If you allow me to define a 'trusted source' as a person or organisation that can back its claims up with hard evidence (since that's really the thrust of the OP), what would your list of 'trusted sources' look like?

If you disagree with my definition, set you own and then make a list.

FEMA has lied about 911. After one of their minions let it out that FEMA showed up in New York the night before 911, they claimed he had his days mixed. Then Giuliani testified to the 911 Commision that the reason they picked the location for their "comand center" was becase FEMA was allready there and had set up for a Biowarfare drill they were going to have.

I don't disagree with it at all.

But then again I wasn't asking you.

Where's the lie in that?

Well, they (FEMA) said they didn't show up in NY on the 10th like spokesman Tom Kenney said they had. However, when Giuliani testified to the Commision he stated that the reason they picked the place they did for their command center was because FEMA was allready there (on 911) setting up for a biowarfare drill (just like originaly stated by Kenny).

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it did not have urban search and rescue teams in place in New York City prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, contrary to an Internet-based rumor alleging otherwise. ... FEMA officials said Kenney, in the heat of the moment, misstated his team's arrival date."

"... the reason Pier 92 was selected as a command center was because on the next day, on September 12, Pier 92 was going to have a drill, it had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the Federal Government, from the State, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack. So that was gonna be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there, so we were able to establish a command center there, within three days, that was two and a half to three times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center. And it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed."

I'm still struggling to see how this is an intentional lie. Are you certain it wasn't just a mistake? I'm just failing to see the intentional deception here. Why does it matter when they arrived? Sounds to me that a biowarfare drill was scheduled to take place shortly after 9/11, and so members of FEMA just happened to be in Manhattan, and therefore were able to set up a command center quicker than if they had to be flown in after 9/11. What am I missing?

Also, what is the source for these quotes?

I guess you are missing that that was the case. Why then would FEMA need to put "internet rumors" (that were true) to rest? Why come out and say Kenney had his days mixed up when this wasnt the case?



spokesman in the office of Vito Pizzi, who works in FEMA's federal coordination office, a total of 16 teams were put on alert or activated Sept. 11. Two of those teams were sent in to Ground Zero the next day, Sept. 12.

FEMA officials said Kenney, in the heat of the moment, misstated his team's arrival date. Kenney could not be reached for comment.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=25329

June 2, 2004, the transcript of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's testimony to the 9-11 Commission during the May 18-19, 2004 hearings in New York. You can listen to his testimony here.

The event of 9/11 triggered certain military and political responses and reactions. Any modern government, or business, or elementary school, for that matter, has contingency plans.

Why, when such plans were implemented, were clamors of conspiracy raised? Why was the entire matter not explainable by the mere law of odds, in a world populated by so many limbic systems?

The law of odds was strangely absent that day. What were the odds of nineteen men achieving a 100% hijacking success rate and a 75% impact success rate (assuming Flight 93 was landmark-bound) against the might of the US intelligence and military machines? Low I would say. And we've only just scratched the surface.

I think this response strikes at the heart of the conspiracy theory. i.e. the inability for a certain number of americans citizens to accept that a small number of foreign terrorists could actually pull this off, :- ''against the might of the US intelligence & military machines''

Maybe (though I'm not a US citizen), but I did also add that 'we've only just scratched the surface'. What I meant by that is that there are so many more things besides the extraordinarily elusory hijackers. And, ultimately, there is the small matter of a lack of evidence (which I accept applies to both sides of the debate).

That actually cuts to the bone of the matter. The worst part is that what would be the easier part. A small number of foreigners entering the US and in the end undertaking the nefarious act or the US government doing it? If it really was the latter, the logistics behind would be huge and utterly impossible to hide, in my honest opinion. A terrorist organization obviously don't have to hide after the act has been committed.

Thus, in my honest opinion, the conspiracy theory idea itself is absurd and the thought that the US government would even consider something like that even more so.

Best,
Badeskov

I can understand why you might think what you think with the exception of the highlighted quote. I find this bewildering. Surely Operation Northwoods, Operation Gladio, The Stratgey of Tension and, for different reasons, Operation Cyclone all show a willingness to consider criminal (albeit plausibly deniable) acts. The Strategy of Tension, for me, is the most compelling historical precedent - moreso than Northwoods - since it involved the CIA (together with NATO and other intelligence agencies) in a decade-long terrorist campaign with civilians as the primary target. The reason? To stop Communist parties across Europe enjoying electoral success.

In my opinion, it's both doublethink and crimestop to be aware of this and yet deny the possibility that the US government (or agencies) participated in the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, I accept it proves nothing.

The CIA couldn't run a one-float parade without f'ing something up. If the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by an intelligence service, it wasn't the CIA or any other US intelligence service for that matter. Could Mossad have done it? Possibly, although such a large covert operation would have likely been beyond the capabilities of even the world's most ruthless intelligence service.

Western governmens and intelligence services have demonstrated a huge ineptness at planning and orchestrating covert ops and attempting to cover their hand in them - from Watergate, to the Lewinsky Affair and all the infamous CIA failed ops in between.

And yet we're expected to believe this operation was solely within the capabilities of bin Laden and his motley crew of inexperienced pilots, some of whom were being tracked within the US as known terrorists. I'm afraid I simply don't buy it.

Further, as inept as the execution of some covert ops may have been, those I listed (with the exception of Northwoods) were extraordinarily successful. Operation Gladio and The Strategy of Tension did indeed prevent the Communists from gaining a political foothold in post-war Europe; and Operation Cyclone, aided by Tim Osman, did indeed lead to the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, which in turn precipitated the break-up of the Soviet Union, a long-standing US goal.

I dont think you give the CIA enough credit?.....what about the secret service?...I never hear anyone mention them...I believe they aided and abetted the atta gang in florida...

And yet when you distill it all down, once this 'motley crew' had control of the aircraft, the disbelief that this was an attack, help their progress. The americans disbelief that they could possibly be attacked in such a way & their inadequate response played into the terrorists hand, & in fact mirrored the same response as the attack on pearl harbour.

do you know how long the terrorists were in s.fla before the attack...they had help surviving here...atta was pulled over by the cops and let go..they had help getting licenses and housing....they were here doing something in Fla long before 9/11...has the FBI ever released the info on what they were doing?...no

I'm afraid I cannot distil the events of that day down in the way you're inviting me to. Your argument assumes that getting control of the aircraft was a straighforward process. It wasn't. You have to consider the events leading up to 9/11 as well as the events of the day itself.

To begin with, despite having the surveillance capability to detect a sneeze from outer space, and despite (presumably) having made efforts to monitor the communications of bin Laden et al, none of the very complex planning that was said to have supported this operation was overheard by US intelligence. None of the alarming gaps in airport security, which had been identified many years previously by the FAA's own Red Team, had been plugged. Some of the alleged hijackers had been identified as terrorists and had been tracked within the US in the months prior to the attack - some were even given flight training. And these random snippets only scratch the surface of improbable US pre-9/11 failures.

Then, on 9/11, the alleged hijackers achieved a 100% boarding success rate despite several of them setting of alarms at airport security checkpoints. They also allegedly achieved a 100% hijack success rate. Then three of the pilots allegedly executed near perfect attacks on three buildings (the incompetent Hani Hanjour, pulling of a manoeuvre that virtually no pilot in the world would have been capable of), whilst US air defences remaind totally bewildered for variously reported, but nonetheless considerable lengths of time.

Then, after the event, and after considerable pressure to release investigative funds, we have the 9/11 Commission's Report, which is based in part upon lies.

In my opinion, this entire operation could not have happened without the plausibly deniable support of the intelligence services, and possibly not just those of the US.

As for Pearl Harbor, you do know that Roosevelt engineered the attack and had ample forewarning don't you?

The most difficult part of the entire operation, was taking over the aicraft - anyone who's flown a flight sim (which i'm guessing you haven't) will tell you it's piss easy to keep an aircraft level and aloft, especially if you've done any real-life flight training (which a number of the hijackers did).

Try to think of the 9/11 hijackers as covert operators - no different to the ones that work for our intelligence services. They were likely skilled in the arts of intelligence-gathering, counter-intelligence, small-arms weapons handling and CQB tactics. Having trained for months, if not years to do what they eventually did, it's no surprise that they were able to successfully hijack those planes and crash three of them into very large buildings that you could easily pick out from thousands of feet up in the air.

Furthermore, neither the CIA or FBI had any idea that the 9/11 attacks were coming - sure, there were various papers in different drawers in different federal offices in Washington and Langley that, if put together, would've suggested that an attack on a specific target was imminent, but drawers don't talk do they... True you had all those warnings prior to 9/11 that something was in the works, but those sort of warnings are forwarded to the principals at the CIA and FBI on a daily basis and 99% of them never come to fruition.

Lanton

I disagree profoundly with pretty much everything you said for reasons explained in the post above yours, and others I don't have the time or inclination to set out.

In very simple terms, you are trying to pursuade me that this carefully planned operation, carried out by 'counter-intelligence' experts, succeeded only because of unimaginable US failures. Their alleged success was entirely contingent upon the complete failure of US intelligence, the FAA and NORAD.

In my opinion, there is simply no way that experts such as the ones you describe would plan an operation that relied, not upon its own ingeniousness, but upon its target's incompetence.

The US intelligence community, lead by the CIA, has cumulatively failed to predict the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Tet Offensive, the fall of the Shah of Iran and they fudged up bigtime in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq (apparently they relied on far too many sources for intel on Iraq's WMD stockpiles and programs). You've also had the massive cases of KGB penetration of that intelligence community (Ames and Hanssen, just to name a few). The CIA was outperformed, for much of the Cold War, by it's Eastern counterparts. No wonder, then, that a resourceful terrorist organisation, lead by experienced men and staffed with skilled covert operators of it's own, managed to plan and carry out the 9/11 attacks.

As i've already said, there were various papers in different drawers in different federal offices in Washington and Langley that, if put together, would've suggested that an attack on a specific target was imminent, but drawers don't talk do they...

I'm not arguing that the CIA don't **** things up; I'm arguing that no operation would be planned around the likelihood that they (and every other agency and government department) would.

Why does it have to have been planned for every agency to fail? Surely any attack, whether terrorist or military, requires planning the best you can and hoping that nothing unexpected comes along. There were four attacks on the same day - that could be part viewed as increasing the chances that one of them was successful. The terrorist planners could be thinking "Wow, that went better than we thought it would" rather than "Great, all those government agencies crunmbled just like we planned they would".

I don't agree with this assessment at all.

The so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested in August 2001. He was arrested due to suspicions arising from his flight training. You'll also recall that there was a furore after 9/11 when it emerged that an application to examine his laptop and other personal possessions was rejected before 9/11. How could the 19 hijackers have proceeded without the fear that their game was up? They did nothing to mitigate against the fact that Moussaoui had been captured and might have revealed sensitive information about the alleged plot - they just carried on regardless.

What about the preposterous notion that Mohamed Atta and friend are alleged to have caught a connecting flight into Boston on 9/11? Seriously, would the perpetrators of such a meticulously constructed operation have jeopardised one key aspect (Atta was a pilot remember) by risking a delay to a connecting flight?

And do you seriously believe that the alleged hijackers could have anticipated the complete failure of the FAA and NORAD to co-ordinate a response? I mean, Hani Hanjour (the guy who couldn't fly a Cessna properly) is alleged to have made a perfectly executed 330 degree turn whilst at the same time making a perfectly executed linear descent on the approach to the Pentagon building. He did this just a few miles away from the building when he must surely have expected to be at risk of being shot down.

These are just three of many, many examples. At any stage of this alleged operation, the whole thing could have been uncovered or stopped if just one small piece of the US defence apparatus had functioned properly or else if one entirely foreseeable event had occured, like a delayed flight. It beggars belief that the success of the operation relied upon none of these things happening.

Hope this video hasn't been posted yet. http://youtube.com/watch?v=X-pDm4tuzbY

The BBC reported WTC7 to have fallen while it's still standing in the background.

(nobody's very well explained building 7. It is supposed to have fallen just from fire damage that spread from WTC1 and 2. This is a steel-frame building and it is the only event in history where a steel frame building is reported to have collapsed from fire damage.. others have burned for 20+ hours without collapsing.)

Building 7 just happened to contain billions in case files such as the Enron energy scandal, etc.

yes, of course, because they are losing the battle.

They are getting desperate. People are awakening to the reality that 9/11 was an inside job.
They are arrogant enough to believe that just because they own Popular Mechanics, they can
deny the very laws of physics and get away with it.

How exactly were the laws of physics "denied" that day? What would Alex Jones have you believe, for a mere $19.95 and free shipping?

No one's getting desperate, thunk. Well, no one on this side of the fence anyway. The Scholars are having a hard time of late, what with all the in-fighting and complete inability to get their versions of the events to line up.

KBA - it's been covered extensively. And I still don't see the point of believing the BBC were in on the grand scheme over the possibility that they just made a mistake.

Also, if you believe the common belief is that WTC7 fell from fire alone, you'd be wrong.

On September 11 you had a chaotic hodgepodge of completely uncoordinated agencies all charged in one way or another with dealing with intelligence. Some of them focused on collecting one type of intelligence, while others focused on collecting intelligence as a sideline, while tracking stolen-car rings, pot growers, or cigarette smugglers. There was no single place where all this intelligence was gathered and reviewed. Given the overlaps, gaps, and lack of systematic control or process, it was possible to drive four hijacked planes through the system and deploy nineteen hijackers without being noticed. The statement that "the U.S. government knew " about anything is meaningless. Certainly, buried in the files of all of these agencies, one could find anything and everything, but that is a far cry from anything being known.

You don't see any former credible and respected intelligence officers or intelligence experts backing up any of these 9/11-themed conspiracy theories for a reason. The US intelligence community, led by the CIA, played second fiddle, for the much of the Cold War, to the Soviets and after the Berlin Wall fell carried on in an even more relaxed state, making the same mistakes. 9/11 was just waiting to happen as long as Al Qaeda were capable of making it happen.

You're either missing my point or else trying to acquire some legitimacy for your position through repetition.

It is utterly irrelevant what state the intelligence service was in. The fact that we have subsequently learned they were appalling should not fool us into thinking the hijackers expected it to be thus. Any sensible plan would have viewed the intelligence services, the FAA and NORAD as a threat and mitigated against such threat. These hijackers didn't - their success owed nothing to their ingenuity and everything to a failure they couldn't have foreseen.

I really cannot put it any more simply.

How are you suggesting they would have gone about mitigating against the threats of the intelligence services, the FAA and NORAD?

These people were willing to die for their cause, this would suggest they were willing to take risks. For example the suicide bomber that blew up the Iraqi parliament must have taken risk of getting through all the relevant security checks but still did it and succeeded (I know it's not a great comparison, but it's the first that came to my head).

The main risk is actually getting on the aircraft and you have to admit security at airports (especially domestic flights) was no where near as effective as it is now (I knew people to get through security with knives before 9/11). Once on the aircraft fear and violence was always going to get you far pre-9/11 where the response for every hijack was 'do as the hijacker says and we'll probably get out alive'. And even assuming the FAA and NORAD worked as you expect them to and the hijacked planes were surrounded with fighters within seconds of suspicious activity, what would happen? The US military shoots down airlines full of passengers? The terrorists would still view that as a huge success.

Its amazing that people believe secret cabals working in the shadows to carry out their own secret agendas actually exist. Folks... NOTHING leaks like the ship of state and no ship leaks as much as that of the US government. To believe that it was possible to plant explosives to demolish a building in secret (a feat which defies logic) using dozens if not more people and then to assume that these people would not blab at the first chance they got is simply beyond belief. Nuff said

How about not romping around the US, attending flight training schools at military bases, renting properties and buying goods and services using cards in their own names? How about not using a connecting flight to get one of their key men into position on the morning of the attack? How about not executing an unnecessary 330 degree manoeuvre on the approach to the Pentagon when anyone with a modicum of intelligence must have feared a shoot-down at any time. And, by the way, have you ever seen the flightpaths of the four hijacked planes? Have you seen how far they were from their targets at the point they were hijacked? Why wait so long to take the plane over? Why not do it much earlier, when the planes were much closer to their targets, in order to minimise the potential risk of a shoot-down?

And finally, when the 20th member of your crew is allegedly captured, why not execute your plan immediately, or at least prior to the planned date, on the assumption that Moussaoui's laptop might reveal the plot or else Moussaoui himself might spill?

If they didn't think they were being watched that doesn't seem too dumb. And perhaps hard and potentially incriminating to get secret identities. Terrorists captured and successful have used their own identities before and since.


Yup, that looks to me to be pretty stupid too.


An inexperienced pilot doing a long turn to get into position and lose altitude doesn't seem 'unnecessary'. And this is someone who is planning to die and kill lots of people doing so - should he try to rush his attack or do the best he can to achieve his aims? If he gets shot down early, well he doesn't win 100%, but he still dies and kills lots of people.

Why wait so long to take the plane over? It's thought they were all taken over about 30minutes after take off. 30 mins to take off, wait until you get to altitude (might as well wait until the proper pilot does the difficult bit!), organise yourself, attack / kill people and force your way into the cockpit does not seem an excessive time. Yes I have seen the flightpaths. Apart from 93 none of them look strange.


Moussaoui himself and other have suggested that he wasn't actually part of the 9/11 plot (and then said was again, and then said wasn't...). IF he wasn't part of the attack then they could have continued as normal. I'll admit this isn't a great argument, but it's the first that pops to mind.


One big point here is hindsight is always 20/20. You're suggesting that the terrorists would have to be super geniuses who planned everything out to perfection. You can pick holes in their plans (some poor, some convincing I'll admit), but you're doing at it looking at all the evidence after the fact and assuming that nothing was left to chance and everything went according to plan. Similarly you seem to think the intelligence community and government agencies should have reacted perfectly and there should have been no human failure and confusion which would have let the terrorists get away with flaws in their plans.

The 9/11 planners and operators knew how the US intelligence community collected and analysed intelligence and they knew how inneffectively and slowly they did those two things. Additionally, they were aware of the ease with which they could get into the US relatively unnoticed and move around the the country unhindered.

The success of the operation relied not primarily upon the sheer incompetence of the US intelligence community in uncovering the threat in time, but on the experience and skill of Al Qaeda's small band of covert operators to successfully prosecute the the plan they had trained for years to do.

It doesn't matter what you're doing in life - whether it's planning a military operation or a game of football - you primarily exploit your own strengths (in the case of the 9/11 attacks, the experience, skill and determination of the 9/11 operators) in the planning and execution stages. What you don't do, which you've been claiming, is just hope that the opposition will do poorly on the actual day - that's the most retarded thing i've ever heard and demonstrates a poor understanding of intelligence matters.

We're not going to have a meeting of minds, determined as we are to hammer our own points home.

I'm afraid it's abundantly obvious to me that the hijackers simply could not have planned and executed the operation as alleged without the support of the intelligence services. I'm staggered that you have committed a great deal of energy arguing the opposite view and frankly bewildered by some of the explanations you've proffered.

You've persevered with that line of thought because you clearly lack any familiarity with intelligence matters (understanding why 9/11 happened requires that sort of understanding, which you clearly do no possess). I've already gone to great lengths to demonstrate how incompetent our intelligence services were and how skilled and experienced the 9/11 planners/hijackers were.

What qualifies you to speak with authority about the US intelligence services?

What evidence is there to demonstrate the hijackers' skill and experience?

You could call it a hobby of mine - reading up on intelligence matters (historical and current). I've read most of the more authoritative accounts of the growth of modern terrorism (Al Qaeda in particular) and the CIA's anti-terrorism programmes since the 1970s, by former respected intelligence officers/experts and the picture I got was that the US intelligence community was caught with it's pants around it's ankles on 9/11.

Erm.....they succeeded!!

Then it's rather self-aggrandising to suggest you know better than I.

And, for the record, I have not challenged your argument that the intelligence services were poor pre-9/11. In fact, I agreed. You might recall, early in our exchange that, despite pointing out some major successes, I fully recognised that there was a massive failure to perform on 9/11. My argument is simply that the hijackers would not have planned an operation on the assumption that the intelligence services would fail.

Which leads me to prompt you for an answer to the second question I asked: what evidence is there to demonstrate the hijackers' skill and experience?

No, that's evidence of intelligence failures.

Or indeed a combination of the two, i.e. failures in the intelligence & good planning.

I'm sorry but this halfway house doesn't work either. Anyone planning to execute a 9/11-style operation would leave nothing to chance, especially the sort of 'skilled and experienced' 'counter-intelligence' operatives that Lanton is proposing were involved. These guys apprently took a large number of risks both before and during the attack that 'real' perpetrators simply wouldn't have taken, even if they suspected their targets to be woefully unprepared.

Kinda adds a whole new dimension to the assumption that the US is all about supporting Democracy and Freedom. Awesome stuff BTW..... I am about to take a gander at your blog

++++++++++++++++++++++

http://theall-seeingi.blogspot.com/2007/04...gladio-and.html

Operation Gladio was originally conceived by Allen Dulles, who went on to become the first civilian Director of the CIA. It was the Italian code name given to the clandestine NATO stay-behind armies that were left across Europe, whose purpose was to train partisan groups in order to counter the threatened Communist expansion. Initially, these armies were coordinated solely by the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) until, upon the orders of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), a second command centre was formed in the shape of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC).

These stay-behind armies later became key backers in what was known in Italy as the Strategy of Tension. This right wing, anti-Communist programme was aimed at preventing the increasingly popular Italian Communist Party from participating in a governing coalition. It lasted for over a decade. Throughout the campaign, Gladio members sought to manipulate public opinion against the Party through non-violent and violent means, often committing false flag attacks, which were blamed on Communist insurgents. These were conducted indiscriminately against both civilian and non-civilian targets, and included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano car bombing, the attempted assassination of former Interior Minister Mariano Rumor and the 1980 Bologna massacre.

How so? Which ones have you read?

Awesome blog man.... I like the way the News stories flash. Kick Ass

The FBI in washington had mossaiu's laptop for 45 days prior to the attack...the field agents had already looked thru it and knew it contained sensitive material....so why didnt washington do anything with it?....

Why didn't they do anything about the guys taking flight lessons and such when the FBI agent made like 150 attempts to get her supervisor's to take action?

I forget the specifics.