Flight 253: Intelligence Agencies Nixed State Department Move to Revoke Bomber’s Visa

Rightist demagogues, as they are wont to do, prattle-on how they, and they alone, can “keep America safe”–by shredding the Constitution.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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?

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?

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)

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.”

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.

Abdulmutallab on the CIA and NCTC’s Radar

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

“Instead,” Newsweek reports, “they point to the intelligence analysis carried out by the CIA and NCTC.”

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.”

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.

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.”

“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.”

Really?

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.”

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.

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.

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.

How’s that for an inconvenient truth!

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Burying the Evidence, “Moving On”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why did the State Department fail to revoke the accused terrorist’s visa?

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.”

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?’”

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.’”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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’.”

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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.

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.

And as we enter the “political high season,” what might come next is anyone’s guess.

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.


Source

Version 7 of "What hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on Credibilty..." is at the Journal of 9/11 Studies

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.

Read: http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf

60 Aerospace Engineers Call for a New 9/11 Investigation

As the number of verified architect and engineer petitioners at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth 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.

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.

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.

Engineers with Full Careers in Aerospace

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Phil R. Bales, Aerospace Reliability and Life-Cycle Engineer. Employers have included major commercial engine companies, Teledyne CAE, Raytheon, and US Navy Civil Service.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.”

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, 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.

“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?”

Dr. Alvin M. Bloom, Engineering consultant. BS, MS, PhD in Aerospace Engineering from University of Texas at Austin 1967

“Building collapses (straight down) at free fall speed could only be caused by a controlled demolition.”

Paul Browning, 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)

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.”

Dr. David Chen, 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.

“NIST & the US Congress should be ashamed of the poor investigation.

“Thanks to the architects & engineers of this site for carrying the torch for truth.”

Malcolm Davis, Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas (Austin) in 1961.

“It is absurd to think that WTC 7 collapsed as a result of the events, as generally promoted, surrounding September 11.

“It is indeed depressing to observe that a large number of United States citizens didn’t even know that WTC 7 even existed.”

Joseph L. DeClue, 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.

“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.”

Dwain A. Deets, 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.

“The many visual images (massive structural members being hurled horizontally, huge pyroclastic clouds, etc.) leave no doubt in my mind explosives were involved.”

Thomas James Dolan, 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.

“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!’”

Larry Erickson, Retired NASA engineer (33 years). Performed research in the fields of structural dynamics, aerodynamics, aeroelasticity and flutter.

“Serious technical investigations by experts seem to be lacking from the official explanations.”

Edmond (Monty) John Forbes, 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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“All destruction was in the classical method of building REMOVAL to make way for new assets.”

Marc Graziani, Engineer and engineering manager for Sperry Utah and Univac for many years, primarily in the aerospace industry.

“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.”

Dr. Jay Kappraff, 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.

“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.”

Kathleen McGrade, 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.

“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.”

David Wayne Nicholson, 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.

“My professional experience with metals in high temperature environments convinced me that the three buildings could not have been demolished with jet fuel fires.”.

Keith Emanuel Noren, Senior Systems Engineer. 35 years engineering mostly in Missile Defense (IR Sensors, Discrimination, Flight Test Planning).

“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, …”

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).

“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.”

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.

“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.”

Eddy Shalom, 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.

“As a physics major, it has been clear to me for some time that the ‘Official Conspiracy Theory’ is totally absurd.

“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.

“This is our greatest challenge and underutilized resource.”

Engineers with less than 30 years in Aerospace


Melissa Allin, P.E., B.S. Aerospace Engineering, University of Oklahoma. Over 15 years in mechanical design, pumping systems and fluid systems design and testing.

“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.

“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.”

William J. Blanch, Aerospace Controls Engineer, formerly with NASA Ames and Lockheed Martin.

“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.”

Raymond William Blohm, Aerospace Engineer, formerly with Boeing Vertol, Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, and Warner Robins Air Logistics Center.

“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.”

Arthur L. Carran, 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.

“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.”

Thomas Edward Carter, Optical Engineer for over 14 years. Have worked in the defense industry, semiconductor industry, biological industry, R&D and aerospace industries.

“The Tower 7 collapse needs to be investigated more thoroughly. Physics is a tough competitor.”

David M. Clifford, Aerospace engineering graduate from Cal Poly SLO with emphasis on mechanics of composite materials.

“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.”

Erwin DeJong, MS (Mechanical and Structural Engineering). Currently occupied in offshore (steel structure) and aerospace engineering.

“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.”

Paul Dewey, Mechanical Engineer. Over 25 years experience developing products and systems, and analyzing failures in the aerospace, electronics and medical fields.

“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.

“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.”

Maurizio Di Pierro, Graduated in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

“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.

“Also, certain footage fully qualifies as forensic evidence.

“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.”

Robert G. Doniacour, E.E., Trained as an Electrical Engineer. I’ve worked for NASA and other companies designing control systems for mechanical motion control systems.

“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.

“How can multi-ton steel beams be ejected with enough force to embed themselves in buildings far away?

“What explains the symmetry of the collapse? Uncontrolled phenomena are seldom symmetrical.”

Benjamin Erwin, B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from M.I.T. with specialization in structural engineering. M.A.T. in Physics Education.

“The lack of any core columns still standing even though the fall was straight down is certainly puzzling.”

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.

“Compare the WTC steel beams with the Madrid tower steel beams … Madrid fire photos

“Unlike the twin trade towers (and WTC 7), this 32 story steel beamed building remains standing after burning for 17 hours straight.

“Does steel act differently in Spain and the USA?

“When and how will we legally sue the Bush Administration?”

Christopher Thomas Fagan, Project engineer for NASA battery backup unit on mobile launcher. Worked for 5 years before company went off shore.

“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.”

Dr. Edwin L. Force, Experience includes 20 years Oil & Chemical Industries, 10 years NASA, now retired.

“Information available suggests thorough, unbiased, complete investigation is warranted. Credentials of critics are impressive.”

T. Mark Hightower, 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.

“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.”

Brett M. Hoffstadt, Advanced degree and nearly 20 years experience in engineering and aerospace.

“WTC 7 had no logical or physical reason to collapse as it did. That event deserves an honest investigation and explanation.”

William T. Holmes, Degree in aeronautical engineering, but with interest in architecture and structural engineering. This continued even with aeronautical engineering career.

“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.

“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.”

Scott Nigel Hudson, 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.

“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.”

Bruce C. Jenkins, Design Engineer on several upper stage and satellite structures including satellite boosters and aircraft fuselage, with Lockheed Missiles & Space Corp and Aerospace Corp.

“It is beyond engineering comprehension that the WTC buildings could have collapsed the way they did by any other means than a controlled demolition.”

David C. Lasich, 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.

“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.”

Eli Aaron Meyer, Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1998.

“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.”

Terry Petersen, 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.

“My main problem is the amount of rubble that went over the sides combined with rapid collapse.

“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.”

Gregory A. Prinz, 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.

“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.”

Samuel Lowndes Ready, 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.

“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.”

David Roark Redick, 5 yrs rocket engineer and 30 years telecom sales, eng., and management; CEO and co-founder Silicon Valley startup Fiberstreet in 2000.

“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.

“The Twin Towers were built with an exterior structure of large vertical I-beams. No way do these disintegrate into short pieces…”

Michael Remington, Composite Design Engineer. B.S. Aerospace Engineering, UCLA. Structural Composite and Material Design, Aerojet

“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.”

John C. Rice, 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.

“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.”

Daniel W. Richard, 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).

“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.

“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!

“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.

“My opinion is that the 3 WTC buildings fell as a result of planted cutting charges — an inside job. …”

Roland R. Rodriguez, Worked in the aerospace and defense industry for almost 25 years developing, integrating, troubleshooting, and testing complex electronic and software systems.

“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.”

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.

“From the elements presented so far, I understand the 2 main hypotheses are:

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?

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.”

Dick W. Scar, 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

“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.”

James Edwin Seymour, 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.

“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.

“I’m signing this petition because a real investigation needs to be done.”

Mike Strasser, Product Design Consultant. Have worked at NASA Ames. Founded and manage a product design firm in San Francisco.

“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.”

Dr. William F. Stubbeman, 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

“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.”

Anthony Szamboti, 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.

“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.”

George Vega, 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.

“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.”

James Vogt, Graduated from Univ of NH in 1979. Design engineer for Raytheon Missile Systems Division. Self-employed as programmer since 1985.

“After 5 semesters of physics in college it is clear to me that these buildings were brought down via controlled demolition.”

Robert R. Walker, 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.

“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.”

Christopher Wilder, 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.

“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.

“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.’

“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.’”

Dr. Frank Wolstencroft, Research in metal deformation (and in particular machining). Industrial experience in the aerospace industry.

“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.”

Brian Wright, 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.

“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.”

Source

AFIP: Records Confirming Collection And Identification Of 9/11 Hijacker Remains Exempt From Disclosure

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.

Dear Mr. Monaghan:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."


Source

The 90-Minute Stand Down on 9/11: Why Was the Secret Service's Early Request for Fighter Jets Ignored?

Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, an officer at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, DC, was notified that the Secret Service wanted fighter jets launched over the nation's capital. It was now obvious the U.S. was under terrorist attack, and Washington would have been an obvious potential target. And yet the Secret Service's request came to nothing.

No fighters had taken off from Andrews by 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit. Nor had any launched by the time Flight 93 apparently crashed in Pennsylvania, shortly after 10:00 a.m., while flying toward Washington. In fact, fighters did not launch from Andrews until over 90 minutes after the second attack in New York. The first fully armed fighters did not launch from there until more than two hours after that attack. So why was the Secret Service's early request for help not acted upon? Why did fighter jets only take off from this massive Air Force base to defend the capital well after the morning's attacks had ended?

SECRET SERVICE CALLS FAA HEADQUARTERS
The Secret Service agent who made the early request that fighter jets be launched appears to have been Nelson Garabito. Garabito was responsible for coordinating the president's movements, and was also the Secret Service's liaison to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He was in the Secret Service Joint Operations Center (JOC) at the White House that morning. Just after Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m., Garabito called Terry Van Steenbergen, his counterpart at the FAA, who was at the FAA headquarters in Washington. According to the 9/11 Commission, shortly into the call, Van Steenburgen told Garabito "that there were more planes unaccounted for--possibly hijacked--in addition to the two that had already crashed."

Possibly in response to this information, Garabito appears to have asked Van Steenbergen to arrange for fighters to be launched over Washington. Van Steenbergen asked three of his colleagues at the FAA to call various air bases to see if they could get fighters into the air. One of these colleagues, Karen Pontius, had previously worked at Andrews Air Force Base, so she made the call to the FAA air traffic control tower there. [1] Garabito would have been unable to call the tower himself, because, according to a 9/11 Commission memorandum, the Secret Service "did not have a phone line to the Andrews tower."

FAA HEADQUARTERS REQUESTS FIGHTERS
Pontius spoke to Steve Marra, an air traffic controller in the Andrews tower. Marra has recalled that Pontius "told him to launch F-16s to cap the airspace over Washington." He relayed this information to the District of Columbia Air National Guard (DCANG), which is based at Andrews, across the airfield from the control tower. [2] Marra appears to have done so when DCANG officer Major Daniel Caine phoned the tower and asked if any air traffic control measures were being implemented in response to the attacks. [3] Caine later recalled that the tower controller--i.e. Marra--told him "that they just received the scramble order." However, oddly, Caine told the 9/11 Commission that the Andrews tower "would not have been in the loop for any Secret Service orders to scramble aircraft." [4]

If the DC Air National Guard was notified of this early "scramble order," why was that order not acted upon? Pilots and others working for the DCANG at Andrews were already well aware of the crisis taking place. Upon learning of the second crash, someone at the unit reportedly yelled, "We're under a terrorist attack!" [5] And, seeing the television coverage of the burning WTC towers, an officer exclaimed, "Well, holy shit, if this is a terrorist attack, we need to get something in the air!"

Furthermore, a request from the Secret Service should have carried considerable weight. According to author Lynn Spencer, "Given that the Secret Service provides protection to the president--and that the president, and the vice president when the president is not available, is the ultimate commander in chief of the military--the Secret Service also has certain authority over the military and, in this case, the DC Guard." [6]

CAINE CALLS HIS SECRET SERVICE CONTACT
After his call to the control tower, Daniel Caine called his contact at the Secret Service, Kenneth Beauchamp, who was at the White House JOC. Caine later told the 9/11 Commission that, on reflection, he believed it was his hearing that the tower had received the "scramble order" that prompted him to call Beauchamp. [7]

And yet Beauchamp supposedly contradicted the Secret Service's request for fighters. Even though it was obvious that the U.S. was under attack, and it should have been clear that Washington was a likely target for any further attacks, he said the Secret Service did not require assistance from the DCANG. Caine had asked: "Do you have any additional information? Are you guys going to need some help?" and Beauchamp replied, "No, but I'll call you back if that changes." [8]

Caine has said that during this call, which he described as "a very quick, confusing conversation," Beauchamp told him that "things were happening and he'd call me back." [9] However, Beauchamp did not call Caine back. [10] (Another Secret Service agent, though, did subsequently call Caine, and asked about getting fighters launched. [11])

According to Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, the acting operations group commander under the 113th Wing of the DCANG, at the time Caine spoke to Beauchamp, "we weren't thinking about defending anything. Our primary concern was what would happen to the air traffic system." [12] But when Brigadier General David Wherley, the commander of the DC Air National Guard, subsequently called the Secret Service JOC shortly after the Pentagon was hit and spoke to Beauchamp, Beauchamp implored him to launch jets to protect Washington. Beauchamp said: "We want you to put a CAP [combat air patrol] up over the city. We need some fighters now." [13]

DCANG PILOT 'STANDING BACK, WAITING'
Between the second WTC attack at 9:03 a.m. and the Pentagon attack at 9:37 a.m., the DCANG fighter pilots on duty at Andrews appear to have been waiting around and doing very little, when they should have been hurrying to get airborne.

One of those pilots, Captain Brandon Rasmussen, was promptly informed of the second crash in New York after it occurred, and immediately realized its implications. He recalled: "I think everybody knew that this was a coordinated attack that was happening. We had no idea who it was by, but it was definitely intentional when you get two airplanes hitting both towers." And yet, he said: "At that point, we didn't know what we could possibly do; that's New York City way up the road. So … like everybody else in America, we're just standing by and watching the news."

This is extraordinary! An Air Force base just 10 miles from Washington had learned that the nation was under attack. And yet the immediate response of its pilots was to stand around watching television!

Rasmussen said it was only after the news broke about the Pentagon being hit that "we knew that we were going to be sticking around home and being quite busy," and "the squadron leadership went into action." [14] DCANG commander David Wherley only headed across the base from his office to the fighter squadron building, to assist his unit's response to the attacks, after a woman at his office saw on television that the Pentagon had been hit and started shrieking. [15]

But even after the Pentagon attack, the DCANG pilots were not immediately told to prepare for takeoff. Rasmussen recalled that at that point, "I'm just kind of standing back, waiting for somebody to task me with something." He added, "I was just waiting at the ops desk for someone to say, 'Okay, we've been cleared to take off and go.'" [16]

FIRST JET LAUNCHES AT 10:38
The first DCANG jet to take off from Andrews Air Force Base was an F-16 that had just returned from a training mission over North Carolina. It had little fuel remaining, carried no missiles, and had only practice ammunition. It took off at 10:38 a.m., an hour after the attack on the Pentagon. [17] Two more F-16s took off at 10:42 a.m., but these were also armed with only practice ammunition and had no missiles. [18] At 11:11 a.m., Rasmussen and Daniel Caine took off in their F-16s, the first fighters to launch from Andrews armed with missiles as well as bullets. [19] By that time, the attacks were long over.

Rasmussen has expressed his and the other DCANG pilots' frustration at having to wait around before being allowed to get airborne. He said that when his unit finally received authorization for its jets to take off, "We were relieved to actually be given permission to go up and do something, instead of feeling totally helpless. I mean, we are fighter pilots, just like guard dogs chomping at the bit, ready to go." [20]

DCANG PROVIDES 'CAPABLE AND READY RESPONSE FORCES'
Although the DC Air National Guard was not part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) air defense force, its mission at the time of the 9/11 attacks included providing "capable and ready response forces for the District of Columbia in the event of a natural disaster or civil emergency." Lieutenant Colonel Phil Thompson, the chief of safety for the DCANG, said, "We practice scrambles, we know how to do intercepts and other things." [21] The unit was in fact known as the "Capital Guardians," implying that it was responsible for protecting Washington, DC. [22]

The fact that, in spite of an early request for help from the Secret Service, it took the DC Air National Guard so long to put together a response to the attacks should be of concern to all Americans. The unit's disastrously slow emergency response needs to be thoroughly probed as part of a rigorous new investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

NOTES
[1] "USSS Statements and Interview Reports." 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 464-465; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Terry Van Steenbergen." 9/11 Commission, March 30, 2004.
[2] "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower." 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003.
[3] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 76.
[4] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major John Daniel Caine, USAF, Supervisor of Flying at 121st Squadron, 113th Wing, Andrews Air Force Base on September 11, 2001." 9/11 Commission, March 8, 2004.
[5] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital." Washington Post, April 8, 2002.
[6] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 123.
[7] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major John Daniel Caine."
[8] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 124.
[9] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 76.
[10] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major John Daniel Caine."
[11] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 78.
[12] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93." Aviation Week & Space Technology, September 9, 2002.
[13] "Memorandum for the Record: BG David Wherley, on September 11, 2001, Commander of the 113th Wing of the USAF Air National Guard, Andrews AFB." 9/11 Commission, August 28, 2003; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 184-185.
[14] Brandon Rasmussen, interviewed by Leslie Filson, September 18, 2003.
[15] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History. New York: Random House, 2007, pp. 445-446; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 184.
[16] Brandon Rasmussen, interviewed by Leslie Filson.
[17] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; "UA93 and Andrews Timeline." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[18] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 82; Brandon Rasmussen, interviewed by Leslie Filson.
[19] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 84; "Relevant Andrews Transmissions." 9/11 Commission, February 17-18, 2004.
[20] Brandon Rasmussen, interviewed by Leslie Filson.
[21] "Andrews Air Force Base: Partner Units." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001; William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 76.
[22] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 122.


Source

Why No Shootdown Order Issued During 9/11 Attacks?

The famous document authorizing shoot down of planes dated 1 June 2001. It's been said this was changed just before 9/11, in June, to give the Sec of Defense authority to order shoot down aircraft. Actually it was updated from 1997 and hardly anything changed from the 1997 order but this is an important document nontheless..........

"1. Purpose. This instruction provides guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects."

"NMCC is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(1) When notified that military escort aircraft are needed in
conjunction with an aircraft piracy (hijacking) emergency, the DDO, NMCC, will notify the appropriate unified command or USELEMNORAD to determine if suitable aircraft are available and forward the request to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(2) Pursuant to reference j, the escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator by direct contact with the NMCC."

"c. If destruction is required, the DDO, NMCC will, forward all
requests or proposals for DOD military assistance to the DOD Executive Secretary and appropriate OSD staff offices, and then to the Secretary of Defense for approval in accordance with DODD 3025.15, paragraph D.7 (reference d)."
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf

So the proper procedure was the FAA hijack coordinator would contact the NMCC who would contact NORAD/Military and get authorization for orders from the Sec of Defense.

But the hijack coordinator is in Puerto Rico, the NMCC officer in charge decides he has better things to do during the attacks, and the Sec of Defense has deserted his post.

"December 4, 2000: Special Forces Commander Appointed FAA Security Chief: US Army Lieutenant General Michael A. Canavan is appointed associate administrator for civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a position that includes being the “hijack coordinator".
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

From DoD Instructions:
"(2) Pursuant to reference j, the escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator by direct contact with the NMCC."
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf

"However, the hijack coordinator, FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security Director Mike Canavan, is in Puerto Rico and claims to have missed out on “everything that transpired that day.” The 9/11 Commission fails to ask him if he had delegated that task to anyone else while he was gone."
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

"The 9/11 Commission fails to ask him if he had delegated that task to anyone else while he was gone."
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

OK....no FAA Hijack coordinator, what about the Secretary of Defense?

“I was in my office with a CIA briefer and I was told that a second plane had hit the other tower.”
“In the meantime, he would get his daily intelligence briefing, which was already scheduled for nine thirty.” Di Rita and Clarke head off down the hallway to the ESC, while Rumsfeld stays in his office. Apparently Rumsfeld will not go to the ESC until around 10:15 a.m.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timelin...

So the 9/11 attacks were an act of war? Well, the Secretary of Defense locked himself in his office and deserted his post then didn't he? No shoot down order, or any orders will be coming from that guy.

And the officer in charge of the NMCC?

"Major General Winfield served as the Deputy Director for Operations, J3, in the National Military Command Center, and was present as the General Officer-in-Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Major General Winfield was nominated for and earned a position as a Senior Military Fellow at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, a national membership organization and "think tank" headquartered in New York City."
http://www.rotc.usaac.army.mil/command/MGWinfieldNew.htm

"was present as the General Officer-in-Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11"
http://www.rotc.usaac.army.mil/command/MGWinfieldNew.htm

not quite....

"Captain Charles Leidig, the deputy for Command Center operations at the NMCC, takes over temporarily from Brigadier General Montague Winfield and is effectively in charge of NMCC during the 9/11 crisis. Winfield had requested the previous day that Leidig stand in for him on September 11. Leidig remains in charge from a few minutes before the 9/11 crisis begins until about 10:30 a.m., after the last hijacked plane crashes. He presides over an important crisis response teleconference that has a very slow start, not even beginning until 9:39 a.m."
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=montague_winfield

Some questions for Gen M. Winfield from the 9/11 commission......

"1) To your knowledge, was the Secretary notified of the second crash? Did the NMCC receive any directions from the Secretary of the Vice Chairman before the hit at the Pentagon?"

"2) What actions were taken in the NMCC between the second strike on WTC (0903) and the attack at the Pentagon (0937)?"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14274468/DH-B3-Gen-Winfield-Interview-Fdr-Ques...

Lots of other interesting questions as well......want to see his answers? Sorry...... for National Security reasons you can't........

"In the review of this file this item was removed because access to it is restricted."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14274468/DH-B3-Gen-Winfield-Interview-Fdr-Ques...

So the FAA hijack coordinator, US Army Lieutenant General Michael A. Canavan, is in Puerto Rico. And apparently no one has replaced him. The NMCC officer in charge decides he has better things to do during the attacks, and the Sec of Defense has deserted his post. How unfortunate.

So how will the FAA and military respond with these major players in the chain of command absent? Well, it turns out we're not real sure. There were a lot of "false statements" being made. The "official story" changed after the 9/11 commission.

According to John Farmer from his book The Ground Truth...

"Northeast Air Defense Sector had eight minutes notice on one flight, five minutes notice on another, and was notified post-crash on the other two." Page 241
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

This from the 9/11 Commission Documents on Referral of False Statements by FAA and NORAD:

"During the course of our investigation, the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States discovered evidence that certain public statements made by NORAD and FAA officials at a Commission hearing on May 23, 2003, and elsewhere, regarding the actions of NORAD and FAA officials in responding to the 9/11 attacks were not accurate."

"Inaccurate Statement #1: The FAA notified the military at 9:16 that United 93 was hijacked."

"During the May 2003 hearing, Commissioner Lehman asked several questions about the path of the Langley fighters, which traveled directly east, over the ocean, and then north toward Baltimore, before heading west to Washington. Why, the Commissioner wanted to know, didn't the fighters head more directly to Washington, if they had been scrambled to respond to American 77, the plane that struck the Pentagon? Col. Marr addressed this question in his response to retired Col. Scott:"

"The answer on AA77 is not easy, nor is it pretty. At the time AA77 was occurring we were focused on UAL93 which was the only confirmed hijack that the FAA had identified to us. My records show UAL93 reported as hijacked at 0916L, once we found it and identified it's [sic] westerly heading, we scrambled Langley at 0924L just in case it turned around toward DC, which it did later. At 0924L we also received a call from the
FAA about AA77 with a follow-up call at 0925 L. It is easiest to explain the simultaneous scramble order with the AA77 notification as the scramble being against AA77 - it takes a lot of time to explain to the public that you're scrambling fighters against a plane heading away from the possible target."

"Col. Marr, in other words, attempted to explain the circuitous route of the Langley fighters in getting to Washington, D.C., by indicating that they were not in fact scrambled to respond to a report at 9:24 that American 77 was hijacked; they were scrambled in response to the earlier "report" that United 93 was hijacked. Thus, the reintroduction of the discredited 9:16 notification time enabled NORAD to explain to the Commission the odd route of the Langley fighters in reaching Washington."

"There were two fundamental problems with the explanation. First, as at least some in the military have known since the week of 9/11, it is inaccurate. The plane had not been hijacked at 9:16; the hijacking did not occur until 9:28 after the Langley fighters were ordered scrambled—and NEADS was not notified until after the plane had crashed. NORAD informed Commission staff at the close of Commission interviews at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs that it now accepts that notification did not occur until after the plane had crashed. Second, as we will now discuss, NEADS was not notified that American 77 was hijacked at 9:24."

"Inaccurate Statement #2: The FAA notified the military of the hijacking of American 77 at 9:24."

"What notification did occur at 9:24? The Mission Crew Commander's staff at NEADS maintains a handwritten contemporaneous log of information received and actions taken (known as the "MCC/T Log"). The 9/11 entry in the log at 9:24 records: "American Airlines #N334AA hijacked." This tail number refers not to American 77 but to American 11, the first hijacked aircraft that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The subpoenaed tapes confirm that this time corresponds to NEADS's receipt of tail number information on American 11 and to reports that American 11 was still airborne and headed towards Washington, D.C."

"Inaccurate Statement #3: When the Langley fighters were scrambled, their objective was to respond to the reports at 9:16 that United 93 was hijacked and at 9:24 that American 77 was hijacked."

"The best evidence for both this inaccurate report and the resulting scramble is the subpoenaed NEADS tape, which records that at approximately 9:21, the Mission Crew Commander spoke the following to the Battle Cab (where the Battle Commander, Colonel Marr, was located):"

"Okay. American Airlines is still airborne, 11, the first guy. He's headed towards Washington, okay? I think we need to scramble Langley right now, and I'm going to - I'm going to take the fighters from Otis and try to chase this guy down if I can find him. Yeah. You sure? Okay. He's heading towards Langley, or I should say Washington. American 11, the original guy. He's still airborne ...."

"Inaccurate Statement #4: Officials were tracking United 93 and intended to intercept the aircraft if it approached Washington, D.C."

"On September 15, 2001, General Paul Weaver, overall commander of the Air National Guard which provided the fighters used to scramble Otis and Langley, told reporters that no fighters were scrambled or vectored to chase United 93: "There was no notification for us to launch airplanes. We weren't even close." That same day, however, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz stated in a television interview that Defense Department officials had been "following" United 93 and were prepared to shoot it down if it approached Washington, D.C."

"The FAA's standard operating procedures for notification of hijackings were disregarded on 9/11. The notifications that did occur, moreover, gave the military no realistic chance to intercept the aircraft, and were sometimes mistaken. NORAD scrambled the Langley fighters in the wrong direction against a nonexistent target. NORAD was, moreover, completely unaware of United 93—the fourth plane—as the flight was heading for Washington."

"The official USAF/NORAD account of 9/11, presented in testimony to the Commission, included in NORAD's official history, and apparently briefed and relied upon by the White House, was that NORAD scrambled its fighters from Langley AFB in order to respond to the hijacking of AA 77 (which hit the Pentagon), that they did not have time to intercept that aircraft, and that DOD subsequently tracked the approach of UA 93 toward Washington, but the aircraft crashed before action needed to be taken."

"The staff does not believe this account is true. Instead we have found, and are preparing to state publicly, that NORAD scrambled its fighters from Langley AFB in order to intercept an aircraft that no longer existed — AA 11 (which hit the WTC) — believing incorrectly that this aircraft might be headed toward Washington and sending fighters up the Eastern seaboard in order to meet AA 11. Further we have found that NORAD did not know about AA 77 until three minutes before it hit the Pentagon, and began diverting the already scrambled aircraft toward Washington against some target (which they did not know was AA 77) one minute before impact, much too late to make a difference. We have also found that NORAD was not tracking UA 93 and did not even know that aircraft had been hijacked until after it had crashed."

"Team 8 has unearthed evidence strongly suggesting the possibility that a USAF officer, and possibly others at the USAF and FAA, must have known that the official story was false, yet persisted in telling it or did not correct the record, even after the Commission began following up with questions after its May 2003 hearing."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15677016/911-Commission-Documents-on-Referral-...

The Inspector General of course in his report did find that officials had made false statements, but it wasn't on purpose. If you want to believe that, here is the report......
http://www.dodig.mil/Ir/reports/06-intel-12.pdf

John Farmer, for one, doesn't buy it....
from his book:
"There are, in sum, significant reasons to doubt the reliability of both Inspectors General reports. Neither finds any evidence that the FAA and DoD coordinated their efforts after 9/11 to reconstruct the story. This conclusion is refuted by the e-mail from CONR to NEADS discussed above, which references the sharing of information, by the fact that NEADS provided its logs to the FAA, and by the fact that the agencies emerged on September 18 with identically erroneous notification times for American 77 and United 93." Page 286
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

I've served in two branches of the armed forces and I find it very hard to believe that the military would cover up for the FAA. In fact I would suspect that not only would they not cover for the FAA but would be outraged that their own headquarters (pentagon) was attacked due to the FAA not informing them in a timely manner. And yet they seemed to have made false statements and pretend the FAA did notify them. The only way (in my eyes)that the military would cover for anyone, would be to cover themselves.

"However, the hijack coordinator, FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security Director Mike Canavan, is in Puerto Rico and claims to have missed out on “everything that transpired that day.” The 9/11 Commission fails to ask him if he had delegated that task to anyone else while he was gone."
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

So who was doing the "coordinating" between the FAA and military? The answer apparently lies in the statement of Acting Deputy Administrator of the FAA, Monte R. Belger.........

Statement of Acting Deputy Administrator of the FAA, Monte R. Belger to 9/11 Commission:

"The Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Va. was our primary source of information about aircraft locations and reports of other unusual situations. Military personnel were assigned to the Command Center on an on-going basis and they became involved in coordinating actions with the military." page 3
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing12/belger_statement.p...

Discussion of Flight 93:
From a tape transcript showing air traffic control actions on 9/11. Officials from the FAA Command Center East, Boston, New York, Washington and Cleveland air traffic control centers, the National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI and others are present on the call:

"MR.: And this is Cleveland Center. Who's up?
MR.: It is the Command Center with about five or six people listening.
MR.:Okay. Mr {inaudible} the chief, just asked if we have any military up or not? Are we pursuing that? We'd like to be able to track this guy so we know what's going on, especially when we lose a transponder.
MR,: We have been in contact with the military cell here in the building and they're working the issue. I'm not sure where they are with--"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13484922/911-Air-Traffic-Control-Transcript

John Farmer:
"Northeast Air Defense Sector had eight minutes notice on one flight, five minutes notice on another, and was notified post-crash on the other two." Page 241
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

9/11 Commission:
"The notifications that did occur, moreover, gave the military no realistic chance to intercept the aircraft, and were sometimes mistaken. NORAD scrambled the Langley fighters in the wrong direction against a nonexistent target. NORAD was, moreover, completely unaware of United 93—the fourth plane—as the flight was heading for Washington."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15677016/911-Commission-Documents-on-Referral-...

Deputy Administrator of the FAA, Monte R. Belger:
"Military personnel were assigned to the Command Center on an on-going basis and they became involved in coordinating actions with the military." page 3
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing12/belger_statement.p...

9-11 commission...
"NORAD was, moreover, completely unaware of United 93—the fourth plane—as the flight was heading for Washington."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12962774/Referral-of-False-Statements-about-91...

From Air traffic control tapes:
"MR.: It is the Command Center with about five or six people listening.
MR,: We have been in contact with the military cell here in the building and they're working the issue. I'm not sure where they are with--"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13484922/911-Air-Traffic-Control-Transcript

It looks like the fault of the FAA not giving the military time to intercept these planes and according to the 9/11 commission not informing the military at all of two of the planes..possibly could be the fault, not with the FAA, but rather......

"Military personnel were assigned to the Command Center on an on-going basis and they became involved in coordinating actions with the military." page 3
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing12/belger_statement.p...

More on the military cells, in hindsight, the last sentence seems most interesting....

From released 9/11 commission records:
"Military/FAA Relationships: There is a natural tension between the two entities because both desire the use of the same airspace for different reasons. As a result of the inherent tension and differing protocols and languages, military cells have been established in FAA to work day-day air space management issues. The New England Region has one such cell, a cell that also provides support to the Eastern Region in New York. Staff held a short discussion with the senior Navy officer in the cell. The cell has 2-3 person contingents from each of the three services and each reports separately to a different boss. The Army and Navy representatives report to their General Staffs at Headquarters US Army and US Navy, respectively. The Air Force Cell reports to the Air Force Liaison Officer at FAA Headquarters. All of the assigned military personnel are either flight or controller-trained and each cell exits to handle administrative matters only. There is no reason that they could have or should have been contacted or interjected themselves in the process on 9/11. The senior Navy officer put in succinctly from a military perspective. There are defined lines of communication and procedures to handle events like that and if he or his other service counterparts had
gotten involved they would have just confounded the situation."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13883328/T8-B2-FAA-NY-Center-Bob-Jones-Fdr-Han...

It would make more sense, that they would lie to cover themselves rather than the FAA. Besides, no shoot down order ever reached any pilot......

John Farmer:
"The authorization to shoot down deviating and unresponsive aircraft was received from the vice president at 10:31 a.m., 15 minutes after NEADS learned that the last hijacked plane, United 93 had crashed. This order was never passed on to the scrambled pilots over New York and Washington." Page 241
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

So the attacks were going to happen. It shouldn't have even reached this stage. Saudi Intelligence knew of these hijackers.......

"Speaking to the Arabic satellite network Al-Arabiya on Thursday, Bandar -- now Abdullah's national security adviser -- said Saudi intelligence was "actively following" most of the September 11, 2001, plotters "with precision."

"If U.S. security authorities had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my opinion, we would have avoided what happened," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/01/saudiarabia.terrorism/

American Intelligence knew of these hijackers.....

"Hamburg - The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had one of the September 11, 2001 terror pilots under surveillance as early as March 1999 after a tip from German security services, according to joint investigative reports in Germany."
http://www.news24.com/Content/World/News/1073/cf1134a97dbb4a9584f6b3f41e...

"In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.
Close surveillance of Mr. Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Mr. Shehhi's roommate.
Asked whether American intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5

CIA Director G Tenet:
"We had at that point the level of detail needed to watchlist al-Mihdhar- that is, to nominate him to the State Department for refusal of entry into the U.S. or deny him another visa. Our officers remained focused on the surveillance operation and did not do so." page 4/27
http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/911project/jci-midhar-hazmi.pdf

July 2001 Phoenix FBI Agent Williams sends memo to Washington warning of UBL supporters going to flight schools......
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/defense/129...

Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent and whistleblower, to CIA director G Tenet:
"You were also told that the FBI had arrested Moussaoui because of a visa overstay and that the CIA was working the case with the FBI. One of the documents given to you even had Bin Laden's picture on it! And the CIA held successive briefings about Moussaoui: August 27th, 2001, with the deputy director of operations; August 28th, 2001, with the executive director of the CIA; August 30, 2001 with the director of Central Intelligence; September 4th, with the executive director of the CIA; and September 10th, with the deputy director of operations."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/how-will-you-look-yoursel_b_...

These attacks were going to happen. It is an undisputed fact, that after the first plane hit the WTC no shoot down orders were given. That after the second plane hit the WTC no shoot down orders were given, that after the pentagon had been hit, no shoot down orders were given, only after the attacks were over was a shoot down order given.

John Farmer:
"The authorization to shoot down deviating and unresponsive aircraft was received from the vice president at 10:31 a.m., 15 minutes after NEADS learned that the last hijacked plane, United 93 had crashed. This order was never passed on to the scrambled pilots over New York and Washington." Page 241
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

Lots "false statements" being made, here's a few from National Security Advisor Rice in 2002.....

C Rice interview Aug 2002:
"Q: And did you have any hunch at that point that it might be terrorism?
DR. RICE: It just didn't come to mind immediately that it might be terrorism. We knew a lot about al Qaeda. We knew that al Qaeda really coveted an attack against American interests, maybe even against the United States. We had gone through a summer in which we had heightened states of alert abroad for our embassies and for our forces, because we were getting a lot of chatter in terrorist channels. But most of it was pointing all of it was pointing abroad, that there was going to be some kind of attack abroad. And the human mind doesn't always put two and two together very quickly, and so, no, in that first attack, it didn't come together for me. When the second plane hit, though, it came together very, very quickly."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III...

"But most of it was pointing all of it was pointing abroad, that there was going to be some kind of attack abroad."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III...

Just a reminder.....

A couple of months after this interview the report of the joint Inquiry by the House and Senate select committee on intelligence was released which made the following points....

"REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE"

"Finding: During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community experienced a significant increase in information indicating that Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida intended to strike against U.S. interests in the very near future."

"Finding: Beginning in 1998 and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received a modest, but relatively steady, stream of intelligence reporting that indicated the possibility of terrorist attacks within the United States."

"Finding: From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons."

"Community received reporting in May 2001 that Bin Ladin supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States to conduct terrorist operations and, in late summer 2001, that an al-Qa’ida associate was considering mounting terrorist attacks within the United States."

"The FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part of “the Bojinka Plot” in the Philippines, discussed later in this report."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

"Community received reporting in May 2001 that Bin Ladin supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States to conduct terrorist operations and, in late summer 2001, that an al-Qa’ida associate was considering mounting terrorist attacks within the United States."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

C. Rice:
"But most of it was pointing all of it was pointing abroad, that there was going to be some kind of attack abroad."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III...

Title of Aug 6 Memo Given to President Bush
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066154

No, she isn't being honest. Will she also "mislead" about a shootdown order?

"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?"

"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."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III...

John Farmer exposes this misleading statement in his book "The Ground Truth"......

"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
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/r...

9/11 Commission admits:
"At 10:10, the pilots over Washington were emphatically told "negative clearance to shoot." Shootdown authority was first communicated to NEADS at 10:31."
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm

There was no shoot down order during the attacks of 9/11.


Source