9/11 was the day steel-framed buildings fell like sandcastles, the law of physics worked in reverse and the United States Air Force went missing in action. So what is the real story?
Before attempting to identify “nine hundred and eleven reasons why 9/11 was an inside job” (which will start tomorrow as part of an investigative, four-part report), I would like to briefly mention my own “where-were-you-on-9/11-moment” since it has a lot to do with my reasons for rejecting the official version of events that fateful day.
On the evening of September 11, 2001, as fate would have it, I was sitting inside of Uncle Sam’s restaurant in the heart of Moscow, enjoying dinner with a Russian friend. In the middle of our now-forgotten conversation, some commotion on the overhead television caught my friend’s attention. I turned around just in time to see an airplane careening into the World Trade Center in a magnificent ball of fire.
And that was it: in that split second, a dividing line had been crudely carved down the middle of the world’s mind between “Before 9/11” and “After 9/11.” For the majority of people who saw those horrific images from various time zones around the planet, the world suddenly felt like a very different, even unrecognizable place. But thanks to the availability of those raw video images, as well as new-found physical and chemical evidence, the truth may finally rise up from the ashes of Ground Zero.
A group of diners that had gathered around the television heard the CNN anchor say that “the South Tower has just collapsed.” I asked one of the people standing close to the screen: “How much of the building is still standing?” He responded with barely a trace of emotion, “Nothing. It’s completely gone.”
In hindsight, news of the total collapse of the South Tower represented the first seed of doubt in my mind concerning 9/11. It seemed unfathomable that the seemingly indestructible North and South Towers, which I had just toured the summer before, had been reduced to a pile of dust and rubble level with the horizon line. Surely at least part of the building was left standing!
For many “9/11 doubters,” that seed of doubt has grown into an oak tree that can no longer be ignored. If Internet traffic is any real indication, the movement is quickly outgrowing its electronic borders and eventually some serious questions will have to be answered by some serious people in the real world.
I excused myself from my dinner companion, who somehow failed to appreciate the global ramifications of two commercial jets slamming into America’s financial heart, and headed to yet another popular hangout for Moscow expatriates. I took a seat at the corner of the bar at the American Bar & Grill and watched until well past midnight as one analyst after another tried to make some sense of the wreckage still smoldering on the ground in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
A United States flag waves over the construction site at Ground Zero during the 7th annual 9/11 memorial ceremony September 11, 2008 in New York City (AFP Photo)
Not surprisingly, the only suspect that was mentioned, before any investigation had begun, was Osama bin Laden. This announcement, predictable though it may have been, sparked a heated barstool debate between me and my neighbor, who couldn’t understand how I could question the news that bin Laden was the culprit. “It’s too early to say anything with certainty,” was my only reply. The premature blame that was heaped on this admittedly evil guy (bin Laden) represented the second seed of doubt.
As it turned out, those red flags that popped up in my mind concerning the events as explained by “the experts” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 were shared by many other individuals around the world. In fact, the only things that really added up on 9/11, for those who were keeping score, were the incredible number of inconsistencies.
Today, researchers from various walks of life are demonstrating that it was highly improbable that the upper sections of the North and South Towers were able to topple the massive, largely undamaged structures below without some sort of other variables in the equation. Meanwhile, large traces of thermite, an extremely rare and dangerous material used by the military and professional demolitionists, have been found in dust samples taken from the WTC buildings. This discovery itself warrants a criminal investigation.
But this is undoubtedly the greatest irony of them all: Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, does not even appear on the FBI’s most wanted list. Why? Officials at the Bureau admit that there is simply not enough evidence to arrest him! So if the FBI is not satisfied with the US government’s explanation for the events that transpired on 9/11, why should the public be satisfied?
The 9/11 Omission Commission
In short, 9/11 represented the world’s largest crime scene of modern times, but was never treated as one. In fact, the crime scenes at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and a patch of woods in Pennsylvania were cordoned off and scrubbed clean before any forensic work could occur. The steel from the WTC towers was quickly hauled to Asia and melted down, while photographs show workers hauling away large crates from the Pentagon site, the contents of which were never revealed to the public.
Meanwhile, US politicians assumed that by simply uttering the name “Osama bin Laden” 9/11 was a shut and closed case. After all, who would dare defend such a villainous creature? Not a criminal lawyer in the entire world, that’s for sure, especially given the paranoid, code-orange mindset that gripped the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which precluded any hope for investigating other plausible explanations.
Given the information as we have collected it, and researched by various parties, we can only conclude that the “investigative work” conducted on this crime scene – performed by government agencies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST), as well as the 9/11 Commission – seems to have actually obstructed and derailed any real efforts at unraveling the true story behind 9/11. That is the real purpose of this article: to assist in the efforts to open a real criminal investigation and eventual trial for the culprits who were responsible for 9/11.
For those who think that such an article is a waste of time, or some sort of propaganda aimed at the United States, you need only consider the following: The 9/11 Commission (a government investigative committee that George W. Bush was forced to assemble) told reporters during their deliberations that the individuals who were responsible for protecting America continually provided false information.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (L) listens as a police officer plays a tune for the people whom were killed in the 9/11 attacks (AFP Photo)
According to an article in The Washington Post, “For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in media and testimony appearances.”
“Some of the panel’s staff members,” the paper continued, “believe that authorities sought to mislead the Commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.”
“To this day we don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the Commission. “It was just so far from the truth… It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
Meanwhile, senior officials at the FAA deliberately destroyed air traffic controllers’ tapes made just hours after 9/11.
According to the Washington Post, “Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by a Federal Aviation Administration manager…But months after the recording was made… another FAA manager decided on his own to destroy the tape, crushing it with his hands, cutting it into small pieces and depositing the pieces into several trash cans.”
The article, which was published on May 7, 2004, went on to say that the manager who had the initiative to record the air traffic controllers, one Mike McCormick, had been reassigned to Iraq where he is “helping to set up an air traffic control system.” So much for contacting Mr. McCormick.
Finally, the families of the 9/11 victims called for the resignation of Executive Director Philip Zelikow, a Bush insider, and were duly snubbed. Commission member Max Cleland resigned, calling the entire exercise a “scam” and a “whitewash.”
If everything was so straightforward and transparent on 9/11, why would anybody need to twist the truth and destroy all of the available evidence? This is called obstruction of justice, which ranks as a federal offense in the United States. It should be little wonder, then, that the esteemed members of the 9/11 Commission wanted to wrap up their proceedings as fast as possible because, to quote a Republican senator participant, “the system needs fixed and another terrorist attack could happen at any moment.”
The bottom line is, if the public cannot place its trust in the very 9/11 Commission that was supposed to investigate the attacks, then how is it supposed to trust the official version of 9/11? But for most individuals, expressing any sort of doubt about the official version as to what occurred on 9/11 would mean confronting demons that few people are prepared for.
The Neoconservatives get their “Pearl Harbor”
Any discussion about the events of 9/11 must include those individuals who were responsible for preventing those attacks from occurring in the first place, namely, the neoconservatives who served under former president George W. Bush.
The neoconservative faction of the Republican Party, which believes it is America’s duty to police the planet and spread its own democratic values, out of the barrel of a gun if necessary, is a radical new political animal in the United States. In the aftermath of 9/11, that philosophy achieved a stranglehold on US politics that will be very hard to shake off in the years to come.
Based largely on the philosophy of a Washington-based neoconservative think tank known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), more than one commentator has made a direct link between 9/11 and the administration of George W. Bush
PNAC, which was in existence from 1997 to 2006, enthusiastically trumpeted the idea that “American leadership is both good for America and the world.”
William Kristol, one of the founding fathers of PNAC, betrayed the zeal and passion that his group had for the use of military force in resolving foreign policy problems in his numerous publications.
“Saddam Hussein must go,” was the blunt opening line of Kristol’s op-ed piece in The New York Times (“Bombing Iraq Isn’t Enough,” Jan. 30, 1998, co-written with Robert Kagan).
People pay their respects during the 7th annual 9/11 commemoration ceremony held at Zuccotti Park September 11, 2008 in New York City (AFP Photo)
“This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton administration,” Kristol continued. “But if the United States is committed… to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail.”
It should be remembered that, following Operation Desert Storm (a military campaign by coalition forces to oust Iraq from Kuwaitm, opened by Bush the Elder on August 2, 1990 and lasting until February 28, 1991) Iraq went from being one of the most advanced Arab nations to one of the most primitive.
In the course of that war, massive Allied bombing campaigns inflicted severe damage on the country, destroying power stations, major dams, even sewage treatment facilities. Indeed, Iraqi fighter pilots and troops, understanding that engaging “the enemy” meant certain death, abandoned their positions and fled to Iran. In other words, there were many more threshold nations to worry about than one that had already been pulverized several years earlier.
Despite overwhelming evidence (supported by UN weapons inspectors on the ground) that Iraq was not stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, the PNAC continued to beat the war drum for the use of military force against Saddam Hussein. Eventually the PNAC, whose members went on to fill top positions in the Bush administration (Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld, to name just a few), got exactly what it wanted with 9/11 when the “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us” mentality kicked in full throttle and “full spectrum dominance” was given a chance.
In fact, the PNAC prior to 9/11 actually seemed to be anticipating another catastrophic event when it wrote in a treatise (Rebuilding America’s Defenses) that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Many commentators point to this passage, as well as the inexplicable attack on Iraq, as proof that the neoconservatives must have had their fingerprints all over the events that transpired on 9/11. This article will not go that far. With that said, however, it is suggestive, at the very least, that the very individuals who fantasized over “another Pearl Harbor” just happened to find themselves in power when that once-in-a-lifetime event broke on 9/11.
Furthermore, the Bush administration will never win accolades for its outstanding moral behavior. Indeed, the crimes it has been found guilty of committing while pursuing its “war on terror” had the actual effect of creating some degree of sympathy for the enemy – no small task when we are talking about Osama bin Laden. Although it is reasonable to expect that the American military would be a bit overenthusiastic after what occurred on 9/11, this cannot excuse the transgressions of international law that followed in its wake.
Roses are bunched together on display during a 9/11 memorial ceremony September 11, 2008 in New York City (AFP Photo)
America and the world are still grappling with the consequences of: attacking Iraq without a UN mandate; hauling suspected terrorists off to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the detainees were “sensorily deprived” and stripped of all legal rights; black hole prisons that the US secret services operated somewhere in Eastern Europe (interesting that the locations of concentration camps and GULAGs are well known, but the site of these democratic dungeons remain veiled in a shroud of total secrecy) with the purpose of torturing prisoners shattered America’s hard-earned reputation as a country that stands for human rights and decency. Finally, the pure breakdown of discipline that was revealed inside the walls of Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of the US guardians appeared to be so systemic that some suggested it was reflective of the new atmosphere of immorality and decadence “that reigns in ‘The West.’”
With the events of 9/11 as the great justifier for anything and everything that follows, members of the Bush administration began to dream up the most deranged Orwellian schemes for “protecting America,” at the same they were actually destroying civil rights and freedom. The Patriot Act, for example, rammed through by the Bush administration on October 26, 2001 after America blinked, greatly increases the power of the law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mails, and even library book withdrawals.
But this blatant disregard for any sort of limits to power cut in the other direction too. According to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, an “executive assassination ring,” called the Joint Special Operations Command, was cooked up by the Bush administration.
“It’s a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” Hersh said. “They do not report to anybody. Except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office.”
And then there was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence, which “was created,” according to a report by the American Forces Press Service … “to aid U.S. efforts to influence countries overseas to help or at least support the war against global terrorism.”
Rumsfeld decided to ax the program after a report in The New York Times discovered evidence that the office was designed to “plant false press releases in foreign media outlets to manipulate public opinion.” So much for spreading democracy.
None of the abovementioned things, however, proves that the Bush administration was somehow complicit with what occurred on 9/11. But it does provide us a strong clue as to their thought processes: how they responded to a crisis, how they craved secrecy, and how they managed to condone some of the most inhumane military practices – in complete violation of the Geneva Convention – in American history.
A parachutist connected to a large American flag lands during the seventh annual 9/11 commemoration ceremony held at Ground Zero September 11, 2008 in New York City (AFP Photo)
Pre-9/11, the neoconservatives were silently hoping for some kind of “Pearl Harbor”, while post-9/11, they managed quickly to forfeit the global support and sympathy that the world had awarded the United States by ushering in an epoch of fear, arrogance and incredibly poor judgment. Despite a growing mountain of evidence that suggests the public has been deceived as to the true nature of events on 9/11, politicians are now expending a lot of time and energy debating whether or not it was morally ethical or strategically expedient for the United States to authorize the use of torture against suspected terrorists. This debate only camouflages the real debate: The real debate and investigation should focus on 9/11, that watershed event that is responsible for getting our troops mixed up in the Middle East to begin with.
Getting back to PNAC, that shady organization eventually fell by the wayside, but the ideas that it nurtured and promoted continue to this day. Indeed, it is too early to say whether irreversible damage has been inflicted on the central tenets of the Republican Party.
Finally, individuals who reject alternative versions of events to the official one are accused of either “distorting the memory of the victims of 9/11,” or being “conspiracy theorists”. Personally, had I been a passenger on one of those ill-fated airplanes, I would probably be sitting in some faraway place, anxiously waiting for an honest investigation that would finally put my soul to rest; after all, there can be no greater tribute to the memory of the deceased than the truth.
As far as accusations of being “conspiracy theorists” goes, it seems that the real conspiracy, given the emerging facts, was concocted on the other side of the debate. Even the FBI has found no reason to arrest Osama bin Laden, yet our military is now fighting on two bloody fronts as a result of his purported crime.
I would like briefly to mention two individuals who have given me permission to quote and cite their exhaustive research for this article: First, Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian journalist and politician who produced the unmatched documentary film on 9/11 entitled Zero, which has thus far failed to reach large audiences in the United States; Niels Harrit, a Professor from the University of Copenhagen whose patient emails helped me to understand chemistry a bit better. Finally, special thanks to the courageous work of David Chandler, a physics teacher who could certainly teach the government a lesson on how to construct viable mathematical models on a shoestring budget.
