe Operation Northwoods, which was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962. The military planners expressly said: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington [DC]. ...Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping, and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions. ...We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). ...At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases."
70. And, while Operation Northwoods was not implemented, another U.S. state-sponsored terror campaign called Operation Gladio did murder innocent civilians across Europe at the orchestration of the CIA (BBC Documentary on Operation Gladio).
John Doraemi
Homepage:
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/
Comments
Hide the following 8 comments
They must have known about it in advance…
18.02.2007 06:30
I really don’t understand why some people just simply refuse to believe Bush and Co would not allow the killing of innocent people for a perceived political gain.
If they can live with killing 655,000 they can easily live with killing 3,000.
The only logical reason I can think off why people like GM refuse to believe the obvious is because they are more concerned about damaging their professional reputation than they are about uncovering the truth.
Shock and Awe
Nova Scotia knew about 911 before the event...
18.02.2007 07:54
I spoke with Augustus Augustus of the FBI regarding what I had learnt. He contacted me after I contacted the NYPD. I remember being shocked to hear the calming voice of the NYPD explaining that they had thousands of calls from folfs like myself who didn't and couldn't carry the burden of what they knew of 911 BEFORE THE EVENT.
I was leaked the information, not through the Al Qaida boogie man, but through a man connected to canadian government and the Nova Scotia privy council, to be exact.
Nova Scotian government was complicit in these crimes committed on American soil by North American governments colluding with other "democratic" governments.
The plains were not allowed to be diverted to Ottawa for fear of bombs and were sent to the less densely populated areas of Nova Scotia and Newfoundlland to land. Being a frequent flyer myself, I had seen many videos on the planes about emergency landings and the the blow up shoots that inflate and passengers should be directed to kick off their shoes, cross their arms and slide down.
Sept. 11, 2001, I drove out to YHZ Halifax international airport to see 60+ planes on the tarmac which was a spectacle for certain.
I foolishly expected the doors to be flying open and the people to all be sliding down...
NOTHING.
The people who could not be landed elsewhere due to bombs that could possibly be on planes were apparently completely safe in Nova Scotia and remained on the planes for some 6-8 hours.
WTF?
Bombs on planes, planes land... get people off planes safely ... yes ... no... ???
What a steaming pile of shite is 911 and it will be the ventual downfall of that old bastard Uncle Sam. Canada is tired of being his whore.
Charity Sweet XXX
Charity Sweet
e-mail:
charitysweet@hotmail.co.uk
Gagging the sceptics
19.02.2007 13:52
Since then, both George Bush and Tony Blair have sought to prevent al-Jazeera from airing video statements by Bin Laden, on the grounds of the preposterous schoolboy intrigue that they "might contain coded messages". Over the weekend the government sought to persuade British broadcasters to restrict their coverage of the war. Blair's spin doctors warned: "You can't trust them [the Taliban] in any way, shape, or form." While true, this applies with equal force to the techniques employed by Downing Street. When Alastair Campbell starts briefing journalists about "Spin Laden", it's a case of the tarantula spinning against the money spider.
If we are to preserve the progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom which President Bush claims to be defending, then we must question everything we see and hear. Though we know that governments lie to us in wartime, most people seem to believe that this universal rule applies to every conflict except the current one. Many of those who now accept that babies were not thrown out of incubators in Kuwait, and that the Belgrano was fleeing when it was hit, are also prepared to believe everything we are being told about Afghanistan and terrorism in the US.
There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. The magical appearance of the terrorists' luggage, passports and flight manual looks rather too good to be true. The dossier of "evidence" purporting to establish Bin Laden's guilt consists largely of supposition and conjecture. The ration packs being dropped on Afghanistan have no conceivable purpose other than to create the false impression that starving people are being fed. Even the anthrax scare looks suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing the public argument about extending the war to other countries, journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might as well have been labelled "a gift from Iraq". This could indeed be the work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would benefit from a shift in public opinion.
Democracy is sustained not by public trust but by public scepticism. Unless we are prepared to question, to expose, to challenge and to dissent, we conspire in the demise of the system for which our governments are supposed to be fighting. The true defenders of America are those who are now being told that they are anti-American.
George Monbiot (repost)
Homepage:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,574809,00.html
Really fed up with 9/11 'truth'
19.02.2007 15:08
give it a rest
sheesh
19.02.2007 17:26
So you clearly don't agree with George who doesn't appear to agree with any kind of LIHOP let alone "deliberate assistance", in fact YOU are a 9/11 truther, a "self hating 9/11 truth'er" perhaps?
You forget the more crazy theories, holograms and beam weapons -- the far out stuff in Loose Change is just the start... Yes this shit is crazy, but who's side are you on? The article above avoids the crazy stuff that is used to discredit anyone asking any questions about 9/11.
You are "Really fed up with 9/11 'truth'" -- like the 9/11 truth momement is the problem, not capitalism, not the permanent "war on terror", not climate change, not the possible nuking of Iran and WW3...
Get angry with the system, not it's victims, or you are just another part of the problem and not part of the solution.
joker
George Monbiot Queries (from Media Lens)
20.02.2007 01:54
MEDIA LENS ALERT: CENTRES OF POWER
George Monbiot Queries Media Lens - Part 1 & 2
27-28 October 2003
maria
Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11
20.02.2007 04:09
by Bill Christison
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 14, 2006
However horrendous the crimes of two of the world’s great liars and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, it is imperative that we not let the deeds of Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush distract us from another recent event.
The U.S. alliance with Israel and the power of the lobby that lets Israel so easily influence U.S. foreign policy have been major factors in allowing the monstrous slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. What is happening in these lands may also encourage Olmert and Bush to start new hostilities in Syria and heavy, possibly nuclear, bombings in Iran -- and this entire mess of neocon pottage may lead to a new World War and clashes of civilizations and religious fundamentalisms that these two wretched politicians seem quite literally to want to impose on the rest of us. It’s a tough case to make that anything else going on in the world -- anywhere -- could possibly be of equal importance.
But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars’ Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001. Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days.
Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts.
Let’s address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.
ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the “hijackers,” and the passengers. The “official story,” as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, “At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed.” This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.
TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.
If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many “Who done it” questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a “Pearl Harbor” event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, “transform” the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.
These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the “official story” of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions.
Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following.
THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some “conspiracy theorists” as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation.
FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft.
FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers’ bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash).
SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations?
SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government’s charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers.
EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario.
NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes.
It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video “Loose Change.”
To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.
A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that “more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” The poll also found that “16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.”
A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a “big one” if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were “unsure.” The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, “despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can’t even muster 50 percent popular support.”
Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject.
This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world.
At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year’s congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process.
A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths.
This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it.
Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives them security -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November.
In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process.
Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies.
At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars’ Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that “neocon fascist madmen” had perpetrated the 9/11 “myth.” He went on to say, “The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth’s perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events.”
Let’s give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers.
Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies. He can be reached at:
Bill Christison
CHOMSKY FEARS 9/11 DEBATE
20.02.2007 15:18
CHOMSKY FEARS 9/11 DEBATE
simon