Was 9/11 an Inside Job?

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Was 9/11 an Inside Job?

 

By Mark H. Gaffney

 

 

The following is an excerpt from Mark H. Gaffney's forthcoming book, THE 911 MYSTERY PLANE AND THE VANISHING OF AMERICA, to be released in September 2008.

 

 

15/08/08 "ICH" -- - - Regrettably, there is considerable evidence that elements of the Bush administration were complicit in the 9/11 attack, and may even have helped stage it. Let us now examine some of what I regard as the most compelling evidence. However, the following discussion makes no claim to be comprehensive.

We know that within minutes of the “worst terrorist attack” in US history, even before the collapse of WTC-2 at 9:59 am, US officials knew the names of several of the alleged hijackers. CBS reported that a flight attendant on AA Flight 11, Amy Sweeney, had the presence of mind to call her office and reveal the seat numbers of the hijackers who had seized the plane.[1] FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, “This was the first piece of hard evidence.”[2] In his memoirs CIA Director George Tenet emphasizes the importance of the passenger manifests, as does counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke.[3] All of which is very strange because the manifests later released by the airlines do not include the names of any of the alleged hijackers. Nor has this discrepancy ever been explained.

 

According to MSNBC, the plan to invade Afghanistan and “remove Al Qaeda from the face of he earth” was already sitting on G.W. Bush’s desk on the morning of 9/11 awaiting his signature.[4] The plan, in the form of a presidential directive, had been developed by the CIA and according to Richard Clarke called for “arming the Northern Alliance...to go on the offensive against the Taliban [and] pressing the CIA to...go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership.”[5]

 

A former Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, tells virtually the same story. During a BBC interview, three days after 9/11, Niak claimed that senior American officials had informed him in mid-July 2001 that the US would attack the Taliban “before the snows start falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”[6] Niak said he received this information in Berlin at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan. He also predicted, correctly, that the US attack would be launched from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But how could US officials know in mid-July that American forces would invade Afghanistan in October unless they had foreknowledge of the attack?

Foreknowledge probably also explains why General Richard Myers, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on 9/11, announced at the first post-9/11 meeting of Bush’s National Security Council, held on video-conference the afternoon of the attack, that “there are forty-two major Taliban bombing targets.”[7] But how did Myers come to have such detailed information about military targets in Afghanistan, so soon after the 9/11 attack? This important detail belies oft-repeated claims that the US military was not prepared to attack Afghanistan, and points to extensive war planning before 9/11. Journalist Steve Coll arrived at a similar conclusion while researching his 2004 book, Ghost Wars, an excellent history of the period leading up to the 9/11 attack. Coll interviewed two Clinton administration officials who informed him that ”the Pentagon had been studying possible targets in the same spring [i.e., 1998] that the CIA had been drawing up its secret plan to raid Tarnack Farm,” located near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where bin Laden had taken up quarters at the invitation of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.[8]

According to Clarke, at the same meeting on the afternoon of 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet informed the president that “Al Qaeda had committed these atrocities.”[9] But, again, how did Tenet know this so soon after the attack, especially given that “security failures” had occurred, unless he had foreknowledge?

No Hard Evidence

On September 20, 2001, the Bush administration officially declared that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attack. Three days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced on Meet the Press that the government would soon release “a white paper” detailing the evidence against bin Laden.[10] Later the same day, Bush faced questions from the press about Powell’s remark and backed away from releasing any additional information. Bush explained that the government had a lot of evidence but that most of it was classified and could not be made public. Bush emphasized, however, that the evidence “leads to one person, as well as one global terrorist organization.”[11] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made a similar statement during an interview on FOX News. Said Rice: “We have very good evidence of links between Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda operatives, and what happened on September 11.”[12] Rice refused to release any particulars, however, and, like Bush, claimed that the evidence was “classified.”

As we know, the US government never got around to releasing the promised white paper. Why not? Was it because the evidence against bin Laden was too weak to hold up in court? Such was the view of journalist Seymour Hersh, who cited CIA and Justice Department sources to this effect in his regular column in the New Yorker magazine.[13]

Foreign intelligence agencies were also busily investigating the case, but fared no better. For instance, Germany’s Chief Federal Prosecutor, Kay Nehm, admitted that there was no hard evidence linking bin Laden with the crime.[14] The lack of evidence prompted former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to speak out against President Bush’s decision to invoke Article V of the NATO Treaty, mobilizing NATO’s involvement in the war on terrorism. In Schmidt’s own words: “Proof had to be delivered that the September 11 terror attack came from abroad. [Yet,] that proof still has not been provided.”[15]

Osama did not cooperate by acknowledging his role in the attack; on the contrary. In a statement on September 16, 2001 carried by Al-Jazeera, bin Laden categorically denied any involvement. Days later, he repeated this denial during an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummaut.[16] On November 3, 2001 Al-Jazeera released a third statement, in which bin Laden not only denied involvement but also accused the Bush administration of waging a “crusader war” against the Muslim world. To the best of my knowledge, none of these denials were reported in the US media. Why not?

On October 1, 2001 British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the case against bin Laden was proved beyond a shadow of doubt. Said Blair: "I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama Bin Laden’s] link to the events of the 11th of September.”[17] Several days later (on October 4), Blair’s government went public with the evidence to which Blair had alluded: a “Bin Laden Dossier.”[18] But the evidence turned out to be short of “incontrovertible,” and in fact was shockingly thin. The Independent described it as “little more than conjecture,”[19] and an editorial in the Guardian concluded that the dossier was “almost worthless from a legal point of view.”[20] The (London) Times agreed, observing that “There is no evidence presented [in the dossier] that directly links bin Laden to September 11.”[21]

The Bin Laden Video and the personification of evil

Confronted with US demands to hand over bin Laden unconditionally, the Taliban was initially defiant, and refused. However, in early October 2001 two Pakistani Islamic parties persuaded the Taliban leadership to extradite bin Laden to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he would be held under house arrest and tried by an international tribunal.[22] The deal even included the extradition of bin Laden to the US in the event of a conviction. However, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf vetoed the arrangement, no doubt, under heavy pressure from the Bush administration. But why would the US turn down an opportunity to bring the arch villain of 9/11 to justice for the crime of the century? Was it because, as I have already suggested, the US had insufficient evidence to convict and faced the embarrassing likelihood of an acquittal?

In fact, the only evidence the US government released linking bin Laden to 9/11 was a video-tape which supposedly turned up by chance in Afghanistan. According to the State Department, US military forces found the hour-long video in Jalalabad on December 9, 2001, shortly after the US invasion.[23] It purportedly shows bin Laden and several of his al Qaeda comrades ghoulishly celebrating their successful attack upon America. The US government released the tape on December 13, 2001 along with an English translation and a Department of Defense (DoD) press release. The latter included the following statement by Rumsfeld: "There was no doubt of bin Laden's responsibility for the September 11 attacks before the tape was discovered."[24] The US media made much of this confessional tape, as did political luminaries like New York City Mayor (and presidential hopeful) Rudy Giuliani, who told CNN that the tape confirmed that the US military campaign against bin Laden was “more than justified.” Giuliani added: "Obviously, this man [i.e., bin Laden] is the personification of evil. He seems delighted at having killed more people than he anticipated, which leaves you wondering just how deep his evil heart and soul really is."[25]

In the video bin Laden brags about al Qaeda’s role in staging the attack. But is the footage bona fide? Anyone who has seen the film knows that the main character bears only the most superficial resemblance to bin Laden, judging from well-known photos. In addition, there are major discrepancies. For example, the video shows bin Laden writing with his right hand when according to the FBI he is a southpaw.[26]

Two independent translators and a third expert on oriental studies also took issue with the English translation of the Arabic released by the DoD. During the program "Monitor,” which aired on the German TV channel “Das Erste,” the three experts stated that "at the most important places where it [i.e, the video] is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it [i.e., the translation] is not identical with the Arabic."[27] The experts also disputed the US claim that the tape proved foreknowledge. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Hamburg, stated that "The American translators who listened to the tapes and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it." While this does not necessarily exonerate bin Laden, it does raise questions. If, as Bush claimed, the US had solid evidence of bin Laden’s guilt, then why make false claims?

Evidently, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agrees with the skeptics. The FBI’s on-line web listing of “Most Wanted Terrorists” includes a page devoted to Osama bin Laden. According to this official post, which may be viewed by anyone with access to cyberspace, bin Laden is wanted by the FBI for the August 1998 attacks upon US Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed over 200 people.[28] However, the page makes no reference to the events of September 11, 2001. Nor is there any mention of the video discussed above. In June 2006, when blogger Ed Haas learned about this, he was understandably puzzled and contacted FBI headquarters by phone seeking an explanation. Haas talked with Rex Tomb, the FBI’s Chief of Investigative Publicity, who informed him that “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”[29] Haas was dumbfounded, and said: “But how is this possible?” Tomb replied that “bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection with 9/11.” He then explained why not:

“The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” [my emphasis][30]

This admission by the FBI is astonishing and raises fundamental questions about the war on terrorism, as well as the role of the US media. Was Osama bin Laden convicted for the cold-blooded murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans in the US court of public opinion by means of a media circus? Did the US government and the corporate media collude to deceive the American people? If so, then a colossal miscarriage of justice has occurred.

Consider also the strange statement made by President Bush at a press conference on March 13, 2002. When asked about the progress being made to catch bin Laden, Bush replied that “we haven’t heard much from him. [i.e., bin Laden] And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I, I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” [31] [my emphasis] But why this almost lackadaisical attitude about the arch-villain whom Bush had promised to track down to the ends of the earth? What had become of the president’s laser-like determination? Bush explained that bin Laden had ceased to be a terrorist threat due to the US occupation of Afghanistan. Yet, by at least one account, the US forces at Tora Bora displayed almost unbelievable incompetence during the pursuit of bin Laden, as a result of which the accused and most of his entourage escaped.[32] Was this the plan, all along?

A no less strange remark made a few weeks later (April 6, 2002) by General Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, suggests that bin Laden’s getaway had been approved at the highest level. Myers told CNN that “the goal has never been to get bin Laden.”[33] I personally found his statement incomprehensible, since at the time Osama was public enemy number one. Did the US allow bin Laden to escape because the Bush administration judged he was more valuable at-large? We can’t be certain, because by this time there were also numerous reports that bin Laden was dead.[34]

Did President Bush know when he made the above statement that bin Laden was already deceased? This would explain Bush’s casual demeanor. Yet, either way, from the standpoint of propaganda it hardly mattered whether bin Laden was dead or alive. His larger-than-life reputation could be sustained simply by neglecting to confirm his death, and the legend is what counted. His persona could also be “spun” in various ways and made to serve political expedience. Indeed, by this logic bin Laden was even more valuable dead because a living breathing bin Laden might at some point be apprehended, in which case the Bush administration faced the unwelcome prospect of a very public trial at which the terrorist would have an opportunity to tell his side of the story to a listening world. And this, of course, had to be avoided.

If we can believe the 9/11 Commission Report, the case against bin Laden was greatly bolstered by the capture and subsequent confession in 2003 of the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). The problem, of course, is that the official story about the plot against America is wholly based on secret CIA interrogations that have never been independently confirmed, and must therefor be viewed as suspect. But even if we accept the testimony of KSM in 2003, this does not explain the rush to war in 2001. Nor does it explain President Bush’s decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein, a decision reportedly made in July 2002.[35]

Previous cases of terrorism had already demonstrated the wisdom of proceeding with caution, since knee-jerk responses can (and do) misfire. For example, after the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, US investigators at first suspected a Mideast connection. But this was proved false, and similar errors were made after the 1988 downing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Although initial evidence pointed to Syria or Iran, a thorough forensic investigation ruled these out and eventually implicated Libya. The 9/11 Commission Report itself describes the latter case as “a cautionary tale about rushing to judgement in attributing responsibility for a terrorist act.”[36] So, why the rush to war after the September 11 attack? If the Bush administration had conclusive evidence that al Qaeda was responsible, why not release it? Was the Bush White House tight-lipped because the actual evidence would have exposed the complicity of the US military and intelligence community? A stunning story that broke in the US press in 2005 points to such a conclusion.

Able Danger

As it happened, a legitimate US military counter-terrorist operation known as Able Danger was tracking Mohamed Atta and his cohorts as early as January-February 2000. The operation, based at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, was small but extremely high-tech, as it employed advanced computers to sweep the internet, a methodology known as as data-mining. In May 2000, however, when Able Danger’s success became known throughout the Defense Department, the officers who ran it were ordered to shut it down and destroy their data.[37] One officer reportedly was threatened with prison if he refused. Later, the Pentagon attempted to block Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Able Danger, and in 2005, when this failed, the Pentagon refused Able Danger staffers permission to testify before the committee.[38]

One intelligence officer who later testified anyway, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, was targeted for harassment. The question is why? Of course, the standard explanation is that the military bureaucracy made gross blunders and later sought to cover up their incompetence. But there is another possibility. Was Able Danger shut down because this honest operation threatened to unmask the covert planning for the September 11 “attack”?

What is clear is that the Pentagon’s self-serving attempts to gag and discredit Lt. Col. Shaffer are not to be believed. In February 2006 Shaffer told the House Armed Services Committee that during the summer of 2000 he and other officers involved in Able Danger attempted on three separate occasions to warn the FBI about the terrorist threat posed by Mohamed Atta. But the meetings never happened. Each time they were canceled at the last minute by high-level Pentagon attorneys.[39] Nor has the Pentagon ever provided a satisfactory explanation as to why.[40]

Some time after the dissolution of Able Danger Shaffer was reassigned to Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan, where in October 2003 he succeeded in bringing the existence of Able Danger to the attention of the 9/11 Commission. This apparently happened due to a chance encounter with Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the commission, and several commission staffers who were then on tour, gathering firsthand information about the US war on terrorism. Lt. Col. Shaffer told the House committee that after he briefed the commission staff about Able Danger’s success in identifying Mohamed Atta and other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Zelikow came up, handed him his card, and asked him to “please contact me upon your return to the states so we can continue this dialogue.”[41] However, three months later when Shaffer did just that he was surprised to discover that Zelikow was no longer interested in Able Danger. But why wouldn’t he be?

Then, all hell broke loose when Shaffer dutifully informed his commanding officer about the contact. From that point on Lt. Col. Shaffer was subjected to the sort of military hazing that is usually reserved for green recruits. His security clearance was cancelled. He lost access to his office computer and all of his classified materials about Able Danger, which, he later learned, were destroyed. Subsequently, the Pentagon dismissed his testimony, claiming it was unsupported by hard evidence, an obvious example of Catch-22. Shaffer also learned that he was under investigation, although no formal charges were ever filed against him. He was told “off the record” that he had “pissed off” one or more high-ranking officers. Several of Shaffer’s colleagues from Able Danger corroborated his story, but it didn’t matter. His military career was over, destroyed.[42] Shaffer’s testimony before Congress is riveting and is essential reading for anyone interested in 9/11 truth.

In their 2006 book Without Precedent, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, deny that Able Danger had ever identified Mohamed Atta before 9/11.[43] But their assertion, much belated, is just not credible. Their own final report on 9/11 makes no mention of Able Danger. It is abundantly clear that even though Lt. Col. Shaffer notified the panel about this important counter-terrorism operation the commissioners made no attempt to investigate it, and since Kean and Hamilton failed to do so how can they now credibly claim to know? Obviously, their denial is based on information they received, much later, from the Pentagon.

Kean and Hamilton write that their staff “received all of the Department of Defense documents on Able Danger and had found no mention of Atta.”[44] But their claim is not persuasive, since we know that 2.5 terabytes of intelligence data about Able Danger had already been destroyed (in 2000), not to mention the information on Shaffer’s hard drive (in 2004). The question for the co-chairs is simple: What assurance could they possibly have that the documents they received from the DoD about Able Danger tell the full story? Obviously, they do not. More to the point, why would Kean and Hamilton believe the Pentagon over the testimony of Lt. Col. Shaffer? By this time the co-chairs already had good reason to suspect that the Pentagon, not Shaffer, had deceived them in the hearings.[45]

Eavesdropping on bin Laden

The fact that Able Danger was shut down in May 2000, long before Bush entered office, raises disturbing questions. Was covert planning for 9/11 already underway during the Clinton administration? It is curious that in 2002 CIA Director George Tenet told a closed session of a joint House-Senate panel investigating the 9/11 “security failure” that al Qaeda‘s planning of the September 11, 2001 attack started as early as 1998.[46] But how could Tenet know this unless the CIA had been tracking bin Laden, all along? As a matter of fact, we know they were! According to several UPI reports, the National Security Administration (NSA) acknowledged in February 2001 that the use of advanced Echelon software enabled the US intelligence community to eavesdrop on thousands of bin Laden’s cell phone calls over a period of years. US officials disclosed that even after bin Laden began to encrypt certain calls in 1995, his “codes were broken.”[47]

The date 1998 is doubly curious. That same year Tenet informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA’s strategy to defeat al Qaeda included the recruiting of al Qaeda operatives.[48] In his memoirs Tenet goes even further with an assertion that is remarkable for its candor. He writes: “the [9/11] commission failed to recognize the sustained comprehensive efforts conducted by the intelligence community prior to 9/11 to penetrate the al Qaeda organization.”[49] I had to re-read this passage several times just to believe my own eyes. Did the CIA recruit terrorists who were then used as patsies on 9/11?

Bush officials, of course, have steadfastly denied that the US successfully penetrated al Qaeda before 9/11. But their denials are less than persuasive in light of Lt. Col. Shaffer’s testimony about Able Danger, and also because there is no doubt: we know that the monitoring of phone calls continued. After al Qaeda bombed two US embassies in East Africa in August 1998, FBI investigators got lucky and stumbled upon an al Qaeda communications hub in Yemen. According to writer Lawrence Wright, this proved to be “one of the most important pieces of evidence the FBI would ever discover, allowing investigators to map the links of the al Qaeda network all across the globe.”[50] The hub was a private telephone, anything but high tech. The switchboard operator turned out to be the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the nineteen alleged hijackers. His job in Yemen was simply to relay messages to-and-from various al Qaeda operatives, including bin Laden.[51]

From phone records US investigators confirmed a flurry of calls through the hub before the embassy bombings, and this pattern was repeated before the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.[52] Indeed, it is unclear why US intelligence agencies failed to prevent the attack on the Cole because, by this time, they were listening. The al Qaeda hub was allowed to operate right up until September 11, 2001, and even after. Incredibly, US and Yemeni authorities did not finally move in and close it down until 2002.[53]

Based on this evidence, gleaned from open sources in the US media, we must conclude that the US intelligence community was tracking al Qaeda’s nearly every move before 9/11, and had been for years, probably including the entry of the alleged hijackers into the US, their “flight training” and subsequent movements. The phone intercepts certainly continued.

In June 2002 both the Miami Herald and the Dallas Star-Telegram reported that in the summer of 2001 the NSA even monitored phone conversations between alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).[54] The papers reported that the NSA “did not recognize the significance of what they had.” Evidently, we are supposed to believe that the NSA did not pass along this important intelligence to the CIA. But this is absurd. After all, the NSA is a part of the US Department of Defense and exists for the purpose of providing intelligence to the CIA and the US military. The story in the Miami Herald even acknowledges this, citing an NSA official who stated under condition of anonymity that it was “simply not true” that the NSA failed to share the information with other intelligence agencies.[55] Of course they shared it. Incidentally, a google search failed to locate the full text of either of these articles, which apparently have long since been scrubbed from the internet. To the best of my knowledge they survive in cyberspace only as thumbnails.

What are we to make of all of this? Did elements of the US intelligence community know about al Qaeda’s multiple hijacking operation, all along? Did they, then, covertly piggy-back their own planning on top of it, thereby insuring the attack’s “success” while also manipulating it for their own ignoble ends? If true, this would easily explain why the Pentagon shut down Able Danger in May 2000. It would explain the Pentagon’s gag order imposed upon the Able Danger staffers, which blunted a Congressional inquiry. It would also explain the carefully orchestrated smear campaign aimed at Lt Col. Shaffer, who did his patriotic duty and was made to pay a terrible price. It would explain why the DoD fed phony or incomplete information about Able Danger to co-chairs Kean and Hamilton, and other members of the commission, to persuade them that the data-mining effort was “insignificant.” It would also explain why, time and again, during the period before 9/11, the CIA withheld critical information from the FBI, information, which, had it become known, would have enabled the FBI to foil the 9/11 attack. The FBI was always just one or two critical pieces of information short of putting together the plot. Nor has the CIA disconnect ever been adequately explained.[56] The standard excuses, bureaucratic bungling and interagency rivalry, are simply not persuasive.

This interpretation would also explain why George Tenet lied during the 9/11 Commission hearings when he denied his meetings with President Bush in August 2001. Indeed, it might even explain why President-elect G.W. Bush retained Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as his CIA chief. The move was one of Bush’s first decisions as president and was most unusual, especially given the neocons’ scarcely concealed scorn for the Clinton administration. However, it makes perfect sense, assuming that when Bush took office elements of the CIA and US military were already deeply involved in the covert planning for the 9/11 attack. Continuity at the CIA would have been essential. As far as I know, writer Ian Henshall was the first to make this connection.[57] And let us not forget: during the period before 9/11 the CIA Director visited the White House on a daily basis. Tenet personally briefed Bush on intelligence issues, an unusual chore for a CIA Director.[58] But, again, this becomes understandable, assuming that a major covert operation was in the works, one that entailed extreme compartmentalization. Only a very few individuals at the top would have been fully briefed.

bin Laden in Dubai?

A no less shocking story that appeared in the prestigious French paper Le Figaro on October 11, 2001 points to the same conclusion. The story claimed that bin Laden was actually under the protection of US security agencies prior to the 9/11 attack. According to Le Figaro, bin Laden checked in to the American Hospital in Dubai on July 4, 2001, just two months before 9/11, where he received medical treatment over a ten-day period for a serious kidney ailment.[59]

 

Dubai is one of the Arab Emirates located in the Persian Gulf. The story cannot be based on just rumor or hearsay because it includes many details: Bin Laden was reportedly accompanied by his personal physician, a nurse, four body guards, and at least one of his lieutenants. It also states that the local CIA station chief, evidently a well known figure in the tiny country, was seen entering bin Laden’s hospital suite during his stay, and immediately after the meeting caught a flight back to the US. If the story is accurate, bin Laden held court from his hospital room, welcoming various members of his extended family, as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. It is no secret that bin Laden suffered from kidney disease. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had informed the Clinton administration about bin Laden’s deteriorating health as early as 1998, during a state visit to Washington.[60]

 

A follow-up report in the Guardian (UK) on November 1, 2001 confirmed the above story and added further details, noting that bin Laden’s Saudi guests included Prince Turki al Faisal, who was then head of Saudi intelligence. The article in the Guardian names French intelligence as the source of the story in Le Figaro. It also claims the information was leaked because the French were “keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.” Given that bin Laden was already wanted at the time for the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, why did the US not arrange to have local authorities snatch the terrorist in Dubai, in order to bring him to justice? Of course, it goes without saying that bin Laden would never have visited the US hospital in the first place had he not been confident of his protected status. Do we dare to connect these dots? Surely the story in Le Figaro suggests that elements of the US intelligence establishment knew about the coming 9/11 attack and allowed bin Laden to remain free to play his assigned role. As shocking as this sounds, if the story is correct there is no other plausible explanation.

Such a conclusion is further supported by powerful evidence that first came to light on November 6, 2001, when the BBC program Newsnight produced FBI documents on British television proving that soon after G.W. Bush entered office the White House ordered the FBI to “back off” from ongoing investigations of Osama bin Laden and other members of his family, some of whom were living in the US at the time.[61] To the best of my knowledge, none of these stories from European and UK press were ever reported in the US media. Again, why not?

Were elements of the US government and intelligence community complicit in the events of September 11, 2001? Did they allow the attack to happen, or even help to stage it, in order to generate the pretext for a much more aggressive US foreign policy which the American people would not otherwise support? Either way, the implications are shocking, indeed, so shocking that many of our fellow countrymen (and women) cannot bring themselves to think such thoughts. Yet, it is a matter of record that the neoconservatives openly advocated an imperial shift in US foreign policy before the November 2000 election.[62] Moreover, Clinton was already moving in this direction.

These are grave questions for our nation and we must not fail to address them. If there is any truth in them we face a Constitutional crisis unlike anything in our history.

Mark's forthcoming book, THE 9/11 MYSTERY PLANE will feature, among other disclosures, the first published discussion and analysis of the NORAD/FAA radar data from 9/11, released last October thanks to a FOIA request. Mark Can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net

Mark's book can be pre-ordered at amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/11-Mystery-Plane-Vanishing-America/dp/0979988608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qi d=1216184222&sr=1-1

 

 

1 According to another account the stewardess was Betty Ong. Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/11, Free Press, New York, 2008, p.18.

2 “The President’s Story,” CBS News, September 10, 2003.

3 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp.xix and 167; Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, Free Press, New York, 2004. pp. 13-14.

4 Jim Miklaszewski and Alex Johnson, “US planned for attack on al-qaida,” MSNBC and NBC, May 16, 2002,

5 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, Free Press, New York, 2004, p. 26. Evidently the name of the plan was “Blue Sky.” George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp. 171 and 130-131.

6 The three US officials were Tom Simmons, a former US Ambassador to Pakistan, Karl Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, and Lee Coldren, a former State Department expert on south Asia. George Arney, “US ‘planned attack on Taliban’,” BBC news, September 18, 2001.

7 At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp.. 23.

8 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin Press, New York, 2004, p. 409, also see note 21, p. 628.

9 Ibid.

10 “White House Wavers on Publicizing bin Laden Case,” UPI, September 24, 2001.

11 Transcript: President Freezes Terrorists' Assets: Remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order, The Rose Garden, September 24, 2001, posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010924-4.html

12 News Sunday, FOX News, September 23, 2001.

13 Seymour Hersh, “What Went Wrong: The C.I.A. and the failure of American intelligence, New Yorker, October 1, 2001

14 The Guardian, September 17, 2001, p. 11; also see The (London) Times, September 28, 2001, p. 5.

15 Schmidt reportedly made the statement on German television on December 10, 2001. See the Webster Tarpley segment in the video by Barrie Zwicker, “The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw,” 2004.

16 Ummaut, September 22, 2001. The pertinent text reads, as follows: “I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks....The American system is totally in the control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States ... I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.”

17 The (London) Daily Telegraph, October 1, 2001.

18 The full transcript may be viewed at http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2001/10/05

19 The Independent (UK), October 7, 2001, p. 7.

20 The Guardian, October 5, 2001, p. 23

21 The (London) Times, October 5, 2001, p. 8.

22 The (London) Daily Telegraph, October 4, 2001, p. 9; also see Milan Rai, “Afghanistan: The Unnecessary War,” Znet, October 13, 2004.

23 The full video is posted at http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2001/12/14

24 As of this writing the press release is still posted and may be viewed at http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=3184

25 “Bin Laden on tape: Attacks ‘benefited Islam greatly’,” CNN, December 14, 2001, posted at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/ret.bin.laden.videotape/

26 http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

27 Georg Restle, Ekkehard Sieker, “Bin-Laden-Video: Falschübersetzung als Beweismittel?”, MONITOR Nr. 485 am, December 20, 2001. posted at http://web.archive.org/web/20021218105636/www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/beitraege.phtml?id=379

28 The page is posted at http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

29 “FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006, posted at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

30 Ibid.

31 President Bush Holds Press Conference, The James S. Brady Briefing Room, March 13, 2002. Posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html

32 John F. Burns,”10-Month Afghan Mystery: Is bin Laden Dead or Alive?,” New York Times, September 30, 2002.

33 Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields, “Interview with General Richard Myers,” CNN, April 6, 2002.

34 Giles Tremlett (in Madrid), “Al-Qaeda leaders say nuclear power stations were original targets,” The Guardian, September 9, 2002; also see “Report: Bin Laden Already Dead,” FOX News, December 26, 2001; “Israeli Intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen,” Special to World Tribune.com, October 16, 2002; “Musharraf: bin Laden likely dead,” CNN, January 19, 2002.

35 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, p. 309.

36 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Norton & Co., New York, 2004, pp. 75-76.

37 Army Major Eric Kleinsmith destroyed 2.5 terabytes of intelligence data about al Qaeda in May and June 2000, at the order of Tony Gentry, general counsel of the Army Intelligence and Security Command. This is an enormous amount of data. To get an idea just how large the number is, wrap your mind around this: It is the equivalent of 25% of the Library of Congress. Patience Wait, “Data-mining offensive in the works,” Government Computer News, October 10, 2005, posted at http://www.gcn.com/print/24_30/37242-1.html?topic=news

38 Philip Shenon, “Pentagon Blocks Testimony at Senate Hearings n Terrorism,” New York Times, September 20, 2005; also see Philip Shenon, “Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader was Named Before Attacks,” New York Times, August 23, 2005.

39 Prepared statement of Anthony A. Shaffer, Lt Col., US Army Reserve, Senior Intelligence Officer, before the House Armed Services Committee, Wednesday February 15, 2006, full transcript posted at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/021506shaffer.pdf

40 The official explanations are so ridiculous they do not even deserve comment.

41 Ibid.

42 Will Dunham, “Three more assert Pentagon knew of 9/11 ringleader,” Reuters, September 1, 2005; “Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims,” FOX News, August 23, 2005; also see Thom Shanker, “Terrorist Known Before 9/11, More Say.” New York Times, September 2, 2005.

43 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/1 Commission, Alfred A, Knopf, New York, 2006, pp. 294-295.

44 Ibid.

45 Dan Eggen, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon,” The Washington Post, August 2, 2006.

46 John Diamond and Kathy Kiely, “Officials: Sept. 11 attacks were planned since 1998,” USA Today, June 18, 2002.

47 Richard Sale, “NSA Listens to bin Laden,” UPI, February 13, 2001; also see John C.K. Daly, “Analysis: US Combs Airwaves for bin Laden,” UPI, February 21, 2001; also see “US Makes Cyberwar on bin Laden,” UPI, February 9, 2001.

48 See the final report of the Joint Inquiry Committee, Appendix, p. 21, cited in Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 413., also see note 30, p. 629.

49 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, p.121.

50 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006, pp.277-278.

51 By Lisa Myers, “Hindsight and the attacks on America,” NBC News, July 21, 2004, posted at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5479799/

52 David Enser, Chris Plante and Peter Bergen, “USS Cole plot began after embassy attacks, investigator says, CNN News, December 20, 2002, posted at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/12/20/terrorism.threat.02/

53 “US links Yemen clan to Sept. 11 and East Africa attacks,” MSNBC, February 14, 2002. archived at http://www.bouwman.com/911/Operation/Yemen/Feb-15.html

54 Dallas Star-Telegram, June 7, 2002; also see Miami Herald, June 6, 2002.

55 Miami Herald, June 6, 2002.

56 For an excellent discussion of the many cases where the CIA withheld information, see Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006. See chapters 16-20.

57 Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed: The New Evidence, Carroll and Graf, New York, 2007, p.64.

58 Tenet mentions this in his memoirs. At the Center of the Storm, p. 137.

59 Alexandra Richard, “The CIA met bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai, Le Figaro, October 11, 2001. (translated by Tiphaine Dickson)

60 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin Press, New York, 2004, p. 442, also see note 14, p. 633.

61 Greg Palast and David Pallister, “FBI claims Bin aden Inquiry was frustrated: Officials told to ‘back off’ on Saudis before September 11,” Guardian (UK), November 7, 2001.

62 The neocon strategy for global US empire was outlined in a 2000 briefing paper, “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century.” It may still be viewed

[unknown1]

Was 9/11 an Inside Job? yes it was!

[Nur]

The Bush Doctrine & The 9/11 Commission Report:

 

Both Authored by Philip Zelikow

 

By David Ray Griffin

 

04/10/08 "ICH " -- - Thanks to the interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson of ABC News on September 11, the “Bush Doctrine” has become part of American political discourse much more fully than it was before. Thanks to that interview and the commentary that followed, Governor Palin and millions of other Americans learned of the existence and meaning of this fateful doctrine---fateful because, as New York Times reporter Philip Shenon has pointed out, it was used to “justify a preemptive strike on Iraq.”1

 

Thus far, however, the commentary following that interview has not brought out the fact that the document in which the Bush Doctrine was first fully articulated---the 2002 version of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS 2002) [pdf]---was written by the same person who was primarily responsible for the 9/11 Commission’s report: its executive director, Philip Zelikow.

 

This fact constituted an enormous conflict of interest that should, at the very least, keep Americans from referring to the 9/11 Commission as a model to be emulated---as did John McCain this September 15 in suggesting that “a 9/11-type commission” should be set up to study the causes of the recent financial crisis. As Shenon shows in his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, Zelikow’s authorship of NSS 2002, in conjunction with his close relationship to the Bush White House that this authorship illustrated, means that when the 9/11 Commission was formed in 2003, he should never have been chosen to be its executive director.

 

In the first part of this essay, I discuss the Bush Doctrine as articulated in NSS 2002. In the second part, I discuss Zelikow’s authorship of this document. In the third part, I discuss how he, in spite of this authorship, became the Commission’s executive director, and why this was problematic for the credibility of The 9/11 Commission Report.

 

The Bush Doctrine

 

According to international law as reflected in the charter of the United Nations, a preemptive war is legal in only one situation: if a country has certain knowledge that an attack by another country is imminent---too imminent for the matter to be taken to the UN Security Council.

 

Preemptive war, thus defined, is to be distinguished from “preventive war,” in which a country, fearing that another country may some time in the future become strong enough to attack it, attacks that country in order to prevent that possibility. Such wars are illegal under international law. Preventive wars, in fact, belong under the category of unprovoked wars, which were declared at the Nuremburg trials to constitute the “supreme international crime.”2

 

This traditional distinction between “preventive” and “preemptive” war creates a terminological problem, because preventive war, being illegal, is worse than preemptive war, and yet to most ears “preemption” sounds worse than “prevention.” As a result, many people speak of “preemptive war” when they really mean preventive war. To avoid any confusion, I employ the term “preemptive-preventive war” for what has traditionally been known as preventive war.3

 

People known as neoconservatives (or simply neocons), the most powerful member of whom has been Dick Cheney, did not like the idea that America’s use of military power could be constrained by the prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, Cheney, in his last year as secretary of defense, had Paul Wolfowitz (the undersecretary of defense for policy) and Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby write the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, which said that the United States should use force to “preempt” and “preclude threats.”4 In 1997, William Kristol founded a neocon think tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).5 In 1998, a letter signed by 18 members of PNAC---including Kristol, Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and James Woolsey---urged President Clinton to “undertake military action” to eliminate “the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.”6

 

Only after 9/11, however, were the neocons able to turn their wish to leave international law behind into official US policy. As Stephen Sniegoski wrote, “it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda of the neocons to become the policy of the United States of America.”7 Andrew Bacevich likewise wrote: “The events of 9/11 provided the tailor-made opportunity to break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American power.”8

 

The idea of preemptive-preventive war, which came to be known as the “Bush doctrine,” was first clearly expressed in the president’s address at West Point in June 2002, when the administration began preparing the American people for the attack on Iraq. Having stated that, in relation to “new threats,” deterrence “means nothing” and containment is “not possible,” Bush dismissed preemption as traditionally understood, saying: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.” Then, using the language of preemption while meaning preemptive-prevention, he said that America’s security “will require all Americans . . . to be ready for preemptive action.”9

 

Having been sketched in June 2002, the Bush Doctrine was first fully laid out that September in NSS 2002. This document’s covering letter, speaking of “our enemies’ efforts to acquire dangerous technologies,” declares that America will, in self-defense, “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”10 Then the document itself, saying that “our best defense is a good offense,” states:

 

“Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries' choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.”11

 

In justifying this change of doctrine, NSS 2002 argues that the United States must “adapt” the traditional doctrine of preemption, long recognized as a right, to the new situation, thereby turning it into a right of anticipatory (preventive) preemption:

 

“For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. . . . We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. . . . The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, . . . the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”12

 

With this argument, NSS 2002 tried to suggest that, since this doctrine of preventive preemption simply involved adapting a traditionally recognized right to a new situation, it brought about no great change. But it did. According to the traditional doctrine, one needed certain evidence that an attack from the other country was imminent. According to the Bush Doctrine, by contrast, the United States can attack another country “even if uncertainty remains” and even if the United States knows that the threat from the other country is not yet “fully formed.”

 

The novelty here, to be sure, involves doctrine more than practice. The United States has in fact attacked several countries that presented no imminent military threat. But it always portrayed these attacks in such a way that they could appear to comport with international law---for example, by claiming, before attacking North Vietnam, that it had attacked a US ship in the Tonkin Gulf. “Never before,” however---point out Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, who call themselves Reagan conservatives---“had any president set out a formal national strategy doctrine that included [preventive] preemption.”13

 

This unprecedented doctrine was, as we have seen, one that neocons had long desired. Indeed, neocon Max Boot described NSS 2002 as a “quintessentially neo-conservative document.”14 And, as we have also seen, the adoption of this doctrine was first made possible by the 9/11 attacks. Halper and Clarke themselves say, in fact, that 9/11 allowed the “preexisting ideological agenda” of the neoconservatives to be “taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.”15

 

Zelikow and NSS 2002

The 9/11 attacks, we have seen, allowed the Bush-Cheney administration to adopt the doctrine of preemptive-preventive war, which the neocons in the administration---most prominently Cheney himself---had long desired. One would assume, therefore, that the 9/11 Commission would not have been run by someone who helped formulate this doctrine, because the Commission should have investigated, among other things, whether the Bush-Cheney administration might have had anything to gain from 9/11 attacks---whether they, in other words, might have had a motive for orchestrating or at least deliberately allowing the attacks. Amazing as it may seem, however, Philip Zelikow, who directed the 9/11 Commission and was the primary author of its final report, had also been the primary author of NSS 2002.

 

Lying behind Zelikow’s authorship of NSS 2002 was the fact that he was close, both personally and ideologically, to Condoleezza Rice, who as National Security Advisor to President Bush had the task of creating this document. Zelikow had worked with Rice in the National Security Council during the Bush I presidency. Then, when the Republicans were out of power during the Clinton years, Zelikow and Rice co-authored a book together. Finally, when she was appointed National Security Advisor to Bush II, she brought on Zelikow to help with the transition to the new National Security Council. Given that long relationship, Zelikow evidently came to mind when Rice found the first draft of NSS unsatisfactory.

 

According to James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, this first draft had been produced by Richard Haass, who was the director of policy planning under Colin Powell in the State Department.16 Although this draft by Haass is evidently not publicly available, an insight into what it contained might be provided by an address Haass had given in 2000 entitled “Imperial America.”

 

While Haass called on Americans to “re-conceive their global role from one of a traditional nation-state to an imperial power,” his foreign policy suggestions were very different from those of the neocons. Saying that “primacy is not to be confused with hegemony” and that “[a]n effort to assert U.S. hegemony is . . . bound to fail,” he called for acceptance of the fact that the world in coming decades “will be a world more multipolar than the present one.” Also, insisting that “[a]n imperial foreign policy is not to be confused with imperialism,” which involves exploitation, he stated that “imperial America is not to be confused with either hegemonic America or unilateral America.” In the new world order that he envisaged, “The United States would need to relinquish some freedom of action,” which would mean that it “would be more difficult to carry out preventive or preemptive strikes on suspect military facilities.” He suggested, moreover, that “[c]oercion and the use of force would normally be a last resort.” The United States would instead rely primarily on “persuasion,” “consultation,” and “global institutions,” especially the UN Security Council.17

 

In any case, whatever the exact nature of the draft for NSS 2002 that Haass produced, Rice, after seeing it, wanted “something bolder,” Mann reports. Deciding that the document should be “completely rewritten,” she “turned the writing over to her old colleague . . . Philip Zelikow.”18

 

Given the hawkish tone of the resulting NSS 2002, we might assume that Zelikow was simply taking dictation from Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Wolfowitz. According to Mann, however, “the hawks in the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney’s office hadn’t been closely involved, even though the document incorporated many of their key ideas. They had left the details and the drafting in the hands of Rice and Zelikow, along with Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley.”19

 

It would seem, therefore, that we can take this “quintessentially neo-conservative document,” which used 9/11 to justify exempting the United States from international law, as reflecting Zelikow’s own thinking. This means that, besides being aligned with the Bush-Cheney White House personally (by virtue primarily of his friendship with Rice) and structurally (by virtue of helping her set up the new NSC), he was also closely aligned ideologically with Cheney and other neocons in the administration.

 

Such a person obviously should not have been put in charge of the 9/11 Commission, given the fact that one of the main questions it should have investigated was whether the Bush-Cheney administration had any responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, whether through incompetence or complicity. Pursuing the possibility of complicity in particular would have required the Commission to ask whether the administration would have had motives for wanting the attacks. Given the fact that Zelikow had authored the document that provided the doctrine of preemptive-preventive warfare desired by leading members of this administration, he would have been one of the worst possible choices to lead such an investigation.

 

The story of how Zelikow was, nevertheless, chosen to be the executive director has been told by Philip Shenon in The Commission.

 

Zelikow and the 9/11 Commission

 

In their preface to The 9/11 Commission Report, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the Commission’s chair and vice chair, respectively, said that the Commission “sought to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan.” In light of the fact that the 9/11 attacks had occurred during the watch of the Bush-Cheney administration, being “independent” and “impartial” would have meant, above all, being fully independent of this administration.

 

With Zelikow as its executive director, the 9/11 Commission could have been independent of the Bush-Cheney administration only if the executive director’s role was merely that of a facilitator, meaning a person who did not influence either the Commission’s research or the content of its final report. Some people, in hearing Zelikow described as the 9/11 Commission’s “executive director,” may assume that he had that kind of role. As Shenon has shown, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Zelikow ran the Commission and took charge of the writing of its final report.

 

With regard to the work of the Commission, Zelikow sought, and largely achieved, total control. He achieved this control through several means.

 

First, the work of the Commission was done not by Kean, Hamilton, and the other commissioners who, by virtue of appearing on television during the Commission’s open hearings, became the public face of the Commission. The work, instead, was done by the 80-some staff members.

 

Second, Shenon points out, these staff members worked directly under Zelikow: “Zelikow had insisted that there be a single, nonpartisan staff.” This meant that none of the commissioners would “have a staff member of their own, typical on these sorts of independent commissions.” Zelikow thereby prevented “any of the commissioners from striking out on their own in the investigation.”20

 

Third, none of the commissioners, including Kean and Hamilton, were given offices in the K Street office building used by the Commission’s staff. As a result, “most of the commissioners rarely visited K Street. Zelikow was in charge.”21

 

Fourth, even though the Commission would not have existed had it not been for the efforts of the families of the 9/11 victims, “the families were not allowed into the commission’s offices because they did not have security clearances.”22

 

Fifth, Zelikow made it clear to the staff members that they worked for him, not for the commissioners. He even prevented direct contact between the staff and the commissioners as much as possible. “If information gathered by the staff was to be passed to the commissioners, it would have to go through Zelikow.”23 Although the commissioners forced Zelikow to rescind his most extreme order of this nature---that the staff members were not even to return phone calls from the commissioners without his permission24---he largely, Shenon reports, achieved his goal: “Zelikow’s micromanagement meant that the staff had little, if any, contact with the ten commissioners; all information was funneled through Zelikow, and he decided how it would be shared elsewhere.”25 Indeed, Shenon says, Zelikow insisted “that every scrap of secret evidence gathered by the staff be shared with him before anyone else; he then controlled how and if the evidence was shared elsewhere.”26

 

Although the fact that the 9/11 Commission was controlled by someone who was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney White House was bad enough, even more contrary to the Commission’s alleged independence was the fact that Zelikow had determined its central conclusions in advance. In their 2006 book, Without Precedent, which is subtitled The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, Kean and Hamilton claimed that, unlike conspiracy theorists, they started with the relevant facts, not with a conclusion: they “were not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another.”27 They admitted, however, that after Zelikow divided the staff into various teams and told them what to investigate, he told team 1A to “tell the story of al Qaeda’s most successful operation---the 9/11 attacks.”28 So, the question that most Americans probably assume to have been one of the 9/11 Commission’s main questions---“Who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks?”---was not asked. The Bush-Cheney administration’s theory was simply presupposed from the outset.

 

The fact that the Commission’s conclusion had been predetermined was made even clearer by Kean and Hamilton’s admission that an outline of the final report was prepared in advance by Zelikow and his former professor Ernest May (with whom he had previously coauthored a book).29

 

Shenon revealed more about this startling fact. Pointing out that Zelikow and May had prepared this outline secretly, Shenon wrote: “By March 2003, with the commission’s staff barely in place, the two men had already prepared a detailed outline, complete with ‘chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings.’” When Zelikow shared this document with Kean and Hamilton, they realized that the staff, if they learned about it, would know that they were doing research for a predetermined conclusion.30 And so the four men agreed upon a conspiracy of silence. In Shenon’s words:

 

“It should be kept secret from the rest of the staff, they all decided. May said that he and Zelikow agreed that the outline should be ‘treated as if it were the most classified document the commission possessed.’ Zelikow . . . labeled it ‘Commission Sensitive,’ putting those words at the top and bottom of each page.”31

 

The work of the 9/11 Commission began, accordingly, with Kean and Hamilton conspiring with Zelikow and May to conceal from the Commission’s staff members the fact that their investigative work would largely be limited to filling in the details of conclusions that had been reached before any investigations had begun.

 

When the staff did finally learn about this outline a year later (in April 2004), some of them began circulating a two-page parody entitled “The Warren Commission Report--Preemptive Outline.” One of its chapter headings was: “Single Bullet: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence Yet. But Really. We’re Sure.”32 The point, of course, was that the crucial chapter of Zelikow and May’s outline could have been headed: “Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence yet. But Really. We’re Sure.”

 

Besides controlling the Commission’s work and predetermining its conclusions, Zelikow also, Shenon says, largely “controlled what the final report would say.”33 He could exert this control because, as Ernest May reported, although the first draft of each chapter was written by one of the investigative teams, Zelikow headed up a team in the front office that revised these drafts.34 Indeed, Shenon adds, “Zelikow rewrote virtually everything that was handed to him---usually top to bottom.”35

 

Given the control exerted by Zelikow over the investigative work of the 9/11 Commission and its final product, it is not inaccurate to think of the report of the 9/11 Commission as the Zelikow Report.

 

In light of the foreseeable fact that the executive director of the 9/11 Commission would be able to exert such control over its work and final product, how could Kean and Hamilton, knowing that the Commission needed to be---or at least appear to be---independent of the Bush administration, have chosen Zelikow for this position? Did they not fear that his personal, structural, and ideological closeness to the Bush-Cheney administration could easily lead him to be more interested in protecting it from blame than in discovering and publishing the truth about how the 9/11 attacks were able to succeed? That this would not have been an unreasonable fear is shown by the fact that many members of the

 

Commission’s staff, Shenon reports, said that Zelikow’s conflicts of interest resulted in a “pattern of partisan moves intended to protect the White House.”36

 

At least part of the answer as to how Zelikow became the executive director, Shenon reveals, is that Zelikow, in applying for the position, concealed some of his conflicts of interest from Kean and Hamilton.

 

The résumé he gave them mentioned the book he had co-authored with Rice and his appointment to the White House intelligence advisory board---two conflicts of interest that Kean and Hamilton deemed “not insurmountable.”37

 

But Zelikow’s résumé failed to mention some other problems---most crucially his authorship of NSS 2002. Given the fact that this document had been used to “justify a preemptive strike on Iraq,” as Shenon says, it would have been in Zelikow’s interest “to use the commission to try to bolster the administration’s argument for war---a war that he had helped make possible.”38 And in fact, Shenon points out, Zelikow did try to use it for just this purpose, even trying to insert statements into the final report connecting al-Qaeda to Iraq (this being one of few times that Zelikow did not get his way).39

 

Zelikow was also dishonest with the Commission in another way, Shenon reports. Although “Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all unnecessary contact with senior Bush administration officials to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest,” he had continuing contacts with both Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice. “More than once, [the Commission’s executive secretary] had been asked to arrange a gate pass so Zelikow could enter the White House to visit the national security adviser in her offices in the West Wing.”40 The secretary’s logs also revealed that Rove---who was the White House’s “quarterback for dealing with the Commission” (according to Republican member of the 9/11 Commission John Lehman)--- called the office “looking for Philip” four times in 2003, after which, she said, Zelikow ordered her to quit keeping logs of his contacts with the White House.41

 

Implications for The 9/11 Commission Report

 

Shenon’s revelations of Zelikow’s close and ongoing relationship with the White House, his authorship of NSS 2002, and his duplicity should make people, at the very least, suspect that The 9/11 Commission Report is less of a truth-seeking than a political document, designed to protect the Bush-Cheney administration.

 

However, as helpful as Shenon’s book is, it fails to mention an even more serious conflict of interest created by Zelikow’s authorship of NSS 2002: If the Bush-Cheney White House enabled the 9/11 attacks in order to reap foreseeable benefits---such as the Bush Doctrine and carte blanche to attack Iraq (with its enormous oil reserves) and Afghanistan (through which the administration wanted to enable the construction of an oil-and-gas pipeline)---it would have been in Zelikow’s interest to cover up this fact.

 

In my 2005 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I have provided abundant evidence that this is indeed what he did. In my most recent book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, I have pointed out---in what must be one of the longest footnotes of all time42---that Shenon, while revealing many problematic facts about Zelikow’s behavior, failed to mention any of the ways in which the Zelikow Report used dishonesty to support the Bush-Cheney administration’s implausible interpretation of 9/11, according to which the attacks were orchestrated and carried out solely by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.43

 

David Ray Griffin is Professor Emeritus at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in California. He has published 34 books, including seven about 9/11, most recently The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), from which the present essay has been drawn.

 

1 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), 170.

 

2 See Steven R. Ratner, “Crimes against Peace” (http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/crimes-against-peace.html).

 

3 I previously used the term “preemptive-preventive war” in “Neocon Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq,” Information Clearing House, February 27, 2007 (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17194.htm).

 

4 Barton Gellman, “Keeping the U.S. First: Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower,” Washington Post, March 11, 1992 (http://www.yale.edu/strattech/92dpg.html); cited in Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 141.

 

5 See Halper and Clark, America Alone, 26, and “Project for the New American Century,” Right Web, updated June 20, 2008 (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1535.html).

 

6 PNAC, Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, May 29, 1998 (http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm).

 

7 Stephen J. Sniegoski, “Neoconservatives, Israel, and 9/11: The Origins of the U.S. War on Iraq.” In D. L. O’Huallachain and J. Forrest Sharpe, eds., Neoconned Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq (Vienna, Va.: IHS Press, 2005), 81-109, at 81-82.

 

8 Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

 

9 “President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point,” June 1, 2002 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html).

 

10 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf), cover letter; this document henceforth referred to as NSS 2002.

 

11 NSS 2002, 6, 15.

 

12 Ibid., 15.

 

13 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 142.

 

14 Max Boot, “Think Again: Neocons,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2004 (http://www.cfr.org/publication/7592/think_again.html), 18.

 

15 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 4.

 

16 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 316.

 

17 Richard N. Haass, “Imperial America,” delivered November 11, 2000, Brookings Institution (http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1999/09diplomacy_haass.aspx).

 

18 Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 316.

 

19 Ibid., 331.

 

20 Shenon, The Commission, 69, 83.

 

21 Ibid., 69-70, 86.

 

22 Ibid., 167.

 

23 Ibid., 83.

 

24 Ibid., 84-85.

 

25 Ibid., 317.

 

26 Ibid., 277.

 

27 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (with Benjamin Rhodes), Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 269-70.

 

28 Ibid., 116.

 

29 Ibid., 270.

 

30 Shenon, The Commission, 388-89.

 

31 Ibid., 389.

 

32 Ibid.

 

33 Ibid., 390.

 

34 Ernest May, “When Government Writes History: A Memoir of the 9/11 Commission,” New Republic, May 23, 2005; cited in Bryan Sacks, ”Making History: The Compromised 9-11 Commission,” in Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11 (New York: Seven Stories, 2008), 223-60, at 258n10.

 

35 Shenon, The Commission, 321.

 

36 Ibid., 319.

 

37 Ibid., 59.

 

38 Ibid., 170.

 

39 Ibid., 104, 130-33, 181, 321.

 

40 Ibid., 106-07.

 

41 Ibid., 175-76, 106-07. In their 2006 book giving “the inside story of the 9/11 Commission,” Kean and Hamilton said, after reporting that the 9/11 families had protested Zelikow’s appointment as executive director because of his conflicts of interest: “But we had full confidence in Zelikow’s independence” (Without Precedent, 28-29). In light of Shenon’s revelations, we must conclude that Zelikow was not the only one who shaded the truth.

 

42 David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 333-38n70.

 

43 To read statements by architects, engineers, firefighters, pilots, political leaders, scholars, scientists, former CIA officials, retired military officers, and others who find the official theory of 9/11 implausible, see the Patriots Question 9/11 website (http://www.patriotsquestion911.com).

[Nur]

The Five Dancing Israelis

Arrested On 9-11

 

 

As the world watched in disbelief and asked the question...

 

 

...Mossad operatives were seen dancing with joy.

 

A Mossad surveillance team made quite a public spectacle of themselves on 9-11.

 

The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers prior to the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards. (1)

 

Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. (2)

 

"They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness. (3)

 

[T]hey were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage. (4)

 

Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. (6)

 

"It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park." (7)

 

 

One anonymous phone call to the authorities actually led them to close down all of New York's bridges and tunnels. The mystery caller told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that a group of Palestinians were mixing a bomb inside of a white van headed for the Holland Tunnel. Here's the transcript from NBC News:

 

Dispatcher: Jersey City police.

Caller: Yes, we have a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there, they look like Palestinians and going around a building.

Caller: There's a minivan heading toward the Holland tunnel, I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniform.

Dispatcher: He has what?

Caller: He's dressed like an Arab. (8)

 

(*Writer's note: Why would this mystery caller specifically say that these "Arabs" were Palestinians? How would he know that? Palestinians usually dress in western style clothes, not "sheikh uniforms")

 

 

Based on that phone call, police then issued a "Be-on-the-Lookout" alert for a white mini-van heading for the city's bridges and tunnels from New Jersey.

 

White, 2000 Chevrolet van with 'Urban Moving Systems' sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and detain individuals. (9)

 

When a van fitting that exact description was stopped just before crossing into New York, the suspicious "middle-easterners" were apprehended. Imagine the surprise of the police officers when these terror suspects turned out to be Israelis!

According to ABC’s 20/20, when the van belonging to the cheering Israelis was stopped by the police, the driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers:

 

 

"We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem." (10)

 

Why did he feel that Palestinians were a problem for the NYPD?

 

The police and FBI field agents became very suspicious when they found maps of the city with certain places highlighted, box cutters (the same items that the hijackers supposedly used), $4700 cash stuffed in a sock, and foreign passports. Police also told the Bergen Record that bomb sniffing dogs were brought to the van and that they reacted as if they had smelled explosives. (11)

 

The FBI seized and developed their photos, one of which shows Sivan Kurzberg flicking a cigarette lighter in front of the smouldering ruins in an apparently celebratory gesture. (12)

 

 

The Jerusalem Post later reported that a white van with a bomb was stopped as it approached the George Washington Bridge, but the ethnicity of the suspects was not revealed. Here's what the Jerusalem Post reported on September 12, 2001:

 

American security services overnight stopped a car bomb on the George Washington Bridge. The van, packed with explosives, was stopped on an approach ramp to the bridge. Authorities suspect the terrorists intended to blow up the main crossing between New Jersey and New York, Army Radio reported. (13)

 

"...two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives was discovered around the George Washington Bridge ... The FBI ... says enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge."

WMV video download (545kB)

 

 

 

 

It was reported the van contained tonnes of explosives (14).

 

What's really intriguing is that ABC's 20/20 (15), the New York Post (16), and the New Jersey Bergen Record (17) all clearly and unambiguously reported that a white van with Israelis was intercepted on a ramp near Route 3, which leads directly to the Lincoln Tunnel.

 

But the Jerusalem Post, Israeli National News (Arutz Sheva) (18), and Yediot America, (19) all reported, just as clearly and unambiguously, that a white van with Israelis was stopped on a ramp leading to the George Washington Bridge, which is several miles north of the Lincoln Tunnel.

 

It appears as if there may actually have been two white vans involved, one stopped on each crossing. This would not only explain the conflicting reports as to the actual location of the arrests, but would also explain how so many credible eye-witnesses all saw celebrating "middle-easterners" in a white van in so many different locations. It also explains why the New York Post and Steve Gordon (lawyer for the 5 Israelis) originally described how three Israelis were arrested but later increased the total to five.

 

Perhaps one van was meant to drop off a bomb while the other was meant to pick up the first set of drivers while re-crossing back into New Jersey? If a van was to be used as a parked time-bomb on the GW Bridge, then certainly the drivers would need to have a "get-away van" to pick them up and escape. And notice how the van (or vans) stayed away from the third major crossing -the Holland Tunnel- which was where the police had originally been directed to by that anti-Palestinian 9-1-1 "mystery caller". A classic misdirection play.

 

From there, the story gets becomes even more suspicious. The Israelis worked for a Weehawken moving company known as Urban Moving Systems. The name of the company actually contains the word MOSSAD embedded inside - MOving SyStems IncorporAteD ... MOSSAD. An American employee of Urban Moving Systems told the The Record of New Jersey that a majority of his co-workers were Israelis and they were joking about the attacks.

 

The employee, who declined to give his name said: "I was in tears. These guys were joking and that bothered me." These guys were like, "Now America knows what we go through." (20)

 

A few days after the attacks, Urban Moving System's Israeli owner, Dominick Suter, dropped his business and fled the country for Israel. He was in such a hurry to flee America that some of Urban Moving System's customers were left with their furniture stranded in storage facilities (21).

 

Suter's departure was abrupt, leaving behind coffee cups, sandwiches, cell phones and computers strewn on office tables and thousands of dollars of goods in storage. Suter was later placed on the same FBI suspect list as 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and other hijackers and suspected al-Qaeda sympathizers, suggesting that U.S. authorities felt Suter may have known something about the attacks. (22)

 

The Jewish weekly The Forward reported that the FBI finally concluded that at least two of the detained Israelis were agents working for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and that Urban Moving Systems, the ostensible employer of the five Israelis, was a front operation. This was confirmed by two former CIA officers, and they noted that movers' vans are a common intelligence cover. (23). The Israelis were held in custody for 71 days before being quietly released. (24)

 

"There was no question but that [the order to close down the investigation] came from the White House. It was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11." (25)

 

 

Several of the detainees discussed their experience in America on an Israeli talk show after their return home. Said one of the men, denying that they were laughing or happy on the morning of Sept. 11, "The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event." (26)

 

 

How did they know there would be an event to document on 9/11?

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots of the dancing Israeli Mossad agents - here's the most logical scenario:

 

1. The Israeli "movers" cheered the 9-11 attacks to celebrate the successful accomplishment of the greatest spy operation ever pulled off in history.

2. One of them, or an accomplice, then calls a 9-1-1 police dispatcher to report Palestinian bomb-makers in a white van headed for the Holland Tunnel.

 

3. Having thus pre-framed the Palestinians with this phone call, the Israeli bombers then head for the George Washington Bridge instead, where they will drop off their time-bomb van and escape with Urban Moving accomplices.

 

4. But the police react very wisely and proactively by closing off ALL bridges and tunnels instead of just the Holland Tunnel. This move inadvertently foils the Israelis' misdirection play and leads to their own capture and 40 day torture.

 

5. To cover up this story, the U.S. Justice Department rounds up over 1000 Arabs for minor immigration violations and places them in New York area jails. The Israelis therefore become less conspicuous as the government and media can now claim that the Israelis were just immigration violators caught in the same dragnet as many other Arabs.

 

6. After several months, FBI and Justice Department "higher-ups" are able to gradually push aside the local FBI agents and free the Israelis quietly.

 

 

Osama bin Laden was immediately blamed for the 9/11 attacks even though he had no previous record of doing anything on this scale. Immediately after the Flight 11 hit World Trade Center 1

CIA Director George Tenet said "You know, this has bin Laden's fingerprints all over it." (27)

 

The compliant mainstream media completely ignored the Israeli connection. Immediately following the 9-11 attacks the media was filled with stories linking the attacks to bin Laden. TV talking-heads, "experts", and scribblers of every stripe spoon-fed a gullible American public a steady diet of the most outrageous propaganda imaginable.

 

We were told that the reason bin Laden attacked the USA was because he hates our "freedom" and "democracy". The Muslims were "medieval" and they wanted to destroy us because they envied our wealth, were still bitter about the Crusades, and were offended by Britney Spears shaking her tits and *** all over the place!

 

But bin Laden strongly denied any role in the attacks and suggested that Zionists orchestrated the

9-11 attacks. The BBC published bin Laden's statement of denial in which he said:

 

"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. ... The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States." (28)

 

You never heard that quote on your nightly newscast did you?

 

[A] number of intelligence officials have raised questions about Osama bin Laden's capabilities. "This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he's running this operation?" one C.I.A. official asked. "It's so huge. He couldn't have done it alone." A senior military officer told me that because of the visas and other documentation needed to infiltrate team members into the United States a major foreign intelligence service might also have been involved. (29)

 

Bin Laden is not named as the perpetrator of 9/11 by the FBI:

 

When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page (30), [Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI] said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” (31)

 

"So we've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden [sic] was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming" - Dick Cheney.

[whitehouse.gov]

 

 

To date, the only shred of “evidence” to be uncovered against bin Laden is a barely audible fuzzy amateur video that the Pentagon just happened to find "lying around" in Afghanistan. How very convenient, and how very fake. (32)

 

There is no evidence, be it hard or circumstantial, to link the Al Qaeda "terrorist network" to these acts of terror, but there is a mountain of evidence, both hard and circumstantial, which suggests that Zionists have been very busy framing Arabs for terror plots against America.

 

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government ... It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now" - Senator Bob Graham. (33)

 

If the sovereign foreign government mentioned by Senator Graham was an enemy of the United States the "compelling evidence" would not be kept secret for 20+ years.

 

One final point; at 09:40 on 9-11 it was reported that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attacks (31). This claim was immediately denied by the DFLP leader Qais abu Leila who said it had always opposed "terror attacks on civilian targets, especially outside the occupied territories." (34)

 

Why would a Palestinian organisation comprising of less than 500 people (35) make the suicidal move of immediately claiming responsibility for the attacks?

 

Sharon and the other Israeli leaders aspire to fulfil what the goals of the political Zionist movement have been since its origin a century ago: to turn all of historic Palestine into an exclusively Jewish state. A central tenet of the Zionist ideology is expressed in the racist slogan, "A land without people for a people without a land." (36)

 

The implication of Palestinians in the 9/11 attacks would have handed Zionists a golden opportunity to achieve the above because all Palestinians would have been labelled terrorists.

 

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."

US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring.

 

 

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WR*****CLES/fiveisraelis.html