I. How Could Hijacked Airliners Have Struck the WTC and the Pentagon?
If the standard operating procedure of the FAA and the US military
had been carried out on the morning of 9/11, AA Flight 11 and UA Flight
175 would have been intercepted before they reached Manhattan, and
Flight 77 would have been intercepted long before it could have reached
the Pentagon. (Such interceptions are routine, being carried out about
100 times a year.) As to why these interceptions did not occur, the
public has never been given a plausible explanation. Indeed, we have
received three mutually inconsistent stories.
In the first few days, military officials said that no fighter
jets were sent up by NORAD until after the strike on the Pentagon at
9:38, even though signs that Flight 11 had been hijacked were observed
at 8:15. That would mean that although interceptions usually occur
within 15 minutes, in this case over 80 minutes had elapsed before any
fighters were even airborne. This story suggested that a “stand-down”
order had been issued.
Within a few days, a second story was put out, according to
which NORAD had sent up fighters but, because FAA notification had
unaccountably come very late, the fighters did not arrive soon enough
to prevent the attacks. Critics showed, however, that even if the FAA’s
notifications had come as late as NORAD claimed, there would have been
time for interceptions to occur. This second story did not, therefore,
remove the suspicion that a stand-down order had been given.
The 9/11 Commission Report gives a third account, according to
which, contrary to NORAD’s timeline of September 18, 2001, the FAA did
not notify NORAD about Flights 175 and 77 until after they had struck
their targets. This third story, besides contradicting the second story
and also considerable evidence that the FAA had notified the military
in a timely manner, contains many inherent implausibilities. It does
not, accordingly, remove grounds for suspicion that a stand-down order
had been issued---a suspicion for which there is ear-witness testimony.
II. Why Did the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the WTC Collapse?
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice
President Richard B. Cheney has also failed to provide a credible
explanation of the total collapses of the World Trade Center buildings.
According to the official explanation, the Twin Towers collapsed
because of the impact of the airplanes and the heat from the ensuing
fires. But this explanation faces several formidable problems.
First, Building 7 also collapsed, and in about the same
way. This similarity implies that all three buildings collapsed because
of the same causes. But building 7 was not hit by a plane, so its
collapse must be explained by fire alone. That would lead to the
conclusion that all three buildings collapsed from fire alone.
Second, however, the fires in these three buildings were not very
big, very hot, or very long-lasting, compared with fires in some
steel-frame high-rises that did not induce collapses. In 1991, for
example, a fire in Philadelphia burned for 18 hours, and in 2004, a
fire in Caracas burned for 17 hours. But neither of these fires
resulted in even a partial collapse, let alone a total collapse. By
contrast, the World Trade Center’s north and south towers burned only
102 and 56 minutes, respectively, before they collapsed. Building 7,
moreover, had fires on only a few floors, according to some witnesses
and all the photographic evidence.
Third, total collapses of steel-frame high-rise buildings have
never, either before or after 9/11, been brought about by fire alone,
or fire combined with structural damage from airplanes. All such
collapses have been caused by explosives in the procedure known as
“controlled demolition.”
Fourth, the collapses of these three WTC buildings all manifested
many standard features of controlled demolition, such as: sudden onset
(whereas steel, if weakened by fire, would gradually begin to sag);
straight-down collapse (as opposed to falling over); collapse at
virtually free-fall speed (indicating that the lower floors were
offering little if any resistance); total collapse (indicating that the
massive steel columns in the core of each building had been sliced into
many pieces---which is what explosives do in controlled demolitions);
the production of molten steel; and the occurrence of multiple
explosions, as reported by dozens of people---including journalists,
police officers, WTC employees, emergency medical workers, and
firefighters. The official theory cannot explain one, let alone all, of
these features---at least, as physicist Steven Jones has pointed out,
without violating several basic laws of physics. But the theory of
controlled demolition easily explains them all.
Fifth, although the question of whether explosives were used could
have been answered by examining the buildings’ steel columns, virtually
all of the steel was immediately sold to scrap dealers, trucked away,
and sent to Asia to be melted down. Moreover, although it is usually a
federal crime to remove anything from a crime scene, in this case the
removal was overseen by government officials.
Sixth, al-Qaeda
terrorists could not have obtained access to the buildings for the
enormous number of hours it would have taken to plant the explosives.
But the question of how agents of the Bush-Cheney administration could
have gotten such access can be answered by pointing out that Marvin
Bush and Wirt Walker III---the president’s brother and cousin,
respectively---were principals of the company in charge of security for
the WTC. It is also doubtful that al-Qaeda terrorists would have had
the courtesy to ensure that the buildings would come straight down,
rather than falling over onto other buildings.
III. Could the Official Account of the Pentagon Possibly Be True?
According to the official account, the Pentagon was struck by AA
Flight 77, under the control of al-Qaeda hijacker Hani Hanjour. This
account is challenged by many facts.
First, Flight 77 allegedly, after making a U-turn in the
mid-west, flew back to Washington undetected for 40 minutes, even
though it was then known that hijacked airliners were being used as
weapons and even though the US military has the best radar systems in
the world, one of which, it brags, “does not miss anything occurring in
North American airspace.”
Second, the aircraft, in order to hit the west wing, reportedly
executed a 270-degree downward spiral, which according to some experts
would have been impossible for a Boeing 757. Hanjour, moreover, was
known as “a terrible pilot,” who could not even fly a small airplane.
Third, how could a pilot as poor as Hanjour have found his way back to Washington without guidance from the ground?
Fourth, the Pentagon is surely the best defended building on the
planet. It is not only within the P-56-A restricted air space that
extends 17 miles in all directions from the Washington Monument, but
also within P-56-B, the three-mile ultra-restricted zone above the
White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon. It is only a few miles from
Andrews Air Force Base, which, assigned to protect these restricted
zones, has at least three squadrons with fighter jets on alert at all
times. (The claim by The 9/11 Commission Report that no fighters were
on alert the morning of 9/11 is wholly implausible.) Also, the Pentagon
is surely protected by batteries of surface-to-air missiles, which are
programmed to destroy any aircraft without a US military transponder
entering the Pentagon’s airspace. (So even if Flight 77 had entered the
Pentagon’s airspace, it could have escaped being shot down only if
officials in the Pentagon had deactivated its anti-aircraft defenses.)
Fifth, terrorists brilliant enough to get through the US
military’s defense system would not have struck the west wing, for many
reasons: It had been reinforced, so the damage was less severe than a
strike anywhere else would have been; it was still being renovated, so
relatively few people were there; the secretary of defense and all the
top brass, whom terrorists would presumably have wanted to kill, were
in the east wing; and hitting the west wing required a difficult
maneuver, whereas crashing into the roof would have been easier and
deadlier.
Sixth, there is considerable evidence that the aircraft that
struck the Pentagon was not even a Boeing 757. For one thing, unlike
the strikes on the Twin Towers, the strike on the Pentagon did not
create a detectable seismic signal. Also, the kind of damage and debris
that would have been produced by the impact of a Boeing 757 was not
produced by the strike on the Pentagon, according to both photographs
and eyewitnesses. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was then an Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel employed at the Pentagon, writes of “a strange lack
of visible debris on the Pentagon lawn, where I stood only moments
after the impact. . . . I saw . . . no airplane metal or cargo debris.”
Photographs show that the façade of the west wing remained standing for
30 minutes after the strike and that, during this time, the hole in
this façade was only about 16 to 18 feet in diameter. A Boeing 757 has
a wingspan of about 125 feet, and a steel engine is mounted on each
wing. And yet there was, as Former Air Force Colonel George Nelson has
pointed out, no visible damage on either side of this hole. Former
pilot Ralph Omholt, discussing both debris and damage on the basis of
the photographic evidence, writes: “there is no doubt that a plane did
not hit the Pentagon. There is no hole big enough to swallow a 757. . .
. There is no viable evidence of burning jet fuel. . . . The
pre-collapse Pentagon section showed no ‘forward-moving’ damage. . . .
There was no tail, no wings; no damage consistent with a B-757
‘crash.’”
Additional evidence that no large airliner hit the west wing is
provided by the fact that the fourth-floor office of Isabelle Slifer,
which was directly above the strike zone (between the first and second
floors), was not damaged by the initial impact.
There is considerable evidence, moreover, that the aircraft that
struck the Pentagon was instead a US military missile. This evidence
consists partly of testimony. Lon Rains, editor of Space News, said: “I
was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing
like an airplane.” The upper management official at LAX, quoted earlier
as saying that he overheard members of LAX Security receiving word of a
stand-down order, says that they later received word that “the Pentagon
had been hit by a rocket.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in an
apparent slip of the tongue, referred in an interview to “the missile
[used] to damage this building.”
The missile hypothesis is also supported by physical evidence. Dr.
Janette Sherman of Alexandria reports that shortly after the strike her
Geiger counter showed the radiation level, about 12 miles downwind from
the Pentagon, to be 8-10 times higher than normal. Two days later, Bill
Bellinger, the EPA radiation expert for the region, said that the
rubble at the crash site was radioactive, adding that he believed the
source to be depleted uranium. These findings are what one would
expect, says Dr. Leuren Moret---formerly a scientist at the Livermore
Nuclear Weapons Laboratory---if the Pentagon had been struck by a
military missile with a depleted uranium warhead.
On the basis of all this evidence, retired Army Major Doug Rokke has
said: “When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void
of airplane parts [and] the size of the hole left in the building . . .
, it looks like the work of a missile.”
A seventh reason to be dubious about the official story is that
evidence was destroyed. Shortly after the strike, government agents
picked up debris from the Pentagon in front of the impact site, put it
in a large container, and carried it off. Shortly thereafter the entire
lawn was covered with dirt and gravel, with the result that any
remaining forensic evidence was covered up. FBI agents also immediately
confiscated the videos from security cameras on two nearby buildings.
Although the Department of Justice, responding to a request under the
Freedom of Information Act, has acknowledged the FBI’s possession of at
least one of these videos, the DoJ has refused to release it.
These
seven problems, besides challenging the official account, collectively
indicate that the strike on the Pentagon was orchestrated by forces
within our own government---an act that would clearly constitute
treason.
IV. Why Did the President and His Secret Service Agents Remain at the School?
President George W. Bush reportedly believed, upon hearing that a
plane had struck one of the Twin Towers, that it was an accident. It
was not terribly strange, therefore, that he decided to go ahead with
the photo-op at the school in Sarasota. Word of the second strike,
however, should have indicated to him and his Secret Service
agents---assuming the truth of official story, according to which these
strikes were unexpected---that the country was undergoing an
unprecedented terrorist attack. And yet the Secret Service allowed him
to remain at the school for another half hour.
This behavior was very strange. The president’s location had
been highly publicized. If the attacks were indeed unexpected, the
Secret Service would have had no idea how many planes had been
hijacked, and they would have had to assume that the president himself
might be one of the targets: What could be more satisfying to foreign
terrorists attacking high-value targets in the United States than to
kill the president? For all the Secret Service would have known, a
hijacked airliner might have been bearing down on the school at that
very minute, ready to crash into it, killing the president and everyone
else there---including the Secret Service agents themselves. It is, in
any case, standard procedure for the Secret Service to rush the
president to a safe location whenever there is any sign that he may be
in danger. And yet these agents, besides allowing the president to
remain in the classroom another 10 minutes, permitted him to speak on
television, thereby announcing to the world that he was still at the
school.
Would not this behavior be explainable only if Bush and the head of
the Secret Service detail knew that the planned attacks did not include
an attack on the president? And how could this have been known for
certain unless the attacks were being carried out by people within our
own government? The 9/11 Commission, far from asking these questions,
was content to report that “[t]he Secret Service told us they . . . did
not think it imperative for [the president] to run out the door.” A
serious inquiry into this matter, therefore, remains to be made.
V. Why Did the 9/11 Commission Lie about Vice President Cheney?
One sign of the complicity of Vice President Cheney is the fact that
the 9/11 Commission evidently felt a need to lie about the time of two
of his activities: his entry into the Presidential Emergency Operations
Center (PEOC) under the White House and his giving the order to shoot
down any unauthorized airplanes.
It had been widely reported that Cheney had gone down to the
PEOC shortly after the second strike on the WTC, hence about 9:15. The
most compelling witness was Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta,
who testified to the 9/11 Commission that when he arrived at the PEOC
at 9:20, Cheney was already there and fully in charge. The 9/11
Commission Report, however, claimed that Cheney did not enter the PEOC
until “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.” Mineta’s testimony,
given in an open hearing, was simply omitted from the Commission’s
final report. Why would the Commission go to such lengths to conceal
the true time of Cheney’s entry into the PEOC?
One possible reason would involve the content of Mineta’s testimony. He said:
During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon,
there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President,
“The plane is 50 miles out.” “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 . .
. said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to
the contrary?”
Mineta said that this conversation---evidently meaning the final exchange---occurred at about 9:25 or 9:26.
This testimony creates a problem for the official story. Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld’s spokesman, in explaining why the Pentagon was not
evacuated before it was struck, claimed that “[t]he Pentagon was simply
not aware that this aircraft was coming our way.” The 9/11 Commission
claimed that there was no warning about an unidentified aircraft
heading towards Washington until 9:36 and hence only “one or two
minutes” before the Pentagon was struck at 9:38. Mineta’s account,
however, says that Cheney knew about an approaching aircraft more than
10 minutes earlier. There would have been over 12 minutes for the
Pentagon to be evacuated.
Mineta’s account also seems to suggest that Cheney had issued
stand-down orders. Mineta himself did not make this allegation, saying
instead that he assumed that “the orders” were to have the plane shot
down. But besides the fact that that interpretation does not fit what
actually happened--the aircraft was not shot down---it would make the
story unintelligible: The question whether the orders still stood would
not make sense unless they were orders to do something unexpected---not
to shoot the aircraft down. By omitting Mineta’s testimony and stating
that Cheney did not enter the PEOC until almost 10:00, the 9/11
Commission implied that Cheney could not have given a stand-down order
to allow an aircraft to strike the Pentagon.
The lie about Cheney’s entry into the PEOC was also important to the
controversy over whether the US military shot down Flight 93. The 9/11
Commission, simply ignoring a vast amount of evidence that the military
did so, supported the official claim that it did not. The Commission
provided this support by claiming that Cheney, having not arrived at
the PEOC until almost 10:00, did not issue the shoot-down order until
after 10:10---which would have been seven or more minutes after Flight
93 had crashed (at 10:03). But in addition to the evidence that Cheney
had been in the PEOC since about 9:15, we also have
evidence---including statements from Richard Clarke and Colonel Robert
Marr, the head of NORAD’s northeast sector (NEADS)---that Cheney’s
shoot-down order was issued well before 10:00.
The 9/11 Commission’s obvious lies about Cheney’s activities
give reason to suspect that it, under the leadership of Philip Zelikow,
was trying to conceal Cheney’s responsibility for the Pentagon strike
and the downing of Flight 93.
VI. Did Members of the Bush-Cheney Administration Have Reasons to Desire the Attacks of 9/11?
Besides having the means and opportunity to orchestrate the events
of 9/11 and their subsequent cover-up, high officials in the
Bush-Cheney administration would also have had motives.
Afghanistan: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard,
had said that establishing military bases in Central Asia would be
crucial for maintaining “American primacy,” partly because of the huge
oil reserves around the Caspian Sea. But American democracy, he added,
“is inimical to imperial mobilization.” Brzezinski, explaining that the
public had “supported America’s engagement in World War II largely
because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,”
suggested that Americans today would support the needed military
operations in Central Asia only “in the circumstance of a truly massive
and widely perceived direct external threat.”
Support for these operations was generated by 9/11 plus the claim by
the Bush-Cheney administration that the attacks had been planned in
Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden—-a claim for which it refused to provide
any proof.
A more specific motivation was provided by the “pipeline war.” The
Bush-Cheney administration supported--as had the Clinton-Gore
administration until 1999--UNOCAL’s plan to build an oil-and-gas
pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban, being unable to provide
sufficient security, had become regarded as an obstacle. In a meeting
in Berlin in July 2001, representatives of the Bush-Cheney
administration, trying to get the Taliban to share power with other
factions, reportedly gave them an ultimatum: “Either you accept our
offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”
When the Taliban refused, the Americans reportedly said that “military
action against Afghanistan would go ahead . . . before the snows
started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the
latest.”
Given the fact that the attacks on New York and Washington occurred
on September 11, the U.S. military had time to get logistically ready
to begin the attack on Afghanistan on October 7.
Iraq: Some key members of the Bush-Cheney administration---including
Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney
himself---had in the late 1990s been active members of an organization,
the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), that advocated
attacking Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, establish a strong military
presence, and control the oil. PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses,
released late in 2000, reiterated the idea of a permanent military
presence in the Gulf region, saying that the “unresolved conflict with
Iraq provides the immediate justification” but “the need for a
substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of
the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
Immediately upon taking office, the Bush administration---two former
members have revealed--- was intent on attacking Iraq. Then in 2003,
after its war in Afghanistan, the administration used 9/11 as a pretext
for attacking Iraq, partly by suggesting that Saddam was involved in
the attacks, partly by playing on the American people’s sense, created
by 9/11, of being vulnerable to a major attack from abroad.
Increased Military Spending: A second possible motive was provided
by PNAC’s more general goal of further increasing America’s military
superiority to be able to achieve global domination. This goal had
already been asserted in the draft of the “Defense Planning Guidance”
written in 1992 by Wolfowitz and Libby under the guidance of Cheney,
who was completing his tenure as secretary of defense. (In an essay
that was entered into the Congressional Record, this draft was
portrayed as an early version of Cheney’s “Plan . . . to rule the
world.”)
In 2000, Wolfowitz and Libby were listed as participants in the
project to produce PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in which this
goal showed up again. This document also contained an idea perhaps
derived from Brzezinski’s book: After saying that the desired Pax
Americana “must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military
preeminence” and that such preeminence will require a technological
transformation of the US military, it adds that this process of
transformation will “likely be a long one, absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."
When 9/11 came, it was immediately treated as “the Pearl Harbor
of the 21st century,” as President Bush reportedly called it that very
night. It was also characterized as, in Bush’s words, “a great
opportunity,” with Rumsfeld adding that 9/11 created “the kind of
opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world.” This
idea then showed up in The National Security Strategy of the United
States of America, issued by the Bush administration in September 2002,
which brazenly said: “The events of September 11, 2001 opened vast, new
opportunities.”
A central dimension of the desired technological transformation
of the military is the weaponization of space, euphemistically called
“Missile Defense.” In January of 2001, the Commission to Assess U.S.
National Security Space Management and Organization, which was chaired
by Rumsfeld, published its report. Speaking of the need for massive
funding for the U.S. Space Command, the Rumsfeld Commission asked
whether such funding would occur only after a “Space Pearl Harbor.”
On the evening of 9/11, Rumsfeld held a press conference. In
attendance was Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, who was asked this question: “Senator Levin, you
and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don’t
have enough money for the large increase in defense that the Pentagon
is seeking, especially for missile defense. . . . Does this sort of
thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase
defense spending. . . ? Congress immediately appropriated an additional
$40 billion for the Pentagon and much more later, with few questions
asked.
VII. Summation: The 9/11 Attacks as Acts of Treason
The facts recited above constitute prima facie evidence that the
named individuals---U.S. President George W. Bush, U.S. Vice President
Richard B. Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld---and
other John and Jane Does are independently and jointly guilty of
Treason against these United States under Article III(3) of the U.S.
Constitution, because:
I. The attacks of 9/11, as portrayed in the official account, could
not have succeeded if standard operating procedures between the FAA and
NORAD had been followed. The Pentagon, under the leadership of Donald
Rumsfeld, has provided three mutually inconsistent accounts of NORAD’s
response, which means that at least two of them are false. Moreover,
the third account, articulated by the 9/11 Commission, is contradicted
by a wide range of facts, including evidence that the FAA had notified
NORAD in a timely fashion. There must have been stand-down orders, and
these could have come only from the highest levels of the Pentagon and
the White House.
II. Overwhelming evidence exists that the collapses of the Twin
Towers and Building 7 were instances of controlled demolition. But
al-Qaeda operatives could not have obtained the needed access to the
buildings to plant the explosives and would not have ensured that the
buildings come straight down. The controlled demolition, therefore, had
to be the work of insiders. That President Bush was one of those
insiders is suggested by the fact that his brother and cousin were
principals in the company in charge of WTC security. Complicity at the
highest levels of the federal government is also indicated by the
removal of evidence (the collapsed steel), which is normally a federal
offense. Finally, if the airplane strikes could have occurred only with
the consent of the president and the secretary of defense (as suggested
in the previous point), the coordination of these strikes with the
demolition of the buildings implies their involvement in the latter as
well.
III. Overwhelming evidence also exists for the conclusion that the
attack on the Pentagon was an inside job. That the official story could
not be true is evident from many facts: Hani Hanjour’s incompetence;
the choice of the west wing as the target; the impossibility of a
commercial airliner’s coming back to Washington undetected and hitting
the Pentagon unless permitted; and the lack of physical evidence
consistent with an attack by a Boeing 757. That the strike was an
inside job is implied by the falsity of the official story, the
evidence that the strike was made by a military aircraft, the removal
of evidence, and the government’s refusal to release videos of the
strike. This operation could hardly have been planned without the
involvement of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
IV. Complicity at the highest levels of the federal government is
also indicated by President Bush’s remaining at the school after it was
evident---given the truth of the official account---that the United
States was experiencing a surprise attack. This behavior makes sense
only if Bush and his lead Secret Service agent knew that there would be
no attack on the school.
V. The complicity of Vice President Cheney in the attack on the
Pentagon and the downing of Flight 93 is implied by the testimony of
Secretary Mineta in conjunction with the false claims of the 9/11
Commission, under the guidance of administration insider Philip
Zelikow, as to when Cheney went to the PEOC and when he issued the
shoot-down authorization.
VI. The conclusion from the evidence that members of the Bush
administration orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 is reinforced by the
fact that they had some huge projects---prosecuting wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq and obtaining funding to accelerate the technological
transformation of the military---that would likely be possible only in
the event of “a new Pearl Harbor.”
On the basis of this and other evidence, the conclusion that the
Bush-Cheney administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks has been
reached by many Americans, including intellectuals and former military
officers. It is time for an independent official investigation into
this evidence.
CAVEAT LECTOR: This memorandum is based upon the best public
research resources presently available. It is presented not as a full
treatment of the subject but as merely a brief summary pointing to the
existence of sufficient prima facie evidence to warrant the appointment
of an independent prosecutor.
ATTACHMENTS
My Observation of LAX Security Events on 9/11
By an Upper Management LAX Official
I was employed in upper management at LAX involved with security in
the APO (Air Port Operations---where the planes are, not the
passengers). I will not otherwise identify myself in this statement,
since I, for both personal and professional reasons, need to remain
anonymous. But I will give as much detail as possible about
security-related events in the APO that I overheard on September 11,
2001, and will also suggest ways in which my account could be
corroborated.
“Security” in the APO involves the CHP, LAWA PD, LAPD, and the FBI,
herein referred to as “Security” (but the CHP was not in proximity to
me during the period my account covers).
My Account
As on other days, there was “chatter” on LAX Security
walkie-talkies, so what Security was saying could easily be heard. On
some of the walkie-talkies I could overhear both sides of the
conversations, on others only one. I do not know who was at the other
end of the walkie-talkies, but I can only assume that it was LAX
dispatch or command.
While there, I observed and heard the following:
At first, LAX Security was very upset because at that time it seemed
to Security that none of the Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) tracking
the hijacked airliners had notified NORAD as required. Security was
well aware that LAX was a target and Emergency SOP were already in
progress in that there was discussion of evacuating the airport.
More chatter revealed that the ATCs had notified NORAD, but that
NORAD had not responded because it had been “ordered to stand down.”
This report made Security even more upset, so they tried to find out
who had issued that order. A short time later the word came down that
the order had come “from the highest level of the White House.” This
seemed inappropriate, so Security made attempts for more details and
clarification, which was not resolved in my presence.
3 planes were grounded and swapped out in Atlanta, Georgia, simply
because they did not pass the routine pre-flight inspection checklist.
Those planes were found to be fully loaded with automatic weapons. LAX
Security surmised that could only have been accomplished by
Maintenance, the Caterers, but, in their view, most likely by “House
Keeping.”
LAX Security believed that the terrorists did not board the planes
through the passenger terminals, but rather by similar means, i.e. via
House Keeping. Other airports were mentioned, but I was unable to get
it all down. Therefore, I don’t have an accurate accounting for the
status and location of the other planes.
Another piece of information that I overheard was that the Pentagon had been hit by a rocket.
There was also a radio station identifying itself as LAX Radio, from which the following was heard:
There were 11 planes and 11 targets. But at the time only 10 of the
targets were mentioned: the WTC; the Pentagon; the White House; the
Capitol; Camp David; the Sears Tower; the Space Needle; the Trans
America Bldg.; LAX; and Air Force One--“if it could be found.”
Two fighter jets had been scrambled and had successfully shot down a
hijacked airliner over Pennsylvania. The point of deployment of the
fighter jets was also mentioned, but I can’t remember the name of the
military base.
Points of origin mentioned included Newark, Atlanta, and other
locations, but it was confusing to me in that I couldn’t determine if
they were with respect to hijacked planes or fighter jets being
scrambled. Unfortunately the names of these airports were not all
familiar to me or it would have been easier for me to account for them.
As I was leaving there was an order to evacuate the airport.
In 2001 and 2002 I tried to notify the media of the events at LAX, but they made it clear they were not interested.
Possible Corroboration
I can think of four ways in which my account of what I heard could be corroborated:
1st LAWA PD, LAPD, and FBI records will reveal the names of the
security officers on duty in the APO during the time of the attacks.
2nd I believe the head of LAX Security in the APO at that time
was Captain Gray. He should be able to confirm the fact that my account
reflects what happened that morning.
3rd The audio recordings of radio transmissions at LAX would
reveal the comments of all the Security officers and LAX
dispatch/command.
4th The audio recording of the LAX Radio broadcast would reveal what was broadcast on 911.
Note: Items 3 and 4 would reveal if I have inadvertently confused
information attained from LAX Security with information received from
LAX Radio. (For example, I believe I heard the comment about a rocket
hitting the Pentagon during the walkie-talkie conversations, but it is
possible that I heard it later on the radio.
FOOTNOTES
See David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 2005), 7-12, 282-85.
2 Ibid. For a summary statement of the omissions and distortions
discussed in that book, see Griffin, “The 9/11 Commission Report: A
571-Page Lie,” 9/11 Visibility Project, May 22, 2005 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php).
3 The FAA reported in a news release on August 9, 2002, that it had
scrambled fighters 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001, and
the Calgary Herald reported on October 13, 2001, that NORAD had
scrambled fighters 129 times in 2000. A few days after 9/11, Major Mike
Snyder, a NORAD spokesperson, told the Boston Globe that “[NORAD’s]
fighters routinely intercept aircraft” (Glen Johnson, “Otis Fighter
Jets Scrambled Too Late to Halt the Attacks,” Boston Globe, Sept. 15,
2001 [http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=print]).
4 Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 139-48.
5 Ibid., 155-226. A briefer version of the problems is provided in
Griffin, “Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93: The 9/11 Commission’s Incredible
Tales,” 911Truth.org, Dec. 5, 2005 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20051205150219651).
6 An upper management official at LAX has reported that he overheard
members of LAX Security (including officers from the FBI and LAPD)
using their walkie-talkies shortly after the attacks. In some cases, he
could hear both sides of the conversation. At first, the LAX officials
were told that the FAA’s Air Traffic Controllers had not notified NORAD
about the hijackings. Later, however, they were told that NORAD had
been notified but did not respond because it had been “ordered to stand
down.” When LAX security officials asked who had issued that order,
they were told that it had come “from the highest level of the White
House” (“My Observation of LAX Security Events on 9/11,” by an Upper
Management LAX Official [attached]; although this official wants to
remain anonymous, he would willingly take a polygraph test).
7 “High-Rise Office Building Fire One Meridian Plaza Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” FEMA (http://usfa.fema.gov/fire-service/techreports/tr049.shtm); “Fire Practically Destroys Venezuela’s Tallest Building” (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/venezuela_fire.html).
8 Chief Thomas McCarthy of the FDNY said that while the firefighters
“were waiting for 7 World Trade to come down,” there was “fire on three
separate floors” (Oral History of Thomas McCarthy, 10-11). Emergency
medical technician Decosta Wright said: “I think the fourth floor was
on fire. . . . [W]e were like, are you guys going to put that fire
out?” (Oral History of Decosta Wright, 11). These quotations are from
the 9/11 oral histories recorded by the New York Fire Department at the
end of 2001 but released to the public (after a court battle) only in
August 2005, at which time they were made available on a New York Times
website (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html).
9 A photograph taken by Terry Schmidt can be seen on page 63 of Eric
Hufschmid’s Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack
(Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002) or on Schmidt’s website (http://www.nycwireless.net/Images/wtc2/).
According to Schmidt, this photo was taken between 3:09 and 3:16 PM,
hence only a little over 2 hours before Building 7 collapsed. It shows
that on the north side of the building, fires were visible only on
floors 7 and 12. Therefore, if there were more fires on the south side,
as some witnesses have claimed, they were not big enough to be seen
from the north side.
10 Whereas several witnesses have testified to the existence of
molten steel, a few have reported that the ends of some of the steel
beams were molten---which would be the case if explosives had been used
to slice them. For example, Joe O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter who worked
for many months on the clean-up efforts, said with regard to a beam
that he saw lifted from deep below the surface: “It was dripping from
the molten steel” (Jennifer Lin, "Recovery Worker Reflects on Months
Spent at Ground Zero," Knight Ridder, May 29, 2002 [http://www.messenger-inquirer.com/news/attacks/4522011.htm]).
Another witness---a vice president of his company---reported that
"sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the
end of the beam would be dripping molten steel" (Trudy Walsh, "Handheld
APP Eased Recovery Tasks," Government Computer News, 21/27a, Sept 11,
2002 [http://www.gcn.com/21_27a/news/19930-1.html]).
11 See David Ray Griffin, “Explosive Testimony: Revelations about
the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories,” 911Truth.org, January 18,
2006 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060118104223192).
Fire captain Dennis Tardio, for example, said: "I hear an explosion and
I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top
floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom” (Dennis Smith, Report
from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade
Center [New York: Penguin, 2002], 18. Another firefighter said: “It
seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It
seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these
explosions” (Oral History of Richard Banaciski, 3-4 [see note 8,
above]).
12 Stephen E. Jones, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” In
David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American
Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink, 2006); also
available at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html. For videos of the WTC collapses, see “9/11/01 WTC Videos” (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html).
13Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 31-32.
14 For discussions of these six points, see the essay by physicist
Stephen E. Jones, mentioned above, and David Ray Griffin, “The
Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot
Be True,” in Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001
(Amsterdam: Elsevier, March, 2006; also available at 911Review.com,
December 9, 2005 [http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html]).
15 “PAVE PAWS, Watching North America’s Skies, 24 Hours a Day” (www.pavepaws.org).
16 Russ Wittenberg, who flew large commercial airliners for 35 years
after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, says that it would have
been impossible for Flight 77 to 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 without touching the
lawn.” It would, he adds, have been “totally impossible for an amateur
who couldn’t even fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a
highly professional manner” (Greg Szymanski, “Former Vietnam Combat and
Commercial Pilot Firm Believer 9/11 Was Inside Government Job,” Lewis
News, Sunday, January 8, 2006 [http://www.lewisnews.com/article.asp?ID=106623]).
Hanjour’s incompetence was reported by the New York Times, May 4, 2002,
and CBS News, May 10, 2002. The 9/11 Commission Report in one place
calls Hanjour “the operation’s most experienced pilot” (530n147). But
it elsewhere acknowledges that he was known to be a “terrible pilot”
(225-26, 242).
17 Besides the fact that this is what we would expect, this is
evidently what Pentagon officials tell their employees. April Gallop,
who was working in the Pentagon on 9/11, has reportedly said that
during her classified tour when she was first assigned to the Pentagon,
she was told that it was the best-defended building in the world (John
Judge, “Pentagon and P-56 Preparations and Defenses and the Stand-Down
on 9/11,” Ratville Times, Jan. 11, 2006 [www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/P56A.html]).
18 See Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 159-64.
19 Thierry Meyssan, who has referred to these anti-missile batteries
(Pentagate [London: Carnot, 2002], 112, 116), has said with regard to
his source of information: “The presence of these anti-missile
batteries was testified to me by French officers to whom they were
shown during an official visit to the Pentagon. This was later
confirmed to me by a Saudi officer.”
John Judge, co-founder of
9-11 Citizens Watch, has reported that one day his father---John Joseph
Judge, a WWII Army Air Corps veteran who worked at the Pentagon until
his death in 1965---showed him the location of an air-to-surface
missile.
Judge also reports that in 1998, he was given a tour of the
Pentagon by Colonel Robinson, the long-time director of security. While
they were outside talking about threats from terrorists, Robinson
pointed to the roof and said, “we have cameras and radar up there to
make sure they don’t try to run a plane into the building.” Since
cameras and radars by themselves would not stop anything, Judge
concluded, Robinson’s statement implicitly referred to anti-aircraft
missiles (John Judge, “Pentagon and P-56 Preparations and Defenses and
the Stand-Down on 9/11,“ Ratville Times, Jan. 11, 2006 [www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/P56A.html];
Judge, incidentally, intends with these accounts to argue that there
must have been a stand-down order, not to support the idea that a
missile hit the Pentagon).
The Pentagon, to be sure, has denied
that it had any anti-aircraft batteries at that time, saying that they
had been considered “too costly and too dangerous to surrounding
residential areas” (Paul Sperry, “Why the Pentagon Was So Vulnerable,”
WorldNetDaily, Sept. 11, 2001 [http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24426]). But can anyone believe that Pentagon officials would have let such considerations prevent them from protecting themselves?
20 Won-Young Kim and Gerald R. Baum, “Seismic Observations during September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack” (http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/publications/download/911pentagon.pdf).
21 Karen Kwiatkowski, “Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy
Theory,” in Griffin and Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire:
Intellectuals Speak Out. For a more technical discussion of the debris,
see “The Missing Wings” (http://www.physics911.net/missingwings.htm),
in which A. K. Dewdney and G. W. Longspaugh argue that the absence of
wing debris alone is sufficient to disprove the claim that a huge
airliner hit the Pentagon. With regard to debris inside the building,
both Ed Plaugher, the county fire chief, and Lee Evey, the head of the
renovation project, reported seeing no big pieces from an airplane
(DoD News Briefings, September 12 and 15, 2001).
22 For photographic evidence and discussions thereof, see Eric
Hufschmid, Painful Questions, Chap. 9, and Dave McGowan, “September 11,
2001 Revisited: The Series: Act II,” Center for an Informed America (www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr68.html).
23 Nelson spoke on The Power Hour, April 27, 2005 (http://www.thepowerhour.com/press_release/press12.htm).
24 Ralph Omholt, “9-11 and the Impossible: Part One of an Online Journal of 9-11” (http://www.physics911.net/omholt.htm).
25 Nikki Lowe, “Pentagon Survivor Donates $500 in Lieu of a
Retirement Party: Isabelle Slifer Shares Her Story,” Pentagon Memorial
Fund Site (http://www.pentagonmemorial.net/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5773). By contrast, when the airliners crashed into the Twin Towers, several floors of each building were immediately damaged.
26 “Eyewitness: The Pentagon,” Space.com, June 30, 2005 (http://www.space.com/news/rains_september11-1.html).
Also relevant is testimony that it appeared to be a small military
airplane, because some such planes and some missiles look very much
alike. Danielle O’Brien, one of the air traffic controllers at Dulles,
said on the basis of the radar data: “The speed, the maneuverability,
the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us
experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane”
(ABC News, Oct. 24, 2001). Another witness, seeing the aircraft from a
14th floor apartment in Pentagon City, said that it “seemed to be able
to hold eight or twelve persons” and “made a shrill noise like a
fighter plane” (“Extensive Casualties in Wake of Pentagon Attack,”
Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2001). There were, to be sure, many people
who reported seeing an airliner, perhaps even one with American
Airlines markings, headed towards or even hit the Pentagon. For an
assessment of the credibility of these testimonies, which shows that
they should not be given more weight than the physical evidence and the
contrary testimony, see Dave McGowan, “September 11, 2001 Revisited:
Act II: Addendum 2” (http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr68e.html).
27 Upper Management LAX Official, “My Observation of LAX Security Events on 9/11.” Below.
28 “News Transcript: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine,” US Department of Defense, Oct. 12, 2001 (www.defenselink.mil/news/nov2001/t11182001_t1012pm.html).
29 Greg Szymanski, “Radiation Expert Claims High-Radiation Readings
Near Pentagon after 9/11 Indicate Depleted Uranium Used; High-Ranking
Army Officer Claims Missile Used at Pentagon, Not Commercial
Airliner,”,” Arctic Beacon, Aug. 18, 2005 [http://www.arcticbeacon.com/18-Aug-2005.html],
and W. Leon Smith and Nathan Diebenow, “DU: A Scientific Perspective:
An Interview With Leuren Moret, Geoscientist,” Lone Star Iconoclast,
Crawford, Texas, Nov. 20, 2005 [http://lonestaricon.com/2005/News/2005/11-20/19news03.htm]).
30 Szymanski, op. cit.
31 Karen Kwiatkowski, who was working at the Pentagon that morning,
reports that “any physical remains of the aircraft that hit the
Pentagon were quickly carted away to some unknown location, so we have
no physical evidence that the aircraft really was Flight 77 or even a
Boeing 757” (“Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory”).
Photographic evidence of this removal can be seen on Eric Hufschmid’s
video, “Painful Deceptions” (available at www.EricHufschmid.Net).
32 A photograph showing this literal cover-up can be seen in Ralph
Omholt, “9-11 and the Impossible: Part One of an Online Journal of
9-11” (http://www.physics911.net/omholt.htm).
33 On the confiscation of the film from the Citgo gas station and a
nearby hotel, respectively, see Bill McKelway “Three Months On, Tension
Lingers Near the Pentagon,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 11, 2001 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1211_wirepentagon.html), and Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Inside the Ring,” Washington Times, Sept. 21, 2001.
34 Scott Bingham, who has tried to get videos of the Pentagon strike
released under the Freedom of Information Act, has his lawsuit and the
revealing response posted on his website, Welcome to Flight 77.info (http://www.flight77.info). A summary of this response is provided in “Government Responds to Flight 77 FOAI Request,” 911Truth.org, Aug. 2005 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050824131004151).
Further evidence of a cover-up is provided by investigative journalist
Wayne Madsen, who reports that he learned from both a senior Pentagon
official and a U.S. Army employee that a strict anti-leak policy was
enacted after 9/11, which forbad all employees to discuss the Pentagon
strike and the FBI’s confiscation of the security video tapes (Wayne
Madsen Report, Jan. 15, 2006 [http://www.waynemadsenreport.com]).
35 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Authorized
Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 39.
36 See Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 241-44.
37 The 9/11 Commission Report, 40.
38 “Statement of Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta before
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,
May 23, 2003” (available at www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/commissiontestimony052303.htm).
39 Ibid.
40 “Air Attack on Pentagon Indicates Weaknesses,” Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001.
41 The 9/11 Commission Report, 34.
42 During the Senate Armed Services Committee’s interview with
General Richard Myers (who was nominated to become chair of the Joint
Chiefs) on September 13, 2001, the chair, Senator Carl Levin, said that
“there have been statements that the aircraft that crashed in
Pennsylvania was shot down.” Myers replied that “the armed forces did
not shoot down any aircraft” (“Senate Armed Services Committee Holds
Hearing on Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., September 13, 2001” [available
at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040814220906511]).
43 See Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions, 238-39. Additional evidence that Flight 93 was shot down
came from an apparent slip by Secretary Rumsfeld during his visit to
Iraq on Christmas Eve, 2004, when he referred to “the people who
attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over
Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon” (“Surprise Trip for Donald
Rumsfeld,” CNN, Dec. 24, 2004 [http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/24/nfcnn.01.html]).
Evidence of a more explicit nature came from Paul Cellucci,
Washington’s envoy to Canada in February of 2005. Seeking to convince
Canada to support the missile defense shield, he told his audience in
Toronto that a Canadian general was in charge of NORAD on 9/11 when it,
under orders from President Bush, scrambled military jets to shoot down
a hijacked aircraft headed for Washington (Colin Perkel and Beth
Gorham, “Missile Rejection Perplexes U.S.,” Canadian Press, Feb. 23,
2005 [available at http://www.curevents.com/vb/showpost.php?p=51773&postcount=1]).
44 Clarke reports that he received the authorization from Cheney
shortly after 9:45, when the evacuation of the White House began
(Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror
[New York: Free Press, 2004], 7-8). According to James Bamford and an
ABC News program called “9/11” (Sept. 11, 2002), Colonel Marr, after
receiving Cheney’s shoot-down order, “sent out word to air traffic
controllers to instruct fighter pilots to destroy the United jetliner,”
saying: “United Airlines Flight 93 will not be allowed to reach
Washington, D.C.” (Bamford, A Pretext for War [New York: Doubleday,
2004], 65-66). “These testimonies contradict the 9/11 Commission’s
claim that the military did not even know about the hijacking of Flight
93 until it had crashed.”
45 For additional evidence, see Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 237-40.
46 Why exactly the military denied shooting down Flight 93, rather
than taking credit for preventing a second attack on Washington, is
unclear. But the very fact that the military and the White House have
steadfastly denied shooting down Flight 93 suggests that this was a
criminal act, which as such needed to be covered up.
47 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 24-25,
35-36, 212.
48 Secretary of State Powell promised a White Paper presenting this
proof, but it was never produced. Also, although the Taliban said that
it would hand bin Laden over if the United States presented evidence of
his involvement in 9/11, Bush replied that there would be no
negotiations or even discussion (“White House Warns Taliban: ‘We Will
Defeat You,’” CNN.com, Sept. 21, 2001). Four weeks after the attacks
began, a Taliban spokesman said: "We will negotiate. But . . . [w]e are
not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have
asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?"
(Kathy Gannon, AP, “Taliban Willing To Talk, But Wants U.S. Respect” [http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/focus/terrorism/archives/1001/w01taliban.html]).
49 See Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), Chs. 12 and
13, entitled “Romancing the Taliban: The Battle for Pipelines.”
50Julio Godoy, “U.S. Taliban Policy Influenced by Oil,” Inter Press Service, Nov. 16, 2001.
51 This according to Niaz Naik, the highly respected Pakistani
representative at the meeting, as reported in George Arney, “U.S.
‘Planned Attack on Taleban,’” BBC News, Sept. 18, 2001. According to a
story in the Guardian, “Threat of U.S. Strikes Passed to Taliban Weeks
Before NY Attack” (Sept. 22, 2001), one of the American representatives
confirmed that this discussion of military action did occur.
52 See Paul D. Wolfowitz and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, “Saddam Must Go,”
Weekly Standard, Dec. 1997; PNAC, “Letter to President Clinton on
Iraq,” Jan. 26, 1998 (www.newamericancentury.org); and PNAC, “Letter to Gingrich and Lott,” May 29, 1998 (www.newamericancentury.org). The signers of the latter two letters included Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
53 The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s
Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September
2000 (www.newamericancentury.org), 14.
54 Paul O’Neill, who was secretary of the treasury and hence a
member of the National Security Council, has stated this in Ron
Susskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and
the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004),
and in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on January 11, 2004. The main
topic within days of the inauguration, O’Neill says, was going after
Saddam, with the question being not “Why Saddam?” or “Why Now?” but
merely “finding a way to do it.” Susskind, whose book also draws on
interviews with other officials, says that in its first weeks the Bush
administration was discussing the occupation of Iraq and the question
of how to divide up its oil (www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml).
Richard Clarke, who had been the National Coordinator for Security and
Counterterrorism, has confirmed O’Neill’s charge, saying: “The
administration of the second George Bush did begin with Iraq on its
agenda” (Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror [New York:
Free Press, 2004], 264).
55 David Armstrong, “Dick Cheney’s Song of America,” Harper’s,
October, 2002 (entered into the Congressional Record on October 10,
2002). One long section of the 1992 draft, Armstrong points out, began
by acknowledging “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”
56 Rebuilding America’s Defenses, 50-51.
57 According to the Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2002.
58 Quoted in Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 32.
59 “Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the New York Times,” Oct. 12, 2001.
60 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Sept. 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html).
61 Report of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization (www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi).
62 “Department of Defense News Briefing on Pentagon Attack, 6:42 PM, Sept. 11, 2001” (available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/dod_brief02.htm).
The transcript, incidentally, has the question coming from Secretary
Rumsfeld. But the flow of the discussion suggests that it came from a
reporter. In either case, the 9/11 attacks were interpreted to mean
that greater defense spending was needed, “especially for missile
defense.”
63 See at least most of the contributors to Paul Zarembka, ed., The
Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006 [March]); David
Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire:
Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006 [fall]);
and Kevin Barrett, John B. Cobb, Jr., and Sandra Lubarsky, eds., 9/11
and the American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out
(Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006 [fall]). These intellectuals
include John B. Cobb, Jr., one of America’s eminent Protestant
theologians; Rosemary Ruether, one of America’s leading Catholic
theologians; Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at
Princeton University; and Morgan Reynolds, the chief economist at the
U.S. Department of Labor during part of the first term of George W.
Bush.
64 Retired USAF Colonel George Nelson, for example, has written of
the “nightmarish probability . . . that so many Americans appear to be
involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history”
(“911: Aircraft Parts as a Clue to Their Identity: The Precautionary
Principle,” Rense.com, April 23, 2005 [http://www.rense.com/general64/prec.htm ])