Getting closer to a final draft for my essay. Here's the latest...
Was 9/11 an inside job?
"19 Hijackers, directed by Osama B. Laden, took over 4 Commercial Jets with box cutters and, while evading the Air Defense System (NORAD), hit 75% of their targets…. The 911 Commission found that there were no warnings for this act of Terrorism..." (Zeitgeist, 43:33)
Although this is commonly accepted as the "official story", there are several anomalies that suggest 9/11 was an inside job. I examine the following claims above in this light.
"The 911 Commission found that there were no warnings for this act of Terrorism…"
First, let's examine the claim that there were no warnings. The U.S. Secretary of State on 9/11 was Condoleeza Rice. Shortly after 9/11, she stated:
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile". (44:03)
Steve Fainaru and James Grivaldi of the Washington Post also bring up a statement from FBI Director Robert Mueller:
"Three days after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III described reports that several of the hijackers had received flight training in the United States as "news, quite obviously," adding, "If we had understood that to be the case, we would have -- perhaps one could have averted this." (
http://www.washingto...10840-2001Sep22)
However, it's now clear that federal authorities -had- been aware of it. In fact, as the washington post article explains in its introduction, federal authorities had known for years that suspected terrorists with ties to bin Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the U.S. and abroad. The article continues:
"A senior government official yesterday acknowledged law enforcement officials were aware that fewer than a dozen people with links to bin Laden had attended U.S. flight schools. However, the official said there was no information to indicate the flight students had been planning suicide hijacking attacks.
"We were unable to marry any information from investigations or the intelligence community that talked to their use of this expertise in the events that we saw unfold on the 11th," the official said."
This is contradicted, however, by a highly classified operation called "Able Danger". As an article from Global Research points out:
"According to Army reserve Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Shaffer, a top secret Pentagon project code-named Able Danger had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al-Qaida cell more than a year before the attacks.
Able Danger was an 18-month highly classified operation tasked, according to Shaffer, with “developing targeting information for al-Qaida on a global scale”, and used data-mining techniques to look for “patterns, associations, and linkages”. He said he himself had first encountered the names of the four hijackers in mid-2000." (
http://www.globalres...text=va&aid=867)
Furthermore, in an article in USA Today, Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri reported on May 18, 2004:
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. (
http://www.usatoday....-18-norad_x.htm)
What, in my view, is terrifying, is that they were conducting multiple "simulations" on 9/11 itself, as 911proof.com points out:
On the very morning of 9/11/01, five war games and terror drills were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, including one "live fly" exercise using REAL planes. Then-Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, admitted to 4 of the war games in congressional testimony (
http://www.911proof.com/9.html)
"19 Hijackers…"
The Zeitgeist documentary mentions an interesting allegation concerning Pakistan's ISI Chief, General Mahmud Ahmed. The ISI is the Pakistani equivalent of the US' CIA. The allegation is that Ahmed had requested that $100,000 be sent to Mohammed Atta, which most believe was the lead 9/11 hijacker. The evidence that this occurred can be found in many online sources, such as the following cached India Online article, written by the information minister of Pakistan at the time, which states:
“The fall of Ahmed was understandable and there is credible evidence linking him with the terrorists involved in the New York attacks. It is understood that Ahmed as ISI chief instructed Omar Sheikh, a Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorist freed during the Indian Airlines Kandahar hijacking, to send $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was involved in the kamikaze attack on the World Trade Center. Sheikh, who now lives near the Binori mosque in Karachi, was spotted in Islamabad at the time the money was transferred to Atta.”
(
http://s3.amazonaws....oday101501.html)
A Times of India article confirms this report, and adds that the FBI and Indian Intelligence were also involved in uncovering the evidence.
(
http://timesofindia..../1454238160.cms)
Zeitgeist also includes CNN footage that aired October 6, 2001, that bring up the findings as well.
Of further interest is the fact that on 9/11, Richard Leiby reports in the Washington post that General Ahmed was having breakfast with government officials in Washington, D.C. on September 11:
On the morning of Sept. 11, [Congressman] Goss and [Senator] Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed -- the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan's intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. (
http://www.washingto...36091-2002May17)
In the same article, Richard Leiby reports that "the discussion that morning touched on Taliban links to terrorism, but Goss says his greatest worry was the dispute in Kashmir -- and the nuclear weapons possessed by feuding Pakistan and India."
However, at the end of the article, Leiby quotes Goss:
"You can spend two hours in here saying, 'I've talked to Porter Goss,' and still not have a clue what my plans and intentions are"
That quote is especially interesting because of another nugget of information from an informant named Randy Glass, regarding the other man at the meeting, Senator Bob Graham. As John Pacenti for the Palm Beach post reported:
In August 2001, just before Glass started to serve a seven-month sentence for a $6 million jewelry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Graham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both lawmakers that a Pakistani operative working for the Taliban known as R.G. Abbas made three references to imminent plans to attack the World Trade Center during the probe, which ended in June 2001.
At one meeting at New York's Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the World Trade Center and said, "Those towers are coming down," Glass said.
Glass also now says the State Department, in an effort to maintain good diplomatic relations with Pakistan, pulled the plug on the South Florida terrorist probe, believing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf could control the militant terrorist faction of his government.
Personally, I wonder if perhaps more was at stake then good diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
Further down, the article states:
Graham acknowledged at [sic] news conference in Boca Raton last month that Glass had contact with his office before Sept. 11, 2001, about an attack on the World Trade Center. "I was concerned about that and a dozen other pieces of information which emanated from the summer of 2001," the senator said.
Graham later said he was unaware of Glass' information until after the terrorist attacks. Glass did speak to a Tallahassee staffer before the attacks but the impression was that Glass wanted Graham to intercede in his criminal case, Anderson said.
Eric Johnson, Wexler's chief of staff, said Glass contacted the office by phone before the terrorist attacks but there is no record of what happened to that information. Since then, other information provided by Glass has been passed on to the FBI.
Glass angrily denies he contacted the lawmakers so they could intercede in his criminal case. He said he wanted only to relay information on plans for an attack in which the World Trade Center had been mentioned. He does say he wanted his prison sentence postponed so he could continue his work.
When the attacks occurred, Glass was in federal prison at Eglin Air Force Base.
"When it happened I literally fell to my knees and started to cry," Glass said. "The frustration level that I had. Who could I tell?"
Continuing from the Zeitgeist documentary: "The 911 Commission deemed the financing of the attacks was "of little practical significance" in their official report."
Jumping to the part where they analyze the 9/11 Commission and its report, starting at 1:01:00, they elaborate on this point:
****
"Page 172 [of the 9/11 Comission Report]. "The US Government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately, the question is of little practical significance"
Audio: "The American authorities had not managed to trace the source of the funding, and then the most amazing and disingenuous statement: 'ultimately it is of little consequence'. It is of massive consequence!"
"Doesn't it matter who paid for 9/11?"
****
Continuing in Zeitgeist, an audio recording from David Ray Griffin, who states in a video recording:
"Evidence was also apparently planted. The passport of one of the hijackers of Flight 11, was allegedly found in the rubble."
Zeitgeist then continues with an audio recording from well known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who elaborates on the story of the passport:
"Goes through the fireball, through the side of the plane and comes down to the ground unscathed!"
Zeitgeist also claims that no evidence has ever linked any of the "hijackers" to Osama bin Laden.
Further in the Zeitgeist documentary, they focus in on Osama Bin Laden. They start off with what may well have been quite a freudian slip of the tongue for George W. Bush:
"Ofcourse we're after Saddam Hussein, I mean Osama Bin Laden…"
The reason this is interesting is because George Bush's vice president was interested in Saddam's oil fields well before 9/11 even occurred. Cheney directed a task force named after him well before 9/11, as Judicial watch makes clear after obtaining information from a Freedom of Information Act request:
"These are documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under a March 5, 2002 court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force. The documents contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents are dated March 2001."
(
http://www.judicialw...raqi-oil-fields)
To be sure, there were commercial interests that wanted to put a pipeline through Afghanistan as well. As David Ray Griffin writes in his article, 9/11: Possible Motives Of The Bush Administration:
*******
In July 1998, the Taliban, after having failed in 1997 to take the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, finally succeeded, giving it control of most of Afghanistan, including the entire pipeline route. After this victory CentGas immediately announced that it was "ready to proceed."37 Shortly thereafter, however, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, leading the United States to launch cruse missile strikes against OBL's camps in Afghanistan. These and related developments led Unocal to withdraw from CentGas, convinced that Afghanistan under the Taliban would never have the peace and stability needed for the pipeline project.38 Rashid, finishing his book in mid-1999, wrote that the Clinton Administration had shifted its support to the pipeline route from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, adding that "by now nobody wanted to touch Afghanistan and the Taliban."39
When the Bush administration came to power, however, it decided to give the Taliban one last chance. This last chance occurred at a four-day meeting in Berlin in July 2001, which would need to be mentioned in any realistic account of how the US war in Afghanistan came about. According to the Pakistani representative at this meeting, Niaz Naik, US representatives, trying to convince the Taliban to share power with US-friendly factions, said: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."40 Naik said that he was told by Americans that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead...before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest."41 The US attack on Afghanistan began, in fact, on October 7, which was as soon as the US military could get ready after 9/11.42
(
http://www.globalres...&articleId=1391)
The documentary continues with a speech from a former LAPD police officer named Michael C. Ruppert, who made an intense investigation of the 9/11 event. On his website, fromthewilderness.com, in a timeline of the events surrounding 9/11 he created, he states:
14. January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]
In the next entry in his timeline, he states:
****
15. Jan. 30, 2001 - Sept. 11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah was questioned in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A number of UAE, Middle Eastern, European, and U.S. sources were cited in this CNN report, which said the CIA requested Jarrah be interrogated because he had been in Afghanistan and was suspected to have ties to terrorists. An unnamed CIA spokesman said the other sources' claims that the agency knew anything about Jarrah before Sept. 11 were "flatly untrue." Jarrah's Jan. 30 detainment at the airport in Dubai, UAE came six months after he took flying lessons in the U.S. Jarrah was released because "U.S. officials were satisfied," said the report. [Source: CNN, Aug. 1, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2...er/index.html]
****
Zeitgeist continues with a video recording of David Ray Griffin, who states:
""When he was already America's most wanted criminal, he reportedly spent two weeks in the American hospital in Dubai, was treated by an American doctor, and visited by the local CIA agent."
Next, it presents a video recording of David Von Kleist, who wrote and produced the 9/11 film, In Plane Site [
http://www.911inplanesite.com/]. He states:
"We have not seen one piece of evidence that links Osama bin Laden directly to the planning stages of September 11th."
Switching back to David Ray Griffin:
"…this failure to provide proof, was later said to be unnecessary because bin Laden, in a video allegedly found in Afghanistan admitted responsibility for the attacks. This confession now is widely cited as proof, but the man in this video has darker skin, fuller cheeks and a broader nose than Osama bin Laden in all other videos. We again seem to have planted evidence."
Switching back to Michael Rupert, Zeitgeist continues:
In 1976, Osama's older brother Salim bin Laden, hired a man in Texas by the name of Jim Bath to handle all the investments in the United States for the bin Ladin family. Jim Bath also happens to be a personal, almost a lifelong friend and former national guard pilot with George W. Bush. The connections between the Bushes and bin Ladins become much more clear (…) when George Herbert Walker Bush made trips to Saudi Arabia in 1998 and 2000 to meet with the bin Ladin family on behalf of the company the Carlyle Group.
Zeitgeist continues:
George H.W. Bush was meeting with Osama's older brother, Shafig bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 in a Carlyle Group function. The Carlyle Group is one of the world's largest defense contractors, which continue to reap massive profits off of the post 911 "War on Terrorism" and Afghan/Iraq Wars.
1
Scott G, on 26 March 2010 - 04:41 PM, said:
