THE 9/11 COMMISSION of OMMISSION

BUT THE 9/11 COMMISSION SHOWED THAT SEPTEMBER 11TH WAS A REAL TERRORIST ATTACK, RIGHT?

Whether or not you believe that governments carry out "false flag" terror, you might reasonably assume that the 9/11 Commission investigated September 11th, and concluded that Osama Bin Laden and his group of terrorists were solely responsible.

Unfortunately, a quick look at the government's investigations reveals that -- not only has there never been a real investigation -- but the behavior of government representatives in willfully obstructing all attempts at investigation comprises evidence of guilt. Specifically, in all criminal trials, evasiveness, obstruction, and destruction of evidence all constitute strong circumstantial evidence that the accused is guilty or, at the very least, not to be believed. 9/11 is no different.

For example, the former director of the FBI says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission.

And the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn't bother to tell the American people (free subscription required).

Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only "the first draft" of history.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."

And former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "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".

But let's back up and look at the 9/11 Commission in more detail. Preliminarily, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney took the rare step of personally requesting that congress limit all 9/11 investigation solely to "intelligence failures", so there has never been a congressional probe into any of the real issues involved.

The administration also opposed the creation of a 9/11 commission. Once it was forced, by pressure from widows of 9-11 victims, to allow a commission to be formed, the administration appointed as executive director an administration insider, whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually true, who was involved in pre-9/11 intelligence briefings, and who was one of the key architects of the "pre-emptive war" doctrine. This executive director, who controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission's inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).

The administration then starved the commission of funds, providing a fraction of the funds used to investigate Monica Lewinsky, failed to provide crucial documents (and see this article also), refused to share much information with the Commission, refused to require high-level officials to testify under oath, and allowed Bush and Cheney to be questioned jointly.

More importantly, the 9-11 Commission refused to examine virtually any evidence which contradicted the administration's official version of events. As stated by the State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, who was the point man for the U.S. government's international counterterrorism policy in the first term of the Bush administration, "there were things the [9/11] commission[s] wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about."

For example, the 9-11 Commission report fails to mention the CIA director's urgent warnings to top administration officials in July 2001 of an impending attack (indeed, the 9-11 Commission was briefed on these warnings, but denied they knew about them until confronted with contrary evidence). Moreover, numerous veteran national security experts were turned away, ignored, or censored by the 9/11 commission, even though they had information directly relevant to the commission's investigation. And the 9/11 Commission Report does not even mention the collapse of World Trade Center building 7 or any explosions in the buildings (the word "explosion" does not appear in the report). There are literally hundreds of other examples of entire lines of evidence which contradict the government's account which were ignored by the Commission.

A very well-documented book by a distinguished professor shows that the 9-11 Commission was a whitewash. According to law professor Richard Falk of Princeton, the author of this book "establishes himself, alongside Seymour Hersh, as America's number one bearer of unpleasant, yet necessary, public truths" (Seymour Hersh, as you might know, is the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal). See a synopsis of the book here; and a summary of a portion of the book here.

Indeed, the very 9-11 widows who had pressured the administration to create the 9/11 Commission now "question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report", and have previously declared it a failure which ignored 70% of their detailed questions and "suppressed important evidence and whistleblower testimony that challenged the official story on many fronts".

Moreover, a leading firefighters' trade publication called the investigation concerning the world trade center a "half-baked farce". In addition, the official investigators themselves were largely denied funding, access to the site and the evidence contained there, or even access to such basic information as the blueprints for the world trade center. Similarly, a professor of fire protection engineering, and the former chief of the fire science and engineering division of the agency now investigating the world trade center disaster, wrote that the world trade center buildings could not have collapsed due to jet fuel fires, that evidence was being destroyed, and that there was no real investigation into the collapses.

Indeed, the blueprints for the world trade center are apparently STILL being withheld from reporters and the public, and the government agency in charge of the investigation has grossly mischaracterized the structure of the buildings.

And the government agency tasked with examining the collapse of the World Trade Centers did NOT investigate any anomalies in the collapse of the buildings, failing to even examine any of the following evidence: the buildings’ impossible near free-fall speeds and symmetrical collapses; the unexplained fact that the core of the North Tower failed first; the apparent demolition squibs; the fact that the buildings turned to dust in mid-air; the presence of molten metal in the basement areas in large pools in all of the buildings; the unexplained presence of unusual compounds in the steel; the unexplained swiss-cheese like holes in the steel; and the unexplained straightening out of the upper 34 floors of the South Tower after they had precipitously leaned over and started toppling like a tree.

Indeed, an article from a respected civil engineering trade journal states:

"World Trade Center disaster investigators are refusing to show computer visualizations [i.e. models] of the collapse of the Twin Towers despite calls from leading structural and fire engineers".

The article goes on to state "a leading U.S. structural engineer said 'By comparison [to the modeling of fires] the global structural model is not as sophisticated' . . . The software used has been pushed to new limits, and there have been a lot of simplifications, extrapolations and judgement calls . . . it would be hard to produce a definitive visualization from the analysis so far.'”. In other words, the government refused to release a visual model of the collapses, and even the non-visual computer models which the government used to examine why the trade centers collapsed are faulty.

The same journal points out that "Some engineers . . . have accused NIST of repeatedly changing its explanation of the collapse mechanism."

See also this question and answer exchange at a recent government press conference (skip to 1 minute and 23 seconds into the video). And this short video on building 7 and the subsequent investigation

And did you know that investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House?

Or that a former FBI translator who Senators Leahy and Grassley, among others, have claimed is credible, and who the administration has gagged for years without any logical basis -- has stated that "this administration knowingly and intentionally let many directly or indirectly involved in that terrorist act [September 11th] go free – untouched and uninvestigated"? (you may wish to disregard brief partisan portion).

Or have you heard that the FBI long ago found and analyzed the "black box" recorders from the airplanes which hit the Twin Towers, but has consistently denied that they were ever found?

Or did you know that the tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view)this article from the Chicago Sun-Times?

And amazingly, many years after the FBI stated it did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute Bin Laden for 9/11, that agency apparently still does not have hard evidence linking Bin Laden to the crime. and by

Still think the government really investigated and disclosed what happened on 9/11?

Indeed, there are even indications that false evidence may have been planted to deflect attention from the real perpetrators.

But no high-level officials question the official story, right?

HIGH-LEVEL OFFICIALS

Current and former high-level U.S. officials have recently and publicly stated that the 9/11 attack was not as it seemed.

For example:

Current U.S. Senator states "The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?"

Current Republican Congressman states that "we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on"

Current Democratic Congressman hints that we aren't being told the truth about 9/11

Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee, has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan said that the official story of 9/11 is "the dog that doesn't hunt" (if you suspect he is a closet liberal, take a look at his bio)

Former director of the U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions, and who is a Catholic Archbishop stated that 9/11 was an inside job (he also said "If our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the twin towers would still be standing, and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason")

Former U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal stated that "there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control ... Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a 'conspiracy Theory' does not change the truth. It seems, 'Something is rotten in the State.'"

Former 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer stated that "9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war", and it was probably an inside job (see Customer Review dated October 7, 2006).

Former high-ranking official for George W. Bush concluded that 9/11 was an inside job

Former high-ranking Reagan official and very influential conservative finds the official story about 9/11 "flimsy and unbelievable"

Former Two-Star general questions the attack on the Pentagon

Former Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official finds various aspects of 9/11 suspicious

Current U.S. Congresswoman, former senior CIA analyst, former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter, former US Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq, former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism, and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (as well as a who's who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that "very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been", that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there's enough evidence to justify a new, "hard-hitting" investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath

Former FBI translator, who the Department of Justice's Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required), said "If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up". She also is leaning towards the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job

A 28-year career CIA official says 9/11 was an inside job

Former ambassador to Iraq is not satisfied with the official story

Former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that 9/11 could not have occurred as the government says, and that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview)

Numerous high-level legal scholars question the official version of 9/11

And many officials from allied governments have also questioned 9/11:

Statement by former President of Italy

Statements by former German Defense Minister and current member of British Parliament

Statement by former Canadian Minister of Defense

Statements of two former MI5 (British intelligence) agents (19 minutes into video)

Statement of a high-ranking general and the former chief of NATO regarding bombs in the Twin Towers (in Danish)

Statement by the commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force; and see also statement of former chief of staff of the Russian armed forces

And see this easy-to-read website for additional high-level officials

But no one could imagine crashing planes into buildings

PRIOR WARNINGS OF PLANES CRASHING INTO BUILDINGS

The administration's claim that terrorists crashing planes into buildings was not foreseeable is contradicted by numerous sources:

Initially, the CIA Director had warned congress shortly before 9/11 "that there could be an attack, an imminent attack, on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected" according to a broadcast on National Public Radio

And the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was "not surprised there was an attack . . . ."

But let's go back and look at the facts chronologically:

Initially, the CIA Director had warned congress shortly before 9/11 "that there could be an attack, an imminent attack, on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected" according to a broadcast on National Public Radio

And the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was "not surprised there was an attack . . . ."

But let's go back and look at the facts chronologically:

According to MSNBC, "There have been a slew of reports over the past decade of plots to use planes to strike American targets".

In 1994, the government received information that international terrorists "had seriously considered the use of airplanes as a means of carrying out terrorist attacks" (see also this article).

In 1998, U.S. officials received reports concerning a "Bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, areas." Officials received reports that al Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell in the United States and that bin Laden was attempting to recruit a group of five to seven young men from the United States to travel to the Middle East for training in conjunction with his plans to strike U.S. domestic targets. Indeed, the report concluded that "a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane . . . into the World Trade Center".

A 1999 report for the National Intelligence Council warned that fanatics loyal to bin Laden might try to hijack a jetliner and fly it into the Pentagon..

Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

The Pentagon tracked the hijackers before 9/11.

And the U.S. received warnings from numerous foreign intelligence services about planned attacks, many of them quite detailed. Indeed, America's closest ally apparently tracked the hijackers' every movement prior to the attacks, and may have sent agents to film the attack on the World Trade Centers.

There were extraordinarily high terrorist attack threat levels in the summer of 2001, involving threats of attack within the U.S., and the U.S. government knew there were Al-Qaeda cells within the U.S. (or watch the video here).

In July 2001, a briefing prepared for senior government officials warned of "a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties ... (it) will occur with little or no warning.".

FBI agents recommended to FBI headquarters, in July 2001, an urgent nationwide review of flight schools regarding terrorism, and mentioned Bin Laden by name.

A pre-9/11 National Intelligence Estimate was entitled "Islamic Extremists Learn to Fly", and was apparently about Islamic people taking classes at U.S. flight schools.

President Bush was told in August 2001 that supporters of Bin Laden planned an attack within the U.S. with explosives and that they wanted to hijack airplanes.

A month before 9/11, the CIA sent a message to the Federal Aviation Administration warning of a possible hijacking "or an act of sabotage against a commercial airliner".

The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US".

U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that Bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes, and that information prompted administration officials to issue a private warning to transportation officials and national security agencies.

It was widely known within the FBI shortly before 9/11 that an imminent attack was planned on lower Manhattan.

An employee who worked in the Twin Towers stated "How could they let this happen? They knew this building was a target. 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"

And a guard who worked in the world trade center stated that "officials had recently taken steps to secure the towers against aerial attacks"

On September 6, 2001, Condoleezza Rice was warned that a terrorist attack inside the United States was imminent

Also on September 6th, author Salman Rushdie is banned by US authorities from taking internal US flights; the FAA told his publisher the reason was that it had “intelligence of something about to happen”

The former FBI translator who the Department of Justice's Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups have claimed is credible says that the government was provided with information about the planned attacks, including the fact that the attacks would be carried out using airplanes, and some information about date ranges and targets. She says that - after 9/11 - the FBI translators were ordered to "keep quiet" regarding this information.

The National Security Agency and the FBI were both independently listening in on the phone calls between the supposed mastermind of the attacks and the lead hijacker. Indeed, the FBI built its own antenna in Madagascar specifically to listen in on the mastermind's phone calls. The day before 9/11, the mastermind told the lead hijacker "tomorrow is zero hour" and gave final approval for the attacks. The NSA intercepted the message that day and the FBI was likely also monitoring the mastermind's phone calls. (The NSA claims that it did not translate the intercept until September 12th; however, the above-mentioned FBI translator said that she was frequently ordered to falsify dates of translations regarding 9/11)

Shortly before 9/11, the NSA also intercepted multiple phone calls from Bin Laden's chief of operations to the United States.

The CIA and the NSA had been intercepting phone calls by the hijackers for years.

Indeed, two days before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden called his stepmother and told her "In two days, you're going to hear big news and you're not going to hear from me for a while.” US officials later told CNN that “in recent years they've been able to monitor some of bin Laden's telephone communications with his [step]mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded." Indeed, before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother.

Newsweek stated "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" (pay-per-view; cached version of article here)

Indeed, the military had actually drilled for aerial attacks with planes:

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the military air defense agency responsible for protecting the U.S. mainland, had run drills for several years of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, and "numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft". In other words, drills using REAL AIRCRAFT simulating terrorist attacks crashing jets into buildings, including the twin towers, were run.

And the military had conducted numerous drills of planes crashing into the Pentagon. For example, see this official military website showing a military drill conducted in 2000 using miniatures; this article concerning a May 2001 exercise of a plane crashing into the Pentagon (see also this article and this one); and this article about yet another drill of a plane hitting the Pentagon from August 2001.

(Indeed, many of the drills appear to have included warning alarms and evacuation of the building.)

The military had also run war games involving multiple, simultaneous hijackings (first paragraph), so this aspect of 9/11 was not as overwhelming as we have been led to believe.

See this short excerpt of a Peter Jennings newscast on 9/11 (excuse the music and subtitles).

There are literally hundreds of other lines of evidence that prove that the government had substantial foreknowledge concerning the attacks (see this website). A former Lieutenant Colonel for the Air Force and former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute summarized the feeling of many when he stated "Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism."

The war games of September 11th

WAR GAMES ON SEPTEMBER 11TH

On the very morning of 9/11/01, five war games and terror drills were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, including one "live fly" exercise using REAL planes. Then-Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, admitted to 4 of the war games in congressional testimony -- see transcript herehere (6 minutes and 12 seconds into the video). or video

Norad had run drills for several years of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, and "numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft". In other words, drills using REAL AIRCRAFT simulating terrorist attacks crashing jets into buildings, including the twin towers, were run. See also official military website showing 2000 military drill, using miniatures, involving a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

Indeed, a former Los Angeles police department investigator, whose newsletter is read by 45 members of congress, both the house and senate intelligence committees, and professors at more than 40 universities around the world, claims that he obtained an on-the-record confirmation from NORAD that ON 9/11, NORAD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack exercise which involved government-operated aircraft POSING AS HIJACKED AIRLINERS.

On September 11th, the government also happened to be running a simulation of a plane crashing into a building.

In addition, a December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article (pay-per-view; reprinted here), stated that "Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an 'inject,' is purged from the screens". This indicates that there were false radar blips inserted onto air traffic controllers' screens as part of the war game exercises.

Moreover, there are indications that some of the major war games previously scheduled for October 2001 were MOVED UP to September 11th by persons unknown.

Interestingly, Vice President Cheney was apparently in charge of ALL of the war games and coordinated the government's "response" to the attacks. See this CNN article; and this previously-cited essay.

And while the government has consistently stated that it did not know where the aircraft were before they struck, this short video clip of the Secretary of Transportation's testimony before the 9/11 Commission shows that Cheney monitored flight 77 for many miles as it approached the Pentagon. How could one of the most heavily-defended buildings in the world have been successfully attacked, when the Vice President of the United States, in charge of counter-terrorism on 9/11, watched it approach from many miles away?

Moreover, a former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off, and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets (also, listen to this interview).

Additionally, this diagram shows that the hijacked planes flew over numerous military bases on 9/11 before crashing. See also this essay regarding the stand down of the military; and see this war game proposal created before 9/11 revolving around Bin Laden and including "live-fly exercises" involving real planes, later confirmed by this official Department of Defense website.

Which scenario is more likely from a strictly logistical perspective:

(1) An outsider sitting in a cave defeating the air defense system of the sole military superpower; or

(2) Someone like Cheney -- who on 9/11 apparently had full control over all defense, war game and counter-terrorism powers -- rigging and gaming the system?

Remember that for the attacks to have succeeded, it was necessary that actions be taken in the middle of the war games and the actual attacks which would thwart the normal military response. For example, Cheney watched flight 77 approach the Pentagon from many miles out, but instructed the military to do nothing (as shown in the testimony of the Secretary of Transportation, linked above). Could Bin Laden have done that?

Fighter jets were also sent far off-course over the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the attacks (testimony of Senator Mark Dayton), so as to neutralize their ability to intercept the hijacked airliners. Could Osama Bin Laden and his sent-from-the-cave band of followers have exercised this degree of control over the military? Obviously not.

And air traffic controllers claim they were still tracking what they thought were hijacked planes long after all 4 of the real planes had crashed. This implies that false radar blips remained on their screens after all 4 planes went down, long after the military claims they purged the phantom war-game-related radar signals. Could Bin Laden have interfered with the full purging of false radar blips inserted as part of the war games? In other words, could Bin Laden have overridden the purging process so that some false blips remained and confused air traffic controllers? The answer is clear.

Therefore, it is statistically much more likely that Cheney and/or other high-level U.S. government and military officials pulled the 9/11 trigger than that Bin Laden did it. At the very least, they took affirmative steps to guarantee that the hijackers' attacks succeeded.

As discussed previously, a former air force colonel and director of the Star Wars program stated "If our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the twin towers would still be standing, and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason"