"9/11 Commission Deception, Cheney's Actions on 9/11, and Why He Should Testify Under Oath"
Professor Peter Dale Scott has written an insightful and provocative paper, published today in the Journal of 9/11 Studies. Excerpts from the paper:
"The 9/11 Commission Report is an example of concerted cover-up, partly by omissions, and just as importantly by its cherry-picking of evidence to create impressions that are in fact authoritatively disputed, and in some cases probably not true. There are many examples of cherry-picking and contrived simulations of fact. More importantly, there is a consistent pattern in this: to minimize Cheney's responsibility for what happened that day."
"In this presentation I have focused on anomalies in the behavior, especially on 9/11, of Richard Cheney. He, and Donald Rumsfeld and others, should testify, under oath, about
1) The June 1 JCS Order requiring highest-level approvals for intercepts of off-course planes,
2) The contested time of Cheney's arrival in the Presidential bunker,
3) Cheney's orders with respect to a plane approaching Washington, and did this occur around 9:27 AM (as testified to by Mineta), or 10:15 AM (as per the 9/11 Report)?
4) Cheney's call or calls with Rumsfeld and the President before or about 10 AM, and did they discuss so-called "Continuity of Government" (COG), including warrantless surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, and arrangements for mass detention.?
The story the Report presented was embarrassing enough: of a trillion dollar defence system that broke down on 9/11, and completely failed to perform its allotted function. But the Report's systematic and repeated distortions lead one to suspect that some even more embarrassing truth is being concealed, and that this truth has to do with orders given on that day by the Vice President.
I believe that COG may be the answer to the mystery question about Cheney's actions at a time when he was talking to the President and Rumsfeld. If so, the three men were almost certainly not acting on their own. Rather, they would have been key figures in a highly classified agenda that must have involved other people.
The question to be explored is whether that agenda involved revising the U.S. constitutional balance of powers, and whether Cheney on 9/11 was primarily occupied in exploiting the attacks as a means to implement an agenda of constitutional revision which he already had in place.
The 911 Commission decided that its supporting evidence and records should be withheld from public view until January 2, 2009 – a date which would obviously insure the President and Vice-President from possible impeachment. But many would concede that since 9/11, and as a result of 9/11, the American nation has drifted towards a constitutional crisis, requiring a change of policy direction. The issues posed by what happened on 9/11 are very relevant to this crisis, and too significant to be postponed until 2009. As it did belatedly in the case of the John F. Kennedy assassination, Congress should initiate a procedure for these records to be reviewed and released expeditiously.
Records that should be released would include all of the phone logs from the White House on 9/11, to determine, as a matter of priority, the precise time and circumstances of Cheney's orders on that day. They would also include materials (such as COG files and the videotape of the White House teleconference) that the Commission apparently never requested. The public also needs to establish why other records requested by the Commission did not initially reach them.
And then, I believe, it would be appropriate for a venue to be established in which the Vice President would testify for the first time about 9/11 under oath."
I'm confident you will want to read Prof. Scott's paper, here.
