The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said“At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”
Some examples of obstruction of justice into the 9/11 investigation include:
An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Timesnotes:
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.
The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this)
The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements
As reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured
At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured”
One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ
The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves
Indeed, the Co-Chair of the congressional investigation into 9/11 (Bob Graham) and 9/11 Commissioner and former Senator Bob Kerrey are calling for either a “PERMANENT 9/11 commission” or a NEW 9/11 investigation to get to the bottom of it.
But hey … nothing’s perfect. We should just let bygones be bygones.
II. No One Could Have Foreseen 9/11
No one could have foreseen the diabolical 9/11 plan. After all, America has not been directly attacked for centuries.
And crashing planes into buildings? No one could have imagined such an out-of-the-blue attack.
But our government officials were busy at the time … and maybe they just took their eyes of the ball.
Anyway, knowing it could happen doesn’t mean that they let it happen on purpose.
III. They Didn’t Have Time to Stop It
Even when government officials realized what was happening, they didn’t have time to react and stop it.
After all, the hijacked planes were being flown hundreds of miles an hour. And by the time our government and military men knew what was happening, it was all over.
True, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) – responsible for intercepting errant aircraft over the U.S. – has a standard operating procedure for scrambling planes for interception which takes only a few minutes.
NORAD regularly and successfully scrambled fighter jets in response to suspicious or unidentified aircraft flying in US airspace in the years preceding 9/11. See this report from the General Accounting Office andthis article from AP. To do this, NORAD keeps a pair of fighters on “alert” at sites around the U.S. These fighters are fueled, armed, and ready to take off within minutes of receiving a scramble order. See these reports from American Defender, Air Force Magazine, Bergen Record, 12/5/2003 and The First 600 Days of Combat (page 14).
For example, NORAD scrambled:
Between 1990 and 1994, NORAD scrambled 1,518 fighter jets (page 4)
Between 1996 and 1998, NORAD’s Western Air Defense Sector scrambled fighters 129 times to identify unknown aircraft that might be a threat, and 42 times against potential and actual drug smugglers
In 1997, NORAD’s Southeast Air Defense Sector tracked 427 unidentified aircraft, and fighters intercepted these “unknowns” 36 times. The same year, NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector handled 65 unidentified tracks and the Western Air Defense Sector handles 104 unidentified tracks
In 1998, the Southeast Air Defense Sector logged more than 400 fighter scrambles
In 1999, NORAD’s fighters at a single base – Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida – scrambled 75times per year, on average
In 2000, NORAD’s fighters fly 147 intercept missions
And between September 2000 and June 2001, NORAD flew 67 intercepts
Yet, on September 11th, they failed to do their job 4 times in a single day:
You might think that the military couldn’t find the hijacked planes because the hijackers turned off the transponders. However, a former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew “like the back of my hand” and who handled two actual hijackings says that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview).
The Director of the American U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) said:
If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!
U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:
There is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State.’
But that can’t be true for 9/11 (even though government officials say that 9/11 was state -sponsored terrorism).
V. Our Government Wouldn’t DO Something Like That
Third, there’s no way government officials, military or intelligence personnel – who are sworn to protect and defend America – would do something like that!
VI. But the Whole Controlled Demolition Thing Is Bulls**t
Whatever you else you may think, the whole “bombs took down the Twin Towers” thing is bulls**t.
True, the collapse of the third World Trade Center skyscraper on 9/11 – one that was never hit with a plane – makes no sense. But that building, World Trade Center 7, is not one of the Twin Towers.
After all, we’ve got to censor those darn conspiracy theories.
We hope that the above-described essay disproves – once and for all – all of the crazy theories going around the Intertubes, and that everyone will shut up once and for all about 9/11.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.