tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9820421960653985552024-03-13T05:29:37.468-07:00...Taming the truth, one report at a time.Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comBlogger623125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-47302277752007735942012-11-05T13:45:00.000-08:002012-11-05T13:47:49.828-08:00911 Widow is One Step Closer to a Supreme Court Case For 911 Truth<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">By</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">JG Vibes</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://www.theintelhub.com/" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">theintelhub.com</a></span></strong></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">November 5, 2012</span><br />
<embed src="http://theintelhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ellen-Mariani.png"></embed>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
After years of repeated roadblocks Ellen Mariani is just one step away from bringing a wrongful death case to the supreme court, in regards to the death of her husband on September 11th 2001.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Ellen is one of the only surviving family members of world trade center victims who didn’t take the governments pay off money, instead she has been relentlessly pursuing the truth for over a decade.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
The many roadblocks that she encountered along the way included the<a href="http://www.public-action.com/911/suit.html" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"> infiltration of a provocateur lawyer</a>, media slander, and <a href="http://www.whale.to/b/bollyn6dec.html" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">a court mandated gag order</a>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Relentless, Ms. Mariani did not give up or back down, and just this week she was finally able to raise the money that was required to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, in her long standing lawsuit against the government and the airlines for their negligence in the false flag attacks.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<a href="http://marianilawsuit.wordpress.com/" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">According to a blog entry posted on her website</a>:</div>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 25px; margin-right: 25px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 20px; padding-top: 10px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
“The Ellen Mariani Legal Defense Fund Committee is pleased to report good news. We have collected the needed funds in time to allow Ellen Mariani to file a petition to the United States Supreme Court, for review of the decision denying her a role in what was originally her own 9/11 complaint.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Ellen’s attorney Bruce Leichty has already started preparing the petition. The filing deadline is 11/23/2012. The Supreme Court has created <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/12a261.htm" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;">a docket page on the Court’s website</a>, so that people can follow the course of the petition if they wish. For a personal statement of the secretary-treasurer of the Fund, Vincent Gillespie, <a href="http://marianilawsuit.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/personal-statement-for-the-emldf-2a.pdf" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;">click here</a>. ”</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
The fundraising effort that was needed to raise this money was the most recent roadblock encountered by Ms. Mariani.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Simply to appeal her case she had to raise $11,000 before she could enter the application process.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Luckily, Architects and Engineers for 911 truth <a href="http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/674-911-lawsuit-heads-toward-us-supreme-court-with-your-help.html" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">helped spread the word</a>about the fund raising effort, and independent media organizations helped as well.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Now Mariani and her lawyer must submit the application to the court by November 23 and then wait for a response.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
There is no telling how long it will take the court to respond, but we will continue to post updates on this story as they become available.</div>
Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-31794025536588744652011-07-26T13:55:00.000-07:002011-07-26T16:29:11.234-07:00Co-Chair of 9/11 Inquiry: American Government Covered Up State Assistance to HijackersIt's front page news today <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/911-victims-phones-hacking/2011/07/11/id/403169">that</a>:<br /><blockquote>Journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World paper tried to access the mobile phones of 9/11 victims, a former New York City police officer claimed on Monday.</blockquote><br />It's also front page news today that the new Secretary of Defense - Leon Panetta - said <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQdhW1tFJNeFXOtT_NnG2pvN_ELA?docId=CNG.321fa4ec04240f38929cd143a6ea7112.101">that</a> American soldiers are in Iraq <span style="font-style: italic;">because of 9/11</span>, even though AFP notes:<br /><blockquote>That was one of the justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion, but the argument has since been widely dismissed.</blockquote>(see <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/5-hours-after-911-attacks-rumsfeld-said.html">this</a> for details).<br /><br />But a more important story - and one which might focus on a more appropriate country<br />than Iraq - is that the co-chair of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry (Bob Graham) today alleged a cover up by the U.S. government of state assistance by Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers.<br /><br />Graham is no flake. He was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 10 years (including 18 months as chairman), member of the CIA External Advisory Board, chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, 18-year U.S. senator, two-term governor of Florida, co-chair of the national commission on the BP oil spill, and member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.<br /><br />Graham <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/11/saudi-arabia-fried-or-foe-asks-senator-bob-graham.html">writes</a> today in the Daily Beast:<br /><blockquote>The first two hijackers who entered the United States did so through Los Angeles International Airport in mid-January 2000. Within days they were urged by a shadowy man, already described in an FBI report as an “agent” of the Saudi government, to relocate to San Diego with promises of extensive support—promises on which he promptly delivered.<br /><br />The agent’s cover was as a ghost employee of a contractor to an agency of the Saudi government—paid a salary and allowances but never expected to show up and work. His real job was to monitor Saudi youth in San Diego getting an education to ensure they were not also plotting the overthrow of the monarchy.<br /><br />When the two future hijackers reached San Diego, the agent’s allowances were substantially increased. Upon their arrival the agent secured and paid for an apartment. He arranged flight lessons. He introduced them to a tight circle of Muslims, primarily Saudis, who offered additional support.<br /><br />Yet the support being funneled to the two visitors proved insufficient for their decidedly non-Islamic tastes—alcohol, strip clubs, even a desired, though unfulfilled, marriage to a stripper. The agent then tapped another source of funds: a welfare account maintained for the benefit of Saudis in need by the wife of the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.<br /><br />That is some of what we do know, and we got a sufficient glimpse to know what we didn’t know. Still unanswered after nearly 10 years are the questions of the full extent of the Saudi pre-9/11 involvement: Did any or all of the other 17 receive support from Saudi interests? Why would Saudi Arabia do this? Do the Saudis have the will and capability to aid future attacks against the United States? And most important: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Why the cover-up by our government?</span><br /><br />I have attempted to address these questions in the final report of the congressional commission and the nonfiction book <span style="font-style: italic;">Intelligence Matters</span>, published in 2004. Each was censored by authorities in the intelligence community, particularly on the role of the Saudis in 9/11.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Why would the Saudis have given substantial assistance to at least two of the hijackers, and possibly all 19? The answer I have come to is <span style="font-style: italic;">survival</span>—survival of the state and survival of the House of Saud.</blockquote>This is stunning. Graham is saying - and actually has <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/july-dec02/intelligence_12-11.html">said for years</a> - that the Saudis were involved in 9/11, but the U.S. government has been censoring this fact.<br /><br />But it doesn't end there.<br /><br />As I <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/did-government-warn-911-commission.htmlhttp://">noted</a> last year:<br /><blockquote>Investigators for the Congressional [9/11] Joint Inquiry <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/11/con05439.html">discovered</a> that an <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">FBI</span> informant</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">orders from the White House</span>.<br /><br />As the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08graham.html">notes</a>:<br /><blockquote>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...<br /><br /> * * *<br /><br />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.<br /><br />In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said <span style="font-weight: bold;">an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."</span></blockquote></blockquote><br />And see this <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/65649">Newsweek</a> article.<br /><br />The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also described <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/did-government-warn-911-commission.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">numerous</span> obstructions of justice</a> by the government into the 9/11 inquiry.<br /><br />As I also <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/government-minders-obstructed-911.html">pointed out</a> last year, Graham - as well as the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission - found that witnesses were also <span style="font-style: italic;">intimidated into being quiet</span>:<br /><blockquote>As I <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/collen-rowley-minders-ensured-she-didnt.html">detailed</a> previously, both the Joint Intelligence Committee and 9/11 Commission investigations into 9/11 had government "minders" intimidating witnesses into not saying anything the government didn't like.<br /><br />You may assume that the issue of "minders" is overblown, and is not really that important.<br /><br />But, as the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/politics/08CND-TERR.html">noted</a> in 2003:<br /><blockquote>The panel [i.e. the 9/11 Commission] also said the failure of the Bush administration to allow officials to be interviewed without the presence of government colleagues could impede its investigation, with the commission's chairman suggesting today that the situation amounted to "intimidation" of the witnesses.<br /><br />***<br /><br />9/11 Commission co-chairs] Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton suggested that the Justice Department was behind a directive barring intelligence officials from being interviewed by the panel without the presence of agency colleagues.<br /><br />At a news conference, Mr. Kean described the presence of "minders" at the interviews as a form of intimidation. "I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency," he said. "You might get less testimony than you would."<br /><br />"We would rather interview these people without minders or without agency people there," he said.</blockquote><br />And as I previously <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/collen-rowley-minders-ensured-she-didnt.html">noted</a>, a recently released 9/11 Commission memo complains that:<ul><li>Minders “answer[ed] questions directed at witnesses;”</li><br /><li>Minders acted as “monitors, reporting to their respective agencies on Commission staffs lines of inquiry and witnesses’ verbatim responses.” The staff thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution;” and</li><br /><li>Minders “positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions.”</li></ul><br />Still think this isn't an important issue?<br /><br />Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and chair of the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-09-07-graham-charges_x.htm">said</a> in 2005:<br /><blockquote>The [9/11] commission's findings were based on an interview with al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">with Saudi Arabian officials present. "He had no motivation to speak truthfully as to his role," he said</span>.</blockquote><br />When government officials are present, it creates conditions where the witness "has no motivation to speak truthfully."<br /><br />Bottom Line: The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton, and chair of the the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, Bob Graham, said that minders obstructed the investigation into 9/11.</blockquote><br />In his Daily Beast article today, Graham also goes into more detail regarding the American cover up of 9/11:<br /><blockquote>The most perplexing unanswered question remains: <span style="font-style: italic;">Why would the United States engage in a cover-up</span>? Many have pointed to the special personal friendship between the royal family and the highest levels of our national government. The fact that the Saudis were allowed to fly a planeload of their elite home from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11, when all other commercial aviation was grounded, is often cited as support for that position. In fact, all that actions such as this do is make America’s post-9/11 reaction to the Saudis even more mysterious.<br /><br />Secrets deemed this critical by both governments are bound to be buried under many layers of official protection and unofficial obfuscation. The actions since 9/11 are a perverted application of Winston Churchill’s truism on the Allies’ plans to end World War II: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”</blockquote><br />How far has the American cover up gone?<br /><br />Here are some hints:<ul><li>The 9/11 Commission's co-chairs said that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new">the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials <span style="font-style: italic;">misrepresented the facts</span> to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such <span style="font-style: italic;">false statements</span></a> (free subscription required)</li><br /><li>9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070108233707/http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html">I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue<br /></a></li><li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070108233707/http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html">9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "</a><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html">We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting</a>"</li><br /><li>9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "<a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/11/21/cleland/index.html?pn=1">It is a national scandal</a>"; "<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/13/911_panel_to_get_access_to_withheld_data/">This investigation is now compromised</a>"; and "<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/23/1546256">One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">But this White House wants to cover it up</span></a>"</li><br /><li>9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "<a href="http://salon.com/ent/feature/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/index4.html">There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version... We didn't have access....</a>" He also says that<a href="http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/911-commissioner-bob-kerrey-it-might.html"> it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11</a>.</li><br /><li>And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry - recently <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/senior-counsel-to-911-commission-at.html">said</a> "<span style="font-weight: bold;">At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not to tell the truth about what happened</span>". He also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html">said</a> "I was <span style="font-weight: bold;">shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described</span> .... 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." And he <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1921659,00.html">said</a>: "It's almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened</span>"</li><br /><li>A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and <span style="font-style: italic;">personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush</span>, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, <span style="font-style: italic;">the Joint Chiefs of Staff</span>, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “<a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">I think at simplest terms, there’s a <span style="font-style: italic;">cover-up</span>. The 9/11 Report is a joke</a>”</li><br /><li>The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said "<a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup</a>"</li><br /><li>The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/04/con06125.html">President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a <span style="font-style: italic;">massive cover-up</span> instead of accepting responsibility</a></li><br /><li>The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/11/17/122900.shtml">there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission</a></li><br /><li>Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/pentagon-papers-whistleblower-daniel.html">says</a> that the government has <span style="font-style: italic;">ordered</span> the media not to cover 9/11</li></ul><br />Other than that, the American government has been totally forthcoming .)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Note: This essay does not address one way or another whether any countries other than Saudi Arabia might have been involved in the 9/11 attacks themselves.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update: Graham appeared on MSNBC and talked about this issue:</span><br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YlDuNguxsi8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe></center><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/co-chair-of-911-inquiry-american.html">Source</a><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-30041018018792395432011-07-26T13:49:00.000-07:002011-07-26T13:54:13.384-07:009/11 families demand to reopen caseThose who lost loved ones during terrorist attacks at New York’s World Trade Center are asking the US Attorney’s office to reopen a case related to September 11.<br /><br />The 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims, along with the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, is demanding that all evidence from a Ground Zero high-rise that was damaged as a result of the terrorist attacks be reviewed again in full, citing a lack of accountability in the death of two firefighters.<br /><br />The former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan was damaged during the 9/11 attacks but remained standing in part for years after. A 2007 blaze in the building, however, left two firefighters dead and activists are saying questions are being left unanswered about the incident.<br /><br />According to a statement issued by the two groups, numerous violations in the building were never reported. A construction contractor and two supervisors were acquitted of manslaughter, among other charges, in what led to the two 2007 deaths.<br /><br />The Deutsche Bank skyscraper was opened in 1974 and was damaged by the debris that blew through New York following the collapse of the Twin Towers. A 2005 investigation of the 41 story of ruins that once housed the financial institute revealed human remains on the roof. An investigation then opened up to analyze the rest of the building for missing persons. Deconstruction finally began in March of 2007, but a seven-alarm fire that summer caused by crews working on the dismantling of the structure led to the death of two city workers.<br /><br />Joseph Graffagnino, 33, and Robert Beddia, 53, died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning on the fourteenth floor of the building on August 18, 2007. An additional 115 firefighters were also injured responding to the blaze.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://rt.com/usa/news/reopen-attacks-building-two/">Source</a><br /><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-34779147796740164372011-07-26T13:39:00.000-07:002011-07-26T13:48:30.253-07:00Why the NIST WTC 7 Report is FalseFew people seem to know why the official report for World Trade Center building 7 is false and unscientific. Some might have heard that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) has admitted that the building fell in free-fall acceleration for a period of time. But the fact is that the building could never have begun to fall the way NIST said it did. Here’s why.<b><b><b><br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ArnYryJqCwU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe></center><br /><br /><br /></b></b></b><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2011-07-09/why-nist-wtc-7-report-false">Source</a><b><b><b><br /><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center><br /></b></b></b>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-41298810912730531772011-03-24T13:09:00.000-07:002011-03-24T13:15:17.285-07:00Tom Sullivan - Explosives Loader AE911Truth's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW<p></p><p></p><p></p><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u5IgqJXyLbg" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe></center><br /><br />AE911Truth's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!<br />Tom Sullivan - Former Explosives Loader for Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI)<br /><br />This interview is some raw footage of one of the world class experts appearing in Architects and Engineer's upcoming hard hitting documentary<br />"9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out"<br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2011-03-20/tom-sullivan-explosives-loader-ae911truths-exclusive-interview">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-90598943633203699072011-03-05T16:52:00.000-08:002011-03-05T17:03:14.324-08:00Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side (Part 2)<p></p><p></p><p>Second in a series<br />by Mark H. Gaffney<br />March 2, 2011<br /><br />This paper will review the evidence for informed, or insider, trading in the days and hours before the 9/11 attacks. From the very first, the phenomenon appeared to be world-wide. One consultant, Jonathan Winer, told ABC: “it’s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to Europe.”[1] The list of affected nations was long, and included the US, Germany, Japan, France Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the UK, Switzerland and Spain.[2] Soon, independent investigations were underway on three continents in the belief that the paper trail would lead to the terrorists.<br /><br />Press statements by leading figures in the international banking community left little doubt that the evidence was compelling. Ernst Welteke, President of the German Deutsche Bundesbank, told reporters that “a preliminary review by German regulators and bank researchers showed there were highly suspicious sales of shares in airlines and insurance companies, along with major trades in gold and oil markets, before September 11 that suggest….advance knowledge of the attacks. Welteke said that his researchers came across….almost irrefutable proof of insider trading.” Welteke was blunt: “What we found makes us sure that people connected to the terrorists must have been trying to profit from this tragedy.”[3]<br /><br />In the U.K., London City regulators investigated a flurry of suspicious sales processed just before the attack.[4] “The Financial Services Authority (FSA), a stock market watchdog, was drawn into the investigation because it had a transaction monitoring department that checks suspicious share movements.” An FSA spokesperson confirmed that market regulators in Germany, Japan and the U.S. had received information about short selling of insurance company shares and airline stocks, which fell sharply as a result of the attacks. Among the WTC tenants were dozens of banks and insurance companies, including several that were now going to have to pay out billions to cover heavy losses from the attacks.[5]<br /><br />Assuming nefarious individuals were armed with foreknowledge, they stood to make a windfall by dumping stock and selling competitors short, not to mention the vast potential profits from last-minute electronic money laundering via computers which, the perpetrators had to know, would be destroyed within hours. Richard Crossley, a London analyst, stated that he had tracked suspicious short selling and share dumping in a swath of stocks. CBS likewise reported a sharp upsurge in purchases of put options on both United and American Airlines.[6] The uptick had occurred in the days prior to 9/11. A put option is a contract that allows the holder to sell a stock at a specified price, within a certain time period. Sources on Wall Street told CBS that before 9/11 they had never seen that kind of trading imbalance. The only airlines affected were United and American, the two involved in the attack. American Airlines stock reportedly fell 39% in a single day. United Airlines stock dropped even more, by a whopping 44%.<br /><br />Although many stocks tumbled, there were also big winners, especially in the military sector. Contractors like L-3 Communications, Allied Techsystems and Northrop Grumman all reported large gains.[7] The biggest winner, though, was Raytheon, which manufactures Tomahawk missiles. During the week following the 9/11 attacks, Raytheon stock climbed by an astounding 37%.[8] Prior to 9/11, the purchase of call options (a contract to buy a stock at a certain price) for Raytheon had suspiciously surged by 600%.<br /><br />The sale of five-year U.S. Treasury Notes also spiked just before 9/11, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.[9] Among the purchases was a single $5 billion transaction, which pointed to large investors. The Journal explained that “Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the US. The notes are prized for their safety and their backing by the U.S. government, and usually rally when investors flee riskier investments, such as stocks.” Michael Shamosh, a bond-market strategist for Tucker Anthony Inc., told the Journal: “If they were going to do something like this they would do it in the five-year part of the market. [Because] It’s extremely liquid, and the tracks would be hard to spot.” The article added that “The value of these notes has risen sharply since the events of September 11.”<br /><br />The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched its own probe into allegations of insider trading. For weeks, the SEC remained close-mouthed about the scope of its investigation, then, in mid-October, sent out a request to securities firms around the world for more information regarding a list of 38 different stocks.[10] SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told the House Financial Services Committee that “We will do everything in our power to track those people down and bring them to justice.”[11] By this time, however, the fix was in.<br /><br />The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the SEC took the unprecedented step of deputizing “hundreds, if not thousands, of key players in the private sector.”[12] Wrote the Chronicle: “In a two-page statement issued to ‘all securities-related entities’ nationwide, the SEC asked companies to designate senior personnel who appreciate ‘the sensitive nature’ of the case and can be relied upon to ‘exercise appropriate discretion’ as ‘point’ people linking government investigators and the industry.” The requested information was to be held in strictest confidence. The SEC statement included the following passage (emphasis added): “We ask that you disseminate the information within your institution only on a need-to-know basis.”<br /><br />In his book “Crossing the Rubicon”, former LAPD detective Mike Ruppert explains the SEC’s unprecedented move to deputize:<br /><br /></p><blockquote>What happens when you deputize someone in a national security or criminal investigation is that you make it illegal for them to disclose publicly what they know…. In effect, they become government agents and are controlled by government regulations rather than their own conscience. In fact, they can be thrown in jail without a hearing if they talk publicly. I have seen this implied threat time and again with federal investigations, intelligence agents, and even members of the United States Congress who are bound so tightly by secrecy oaths and agreements that they are not even able to disclose criminal activities inside the government for fear of incarceration.[13]</blockquote><br />Notice, this surely means that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the insider trading.[14] When the evidentiary trail led back to Wall Street, the SEC moved quickly to control the evidence and muzzle potential witnesses. Despite the best efforts of the SEC, a few details did leak to the world press. In mid-October 2001, The Independent (UK) reported that, “To the embarrassment of investigators, it has….emerged that the firm used to buy many of the ‘put’ options (where a trader, in effect, bets on a share price fall) on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by Alvin ‘Buzzy’ Krongard, now executive director of the CIA.”[15] The evidence was all the more incriminating, because in at least one case the purchaser failed to collect a reported $2.5 million in profits made from the collapsing share price of UAL stock. The only plausible explanation was that someone at the purchasing bank feared exposure and subsequent arrest.<br /><br />For the most part, the U.S. press failed to pick up the story, which clearly linked Wall Street and the U.S. intelligence community to the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, the New York Times cooperated with the cover-up.[16] George Tenet writes in his memoirs that he recruited Buzzy Krongard in 1998 to become his deputy at CIA, probably to serve as Tenet’s personal liaison to Wall Street.[17] Until 1997, Krongard was chairman of Alex Brown Inc., America’s oldest investment banking firm. Alex Brown was acquired by Bankers Trust in 1997, which, in turn, was purchased by Deutsche Bank in 1999. In the mid-1990s, Krongard had served as a consultant to CIA director James Woolsey.<br /><br />In 1998, Banker’s Trust-Alex Brown refused to cooperate with a Senate subcommittee which, at the time, was conducting hearings on the involvement of U.S. banks in money laundering activities.[18] At the time, Banker’s Trust, like other large U.S. banks, was in the business of private banking. This means that Banker’s Trust catered to unnamed wealthy clients for the purpose of setting up shell companies in foreign jurisdictions, such as on the Isle of Jersey, where effective bank regulation and oversight are nonexistent. According to Ruppert, Krongard’s last job at Alex Brown was to oversee “private client relations.”[19] This means that Krongard personally arranged confidential transactions and transfers for the bank’s unnamed wealthy clientele.<br /><br />Private banks typically offer a range of services to their clients for the purpose of shielding them from oversight. Private banks set up multiple offshore accounts in multiple locations under multiple names. They also facilitate the quick, confidential and hard-to-trace transfer of money across jurisdictional boundaries. In many such cases, the private banks do not even know who owns the account; which, of course, means that not even the bankers can follow the transactions with “due diligence.” Many private banks do not even try, for fear of scaring away business, especially from foreign clients. Even though private bankers are responsible for enforcing legal controls against money laundering, where such laws exist, in practice, oversight is typically weak or nonexistent. I was shocked to learn that although it is illegal for U.S. banks to launder ill-gotten money that originates within the United States, it is not illegal for them to accept dirty money from elsewhere. No surprise then, that many U.S. banks openly solicit business from Central American drug lords, arms merchants, and other shady entities.<br /><br />For these reasons, it is little wonder that over the last several decades, law enforcement has failed to stem the growing international flood of laundered drug money and other illicit assets. Their failure has been spectacular. In 1999, a consensus of experts in Germany, Switzerland and at the U.S. Treasury agreed that 99.9% of laundered money routinely escapes detection. The experts estimated that the annual total was between $500 billion and a trillion dollars, a mind-boggling number, about half of which is washed into the U.S. economy, the rest into Europe.[20]<br /><br />After “Buzzy” Krongard’s departure to the CIA, his successor at Alex Brown was his former deputy Mayo Shattuck III, who had worked at the bank for many years. In 1997, Shattuck helped Krongard engineer the merger with Banker’s Trust, and he stayed on after Deutsche Bank acquired Bankers Trust – Alex Brown in 1999.[21]<br /><br />According to the New York Times, Bankers Trust was “one of the most loosely managed [banks] on Wall Street,” and during the 1990s was repeatedly rocked by scandal. In 1994, clients and regulators accused the bank “of misleading customers about its risky derivative products.” The case went viral when tape recordings were made public that showed bank salesmen snickering about ripping off naive customers. In 1999, Banker’s Trust pled guilty to criminal conspiracy charges, after it was revealed that top-level executives had created a slush fund out of at least $20 million in unclaimed funds.[22] Bankers Trust had to pay a $63 million fine and would have been forced to close it doors but for the fact it was acquired, just at this time, by Deutsche Bank, Europe’s largest bank.<br /><br />According to the New York Times, Mayo Shattuck III “was made co-head of investment banking in January [2001], overseeing Deutsche Bank’s 400 brokers who cater to wealthy clients.”[23] It is curious that Shattuck resigned immediately after the 9/11 attacks.<br /><br />In a footnote buried on page 499, the 9/11 Commission Report alludes to Mayo Shattuck III’s likely role in purchasing the United Airlines put options just prior to 9/11. The note fails to mention Shattuck and Deutsche Bank by name, but attempts to explain away the charges of insider trading, as follows:<br /><br /><blockquote>A single US-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95% of the UAL puts on September 6 [2001] as part of a strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading on September 10 was traced to a specific US-based options trading newsletter….which recommended these trades.[24]</blockquote><br />Evidently, we are supposed to conclude that “American” means American Airlines. But here it could just as easily refer to American Express. If Deutsche Bank’s pre-9/11 trading was truly hedged, as the 9/11 Commission Report contends in the footnote, then it would not meet the definition of informed or insider trading. However, without more information, it is not possible to confirm or refute the facts in this particular case. Still, the commission’s token explanation is not convincing. Two statistical studies since published reported an unusual volume in options trading for both United and American airlines in the days before 9/11. The author of the first study wrote that the results are “consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks.”[25] The second paper, by the Swiss Banking Institute, reached the same conclusion.[26] A third study looked at the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX index options) and found “abnormal trading volumes in September 2001 OTM, ATM and ITM SPX index put options, and September 2001 ITM SPX index call options.” The authors concluded that there is “credible circumstantial evidence to support the insider trading claim.”[27]<br /><br />Notice also, the commission makes no mention in its footnote of the 36 other companies identified by the SEC in its insider trading probe. What about the pre-9/11 surge in call options for Raytheon, for instance, or the spike in put options for the behemoth Morgan Stanley, which had offices in WTC 2? The 9/11 Commission Report offers not one word of explanation about any of this. The truth, we must conclude, is to be found between the lines in the report’s conspicuous avoidance of the lion’s share of the insider trading issue. Indeed, if the trading was truly “innocuous,” as the report states, then why did the SEC muzzle potential whistleblowers by deputizing everyone involved with its investigation? The likely answer is that so many players on Wall Street were involved that the SEC could not risk an open process, for fear of exposing the unthinkable. This would explain why the SEC limited the flow of information to those with a “need to know,” which, of course, means that very few participants in the SEC investigation had the full picture. It would also explain why the SEC ultimately named no names. All of which hints at the true and frightening extent of criminal activity on Wall Street in the days and hours before 9/11. The SEC was like a surgeon who opens a patient on the operating room table to remove a tumor, only to sew him back up again after finding that the cancer has metastasized through the system.<br /><br />At an early stage of its investigation, perhaps before SEC officials were fully aware of the implications, the SEC did recommend that the FBI investigate two suspicious transactions. We know about this thanks to a 9/11 Commission memorandum declassified in May 2009 which summarizes an August 2003 meeting at which FBI agents briefed the commission on the insider trading issue. The document indicates that the SEC passed the information about the suspicious trading to the FBI on September 21, 2001, just ten days after the 9/11 attacks.[28]<br /><br />Although the names in both cases are censored from the declassified document, thanks to some nice detective work by Kevin Ryan we know whom (in one case) the SEC was referring to.[29] The identity of the suspicious trader is a stunner that should have become prime-time news on every network, world-wide. Kevin Ryan was able to fill in the blanks because, fortunately, the censor left enough details in the document to identify the suspicious party who, as it turns out, was none other than Wirt Walker III, a distant cousin to then-President G.W. Bush. Several days before 9/11, Walker and his wife Sally purchased 56,000 shares of stock in Stratesec, one of the companies that provided security at the World Trade Center up until the day of the attacks. Notably, Stratesec also provided security at Dulles International Airport, where AA 77 took off on 9/11, and also security for United Airlines, which owned two of the other three allegedly hijacked aircraft. At the time, Walker was a director of Stratesec. Amazingly, Bush’s brother Marvin was also on the board. Walker’s investment paid off handsomely, gaining $50,000 in value in a matter of a few days. Given the links to the World Trade Center and the Bush family, the SEC lead should have sparked an intensive FBI investigation. Yet, incredibly, in a mind-boggling example of criminal malfeasance, the FBI concluded that because Walker and his wife had “no ties to terrorism … there was no reason to pursue the investigation.” The FBI did not conduct a single interview.<br /><br />The 9/11 Commission Report also fails to mention the other compelling evidence for insider trading that I have not yet discussed, namely, the approximately 400 computer hard drives found by workmen in the ruins of the WTC. According to Reuters and CNN, in the period after 9/11, U.S. credit card, telecommunications and accounting firms hired a German company named Convar to recoup data from the damaged hard drives.[30] Convar got the contract because, two years before, it had developed a proprietary method for recovering data using a cutting edge laser scanning technology. Peter Wagner, a Convar spokesman, told CNN that the new laser process makes it “possible to read the individual drive surfaces and then create a virtual drive.” As of December 2001, Convar had examined 39 hard drives and in most cases succeeded in recovering 100% of the data. The company was specifically searching for encryption keys, indicating a financial record. Convar found evidence stored on the drives of “an unexplained surge in transactions prior to the attacks.” Convar director Peter Henschel told CNN that “unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded. Said Henschel: “The suspicion is that insider information about the attack was used to send financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amidst all the chaos the criminals would have a good head start…..Of course it’s possible that Americans went on an absolute shopping binge, that Tuesday morning. But at this point there are many transactions that cannot be accounted for.” After the initial story by CNN and Reuters, the issue of the WTC hard drives disappeared from the news, and nothing has been heard since. Although reports on the Internet that Kroll purchased Convar remain unsubstantiated, it is nonetheless clear that someone made the story (and the evidence) go away.[31] But what reason would they possibly have for doing so? Unless the initial indications from Convar that insider trading had occurred were correct.<br /><br />The above CNN quote by Peter Henschel that “unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded,” was later confirmed in truly chilling fashion by a Deutsche Bank New York branch employee who survived the attacks. The whistleblower, who insists on remaining anonymous for his own protection, told Mike Ruppert that “about five minutes before the attack the entire Deutsche Bank computer system had been taken over by something external that no one in the office recognized, and every file was downloaded at lightning speed to an unknown location” (emphasis added).[32] Here, the important phrase is “five minutes before the attack.” Chilling indeed.<br /><br />To be continued…<br /><br />Notes<br /><br />[1] World News Tonight, 20 September 2001.<br /><br />[2] Dave Eberhart, “Still Silence From 9-11 Stock Speculation Probe”, NewsMax, June 3, 2002, <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/2/62018.shtml">http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/2/62018.shtml</a><br /><br />[3] William Drozdiak, “‘Insider trading’ by terrorists is suspected in Europe”, Miami Herald, September 24, 2001, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20011109160700/www.miami.com/herald/special/news/worldtrade/digdocs/099922.htm">http://web.archive.org/web/20011109160700/www.miami.com/herald/special/news/worldtrade/digdocs/099922.htm<br /></a><br />[4] James Doran, “Insider Trading Apparently Based on Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks,” London Times, September 18, 2001. Archived at <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/londontimes_insidertrading.html">http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/londontimes_insidertrading.html<br /></a><br />[5] Christian Berthelsen, Scott Winokur, “Suspicious profits sit uncollected,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 2001. Archived at <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128.DTL">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/29/MN186128.DTL</a><br /><br />[6] “Profiting from Disaster,” CBS Evening News, September 19, 2001. Archived at <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/main311834.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/main311834.shtml</a><br /><br />[7] Michelle Ciarrocca, “Post-9/11 Economic Windfalls for Arms Manufacturers,” Foreign Policy in Focus, September 2002. Posted at <a href="http://old.911digitalarchive.org/objects/50.pdf">http://old.911digitalarchive.org/objects/50.pdf</a><br /><br />[8] Bank of America among 38 stocks in SEC’s attack probe,” Bloomberg News, October 3, 2001. Archived at <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/bloombberg_BAamong38.html">http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/bloombberg_BAamong38.html</a><br /><br />[9] Cited by Barry Grey, “Suspicious trading points to advance knowledge by big investors of September 11 attacks,” World Socialist Web Site, October 5, 2001. Posted at <a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/bond-o05.shtml">http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/bond-o05.shtml</a><br /><br />[10] Bloomberg News, October 3, 2001. The list included stocks of American, United, Continental, Northwest, Southwest and US Airways airlines, as well as Martin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp., AIG, American Express Corp, American International Group, AMR Corporation, Axa SA, Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Corp, Bank One Corp, Cigna Group, CNA Financial, Carnival Corp, Chubb Group, John Hancock Financial Services, Hercules Inc, L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc., LTV Corporation, Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., MetLife, Progressive Corp., General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Citigroup Inc. ,Royal & Sun Alliance, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., Vornado Reality Trust, Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter & Co., XL Capital Ltd., and Bear Stearns.<br /><br />[11] Erin E. Arvedlund, “Follow The Money: Terrorist Conspirators Could Have Profited More From Fall Of Entire Market Than Single Stocks,” Barron’s (Dow Jones and Company), 6 October 2001.<br /><br />[12] Scott Winokur, “SEC wants data-sharing system,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2001. Posted at <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/19/BU142745.DTL">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/19/BU142745.DTL</a><br /><br />[13] Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon,(New Society Publishers, 2004), p. 243.<br /><br />[14] Bloomberg reportedly acknowledged the fact in a September 2003 newswire. Although the wire has since disappeared from the Internet, the text is archived at <a href="http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/ar/t1699.htm">http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/ar/t1699.htm</a><br /><br />[15] Chris Blackhurst, “Mystery of terror ‘insider dealers’,” The Independent, October 14, 2001, posted at <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mystery-of-terror-insider-dealers-631325.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mystery-of-terror-insider-dealers-631325.html<br /></a><br />[16] “Whether advance knowledge of U.S. attacks was used for profit,” New York Times, October 1, 2001. Archived at <a href="http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/10/01/stories/06010006.htm">http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/10/01/stories/06010006.htm</a><br /><br />[17] George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, Harper Collins, New York, 2007, p. 19.<br /><br />[18] Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 106th Congress, November 9 and 10, 1999, p.879. Posted at <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_senate_hearings&docid=f:61699.pdf">http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_senate_hearings&docid=f:61699.pdf<br /></a><br />[19] <a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html">http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html</a><br /><br />[20] Raymond W. Baker, “The Biggest Loophole in the Free Market System,” The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1999, p. 29. Posted at (see p. 1061) <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_senate_hearings&docid=f:61699.pdf">http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_senate_hearings&docid=f:61699.pdf</a><br /><br />[21] “Chief Steps Down At Alex Brown,” New York Times, September 15, 2001.<br /><br />[22] Timothy L. O’Brien, “The Deep Slush at Bankers Trust,” The New York Times, May 30, 1999. Posted at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/30/business/the-deep-slush-at-bankers-trust.html?src=pm">http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/30/business/the-deep-slush-at-bankers-trust.html?src=pm</a><br /><br />[23] “Chief Steps Down At Alex Brown,” New York Times, September 15, 2001.<br /><br />[24] 9/11 Commission Report, W.W. Norton, 2004, p. 499.<br /><br />[25] Allen M. Poteshman, “Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,” The Journal of Business, 2006, vol. 79, no. 4, <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/503645">http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/503645</a><br /><br />[26] Marc Chesney, et al, “Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the Options Markets,” Social Sciences Research Network, 13 January 2010, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522157">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1522157</a><br /><br />[27] Wing-Keung Wong, et al, “Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?,” Social Sciences Research Network, April 2010, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588523">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588523<br /></a><br />[28] 9/11 Commission memorandum entitled “FBI Briefing on Trading”, prepared by Doug Greenburg, 18 August 2003, p. 4-5. Posted at <a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00269.pdf">http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00269.pdf</a><br /><br />[29] Kevin Ryan, “Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11,” Foreign Policy Journal, November 18, 2010. Posted at <a href="http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/18/evidence-for-informed-trading-on-the-attacks-of-september-11/all/1/">http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/18/evidence-for-informed-trading-on-the-attacks-of-september-11/all/1/<br /></a><br />[30] “German firm probes final World Trade Center deals,” Reuters, December 17, 2001. Posted at <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/12/20/wtc.harddrives.idg/">http://www.rediff.com/money/2001/dec/17wtc.htm</a><br /><br />Rick Perera, “Computer disk drives from WTC could yield clues,” CNN, December 20, 2001. Posted at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/12/20/wtc.harddrives.idg/<br /><br />[31] Michael Fury, “The Ghost in the Machines: Evidence of Foreknowledge in the WTC Hard Drive Recoveries,” Journal of 9/11 Studies, December 2008. Posted at <a href="http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/GhostWTC.pdf">http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/GhostWTC.pdf</a><br /><br />[32] Crossing the Rubicon, p. 244.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/03/02/black-911-a-walk-on-the-dark-side-2/">Source</a><p></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-1764948621446823282011-03-05T16:25:00.000-08:002011-03-05T17:05:26.943-08:00Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side (Part 1)<p></p><p></p><p>First in a series<br />by Mark H. Gaffney<br />February 11, 2011<br /><br />In his important 2006 book, Nemesis, the Last Days of the American Republic, the third and concluding part of a trilogy, the late Chalmers Johnson, who was an expert on Japan and US foreign policy, writes that as much as 40% of the Pentagon budget is “black,” meaning hidden from public scrutiny.[1] If the figure is even approximately correct, and I believe it is, the number is alarming because it suggests that democratic oversight of US military research and development has broken down. In which case our democratic values and way of life are presently at risk; not from without, as there is no foreign enemy that can destroy the US Constitution, but from within.<br /><br />I would argue that Chalmers Johnson’s estimate was corroborated on September 10, 2001, on the eve of the worst terrorist attack in US history, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged during a press conference that the Department of Defense (DoD) could not account for $2.3 trillion of the massive Pentagon budget, a number so large as to be incomprehensible.[2] Any remaining hope that the US military might still get its budgetary house in order were dashed at 9:38 am the next morning, when the west wing of the Pentagon exploded in flames and smoke, the target of a terrorist strike. Incredibly, the exact point of impact was the DoD’s accounting offices on the first floor. The surgical destruction of its records and staff, nearly all of whom died in the attack, raises important questions about who benefited from 9/11. Given the Pentagon’s vast size, the statistical odds against this being a coincidence prompted skeptics of the official story to read a dark design into the attack. As Deep Throat said: “Follow the money.”<br /><br />Was the Pentagon accounting office destroyed because diabolical individuals planned it that way? No question, the west wing presented a much more challenging target than the east wing. Targeting the west wing required a difficult approach over the Arlington skyline. The final approach was especially dicey and amounted to a downhill obstacle course, skirting apartments and a large building complex about a quarter-mile from the Pentagon known as the Naval Annex; which sits atop a hill that rises from the flat ground along the Potomac River. In April 2008, I interviewed Army Brigadier General Clyde Vaughn, a credible witness to the events of that morning. Vaughn explained over the telephone that on 9/11 he was on his way to work at the Pentagon via Shirley Highway (I-395) when the strike occurred. The general told me the hijacked aircraft (presumably AA 77) just missed the Naval Annex and would have hit the US Air Force memorial that presently occupies the site, had the 270 feet-tall monument existed on 9/11.[3] The new memorial was constructed in 2006 and dedicated the same year.<br /><br />Why did the terrorists not take the easy approach up the Potomac River? The river approach would have afforded a reasonably good chance to crash the offices of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were located on the opposite side of the building, in the middle of the outer “E” ring. The location of their offices was no secret. Surely terrorists would have been more interested in decapitating the command structure of the US war machine than going after a bunch of accounting clerks.<br /><br />That morning, there were other striking anomalies. The crash of AA 11 into the North Tower at 8:46 am should also have raised red flags, because the point of impact at the 95th and 96th floors was too remarkable to be happenstance. Both floors were occupied by Marsh & McLennan, one of the world’s largest insurance brokerages, with family ties to the private intelligence firm, Kroll Associates, which held the security contract at the World Trade Center. Indeed, the network of corporate ties is so entangled that were I to trace all of the links, they would easily fill a book. Here, I will sketch out only the most salient connections.<br /><br />The CEO of Marsh & McLennan on 9/11 was Jeffry Greenberg, son of Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, owner of AIG, the world’s largest insurance conglomerate (or second largest, depending on the source). Greenberg’s other son, Evan, was CEO of Ace Limited, another large insurance company. Maurice Greenberg had been a director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank for many years, and in 1994-95 served as its chairman. Greenberg was also vice-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which in 1996 published his report, “Making Intelligence Smarter: The future of U.S. Intelligence”; as a result of which, Senator Arlen Specter floated Greenberg’s name as a candidate for the directorship of the CIA.[4] Although George Tenet eventually got the job, the mere fact that Greenberg was in the running shows the extent of his influence. In 1993, Greenberg’s huge insurance conglomerate AIG reportedly bankrolled the Wall Street spy firm, Kroll Associates, saving it from bankruptcy. Thereafter, Kroll became an AIG subsidiary. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Kroll acquired the contract from the Port Authority of New York to upgrade security at the World Trade Center, in the process beating out two other firms.[5] Kroll continued with the WTC security contract through the period leading up to the September 11 attacks. One of Kroll’s directors, Jerome Hauer, also managed New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, which was located on the 23rd floor of WTC 7.[6]<br /><br />Notice this means Kroll had unfettered access to all three of the buildings destroyed on 9/11. This startling coincidence should have been reason enough for the 9/11 Commission to investigate Kroll’s shady background as well as its relations with AIG, Ace, and Marsh & McClennan. The commission was armed with subpoena authority and might have probed deeply enough to learn the truth. Unfortunately, the official investigators were not interested in connecting the dots. Although Kroll was based in New York City, it served (and still serves) an international clientele through 60 offices in some 27 countries. Over the years, the firm has repeatedly been accused of, and/or formally charged with, conspiracy. In 1995 the French government expelled several Americans from the country, including a Kroll employee named William Lee, for allegedly spying on French industry. Lee’s involvement with Kroll made French authorities suspicious that his Paris operation might be a CIA front.[7] The French were surely aware of Kroll’s longstanding practice of hiring former CIA, FBI, and British Intelligence agents. Kroll/AIG made no effort to conceal the fact that between 1997-2003 the AIG board of directors included Frank G. Wisner, Jr., son of one of the founders of the CIA.[8] Wisner Jr. is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Wisner Jr. also served as US ambassador to several nations, including Egypt, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[9] As I write, Wisner’s name surfaced in the news. Last week, President Obama dispatched Wisner as his personal envoy to confer with the embattled Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.[10] Even as popular pressure continued to build for Mubarak to step down, Wisner embarrassed Obama by publicly encouraging Mubarak to ride out the crisis and hang onto power. No doubt, his action reflects the view from Langley, which would much prefer to see Mubarak remain in power. The CIA has long supported the Mubarak regime and in return was allowed to use Egypt as a haven for renditions and torture. Wisner’s thumbing his nose at his own president, no doubt, is also an accurate measure of the US national security state’s low opinion of Obama. It certainly exposes Obama’s weakness as president.[11]<br /><br />Did the French government over-react in 1995 when it expelled a Kroll employee for suspected industrial espionage? Possibly, but the French had good reason to be wary of CIA meddling in their country. It is a safe bet the French have not forgotten Operation Gladio, the rogue intelligence network secretly organized in Europe by the CIA, NATO and British MI-6, after World War II.[12] “Gladio” means “sword” in Italian and is the root of the word “gladiator.” Known as the “stay behind armies,” they were in every NATO country, and totaled thousands of paramilitary soldiers. Their ranks included known underworld criminals and drug traffickers; and crucially, the CIA kept the whole operation secret for nearly forty years.<br /><br />Although the stay-behind armies were supposed to form the nucleus of an armed resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion of western Europe, the invasion never materialized, and the CIA-trained forces were sometimes used for other less savory purposes. These included smear and disinformation campaigns, mass bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and attempted coup d’etats; all of which was blamed on the communists. Before it was over, the CIA-staged terror campaign added up to hundreds of incidents in Italy, France, Greece, Belgium, and other European nations.<br /><br />The news about Gladio first broke in the Italian press, in August 1990, at the time of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait; and immediately touched off a political earthquake on the continent. As they say, bad news travels fast. Shock turned to outrage as Europeans learned that for decades the CIA and NATO had been sponsoring terrorist attacks in the democratic nations of Europe. All of which, as noted, was blamed on the communists. The purpose of Gladio had been to strike fear into the population of Europe, and thus, to weaken the left-wing parties.<br /><br />If this sounds like fantasy to the reader, it is only because the US media, to this day, has never informed the American people about the CIA’s long and ugly history of staging international terrorism. Here in the US, it is euphemistically known as “counter-terrorism.” Although the average American is ignorant of the fact, most Frenchmen probably also know that under Gladio, the CIA lent support to an attempted putsch against French President Charles de Gaulle in 1958 by reactionary elements of the French army. The renegade French forces were opposed to de Gaulle’s controversial decision to end to the French military occupation of Algeria. Most of the people of France probably also know about the CIA’s involvement in at least one other conspiracy to assassinate de Gaulle in the mid-1960s; but which fortunately failed.[13] De Gaulle survived some thirty assassination attempts. At the time, the CIA’s involvement caused a near rupture in US-French relations. De Gaulle reacted angrily by pulling France out of NATO, and ordered US military forces out of France. The US was compelled to move NATO headquarters from Paris to Mons, in Belgium. Nor did the American people hear the truth about what really happened. In fact, they still do not know, because the US press has never informed them.<br /><br />Given this brief background, one must ask: Were the French trying to send a wake-up signal to the American people when they leaked the following shocker about 9/11 to the world press? In October 2001 the prestigious French paper Le Figaro reported that in July 2001, just two months before 9/11, Osama bin Laden received dialysis treatments and other medical care for a serious kidney ailment at the American Hospital in Dubai, one of the Arab emirates in the Persian Gulf.[14] At the time, bin Laden was a wanted man, and had been indicted by the US Department of Justice for the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Yet, according to the detailed report in Le Figaro, the Americans treated bin Laden as a VIP guest. The Al Qaeda leader arrived with a retinue that included his personal physician, a nurse, four bodyguards, and at least one of his lieutenants. Bin Laden reportedly held court in his hospital suite, welcoming members of his large family, Saudi officials, and even the local CIA station chief, who evidently was a well-known figure in the tiny country. The CIA official was evidently seen entering bin Laden’s room. Immediately after leaving, he caught a flight back to the US. The article in Le Figaro was closely followed by a story in The Guardian (UK), which added more details. It noted that bin Laden’s Saudi guests had included Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence. The story also named French intelligence as the source of the story in Le Figaro, and added that the information was leaked because the French were “keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.”[15] If the story is accurate, it means Osama bin Laden was a US intelligence asset right up until the morning of 9/11. There is no other possible interpretation. In which case, the American people have been seriously misled, indeed, have been fed a pack of lies, about the events of that horrible day. I would add: there were no retractions. Le Figaro stood by its story. Meanwhile, the US media played dumb and never even reported it.<br /><br />But I digress. Back to AIG/Kroll. In 2005, the government of Brazil formally indicted Kroll’s chief Brazilian executive Eduardo Sampaio and five other Kroll employees on criminal charges, including bribery and various breaches of Brazil’s data privacy laws. Sampaio reportedly escaped arrest by fleeing the country.[16]<br /><br />In 2006 another Kroll affiliate made the news for “unacceptable billing practices” while representing the failed energy giant Enron in court.[17] The Enron Corporation had collapsed in late 2001 amidst allegations of fraudulent accounting; then, in January 2002, hired Kroll Zolfo Cooper to handle its chapter 11 proceedings. The US Trustee Program, which administers bankruptcy cases, uncovered the billing irregularities after Kroll sought an additional fee of $25 million for its services. The firm had already received a cool $100 million for scavenging the Enron corpse but wanted more, even as stockholders received nothing. Evidently, the folks at Kroll thought no one would notice a mere $25 million, which is chump change compared with the $30 billion in inflated energy costs that Enron gouged from the state of California in 2000-2001. All of which must be good: because Enron got away with it. According to economist Paul Krugman, emails confirmed that Enron had rigged the markets.[18] The heavily Democratic golden state has yet to recover from what must be viewed as a partisan attack.<br /><br />Also in 2006: a whistleblower named Richard A. Grove went public with stunning testimony about his involvement with the Greenberg empire, an up-close-and-personal experience, Grove says, that nearly cost him his life.[19] During the period leading up to 9/11, Grove worked as a salesman for Silverstream Software, an enterprise company which marketed designer solutions to a number of Wall Street firms, including Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Banker’s Trust, Alex Brown, and Morgan Stanley. According to Grove, Silverstream “built internet transactional and trading platforms,” designed “to web-enable the critical business functions of Fortune 500 companies, basically integrating and making available on the web the disparate legacy applications and mainframes while simultaneously streamlining workflow and traditional paper processes.” The “end result [was] a lower cost of operation and more efficient transactions because inefficiencies such as people were being taken out of the loop.”[20]<br /><br />Grove was so successful as a salesman that (he claims) he became a millionaire before the age of thirty. He only realized, later, that the software he sold might have enabled fraudulent trading in the hours before and possibly during the 9/11 attacks. The most advanced software of all went to Marsh & McClennan, which, he says, placed an order in 2000 for a technological solution “beyond what we had done for any of the above-named companies; insofar as it would be used to electronically connect Marsh to its major business partners via internet portals, for the purpose of creating ‘paperless transactions’ and expediting revenue and renewal cycles.” Grove inked the software deal with Marsh & McClennan in October 2000. After which, his employer Silverstream stationed a team of 30-40 technicians in the client’s offices in WTC 1, led by several software developers who proceeded to design and build the software package “from the ground up.” During this period, Grove served as liaison between Silverstream & Marsh to insure that the software would perform as specified. The team worked around-the-clock, seven days a week, to meet Marsh’s pre-September 11, 2001 deadline. The end result was “a specific type of connectivity that was used to link AIG and Marsh & McLennan, the first two commercial companies on the planet to employ this type of transaction.”[21]<br /><br />Grove says he first noticed fiscal irregularities in October 2000 when he and a colleague helped “identify about $10,000,000 in suspicious purchase orders.” Marsh’s chief information officer, Gary Lasko, later confirmed that “certain vendors were deceiving Marsh … selling … large quantities of hardware that were [sic] not necessary” for the project. But Grove did not worry too much about this at the time; nor did he run into personal trouble until the spring of 2001, when he learned, while negotiating a license renewal contract with Lasko, that his own employer, Silverstream, was over-billing Marsh “to the tune of $7 million, or more.” Grove brought the matter to the attention of Silverstream executives, but was told to keep quiet and mind his own business. A Marsh executive advised him to do the same. By this point, a number of Marsh employees had earned Grove’s trust and when he shared his concerns with them, they agreed that “something untoward was going on.” Grove names these honest employees in his testimonial: Kathryn Lee, Ken Rice, Richard Breuhardt, John Ueltzhoeffer, in addition to Gary Lasko, all of whom perished on 9/11.[22] Incidentally, a simple check confirmed that these names do indeed appear on the fatality list of World Trade Center victims.[23]<br /><br />The proverbial schtick hit the fan on June 5th, 2001, the day after Grove sent an email to his sales team informing them that “Silverstream was billing Marsh millions above and beyond the numbers we were being paid commissions on….” There were only two possibilities: either the members of his team were being cheated out of their rightful commissions, or Silverstream was defrauding Marsh & McClennan. Later that day, Grove received word from Gary Lasko that Marsh had decided to retain Silverstream for the next phase of the project. The extension was good news and he immediately informed his boss. Grove was personally delighted because his rightful commission “would have been a payday worth well over a million dollars.” He never collected it, however; because the next morning, Grove was summoned to his boss’s office and abruptly terminated.<br /><br />This is not the end of the story. Several weeks later, Grove suffered a medical emergency that required surgery and weeks of hospitalization. In August 2001, while still bedridden, a Silverstream company official visited him at the hospital and offered him $9,999 in cash, plus an extension of his medical benefits, if he would agree never to talk about the work he did for Silverstream. Grove needed the continuing medical coverage and agreed to the terms. However, after his convalescence he became suspicious about the secrecy agreement and decided that, at very least, he should maintain contact with the honest employees at Marsh, several of whom were now close friends. Shortly thereafter, one of them arranged for Grove to attend a meeting at the offices of Marsh & McClennan, at which the honest employees planned to “openly question the suspiciously unconcerned executive who seemed to be at the center of the controversial secrecy.” The executive had agreed to participate via a video conference link from his apartment in uptown Manhattan. This was the same individual who, months before, had warned Grove to look the other way. Grove was in possession of documents proving illicit activity, and he planned to produce them at the meeting. However, on the day of the showdown, he ran late, having been delayed by heavy Manhattan traffic. Grove says he was within 2-3 blocks of the World Trade Center when UAL 175 hit the South Tower. By then, all or most of his friends in the North Tower were already dead, or trapped on the upper floors. All told, some 300 or more Marsh employees perished that morning. None of whom had any idea what was in store for them.<br /><br />To be continued…<br /><br />Notes<br /><br />[1] Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Final Days of the American Republic, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2006, pp. 9 and 115.<br /><br />[2] <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml</a><br /><br />[3] Vaughn’s testimony is intriguing because it does not conform in all respects to the official narrative. Vaughn told CNN: “There wasn’t anything in the air, except for one airplane, and it looked like it was loitering over Georgetown, in a high, left-hand bank,” he said. “That may have been the plane. I have never seen one on that (flight) pattern.” The aircraft described by Vaughn has never been identified. Ian Christopher McCaleb, “Three-star general may be among Pentagon dead,” CNN, September 13, 2001. Posted at <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/pentagon.terrorism/">http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/pentagon.terrorism/</a><br /><br />[4] <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/cfr.html">http://www.fas.org/irp/cfr.html</a><br /><br />[5] Douglas Frantz, “A Midlife Crisis at Kroll Associates,” New York Times, September 1, 1994, posted at <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401EEDC1738F932A3575AC0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401EEDC1738F932A3575AC0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all</a><br /><br />[6] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Hauer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Hauer<br /></a><br />[7] David Ignatius, “The French, the CIA and the Man Who Sued Too Much,” Washington Post, January 8, 1996.<br /><br />[8] <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/AIG+Vice+Chairman+Frank+G.+Wisner+Announces+Retirement.-a0193518331">http://www.thefreelibrary.com/AIG+Vice+Chairman+Frank+G.+Wisner+Announces+Retirement.-a0193518331</a><br /><br />[9] <a href="http://www.cfr.org/bios/879/frank_g_wisner.html">http://www.cfr.org/bios/879/frank_g_wisner.html<br /></a><br />[10] Vijay Prashad, “The Empire’s Bagman,” Counterpunch, February 2, 2011. Posted at <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad02022011.html">http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad02022011.html<br /></a><br />[11] Robert Fisk, “US Envoy’s business link to Egypt,” The Independent (UK), February 7, 2011. Posted at <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/revealed-us-envoys-business-link-to-egypt-2206329.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/revealed-us-envoys-business-link-to-egypt-2206329.html</a><br /><br />[12] Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London, 2005.<br /><br />[13] William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1995, pp, 148-152.<br /><br />[14] Alexandra Richard, “The CIA met bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai, Le Figaro, October 11, 2001. (translated by Tiphaine Dickson)<br /><br />[15] Anthony Sampson, “CIA agent alleged to haveb met Bin Laden in July,” Guardian (UK), November 1, 2001. Posted at <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism</a><br /><br />[16] The Brazilian connection, June 25, 2005, posted at <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/the-brazilian-connection/2005/06/24/1119321906577.html">http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/the-brazilian-connection/2005/06/24/1119321906577.html</a><br /><br />[17] Mark Sherman, “Justice Department finds billing irregularities by former interim Enron CEO,” Associated Press, March 27, 2006. Posted at <a href="http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20060327/SPECIAL14/60327014">http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20060327/SPECIAL14/60327014</a><br /><br />[18] Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling, Norton & Co, 2005, pp. 318-320.<br /><br />[19] <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/abigsecret/Grove.html">http://www.freewebs.com/abigsecret/Grove.html</a><br /><br />[20] Ibid.<br /><br />[21] Ibid.<br /><br />[22] Ibid.<br /><br />[23] <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62151,00.html#wtc">http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62151,00.html#wtc<br /></a><br /><a href="http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/02/11/black-911-a-walk-on-the-dark-side/">Source</a></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-33375153011321830422010-12-09T09:36:00.000-08:002010-12-09T09:42:19.997-08:009/11 EXPLOSIVE TESTIMONY EXCLUSIVE, Robert McCoy, Architect - 2 Parts<p></p><p></p><p>Architect Robert McCoy</p><p>This interview is some raw footage of one of the world class experts appearing in Architects and Engineer's upcoming hard hitting documentary "9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out"<br /><br />9/11 EXPLOSIVE TESTIMONY EXCLUSIVE-Robert McCoy-Architect 1of2<br /><br /></p><center><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fhe7Kt12wwI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fhe7Kt12wwI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhe7Kt12wwI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhe7Kt12wwI</a><br /></div><br /><br />9/11 EXPLOSIVE TESTIMONY EXCLUSIVE-Robert McCoy-Architect 2of2<br /><br /><center><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jYC8X4BlBnY?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jYC8X4BlBnY?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYC8X4BlBnY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYC8X4BlBnY</a><br /></div><br />http://www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth<br /><br /><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-86564261217282904002010-09-28T13:23:00.000-07:002010-09-28T13:53:54.943-07:00Did 9/11 Really "Change Everything"?<p><p><p>We've been told that 9/11 changed everything.<br /><br />Is it true?<br /><br />Let's look:<br /></p><ul><li>The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm">this</a> and <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/">this</a>)</li><br /><li>The decision to launch the Iraq war was made <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/new-documents-show-bush-administration-plan">before 9/11</a>. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042700550.html?nav=most_emailed">wanted to invade Iraq <span style="font-style: italic;">long before</span> 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq</a>. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill - who sat on the National Security Council - also <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/">says</a> that Bush planned the Iraq war before9/11. And top British officials <a href="http://rawstory.com/2009/11/discussed-iraq-regime-change-month-bush-office-british/">say</a> that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office</li><br /><li>Cheney apparently even made Iraqi's oil fields a national security priority <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2008/07/cheney-and-oil-bigs-planned-us-war.html">before 9/11</a></li><br /><li>The Patriot Act was planned <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030423013539/http://www.truthout.com/docs_02/05.21B.jvb.usapa.911.p.htm">before 9/11</a></li><br /><li>Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long <a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060210.html">before 9/11</a></li><br /><li>Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0213-28.htm">before 9/11</a>. And see <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/golub03212003.html">this</a></li><br /><li>Cheney and the rest of the neocons lamented - <a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">before 9/11</a> - that America could not truly project its power globally without the justification of a "new Pearl Harbor"</li><br /><li>The government's spying on Americans began <a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p.html">before 9/11</a> (confirmed <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE">here</a> and <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2007/ATT_engineer_says_Bush_Administration_sought_1216.html">here</a>. And see <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060213222729/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060204/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ford_era_spying_1">this</a>)</li><br /><li>The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Iran_The_Road_to_Confrontation_0123.html">before 9/11</a></li><br /><li>The government knew that terrorists could use planes as weapons -- and had even run its own drills of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, using REAL airplanes -- all <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2008/04/was-911-unforeseeable.html">before 9/11</a></li><br /><li>The government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers' own mouths before 9/11</li><br /><li>Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism programs for the United States before (and on) 9/11. See <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040819103241/http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/af/security/a1050878.htm">this Department of State announcement</a>, <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/">this CNN article</a> and <a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml#bullmeans">this essay</a></li><br /><li>It was known long <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/top-interrogation-experts-say-torture.html">before 9/11</a> that torture doesn't work to produce accurate intelligence, but is an <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/torture-is-form-of-terrorism.html">effective way</a> to terrorize people</li></ul><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So did 9/11 really "change everything"? Or was it simply an excuse to implement existing plans?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/did-911-really-change-everything.html">http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/did-911-really-change-everything....</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/did-911-really-change-everything.html">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-30636645707726532432010-09-12T17:31:00.000-07:002010-09-12T17:49:36.732-07:00Explosive Connections: Initial draft release<p></p><p></p><p>This is only the initial draft release and not all inclusive. I fully expect additions and corrections which I will periodically revise as new and better information surfaces.</p><p><br /><table border="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%201%2036X42.pdf"><img src="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/AVATAR%20WTC%201.jpg" width="300" /></a></td> <td><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%202%2036X42.pdf"><img src="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/AVATAR%20WTC%202.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />PDF's:<br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%201%2036X42.pdf">http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC 1 36X42.pdf</a> (for large format printing)<br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%201%208_5x11.pdf">http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC 1 8_5x11.pdf</a><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%202%2036X42.pdf">http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC 2 36X42.pdf</a> (for large format printing)<br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC%202%208_5x11.pdf"><br />http://911blogger.com/sites/default/files/WTC 2 8_5x11.pdf</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-09-10/explosive-connections-initial-draft-release">Source</a></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-1203319461843143182010-09-06T19:59:00.000-07:002010-09-06T20:13:57.503-07:00Did NIST Edit WTC 7 Footage To Hide Evidence Of Implosion?<p></p><p></p><p>After filing a lawsuit that prompted NIST to release more than 3 terabytes of photographs and videos from their investigation into the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7 on 9/11, the <a href="http://www.ic911studies.org/">International Center for 9/11 Studies</a> has obtained evidence that suggests NIST edited several videos of the collapse of Building 7 in order to hide evidence of a controlled implosion.</p><blockquote>The Center filed a FOIA Request with NIST on January 26, 2009, seeking production of “all of the photographs and videos collected, reviewed, cited or in any other way used by NIST during its investigation of the World Trade Center building collapses.” Following several unsuccessful attempts to get NIST to even acknowledge receipt of the Request, the Center was forced to file a lawsuit on May 28, 2009. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Request was assigned a reference number, and NIST began periodically releasing batches of responsive records.</blockquote>The Center has now begun posting some of those images and videos online, the first batch of which is from an external hard disk drive “NIST WTC Investigation Cumulus Video Clips.”<br /><br />In one of the clips, the video of which has been in the public domain for years, a loud, low-frequency boom can be heard just before the east penthouse of WTC 7 falls. Once the support columns that held up the penthouse are taken out, the rest of the building falls almost within its own footprint.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XrnmbUDeHus?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XrnmbUDeHus?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br />However, in subsequent clips released by NIST, where the camera is located nearer to the building, the collapse of the penthouse is clearly edited out of the footage.<br /><br />“Several clips from the Cumulus database show signs of editing. In the two video clips below, the collapse of the penthouse of World Trade Center 7 is cut out of the video. These videos happen to have been filmed from close to WTC 7, and have a high quality soundtrack that would have picked up explosion sounds from the charges that severed the columns supporting the penthouse, especially the explosion heard in the last video clip presented,” comments the International Center for 9/11 Studies.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XH_Lv_sevwY?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XH_Lv_sevwY?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VyhMTOdRnRo?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VyhMTOdRnRo?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br />In another clip, the entire collapse of the building is edited out, the audio is removed and only restored after the building has fully collapsed.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XT3ea4AC2K8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XT3ea4AC2K8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br />The Center also obtained videos of the collapse of the twin towers that had obviously been edited, with sections deliberately removed. “There are many video clips in the Cumulus database that do not show collapse initiation – the only event even purportedly explained in the final report from NIST on the Twin Towers,” states the Center.<br /><br />Another new video shows Michael Hess yelling for help from the 8th floor window of WTC 7. The clip reinforces the fact that the building had not sustained any substantial damage before its free fall collapse within 7 seconds.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZduP7HTM3cg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZduP7HTM3cg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br />As we documented for several years, the collapse of WTC 7 is the smoking gun confirming that the official story behind 9/11 is bogus. <a href="http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/260207building7.htm">The collapse of Building 7 was reported before it happened by several news stations, including BBC and CNN</a>.<br /><br />The International Center for 9/11 Studies is now in the process of reviewing over 300 DVDs along with several external hard disk drives that contain a plethora of unseen photographs and video footage from ground zero. Judging by the small amount of damning footage already released, it’s highly probable that this data will provide a myriad of new contradictions both to the official 9/11 story as well as NIST’s own investigation into the collapse of the three buildings.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.infowars.com/did-nist-edit-wtc-7-footage-to-hide-evidence-of-implosion/">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-8240202659526385212010-07-29T09:49:00.000-07:002010-12-09T09:52:09.347-08:00New Evidence Of WTC Thermite Presence On 9/11?<p></p><p></p><p>Contained within the 2008 History Channel documentary "102 Minutes That Changed America" is video depicting what appears to be molten material within World Trade Center tower 2 on September 11, 2001, similar to other molten material filmed nearby. Molten iron is a product of thermitic reactions.<br /><br /></p><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6qv1WV4tQLw?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6qv1WV4tQLw?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br />Previously recorded molten material originating from within the northeast corner of the 80th floor of WTC 2 moments before its collapse:<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nbzdO0EPOGg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nbzdO0EPOGg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-07-29/new-evidence-wtc-thermite-presence-911">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-63619457615621577482010-07-28T09:53:00.000-07:002010-12-09T10:00:32.480-08:00"Do the Orders Still Stand?" Who was he?<p></p><p></p><p>He seems to be Naval Aide Douglas Cochrane. I'll get to how he is identified in a moment. First.....<br /><br />The 9-11 commission has this scenario in the PEOC, instead of the one described by N Mineta.....<br /><br />"At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, "in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing." The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. He told us he based this authorization on his earlier conversation with the President. The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The Vice President again said yes"<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />The person telling Cheney the plane is 80 miles out...60 miles out...etc...is described as his "Military Aide". This would be the "young man" as Mineta described him. Unless there are two different people telling Cheney the plane is 80 miles out...the plane is 60 miles out....this seems extremely unlikely. So who is this military aide? I'll get to him shortly.<br /><br />First,this may or may not be true, but the fact is Cheney can't prove it(the part of him getting shoot down authorization), what Cheney is doing is protecting the President, along with Sec of Def Rumsfeld, who are the only two people authorized to issue shoot down orders. Neither one did so, and conspired together not to.................<br /><br />"Prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense)." page 17/46<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">ttp://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf</a><br /><br />"The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shootdown authority was not discussed."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf</a><br /><br />That's called selective amnesia.<br /><br />"At 10:10, the pilots over Washington were emphatically told "negative clearance to shoot." Shootdown authority was first communicated to NEADS at 10:31."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />I mean....it's right there. The official story is probably right, in that, the passengers having to take over 93, because no one was authorizing any shoot down order, until the attacks were over. It's a proveable fact that no shoot down orders were given until after the last plane (Flight 93) went down. They had no intention of disrupting what they needed to happen. It's not believable that a pilot would take it upon themselves to kill a plane of civilians without authorization.<br /><br />Here's evidence of a stand down. If the President gave Cheney an order, and they claim it was a shoot down order they can't prove it. They should be able to do that. Instead the proof indicates the order was never given during the attacks (Flight 93 went down at 10:03 or 10:06)....<br /><br />"Fleischer’s 10:20 note is the first mention of shootdown authority. See White House notes,Ari Fleischer notes, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Ari Fleischer interview (Apr. 22, 2004)."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />"The Vice President's military aide told us he believed the Vice President spoke to the President just after entering the conference room, but he did not hear what they said. Rice, who entered the room shortly after the Vice President and sat next to him, remembered hearing him inform the President, "Sir, the CAPs are up. Sir, they're going to want to know what to do." Then she recalled hearing him say, "Yes sir." She believed this conversation occurred a few minutes, perhaps five, after they entered the conference room."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />"Among the sources that reflect other important events of that morning, there is no documentary evidence for this call, but the relevant sources are incomplete."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf</a><br /><br />This is where the military aide's testimoney would be crucial, what was the order he was given? But again......even if he says it was a shoot down order, it came from Cheney, and he and Bush (who insisted on testifying together) can't prove it, Cheney is protecting Bush and Rumsfeld both, who never did issue shoot down orders.<br /><br />"The Vice President was logged calling the President at 10:18 for a two-minute conversation that obtained the confirmation. On Air Force One, the President's press secretary was taking notes; Ari Fleischer recorded that at 10:20, the President told him that he had authorized a shootdown of aircraft if necessary."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />"Fleischer’s 10:20 note is the first mention of shootdown authority. See White House notes,Ari Fleischer notes, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Ari Fleischer interview (Apr. 22, 2004)."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />That's when Bush issued the shoot down order. 10:20, and Rumsfeld never did.<br /><br />"Bush remained in the classroom for "five to seven minutes" after learning of the second crash as the children around him continued reading. He had his first conversation with Cheney at about 9:15."<br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17_2.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17_2.html</a><br /><br />But wasn't giving shoot down authorization. How come? How many buildings does it take? How about if the pentagon gets hit, how about then? Still.....Nope.......<br /><br />"Bush and Cheney spoke again at 9:45, while Bush was on the tarmac aboard Air Force One. By that time, both towers of the World Trade Center were aflame and the Pentagon had been hit."<br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17_2.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17_2.html</a><br /><br />Pretty outrageous. Still, no intention on giving shoot down authority. If any orders were given, they were stand down orders.<br /><br />The last plane went down at 10:03 to 10:06...most likely by the passengers. These passengers were in a no win situation, but surely prevented 9/11 from being even more catastrophic than it already was, the nations capital was it's target, and these traitors sure weren't going to stop it.<br /><br />"Fleischer’s 10:20 note is the first mention of shootdown authority. See White House notes,Ari Fleischer notes, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Ari Fleischer interview (Apr. 22, 2004)."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />"The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shootdown authority was not discussed."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf</a><br /><br />Here's Condi Rice lieing to you.....<br /><br />"Q At one point that morning, the President gave an order to the Combat Air Patrol pilots giving them permission to shoot down U.S. commercial airliners. How did that decision come about, and how did you take on board the gravity of that decision?<br /><br />DR. RICE: The President did give the order to shoot down a civilian plane if it was not responding properly. And it was authority through channels by Secretary Rumsfeld, and the Vice President passed the request, the President said yes."<br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III-Fdr-8602-Terry-MoranABC-Interview-of-Rice-003">http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III...</a><br /><br />John Farmer exposes this false statement in his book "The Ground Truth"......<br /><br />"The authority was not requested through channels, when Secretary Rumsfeld joined the Air Threat Conference Call at 10:30 and was told about the shoot down order by Vice President Cheney, he was clearly unaware of it. Wether the vice president had requested prior authorization from the president is disputed, but uncorroborated by the records of the day. page 260<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260588203&sr=1-1">http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...</a><br /><br />Cheney made the order on his own (no matter what it was) The first Presidential authorization came at 10:20, according to Arie Fletcher's notes and he was taking notes for this reason, to keep track of what time things were happening for historical reasons.<br /><br />"Fleischer’s 10:20 note is the first mention of shootdown authority. See White House notes,Ari Fleischer notes, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Ari Fleischer interview (Apr. 22, 2004)."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />Remember:<br /><br />"At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, "in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing." The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />If he did authorize a shoot down order (which is debateable), he told the President later, after he did it, if he didn't issue a shoot down, he was given the authorization at this later time......<br /><br />"The Vice President was logged calling the President at 10:18 for a two-minute conversation that obtained the confirmation. On Air Force One, the President's press secretary was taking notes; Ari Fleischer recorded that at 10:20, the President told him that he had authorized a shootdown of aircraft if necessary."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />"His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, "in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing." The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane."<br /><a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm</a><br /><br />This is not what Mineta said by a long shot. Mineta said he didn't even know it was a shootdown order, he makes it clear he that he heard what Cheney said and quotes him. (Whipped his neck around and said "of coarse the order still stands"...etc...)<br /><br />Libby has already been convicted in a court of Law of lying under oath to protect Cheney. So this story seems false and contrived. This Military Aide's testimony is important. So who is he?<br /><br />The person telling Cheney the plane is 80 miles out...60 miles out...etc...is described as his "Military Aide". This would be the "young man" as Mineta described him. Unless there are two different people telling Cheney the plane is 80 miles out...the plane is 60 miles out....this seems extememly unlikely. So who is this military aide?<br /><br />Check the footnotes, on this scenario, and the only one that applies to Cheney and the "Military Aide" would be this Douglas Cochrane.....<br /><br />"215. Douglas Cochrane meeting (Apr. 16, 2004); Condeleeza Rice meeting (Feb. 7, 2004). For Rice entering after the Vice President, see USSS report,“Executive Summary:U.S. Secret Service Timeline of Events, September 11–October 3, 2001,” Oct. 3, 2001, p. 2; Carl Truscott interview (Apr. 15, 2004)."<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />We know who Rice is. Truscott is a member of the secret service because....<br />"interviews of the 3 USSS agents in proximity to the President (Eddie Marenzel) and VP (Truscott and Zotto) are still on hold."<br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-Front-Office-Re-White-House-Day-of-Investigation-511">http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-F...</a><br /><br />Yes, they wanted to talk with this Military Aide as seen in this released 9-11 commission memo....<br /><br />"March 2, 2004<br />New Requests:<br />(2)VP Military Aide (I believe his last name is Cochrane): The person at the Vice President's side in the PEOC who should have been intimately involved in the military communications chain is his military aide."<br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-Front-Office-Re-White-House-Day-of-Investigation-511">http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-F...</a><br /><br />They did talk with him according to the 9-11 commission footnotes, a month and a half after that memo....<br /><br />"215. Douglas Cochrane meeting (Apr. 16, 2004);"<br /><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.pdf</a><br /><br />But we can't see what was said in that interview yet.....<br /><br />"ACCESS RESTRICTED<br />The item identified below has been withdrawn from this file:<br />Folder Title: White House Timelines"<br /><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/14274489/DH-B3-White-House-Timelines-Fdr-Entire-Contents-Doug-Cochrane-and-14-Withdrawal-Notice-for-Draft-Time-Lines-089">http://www.scribd.com/doc/14274489/DH-B3-White-House-Timelines-Fdr-Entir...</a><br /><br />This is BS. It's 2010 and we still can't see any part of his interview? This needs to be declassified and released.<br /><br />Yup, he's military....but not so young...you have to remember Mineta was around 71 at the time......<br /><br />"Cochrane was selected to serve as the Naval Aide to the Vice President in November of 2000 and served Vice President Richard B. Cheney until December 2002. He was commended by President George W. Bush for distinguished service as Naval Aide and Emergency Action Officer, on and about Sept. 11, 2001."<br /><a href="http://cache.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=1146282991&page_url=%2f%2fwww.mayportmirror.com%2fstories%2f040705%2fmay_hsl44001.shtml&page_last_updated=10%2f4%2f2009+7%3a17%3a51+AM&firstName=Douglas&lastName=Cochrane">http://cache.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=1146282991&pa...</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-07-28/do-orders-still-stand-who-was-he">Source</a></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-24334992942036478632010-06-30T17:34:00.000-07:002010-06-30T17:46:07.043-07:009/11 Experiments: Collapse vs. Demolition<p><p><p><center><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9YRUso7Nf3s&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9YRUso7Nf3s&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-64092271282416117122010-06-30T14:13:00.000-07:002010-06-30T16:47:30.625-07:00The Actions and Inactions of the Commander in Charge of the U.S. Air Defense Failure on 9/11<p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">"During those entire 109 minutes ... this country and its citizens were completely undefended." </span><br />- Senator Mark Dayton<br /><br />General Ralph Eberhart was the commander in chief of NORAD--the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace--when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Considering that NORAD failed to intercept any of the four aircraft targeted in the attacks and successfully defend New York and Washington, one would reasonably expect Eberhart to have been somehow held to account. And yet that did not happen.<br /><br />In fact, nine years on, we still know very little about what Eberhart did while the 9/11 attacks were taking place. From what we do know, his actions seem far from reassuring. Eberhart at least gave the impression of having an unclear picture of what was going on. Accounts of his actions reveal no decisive attempts to respond to the attacks. He appears to have been particularly slow to order a plan that would give the military control of U.S. airspace and get all aircraft grounded. Furthermore, in the middle of the attacks, he decided to drive from his office at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, to NORAD's operations center in Cheyenne Mountain--a journey that apparently put him out of the loop for about an hour.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EBERHART'S ACTIONS ON 9/11</span><br />Ralph Eberhart began the morning of September 11, 2001 at NORAD headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base. [1] He told the 9/11 Commission that he learned of the crisis that was unfolding when the command director at NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (presumably Captain Michael Jellinek) called at 8:45 a.m.--one minute before the first World Trade Center tower was hit--and "informed him of the ongoing circumstance of a suspected hijacking on the East Coast." Eberhart subsequently went to his office and saw the television coverage of the first attack on the WTC.<br /><br />He "asked if the aircraft that was suspected of impacting the World Trade Center was the same aircraft that was a suspected hijack, and was told that they were not." Eberhart has recalled that there was apparently "great confusion in the system" at this time. But after news broke of the second attack on the WTC, he said, it was "obvious" to him that there was "an ongoing and coordinated terrorist attack" taking place. [2] And yet his subsequent actions were hardly impressive, considering the urgency of the situation.<br /><br />Eberhart tried contacting General Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but was unable to, since Shelton was airborne at the time, on his way to a NATO meeting in Europe. Eberhart then "contacted higher command authority at the Pentagon," he has recalled. [3]<br /><br />He also spoke briefly with General Richard Myers, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was on Capitol Hill, where he had been meeting with Senator Max Cleland. At some point between 9:03 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., according to Myers's recollection, Eberhart phoned the vice chairman's military aide on his cell phone, which the aide then passed to Myers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EBERHART UNCLEAR ABOUT DETAILS OF HIJACKINGS AND NORAD'S RESPONSE</span><br />Eberhart updated Myers on the crisis, telling him the two WTC towers had been hit and there were "several hijack codes in the system." This, according to Myers, meant "that the transponders in the aircraft [were] talking to the ground, and they're saying ... we're being hijacked." [4] However, if Myers's recollection is correct, Eberhart was apparently either mistaken or deliberately giving false information: None of the pilots of the four flights targeted that morning keyed the code that would indicate a hijacking into their plane's transponder. [5] There should have been no "hijack codes in the system" at that time.<br /><br />Eberhart told Myers he was working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to get all aircraft over the U.S. to land. He also said NORAD would be launching fighter jets in response to the attacks. [6] As Myers would recall two days later, "I think the decision was, at that point, to start launching aircraft." [7] However, NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), based in upstate New York, had already launched fighters by that time: Two F-15s had taken off from Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts at 8:46 a.m. [8] So if Myers's account is correct, Eberhart--the man in charge of NORAD--was apparently either unaware of the actions of NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector or knowingly giving out false information.<br /><br />Furthermore, when he was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission in March 2004, Eberhart claimed he'd had "no knowledge of the circumstances that initiated the scramble" of fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. [9] Extensive evidence uncovered by the Commission showed that NEADS scrambled those fighters in response to an incorrect report it had received that American Airlines Flight 11--which hit the WTC at 8:46 a.m.--was still airborne and heading south, toward Washington, DC. [10] At the time of his 9/11 Commission interview, Eberhart said, he had only "recently" been made aware of these circumstances. [11] How could the man in charge of NORAD on September 11 have been unaware of such crucial information for nearly two and a half years after the attacks occurred?<br /><br />After learning of the attacks in New York, Eberhart stayed at Building 1 at Peterson Air Force Base--the headquarters of the Air Force Space Command, which, as well as NORAD, he was the commander of--because, he said, "he did not want to lose communication." [12] However, he soon set out on a journey that caused him to lose communication with others involved in the emergency response for 45 minutes or longer.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EBERHART OUT OF COMMUNICATION WHILE TRAVELING TO OPERATIONS CENTER</span><br />At "approximately 9:30," according to his own recollection, Eberhart left Peterson Air Force Base and headed to the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain. [13] The operations center was about 12 miles away, a journey that takes "roughly 30 minutes," according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>. But, as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span> noted, "The trip to Cheyenne Mountain can be time-consuming if traffic is bad," and the drive took Eberhart 45 minutes. [14]<br /><br />The journey may in fact have taken even longer. Eberhart told the 9/11 Commission that by the time he arrived at the operations center, the authorization for the military to shoot down threatening aircraft had been passed down NORAD's chain of command. NORAD finally passed on this authorization to its three air defense sectors at 10:31 a.m., which would imply that Eberhart reached the operations center shortly after that time, more than an hour after he said he left Peterson Air Force Base. [15]<br /><br />Furthermore, while he was making the journey to Cheyenne Mountain, Eberhart "couldn't receive telephone calls as senior officials weighed how to respond," according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Denver Post</span>. [16] He reportedly "lost a cell phone call with Vice President Dick Cheney." The reason why Eberhart had problems receiving phone calls is unclear, though it has been reported that "New repeater stations were installed almost immediately" after 9/11, "to fix the phone problem." [17]<br /><br />During the period when he was reportedly traveling to the operations center, at 9:49 a.m., Eberhart "directed all air sovereignty aircraft to battle stations, fully armed" over the Pentagon's air threat conference call, according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>. [18] Presumably he was either able to successfully issue this order himself despite his communication problems, or the order was issued on his behalf by a subordinate who was participating in the air threat conference call. However, when an aircraft is at "battle stations," its pilot is in the cockpit, but with the engines turned off, ready to start them and taxi out only if a scramble order should follow. [19] So Eberhart's order would have meant that any air sovereignty aircraft not already airborne would have remained on the ground, rather than immediately getting into the air, where they could have quickly intercepted a hostile aircraft.<br /><br />The reason Eberhart decided to relocate to Cheyenne Mountain at such an important time, when his uninterrupted participation in the crisis response would presumably have been essential, is unclear. According to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Colorado Springs Gazette</span>, the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center "had communications capabilities not available at Peterson." [20] And Eberhart told the 9/11 Commission that, on his communications loop, it had "quieted down" before he decided to head out to the mountain. [21]<br /><br />All the same, if Eberhart's account of his actions is correct, it would mean that, in the middle of the worst terrorist attack in the history of the U.S., the commander of NORAD was, at least to some degree, out of the loop for maybe an hour or more.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MILITARY ONLY TAKES CONTROL OF SKIES AFTER ATTACKS ENDED</span><br />The one key action Ralph Eberhart is known to have taken in response to the 9/11 attacks was to implement a modified version of a plan called "SCATANA," which would clear the skies and give the military control over U.S. airspace. However, Eberhart only ordered that this plan be put into operation at around 11:00 a.m., about two hours after the second WTC tower was hit and it became "obvious" to him that a coordinated terrorist attack was taking place.<br /><br />When he was asked before the 9/11 Commission why it had taken so long to initiate the plan, Eberhart recalled that people had been approaching him and telling him to "declare SCATANA." However, he added, NORAD "could not control the airspace that day with the radars we had and all the aircraft that were airborne. ... So, if I suddenly say, 'We've got it, we will control the airspace,' we would have had worse problems than we had that morning because I cannot provide [air] traffic deconfliction like the FAA has."<br /><br />Eberhart therefore requested that a modified version of SCATANA be devised, telling those that were calling for the plan, "I will execute SCATANA once you have a modified SCATANA that clearly delineates the lines in the road and doesn't cause a bad situation to become worse." The modified SCATANA that Eberhart subsequently implemented allowed navigational aids to stay on, and selective approval for specific and necessary flights. [22]<br /><br />Eberhart was implying to the 9/11 Commission that his delay in ordering SCATANA was due to the time required to put together this modified version of it. However, he has not specified the time at which he asked his colleagues to start preparing the modified SCATANA. Was it at 9:03 a.m., when the second WTC tower was hit and everyone realized that the U.S. was under attack--a time when the value of such a plan would presumably have been obvious? Or was it later on? If later on, how much later?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">AMERICA 'COMPLETELY UNDEFENDED' DURING ATTACKS</span><br />A fuller analysis of Ralph Eberhart's actions on September 11 will only be possible when more evidence comes to light revealing what he did at the time of the attacks. It seems remarkable that we still know so little about the actions of the man who, as commander of NORAD, was in charge of the air defense of the U.S. In that role, Eberhart oversaw a catastrophic failure, which, in the words of Senator Mark Dayton, meant that for "109 minutes ... this country and its citizens were completely undefended." [23]<br /><br />And yet, rather than being held accountable, or even just criticized, for that failure, in October 2002 Eberhart was put in charge of the newly created Northern Command (NORTHCOM), described as "the nation's premier military homeland defense organization," which had the mission of countering threats and aggression against the United States. [24]<br /><br />As Dayton concluded, "The situation is urgent when we do not get protected in those circumstances [that occurred on 9/11], and it is even worse when it is covered up." [25]<br /><br />NOTES<br />[1] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States</span>. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 465.<br />[2] <a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf">"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart." 9/11 Commission, March 1, 2004</a>.<br />[3] Ibid.; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, <span style="font-style: italic;">Eyes on the Horizon</span>: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security. New York: Threshold Editions, 2009, p. 10.<br />[4] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski. NBC News, September 11, 2002; <a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00751.pdf">"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Richard Myers, Affiliated With NORAD." 9/11 Commission, February 17, 2004</a>; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, <span style="font-style: italic;">Eyes on the Horizon</span>, p. 9.<br />[5] <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/se.07.html">"Government Official Has New Evidence Regarding Hijacked Airlines." CNN, September 11, 2001</a>.<br />[6]<a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00751.pdf"> "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Richard Myers, Affiliated With NORAD"</a>; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, <span style="font-style: italic;">Eyes on the Horizon</span>, p. 9.<br />[7]<a href="http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm"> Senate Armed Services Committee, <span style="font-style: italic;">U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing on Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff</span>. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 13, 2001</a>.<br />[8] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>, p. 20.<br />[9]<a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf"> "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."</a><br />[10] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>, pp. 26-27, 34.<br />[11]<a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf"> "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."</a><br />[12]<a href="http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=5317"> "General Ralph E. 'Ed' Eberhart." U.S. Air Force, February 2004</a>;<a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf"> "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."</a><br />[13] <a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf">"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."</a><br />[14] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>, p. 465;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/28/AR2006072801617.html"> T. R. Reid, "Military to Idle NORAD Compound." <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span>, July 29, 2006</a>.<br />[15] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>, p. 42; Lynn Spencer, <span style="font-style: italic;">Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11</span>. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 240.<br />[16]<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_4103478"> Bruce Finley, "Military to Put Cheyenne Mountain on Standby." <span style="font-style: italic;">Denver Post</span>, July 27, 2006</a>.<br />[17]<a href="http://www.gazette.com/articles/mountain-10067-cheyenne-study.html"> Pam Zubeck, "Cheyenne Mountain's Fate May Lie in Study Contents." <span style="font-style: italic;">Colorado Springs Gazette</span>, June 16, 2006</a>.<br />[18] 9/11 Commission, The <span style="font-style: italic;">9/11 Commission Report</span>, pp. 38, 463.<br />[19] Leslie Filson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission</span>. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 55; Lynn Spencer,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Touching History</span>, p. 27.<br />[20]<a href="http://www.gazette.com/articles/mountain-10067-cheyenne-study.html"> Pam Zubeck, "Cheyenne Mountain's Fate May Lie in Study Contents."</a><br />[21] <a href="http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00788.pdf">"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."</a><br />[22]<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http:/www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm"> William B. Scott, "Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks." Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002</a>; <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm">National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004</a>; Lynn Spencer,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Touching History</span>, p. 269.<br />[23] <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108shrg741/html/CHRG-108shrg741.htm">Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, <span style="font-style: italic;">Making America Safer: Examining the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission</span>.</a><a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108shrg741/html/CHRG-108shrg741.htm"> 108th Cong., 2nd sess., July 30, 2004</a>.<br />[24] <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44083">Gerry J. Gilmore, "Eberhart Tabbed to Head U.S. Northern Command." American Forces Press Service, May 8, 2002</a>; <a href="http://www.govexec.com/features/0503/HSEberhart.htm">"Key Players: Commander, Northern Command, Gen. Ralph Eberhart." Government Executive, April 15, 2003</a>.<br />[25] <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108shrg741/html/CHRG-108shrg741.htm">Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, <span style="font-style: italic;">Making America Safer: Examining the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission</span></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-06-19/actions-and-inactions-commander-charge-us-air-defense-failure-911">Source</a><br /><br /></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-2051104607812587412010-06-30T13:48:00.000-07:002010-06-30T13:51:23.736-07:00More 9/11 Human Remains Found At Ground Zero<p></p><p></p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TCuuHvC5apI/AAAAAAAAAZs/nk27cu6lL6E/s1600/Flight_11_Seat_Cushion_Large.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TCuuHvC5apI/AAAAAAAAAZs/nk27cu6lL6E/s320/Flight_11_Seat_Cushion_Large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488672018792016530" border="0" /></a>Just two or so dump trucks filled with never-before sifted debris from Ground Zero have yielded 72 new fragments of human remains in an almost three-month operation that could bring closure to more families of victims of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center terror attack.<br /><br />Because of the size and condition of some of the remains the NYC Medical Examiner's office told ABC News there was a good chance of obtaining DNA samples that could lead to new IDs once DNA testing is completed. The remains of about 1,000 victims of the almost 3,000 killed at Ground Zero have still not been identified.<br /><br />A memorandum summarizing the findings of the operation, in which 844 cubic yards of debris was forensically sifted, was released by New York City officials Tuesday. It stated that including the 72 new fragments, a total of 1845 potential human remains have now been located since 2006 and are at the Medical Examiner's Office and when possible will be subjected to DNA testing.<br /><br />The full report summarizing the now completed sifting operation is expected--nearly 9 years after al Qaeda crashed planes into the Twin Towers --to yield clues to the identities of some of the victims whose remains were either never found or are not as yet identifiable.<br /><br />The sifting operation took place at Fresh Kill Landfills in Staten Island, where the new debris was brought and run through a series of conveyor belts that sort debris by size. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the debris from the site yielded driver's licenses, rings, watches, wallets, shoes -- boxes and boxes of poignant reminders of the cost in human lives. This time, the sorting yielded bone fragments.<br /><br />As of January 2010, the Medical Examiner's office had identified 1626 Ground Zero victims, or 59 percent of a reported 2,752 total. As of that date 21,744 remains had been recovered and 12,768, or 59 percent, had been identified.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/911-human-remains-found-ground/story?id=10980468">Source</a><br /><br /></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-81757563029442497502010-06-30T13:45:00.000-07:002010-06-30T13:47:50.300-07:00Explosive Evidence at WTC Cited by Former CDI Employee 24 June 2010 Written by Darcy Wearing and Richard Gage, AIA<p></p><p></p><p>Explosive Evidence at WTC Cited by Former CDI Employee<br />News - News Releases By AE911Truth<br />Written by Darcy Wearing and Richard Gage, AIA<br />Thursday, 24 June 2010 18:55<br /><br />Having had the privilege of speaking with Tom Sullivan, an actual explosive-charge placement technician, we have some new insights to pass along as to how controlled demolition works, where it started, and the effect that 9/11 had on the demolition industry. Sullivan gained his experience as an employee of the leading firm in this field, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI). Sullivan stresses though “I do not in anyway represent CDI and what I have to say is based on my own experience and training,”<br /><br />Sullivan attended high school with Doug Loizeaux of the Loizeaux family. The Loizeaux family, through the father Jack, independently started the whole controlled-demolition industry and turned it into a highly profitable business. Sullivan, before he became connected to CDI, was an independent photographer during his early years in Maryland. He would be sent to CD sites and take still pictures of the jobs. He became infatuated with the CD industry. The time came when he would do both, being the placer of the “cutter charges” on the primary joints, and photographing the jobs for promoting the business. Soon he would switch to full-time employee status of CDI -- as verified by AE911Truth’s verification team.<br /><br />"It was very interesting, but also very hard work, long hours, especially in the cold weather," Sullivan reflects. He stated that the days began early, around 6 a.m., and they would work until the sun was down. Sullivan had the experience of preparing a building by placing the cutter charges throughout the primary joints, and then, of course, watching it all come down.<br /><br />Read the rest with photos:<br /><a href="http://www.ae911truth.org/newsletter/2010/06/index.php#cdi">http://www.ae911truth.org/newsletter/2010/06/index.php#cdi</a><br /><br />Sullivan notes that many weeks are required to “prep,” or weaken the buildings before demolitions. Steel frame buildings don’t just fall into their footprints at free-fall without major work throughout the building – even some before the placement of explosives. Sullivan emphasized as an aside, “Fire cannot bring down steel-framed high rises -- period.”<br /><br />One of Sullivan’s most exciting jobs was the colossal Kingdome in whose reinforced concrete structure he personally placed hundreds of deadly explosive charges.<br /><br />Working for CDI was, Sullivan stated, “a very unique experience.” He also said, "they were a close-knit family -- referring to the familial values of the Loizeauxs." “I learned from watching," said Sullivan. "There is no school that will teach you this, just hands on hard work." Sullivan took hundreds of project photos, through which he developed a deep passion for the trade.<br /><br />When asked, what made CDI the best in the business, he commented, “their family had all the experience because they ’invented’ the art of CD. They spent years traveling around the world, showing and educating people how this art form works.”<br /><br />Unfortunately, the business came to a screeching halt after 9/11. "People were scared -- if they were to hear a loud bang it was probably some kind of terrorist attack," says Sullivan in frustration. "Fear took over and there was no more business." Even Mark Loizeaux (CDI’s President) has been quoted as saying 9/11 ruined him. Sullivan had no choice but to leave CDI. Curiously, CDI had a role in the WTC cleanup through a subcontract under Tully Construction. On September 22, 2001, CDI submitted a 25-page "preliminary" document to New York City's Department of Design and Construction, a plan related to the removal and recycling of the steel.[¹]<br /><br />Sullivan stated that he knew from the first day that the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11 was a classic controlled implosion. Asked how he thought it might have been done he posited, “looking at the building it wouldn’t be a problem -- once you gain access to the elevator shafts…then a team of expert loaders would have hidden access to the core columns and beams. The rest can be accomplished with just the right kind of explosives for the job. Thermite can be used as well.”<br /><br />Brent Blanchard, the photographer from the controlled demolition company Protec, has said, in criticism of the CD theory, that there would have had to been detonation cords strung all over the place and casings left in the rubble pile from the cutter charges. So we asked for a response from Sullivan. He noted that:<br /><br />Remote wireless detonators have been available for years. Look at any action movie -- and of course the military has them. The reason most contractors don’t use them is that they are too expensive -- but in a project with a huge budget it would be no problem. As for the casings -- everyone in the industry, including Blanchard, would know that RDX explosive cutter charges are completely consumed when they go off -- nothing is left. And in the case of Thermite cutter charges, that may also be the case. Thermite self-consuming cutter charge casings have been around since first patented back in 1984.<br /><br />We asked Sullivan if all the floors in WTC 7 would have to be loaded with explosives in order for a successful controlled demolition. He responded,<br /><br />No, with steel framed buildings you really need only to load the bottom third to bring the building down. While at CDI we had a job in Hartford Conn, the CNG building, where we did just that. And it worked out beautifully.<br /><br />Recalling that Ron Craig, a Hollywood movie explosions expert claimed in a debate with us, that there would have been many blocks of broken windows if it were a controlled demolition. Sullivan reflected,<br /><br />The key word here is controlled demolition – in other words careful placement of charges -- always focused and precise. We are not talking about setting off a bomb here. The amount and type of explosives is an art and collateral damage can often be completely avoided.<br /><br />We asked about Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) who claimed publically in his infamous press conference at the “unveiling” of the Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 that there would have been a loud boom coming from a massive explosion if this had been a controlled demolition, and asked him about that. Sullivan said, “With any implosion there is never just one big explosion but rather waves of smaller explosions -- not unlike the percussion section in a symphony -- as each loaded floor is progressively set off.”<br /><br />And as Sullivan watched the towers collapse that day, like so many did, he pondered at how fast it all took place, and how suddenly and symmetrically they were brought down. "I knew it was an explosive event as soon as I saw it, there was no question in my mind," said Sullivan. Most of us agree -- it's not by chance that the first tower just happened to collapse -- then the second in the same manner. What convinced him completely is when he watched Tower 7 fall that day, "I mean, come on, it was complete destruction. I've seen buildings fall like that for years -- that was the end game for me." Keep in mind that Sullivan did this for a living for several years -- it is like second nature for him to see this type of demolition. If anybody would know, it should be him. But we went ahead and asked him, “Is there any chance that normal office fires (the official cause of the ’collapse’) could have been responsible for the smooth, symmetrical, free-fall acceleration of building 7? “Not a chance,” he retorted. We just wanted to be sure.<br /><br />When we asked him if he followed any of the 9/11 Commission hearings or that of the NIST reporting, he had the same answer for both "I have no tolerance for people who lie to me about what I know to be true. I threw my hands up in disgust and never watched another hearing after the first. As for NIST, I didn't even watch because I knew what to expect." He did however follow the final report on the collapse of Tower 7 and said it angered him that they could actually convince so many of their fraudulent claims.<br /><br />Sullivan first came into contact with AE911Truth through a friend that sent him the 9/11: Blueprint for Truth DVD. He watched it and was very excited that there was actually an organization out there trying to inform people of what he was trying to say since that fateful day. “AE911Truth is the most focused and organized group there is today in the 9/11 truth movement. There is no speculation," he said. "Blueprint for Truth is factual and impressive information based on science and physics, and was clear and concise." When asked if he agreed with the evidence the DVD brings forth, Sullivan responded, "It contains extremely compelling evidence."<br /><br />The final question we asked in this interview was, "How many architects and engineers does it take speaking in unison until people hear that there is a problem?" His response, "As the number grows it will be harder and harder to deny them -- but deny them they will."<br /><br />Note: 1) Sullivan came out from the East Coast to deliver a short but electrifying presentation on Friday and Saturday night, May 7th & 8th at the joint presentation of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. He joined Richard Gage, AIA, and Erik Lawyer on stage for 10 minutes and answered some key questions about the demolition industry, the CDI family of Loizeauxs, and the way the 3 WTC skyscrapers were destroyed. Prior to these milestone events he appeared with Gage and Lawyer on KPFA radio Berkeley on the program “Guns & Butter” with host Bonnie Faulkner who had a number of great questions for him.<br /><br />2) "DO NOT COPY" watermarks on images were added by Tom Sullivan. These images may not be copied other than in the context of this article, or with his specific approval.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-06-25/explosive-evidence-wtc-cited-former-cdi-employee-24-june-2010-written-darcy-wearing-and-richard-gage-aia">Source</a><br /><br /></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-85628864902385434462010-06-30T12:20:00.000-07:002010-06-30T12:25:08.135-07:00Filmmaker Says McChrystal Part of Pat Tillman Cover Up, Surprised at His Obama Remarks<p></p><p></p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TCuZXindm-I/AAAAAAAAAZk/VI5FnNcmpsw/s1600/TillmanStory_monster_397x224.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 397px; height: 223px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TCuZXindm-I/AAAAAAAAAZk/VI5FnNcmpsw/s400/TillmanStory_monster_397x224.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488649200589446114" border="0" /></a>Gen. Stanley McChrystal (left) and a promotional poster for the film 'The Tillman Story'<br /><br />Soon after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, pro football star Pat Tillman surrendered his multimillion-dollar NFL contract, left behind his wife, Marie, and joined the United States Army Rangers, where he completed multiple combat tours.<br /><br />On April 22, 2004, while serving in the mountains of Afghanistan, Tillman was shot dead in what the U.S. government initially said was a result of enemy fire from a hostile ambush near the border with Pakistan. But it ultimately emerged that Tillman was, in fact, shot by his fellow soldiers, and details surrounding the motives and circumstances behind his death remain a source of great controversy.<br /><br />In his new documentary, “The Tillman Story,” filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev explores these controversies and the roles numerous high-powered political and military figures played in falsely reporting how Tillman died and turning his killing into what his mother, Dannie Tillman, called a “recruiting” tool for the U.S Army.<br /><br />One of the high-powered figures highlighted in the film for his alleged deception is Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was relieved of his military duties in Afghanistan on Wednesday.<br /><br />Reacting to McChrystal's forced resignation, Bar-Lev said he was shocked that McChrystal had made the remarks critical of the Obama administration that led to his resignation.<br /><br />“I am quite frankly surprised," Bar-Lev told Pop Tarts. "In the Tillman case, he was much more strategic than he seems to have been in this Rolling Stone interview.”<br /><br />Prior to President George W. Bush addressing Tillman’s death at a White House dinner, McChrystal, who reportedly knew that it was fratricide but chose to omit such details from his subsequent paperwork, sent an urgent memo to Bush’s speechwriters, warning them that "unknowing statements by our country's leaders ... might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public."<br /><br />Tillman's father told the New York Daily News on Wednesday that "I do believe [McChrystal] participated in a falsified homicide investigation."<br /><br />McChrystal did not share his side of the story in the film, despite the filmmakers' request, Bar-Lev said.<br /><br />Bar-Lev has not spoken to the Tillman family since McChrystal resigned.<br /><br />"The Tillman Story," which will see limited release in late August, was narrated by actor Josh Brolin, who told Pop Tarts he was “shocked” by what he learned while working on the project.<br /><br />“I remember hearing in the documentary that someone [Gen. Kensinger] was saying that the family doesn’t have God in their lives and they are having a tough time getting over the death of their son because they don’t have anything to rely on,” Brolin said. “That was a guy that knew that they were lying to the family. So to say that to someone publicly was just so disrespectful to every person fighting for the country and fighting for the freedom in the country, that is the most evil thing you could do."<br /><br />The documentary alludes to the fact that the government put the all blame on Kensinger after he had retired from the military, after which he could not be criminally charged, and “conveniently” no further investigation could then be ordered. While the family doesn’t believe Kensinger is blameless, they do believe he was merely a pawn to protect then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The film also shows a letter Rumsfeld allegedly sent to military officials after Tillman enlisted, telling them that he was “a special man” and that they needed to “keep an eye on him.”<br /><br />A fellow Ranger, who was at Tillman’s side when he died, indirectly raises the question that the former NFL star may very well have been murdered. Despite Tillman’s constant screams and, what turned out to be his last words, “I’m Pat f***ing Tillman, why are you shooting at me?” the bullets continued to gain momentum.<br /><br />Tillman’s longtime friend Russell Baer, who was with him when he killed and accompanied his body back home, hopes the documentary brings some sort of closure in giving the American public a sense of what really happened to Tillman.<br /><br />“If you’ve spent a lot of time in the service, they tell you to never lie. They hold you high with integrity and the truth and always sticking up for what you believe in and having each other’s backs, and when it came down to it they completely lied,” Baer said. “They completely held everyone out to dry, including Pat.”<br /><br />Bar-Lev says the story does not end with his movie.<br /><br />“This is an unsolved mystery; nobody has ever really paid a price for what was done to the Tillmans,” he said. “No one has taken accountability or made an admission for a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth. This story is not over yet.”<br /><br /><center><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/D-NbZqt8WJk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/D-NbZqt8WJk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-06-26/filmmaker-says-mcchrystal-part-pat-tillman-cover-surprised-his-obama-remarks"><br />Source</a><br /><br /></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-17648885190999297312010-05-28T12:58:00.000-07:002010-12-08T13:28:43.020-08:00The WTC Leaseholder and His Associates That Cheated Death on 9/11: Was it Coincidence or Foreknowledge?<p></p><p></p><p>New York real estate developer Larry Silverstein and several key individuals associated with his firm, Silverstein Properties, appear to have had remarkable luck on September 11, 2001, when changes in their schedule or coincidental circumstances saved them from being high up in the World Trade Center when it was attacked.<br /><br />Silverstein Properties took over the lease of the World Trade Center seven weeks before 9/11, the only time the complex had gone under private control [1], and after 9/11 Larry Silverstein sought damages of over $7 billion from his insurers for the destruction of the Twin Towers. [2] On September 11, the firm had temporary offices on the 88th floor of the North Tower. (American Airlines Flight 11 impacted that tower between its 93rd and 99th floors.) Of its 160 employees, 54 were working in those offices at the time of the attacks and four of them died. [3]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">HIGH-LEVEL INDIVIDUALS AVOIDED DANGER ON 9/11</span><br />The fortunate circumstances that kept the high-level individuals out of danger the morning of 9/11 were quite extraordinary. Larry Silverstein survived the attacks supposedly because his wife forced him to go to a doctor's appointment instead of a meeting at the WTC; Silverstein's son and daughter survived because, independently of each other, they were running late; his top aide survived because he cut short a meeting he was in at the top of the North Tower; his publicist agreed to join a meeting at the WTC at 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m.; and others associated with Silverstein Properties may have avoided danger due to the cancellation of a meeting on the 88th floor of the North Tower.<br /><br />There are three possible explanations for the combined good fortune of these individuals on September 11. Maybe it was all due to coincidence. Or, more sinisterly, perhaps some of these individuals had foreknowledge of the attacks and therefore knew of the threat to the WTC. Or maybe they received some kind of forewarning from others who had specific foreknowledge of the danger. While it will be impossible to draw definite conclusions until there is a proper investigation, the accounts of these individuals, described below, make clear why such a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks is needed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">WTC LEASEHOLDER PERSUADED TO GO TO DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT INSTEAD OF TRADE CENTER</span><br />After his company took over the lease of the Twin Towers on July 24, 2001, Larry Silverstein reportedly "spent his days at the towers, meeting and greeting his tenants." [4] According to the New York Times, "Every morning after the deal was finalized, Mr. Silverstein held breakfast meetings at Windows on the World," the restaurant at the top of the North Tower. [5] Those meetings would begin at 8:30 a.m. [6]<br /><br />All of the approximately 170 people in Windows on the World at the time of the attack on the North Tower--8:46 a.m.--died when the tower subsequently collapsed. [7] Yet September 11 was the one morning when Larry Silverstein was not at the restaurant. Instead, he was at his apartment on New York's Park Avenue. [8] The reason, as the Washington Post described, was that he had "complained of a problem with his skin and the sun. His wife, Klara, demanded that he go to the dermatologist. She even made the appointment, which was scheduled for that morning." Silverstein has recalled that he was "getting dressed to go to the doctor" on 9/11, but complained to his wife: "I have so much to do downtown. This is a horrendous waste of my time. I should be going to work." She retorted, "You're not going to cancel this appointment this morning, you're going to the dermatologist." Silverstein has noted, "When you're married to the same woman for 46 years, you learn early on to say, 'Yes, dear.'" He therefore did not head to the WTC. Referring to these circumstances that saved his life, Silverstein commented, "That morning was the serendipitous quality of life." [9]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">LEASEHOLDER'S SON AND DAUGHTER LATE FOR MEETINGS AT WTC</span><br />Two of Larry Silverstein's three children, Roger and Lisa, were vice presidents of Silverstein Properties. [10] After the company took over the lease of the WTC, Roger and Lisa Silverstein worked in its temporary offices on the 88th floor of the North Tower and, according to the New York Observer, attended meetings with tenants each morning at Windows on the World. But on the morning of September 11, apparently independently of each other, both of them "were running late." As a result, Roger Silverstein was in the parking garage of WTC Building 7 when the North Tower was hit, and Lisa Silverstein was subsequently turned away from the WTC complex by police further uptown. The New York Observer noted, "If the attack had happened just a little later, [Larry] Silverstein's children would likely have been trapped at Windows" on the World. [11]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">LEASEHOLDER'S TOP AIDE ENDS MEETING AT WTC EARLY</span><br />An executive with Silverstein Properties who was even more fortunate was Larry Silverstein's top aide, Geoffrey Wharton, who was actually at the 8:30 a.m. meeting at Windows on the World that Silverstein missed. [12] Wharton was meeting with Liz Thompson, the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, to discuss the council's relationship with Silverstein Properties, and its studio and performance programs. Fortunately, as Thompson has recalled, Wharton "had to cut the meeting a little short." [13] And, according to the Engineering News-Record, he then "decided to escort his guest down to the lobby." [14] Consequently, Wharton and Thompson got on an elevator at 8:44 a.m., just two minutes before Flight 11 hit the tower. Only two other individuals were in that last elevator down from the 107th floor: Michael Nestor and Richard Tierney, both senior officials with the New York Port Authority, who were leaving the restaurant because Nestor had a meeting downstairs to attend. The four of them were the last people to make it out of Windows on the World alive. [15]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">LEASEHOLDER'S PUBLICIST AGREES TO JOIN MEETING AT WTC AN HOUR LATE</span><br />Another key individual who was fortunate not to be in the World Trade Center when it was hit was publicist Howard Rubenstein, who had represented Larry Silverstein for over 30 years and would subsequently work with the real estate developer on the reconstruction of the WTC. [16]<br /><br />The day before 9/11, Rubenstein was called by John O'Neill, the former FBI counterterrorism chief, who had recently started work as head of security at the WTC. O'Neill invited Rubenstein to a meeting he was going to be leading, which would be held in the WTC at 8:00 a.m. on September 11. It was to discuss how the building's management was protecting the Twin Towers against terrorism. Rubenstein has recalled that O'Neill told him, "Bring your staff, two people."<br /><br />Rubenstein agreed to attend the meeting, because "we were then representing the World Trade Center." However, after further thought he called O'Neill back and said, "I have a staff meeting on Tuesday, do you mind if I don't go?" O'Neill told him to send a colleague in his place, but Rubenstein replied, "But that somebody is also at my staff meeting." So O'Neill told Rubenstein to "come at 9 o'clock instead of 8 o'clock."<br /><br />According to Rubenstein, the morning of September 11 he was in the staff meeting when his secretary ran in and told him, "The World Trade Center just got hit and you were supposed to be there." While Rubenstein and his staff members were safe, "Everyone at that breakfast meeting died, including John O'Neill." [17]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">COMPANY MEETING IN WTC ON 9/11 CANCELED THE NIGHT BEFORE</span><br />Furthermore, Silverstein Properties had been scheduled to hold a meeting the morning of September 11 in its offices on the 88th floor of the North Tower, reportedly "to discuss what to do in the event of a terrorist attack." According to the New York Times, that meeting was canceled the night of September 10, "because one participant could not attend." [18] Further details of the meeting--such as who was meant to be there, and whether any people managed to stay away from the WTC on 9/11 thanks to its cancellation--are unknown.<br /><br />As we can see, some notable people connected with the WTC leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, appear to have been particularly lucky on September 11. Under slightly different circumstances they may well have been among the victims of the attacks. While their accounts, described above, do not prove anything sinister, the series of apparent coincidences that kept these individuals away from danger on 9/11 surely need to be examined as part of a new investigation into the attacks.<br /><br />NOTES<br />[1] <a href="http://www.icsc.org/srch/front/200104270803.htm">"Silverstein Properties and Westfield Win $3.2B World Trade Center Lease." International Council of Shopping Centers, April 27, 2001</a>; "<a href="http://www.panynj.gov/press-room/press-item.cfm?headLine_id=81">Governor Pataki, Acting Governor DiFrancesco Laud Historic Port Authority Agreement to Privatize World Trade Center." Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, July 24, 2001</a>.<br />[2] <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2737023/Magnates-tower-plan-under-threat.html">Simon English, "Magnate's Tower Plan Under Threat." Daily Telegraph, October 10, 2001</a>; <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040617171233/http:/www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1082923373947">Mark Hamblett, "Jurors Deal World Trade Center Leaseholder Major Setback." New York Law Journal, April 30, 2004</a>.<br />[3] <a href="http://www.ctv.ca/special/sept11/hubs/canadian/history.html">Doug Saunders, Caroline Alphonso, Colin Freeze, Lisa Priest, and Geoffrey York, "Surviving History." Globe and Mail, September 7, 2002</a>.<br />[4] <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021207052827/http:/www.hughhewitt.com/past_news_links_11.02/11.20.02.At_Ground_Zero.html">Lynne Duke, "At Ground Zero, a Tall Order for the Developer." Washington Post, November 20, 2002</a>.<br />[5] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/11groundzero.html">Deborah Sontag, "The Hole in the City's Heart." New York Times, September 11, 2006</a>.<br />[6] <a href="http://enr.construction.com/features/buildings/archives/040913a-1.asp">Nadine M. Post, "World Trade Center's Rebuilders Find Opportunity in the Face of Tragedy." Engineering News-Record, September 13, 2004</a>.<br />[7] <a href="http://soundportraits.org/on-air/the_last_elevator/transcript.php">"The Last Elevator." Morning Edition, NPR, September 11, 2003</a>.<br />[8] <a href="http://nymag.com/nymetro/realestate/urbandev/features/11718/">Robert Kolker, "Who Wants to Move to Ground Zero?" New York Magazine, May 21, 2005</a>.<br />[9] <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021207052827/http:/www.hughhewitt.com/past_news_links_11.02/11.20.02.At_Ground_Zero.html">Lynne Duke, "At Ground Zero, a Tall Order for the Developer."</a><br />[10] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/03/nyregion/commercial-real-estate-downtown-tower-gets-a-new-look.html">Mervyn Rothstein, "Downtown Tower Gets a New Look." New York Times, February 3, 1999</a>; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/22/garden/developer-daughters-born-to-build.html">Tracie Rozhon, "Developer Daughters, Born to Build." New York Times, March 22, 2001</a>; <a href="http://www.ctv.ca/special/sept11/hubs/canadian/history.html">Doug Saunders, Caroline Alphonso, Colin Freeze, Lisa Priest, and Geoffrey York, "Surviving History."</a><br />[11] <a href="http://www.observer.com/node/47252">Tom McGeveran, "Mike Sees City Taking Control at Ground Zero." New York Observer, March 16, 2003</a>; <a href="http://nymag.com/nymetro/realestate/urbandev/features/11718/">Robert Kolker, "Who Wants to Move to Ground Zero?"</a><br />[12] <a href="http://enr.construction.com/features/buildings/archives/040913a-1.asp">Nadine M. Post, "World Trade Center's Rebuilders Find Opportunity in the Face of Tragedy."</a><br />[13] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html">Jim Dwyer, Eric Lipton, Kevin Flynn, James Glanz, and Ford Fessenden, "Fighting to Live as the Towers Died." New York Times, May 26, 2002</a>; <a href="http://www.nycityartscoalition.org/creativedowntown.pdf">Creative Downtown: The Role of Culture in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan. New York: New York City Arts Coalition, 2002, p. 9</a>.<br />[14] <a href="http://enr.construction.com/features/buildings/archives/040913a-1.asp">Nadine M. Post, "World Trade Center's Rebuilders Find Opportunity in the Face of Tragedy."</a><br />[15] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html">Jim Dwyer, Eric Lipton, Kevin Flynn, James Glanz, and Ford Fessenden, "Fighting to Live as the Towers Died"</a>; <a href="http://soundportraits.org/on-air/the_last_elevator/transcript.php">"The Last Elevator."</a><br />[16] <a href="http://www.rubenstein.com/files/The_Deal.pdf">Dennis Fitzgerald, "The Bold and the Beautiful." The Deal, June 7, 2004.</a><br />[17] <a href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/1351">Charlie Rose. PBS, July 15, 2004</a>; <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20071120001602/http:/www.lifestylesmagazine.com/website/past/stories/193/Lifestyle_10-2004_006.html">Aliza Davidovit, "Howard Rubenstein: Best Face Forward." Lifestyles Magazine, Fall 2004</a>.<br />[18] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/business/day-terror-insurers-reinsurance-companies-wait-sort-cost-damages.html">Andrew Ross Sorkin and Simon Romero, "Reinsurance Companies Wait to Sort out Cost of Damages." New York Times, September 12, 2001</a>.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-05-28/wtc-leaseholder-and-his-associates-cheated-death-911-was-it-coincidence-or-foreknowledge">Source</a></p><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-73572344119850673992010-04-29T12:23:00.000-07:002010-12-08T12:24:35.597-08:00<p></p><p></p><p>The following are declassified United States Secret Service records obtained on April 23, 2010 via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, describing the activities of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, families of the president and vice-president, threats against Air Force One and activity within the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on September 11, 2001.<br /><br />Download the PDF file via the following link:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?vydb4nxdmyy">http://www.mediafire.com/?vydb4nxdmyy</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://911blogger.com/news/2010-04-29/declassified-911-us-secret-service-foia-records-describing-activity-president-bush-vp-cheney">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-75026343274828356282010-03-28T23:56:00.000-07:002010-03-29T00:08:59.621-07:00“DO NOT CROSS THE LINE”<p><p><p>According to a <a href="http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/CIA.pdf">document obtained by the ACLU</a> under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on Tuesday March 16, the 9/11 commission was warned on Jan. 6th, 2004 by high-level administration officials to “not cross the line” in the investigation of the events that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.<br /><br />The document is available at <a href="http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/CIA.pdf">http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/CIA.pdf</a><br /><br />Here’s a copy of the letter in question (page 26 of the PDF document). <ul><em>From:<br /><br />Department of Defense<br />Department of Justice<br />Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)<br /><br />To:<br /><br />National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States<br /><br /><br />Thomas H. Kean, Chairman<br />Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman<br /><br />Gentlemen:<br /><br />Your staff has advised us that the Commission seeks to participate in the questioning of certain enemy combatants detained in the war against terrorists of global reach. Such action by the Commission would substantially interfere with the ability of the United States to perform its law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions in the protection of the American people.<br /><br />Your legislative commission has had extraordinary — indeed, unprecedented in the annals of American history — access to many of the Nation’s most sensitive secrets in the conduct of its work, including detainee information. In response to the Commission’s expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation. <strong>There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross</strong> — the line separating the Commission’s proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government’s ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks. <strong>The Commission staffs proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line</strong>.<br /><br />As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission to not further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees.<br /><br />Respectfully,<br /><br />John Ashcroft, Attorney General<br />Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense<br />George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence</em></ul><br /><strong>9/11 Commission findings based on torture</strong><br /><br />In December of 2009, we have published an important article titled “<a href="http://world911truth.org/much-of-911-commission-findings-cite-intelligence-garnered-by-torture/">Much of 9/11 Commission findings cite intelligence garnered by torture</a>” in which we describe that much of the material cited in the 9/11 Commission’s findings was derived from war detainees during brutal CIA interrogations authorized by the Bush administration. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was <strong>central</strong> to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.<br /><br />The CIA has since revealed that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes of prisoners being tortured.<br /><br />When asked by MSNBC News anchor if “under duress, will people tell the truth if tortured?” former CIA officer Robert Baer answered “under duress, under the threat of duress, people will tell what they think you want to hear. It is an unreliable tool. And the reason I say this is I have spent 21 years in the CIA, in and out of prisons watching these techniques, one way or another, reading reports, and the countries that torture, uniformly produce inaccurate intelligence. Torture does not work.”<br /><br />They also talk about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who has been waterboarded over <strong>183</strong> times.<br /><br /><center><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rr8AVpSMH9Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rr8AVpSMH9Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><em>The below text is a excerpt of the </em><a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m3d17-ACLU-obtains-document-stating-911-commission-told-to-not-cross-the-line"><em>Examiner.com</em></a><em> article on this newly released memo<br /></em><br />The warning in the memo released by the government to the ACLU is just one example of how the Bush administration fiercely struggled to prevent the 9/11 Commission from conducting a deeper probe into the attacks. It is common knowledge that Bush and Cheney refused to cooperate with the investigation and when forced to do so, only <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/vest03312004.html">testified together, not under oath</a>.<br /><br /><strong>9/11 Commissioners criticism</strong><br /><br />What may not be known to many Americans is that members of the 9/11 Commission have publicly stated that the investigation was a whitewash, and stymied from the beginning.<br /><br />John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html">said that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11</a>, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.<br /><br />Senator Max Cleland, who resigned from the 9/11 Commission after calling it a “national scandal”, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_cleland.html">stated in a 2003 PBS interview</a>: <ul>“I’m saying that’s deliberate. I am saying that the delay in relating this information to the American public out of a hearing… series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow walked… the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow walked, because the Administration’s policy was, and its priority was, we’re gonna take Saddam Hussein out.”<br /><br />— Senator Max Cleland, former 9/11 Commissioner who resigned after calling it a “national scandal” </ul><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/23/the_white_house_has_played_cover">On <em>Democracy Now</em>, Cleland also said</a>, “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”. In 2006 the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new"><em>Washington Post</em> reported</a> that several members of the 9/11 Commission suspected deception on part of the Pentagon:<br /><br />Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.<br /><br />9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerry also has unanswered questions. According to an <a href="http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/index4.html">article in <em>Salon.com</em></a>, he believes that there are legitimate reasons to believe an alternative version to the official story.”There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version,” Kerry said. The commission had limited time and limited resources to pursue its investigation, and its access to key documents and witnesses was obstructed by government agencies and key administration officials.<br /><br />Commissioner Tim Roemer suggested that Commission members were considering a criminal probe of false statements. “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting,”<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html">Roemer told <em>CNN</em></a>. “We were not sure of the intent, whether it was to deceive the commission or merely part of the fumbling bureaucracy.”<br /><br />The document that the ACLU has obtained corroborates what officials involved in the 9/11 Commission have been saying for years. The entire “investigation” was nothing more than a whitewash designed to hide the facts about 9/11 from the American people.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://world911truth.org/do-not-cross-the-line/">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-16391890943645013842010-02-12T01:49:00.000-08:002010-03-29T00:11:25.630-07:00Flight 253: Intelligence Agencies Nixed State Department Move to Revoke Bomber’s Visa<p><p><p>Rightist demagogues, as they are wont to do, prattle-on how they, and they alone, can “keep America safe”–by shredding the Constitution.<br /><br />Waging a decades-long psychological war against the American people, corporatist thugs embedded within the National Security State assure us that secrecy, deceit and imperial adventures that steal other peoples’ resources are the one true path to national prosperity and universal happiness.<br /><br />But what happens when those charged with protecting us from attack, actually aid and abet those who would kill us, and then handsomely profit from our slaughter in the process?<br /><br />During a January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick F. Kennedy, testified that the visa of accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, wasn’t revoked at the specific request of secret state agencies.<br /><br />Kennedy, a Bushist State Department holdover, was the former Director on National Intelligence for Management and headed the transition team that set up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2005 under former Ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, a veteran of U.S. covert operations since the Vietnam war.<br /><br />Given the avalanche of media interest, fueled by Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, whether or not the suspect should have been read his Miranda rights, the only coverage of the hearings that reported Kennedy’s explosive testimony, was a brief article in the Detroit News.<br /><br />Claiming that “revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said that allowing the alleged terrorist to keep his visa would have “helped” federal investigators take down the entire network “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.”<br /><br />A “soldier” (indicted criminal) who would have murdered 300 air passengers if the detonator concealed in his underpants hadn’t serendipitously failed to explode the device.<br /><br />As Alex Lantier wrote February 3 on the World Socialist Web Site, the latest in a series of significant revelations “has been buried by the media.” The socialist critic avers: “As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.”<br /><br />Lantier charges that “despite–or perhaps more accurately, because of–the fact that this information exposes the official government story of the near-disaster to be a lie” the corporate media is fully complicit in the cover-up.<br /><br />Weeks after the incident, it is now clear that intelligence agencies did far more than simply “watch” a potential terrorist. That they gave Abdulmutallab a leg up, bypassing airline security systems put in place after 9/11 that would have prevented him from boarding that plane, is also crystal clear.<br /><br />The question is: was a reckless calculation made that gambled the lives of 300 air passengers for ruthless political purposes? If so, was it designed to destabilize the Obama government, thereby binding it ever-closer to a permanent, unelected, security apparatus that feathers its nest by serving the only constituency that matters–giant energy firms, defense-related corporations and those who finance them?<br /><br />Is this scenario being played out in Washington where Republican right-wingers like Senators Susan Collins (ME), Tom Coburn (OK), John McCain (AZ), John Ensign (NV) and Lindsey Graham (SC), but also neocon Democrats such as Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), demand that the accused be turned over to the military for “special handling,” thereby ratcheting-up pressure for increased domestic repression?<br /><br />Just as pertinently, is this what White House insider Richard Wolffe meant when he said on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann January 4 that the “president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda.” (emphasis added)<br /><br />For weeks now, the Obama administration and the media have played the same broken record: despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a multitude of security agencies, ranging from the CIA, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a satrapy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, “failed to connect the dots.”<br /><br />But as I have documented in previous reports, most recently on January 22, citing multiple domestic and foreign intelligence warnings, including a walk-in interview at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, by the suspect’s own father, a former top official in the Nigerian government, consular officials and CIA officers passed the warning up the food chain–where it sat.<br /><br />Abdulmutallab on the CIA and NCTC’s Radar<br /><br />The revelation that various agencies of America’s shadow government made a deliberate decision that allowed Abdulmutallab to board Flight 253 is more extensive than previously disclosed.<br /><br />Newsweek revealed February 2 that “a single intelligence community database operated by the CIA, known by the code name ‘Hercules’,” held all the “‘bits and pieces’ of intelligence that White House officials believe could have led U.S. authorities to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before last December 25.”<br /><br />However, even though the agencies had assembled information on the suspect in a single computer system where it was readily accessible to analysts, anonymous “intelligence officials” told journalist Mark Hosenball that “all source” analysts at CIA and NCTC “which both had access to ‘Hercules,’ were unable to assemble the intelligence scraps in time to prevent Abdulmutallab from boarding his Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underpants.”<br /><br />The unnamed officials told Hosenball that the failure to stop the suspect “validates assertions by White House and congressional investigators that the alleged lapses in the handling of intelligence related to Abdulmutallab did not stem from a failure of sometimes turf-conscious spy agencies to share information with each other.”<br /><br />“Instead,” Newsweek reports, “they point to the intelligence analysis carried out by the CIA and NCTC.”<br /><br />As I previously reported, citing a January 18 investigation by The New York Times, the National Security Agency “learned from a communications intercept” that a man named “‘Umar Farouk’–the first two names of the jetliner suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab–had volunteered for a coming operation.” Additional NSA intercepts in December “mentioned the date of Dec. 25, and suggested that they were ‘looking for ways to get somebody out’ or ‘for ways to move people to the West,’ one senior administration official said.”<br /><br />Running for cover, an intelligence official told Newsweek: “The volume of any database doesn’t matter much. That, by itself, doesn’t get you anywhere.” An interesting spin, when one considers the multibillion dollar expansion by NSA, as investigative journalist James Bamford reported last November.<br /><br />The official continues, “Nor does the mere fact that the NCTC and the CIA have shared access to material. The key is knowing what to look for, how to bring together different bits and scraps of information that–on the surface and in an ocean of data–don’t appear to be connected.” Conversely, knowing which “bits and scraps” to ignore from a parapolitical perspective, may have played an equally critical role in a presumed analytical “lapse.”<br /><br />“This is hard stuff,” the anonymous source pontificates. “It’s not a case of punching in a couple of search terms, sitting back, and waiting for enlightenment. Once you know the answer, it seems easy. But in real life, you don’t get the answer ahead of time.”<br /><br />Really?<br /><br />To the contrary, as with the September 11, 2001 hijack team, the Flight 253 affair seems to indicate that the decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the plane was a political, not a law enforcement decision that led analysts not to “connect” more than a few of the “dots.”<br /><br />As we now know, prior to 9/11, the Pentagon’s Able Danger unit had amassed terabytes of data on al-Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States. According to published reports, the unit had obtained detailed information on ringleader, the drug-addled Mohammed Atta, and other members of the suicide squad. Yet just scant months before the atrocity, the unit was shuttered and the data destroyed.<br /><br />Corporate media and the 9/11 Commission have advanced two contradictory propositions on Able Danger’s demise: the Pentagon unit hadn’t gathered intelligence on Atta and claims to contrary were overblown or they illegally obtained information on ordinary Americans and were shut down for inadvertent spying.<br /><br />However as researcher Paul Thompson revealed in The Terror Timeline, Able Danger had identified Americans, only they were the wrong Americans. According to Thompson, the unit pegged “future National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and other prominent Americans as potential security risks” over their illicit dealings with foreign governments.<br /><br />How’s that for an inconvenient truth!<br /><br />As with earlier warnings of impending terrorist strikes, political efficacy trumped the safety and security of the American people. This is underscored by January 20 testimony by NCTC Director, Bushist embed Michael E. Leiter, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.<br /><br />CongressDaily revealed that Leiter told the senators, “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”<br /><br />Journalist Chris Strohm disclosed that intelligence officials “acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities,” a fact now confirmed by Patrick F. Kennedy’s January 27 testimony before the House Committee.<br /><br />Similar to the Detroit News report on Kennedy’s admission, to date, not a single media outlet picked-up the trail and investigated CongressDaily’s chilling disclosure.<br /><br />Burying the Evidence, “Moving On”<br /><br />Corporate media are chock-a-block with reports of efforts by right-wing Republicans and some Democrats to brand the Obama administration as “soft on terrorism.”<br /><br />As readers are well aware, Antifascist Calling doesn’t carry water for the Obama administration; a government that has rightly been characterized as a slick makeover of the previous regime. However it must be acknowledged, unlike Bushist torture freaks, in Abdulmutallab’s case constitutional norms were followed and a criminal suspect lawfully charged for an egregious act.<br /><br />In “new normal” America however, not disappearing a suspect into a gulag, subject to tender ministrations by “enhanced interrogation” specialists (torturers) is viewed as a bad thing in our debased political culture.<br /><br />Meanwhile media stenographers scrupulously ignore, with a single-mindedness one has come to expect from totalitarian regimes, considerable evidence that elements of the intelligence-security apparatus could be charged as accessories before and after the fact with Abdulmutallab’s alleged offense.<br /><br />In his prepared statement to the House Committee, Kennedy asserted that “following his father’s November 19 visit to the Embassy, we sent a cable to the Washington intelligence and law enforcement community through proper channels (the Visas Viper system) that ‘Information at post suggests [that Farouk] may be involved in Yemeni-based extremists.’ At the same time, the Consular Section entered Abdulmutallab into the Consular Lookout and Support System database known as CLASS.”<br /><br />When it was discovered that officials in Abuja had misspelled the suspect’s name “information about previous visas issued to him and the fact that he currently held a valid U.S. visa was not included in the cable.”<br /><br />Despite the misspelling however, “the CLASS entry resulted in a lookout using the correct spelling that was shared automatically with the primary lookout system used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and accessible to other agencies.”<br /><br />In other words, even though the initial Embassy cable misspelled Abdulmutallab’s name, the “lookout” notification sent out to intelligence agencies, specifically DHS, should have warranted further action. And it also appears that initially it did.<br /><br />As both the Los Angeles Times and CongressDaily reported, Customs and Border Protection agents obtained the suspect’s name from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE database, maintained by the NCTC and planned to question Abdulmutallab when Flight 253 landed in Detroit on arrival from Amsterdam.<br /><br />However, as CongressDaily subsequently revealed, CBP agents “had information about alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab three days before his departure” and not during the flight as the Los Angeles Times report initially suggested.<br /><br />As we now know, information fed to NCTC’s database contained specific warnings from the State Department–as did the CIA’s “Hercules” system as Newsweek reported, and “that White House officials believe could have led U.S. authorities to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before last December 25,” according to the newsmagazine’s anonymous sources.<br /><br />Why did the State Department fail to revoke the accused terrorist’s visa?<br /><br />When questioned by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Kennedy told the panel, “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step.”<br /><br />Kennedy explained, “We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’”<br /><br />The Undersecretary added: “And one of the members [of the intelligence community]–and we’d be glad to give you that [information] … in private [closed session]–said, ‘Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.’”<br /><br />In other words, despite multiple sourced reports from American and overseas security agencies that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was planning to launch an attack, probably on Christmas Day, deploying an asset identified by NSA intercepts as a “Nigerian” named “Umar Farouk,” high-level intelligence officials, claiming to have “eyes” on the alleged AQAP operative, a suspected suicide bomber to boot, allowed him to board an airliner packed with nearly 300 passengers and crew.<br /><br />In a prepared statement to the Committee, NCTC Director Leiter said, “Let’s start with this clear assertion: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should not have stepped on that plane. The counterterrorism system failed and we told the President we are determined to do better.”<br /><br />However, neither House Committee members, nor the corporate media which suppressed the story entirely, challenged Leiter’s statement of a week earlier when he testified before a Senate panel that intelligence agencies allow watch listed terrorists to enter the country “because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”<br /><br />If Leiter’s testimony was taken under oath, he should be brought up on charges of perjury since he next asserted that “Intelligence Community analysts who were working hard on immediate threats to Americans in Yemen did not understand the fragments of intelligence on what turned out later to be Mr. Abdulmutallab, so they did not push him onto the terrorist watchlist.”<br /><br />This claim, as with practically all the “facts” released to the American people by the White House, Congress or by the secret state agencies themselves, is a rank mendacity.<br /><br />As Newsweek’s unnamed sources claim, CIA and NCTC analysts did have access to an “intelligence community database,” “Hercules,” and that it held all the available data on Abdulmutallab and “validates assertions by the White House and congressional investigators” that the failure to stop the bomber were not due to bungled efforts “to connect the dots.”<br /><br />As I reported last month, during a December 22 meeting at the White House, President Obama was briefed by top officials from the CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security “who ticked off a list of possible plots against the United States and how their agencies were working to disrupt them,” as The New York Times disclosed January 18.<br /><br />Last month, Newsweek reported that “intelligence analysts had ‘highlighted’ an evolving ’strategic threat’,” and that “’some of the improvised explosive device tactics AQAP might use against U.S. interests were highlighted’ in other ‘finished intelligence products’.”<br /><br />“Finished intelligence products” on an evolving plot to destroy an airliner are hardly “fragments,” as Leiter deceitfully testified to the House Committee. Cheekily, NCTC’s head honcho falsely claimed that his agency, the recipient of billions of dollars in taxpayer largesse, “did not correlate the specific information that would have been required to help keep Abdulmutallab off that Northwest Airlines flight.”<br /><br />Citing the need to “improve” intelligence capabilities by accelerating “information technology enhancements, to include knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database searches, and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence,” Leiter implies that billions more in handouts to security contractors are needed to “solve” the problem.<br /><br />This from the Director of an agency that under his watch wasted more than $500 million on its flawed Railhead project to “upgrade” the TIDE database, an initiative “crippled by technical failures and contractor mismanagement,” as the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and congressional investigators revealed back in 2008.<br /><br />Contractor hanky-panky aside, the problem is not one of technical “upgrades” to an agency that seems more concerned with facilitating the entrance of terrorists into the country “for some reason or another” than stopping them.<br /><br />Rather, it is imperative that the American people demand that Congress and the Executive Branch, which in theory, controls the gaggle of alphabet-soup satrapies in cahoots with the most rotten and predatory sectors of the U.S. ruling class, clean house and bring to book, the rightist elements aligned with the petroleum-intelligence nexus who continue to deploy terror gangs such as al-Qaeda as strategic assets.<br /><br />That they do so regardless of the cost, to the American people and to the victims of illegal U.S. wars and occupations, is a sign that the system, verging on bankruptcy will soon veer even further out of any effective democratic control.<br /><br />How else can one interpret Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair’s chilling assertion to the Senate Committee on Intelligence that he was “highly certain” that al-Qaeda “or one of its affiliates” will attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months,” as The New York Times reported.<br /><br />“We judge that al Qaeda maintains its intent to attack the homeland, preferably with a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the U.S. economy or both,” Blair wrote in his annual threat assessment to the Senate Intelligence Committee.<br /><br />As investigative journalist Russ Baker wrote in his essential book, Family of Secrets, “Authoritarianism thrives in a climate of fear, and the [Bush] administration invoked fear continually. But when it came to security, there was the usual exemption for large corporate entities [and] the tattoo of terror was relentless, especially during the political high season.”<br /><br />Not much has changed since Barack Obama became president. Many of the same dodgy players who ramped-up production lines at the fear factory for the Bush/Cheney team are still in place, doing what they do best: hitting the corporate “sweet spot” for their clients in the Military-Industrial-Security-Complex.<br /><br />In the weeks since the attempted destruction of Flight 253, one thing is certain: the White House, Congress, the intelligence agencies and their handmaidens, the corporate media, are participating in a massive cover-up.<br /><br />And as we enter the “political high season,” what might come next is anyone’s guess.<br /><br />Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/flight-253-intelligence-agencies-nixed-state-department-move-to-revoke-bombers-visa/">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-88434053778295432512010-01-29T10:20:00.000-08:002010-12-08T10:22:18.854-08:00Version 7 of "What hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on Credibilty..." is at the Journal of 9/11 Studies<p></p><p></p><p>In this version an additional photograph of debris has been included, wing loading on the spiral descent of flight AA77 has been calculated and the description of the position of CIT has been enlarged. Version 5 included a table showing that a range of flight paths exist which would enable a Boeing 757 to hit the light poles and the Pentagon without experiencing excessive g-force. As some researchers have stated that this is impossible the issue of misinformation arises and is examined in a postscript.<br /><br />Read: <a href="http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf">http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf</a><br /><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-3845736754961934052010-01-21T09:27:00.000-08:002010-12-08T09:58:19.370-08:0060 Aerospace Engineers Call for a New 9/11 Investigation<p></p><p></p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TP_GykkVb9I/AAAAAAAAAaU/pSMCfjiWK1M/s1600/60-aerospace-engineers-call-for-a-New-911-investigation.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 250px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n6omdNCm_I/TP_GykkVb9I/AAAAAAAAAaU/pSMCfjiWK1M/s400/60-aerospace-engineers-call-for-a-New-911-investigation.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548371838055575506" border="0" /></a>As the number of verified architect and engineer petitioners at <a href="http://ae911truth.org/">Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth</a> passes 1,200, the number describing themselves as aerospace engineers, or as engineers who have contributed professionally to the aerospace field, exceed sixty. These sixty-plus engineers were motivated to place their names on the public record as a matter of professional and social responsibility.<br /><br />While the skills necessary to conduct professional forensic analysis of destroyed buildings is largely distinct from those experienced in aerospace engineering, the basic physical laws involved in an analysis of the speed, symmetry, and energy input/output balance of the World Trade Center’s destruction involve only high school physics and chemistry, some lookups regarding the energy necessary to crush concrete, and basic arithmetic.<br /><br />Here is a listing of these sixty-plus aerospace engineers, together with brief bios and their statements made at the time they signed. The engineers are listed alphabetically, grouped with those having full careers in aerospace listed first, and those with less than 30 years in aerospace listed second.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Engineers with Full Careers in Aerospace</span><br /><br /><a href="http://world911truth.org/documents/60_Aerospace_Engineers_Call_for_a_New_911_Investigation.pdf">Download PDF version</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Phil R. Bales</span>, Aerospace Reliability and Life-Cycle Engineer. Employers have included major commercial engine companies, Teledyne CAE, Raytheon, and US Navy Civil Service.<br /><br /></p><blockquote>“I was acutely aware of Engineering Cost Analysis and Life Cycle Cost Analysis, with many post graduate courses in these disciplines. My career was heavily biased toward statistical analysis and Warranty Cost Forecasting, requiring me to consider all possibilities, emphasizing the likelihood that the less likely events should be considered less heavily.<br /><br />“Perhaps, this is why I was extremely reluctant to even consider the possibility that 9/11 could have been a staged event. ‘What is the chance that our own government could pull that off and get away with it?’ I pondered. When I was confronted with the facts, and I considered the reality that the temperatures of jet fuel combustion do not support the suggested failure modes posed by the government’s official report, I was forced into a paradigm shift. This reality has changed my entire perspective on the groups that I had previously dismissed as emotional, uneducated fools. I was wrong and I am grateful to the 9/11 Truthers for holding me accountable for the Truth! Now, I too am a 9/11 Truther.<br /><br />“The facts about the collapse of three WTC buildings on 9/11/2001 just do not support the theory posed by the PBS Report, or the US Government’s publication. There must be further explanation to satisfy my hunger for the truth about the horrible realities of the WTC and Pentagon murders.<br /><br />“As an engineer, as a patriot, as citizen of the United States of America, I demand that the government which is accountable to its citizens appoint an independent commission to investigate and report on the Truth of 9/11/2001.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. Robert M. Bowman</span>, Lt. Col., USAF, ret; Exec VP, Millennium III Corp; Vice-Pres, Space Communications Co; Director of Advanced Space Programs Development, US Space Division (USAF); 101 combat missions F4, Vietnam; Head of Aero. Eng. Dept & Asst Dean, AF Inst of Tech, WPAFB.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The official explanation in the NIST report violates the laws of physics. It is physically impossible for a building (or anything else) to fall at near-free-fall speed and do work (smashing steel and concrete) on the way down. An external energy input (like explosives) is absolutely essential. In addition, for the top of one of the towers to tip about 30 degrees and NOT continue tipping and falling off violates the law of conservation of angular momentum. The symmetrical collapse of building 7 due to highly asymmetrical damage is also unbelievable. We have not yet been told the truth. If the government has nothing to hide, why continue to hide everything? Why not a new and truly independent investigation?”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. Alvin M. Bloom</span>, Engineering consultant. BS, MS, PhD in Aerospace Engineering from University of Texas at Austin 1967<br /><br /><blockquote>“Building collapses (straight down) at free fall speed could only be caused by a controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Browning</span>, M.S. 35 years engineering experience with a NASA contractor, Bell Labs, Bellcore, AT&T Labs and Cingular/AT&T Mobility (12 years Engineering Management)<br /><br /><blockquote>“The only steel framed skyscrapers to have ever collapsed as a result of a fire were WTC 1, 2, and 7. These buildings were built to withstand the impact of a fully loaded Boeing 707, an aircraft about the same size and weight as the aircraft that hit them on 9/11.<br /><br />“Temperatures produced by the fires simply did not reach those required to have a significant impact on the building’s structural integrity. Firemen 2 floors beneath the impact area in one building radioed out that the fire was controllable. Obviously he was not confronting a temperature of 2000 degrees only two stories above him. Pictures showed survivors of the impact standing in the hole made by the aircraft. These people wouldn’t have been there under the kind of conditions assumed by the official story.<br /><br />“Fireman recalled hearing a series of secondary explosions exactly like those that would have been used to cause a controlled demolition and that the collapses looked exactly like that’s what happened.<br /><br />“WTC 7 was hit by nothing and yet collapsed in the same way as the towers. Molten metal containing sulfur, indicating thermate, remained underneath all three buildings for weeks after 9/11. The structural steel debris was carted away as soon as possible without inspection. Taking pictures of ground zero or even stopping to look at it was made a criminal offense.<br /><br />“The impact of the aircraft and the resulting fires could not possibly have caused the twin towers to collapse and saying that the collapse of WTC 7 was due to the impacts is simply absurd.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. David Chen</span>, PhD in EE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Worked at various aerospace companies doing artificial intelligence work, networked, real-time systems, and network security. Currently an Associate Technical Fellow at the Boeing Anaheim, California site.<br /><br /><blockquote>“NIST & the US Congress should be ashamed of the poor investigation.<br /><br />“Thanks to the architects & engineers of this site for carrying the torch for truth.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Malcolm Davis</span>, Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas (Austin) in 1961.<br /><br /><blockquote>“It is absurd to think that WTC 7 collapsed as a result of the events, as generally promoted, surrounding September 11.<br /><br />“It is indeed depressing to observe that a large number of United States citizens didn’t even know that WTC 7 even existed.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Joseph L. DeClue</span>, Graduate MIT Class 1951, Retired Pres. Database Multitech, Designed analog and digital circuits. Eventually managed as Chief Engineer and V.P. Engineering of several companies and founded Database Multitech as a design and service company.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The Government’s politically-correct explanation is not credible. It seems highly likely that our government must have had some part or at least been aware of the pending attack. Also the lack of response by the Air Force was not credible.”<br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dwain A. Deets</span>, Former Aerospace Research Engineer. While at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, held positions of Chief, Research Engineering Division, Director for Aeronautical Projects, and Flight Research Program Manager.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The many visual images (massive structural members being hurled horizontally, huge pyroclastic clouds, etc.) leave no doubt in my mind explosives were involved.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thomas James Dolan</span>, 45 years as mechanical/project engineer on Apollo manned lunar landing program, X-15, B-70, T-39, aircraft accident investigator (USC & FAA certified), Boeing 767, Space Shuttle, Navstar Global Positioning System and the Space Station.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I have seen on TV commercial buildings collapse under controlled demolition prior to 911. I have been told that no certified US demolition companies will comment officially on 911. I personally saw and heard in real time 2 firemen (one dirty and exhausted, seated outside on a low brick garden wall) and another just reporting for action – nice and clean. Both were looking at Building 7 in the near background (1 block?) away and to the question for the exhausted one by the fresh one regarding its status the exhausted one looked at his watch and said as clearly as I can remember, ‘Its going down about 4:30! I didn’t think too much about it at the time but now I think about it a lot whenever 911 comes up!’”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Larry Erickson</span>, Retired NASA engineer (33 years). Performed research in the fields of structural dynamics, aerodynamics, aeroelasticity and flutter.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Serious technical investigations by experts seem to be lacking from the official explanations.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Edmond (Monty) John Forbes</span>, In 1981 joined MITRE Corp, Bedford MA as Lead Sys Engineer for airborne Wide Body Presidential assets. This extended to Special Service classified systems in both fixed wing & rotary wing platforms until retirement in 2004.<br /><br /><blockquote>“True, both WTC 1 & 2, North & South structures were impacted by commercial “767′s” killing innocent passengers, crew & hijackers along with occupants in the building floors at point of impact. The devastation and human loss beyond the impact site was due to other influences because of the proven design and features of the Towers.<br /><br />“The temperatures in the impact areas due to burning Jet-A fuel and the office furnishings and business tools could NOT rise to the level of 3000-4000 deg. F necessary to deform and fail structural steel joints and the total collapse of the structures.<br /><br />“Such ‘failure’ could only be caused by man-made features of pyro-technical assets pre-placed by ‘outsiders.’ Look at the destruction of WTC 7. No aircraft or heavy debris collateral from the Towers struck that building.<br /><br />“All destruction was in the classical method of building REMOVAL to make way for new assets.”</blockquote><br /><br />Marc Graziani, Engineer and engineering manager for Sperry Utah and Univac for many years, primarily in the aerospace industry.<br /><br /><blockquote>“There is no degree required for simple common sense, if all structures fell as these structures did then why do we spend millions of dollars each year paying demolition experts to demolish structures for minimal collateral damage? This is not a perfect world, no structure of this magnitude could weaken perfectly and collapse in on themselves.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. Jay Kappraff</span>, Assoc. Professor of Mathematics. Chemical engineer with Dupont 1960-1961, Aerospace Engineer with NADA 1963-1965, Ph.D. in mathematics from NYU Courant Inst. specializing in Plasma Physics, Assoc. Prof of Math. at New Jersey Inst. of Technology 1974-present.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The analysis of the 3 collapses of the WTC as narrated by Richard Gage is very convincing. That the building collapsed near the speed of gravity has no other explanation other than controlled demolition. The symmetric collapse reinforces this hypothesis.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kathleen McGrade</span>, B.S. Materials Engineering at NMIMT, class of ’78. Joined a start up named Starstruck formed to launch a rocket for delivering satellites into near earth orbit. Was with two other start ups, Metcal and Crystallume. Now owns a “regular” company that inspects and tests fire trucks throughout CA & CO.<br /><blockquote><br />“After reading everything I could find for four months on the subject to where my head was spinning, I realized that all the evidence you need to see the truth is in the 10-second video of the Bldg. 7 collapse. You don’t need an engineering degree to see it.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David Wayne Nicholson</span>, Windhunter Corporation President. Worked in the nuclear, automotive, aerospace and pharmaceutical industries concentrating on the design of machinery. Some equipment contained 3,000 degree F gases that were used to test gas turbine components.<br /><br /><blockquote>“My professional experience with metals in high temperature environments convinced me that the three buildings could not have been demolished with jet fuel fires.”.<br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Keith Emanuel Noren</span>, Senior Systems Engineer. 35 years engineering mostly in Missile Defense (IR Sensors, Discrimination, Flight Test Planning).<br /><br /><blockquote>“Way too many questions unanswered – 3 Towers apparently destroyed (pulverization of concrete, melting temp not reached, free fall speed, upward steel beams, chem analysis showing explosives, molten steel in basement, rapid removal of debris), too many advance intel notices to be pure incompetence, insider trading, virtual Air Defense shutdown, Norm Mineta/Richard Clarke vs Dick Cheney testimonies, Pentagon withholding of surveillance cameras, black hole/no aircraft debris at Shanksville, …”</blockquote><br /><br />Robert W. Poltz, President and CEO of Design Analytx International, world leader in high tech systems reliability design analysis. Published 19 articles on Reliability Engineering 2000-01. Member of the Society of Reliability Engineering, IEEE, and ASQ (American Society for Quality).<br /><br /><blockquote>“I became keenly aware that something wasn’t right about the whole scenario surrounding the collapse of two skyscrapers. Having grown up in the shadow of the Empire State Building in New York City in my youth and young adult life, I remember hearing in school that lower Manhattan was ‘Ground Zero’ in the event of nuclear attack. Living and working in skyscrapers is the norm in NYC. They are virtually indestructible given the amount of steel used and a history of over-building these structures. Then I saw the Loose Change video and that opened my eyes in disbelief that our government could do something like this and hope to get away with it. Let’s start with independent hearings to determine the cause of failure of these buildings from a scientific analysis. Let the evidence lead us from there towards criminal prosecution of the guilty.”</blockquote><br /><br />Attila M. Revesz, Senior Member of IEEE and Senior Member of AIAA, Worked as a research engineer and taught college level physics and math in Hungary. Worked as a design engineer in aerospace industry and business manager in California.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Watching the rapid and symmetrical collapse of the building to its own footprint contradicts the official story. The sound of explosion at ground level shortly prior to collapse suggests controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eddy Shalom</span>, Over 30 years of experience working in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in flight electronics and other areas, as an engineer and as a technical manager.<br /><br /><blockquote>“As a physics major, it has been clear to me for some time that the ‘Official Conspiracy Theory’ is totally absurd.<br /><br />“It is not clear to me why so many intelligent people with the same education and training refuse to even review the evidence with an open mind.<br /><br />“This is our greatest challenge and underutilized resource.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Engineers with less than 30 years in Aerospace</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Melissa Allin</span>, P.E., B.S. Aerospace Engineering, University of Oklahoma. Over 15 years in mechanical design, pumping systems and fluid systems design and testing.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I have spent five years researching and discussing the events of 9/11. The reason I would like to sign this petition for a new investigation is due to the unanswered questions, informational gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies of the 9/11 Commission Report in general, and because of the unacceptable work of the NIST in investigating the collapse of the towers specifically.<br /><br />“The tragedy of 9/11 and the mass of civilian deaths that occurred that day demand a proper investigation, unbiased fact-seeking, and full-disclosure. The American people have been charged $16 million by the NIST and received nothing of value in return for that price. I would lose my engineering license if I pulled that stunt.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">William J. Blanch</span>, Aerospace Controls Engineer, formerly with NASA Ames and Lockheed Martin.<br /><br /><blockquote>“As a Controls Engineer I worked with angular momentum and I just couldn’t understand how the vector of the collapse was perpendicular to the ground and straight down the center of the buildings. The expansion of the trusses would need to be ‘linear’ for this collapse vector to be possible.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Raymond William Blohm</span>, Aerospace Engineer, formerly with Boeing Vertol, Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, and Warner Robins Air Logistics Center.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Since the ‘attack’, I have been perusing the credible books and documentaries concerning either the actual event or the greater political — intelligence agency — corporatocracy — financial setting. Books like James Bamford’s The Shadow Factory & Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and documentaries like Zeitgeist, The Movie: World Trade Center and Core Of Corruption have caused me to doubt the official story (including the building collapses). We need to know what kind of world we live in.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Arthur L. Carran</span>, P.E., Commercial Pilot Certificate with Instrument Flight Rating; B.S., Aerospace Engineering Technology, Kent State University; Professional Engineer, State of Ohio; Employed in Aerospace Engineering field since 1983.<br /><br /><blockquote>“WTC 1, 2, and 7 show that the official story is false because of the symmetrical collapse, the free-fall speed of the collapse, the pulverization of the concrete to dust, the cutting of the columns to convenient lengths, and the persistent molten pools of steel. The Pentagon event shows that the official story is false because of the improbable flight path flown by the 757. The Shanksville event shows that the official story is false because of the characteristics of the aircraft debris field.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thomas Edward Carter</span>, Optical Engineer for over 14 years. Have worked in the defense industry, semiconductor industry, biological industry, R&D and aerospace industries.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The Tower 7 collapse needs to be investigated more thoroughly. Physics is a tough competitor.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David M. Clifford</span>, Aerospace engineering graduate from Cal Poly SLO with emphasis on mechanics of composite materials.<br /><br /><blockquote>“It is a sad day for humanity when institutions are killing their own for conquest/monetary gain. The evidence clearly shows demolition was behind the collapse of all THREE towers.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Erwin DeJong</span>, MS (Mechanical and Structural Engineering). Currently occupied in offshore (steel structure) and aerospace engineering.<br /><br /><blockquote>“From a technical point of view it is not explainable that a steel structure sinks down into its own footprint with obviously no resistance after intense fires or even a plane crash.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Dewey</span>, Mechanical Engineer. Over 25 years experience developing products and systems, and analyzing failures in the aerospace, electronics and medical fields.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The official report describing the cause of the collapse of the three structures at the World Trade Center seems to reach conclusions not based on the evidence presented and does not address evidence that does not support the conclusion. It is not credible.<br /><br />“Many actions costing many lives and billions of taxpayers’ money have been initiated based on the story repeated in that report. The American people, and the people of the world, deserve a thorough review of all the relevant data and facts and an open analysis and conclusion from a reputable and diverse professional group. Please find the courage to support revisiting the facts surrounding the collapse of the buildings on 9/11. Thank you.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Maurizio Di Pierro</span>, Graduated in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I am convinced that a steel frame building has a very small probability of collapse in an event of fire. The WTC 7 collapse is not explainable without resorting to controlled demolition. The symmetry and velocity of collapse, the dynamics of collapse in general point toward the controlled demolition as a cause of collapse.<br /><br />“Also, certain footage fully qualifies as forensic evidence.<br /><br />“As for the airplane hitting the Pentagon, I support PilotsFor911Truth.org, and find it implausible that the airplane ‘vaporized’ upon impact scattering so few debris and showing a narrow and deep penetration into the building.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Robert G. Doniacour</span>, E.E., Trained as an Electrical Engineer. I’ve worked for NASA and other companies designing control systems for mechanical motion control systems.<br /><br /><blockquote>“We must perform publicly and with peer review an extensive analysis of the WTC collapse. The official explanation stops at the onset of collapse. To even explain the start of the collapse without explosives requires some far-fetched ideas. There are lots of energy analyses to do that I have not seen done.<br /><br />“How can multi-ton steel beams be ejected with enough force to embed themselves in buildings far away?<br /><br />“What explains the symmetry of the collapse? Uncontrolled phenomena are seldom symmetrical.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Benjamin Erwin</span>, B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from M.I.T. with specialization in structural engineering. M.A.T. in Physics Education.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The lack of any core columns still standing even though the fall was straight down is certainly puzzling.”<br /><br />Jean Evrard, Univ of Brussels (1963, engineering), Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (1967, aerospace), von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Brussels (1968, fluid mechanics). After having worked as a researcher for NASA, moved from science to business.<br /><br />“Compare the WTC steel beams with the Madrid tower steel beams … Madrid fire photos<br /><br />“Unlike the twin trade towers (and WTC 7), this 32 story steel beamed building remains standing after burning for 17 hours straight.<br /><br />“Does steel act differently in Spain and the USA?<br /><br />“When and how will we legally sue the Bush Administration?”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Christopher Thomas Fagan</span>, Project engineer for NASA battery backup unit on mobile launcher. Worked for 5 years before company went off shore.<br /><br /><blockquote>“3 buildings coming down with 2 planes doesn’t work out. The new stories of superthermite in the dust at four locations shows that the demolitions were planned. As an engineer with statics and dynamics classes as well as properties of materials, I want to see the equations. Smarter people I trust will analyze these with a fine-toothed comb. It is hard to hide from a complete set of questions.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. Edwin L. Force</span>, Experience includes 20 years Oil & Chemical Industries, 10 years NASA, now retired.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Information available suggests thorough, unbiased, complete investigation is warranted. Credentials of critics are impressive.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">T. Mark Hightower</span>, Worked initially in the chemical industry. For the last nearly 20 years, worked in aerospace. Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as well as a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I woke up to the problems with the building collapses in January 2004 when I stumbled upon a web site that showed evidence that they were brought down with controlled demolition. It is clear that the buildings had help to bring them down. The collapses of WTC towers 1 and 2 were obviously far more energetic events than can be explained by some sort of progressive gravitational collapse initiated by a simple weakening of the structure by hydrocarbon fire. Here I am thinking of the tremendous dust clouds (pyroclastic flows) and the nearly free-fall speed. Building 7, not hit by a plane, appears to have been a classic controlled demolition, and perfectly symmetrically executed.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brett M. Hoffstadt</span>, Advanced degree and nearly 20 years experience in engineering and aerospace.<br /><br /><blockquote>“WTC 7 had no logical or physical reason to collapse as it did. That event deserves an honest investigation and explanation.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">William T. Holmes</span>, Degree in aeronautical engineering, but with interest in architecture and structural engineering. This continued even with aeronautical engineering career.<br /><br /><blockquote>“No question of demolition. See voluntary society, where you’ll find a chronology of U.S. false flag events and Tower profitability information. Also there is documentation of Tower bi-metallic corrosion, and a demand by the EPA that Towers 1 and 2 be disassembled by 2007 rather than demolished. Disassembly was prohibitively expensive. Corroborating evidence of this is needed.<br /><br />“Is it possible that every tall building is wired for demolition to avoid toppling due to an earthquake or bomb, and in the case of the Towers, the buildings were demolished to avoid collateral property damage the moment they started to topple, despite being occupied? Building 7 would argue against that.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Scott Nigel Hudson</span>, Aeronautical Stress Engineer for three years in Bristol, England. Helped design primary flight control actuators for helicopter & U.A.V. applications. Worked on aircraft landing gear also.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Theoretical impossibility for a steel-framed skyscraper to collapse symmetrically virtually into its own footprint at near-free-fall speed due to office fires, while looking like a controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bruce C. Jenkins</span>, Design Engineer on several upper stage and satellite structures including satellite boosters and aircraft fuselage, with Lockheed Missiles & Space Corp and Aerospace Corp.<br /><br /><blockquote>“It is beyond engineering comprehension that the WTC buildings could have collapsed the way they did by any other means than a controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David C. Lasich</span>, B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 1990. Worked in the field of engineering for over 15 years. Also earned a secondary teaching credential and have taught math up to the high school level.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The few videos I have seen and interviews I have heard were taken with much skepticism. However there are many troubling questions that I feel the 9/11 Commission did not answer. The most troubling to me is that the investigation was obviously not done in a completely objective and scientific way. Much evidence was neglected, and those on the panel most likely had prejudices to the findings.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eli Aaron Meyer</span>, Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1998.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I tend to view “conspiracy theory” material as a skeptic, and this is how I approached this issue. After reading peer-reviewed studies done at Brigham Young University, I began taking the issue seriously. The fact that many other high-rise structures have sustained fires for long durations without structural failure really makes me question how Jet A fuel burned at atmospheric conditions (sustained fires, post-explosion) could possibly generate the heat necessary to compromise the structural integrity of the steel to result in structural failure. The near free-fall collapse speeds (documented on video) of the buildings doesn’t seem possible from a localized structural failure. If there was structural failure as a result of fire and impact, I would expect an asymmetrical failure of the buildings; however the buildings almost entirely [came straight down] upon themselves. I would like to see some more research done upon this subject.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Terry Petersen</span>, E.E., Served six years in the Army. Got my degree and went straight into an aerospace company and have been there for 12 years.<br /><br /><blockquote>“My main problem is the amount of rubble that went over the sides combined with rapid collapse.<br /><br />“My opinion is that contrasting the South Tower core standing after the collapse to what Bazant presents may be the best way to get “skeptical” engineers on board.”<br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gregory A. Prinz</span>, Mechanical Engineer. I graduated in 1986, worked in the aerospace/telecommunications industry as a production engineer, building countermeasures defense systems for the military until 1990.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I originally (immediately after the attacks) thought that the official story of collapse made sense from an engineering standpoint. However, after spending countless hours reading reports, looking through comprehensive engineering analyses, studying the tower’s design aspects, and seeing what a poor, non-technical report/explanation was produced by our government, there is no doubt that there needs to be a more thorough investigation into what happened. It does not add up.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Samuel Lowndes Ready</span>, Received MSEE from University of Southern California with an emphasis on computers in 1958. Then worked in Aerospace for 26 years for several different companies in So. Cal.<br /><br /><blockquote>“From all the different videos I have seen it seems very clear that the collapse of the 3 WTC buildings was due to controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David Roark Redick</span>, 5 yrs rocket engineer and 30 years telecom sales, eng., and management; CEO and co-founder Silicon Valley startup Fiberstreet in 2000.<br /><br /><blockquote>“No way except controlled demolition do all parts of a floor collapse at once; plus sequence of floor collapses top to bottom on WTC 1&2.<br /><br />“The Twin Towers were built with an exterior structure of large vertical I-beams. No way do these disintegrate into short pieces…”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Remington</span>, Composite Design Engineer. B.S. Aerospace Engineering, UCLA. Structural Composite and Material Design, Aerojet<br /><br /><blockquote>“I do agree that the implosions of each WTC building appear to have many more characteristics of a controlled demolition, than not. Significant quantities of thermite present in the rubble is sufficient evidence, alone, to warrant a thorough investigation.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">John C. Rice</span>, P.E. (ret.) Retired Transportation Engineer. Worked in aerospace defense for Martin Marietta on the Gemini and Prime projects. As a transportation engineer, specialized in traffic signal systems.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Since September 11 I have collected hundreds of photos and articles that point to 9/11 being an inside job. I want to see the criminals brought to justice.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniel W. Richard</span>, P.E., LS (retired). Graduated from University of Arizona 1950 and worked for various companies (Fluor Corporation, Fisher Contracting, Pan American World Airways Guided Missile Range Department) and also the U.S. government (Federal Aviation Agency, U.S. Forest Service).<br /><br /><blockquote>“I accepted the government’s conspiracy story as given out by the mainstream media and did not give much, if any, thought to it until a neighbor on March 1, 2006 brought me a story from the Desert Morning News in SLC, Utah.<br /><br />“It was dated 1-28-06. I contacted the journalist and asked if there were any other stories and she sent me two others. After reading them and finally thinking about it and based on my engineering education and experience, I realized that we have been lied to and that there was a coverup. For instance if the floors pancaked and fell one on the other from the fires, which could not possibly melt and cut the steel, the 47 massive columns over a quarter mile high would still be standing!<br /><br />“There was no forensic investigation and the steel fell in lengths that could be loaded and trucked to the west coast and shipped to Asia. Also the 9/11 Commission Report did not mention the 47-story WTC 7, which fell the afternoon that the two towers fell in the morning! A sure sign of a false report.<br /><br />“My opinion is that the 3 WTC buildings fell as a result of planted cutting charges — an inside job. …”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Roland R. Rodriguez</span>, Worked in the aerospace and defense industry for almost 25 years developing, integrating, troubleshooting, and testing complex electronic and software systems.<br /><br />“It is inconceivable that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed as they did because of fires as the public has been led to believe. This is not just an opinion, but a very well educated guess. Although I studied electrical engineering, Georgia Tech–as most engineering universities–required that I take courses in physics, statics, dynamics, thermodynamics.”<br /><br />Marc Salesse-Lavergne, Graduated as an Engineer from the Institut Superieur d’Electronique de Paris in 1987 (major in solid state physics and micro-electronics). Electronics engineering for Aerospatiale, then aeronautics engineering for Eurocopter company from 1990 to today.<br /><br /><blockquote>“From the elements presented so far, I understand the 2 main hypotheses are:<br /><br />1) WTC towers’ structural damage by the initial impact, followed by softening of this steel and concrete structure from fire exposure, until the upper building weight crashed the lower weakened structure. Since no other case is known of such equivalent buildings being destroyed by fire, then this explanation only holds if the initial damage was large enough. Are you aware of any evaluation of the energy dissipated by the initial impact, and simulations or computations of how much damage it could have caused?<br /><br />2) Controlled destruction by coordinated explosions all along the fall path. Although most of what is left of the towers have disappeared, explosives traces are no doubt to be found in what remains.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dick W. Scar</span>, Experimental Test Engineer, Pratt & Whiney Aircraft ’65-’68; Powerplant engineer, United Air Lines ’68-72. Owned and operated family retail business ’72-04. Now Retired<br /><br /><blockquote>“Of all the astounding events on Sept. 11, ’01, I was most started by how the WTC buildings collapsed. I would never have expected that to happen.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">James Edwin Seymour</span>, Mechanical Engineer. In-depth, widely varied technical experience in both aerospace and commercial areas with major accomplishments on many top high-tech projects for Fortune 500 companies. Heavy MIL-STD experience.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I think 9/11 was an inside job. I’m less certain about the bombs in the buildings. I saw a video on the web showing controlled demolitions. The explosions were huge concussions and louder than the sound the fall made.<br /><br />“I’m signing this petition because a real investigation needs to be done.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mike Strasser</span>, Product Design Consultant. Have worked at NASA Ames. Founded and manage a product design firm in San Francisco.<br /><br /><blockquote>“There seems to be some very compelling facts that lead me to believe that it’s not a simple terrorist attack that destroyed all three buildings.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. William F. Stubbeman</span>, 1987 BSE in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Princeton; 1992 medical degree from Columbia University in New York; 2000 began private practice in psychiatry; 2009 2000-present private practice psychiatry in LA, CA<br /><br /><blockquote>“The results of the peer-reviewed study published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2, 7-31 contains clear scientific proof that unreacted nanothermite explosive fragments were found in the dust from the world trade center collapse. Methods used for analysis include optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, spectroscopy, and calorimetry. They witnessed and photographed triggered micro-explosions from the nanothermite fragments. These micro-explosions produced the same heat and force output as laboratory nanothermite. The dust was sampled from four different locations soon after the collapses. One sample was collected about ten minutes after the collapses of WTC buildings 1 & 2. All dust samples produced essentially the same findings. The unreacted explosive fragments can clearly be seen under low-power magnification, as photographs from the paper illustrate. This type of explosive is apparently untraceable, unlike most kinds of demolition materials. Eight different authors from universities and organizations around the world including Denmark, Utah, Indiana, Australia, Berkeley, Dallas contributed to this paper. This kind of science cannot be fudged. After reading this I became convinced that the reason for the clear and undeniable presence of explosive residue in the dust should be thoroughly re-investigated, especially since the NIST & FEMA reports did not even look for or mention these findings.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anthony Szamboti</span>, Mechanical Design Engineer with over 20 years experience in the Aerospace and communications industries, where I have designed a large variety of structures required to perform in dynamic environments.<br /><br /><blockquote>“After watching the twin tower collapses live I wondered to myself where all of the energy came from to cause such rapid collapses. At the time I did not know how the buildings were designed and also heard a few days later about a civil engineering professor saying there was a 30g dynamic load. This was probably Dr. Bazant of Northwestern University. I somewhat accepted this but still wondered. After hearing about Dr. Steven Jones bringing up issues with molten metal in the rubble in early 2006 I decided I should read his paper. I found it on the Internet and after reading it started looking much harder at those collapses myself. Unfortunately, there is little doubt that the collapses were caused by controlled demolitions and it appears the aircraft impacts were causal ruses.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">George Vega</span>, Quality/Manufacturing Engineer with experience in aerospace and defense, telecommunications, and computer chip manufacturing industries. Specialist in statistical quality control and computer aided design and manufacturing.<br /><br /><blockquote>“The 9/11 building collapses have the appearance of a demolition. The Pentagon has the appearance of a missile strike. I would like to know the truth about why WTC Building 7 collapsed.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">James Vogt</span>, Graduated from Univ of NH in 1979. Design engineer for Raytheon Missile Systems Division. Self-employed as programmer since 1985.<br /><br /><blockquote>“After 5 semesters of physics in college it is clear to me that these buildings were brought down via controlled demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Robert R. Walker</span>, 35 years experience in instrumentation supporting structural testing. I worked in aerospace for 28 years testing strength of spacecraft materials. I am still active in material testing and hold US patents for load sensors.<br /><br /><blockquote>“After viewing the building 7 collapse, I have to say if somebody told me that a demolition expert was reducing building 7 to rubble I would agree. The thermite connection is strong evidence that somebody orchestrated cutting the under-pinnings of building 7 and probably had the twin towers prepared for demolition.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Christopher Wilder</span>, 30+ years of wide mechanical engineering experience; Consulted with internationally known entities Kaiser Aluminum, Bechtel, Lawrence National Labs, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Applied Materials, Intel, NASA, and BOC.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I concluded early on that the ‘official explanation,’ even before the 9/11 Commission report, did not add up. The first couple of items that I found suspicious were 1) the pulverizing of the concrete and 2) the free fall of the Towers in less than 10 seconds. Since 2001 I have read many books on the subject starting with Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid, The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin (I saw him speak in Berkeley a year ago with Peter Phillips) and Towers of Deception by Barrie Zwicker—the latter of which included the CD The Great Conspiracy. From the latter book I agreed with the author (and Richard Gage whom I heard on KPFA today) that there needs to be another, more thorough, investigation of the events of 9/11/2001.<br /><br />“To add to my list of suspicious items, I saw a public showing of a CD, in 2004, where the focus was on experienced criminal investigators and how they were making the case about the rapid shipment of the steel from the Towers to India and China and that act was ‘destroying evidence at the scene of a crime.’<br /><br />“I worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center from 2001-2005. I was amazed how otherwise very savvy physicists and engineers didn’t want to entertain the thought, or evidence, that the ‘official explanation’ did not add up. They willingly accept the official ‘pancake theory.’ I have my own theory about their willingness to accept the official explanation. Several years ago I came across a term called ‘cognitive dissonance.’ The psychological description goes like this: the term describes an uncomfortable mental tension that arises from results from having two (or more) conflicting thoughts at the same time i.e. ‘The Towers falling was a bad, terrible event’ and ‘My government is here to help me and they couldn’t have had anything to do with the destruction of the Towers.’”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dr. Frank Wolstencroft</span>, Research in metal deformation (and in particular machining). Industrial experience in the aerospace industry.<br /><br /><blockquote>“There are too many unanswered questions about 9/11 in order to believe the official version of events. A more thorough investigation is needed to arrive at a more accurate assessment. There is not enough energy contained in jet fuel to explain the total collapse and destruction of the central core. The molten steel found in the basements of the towers needs to be explained scientifically. The collapse of WTC 7 is also very suspicious.”</blockquote><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Wright</span>, Graduated Wayne State University, BSME 1975, several years working as a design engineer in aerospace, product engineer in automotive, and project engineer in biomechanical engineering.<br /><br /><blockquote>“One does not need to be an engineer to understand that contradictions cannot exist. If the pancake theory is true then we should sure have seen some pancakes, not pulverized concrete and steel. Further, buildings such as WTC 7 do not spontaneously collapse from being hit by debris or from fire.”</blockquote><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://world911truth.org/60-aerospace-engineers-call-for-a-new-911-investigation/">Source</a><center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-982042196065398555.post-52025397042680175032009-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:002009-12-21T15:29:23.390-08:00AFIP: Records Confirming Collection And Identification Of 9/11 Hijacker Remains Exempt From Disclosure<p><p><p>The following is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reply from the U.S.Armed Forces Institute of Pathology regarding a request for records that confirm the collection and identification of terrorists accused of hijacking American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Such records are reportedly exempt from disclosure under exemption (b)(7)(a) which prohibits disclosure of information which would interfere with an on-going law enforcement investigation and exemption (b)7(c), which also provides protection for law enforcement information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of individuals in being associated with criminal activities, including investigators.<br /><br /><center><img src="http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd121/88Badmachine88/3-7.jpg" /></center><br /><br /><center><img src="http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd121/88Badmachine88/4-4.jpg" /></center><br /><br /><em>Dear Mr. Monaghan:<br /><br />This is in response to your August 28,2009, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records establishing the recovery and/or identification of the remains of the terrorists accused of hijacking American airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 2001, collected from the Pentagon building in Arlington, VA and Shanksville, PA. And positively identified following the terrorist attacks of September 2001.<br /><br />You also requested the records establishing the recovery and/or identification of passenger remains of those aboard American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93, who perished in the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001. Your request was received at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on September 3, 2009, and assigned a tracking number of 1O-W2DL-000I5-F was processed in accordance with the Freedom of lnformation Act, 5 United States Code (U.S.C.) § 552.<br /><br />The review has been completed and the potentially responsive documents are being withheld pursuant to the FOIA under the following Exemptions: Exemption (b)(6) prohibits the disclosure of an individual's personal information viewing it as an invasion of their personal privacy; Exemption (b)(7)(a) which prohibits disclosure of information which would interfere of information that could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.<br /><br />Additional you request is being denied pursuant to FOIA Exemption (b)(7)(a) which prohibits the disclosure of information whose release could reasonably be expected to interfere with an on-going law enforcement investigation. FOlA Exemption (b)7(c) also provides protection for law enforcement information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of individuals in being associated with criminal activities, including investigators.<br /><br />Because your FOIA request has been denied, you are advised of your right to appeal this determination to the Secretary of the Army. If you decide to appeal at this time, your appeal must be submitted within 60 days of the date of this letter. In your appeal, you must state the basis for your disagreement with the denial and the justification for the release of information associated with your request for this command. Your appeal should be addressed to: U.S. Army Medical Command, Attention: Freedom of lnformation Privacy Acts Office (MCPA), 2050 Worth Road Suite 21, Fort Sam Houston, Texas 78234-6021, for forwarding, as appropriate, to the Office of the Secretary of the Army. Please enclose a copy of this letter along with your appeal. To ensure proper processing of any appeal the letter and the envelope should both bear the notation, "Privacy Act/Freedom of Information Act Appeal."</em><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.911blogger.com/node/22200">Source</a> <center><img src="http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/truthgonewild/TGWBlogSig.png" /></center>Welcome!http://www.blogger.com/profile/01591016775869936079noreply@blogger.com