"Shortly before the first tower came down, I remember feeling the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and then debris just started flying everywhere. ... By the time the debris settled from the first collapse, we started to walk back east, toward West Street, and a few minutes later ... we basically had the same thing: The ground shook again, and we heard another terrible noise and the next thing we knew the second tower was coming down." [EMS Lieutenant Bradley Mann]
Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded strange seismic activity on September 11 that has still not been explained.
The Palisades seismic record shows that — as the collapses began — a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the earth. These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses. [AFP]
This 2.6 MB wmv video (stills below) shows the collapse of WTC 1 and it corroborates the above "seismic spikes". The camera was not hand held, it was directly connected to the ground via a tripod, and this allowed the camera to visually capture a ground shake which occurred ~13 seconds before the building collapsed. The video also shows an object fall from the right hand side of the building moments before the camera begins to shake. The close timing of these two events indicates they are linked.
Note that 6 seconds into the video the camera shakes for almost a second, too long to be a kick or a jostle.
Moments before the shake a large piece of debris is knocked from the right side of the building (see image on right).
... clearly shows new blooms of smoke exiting the opening on the front facing side of the building as well as to the right.
9/11 news broadcast: "...the second tower, the only one that was standing, tower number one ... we saw some kind of explosion, a lot of smoke come out of the top of the tower and then it collapsed down onto the streets below, much like we saw the first tower just about a half hour ago." [89kB mp3 download]
Genelle Guzman McMillan was on the 13th floor of WTC 1 when it collapsed:
McMillan heard a rumble. "A big explosion," she now calls it. "The wall I was facing just opened up, and it threw me on the other side," she says. McMillan looked for Gonzalez. "I was still holding Rosa's hand," McMillan says. "But she pulled away." McMillan remembers Gonzalez trying to climb the stairs. "I got up," McMillan says. "And I tried to go behind her. That's when the rubble just kept coming down." [Bergen Record]
"We're stuck on the stairs for a while. We finally got down to the lobby, and then when we get to the lobby there was this big explosion."
This video shows two perspectives of the collapse. The inset video shows the camera shake at roughly six seconds. Five seconds later the main video shows smoke appearing at the building's base.
Here is the definition of conventional fire smoke:
The smoke released by any type of fire (forest, brush, crop, structure, tires, or waste) is a mixture of particles and chemicals produced by incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials. All smoke contains particulate matter (PM or soot). Dark smoke implies the presence of soot. Soot is produced when a fire is oxygen starved, or has just been extinguished. Soot also has a high thermal capacity and may act to rob a fire of heat by carrying it away.
Here is a photograph showing conventional fires in the twin towers on 9/11:
Here is a photograph showing the area of the World Trade Center on 9/16/2001:
Here are the temperatures of the fires burning in the WTC wreckage on that day:
Conventional fires burning under tons of rubble would be oxygen starved, therefore the smoke produced would be black, not white. Also, large amounts of soot would have been produced in five days, therefore the temperatures of the oxygen starved fires should have been significantly lower.
The fires in the WTC wreckage were not conventional fires.
Were there additional explosive charges and additional bombers?
A brief overview of the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing:
On April 17, 1995 Timothy McVeigh reportedly picked up a 20-foot Ryder truck from Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City. The truck was filled with roughly 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, a highly volatile motor-racing fuel-a mixture also known as Kinepak or ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil).
At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the truck exploded in the street in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. About 90 minutes later, McVeigh was stopped by an Oklahoma state trooper for driving a vehicle without a license plate, who then arrested him on a firearms charge. Two days later he was charged in the bombing. His friend Terry Nichols was arrested in Kansas, and formally charged with the bombing on May 10.
There are many problems with the official story of the bombing. Let's start with McVeigh's whereabouts on April 17.
McVeigh had been filmed by a security camera at a nearby McDonald's 24 minutes before the time stamped on the truck rental agreement, wearing clothes that did not match either of the men seen at Elliott's.
There is no plausible explanation of how he traveled the mile and a quarter from McDonald's to the rental agency, carless and alone as he claims, without getting soaked in the rain.
The three people interviewed agreed John Does 1 and 2 were dry. According to Stephen Jones, who has seen the interview transcripts, it took 44 days for the FBI to convince the car rental agency owner that John Doe 1 was Timothy McVeigh. And in the end they did not dare put him on the witness stand, for fear of what might happen under cross-examination.
There is also an unanswered question with regard to the truck, namely what was the Army doing with a Ryder Truck just before the Murrah blast?
"...here's now what we are starting to learn about the succession, or what someone obviously hoped would be a succession of explosions. The first bomb that was in the federal building did go off ... the second explosive was found and defused. The third explosive that was found and they are working on it right now ... both the second and third explosives, if you can imagine this, were larger than the first. ... It is just incredible to think that there was that much heavy artillery that was somehow moved into the downtown Oklahoma City federal building."
"...this is the work of a sophisticated group, this is a very sophisticated device, and it has to have been done by an explosives expert."
Before proceeding to the acoustical data, let me explain a little something about explosives and how people perceive them.
I work in special effects. In films, great use is made of low velocity explosives such as untamped black powder and ANFO because they are low velocity explosives. With a great whoosh and roar they belch forth with fire and smoke in a manner that has caused folks to drop their popcorn in matinees ever since sound came in.
Movies have conditioned people to expect a certain look and sound to explosions, all based on very low velocity explosives. In a stunning ironic twist, moviegoers seem to perceive the slower explosions as more powerful.
Demolition experts will tell you that high brissive or high velocity explosives actually are more powerful, as they build up a powerful shock wave. However, except for actually collapsing a structure, such explosives are unsuitable for film. The blast is over so quickly it can be missed while the film is moving between one frame and the next. There is very little visible smoke and flash, and the "crack" of a C-4 cutter charge is downright disappointing to hear.
Thus, the average person's awareness of what an explosion is supposed to look and sound like is based on the movies and low velocity explosives only. In not knowing what high velocity explosives sound like or feel like (as the shock wave moves through the earth), many people might not understand what they have heard or felt on April 19th.
This is the dictation tape made by a lawyer which captures the sounds of the blast which destroyed the Oklahoma Federal Building on April 19th, 1995. Note the sounds of a rattle which precedes the blast by one second. This sound is the surface wave from the ANFO Truck Bomb which arrives ahead of the airborne concussion, traveling through the Earth's surface. 4.2 seconds ahead of the start of the rattle, a "thump" is heard on the tape, overlapping the second syllable of the word "attorneys".
An airborne event which arrives at the correct place to be associated with event 1, if it originates at the same location as the truck bomb itself.
This marks the start of the arrival of the surface wave from the truck bomb. On the tape, this can be heard as a rattle building under the lawyer's voice. Note that unlike the lawyer's voiceprints, which show clear banding in frequency, the sounds from the truck bomb surface wave are smoothly distributed in the lower frequencies.
This is the arrival of the airborne concussion from the truck bomb. Like the surface wave, this signal lacks the striations of the lawyer's voice. The most notable difference is the sudden transition to high frequency components.
Note that the Surface Wave / Air Wave delays are identical in both cases, indicating similar distances from the recording device.
When I originally heard this tape, I discarded the "pop" at the -4.2 second mark as just noise on the tape. However, when the Water Board tape (which follows) also had an artifact at the -4.2 second mark, I ran a frequency domain audio spectrogram on the lawyer's dictation tape. The spike corresponding to the pop at the -4.2 second mark is circled. The other event marks were added later. The stripe at the top is electronic noise, possibly from the dictation machine itself.
The Oklahoma Water Board Tape
At the time when the Truck Bomb exploded outside the Murrah Federal Building on April 19th, The Oklahoma Water Board was meeting in a building diagonally across the street. 4.2 seconds prior to the truck bomb blast, a loud "thump" is heard on the tape, just as the speaker finishes the phrase," are four elements that I have to..".
On this tape, the speaker pauses after the thump is heard, and just prior to the main blast, if you listen real close, other voices can be heard just starting to speak up.
From the above evidence, it is clear that an event which generated a high frequency surface wave which preceded the main truck bomb blast by 4.2 seconds. This event was recorded at two different locations at distances of 100 yards and 1/3 of a mile. Because the 4.2 second interval remains constant at both distances, theories of mechanism producing echoes are eliminated. Because the spectrogram of the lawyer's tape shows BOTH surface and airborne waves separated by 4.2 seconds from BOTH surface and airborne waves of the truck bomb, arguments of a surface/air phenomenon are invalid. Two events at the Murrah building 4.2 seconds apart produced two sets of surface/air pairs 4.2 seconds apart at the lawyer's office.
The Seismographic Records from Norman Oklahoma
These images are scans of the seismographic output from the Norman Oklahoma Z-axis recorder for April 19th and May 23rd; the bombing and the demolition respectively. This is the raw data which led Ray Brown and Charles Mankin to decide that there may have been a second explosion. It turns out that the 10 second delay is caused by differing propagation times through the layers of shale and sandstone that lie under Oklahoma City.
April 19th: The Bombing of the Murrah Building
The FAX cover logo from the Oklahoma Geological Survey
May 23rd: The Sequenced Demolition of the Murrah Building
The additional spikes on this record are caused by wind flexing the radio antenna which is used to transmit the data to the Oklahoma Geological Survey.
Seismographic record of the Murrah Building Demolition
Note that the 8 second long sequenced demolition of the remainder of the Murrah Building yielded a trace the same length as the original bombing. The first trace, if indeed a single explosion, should be shorter. But it isn't, suggesting that BOTH events consisted of multiple sequenced detonations over several seconds' duration.
The Murrah Building Cover-up (literally)
The minister who married my wife and I was in OK City right after the Murrah Building bomb(s) exploded, and he volunteered to help dig for survivors. He told of three very odd occurrences. In the first, he was required to show his ID six times before being allowed to help look for survivors. In the second, he confirmed the stories told by others that men in suits and ties were literally stepping over the wounded in their haste to gather up files and certain other items in the debris.
Lastly, and the oddest story of all, he told of more men in suits and ties taping plastic sheeting over portions of the building wreckage! The plastic sheeting used was very thin, could not possibly provide any mechanical support for the covered items, and seemed to serve no other purpose than to conceal the wrapped object from view. This story has also been confirmed by other witnesses.
Finally, a photo surfaced which confirms this story (see right).
Note at the very right edge of the photo a large piece of the building covered in shiny black plastic, partly obscured by the flat piece of floor leaning against it. Note the ladder to get a sense of the size of the covered object.
A year’s work finally finished. Dan Fraunfelter counted himself lucky when he landed a job working on the first phase of the massive Pentagon renovation project. When the military complex was originally built, it was constructed in five, chevron-shaped wedges. Each chevron, more than 1 million square feet in size, accommodating roughly 5,000 workers, was designed as a stand-alone building with its own separate utility system. The unique design was meant to make the entire complex stronger (if one section of the building was suddenly disabled, the others could function regularly without disruption.)
But it also lent itself particularly well to renovation. Even though the Pentagon is massive—larger than three Empire State Buildings, the face on each of the five sides slightly longer than three football fields— the wedge construction allowed engineers to remake the building one, easy-to-close-off section at a time. Contractors could simply move workers, seal off a wedge, and install new features like reinforced steel columns and two-inch-thick blast-resistant windows. Fraunfelter, a 24-year-old who studies architecture part time at Northern Virginia Community College, had long been fascinated by the Pentagon. When his firm, Amec Construction, won the general contract for Wedge 1, he plunged into the job eagerly, anxious to explore every square inch of the physical structure.
On Sept. 11, the contract officially complete, Fraunfelter was finishing up a few last punch-list items. He arrived on-site at 7 a.m. to prepare for an 8 a.m. tenant meeting. It was a routine job-completion task, a meeting where tenants handed over a list of final fix-it items: touch-up painting, leaking pipes, etc. [MSNBC]
American Airlines Flight 77 struck the portion of the building that had already been renovated. It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The steel reinforcement, bolted together to form a continuous structure through all of the Pentagon's five floors, kept that section of the building from collapsing for 30 minutes--enough time for hundreds of people to crawl out to safety.
The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows--2 inches thick and 2,500 pounds each--that stayed intact during the crash and fire. It had fire doors that opened automatically and newly built exits that allowed people to get out.
"This was a terrible tragedy, but I'm here to tell you that if we had not undertaken these efforts in the building, this could have been much, much worse," Evey said. "The fact that they happened to hit an area that we had built so sturdily was a wonderful gift."
The rest of the Pentagon would not have fared as well.
The fire that swept through the building caused the greatest damage in an unrenovated section with no sprinkler system, heavy windows or steel reinforcements. But many of the offices there were empty in anticipation of the renovation.
While perhaps 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there Tuesday, officials said. [LATimes]
Most of Marine Aviation had just the weekend before been moved to the "Butler building," an extension of the Pentagon and about 200 yards from where the impact occurred, not nearly as close as their previous offices. [mca-marines.org]
Normally 5000 people work in [wedge 2], but by September 11 renovation of this second wedge was underway. Three months earlier most of the 5000 employees who work in wedge 2 were relocated to temporary offices elsewhere.
KING: Michael, the Pentagon was kind of lucky in a sense, wasn't it?
FLOCCO: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
KING: The side they hit wasn't that populated and it didn't make a direct, full -- like top of the Pentagon hit, right?
FLOCCO: Correct. Also, the other contributing factors -- fewer engines -- was the fact that it hit initially on the newly renovated section that had (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wire inside of -- able to withstand more of an impact.
Plus, some of the columns and the windows had previously been reinforced for the first phase of the renovation. It was a five-phase renovation program. The first phase had just been completed only a week before. And where the plane hit was under restructured, reinforced part of it. So initially, it hit a very solid part and then, glanced off of that and went into the old section that had just been evacuated for phase two renovation. Had it hit anywhere else, it could have been catastrophic. [CNN]
It's September 11 all over again - eight years on. The George W Bush administration is out. The "global war on terror" is still on, renamed "overseas contingency operations" by the Barack Obama administration. Obama's "new strategy" - a war escalation - is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. "Al-Qaeda" remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 - the neo-cons' "new Pearl Harbor" - remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the young 21st century.
It's useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites' political operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment highlight Dr Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 "war on terror" is a "mythical historical narrative".
The following questions, some multi-part - and most totally ignored by the 9/11 Commission - are just the tip of the immense 9/11 iceberg. A hat tip goes to the indefatigable work of 911truth.org; whatreallyhappened.com; architects and engineers for 9/11 truth; the Italian documentary Zero: an investigation into 9/11; and Asia Times Online readers' e-mails.
None of these questions has been convincingly answered - according to the official narrative. It's up to US civil society to keep up the pressure. Eight years after the fact, one fundamental conclusion is imperative. The official narrative edifice of 9/11 is simply not acceptable.
Fifty questions 1) How come dead or not dead Osama bin Laden has not been formally indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as responsible for 9/11? Is it because the US government - as acknowledged by the FBI itself - has not produced a single conclusive piece of evidence?
2) How could all the alleged 19 razor-blade box cutter-equipped Muslim perpetrators have been identified in less than 72 hours - without even a crime scene investigation?
3) How come none of the 19's names appeared on the passenger lists released the same day by both United Airlines and American Airlines?
4) How come eight names on the "original" FBI list happened to be found alive and living in different countries?
5) Why would pious jihadi Mohammed Atta leave a how-to-fly video manual, a uniform and his last will inside his bag knowing he was on a suicide mission?
6) Why did Mohammed Atta study flight simulation at Opa Locka, a hub of no less than six US Navy training bases?
7) How could Mohammed Atta's passport have been magically found buried among the Word Trade Center (WTC)'s debris when not a single flight recorder was found?
8) Who is in the possession of the "disappeared" eight indestructible black boxes on those four flights?
9) Considering multiple international red alerts about a possible terrorist attack inside the US - including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's infamous August 6, 2001, memo - how come four hijacked planes deviating from their computerized flight paths and disappearing from radar are allowed to fly around US airspace for more than an hour and a half - not to mention disabling all the elaborate Pentagon's defense systems in the process?
10) Why the secretary of the US Air Force James Roche did not try to intercept both planes hitting the WTC (only seven minutes away from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey) as well as the Pentagon (only 10 minutes away from McGuire)? Roche had no less than 75 minutes to respond to the plane hitting the Pentagon. 11) Why did George W Bush continue to recite "My Pet Goat" in his Florida school and was not instantly absconded by the secret service?
12) How could Bush have seen the first plane crashing on WTC live - as he admitted? Did he have previous knowledge - or is he psychic?
13) Bush said that he and Andrew Card initially thought the first hit on the WTC was an accident with a small plane. How is that possible when the FAA as well as NORAD already knew this was about a hijacked plane?
14) What are the odds of transponders in four different planes be turned off almost simultaneously, in the same geographical area, very close to the nation's seat of power in Washington, and no one scrambles to contact the Pentagon or the media?
15) Could defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld explain why initial media reports said that there were no fighter jets available at Andrews Air Force Base and then change the reports that there were, but not on high alert?
16) Why was the DC Air National Guard in Washington AWOL on 9/11?
17) Why did combat jet fighters of the 305th Air Wing, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey not intercept the second hijacked plane hitting the WTC, when they could have done it within seven minutes?
18) Why did none of the combat jet fighters of the 459th Aircraft Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base intercept the plane that hit the Pentagon, only 16 kilometers away? And since we're at it, why the Pentagon did not release the full video of the hit?
19) A number of very experienced airline pilots - including US ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a former fighter jet pilot - revealed that, well, only crack pilots could have performed such complex maneuvers on the hijacked jets, while others insisted they could only have been accomplished by remote control. Is it remotely believable that the hijackers were up to the task?
20) How come a substantial number of witnesses did swear seeing and hearing multiple explosions in both towers of the WTC?
21) How come a substantial number of reputed architects and engineers are adamant that the official narrative simply does not explain the largest structural collapse in recorded history (the Twin Towers) as well as the collapse of WTC building 7, which was not even hit by a jet?
22) According to Frank de Martini, WTC's construction manager, "We designed the building to resist the impact of one or more jetliners." The second plane nearly missed tower 1; most of the fuel burned in an explosion outside the tower. Yet this tower collapsed first, long before tower 2 that was "perforated" by the first hit. Jet fuel burned up fast - and by far did not reach the 2000-degree heat necessary to hurt the six tubular steel columns in the center of the tower - designed specifically to keep the towers from collapsing even if hit by a Boeing 707. A Boeing 707 used to carry more fuel than the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 that actually hit the towers.
23) Why did Mayor Rudolph Giuliani instantly authorized the shipment of WTC rubble to China and India for recycling?
24) Why was metallic debris found no less than 13 kilometers from the crash site of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania? Was the plane in fact shot down - under vice president Dick Cheney's orders?
25) The Pipelineistan question. What did US ambassador Wendy Chamberlain talk about over the phone on October 10, 2001, with the oil minister of Pakistan? Was it to tell him that the 1990s-planned Unocal gas pipeline project, TAP (Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/ Pakistan), abandoned because of Taliban demands on transit fees, was now back in business? (Two months later, an agreement to build the pipeline was signed between the leaders of the three countries).
26) What is former Unocal lobbyist and former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad up to in Afghanistan?
27) How come former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Niak said in mid-July 2001 that the US had already decided to strike against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban by October? The topic was discussed secretly at the July Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, according to Pakistani diplomats.
28) How come US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told FBI agent John O'Neill in July 2001 to stop investigating al-Qaeda's financial operations - with O'Neill instantly moved to a security job at the WTC, where he died on 9/11?
29) Considering the very intimate relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the ISI and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is Bin Laden alive, dead or still a valuable asset of the ISI, the CIA or both?
30) Was Bin Laden admitted at the American hospital in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on July 4, 2001, after flying from Quetta, Pakistan, and staying for treatment until July 11?
31) Did the Bin Laden group build the caves of Tora Bora in close cooperation with the CIA during the 1980s' anti-Soviet jihad?
32) How come General Tommy Franks knew for sure that Bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora in late November 2001?
33) Why did president Bill Clinton abort a hit on Bin Laden in October 1999? Why did then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf abort a covert ops in the same date? And why did Musharraf do the same thing again in August 2001?
34) Why did George W Bush dissolve the Bin Laden Task Force nine months before 9/11?
35) How come the (fake) Bin Laden home video - in which he "confesses" to being the perpetrator of 9/11 - released by the US on December 13, 2001, was found only two weeks after it was produced (on November 9); was it really found in Jalalabad (considering Northern Alliance and US troops had not even arrived there at the time); by whom; and how come the Pentagon was forced to release a new translation after the first (botched) one?
36) Why was ISI chief Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmad abruptly "retired" on October 8, 2001, the day the US started bombing Afghanistan?
37) What was Ahmad up to in Washington exactly on the week of 9/11 (he arrived on September 4)? On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad was having breakfast on Capitol Hill with Bob Graham and Porter Goss, both later part of the 9/11 Commission, which simply refused to investigate two of its members. Ahmad had breakfast with Richard Armitage of the State Department on September 12 and 13 (when Pakistan negotiated its "cooperation" with the "war on terror") and met all the CIA and Pentagon top brass. On September 13, Musharraf announced he would send Ahmad to Afghanistan to demand to the Taliban the extradition of Bin Laden. 38) Who inside the ISI transferred US$100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the summer of 2001 - under orders of Ahmad himself, as Indian intelligence insists? Was it really ISI asset Omar Sheikh, Bin Laden's information technology specialist who later organized the slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi? So was the ISI directly linked to 9/11?
39) Did the FBI investigate the two shady characters who met Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi in Harry's Bar at the Helmsley Hotel in New York City on September 8, 2001?
40) What did director of Asian affairs at the State Department Christina Rocca and the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef discuss in their meeting in Islamabad in August 2001?
41) Did Washington know in advance that an "al-Qaeda" connection would kill Afghan nationalist commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, aka "The Lion of the Panjshir", only two days before 9/11? Massoud was fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda - helped by Russia and Iran. According to the Northern Alliance, Massoud was killed by an ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda axis. If still alive, he would never have allowed the US to rig a loya jirga (grand council) in Afghanistan and install a puppet, former CIA asset Hamid Karzai, as leader of the country.
42) Why did it take no less than four months before the name of Ramzi Binalshibh surfaced in the 9/11 context, considering the Yemeni was a roommate of Mohammed Atta in his apartment cell in Hamburg?
43) Is pathetic shoe-bomber Richard Reid an ISI asset?
44) Did then-Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence tell the CIA in 2001 that 25 terrorist pilots had been training for suicide missions?
45) When did the head of German intelligence, August Hanning, tell the CIA that terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft?"
46) When did Egyptian President Mubarak tell the CIA about an attack on the US with an "airplane stuffed with explosives?"
47) When did Israel's Mossad director Efraim Halevy tell the CIA about a possible attack on the US by "200 terrorists?"
48) Were the Taliban aware of the warning by a Bush administration official as early as February 2001 - "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs?"
49) Has Northrop-Grumman used Global Hawk technology - which allows to remotely control unmanned planes - in the war in Afghanistan since October 2001? Did it install Global Hawk in a commercial plane? Is Global Hawk available at all for commercial planes?
50) Would Cheney stand up and volunteer the detailed timeline of what he was really up to during the whole day on 9/11?
On 9/11 there was no reaction from the USAF as hijacked aircraft flew through US airspace and plowed into buildings. This lack of response is inconceivable unless the USAF was stood down.
Careful planning made this easy to achieve.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A (dated 1 June 2001) changed the protocol so that any requests for "potentially lethal support" had to come explicitly from the secretary of defense, leaving commanders in the field unable to respond to hijackings in any meaningful fashion.
VOICE TWO: Do we want to think about scrambling aircraft? VOICE ONE: Oh, God, I don't know. VOICE TWO: That's a decision somebody's going to have to make probably in the next ten minutes. VOICE ONE: Oh, you know, everybody just left the room.
...and this effectively stood down the USAF when it was needed most.
Dr. Robert Bowman, a man so decorated with medals and honors they could fill a patriotic Christmas tree, has joined the ranks of those who are declaring that the attacks on 9/11 were an inside job. As right wing world comes tumbling down, more prominent individuals are coming forward with their doubts and concerns with the official report. Some have little more than the powers of their own deduction, others are expert engineers and physicists.
Dr. Bowman has inside knowledge of military protocol, and has stated that it is apparent to him that the massive military exercises that took place on September 11, 2001 were intentionally staged to confuse civil defenses. The person who headed those exercises? None other then Richard Cheney, otherwise known as Dead-eye Dick. [Choice Changes]
"If a stand down order were given it probably would have to come from at least as high as the vice president."
There was a young man who came in and said to the vice president "The plane [Flight 77] is 50 miles out" [from Washington], "The plane is 30 miles out", and when it got down to "The plane is 10 miles out" the young man also said to the vice president "Do the orders still stand?", and the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said "Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary?"
The US military has spent billions of dollars developing stealth aircraft which are invisible to radar so they can mount surprise attacks on adversaries, but it seems they should have saved their money and bought a fleet of airliners because they appear to be far more effective.
On 9/11 the world's only military superpower was apparently oblivious to the location of rogue airliners in it's airspace for over an hour, and military commanders were left perplexed on how to deal with the situation of hijackers using these planes as flying bombs.
This confusion resulted in fighter jets flying around aimlessly whilst the hierarchy fully assessed what was going on, and this total lack of cohesion ultimately led to the loss of nearly 3000 lives.
All that was required to overcome America's military might on 9/11 were 19 hijackers on 4 airliners.
Does this sound plausible to you?
It's what you're expected to believe.
NORAD was unusually prepared on 9/11, because it was conducting a week-long semiannual exercise called Vigilant Guardian.
On 9/11, North American Aerospace Defense Command's (Norad) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) was fully staffed, its key officers and enlisted supervisors already manning the operations center "battle cab." [Aviation Week]
COLONEL ROBERT MARR, US AIR FORCE: We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board. [...] We had 14 aircraft on alert, seven sites, two aircraft at each site. [ABC News]
That's a ratio of 3.5 'hot' fighter jets per hijacked airliner.
The above map shows that all of the hijacked planes transponders were turned off during their flights. This does not hide the plane as it can still be tracked by skin paint, but it hides the plane's altitude and it should immediately call attention to the aircraft.
The USAF response against Flight 11
None
The USAF response against Flight 175
8:45 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 175 is taken over by five hijackers who use knives, Mace and the threat of a bomb. Both pilots are killed and the plane is diverted southward to New York City.
8:53 a.m. - Unaware that their intended target has already crashed into the World Trade Center, the F-15s from Otis Air Force Base are sent to military-controlled airspace off Long Island and ordered to remain in a holding pattern until between 9:09 and 9:13 a.m. [National Geographic]
Flight 11 had crashed into World Trade Center 1, and Flight 175 was hijacked and heading toward New York.
Fighter jets were ordered to stay in a holding pattern off Long Island.
The last moments of Flight 93 were viewed from another aircraft...
"Executive 956: OK, I think we got him in sight." [Memory Hole]
...so it stands to reason that other planes reported seeing Flight 93 during its flight, therefore the military could have easily located the plane. That being said, why didn't the FAA and military locate of all of the hijacked aircraft through planes which were known to be in their vicinities?
Maybe they did, but we might never know...
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department. [New York Times 5/6/04]
The US military knew Flight 77 had been hijacked at approximately 08:50:
During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the control of hijackers, up to the moment it struck the west side of the Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the building were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do. [New York Times]
A "mystery plane" had a birds eye view of the Pentagon...
"About ten minutes ago there was a white jet circling overhead. Now, you generally don't see planes in the area over the White House. That is restricted airspace." ... "[C]omparison of the CNN video and an official Air Force photo suggests the mystery plane is among the military's most sensitive aircraft, an Air Force E-4B. ... There are many commercial versions of the 747, obviously, that look similar, but I don't think any of them that have the communications pod like the E-4, the Air Force E-4 does behind the cockpit." [CNN]
Flight 77's approach into Washington was tracked on radar:
Eight minutes before the crash, at 9:30 a.m. EDT, radar tracked the plane as it closed to within 30 miles of Washington. [CBS News]
"There was an unidentified plane to the south of Dulles moving at a very high rate of speed" ... Traveling at 750 km/h the plane is headed straight for the protected airspace covering the capital and the White House...
This map shows Andrews AFB is roughly 11 miles from the Pentagon:
This page from the Andrews AFB web site (removed 9/12) shows the base had F-16 fighter jets which could have intercepted Flight 77.
Instead, F-16s were scrambled from Langley AFB which is 120 miles south of the Pentagon at 9:30 a.m.
A typical F-16.
At first, the planes were directed toward New York at top speed, and probably reached 600 m.p.h. within two minutes, General Haugen said [obviously they were on a go-slow]. Then, flying in formation, they were vectored toward the west and given a new flight target: Reagan National Airport. [New York Times]
Why didn't the E-4B order the fighters to defend Washington?
Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. [CBS News]
At 09:38 the Pentagon was hit:
"We heard what sounded like a missile, then we heard a loud boom," said Tom Seibert, 33, a network engineer at the Pentagon. "We were sitting there and watching this thing from New York, and I said, you know, the next best target would be us. And five minutes later, boom." [Guardian]
Question: How was a plane which was known to be hostile able to have an unimpeded 48 minute joyride around US airspace before slamming into the heart of the US military?
HOLLYWOOD star Charlie Sheen has stunned Americans by claiming the US Government were behind the 9/11 atrocity.
Sheen appealed to President Barack Obama to hold a new investigation into the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC.
Sheen, 44, the highest paid actor on US TV, said the official 9/11 story is "an absolute fairytale, a complete work of fiction and not a very good one".
He claims the attacks served as "the pretext for the dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights" and to justify war on Iraq.
He also hints that Osama bin Laden works for the US government.
Top Chinese diplomats in Washington on Tuesday warned against "trade wars," as President Obama faces a looming decision on whether to erect barriers against the import of Chinese tires.
"Trade wars between China and the United States is the last thing that our two countries need right now," said Xie Feng, deputy chief of mission for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
The Obama administration currently is facing a decision on whether to impose tariffs against Chinese tires, following the recommendation of the U.S. International Trade Commission. The president has until Sept. 17 to decide.
The United Steelworkers of America, the union that represents many of the 8,000 American workers who it says have lost or will lose their jobs because of competition from Chinese tire production, called Tuesday for the White House to go further than the ITC recommendation and impose a tariff of higher than 55 percent.
The Seen and the Unseen
If the US is dumb enough (and we might be) to impose a 55% tariff on Chinese tires, the first thing US manufacturers might do is jack up prices. Unlike what the union clowns think, the result would be fewer cars and tires sold. Moreover, China's reaction might be to buy fewer US planes. Finally, there would be fewer jobs at the docks loading and unloading stuff.
Union clowns never look at the seen and unseen for their ridiculous proposals. In aggregate it is clear (at least it should be clear) that trade wars cost jobs.
Outrage In Canada
Earlier this year, restrictions in the stimulus packages caused outrage in Canada over "Buy American" provisions. Please consider Trade Wars Brewing In Economic Malaise.
Is this what the first trade war of the global economic crisis looks like?
Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting sewage pumps made outside of Toronto. After a Navy official spotted Canadian pipe fittings in a construction project at Camp Pendleton, Calif., they were hauled out of the ground and replaced with American versions. In recent weeks, other Canadian manufacturers doing business with U.S. state and local governments say they have been besieged with requests to sign affidavits pledging that they will only supply materials made in the USA.
Outrage spread in Canada, with the Toronto Star last week bemoaning "a plague of protectionist measures in the U.S." and Canadian companies openly fretting about having to shift jobs to the United States to meet made-in-the-USA requirements. This week, the Canadians fired back. A number of Ontario towns, with a collective population of nearly 500,000, retaliated with measures effectively barring U.S. companies from their municipal contracts -- the first shot in a larger campaign that could shut U.S. companies out of billions of dollars worth of Canadian projects.
This is not your father's trade war, a tit-for-tat over champagne or cheese. With countries worldwide desperately trying to keep and create jobs in the midst of a global recession, the spat between the United States and its normally friendly northern neighbor underscores what is emerging as the biggest threat to open commerce during the economic crisis.
The new buy American provisions, the company said, are being so broadly interpreted that Duferco Farrell is on the verge of shutting down. Part of an increasingly global supply chain that seeks efficiencies by spreading production among multiple nations, it manufactures coils at its Pennsylvania plant using imported steel slabs that are generally not sold commercially in the United States. The partially foreign production process means the company's coils do not fit the current definition of made in the USA -- a designation that the stimulus law requires for thousands of public works projects across the nation.
In recent weeks, its largest client -- a steel pipemaker located one mile down the road -- notified Duferco Farrell that it would be canceling orders. Instead, the client is buying from companies with 100 percent U.S. production to meet the new stimulus regulations. Duferco has had to furlough 80 percent of its workforce.
"You need to tell me how inhibiting business between two companies located one mile apart is going to save American jobs," said Bob Miller, Duferco Farrell's executive vice president. "I've got 600 United Steel Workers out there who are going to lose their jobs because of this. And you tell me this is good for America?"
The United States is not alone in throwing up domestic policies assailed by critics as protectionist. Britain and the Netherlands, for instance, are forcing banks receiving taxpayer bailouts to jump-start lending at home at the expense of overseas clients. French President Nicolas Sarkozy initially insisted that his nation's automakers move manufacturing jobs home in exchange for a government bailout, but backed down after outrage surged among his peers in the European Union, of which France is a central member.
No, Mr. Miller this is not good for US jobs, nor jobs in aggregate anywhere. But the union clowns are strongly in favor of it anyway.
By the way, geographic illiterates in the US need to make a note that Canada and Mexico are American. Brazil is too, but more specifically South American. North America and South America are continents and anyone from either continent is American.
The U.S. Commerce Department decided to impose duties of as much as 31 percent on steel pipe from China, agreeing with American producers such as U.S. Steel Corp. that the imports were supported by unfair subsidies, people familiar with the decision said.
The preliminary decision was to be released in a statement by the Commerce Department today, according to the people, who asked not to be identified before the announcement. The average duties on $2.8 billion in annual imports of the pipe, used in oil and gas wells, will be 21.3 percent, the people said.
The case, the largest so-called countervailing duty complaint filed against Chinese-made products, was brought by the United Steelworkers union; U.S. Steel, the largest U.S.- based steelmaker; U.S. operations of Evraz Group SA, Russia’s second-largest steelmaker; and Pennsylvania-based Wheatland Tube Co.
Tariffs Cost Jobs
The above article came out just minutes ago. I had not yet seen it when I wrote in Greenspan "Market Crisis Will Happen Again": One of the biggest risks now to the global economy is a huge round of protectionism. Unfortunately, it's probably only a matter of time before Congress overreacts. That's human nature, Congressional style.
Pray tell, how is charging 21.3% more for steel pipe going to encourage investment? The answer is: it will not. Not a single job will be saved by this ridiculous measure. Instead, China is likely to react by buying more planes from Europe, or wheat from Australia, instead of either from the US. Alternatively, trade just shrinks across the board in other ways.
It will be interesting to see if the US follows up on tire threats or Congress follows through with earlier threats of labeling China a "currency manipulator". The irony is, via practices at the Fed and treasury, the US is the world's biggest manipulator of currencies as well as the world's biggest hypocrite about free trade, especially in regards to agricultural goods.
On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 19:
Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher, de recevoir et de répandre, sans considérations de frontières, les informations et les idées par quelque moyen d'expression que ce soit.(adopté à Paris le 10 décembre 1948)
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“You are evil thieving bastards, you have reaped ungodly profits in your behemoth casino scams, then lost, only to turn around and usurp the wealth of this great nation by the outright rape and pillage of middle class Americans’ whose sweat and toil built it. The biggest ripoff in the history of the world is padding your bonus checks with the Federal Government as your co-conspirators. Every last one of you should be rotting in prison.” - American Middle Class Representative
The __Wall Street - Main Street__ confrontation has been inevitable ever since the banksters decided to do anything and everything to perpetuate the game of Heads We Win, Tails You Lose, this time openly at the middle class’ dime. It appears it has now emerged fully into the open.
Many respected senior members of the military, intelligence services, and government have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report. Some even allege government complicity in the terrible acts of 9/11. Below are the highly revealing public statements on this vital topic of over 50 prominent public servants with links for verification and further investigation.
The collective voices of these respected senior officials along with over 100 esteemed professors, over 100 pilots and aviation professionals, and hundreds of architects and engineers give credibility to the claim that the 9/11 Commission Report is tragically flawed. These dedicated individuals from across the political spectrum are not irresponsible believers in some 9/11 conspiracy theory. Their sincere concern, backed by decades of service to their country, demonstrate that criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report is not only reasonable and responsible, it is in fact a patriotic duty.
SENIOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS QUESTION 9/11
Senator Max Cleland
Senator Max Cleland – Former member of the 9/11 Commission, resigned December 2003. U.S. Senator from Georgia 1996-2002. Currently serves on the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Administrator of U.S. Veterans Administration 1977-1981. Awarded Silver Star and Bronze Star for U.S. Army bravery in Viet Nam. Triple amputee from war injuries.
Boston Globe Article 11/13/03: "If this decision stands [to limit 9/11 Commission access to White House documents], I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised."
Transcript of audio interview 3/23/04: "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9/11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up." http://www.democracynow.org/...
Louis Freeh – Director of FBI, 1993-2001. Former U.S. District Court Judge for Southern District of New York, appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Former Deputy United States Attorney in New York. Former FBI agent. Former officer in United States Army.
Wall Street Journal 11/17/05: "Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of [lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed] Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it 'was not historically significant.' This astounding conclusion—in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings—raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself. No wonder the 9/11 families were outraged by these revelations and called for a 'new' commission."
General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret) – Commanding General of Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), 1981 - 1984. Also commanded U.S. Army’s Intelligence Center. Former head of Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence. 32-year Army career. Inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in 1990.
Video: "One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?" http://www.undersiegemovie.com... . Another video of General Stubblebine's testimony is available here.
Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Ford and Carter. Air Force fighter pilot, over 100 combat missions. PhD in Aeronautics, Nuclear Engineering.
Video: "A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story ... of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible. … There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up. Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney. I think the very kindest thing that we can say about George W. Bush and all the people in the U.S. Government that have been involved in this massive cover-up ... is that they were aware of impending attacks and let them happen. However even that is high treason and conspiracy to commit murder." http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid...
Raymond L. McGovern – Former Chairman, National Intelligence Estimates, CIA. Responsible for President’s Daily Brief (PDB) for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. 27-year CIA veteran. Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer.
Video: "I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 report is a joke. The question is: What’s being covered up? Is it gross malfeasance, gross negligence? Now there are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions. This is the bottom line for me; just as Hitler in 1933 cynically exploited the burning of the parliament building, the Reichstag, this is exactly what our President did in exploiting 9/11. The cynical way in which he played on our trauma, used it to justify attacking, making a war of aggression on a country that he knew had nothing to do with 9/11. That suffices for me. That’s certainly an impeachable offense." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwu0bNaUcOU
Francesco Cossiga – President of Italy, 1985-1992. Also served as Former Prime Minister, Undersecretary for Defense, and President of the Italian Senate.
Article Corriere della Sera, 11/30/07: Mr. Cossiga commenting on a purported new video from Osama bin Laden: "The non-authenticity of the video is supported by the fact that Osama bin Laden in it 'confessed' that Al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York. However, all of the democratic areas of America and of Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know full well that the disastrous attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad ... to falsely incriminate Arabic countries and to persuade the Western Powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan." Original article in Italian: http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_novembre...
Col. George Nelson, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority. 34-year Air Force career.
Essay: "The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden.
With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged.
As painful and heartbreaking as was the loss of innocent lives and the lingering health problems of thousands more, a most troublesome and nightmarish probability remains that so many Americans appear to be involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history." http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson....
Col. Ronald D. Ray
Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret) – Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during Reagan Administration. Highly decorated Vietnam veteran (two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart). Appointed by President George H.W. Bush to serve on American Battle Monuments Commission. From 1990 to 1994, served as Military Historian and Deputy Director of Field Operations for U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
Article: "The former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan Administration and a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and Colonel has gone on the record to voice his doubts about the official story of 9/11 - calling it ‘the dog that doesn't hunt.' Ray questioned the feasibility of having a budget of half a trillion dollars a year, yet not even being able to defend the Pentagon. 'Half a trillion dollars a year and a bunch of guys over in a cave in Afghanistan were able to penetrate that half a trillion dollar network that's supposed to provide Americans with national security.'" http://www.prisonplanet.com/...
Rep. Curt Weldon – Ten-term Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania. House Armed Services Committee Vice Chairman. Homeland Security Committee Vice Chairman.
U.S. House of Representatives Speech 10/19/05: "Intelligence officers ... identified [lead 9/11 hijacker] Mohammed Atta and three terrorists a year before 9/11, tried to transfer that information to the FBI, were denied, and the FBI Director has now said ... the FBI could have used it to perhaps prevent the hijackings. The 9/11 Commission totally ignored this entire story.
I am a strong supporter of our military. I am a strong supporter of President Bush. I say all of that, Mr. Speaker, because ... there is something desperately wrong here. I have met with at least 10 people who fully corroborate what [intelligence officer] Tony Shaffer says. This is not [about] Republicans or Democrats. It is about what is fundamental to this country."
Fox News 8/28/05: "'There's something very sinister going on here that really troubles me,' Weldon told Fox News on Thursday, blasting the 9/11 commission for not taking the claims more seriously. He said some panel members were trying to smear Shaffer and Able Danger. 'What's the 9/11 commission got to hide?'"
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army (ret) – Former Military Intelligence Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency. Member of Able Danger effort to target Al Qaeda’s global structure. Former Chief of the Army’s HUMINT [Human Intelligence] program. Awarded the Bronze Star for bravery for the first of his two combat tours to Afghanistan. 23-year military intelligence career.
Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee 2/15/06 (page 18) - “After contact by two separate members of the Able Danger team … the 9/11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review of investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a “preconceived” conclusion to the 9/11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9/11 staff ... as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that Able Danger’s findings were “urban legend.” http://www.abledan...
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Former Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Staff Member, Office of Director of the National Security Agency. 20-year Air Force veteran.
Essay: "Reading through the official 9/11 report, I quickly lost my focus – apparently emulating the 9/11 commission over the past 20 months. One wonders if the entire commission wasn't secretly replaced by pod people from the old Soviet Central Committee. I naively expected more constructive and useful information in the report." http://www.lewrockwell.com/...
Paul Craig Roberts, PhD – Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan. "Father of Reaganomics." Former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Currently Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.
Essay: "We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to 'pancake' at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...
Essay: "There are not many editors eager for writers to explore the glaring defects of the 9/11 Commission Report. One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02062006....
Morgan Reynolds, PhD – Chief Economist, Department of Labor under George W. Bush 2001-2002. Former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University.
Video: "I first began to suspect that 9/11 was in inside job when the Bush-Cheney Administration invaded Iraq. … We can prove that the government’s story is false." http://video... - Free video presentation of Dr. Reynolds
Essay: "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. The job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right. Unfortunately, getting it right in today’s 'security state' demands daring because explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11." http://www.lewrockwell.com/...
Catherine Austin Fitts – Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush. Former Managing Director of Wall Street investment bank, Dillon, Read & Co.
Audio Interview 9/9/04: Regarding 9/11: "The official story could not possibly have happened. It’s not possible. It’s not operationally feasible. ... The Commission was a whitewash." (About 45 minutes into the file.) http://157....
Essay: "The first category of people who benefited were those who are guilty and complicit in designing, implementing and financing the 9/11 operation. On such a sophisticated and successful covert operation, the people responsible would have had budgets and financing and would have organized the operation to maximize their political and financial benefits." http://globalresearch.ca/...
Major Scott Ritter, U.S. Marine Corps – Former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer and Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq 1991-1998.
Video: "I, like the others, am frustrated by the 9/11 Commission Report, by the lack of transparency on the part of the United States government, both in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch when it comes to putting out on the table all facts known to the 9/11 case." http://video.google.com/videoplay?...
Paul Hellyer – Former Minister of National Defense of Canada. Former Deputy Prime Minister. Former Member of House of Commons.
Video: Regarding 9/11: "I think the inquiry has been very shallow, very superficial. I would like to see a much tougher, more in-depth inquiry. I would like to see someone in a position of authority ask those questions and insist on getting answers. We have to try and get the truth. I hope that somebody has the courage and persistence to keep at it until we get it." http://www.septembereleventh.org/...
Andreas von Buelow, PhD – Former State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Defense of West Germany. Former Minister of Research and Technology. Member of Bundestag (Parliament) 1969-1994.
Video: Regarding 9/11 Commission inquiry: "The official story is so inadequate and far-fetched that there must be another one." http://video.google.com/...
Article/Interview: "The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes, and within one hour to drive them into their targets with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry." http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/VonBuelow....
Michael Meacher – Former Under Secretary for Industry, Under Secretary for Health and Social Security, Minister of Environment, and Member of the House of Commons (UK).
Video: Regarding the 9/11 Commission Report: "It was a 580-page avoidance of any serious explanation. The official investigative report says the US has never been able to find the sources of financing for 9/11. And then they say, 'That after all is a matter of no great importance.' I find that astonishing. It is a matter of absolutely central importance. It seems to me extraordinary that the United States with its stupendous military capabilities and the most technologically advanced country in the world completely and totally failed to follow up on these leads." http://video.google.com/...
General Leonid Ivashov – Joint Chief of Staff of Russian Armies on 9/11/2001. Chief of Department for General Affairs in Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense. Chief of Military Cooperation Department at Russian Federation’s Ministry of Defense. Secretary of Council of Defense Ministers of Community of Independant States (CIS).
Essay: Regarding 9/11: "Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude." http://www.physics911.net/ivashov....
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal – Former Foreign Minister of Egypt. Adviser to Egyptian Presidents Nasser and Sadat. Renowned Journalist and Editor.
Article in one of U.K.'s leading newspapers The Guardian: Regarding 9/11: "Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication."
William Christison – Former National Intelligence Officer and Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. 29-year CIA veteran.
Essay: "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. An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them." http://www.dissidentvoice.org...
Article: "David Griffin believes this all was totally an inside job - I've got to say I think that it was too. I have since decided that....at least some elements in this US government had contributed in some way or other to causing 9/11 to happen… The reason that the two towers in New York actually collapsed and fell all the way to the ground was controlled explosions rather than just being hit by two airplanes. All of the characteristics of these demolitions show that they almost had to have been controlled explosions." http://www.prisonplanet.com/...
Melvin A. Goodman – Senior Analyst, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, 1974-1976. Former Division Chief and Senior Analyst, Office of Soviet Affairs, CIA,1976 - 1986. Professor of International Security, National War College 1986-2004. Currently Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy and Adjunct Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University. Author or co-author of five books on international relations.
Congressional testimony: "I want to talk about the [9/11] Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is extremely important to understand the failure of the Commission." http://www.house.gov/mckinney/...
Robert Baer – Former CIA Case Officer, Specialist in Middle East, Directorate of Operations. Awarded Career Intelligence Medal. 21-year CIA veteran. Author of two nonfiction books about CIA operations, See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil
Audio Interview 6/9/06:Thom Hartmann: "Are you of the opinion there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government?" Robert Baer: "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." Hartmann: "And why is it not being investigated?" Baer: "Why isn't the WMD story being investigated? Why hasn't anybody been held accountable for 9/11? We held people accountable after Pearl Harbor. Why has there been no change in command? Why have there been no political repercussions? Why has there [not been] any sort of exposure on this?" http://www.911blogger.com/...
Essay: "Did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no." http://books.guardian.co....
Edward L. Peck – Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under Ronald Reagan. Former Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs at the State Department. U.S. Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq (1977-80). 32-year veteran of the Foreign Service.
Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
We want truthful answers to questions... As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
Morton Goulder – Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Warning under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter (1973-77). Founder of Sanders Associates.
Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
We want truthful answers to questions... As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
Fred Burks – Former State Department Interpreter for Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore, Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. 18-year State Department career.
Essay: "How is it possible that our military's highly touted missile detections systems could not locate Flight 77 in the 42 minutes it was known to be lost before it crashed into the heart of the defense system of the U.S.?
An even bigger question is why isn't our media asking these questions? Why isn't our military spending many millions of dollars to find out why military defense systems failed on 9/11? Why is it that the 9/11 Commission budget was far less than the budget allotted to the Challenger Disaster or even the Monica Lewinsky affair?" http://www.WantToKnow.info/911...
Major Douglas Rokke, PhD, U.S. Army (ret) – Former Director U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project.
Article: Regarding the impact at the Pentagon on 9/11/2001: "When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void of airplane parts, the size of the hole left in the building and the fact the projectile's impact penetrated numerous concrete walls, it looks like the work of a missile. And when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile." http://www.rense.com/....
Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force – Former Air Force fighter pilot, over 100 combat missions. Commercial pilot for Pan Am and United Airlines for 35 years. Had previously flown the actual two United airplanes that were hijacked on 9/11.
Article: "'The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S.' Wittenberg convincingly argued there was absolutely no possibility that Flight 77 could have 'descended 7,000 feet in two minutes, all the while performing a steep 270 degree banked turn before crashing into the Pentagon's first floor wall.'
'For a guy to just jump into the cockpit and fly like an ace is impossible,' said Wittenberg, recalling that when he made the jump from Boeing 727s to the highly sophisticated computerized characteristics of the 737s through 767s, it took him considerable time to feel comfortable flying." http://www.arcticbeacon.com....
Audio Interview 9/16/04: "[Flight 77] could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall. The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous." http://911underground.com/...
Barbara Honegger
Barbara Honegger – Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School (1995 - present). White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to President Ronald Reagan (1981-83).
Essay: "The US military, not al Qaeda, had the sustained access weeks before 9/11 to also plant controlled demolition charges throughout the superstructures of WTC1 and WTC2, and in WTC7, which brought down all three buildings on 9/11. A US military plane, not one piloted by al Qaeda, performed the highly skilled, high−speed 270−degree dive towards the Pentagon. Air Traffic Controllers on 9/11 were sure [it] was a military plane as they watched it on their screens. Only a military aircraft, not a civilian plane flown by al Qaeda, would have given off the 'friendly' signal needed to disable the Pentagon’s anti−aircraft missile batteries as it approached the building. Only the US military, not al Qaeda, had the ability to break all of its Standard Operating Procedures to paralyze its own emergency response system." http://blog.lege....
Capt. Gregory M. Zeigler, PhD, U.S. Army – Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer
Statement: "I knew from September 18, 2001, that the official story about 9/11 was false. ... Anomalies poured in rapidly: the hijackers' names appearing in none of the published flight passenger lists, BBC reports of stolen identities of the alleged hijackers or the alleged hijackers being found alive, the obvious demolitions of WTC1, 2, and 7, the lack of identifiable Boeing 757 wreckage at the Pentagon ... Link to full statement
Sibel D. Edmonds
Sibel D. Edmonds – Former Language Translation Specialist, FBI. Performed translations for counterterrorism, counterintelligence operations. 9/11 Commission Witness.
Letter to 9/11 Commission: "I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations." http://www.com...
Bogdan Dzakovic – 14-year Counterterrorism expert, Security Division of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Team Leader of FAA's Red (Terrorism) Team. Former Team Leader in Federal Air Marshal program. Former Coast Guard officer. Witness for 9/11 Commission.
Video transcript: Regarding the 9/11 Commission "The best I could say about it is they really botched the job by not really going into the real failures. … At worst, I think the 9/11 Commission Report is treasonous. And if you look at what the word 'treason' means in the Webster’s Dictionary, it’s a betrayal of a trust." http://www.911rep...
"We the undersigned wish to bring to the attention of the Congress and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the [9/11 Commission] report and its recommendations.
Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission’s report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention.
The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations."
Petition signed by 25 military, intelligence, and security veterans below:
John M. Cole– Former Intelligence Operations Specialist, Counterintelligence Division, FBI. In charge of FBI’s foreign intelligence investigations covering India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.18-year FBI career. David "Mark" Conrad – Retired Agent in Charge, U.S. Customs. Responsible for internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations. Former Federal Sky Marshall. 27-years in U.S. Customs. Currently Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University. Edward J. Costello, Jr. – Former Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI. Former Judge, Los Angeles, CA. Rosemary N. Dew – Former Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, FBI. Former member President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) and the Electronic Commerce/Cyber Crime Working Group. 13-year FBI career.
Bogdan Dzakovic – 14-year Counter-terrorism expert, Security Division of Federal Aviation Administration. Witness before the 9/11 Commission. (For more, click here) Sibel D. Edmonds – Former Language Translation Specialist, performing translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations, FBI. Witness before the 9/11 Commission. (For more, click here) Steve Elson – Former Special Agent with the U.S. Navy and the FAA. Specialist in Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and Security. Twenty-two years military experience, primarily in Naval Special Warfare and nine years Federal service with the FAA and DEA. Retired Navy Seal. David Forbes– Aviation, Logistics and Govt. Security Analysts, BoydForbes, Inc. Melvin A. Goodman– Senior Analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, 1974-1976. Professor of International Security at the National War College 1986-2004. (For more, click here) Mark Graf– Former Security Supervisor, Planner, and Derivative Classifier, Department of Energy. Former Chairman of the Rocky Flats (DOE) Physical Security Systems Working Group from 1990 through 1995. Gilbert M. Graham – Retired Special Agent, Counterintelligence, FBI. 24-year FBI career. Diane Kleiman– Former Special Agent, US Customs. Exposes major cover-ups on her website: http://www.customscoverup.com Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Former Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Staff Member, Office of Director of the National Security Agency. 20-year Air Force veteran. (For more, click here) Lynne A. Larkin– Former CIA Operations Officer. Served in several CIA foreign stations and in the CIA's counter-intelligence center helping chair a multi-agency task force and seminars on coordinating intelligence among intelligence and crime prevention agencies. David MacMichael – Former Senior Estimates Officer with special responsibility for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the CIA's National Intelligence Council. Former Captain, U.S. Marine Corps. 10-year military service. Raymond L. McGovern – Former Chairman, National Intelligence Estimates, CIA, responsible for preparing the President’ Daily Brief (PDB) for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. 27-year CIA veteran. Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. (For more, click here) Theodore J. Pahle – Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency. 37-year intelligence career. HUMINT [Human Intelligence] operations officer with DIA, Office of Naval Intelligence and U.S. Army Intelligence. Middle East and Latin American operations specialist. Behrooz Sarshar – Retired Language Translation Specialist, performing Farsi translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations dealing with Iran and Afghanistan, FBI. Brian F. Sullivan– Retired Special Agent, Risk Management Specialist, FAA. Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Military Police. Commander Larry J. Tortorich, U.S. Navy (ret)– Former Deputy Program Manager for Logistics – Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. 24-year Navy career in the fields of aviation and counterterrorism. Two years as a federal employee with DHS/TSA in the fields of security and counterterrorism. Jane A. Turner – Retired Special Agent, 24-years in FBI. John B. Vincent – Retired Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI. 27-year FBI career. Dr. Fred Whitehurst – Retired Supervisory Special Agent / Laboratory Forensic Examiner, FBI. Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret) – Retired Army officer and Former U.S. Diplomat. 29 years in U.S. Army, U.S. Army Reserves. Member of International law team in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. Served in Panama and Somalia. Joined Foreign Service in 1987. Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. Helped reopen US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001. Matthew J. Zipoli – Special Response Team (SRT) Officer, DOE. Vice President, Security Police Officer's Association, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
David Shayler
David Shayler – Former Counter-terrorism Officer, MI5 (UK)
Video:"The available evidence indicates that people in key positions in the FBI, the State Department, the CIA and so on were not loyal to the Constitution; that they saw an opportunity in plans laid down by genuine Islamic terrorists to carry out an operation that would shock the world and would therefore justify U.S. adventurism in the middle East, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq." http://video.google.com
9/11 is unquestionably the most important event in American history since December 7, 1941, when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. The magnitude of its impact on America and the world cannot be overstated. The terrible acts of 9/11 and the events leading up to them deserve a thorough and unimpeachable investigation to learn the facts. And if some rogue elements within the U.S. government were complicit in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, as several of these individuals allege, it is critical that these elements be exposed and removed from power.
Note of acknowledgement: Most of this excellent data was compiled by Alan Miller. For the latest version of this chart on his website: http://www.patriotsquestion911.com. Please note that most of the individuals listed above are not affiliated with this website.
A PERSONAL NOTE ABOUT THIS WEBPAGE FROM ALAN MILLER
I believed the official explanation of 9/11 for four and one-half years. I remember, during that time, becoming angry at news stories about people who challenged that explanation. However, in the Spring of 2006, I saw the documentary, Loose Change, on the Internet. Although not entirely objective, it raised many serious and disturbing questions about the events of 9/11 that I had previously simply accepted without much critical thought.
And so I began a several month period of researching the events of 9/11. I found a great deal of material challenging the 9/11 Commission Report on web sites like 911truth.org, physics911.net, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and many others. I attended a lecture by Prof. David Ray Griffin. I learned much about what has become known as the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Much of the information and limited media coverage of the 9/11 Truth Movement focuses on college professors like David Ray Griffin, Steven Jones, James Fetzer, Kee Dewdney, and others. In August of 2006, I began searching for statements about 9/11 by members of the intelligence services, military and government. Because of their experience in these areas, I felt their opinions about 9/11 would be an additional valuable source of information. I was surprised by the amount of criticism of 9/11 from this group that I found scattered around the Internet. I had learned of virtually none of this criticism through newspapers, television, or radio news sources.
I don't know what really happened on 9/11. I greatly value these individuals' statements because most have spent large portions of their careers studying espionage, terrorism, and military operations throughout the world and personally planned and carried out United States' military and intelligence activities. They're experienced professionals, whom I trust.
My objective, at this point, is to have our government launch a new, extremely thorough and impartial re-examination of the terrible acts of 9/11 and the events leading up to them. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the above listed experienced individuals, the current 9/11 Commission Report is seriously inadequate in explaining what really happened.
For the sake of those who died on 9/11, their families, the American people, and for the sake of peace in the world, please continue to seek the truth about 9/11. Demand a thorough and impartial reinvestigation of 9/11.
If you are or know of an active or former senior member of the military, intelligence services, or government, who has publicly expressed concerns about the 9/11 Commission Report, and would like your comment to be added to this list, please email your information to me.
Sincerely,
Alan Miller
LINKS TO RELIABLE 9/11 RESOURCES, 9/11 COMMISSION WEBSITE
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