They Let it Happen

MUZZLING THE DEFENSE

2009-02-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
They Let It Happen
[undated]

Note [added 2/8/09] While I am leaving this post up as-is and FWIW, the core point of it - the apparent "muzzling" represented by the 2001 order - seems to have been debunked. See Mike W's 9/11 Myths page. What I'd previously read as an exception to new restrictions was actually THE change to a MORE restrictive previous order. Good thing I had already called it a red herring, rather than hanging any weight on the issue. So for the record - the June 1 change can have had no direct role in impeding the 9/11 defense, and so it's implementation is not direct evidence of any LIHOP thinking. Apologies also for the late update.
---

As indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case, the Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels. But more tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for these fighters to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain of command to the responsible fighter pilots.

But these guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, extending the need for approval yet further down. A Defense Department directive of June 1 2001 stated: “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 […] forward requests for DoD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval.” [1] Aviation Week backed this up: “On Sept. 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. Someone in the NMCC would call NORAD's command center and ask about availability of aircraft, then seek approval from the Defense Secretary--Donald H. Rumsfeld--to launch fighters.” [2] In other words, the automatic scrambling of fighters was no more – the Secretary of Defense now had to personally sign off before fighters could be sent up, and specifically in response to a hijacking. Michael Ruppert wrote that this change in procedures “demonstrated a willful intent to centralize decision-making away from field commanders prior to the attacks.” [3]

But the 9/11 Commission’s final report states in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” [4] They do not mention how recently and intentionally it had become so unsuited.

Of course “immediate response” actions were allowed without Rumsfeld’s immediate permission, and it appears some thought the attacks fit this exception – neither the Otis nor the Langley fighters, the first wave of defense (scrampled 8:52 and 9:30), were scrambled with Rumsfeld’s permission. He claims he never even arrived at the NMCC until 10:30 am. According to the Commission, Major General Larry Arnold, commander of the Continental U.S. NORAD Region said to one of his subordinates “go ahead and scramble [the Otis fighters], and we’ll get authorities later.” So the fighters were sent up, if slowly and with great confusion, and Rumsfeld’s procedure change becomes a red herring, if a telling one.

Sources: [5] Ruppert, Micheal C. Crossing the Rubicon. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada. New Society Publishers. 2004. Page 316
[6] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm. (need subscription to read it now).
[7] See [5]. Ruppert. Page 337.
[8] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 17

WARGAME IV: VIGILANT WARRIOR

2008-09-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

Update, 9/10/08: I wrote this post a long time ago when i was more "Truthy," but in fact there was probably NOT a wargame called Vigilant Warrior on 9/11 - see comments below. For reference purposes at least however I'll leave this post up. Just read "probable" as "faintly possible," and so on...

USA Today reported in April 2004 article also cited a NORAD press release: “Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft. These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures…” [1] These “mock hijacked aircraft,” otherwise called “live-flies,” are used sometimes in air-based war games involving hijacking scenarios. They are actual planes of a variety of makes, in the air (manned or under remote control), pretending to be hijacked for the benefit of effective training.

Ruppert asked some questions, some regarding live-flies, of Major Don Arias, NORAD press spokesman who was on duty and involved in the response the morning of 9/11. Arias at first dismissed Ruppert as part of the “grassy knoll” crowd, but later gave him some good information in a phone interview and follow-up e-mail. He confirmed Vigilant Guardian, and provided clues on the meanings of nicknames.

“Vigilant or Amalgam means it is a HQ NORAD sponsored exercise. Guardian means it is a multi-command CPX, or command post exercise (no live-fly). So on 9/11, NORAD was conducting a NORAD-wide, multi-command, command post exercise with no live-fly. Other exercise terms include: Warrior = JCS/HQ NORAD sponsored FTX, or field training exercise (live-fly).” [2]

Arias thus confirmed that JCS-connected “Warrior” exercises would involve live-flies faking symptoms of a hijacking. Ruppert further speculated that “warrior” and “guardian” exercises would be conducted jointly in an offense/defense simulation, a possibility he was unable to verify. But whatever its relation to the other war games, there is evidence of at least one “warrior” exercise taking place on the morning of 9/11.

Richard Clarke said in his book Against All Enemies that acting JCS Chairman Richard Myers told him in their videoconference on 9/11 “not a pretty picture, Dick… We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise.” [3] This does not seem to be a confused reference to the already admitted Vigilant Guardian, since that did not involve JCS – but a “Warrior” FTX would have Joint Chiefs involvement – and live-flies. Chalk up another (probable) exercise, this one putting extra “hostile” aircraft in the skies amid the attack.

Sources:
[1] Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon. p 345
[2] Ruppert, Crossing the Rubion. p 368
[3] clarke, Against All Enemies. p 5

THE TERRORISTS "FAILED MISERABLY"

2007-10-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

Another of these telling ironies was al Qaeda’s famous “miscalculation” regarding the effect of their attack on the American psyche. Bin Laden’s network had “intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat,” as the President himself explained bare hours after it happened. But of course, Bush intoned gravely, “they have failed; our country is strong.” Indeed, a wave of patriotism spread across the nation in the wake of the attack, like shockwaves radiating out from an epicenter at Ground Zero. Flags flew off the shelves nationwide as people showed their solidarity with the President, with the victims, with each other. “If it’s anything red white and blue it’s gonna sell” said one Wal Mart employee. Dan Rather said it well when he pointed out the irony: “the terrorists who set out to destroy America failed miserably. In fact, after September 11th, the nation was more united than ever.”

The idea continued well into 2002 at least. The Ad Council started a line of television spots to mark the first Independence Day after 9/11. These promoted the concept of “Freedom.” (Appreciate it, Cherish it, Protect it). In one particularly telling spot, a narrator intoned “on September 11th, terrorists tried to change our lives forever,” as a row of plain looking houses faded to black. Then the houses faded back in decked-out with American flags under a cloudy sky, over which the narrator intoned "they succeeded."
The spot’s writers certainly saw an irony in that, but the irony I see is a bit different, and I read different weather in those clouds. The attack “succeeded” not in intimidating America but, ironically, in boosting patriotism and jingoism – as well as flag sales, Bush’s popularity numbers, military recruitment, church attendance, support for a radical foreign policy of conquest, etc.

Is Osama bin Laden, or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or whatever deputies planned the ghastly attacks really that stupid that they couldn’t foresee the chain of events their actions would trigger? Were they not aware the attack might be seen as a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor,” or fail to realize who would benefit most from the political fallout? If not, their collective intelligence is clearly brought into question. If so, either the true motives of al Qaeda or their guilt for the attack must likewise come into doubt.

THE CHAIN OF COMMAND ON 9/11 {masterlist}

2007-10-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

The National Defense Chain of Command in a wartime emergency at the time of the September 11 attacks was: 1) President, 2) Defense Secretary, 3) regional combatant commanders. This was established by the Goldwater-Nichols DOD reorganization Act of 1986, which also allowed that on the whim of the President and Defense Secretary, communications with and oversight of these commanders pass through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS – the nation’s top military officer)

Tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for fighter jets to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain to the responsible fighter pilots. As the 9/11 Commission explained, “prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense).” [2]

This Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels, as indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case. These guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, with Rumsfeld asserting the sole authority to allow fighters to take off at all. This is covered in more in detail in the post "Muzzling the Defense?"

The 9/11 Commission’s final report later stated in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” It became even more unsuited in the days and hours and even minutes before the attacks, and on the morning of September 11th, strangely, the National Command Authority’s chain of command seemed to sprout new links, swap out old ones, and seemed to not be anchored down to anything. The following posts deal with the US leadership response and the flailings and failings of a Chain of broken links.

- President Bush: “There’s one Terrible Pilot:” The accidental President Stumbles into 9/11.

- Vice President Cheney, the Roadmap Swap, and the “Effort.” Clarifying the Record. Did Bush hand Cheney the joystick to control the attacks?

- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order: Who issued the order and when? 9:45, 10:14, 10:18?

- Link #2 AWOL: Psychic Rumsfeld’s Wanderings

- Myers the stand-in: How he responds "when things are happening."

- First Day Jitters: Sliney, Leidig, Myers: Three Defense Links Swapped out at the last minute at Joint Chiefs of Staff (ACTING Chairman richard Myers, as of ?:00 am, 9/11) Benedict Sliney at FAA Operations Center (first day as of ?:00 am, 9/11) and Leidig at the NMCC (see chart below - standing in as of 8:30 am, 9/11, as per a request from the previous day). This is spooky.

In the end, what we got was a startlingly "unprepared" and disjointed command authority that ran something like this:

WAR GAME 5: GLOBAL GUARDIAN

2007-07-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

WAR GAME 5: GLOBAL GUARDIAN
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
They Let It Happen
Last updated July 27 2007

The Center for Cooperative Research patched together this description of the periodic exercise Global Guardian, directed from the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) center, a bunker set beneath Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska:

"[T]hree special military command aircraft with sophisticated communications equipment, based at Offutt, are up in the air the morning of 9/11. These E-4B National Airborne Operations Center planes—nicknamed “Doomsday” planes during the Cold War—are intended to control nuclear forces from the air in times of crisis. They are capable of acting as alternative command posts for top government officials from where they can direct US forces, execute war orders and coordinate the actions of civil authorities in times of national emergency. [...] Media accounts indicate Global Guardian is cancelled at Offutt shortly after the second WTC tower is hit (at 9:03 a.m.), with staff switching to “real-world mode.” However, even after Global Guardian is called off, the three E-4Bs remain airborne." [1]

The exercise's details and exact purpose remain vague, but it seems to be related to "Continuity of Government" exercises also carried out in the 1980s with E4-Bs and background officials like Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. [2] Whatever the exercise really was, it was it was “in full swing” when the attacks began. Researcher Mark H. Gaffney looked into reports of the mysterious white plane seen and filmed over Washington DC has shown that this was almost certainly a whie, 4-engine E4-B, presumably one of the Global Guardian participants, though there appears to be a massive cover-up of the plane, which apparently must remain secret even after being filmed in broad daylight. [3]

By 2006 anyway, GLOBAL GUARDIAN, along with a space-oriented APOLLO GUARDIAN exercise, are "conducted in conjunction" with the more well-known Vigilant Guardian Exercise. [4] VG was also in full swing on 9/11, so it seems they were allied at the time, officially or otherwise. Gaffney also found that the exercise's being conducted at that time really is an unusual coincidence:

"In previous years the military always staged Global Guardian in October or November; and the 2001 exercise was likewise originally scheduled for October, according to various reports. Curiously, however, for reasons never disclosed, the Joint Chiefs changed the plan and conducted the 2001 exercise during the week of September 11. The following year the date reverted back. The 2002 Global Guardian came off in October, as in previous years, and this has continued to be the case." [5]

Total Coincidences?
CCR: "The Federal Advisory Committee (whose chairman is retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft) is aboard one of these Doomsday planes, being brought to Offutt to observe the exercise. [...] a small group of business leaders are at Offutt Air Force Base for a charity fundraiser event due to take place there later in the day, hosted by the multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. When the attacks begin, these visitors are having breakfast with Admiral Mies, the director of Global Guardian. After the second WTC tower is hit, Mies excuses himself from the group, presumably to assist in canceling the exercise." [7] Later in the afternoon, President Bush and Air Force One landed at Offutt "as a security precaution." It was his second landing since leaving Florida, and he convened a teleconference with the National Security Council from there. [7]

Sources:
[1], [6] Center for Cooperative Research. “Before 9:00 a.m. September 11, 2001: Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, is Directing Global Guardian Training Exercise.” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a900offutt
[2] "Between 1981 and 1989: Officials Airborne in Doomsday Plane." http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a81doomsdayplanes#a81doomsdayplanes
[3], [5] Gaffney, Mark H. "The 911 Mystery Plane - First in a Series." Rense.com. 4-5-7 http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm
[4] Global Security: Vigilant Guardian. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm
[7] "Bush Reacts to Attacks, Moves to Nebraska." By Mike Allen. Washington Post. Tuesday, September 11, 2001; 4:36 p.m http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/bush091101.htm

FAILED AIR DEFENSE {masterlist}

2007-06-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

AN AERIAL BALLET OF PERFECTLY SYNCHRONIZED FAILURES (updated 2/5/07)
“Is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?”
- Larry Arnold, NORAD Commander, upon hearing of the first hijack
“That was news to me. I thought we were still chasing American 11.”
- F-15 pilot “Duff” on hearing a second plane had hit the WTC
“Holy smoke, that’s why we’re here.”
- F-16 pilot “Lou” upon seeing smoke from the Pentagon

This post is to organize and link together all the related sub-posts on the ridiculously inadequate air defense during the 9/11 attack. The air-based wargames, which are referred to often in these posts, are covered seperately in the wargames masterlist. People still argue about whether our fighter defenses could have done anything if they had been better integrated. The answer depends on the presumptions one makes, but basically the answer is yes - there were procedures to defend the nation from roughly the 9/11 threat of suicide hijackings, but they have been magnified, obscured, and muddled by both sides in the post-9/11 debate. And they seem to have not been followed that morning.

This is a chart I made of the timeline of the attack and overall air defense during it - click the image to get a full-size, readable view (can also be saved and printed, 8.5 x 11").

> Status of air terror readiness as of 9/11: Could it be this bad on accident?
- Payne Stewart and Standard procedure: We had standard procedures for intercepting stray planes
- Rumors of a Stand-Down: Unprepared or Stood Down? (neither - this dichotomy is a false one).
- Muzzling the Defense: Rumsfeld's recent changes to fighter scramble procedures - ultimately a red herring?
- Warnings ignored?
- Fighter deployments decided on to defend the known primary zone of terrorism threats: notably inadequate.
- Commercial pilots' right to bear arms in the air rescinded in 2001? Post in the works...

> A Hobbled Defense in Action on 9/11
- Federal Attack Assistance? {masterlist}: The FAA's role in "dropping the ball" on 9/11, in several sub-posts: Sliney, the phantom Flight 11, the mistaken memo, etc...
- Phantom flights/radar inserts
- Radar blind spots
- Otis and Langley: Scrambling against the clock
- Heading and Speed: slowly away from the attacks
- Information shared with the defending fighter pilots: RIDICULOUSLY inadequate

> Permission to use deadly force to protect America: Negligently (?) denied
- No Such order recieved by the five defending pilots.
- Bush at Booker: Isolated accidents require no defensive orders, and Bush insisted on pretending it was an isolated accident until the last possible minute - and then still refused to issue the order for at least another hour. By the official story.
- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order

PRE-9/11 PENTAGON PREPAREDNESS

2007-06-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

OF FORESIGHT AND ANCHOR CHAINS
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud, January 23 2007
reposted 4/23/07

Although most Pentagon workers in the area hit on 9/11 were still sitting at their desks doing their usual work as Flight 77 came crashing through their office doors, there were well-established and practiced procedures for “exactly” such an event. The Washington Post reported shortly after 9/11 the account of a Pentagon medic who was sitting and reading the just-printed emergency response manual for what to do in case the building was struck by a civilian airliner at the precise moment that happened. [1] But unfortunately these procedures don’t seem to have helped much, given no radar track of the incoming plane, no warning, and thus no time given to implement any such measures.

Dennis Ryan's photo of a mock-up used for MASCAL (slightly filtered for artsy effect)

Among the emergency drills they’d held was one in October 2000, less than a year prior as part of what the Military District of Washington News Service called at the time "several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room." Author Dennis Ryan provided photographs as well for one of the scenarios, the "Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise" (MASCAL) the mock passenger plane crashed into the mock Pentagon courtyard appears to be a big one but probably not a 757 as Loose Change claims. One participant explained as far-fetched as the MASCAL scenario may have seemed, “you have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here.” [2] Navy Capt. Charles Burlingame was allegedly part of this drill, though the charge is unsubstantiated. If you don't know the significance of that already, check this post.

Whether the MASCAL crash was supposed to be an accident or an attack didn't seem to matter - it was all about the aftermath. But in the next noteworthy drill conducted eight months later, the preparations were getting more specifically 9/11-related. As US Medicine magazine, "the voice of Federal medicine," reported in October 2001:

"Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May. In fact, the tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic here in the Pentagon trained jointly in May to fine-tune their emergency preparedness, afterward making simple equipment changes that would make a difference Sept. 11 when the hypothetical became reality." [3]

This is amazing; according to this article, they were looking at a hijacked 757 strike four months before that happened on 9/11, preparations that "made a difference." Of course the best difference would have been to simply evacuate the building well before the plane arrived (35 minutes after it became clear the nation was under attack), or to have worked out air defense plans, perhaps with NORAD, to stop any such weaponized aircraft short of the building.

A possible third drill may have been planned to that end in conjunction with a proposed mid-2001 NORAD exercise simulating suicide hijacking attacks. USA Today famously reported on April 18, 2004 that "in the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, [NORAD] conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties." While nearly all of these focused on threats coming from across the Atlantic, they had the 9/11 targets in mind. earlier drills had focused on such an attack against the WTC, in this case “the target was the Pentagon – but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic.” [4] The original source for this is an e-mail from a former NORAD official obtained by the Project On Government Oversight, which explained that NORAD "wanted to develop a response in the event that a terrorist group would use an airliner as a missile to attack the Pentagon, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the scenario as "too unrealistic." [5] This was in April 2001 POGO reports, a month before they prepared for defense against an unobstructed hijacked plane/missile hitting their building, and five months before 9/11, when they had no capabilities in place "to protect the Pentagon," but at least they had the aftermath covered well enough.

Buth even with just the two drills plus whatever else went in to the process, the Pentagon's bureaucracy had just enough time to get the emergency procedures ironed out and printed before the precise "unrealistic" scenario envisioned four months earlier came crushingly true. But there was apparently not enough time to fully integrate the plan with things like useful warning procedures - a tragically stalled process that would help illustrate Rumsfeld's charges that pre-9/11, the Pentagon was "tangled in its own anchor chain." How conveniently illustrative of his and his colleagues' known desire for a 21st Century "process of transformation" there.

Sources:
[1] Oil Empire. http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html
[2] Ryan, Dennis. "Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies." Military District of Washington News Service. November 3 2000. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlan.html
[3] Mientka, Matt. Pentagon Medics Trained For Strike. US Medicine. October 2001. http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=272&issueID=31
[4] as passed on by US Rep. Jan Schakowski: http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/press2004a/pr4_20_2004mis.html
Also at 9-11 Research: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/post911/commission/usatoday_noradx.htm
and the original still up at USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
[5] Project on Government Oversight. "Joint Chiefs of Staff Rejected "Airplanes as Missiles" Scenario Five Months prior to 9/11." April 13 2004. http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ha-040401-homelandsecurity.html

THE HIJACKERS {masterlist}

2007-06-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

This post is to link and organize all the posts dealing with the 9/11 hijackers. This does not claim to be a complete or comprehensive list by any means, just a few things I found in my research. Most of the research is a little old, and I'm less-versed in recent developments, but some observations herein are worthy of note. But really for me this is an afterthought - no matter where the attackers came from and how they really attacked, it was the US government and military that were tasked with defending America - and they failed with curious precision.

[click picture to enlarge - open in a new window to match names to faces as you read other posts]

> Identity: who are they and where did they come from?
- The Miracle Passports: Implausibly Tying the Attackers Directly to the Scene of the Crime
- The Three Abdul Almoaris: The cases of confused identity regarding the alleged hijackers are many and well-covered elsewhere. Here I'll cover one telling case I haven't seen anyone else take on. Not that I've really looked. I'd rather keep my illusion of a "hot exclusive story:"
- Strategy and Tactics: The Five Hijackers Trained by the US military?

> Immunity: how did they get here and how did they avoid arrest?
- The Hijacker Express Lane: How'd they get in the country? Through the wide open side door.
- The Buried Reports
- Mission Improbable: Violations of Operational Security that "miraculously" didn't unravel the plot.
- Atta Boy: The Man We Love to Hate and all his glorious idiocy
Applying for a USDA loan to finance the attack

> The Terrorland Connection: Florida and 9/11
- Terrorland I: Daniel Hopsicker reveals a Floida Perfect Bush Circle
- Terrorland II: The Dutchmen Come to Town/Government Work?
- Terrorland III: Learning to Fly
- Terrorland IV: The Dutch Boys Become an Embarrassment
- Terrorland V: Map of coincidence: Fly the Friendly Skies of Terrorland

> No Hijackers
- If not a sucide pilot, what else could have been flying the airplane missiles of 9/11? There's at least one possibility that is "remote" but plausible.
- The Evidence: the audio record is the only serious obstacle
- Ulterior Motives: De-blaming Arabs, blaming Jews, etc.
- The Dangers: Why the no-hijacker theory could be another baited honeytrap

THE BOJINKA COVER STORY {masterlist}

2007-06-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

This is to link the few posts that will collectively explain a disturbing possibility that the US government essentially scripted out the 9/11 attacks nearly seven years before, planted the idea into the early body of knowledge about the terrorists later to be called al Qaeda, and then reported as a precedent once a similar attack was carried out on 9/11. The plan was again recycled, this time exactly, as the London terror threat of 2006 that banned all liquids from flights after fears of a ten-plane attack using liquid bombs - precisely the idea behind the original "Operation Bojinka," uncovered in early 1995.

Admittedly, this is a bit off the Let it Happen tangent of the blog here as a whole, integrating best with a MIHOP interpretation. But I'm not sure where else to put it, and I'm already covering the hijackers here, so here it goes.

Bojinka intro: From the "cover story" chapter IV of my book "Scenario 12-E: The Philosophy, the Technology, and the Cover Story Behind Shadow 9/11."

----
The Perfect Story
Now we have clarified that at the flip of a few switches, it would be technically possible for otherwise ordinary commercial flights to be turned into flying tombs, sealed off from the outside world and locked into their final flight plan by people who would be sitting safely somewhere else, perhaps sipping lukewarm coffee. But what would the eyewitnesses say?

What was needed was the tactic, the fingerprint, to mask the operation and steer the blame in the desired direction. The cover story was already well-developed in advance, not by a government agency or think-tank, but by the natural flow of world events (or at least by some collaborative effort between the two). And the direction of the blame was towards Eurasia and the one enemy in particular who was safely camping out in the heart of that central continent – Afghanistan.

To all eyewitness accounts, Shadow 9/11 would appear like a bin Laden attack, fitting with preconceptions. Ah, the preconceptions… The writers of that Lone Gunmen pilot, as they scratched it out in 2000, had to wonder “if I were a right-wing-faction-type, and I wanted to convince people we’d been attacked by a “tin pot dictator” how would I do it?” When we disregard the PC bias on TV that filters out racial references, it’s pretty clear this would be an Arab dictator, probably bin Laden, maybe supported by Saddam Hussein. What did these sci-fi writers decide? Apparently the same thing the planners of Shadow 9/11 decided.

The cover stories for both Scenario 12-D and for Shadow 9/11 may have been lifted straight from al Qaeda’s famous Operation Bojinka, an early airliner-centered terrorist plot discovered in the former U.S. colony of the Philippines in early 1995. In an interview after the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed claimed that the 9-11 attacks he allegedly financed were a revived and streamlined version of this six year old plot. Like no other single story, this one looks like the taproot of September 11’s infamous tactic. But the exact degree of foresight, what was known by whom, is a matter of great contention, and the factual record is left fragmented. There are weird forces at work here.

- Bojinka I:Phase One: A Loud Bang in Manila Ramzi Yousef, a chance explosion, a pope spared, and the origins of the plot in the Philippines, early 1995.

- Bojinka II:Phase Two: The Evolution How Bojinks DIDN'T lead to a prediction of the 9/11 tactic - simultaneous suicide hijackings - even though it clearly should have.

- Bojinka III:Before Bojinka: Corder, the GIA, and Cetron’s Scenario The Pentagon report that laid out the Bojinka threat just days before it was discovered in terrorist minds.

- Bojinka IV:A Real and Repeated Threat Before 9/11, suicide hijackings were actually real and didn't need to be imagined. The only thing different about 9/11 is this one wasn't stopped.

- Bojinka V: Florida 2001: Bojinka Becomes 9/11?

- Bojinka VI: Brzezinski's Bombshell/What Was Left Out: A prominent article on bojinka by Zbigniew Brzezinski's nephew, and the general deletion or minimization of the suicide airliner hijacking element.

- Bojinka VII: Professed Ignorance, Maintaining the Focus "I don't think anyone could have predicted..."

- Bojinka VIII: Operation Brzezinski? the Brzezinski article and the word "Bojinka" get me thinking to a bizarre and probably useless observation that still gives me a chill and I thought it worth sharing. (coming soon)
--------- -----------

LICENSE TO KILL: DENIED

2007-05-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

On September 11, two F-15s were sent from Otis AFB in Massachusetts to protect Manhattan from further hijacking attacks. They weren’t scrambled until 8:52, six minutes after the first impact, and didn’t arrive at the scene until 9:25, 23 minutes after the second impact, and they reportedly didn't learn of any impact at all until they got there after the NY leg of the attack was complete. One of the pilots, code-named “Nasty,” lamented to the BBC “for a long time I wondered what would’ve happened if we’d, uh… been scrambled in time.” [1]

I would like to invite you to wonder along with him; imagine for a moment that the two Otis fighters had been scrambled “in time,” sent in the right direction, and flew full-blower. Imagine them arriving in Manhattan at, say, 8:54, just after the first plane had hit the WTC. They would be circling nervously in their F-15s, seeing United 175 coming in fast and low. Imagine the fighters rushing out to intercept it, ready to scatter the airliner over some farmer’s field before it scattered itself against and into the South Tower. Imagine them on the scene, ready to act and deal with the nightmares later, and prevent the second catastrophic collision and alleged jet-fuel-induced collapse that killed so many.

Now imagine they were left without legal authority to fire; imagine them asking and asking again as the hijacked airliner came into view “permission to engage?” and receiving the reply “do not engage.” We’d like to think they would pull the trigger anyway, and “take lives in the air in order to preserve lives on the ground,” the standard response in such an un-standard case. But it’s also possible they may have done their job and follow orders, even though the protocols mandated that they watch powerlessly as United 175 passed them by and slammed explosively into the South Tower. That would not look good for the government.

In fact, that would have been the situation if the pilots had been scrambled sooner. Every source agrees on this point; the fighter pilots sent to defend the skies were never instructed (and thus never allowed) to fire on airliners until long after all the targets had crashed. In fact, this itself may be the best clue in understanding the botched reaction up to that point. If not for the unlikely string of synchronized failures that kept all fighters well away from the hijacked planes, the lack of authorization would have been absolutely crucial and a political liability to say the least.

The Langley pilots did receive a vague order at 9:55 from the Secret Service to protect the white House. Recollections vary: “I want you to protect the White House” - ”The White House [is] an important asset to protect” - “Be aware of where it is… it could be a target.” [2] This was not taken by the pilots as a clear shoot-down order, signed off on by the proper authorities. Fifteen minutes later, in fact, the pilots were told they had “negative clearance to shoot.” [3] Jere Longman concluded that after patrolling Washington for hours “both Honey and Lou said that no one had given them any orders to shoot down a commercial airliner.” [4]

New York flight control mentioned to Otis pilot Nasty “if we have another hijacked aircraft we’re going to have to shoot it down.” He knew this was conversational and “not connected to the chain of command.” [5] “Only the President could make that decision,” Nasty explained to the Cape Cod Times, “and he was indisposed at a public event,” referring to his now-famous reading exercise at a Florida elementary school. [6]

Sources:
[1] “Clear the Skies.” BBC Video. 2002.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute. New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 436.
[3]See [2]. Page 453.
[4] Longman, Jere. Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back. New York. Harper Collins. 2002. Page 222
[5] See [2]. Page 440.
[6] Dennehy, Kevin. “'I Thought It Was the Start of World War III'” The Cape Cod Times. August 21, 2002. Accessed November 13, 2004 at: http://www.poconorecord.com/report/911-2002/000232.htm.

LIHOP vs. MIHOP {and MIHOP masterlist}

2007-05-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

LIHOP vs. MIHOP: to the uninitiated, it looks like a discussion about where to eat pancakes, but is really one of the long-running debates among those who reject the official story of 9/11 – did they Let it Happen on Purpose or Make It Happen on Purpose? Originally I saw that the military’s defenses failed with curious precision and let the attack happen. Bolstered by the immediate and brazen capitalization on the tragedy, this was my first and most lasting impression. But later I came to see the merits of a MIHOP explanation, the basic idea of which is if you want it done right, do it yourself. The former I came to call the "New Day of Deceit" construct, the latter became "Shadow 9/11."

Quickly enough I decided both were more likely than the official story, both meant we were in deep trouble and people needed to be alerted, and both share the common thread "On Purpose." So I set to defining and exposing that purpose but found the sheer volume of possible ulterior motives made such a cataloguing a daunting task. It’a also redundant; everyone has seen from minute one how this was America’s New Pearl Harbor, our own finest hour emerging from the darkest, and clearly Bush’s defining moment, his only claim to mass public loyalty.

So seeing that purpose was clearly established, I returned to the method: Allowed or Orchestrated? The name of this page may indicate a LIHOP leaning, and that is indeed where the evidence herein points. But in fact I’m a LIHOP/MIHOP fence-sitter; and it must be noted that their Letting It Happen doesn’t necessarily exclude the possibility of their also Making It Happen. LIHOP in fact is a necessary sub-set of a mechanically engineered inside job; it would do no good to make it happen if you then let normal defense protocols stop the plot in mid-flight. So either way, unless I’m wrong and it was just an unprovoked surprise attack that accidentally benefited them so, they had to have purposefully Let It Happen. If you don’t believe me, read at least three posts from this site and then reconsider.

It’s nigh impossible to prove that defenses were scuttled on purpose. So far as I know there is not even one charge from anyone in the defense system claiming an outright military stand-down.But to strongly indicate a purposefully thrown defense is not too hard at all. In many cases, all one need do is read a few lines of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report and make the connections they were unwilling to. Others take deeper research, and a little imagination run by factual and common sense checks goes a long way.

The reason people have so gravitated to MIHOP theories is the possibility of finding hard proof of such. Slow fighter scrambles and inadequate deployments don’t necessarily prove anything, but if we could verify that a missile hit the Pentagon, or that the WTC attack planes were drones fitted with missile-firing pods, we’re clearly looking at someone closer to home than foreign terrorists. But the main problem with such evidence is it either doesn’t exist or is impossible to verify in the sea of fakes, which I regularly take on over at The Frustrating Fraud.

So, for evidence of a LIHOP scenario, either stand-alone or as a subset of a MIHOP operation, read anything on the site. As for the good arguments for a MIHOP explanation – which almost by definition are unprovable – there are some I felt worth covering on this and my other pages.

On the Mechanics of Shadow 9/11:
- A Plane IS a missile: On Raytheon’s August 2001 perfection of a new remote piloting system for airliners.

- Vialls, Von Buelow, Home Run: A Questionable, self-referrential tag-team bring us an intriguing but unprovable charge: a secret airliner remote control system in place since the 1970s.

- Flight 93 and the audio record: the prime stumbling block of the no-hijacker remote-control theory.

- A remote control airliner as a tool in an inside job worked its way into a pre-9/11 TV program – flown into the WTC BY the Pentagon, no less.Scenario 12-D: Another X-File

- Getting the drones in the air? The War Games of 9/11 {masterlist}

- Northwoods 2001?: The curious revelation of Northwoods decades later and just months before 9/11 and the Acting JCS Chairman caught in the thick of conspiracy theory crossfire.

Questioning the Official Perps:
- The Hijackers {masterlist}: a partial compilation of the problems with the official perpetrators, lending weight to the possibility that they were not as reported and possibly not even on the planes.

- A Fabricated threat? Bojinka {masterlist]: The 9/11 tactic was the telltale sign, leading back to Operation Bojinka, a plot found in an ‘al Qaeda’ brain in the Philippines in the first days of 1995. Just a few days earlier the same threat was written up by a Pentagon adviser and then deleted until after 9/11. Is this the cover story to mask Shadow 9/11 and direct blame to the Arabs?

- Threats of war and other such provocations in Afghanistan in the months before 9/11. Did this play any role in the long-planned attack? If so does this transform LIHOP to MIHOP?

BUSH, CHENEY, AND SECRET SERVICE COMMUNICATIONS

2007-05-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
They Let It Happen
last updated 5/7/07

A year after the attack, CNN retold Vice President Cheney’s version of what happened. Cheney was in his proper office in the West Wing when he heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC. Unlike everyone else whose reactions I’ve looked at - with the notable exception of counter-terrorism “Czar” Richard Clarke - Cheney had an inkling this may not be a simple accident. “He watched TV and hoped that his instincts were wrong.,” CNN reported. He explained “it was a clear day, there were no weather problems, and then we saw the second airplane hit in real time. At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act.” [1]

Shortly after this, his Secret Service agent “all of a sudden materialized right beside me and said, 'Sir, we have to leave now.' He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, and into the underground shelter in the White House." [2] So while, as many noted, the Secret Service was allowing the President to linger in the open at the schoolhouse, they were “propelling” Cheney to safety in an underground bunker. While both men were on the East Coast, they seemed to be operating in two different time zones.

This underground shelter was the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). From the previously unused but well-equipped PEOC, as CNN explains, the Vice-President “directed the U.S. government's response” to the attack. The actions Cheney took “included moving key members of Congress to a secure location and having the Secret Service bring his wife, Lynn, to the bunker.” [3] Somehow, these radical moves failed to halt the attack.

Cheney and Rice share a tense moment in the PEOC on 9/11. Photo chosen for presence of Cheney on the phone.

Cheney’s account actually offers little in the line of useful action, focusing more on talk of raw emotion – agony and impotence and rage – just like the rest of us – after he saw the second plane hit on the TV - just like the rest of us. But Bush talked to Cheney on a regular cell phone instead of a secure phone, which wasn’t working right. Cheney’s information seemed partial and confused. The 9/11 Commission, based on Cheney’s private testimony, decided Cheney suffered major communications problems that hampered a response. [4] CNN described the PEOC’s performance on 9-11 “a day of crisis with some hitches.” For example, “Cheney wanted to track TV reports of the devastation and listen in on communications with the Pentagon.” But, as aide Mary Matalin recalled, “you can have sound on one or the other and he found that technically imperfect.” [5]

But we know he was in the presence of Secret Service agents during the entire crisis, and the evidence indicates their communication abilities were widespread and efficiently used. Cheney seemed to slip on this once, telling Meet the Press, on September 16 “the Secret Service has an arrangement with the FAA. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was ...” [6] He cut himself off there and shifted gears. What this means is that after the first plane hit, and we would presume soon after, the Secret Service knew, and were listening in on, at least, the FAA’s communications by about 8:50. The second plane was already confirmed hijacked by FAA and NORAD and headed to New York by this time.

Richard Clarke also testified in his book Against All Enemies that at about 9:40, Brian Stafford, Director of the Secret Service “slipped me a note. “Radar shows aircraft headed this way.’” Clarke explained “Secret Service had a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.” [7] The 9/11 Commission also has backed up direct Secret-Service-FAA communications in their final report. [8] The Secret Service knew all these things and were just a “hey, you!” away from Cheney’s ear and Bush’s.

The communication abilities of the Secret Service also, apparently, extended into the military chain of command, their contacts to the very front lines of the battle. Recall that it was the Secret Service who called the Langley fighter pilots around 9:55 and told them to “protect” the White House (though with no mention of precisely how). [9] They also called Andrews Air Force Base, near the Pentagon, shortly after 9:03 to request fighter jets, which didn’t get any off the ground until 10:42. [10]

Bush's famous shot talking to Cheney from Air Force One

So the Secret Service - and thus both Bush and Cheney - were as in the communications loop as they wanted to be. There was two-way access to all information from FAA, regional Air Force bases, and even the actual fighter pilots, and probably also NORAD, NMCC, etc. So why, with access to a bird’s eye view of the situation and universal communications at Cheney’s and the President’s fingertips, wasn’t an adequate defense marshaled? The story that the phones didn’t work well that day, that Cheney couldn’t talk to the Pentagon and get his intelligence briefings from CNN at the same time, etc. does not pan out well. Something else, probably something sinister, had to be behind this curiously long roster of excuses.

[1], [2], [3], [5] “Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker.” CNN. September 12, 2002. Accessed at: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/
[4] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 40.
[6] Thompson and the CCR. "The Terror Timeline." Page 375.
[7] Ruppert, "Crossing the Rubicon." Page 427.
[8] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 41.
[9] Thompson and the CCR. "The Terror Timeline." Page 436.
[10] Thompson and the CCR. Page 458.

FAA II: THE PHANTOM FLIGHT 11

2007-05-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

NORAD’s third “incorrect” story to the 9/11 Commission was their testimony that the Langley fighters, scrambled eight minutes before the Pentagon was hit, “were scrambled to respond to the notifications about American 77, United 93, or both.” This certainly makes sense: there were planes targetting Washington. The jets that should have been sent for them were sent. But they were not sent up for that reason. As late as 9:35 no one in the defense system was aware of any real designs on Washington – or so says the Commission. Instead, they decided, “the notice NEADs received at 9:24 was that American 11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington, DC.” [1]

It was to intercept this ghost target that the Langley fighters took off at 9:30. The commission cited a taped NEADS call, conversations within the FAA system, contemporaneous logs from NEADS, Continental Region headquarters, and NORAD, among others. “Yet this response to a phantom aircraft was was not recounted in a single public timeline or statement issued by the FAA or Department of Defense. The inaccurate accounts created the impression that the Langley scramble was a logical response to an actual hijacked aircraft.” [2]

Here is the transcript of this call, placed from FAA’s Boston Center to NEADS at 9:21:
“FAA: Military, Boston Center. I just had a report that American 11 is still
in the air, and it’s on its way towards—heading towards Washington.
NEADS: Okay. American 11 is still in the air?
FAA: Yes.
NEADS: On its way towards Washington?
FAA: That was another—it was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower. That’s the latest report we have.
NEADS: Okay.
FAA: I’m going to try to confirm an ID for you, but I would assume he’s somewhere over, uh, either New Jersey or somewhere further south.
NEADS: Okay. So American 11 isn’t the hijack at all then, right?
FAA: No, he is a hijack.
NEADS: He—American 11 is a hijack?
FAA: Yes.
NEADS: And he’s heading into Washington?
FAA: Yes. This could be a third aircraft.” [3]

The NEADS technician who took this call from the FAA immediately passed the word to the mission crew commander, who reported to the NEADS battle commander: ”Okay, uh, American Airlines is still airborne. Eleven, the first guy, he’s heading towards Washington. Okay? I think we need to scramble Langley right now. And I’m gonna take the fighters from Otis, try to chase this guy down if I can find him.” The Otis pilots were not dragged from their just-established patrol of Manhattan, but they also were nearly sent after this non-existent target.

The Commission ultimately found themselves “unable to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information.” So let’s trace it back, based on the information that they had. In their report they note that the call was placed from FAA’s Boston Center to NEADS at 9:21, and in turn ”Boston Center had heard from FAA headquarters in Washington that American 11 was still airorne .” [4] So at some point prior to 9:20, someone at the national HQ in DC called this in to Boston, responsible for tracking these flights and already in contact with NEADS.

There are numerous possible explanations for this false report, and it wouldn’t have been the only one of the day. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told Richard Clarke, after the first two planes had crashed, “we have reports of eleven aircraft off course or out of communications, maybe hijacked.” [2] Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said “we probably had maybe about ten unaccounted for planes.” [3] Florida State Congressman Adam Putnam, who was aboard Air Force One with President Bush, who told him at 11:30 that there were six aircraft still unaccounted for. [4] In his bunker beneath the White House, Cheney had at least two possible run-ins with ghost planes, which he aggressively ordered shot down.

One explanation for these phantom flights centers on the presence in the radar system of false returns inserted for the morning’s war game Northern Vigilance. It’s unclear where these blips were showing up and on whose screens, but they were allegedly purged at about 9;00 am, as it became clear the US was under air attack and a clean slate was needed. Not that it helped much.

There are other possibilities as well. I’m guessing if this particular report of the Ghost Flight 11 is ever is explained, it’ll be something innocuous sounding, like this:

A controller at Boston center got a printed report – not a radar return – that American 77 was unaccounted for, missing from radar, possibly crashed or possibly headed to DC. But in the chaos after having seen American 11 disappear, he turns the 7s into 1s (optically easy to do, especially if the 1s are printed with pronounced serifs). He sees American 11 is missing from radar and possibly headed to DC and reports it as such. No radar track, so he can only guess – it was in New York, headed to DC… looking to the south of there...

But it could well be something more concrete than that, though we have to venture into weird land for the next post to see this possibility. Next: Mistaken FAA Info: Some or The?
Back to FAA Masterlist

THE PROJECT’S PHASED TAKEOVER: 9/20-10/11/01

2007-05-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

ONE MONTH OF "MORAL CLARITY"
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
Posted 4/30/07

For whatever It’s worth, it was the 102nd birthday of the late neocon intellectual godfather Leo Strauss when, on September 20th 2001, as President Bush prepared to give an address to a special joint session of Congress pitching the “War on Terrorism” to a stunned nation, the PNAC delivered an open letter to Bush entitled, humbly, “Lead the World to Victory.” [signed by Kristol, Bauer, Cropsey, Cohen, Gaffney, two Kagans, Perle, Podhoretz, Schmitt, etc.] Full text available here.

The letter lauded Bush’s tough response to the attack and his framing of it as a war, and praised the administration’s public assertions that the campaign would be fought on many fronts, and early hints that it would not be limited to al Qaeda. They encouraged this thinking and suggested some of their own ideas as to what other fronts should be opened; for starters, they offered Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, and, of course, Iraq, with a hint of more threats to come. These suggestions bore more similarity to an Israeli wish-hit-list than any realistic response to the nine-day-old 9/11 attacks. The proposals of the letter could have just as easily been passed on by Cheney, (and probably already had been) but they wanted it to look open, and perhaps more importantly, to bring their ideas to the attention of the stunned and suggestible public on the same day Bush was going public with his own guaranteed war proposal. It was a highly visible formal entreaty to cover for pre-arranged back-room deals that became evident as Bush spoke that evening.

The nation drew in a breath and listened; just nine days after the attack, and after much discussion with his august advisers, Bush already knew the shape and scope of the war at hand. He informed his fellow Americans that “this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the Air Wars above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat… Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.” IWith his fatwa “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” Bush charted a clearly unilateralist direction – we were going this way, others would either follow or hold back at their own risk, a clear nod to the PNAC’s Concept of unilateralism (or, more accurately, multilateralism via “global leadership”). He had almost certainly read the Project’s letter well before he spoke, and had likely already acceded to all of its major proposals.

The following day, Charles Krauthammer’s essay “Voices of moral obtuseness” appeared in Time, arguing the same case as the PNAC’s letter. He had, in fact, signed the letter. Krauthammer lamented that “in the wake of a massacre that killed more than 5,000 innocent Americans in a day, one might expect moral clarity,” but we were instead hearing criticism of U.S. policy, what he saw as a relativist, liberal “we had it coming” attitude. He was of course right in his observation that the attack was an “event of blinding clarity,” although I’m not sure he sees the irony in that phrase. Krauthammer noted the earlier dissolution of anti-war and isolationist sentiment following the attack on Pearl Harbor, an analogy that had to have his colleagues at the PNAC smiling as they set about implementing their "process of transformation."

One month after the attack, Bush delivered a speech at the wounded Pentagon, offering a more concrete assurance of his dedication to the PNAC vision. On a dreary Thursday morning, October 11th, 2001, he reassured the Project, on at least four key points, that 9-11 was indeed the fulfillment of their year-old report Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

Bush’s Address at the Pentagon, October 11, 2001: “Brick by brick, we will quickly rebuild the Pentagon.”

1) He noted “as Americans did sixty years ago, we have entered a struggle of uncertain duration.” This was perhaps code for “new Pearl Harbor.”

2) Perhaps in response to the PNAC’s call for increased ”defense” budgets, Bush assured them “in the missions ahead for the military, you will have everything you need, every resource, every weapon, every means to assure full victory for the United States and the cause of freedom.”

3) Bush reassured them that “brick by brick, we will quickly rebuild the Pentagon.” It’s interesting to note that the Pentagon did not need to be rebuilt, just repaired. But he didn’t say repaired; he said the Pentagon would be re-built, possibly code for a Rebuilding America’s Defenses. And it would be done “quickly,” as in the desired speed of the “process of transformation.”

4) The report had called for the U.S. to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.” A year and a month later, Bush reassured them and the world that “we have a unified country. We have the patience to fight and win on many fronts.”

It appears the PNAC was essentially quite pleased with the direction the Administration was taking, following their road map to the expansion of the Pax Americana and to continued “American global leadership.” Bush in turn seemed pleased with the response to the attack that the PNAC had prepared a year before it happened. Of course, they all had to understand the irony that this road map would not have been followed so quickly, as the Project had earlier noted, without the realization of the “new Pearl Harbor.” It turned out well for the Project; their laboriously crafted roadmap was being followed, and they set about refining its details and positioning the military’s machinery to start moving by it. By the time of Bush's 10/11 speech, bombs were already falling on Afghanistan, troops and aircraft carriers were soon moving to all the other pushpins on the Pentagon’s big map, and the plan to take Iraq was put into motion. Their “New American Century” had begun with a bang.

THE LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN

2007-04-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

INSTANT POWDERED TERROR - PART I
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
Posted April 18 2007

After the day of 9/11 with its climate of nationwide crisis, confused reports of a dozen hijackings, thwarted attacks elsewhere, the scope and scale of the threat unclear, came a sequence of vulnerable days. The US was still reeling as the death toll solidified, and waiting for a possible second phase of attacks, with experts warning it could be perhaps even deadlier, involving chemical, radiological, or biological weapons But in the weeks after September 11th, nothing that wicked our way came. Things kept making more and more sense, the stock market re-opened, and the fear subsided to a manageable level. As the leaves turned to rusty hues, Americans had just enough time to feel that all was under control if on high alert, the expected retaliation was imminent over Afghanistan, and we had that special post-9/11 familial unity to fill in the gaps and bind the wounds that were just beginning to heal.

Yet it was only days after the devastating attacks that someone somewhere decided it was time to raise the fear level again, and set a chain reaction in motion by dropping deadly samples of weaponized Ames-strain anthrax into several envelopes and sending them through the mail to targets all along the East Coast. The first letter was post-marked September 18, the last, September 25, all headed “9-11-01,” an obvious reference to the days-old attack.

On October 2nd the first victim of the ‘thrax, a photo editor for American Media Inc. named Robert Stevens, was hospitalized in Boca Raton, Florida, his symptoms unknown. (American Media, Inc. is the nation’s leading tabloid publisher, responsible for the National Enquirer, the National Examiner, the Sun, the Star, and Stevens’ paper the Globe.) His diagnosis of inhalation anthrax was made public the following day, and he died on the fifth. As the Florida-shaped “Terrorland” map grew another dot of oddity, the nation at large gasped – no one had died in the U.S. from anthrax in over twenty years.

The cause was uncertain, and the CDC seemed baffled, but less than a month after Al Qaeda’s masterpiece, it didn’t look good. There was speculation as to whether al Qaeda was involved, and investigators checked “materials left behind” by the 9/11 hijackers for traces of Anthrax. (We’ll retirn to hijacker/Anthrax crossover evidence in another post and after some more research). While no such direct link was reported, it was noted by CNN that “Stevens lived about a mile from an air strip where Mohamed Atta […] rented planes,” with the vague implication that he was perhaps exposed to anthrax through his glancing proximity to the plot’s ringleader and lead pilot. [1] Perhaps his living near Atta’s airfield was a factor in his demise and not simply a bizarre coincidence. There are certainly some things that “inquiring minds want to know” that the either the hijackers or the powers behind Shadow 9/11 don’t want them to know. As much of a stretch as that is, If the 9/11 hijackers had been messing with anthrax too, people reasoned, that was scary. It was later proven that Stevens was instead exposed in his workplace, through a piece of mail that would soon be just a point in the emerging pattern of attacks.

From Boca Raton, the chaos rapidly spread to the more reputable media, with anthrax turning up in the offices of CBS News, where an assistant to Dan Rather was exposed. Spores turned up at ABC News, where an employee’s baby was infected, but treated early. Anthrax was sent to NBC News, where an intern for Tom Brokaw was infected. Brokaw was composed but visibly quite pissed on the news that night. The press was targeted also; spores turned up at the Washington Post and the New York Post.

In all several dozen were infected or exposed, and five people in the general public died; Stevens in Florida, a New York hospital worker, an elderly woman in Connecticut, and two Washington-area letter carriers. As October wore on, with these deaths along with dozens of infections reported one by one, Cipro became a household word, anthrax a nation-wide concern – every white powder or any unknown substance at all was suddenly reason for a 911 call. Susan Watts, science editor for the BBC program Newsnight, summed it up that the anthrax attack “was second only to that on the Twin Towers in the degree of shock and anxiety it caused...Some even say the anthrax letters triggered sub-clinical hysteria in the American people.” [2]

The attack also hit home in Congress. On October 15, Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat recently named Senate Majority Leader, received a crudely written letter packed with white powder that tested positive for anthrax. One of his staffers was exposed, but not infected. Daschle’s letter had announced an anthrax attack on the Senate, the only part of the government no longer under Republican control. Parts of eight floors of the Hart Senate office building were evacuated for cleanup. A government source told CNN the anthrax in Daschle’s letter was "high grade, very virulent and sophisticated." [3] These sophisticated terrorists then wrote, apparently in Cray-on, “9-11-01. YOU CANNOT STOP US. WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. ARE YOU AFRAID?” The crudely-written, caps-locked letter closed with the lines “DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT.” “Clearly, they were trying to kill somebody,” Daschle told CNN of the unknown sender(s). “What this says to me is that there is an orchestrated effort under way, and that it may hit again. So we need to be ready for it.” [4] Mail in the Senate mail room was sequestered in barrels for inspection, which eventually turned up a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, another Democratic powerbroker, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in charge of approving the President’s judicial nominees. The anthrax in it, the handwriting (TAKE PENACILIN NOW), the closing, and the return address (Greendale School 4th Grade) were identical to the Daschle letter.

The letter to Leahy (D-VT)

The House of Representatives closed its doors on October 17th for a precautionary environmental inspection. Two days later, the Senate closed its doors also. Everyone was evacuated out of their familiar surroundings, as Representative “Butch” Otter (R-Idaho) described it, and the House completely suspended proceedings for this time. It was an unexpected and unsettling, half-week vacation that gave them perhaps a unique perspective on the next task on their agenda.

The Congress came back in when the House and Senate buildings were deemed safe and re-opened on October 22nd. The USA PATRIOT Act was first proposed by Rep James Sensenbrenner the following day. Under fear of germ death, the Congress quickly and overwhelmingly approved the sweeping grant of power to the Justice Department the same day. Objections were lodged, but overruled and passed by yhe House of the 24th, the Senate on the 25th, and was signed into law by President Bush on the 26th. The New York Times reported that “members rose to say that almost no one had read the new bill, and pleaded for more time and more deliberation.... the chairman of the Rules Committee, Representative David Dreier (R – CA) replied jokingly that voting out of ignorance was “not unprecedented.” [5] The vote stood, just a month and a half after 9/11.

It’s clear, then, who benefited from the anthrax attack on the congressional end, but the obvious conclusion was simply too dark to look at. So speculation began, its breathless intensity compensating for its lack of logic.

FAA: FEDERAL ATTACK ASSISTANCE? {masterlist}

2007-04-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

This post is to organize those sub-posts, both up and coming, detailing aspects of the role of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the 9/11 attack carried out in their system.
(last Updated 3/22/07)

Active ATS threads on the FAA/phantom Flight 11/etc., from which I started this research:
"Evidence of a Cover-Up"
"Coverup of FAA role in gutting Pentagon Defense"

- FAA 1:The cover-up on page 34: the 9/11 Commission draws attention quietly to "incorrect" NORAD testimony on their links with FAA and the defense.

- FAA 2: The Phantom Flight 11: A quick look at the "mistaken FAA information" that AA 11 was headed to the capital, eclipsing all real threats.

- FAA 3: Mistaken FAA Info; Some or The? A fascinating look at the plane given a second chance, a half-hour after it ended, to distract defenders further south. I may have found the "smoking gun" memo (with a smoking gun in it) that put flight 11 back on the map.

- FAA 4: Authority: Unlimited but unsure: Ben Sliney's odd initiation
See also: First Day Jitters): FAA operations manager and NMCC director, besides JCS chairman, all first-day rookies on 9/11. Coincidence?

- FAA 5: Deserted Towers - coming eventually ...

- FAA 6: The Gutted defense of Washington (coming soon): The effect of this phantom flight and its part in the general failure of defense over the capital - see Failed Air Defense {masterlist} for existing analysis

- FAA 7: Human Error? (coming soon - clue: it's an inadequate excuse)

Additional, circumstantial evidence of odd FAA policy proposals in the months before 9/11 - shutting off radar and disarming pilots - two posts coming soon...

DISARMING PILOTS

2007-04-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

Safety or Disempowerment of the Cockpit?
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns
April 9 2007

When looking at the failure of the world’s mightiest Air Force to shoot down four hijacked airliners during an attack that lasted nearly two hours, it is important to remember that the far better option would have been to prevent the hijackings in the first place. The situation didn’t have to get to the point where orders to shoot down a planeload of innocents was necessary. Of course, stopping the men at the airport or before, preventing them even boarding, was the best sort of outcome with no possibility of a 9/11 size disaster. But even if these lines of defense failed (as was, of course, the case), there was still a possible last line of defense short of an air-to-air missile - the passengers, crews, and pilots aboard the planes themselves. If the numerous warnings of suicide hijackings the government had received in the months before the attack had been passed on to the airlines or the public, they may have known what was at stake and fought back, as the passengers on Flight 93 are believed to have successfully done once they learned the stakes.

It was soon noted that against terrorists armed only with box cutters, and alerted to the possibility of suicide hijackings, an armed pilot who knew the stakes may have been able, with the speed of a single bullet, to prevent his plane being turned into a missile. After September 11th, many voices went up asking that pilots be armed to meet future threats. Captain Stephen Luckey, Chairman of the National Flight Security Committee of the Airline Pilots Association, addressed this issue in testimony before a House Subcommittee on May 2nd, 2002. Luckey maintained that this drive to arm pilots was actually a question of re-arming them, as airline pilots indeed had been, quietly, allowed to carry guns onboard until… right before 9/11.

Luckey put it in context; “in 1961, the FAA amended federal aviation regulations, with Congressional support, to permit pilots to be armed with the consent of their airline – the agency removed that regulatory language in July 2001.” [1] That was quick – now for an instant replay: “the agency removed that regulatory language in July, 2001.” In 1961, in response to the Cuban missile Crisis and a spate of Cuban hijackings, the FAA enacted a rule that allowed pilots to carry guns on commercial flights with the purpose of stopping hijackings early. For forty years the rule stood, but in July 2001, the FAA rescinded it.

According to the conservative WorldNet Daily, the gun ban was set to take effect on an unspecified date in September. [2] In another article, WorldNet also reported that this decision was made despite a specific warning to FAA and other government officials from the ubiquitous Richard Clarke. On July 5, the nation’s top counter-terrorism agent reportedly told FAA representatives and others at a meeting in the White House that “something really spectacular is going to happen here and it’s going to happen soon.” [3]

An FAA spokesman downplayed the impact of the gun ban, saying “in the past, FAA regulations permitted pilots to carry firearms in the cockpit” but that “that was never put into effect because no requests… were ever made.” [4] Apparently, in forty years, there was not one request from an airline pilot to be armed. There must have been no successful drives to increase awareness of the policy. Were the pilots ever even aware of the policy? This rule stood, allegedly unused, for decades; if it was never used, why bother rescinding it after it had sat for so long? What was suddenly so different that mandated the change? The only thing I see different is the hijacking threat – if ever there was a time pilots would start asking for permission to carry guns, the summer and fall of 2001 would have, should have, been it.

It’s not likely that any of the pilots involved had been disarmed by this decision, and so it likely had no effect on the attack. But once again, the timing of this decision is strange, perhaps indicating a better safe than sorry mentality, a fear that some pilots might try to use that old rule in light of the threat and thus spoil a perfectly useful attack. The reasoning has been explained as eliminating redundancy, but on the question of timing, FAA officials referred WorldNet to the Department of Transportation, who refused to return calls. [5] If no pilots had ever asked for guns, or, as I argue in other posts, there were to be no hijackers to shoot, then the FAA’s decision served no tactical purpose, and yet its timing still seems at the far edge of coincidence territory to say the least.

Back to Federal Attack Assistance Masterlist
Sources:
[1] Luckey, Stephen. “Arming Flight Crews Against Terrorist Acts. Statement before Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C. May 2, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.house.gov/transportation/aviation/05-02-02/luckey.html
[2], [5] Dougherty, John. “Homeland Insecurity: FAA began disarming pilots in ’87.” Worldnet Daily. May 29, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27765
[3]Vulliami, Ed. “A Bad Call?” The Guardian. May 19, 2002. Accessed November 18, 2004 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,718267,00.html
[4] Dougherty, John. “Armed-pilot rule nixed after hijack briefing.” Worldnet Daily. May 18, 2002. Accessed November 7, 2004 at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27672

SCENARIO 12-D: ANOTHER X-FILE

2007-04-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

WARNING: PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!

Remote controlled airliners as weapons of an inside job seemed plausible enough to the writers of a TV program aired, strangely, just six months before September 11. Stranger still, it was aired on Rupert Murdoch’s FOX network, widely suspected of being an appendage of the Republican Party. On March 4, the pilot episode of the short-lived X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen aired. It had been filmed a year prior, and was apparently late getting on-screen just weeks after Bush’s inauguration.

John Byers, one of the Lone Gunnmen (a geeky crew of three conspiracy nuts who foil all kinds of top-secret crimes) found out his father, a CIA agent, was killed when his car ran off the road. After the funeral, a senior Air Force officer named Ray Helm told Byers that his father was murdered, “which is exactly the way these people manage things. People your father and I worked for […] He was a good man. He had a conscience. Sometimes that's a problem in our line of work.

Byers found that his father’s car was crashed by remote control because he knew about something he wasn’t supposed to. He suspected it had something to do with a trace on his dad’s wiped computer of a DoD file labeled “Scenario 12-D.” Helm gave Byers the password for the Pentagon’s computer network – “Overlord.” The Gunmen hacked in and located 12-D on “some government think-tank's upload directory,” but the download failed.

Byers then returned to his father’s house, suspecting the old man was actually alive. Indeed, Bert was alive, and he was there at his house. Reunited, Byers immediately asked about the mystery scenario:

Byers: “We know it’s a war game scenario – it has to do with airline counter-terrorism. But why was it important enough to kill for?”
Byers Snr: “Because it’s no longer a game.”
Byers: “If some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario, why target you for assassination?”
Byers Snr: “Depends on who your terrorists are.”
Byers: “…The men who conceived of it in the first place. You’re saying our government plans to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airliner?”
Byers Snr: “There you go, blaming the entire government as usual. It’s a faction, a small faction.”
Byers: “For what possible gain?”
Byers Snr: “The Cold War’s over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market’s flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City, and you’ll find a dozen tin pot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart bombed.”

“Bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City” – hmmm… It was a 727 that Raytheon would soon prove that JPALS remote control worked on. Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if Rumsfeld, “General Star Wars,” watches FOX and digs the X-Files. I can visualize the old goat muttering something to himself when he saw this, crossing-out “12-D” and replacing it with “12-E… 757, 767,777? Go massive. Hit self as well.”

Left: Bert Byers gaze from the cockpit as his doomed airliner speeds toward the WTC. Right: The Pilot's view. (stills from the Lone Gunmen)

Anyway, father and son then boarded the plane slated for destruction that very night, hoping to foil the plot. When Byers found no bomb on board, he asked his dad “How are they going to bring it down?” Bert replied “the same way a dead man can drive a car.” Byers’ cohorts on the ground tracked the flight path with their computers and informed him the plane was under “remote access, someone on the ground’s flying your plane.” They warned him “you’ll be making an unexpected stop” in 22 minutes, at the “Corner of Liberty and Washington, lower Manhattan.” Byers was stunned, whispering to his dad “they’re going to crash the plane into the World Trade Center.”

The pilots couldn’t gain control of the plane, having been locked-out by the remote control system, just as Home Run is supposed to do, just as JPALS, at least in the (dubious) Der Spiegel version, is supposed to do. The captain informed the passengers of technical difficulties and asked them to return to their seats, with Bert muttering “and kiss your asses goodbye.”

Of course the gunmen finally broke the code, using their trusty computers and anagram skills as always, and foiled the plot. The pilots were finally given the ability to manually override the doomed flight plan just in time for the plane to veer sharply upward, zipping past the windows of the WTC and barely clearing the top. It seemed silly at the time, but many would prefer this to the similar but more depressing script that unfolded six months later in the real world…

This is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in my research, deserving of an X-File of its own. I still cannot believe the timing of this was an accident, but I also have no great insights into what sort of conscious design would have had this released in the months before Shadow 9-11 may have brought it to life on a larger scale. Was this a warning from a disgruntled insider, an experiment in pre-conditioning, or just a very bizarre coincidence?

This prediction was written, remember, at least a year before it was aired, so probably in early 2000. The episode’s writers were Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban (who work together so often, in fact, that they often compress their names into the singular “John Gilnitz,” as I will in referring to them collectively. Spotnitz later told reporters in mid-2002, when people finally noticed the parallel and asked him about it:

“I woke up on Sept. 11th and saw it on TV, and the first thing I thought of was The Lone Gunmen. But then in the weeks and months that followed, almost no one noticed the connection [or wanted to – ed]. What's disturbing about it to me is, you think as a fiction writer that if you can imagine this scenario, then the people in power in the government who are there to imagine disaster scenarios can imagine it, too.”

And the people who propose special distribution documents can imagine it as well. The fact that it took months for anyone to notice the parallel, as TV Guide reported in June 2002, “seems to be collective amnesia of the highest order.”

Actor Dean Haglund, who played Gunman Richard “Ringo” Langley on the show, was freaked out by the comparison too. He didn’t indicate any knowledge of how the script was arrived at, but had doubts about the script played out on 9-11. With the advantage of three years hindsight, Haglund told the amazing and annoying Alex Jones in a 2004 interview “I think it was staged, and uh… it’s America’s Reichstag Fire.” [3]

But no matter the views of those involved, this evidence of the conceivability of a plane being used as a remote-controlled weapon of empire was shown on the fringe venue of prime time network television, and a virtual outline of Shadow 9-11 was somehow branded an X-Files conspiracy theory six months before the attack that cast that shadow even came to be. All thanks to John Gilnitz and the folks at FOX.

The episode’s closing dialog is also, I believe, relevant here. If this was indeed a warning from an insider, they wanted us to know that now we’re on our own:

“Byers: “If we can't get the FBI we'll go public. With your testimony, we can break this conspiracy wide open. Bring Overlord down. The whole operation.
Byers Snr: God, I see myself in you. The same youthful enthusiasm, idealism. I was so angry at you for so long because I didn't want you to waste your life tilting at windmills. But I can see now, you've got something I never had. You're a brave man, John.
Byers: You're not going to testify. You're going to let them cover this up.
Byers Snr: They almost killed me twice. They won't fail a third time. My silence will keep me alive. (he puts his hand on BYERS' shoulder) And you. I know you and your friends are fighting for the American dream. (Pause) Just don't expect to win. (the elder Byers walks away in silence).

Sources:
The Lone Gunmen, pilot episode. Aired on FOX TV March 4 2001. Info available at: http://www.prisonplanet.com/The_Lone_Gunmen_Realm_Pilot_Episode.htm
“Gunmen Foreshadowed 9/11.” SciFi Wire. June 21, 2002.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-tv.html?2002-06/21/10.00.tv
Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. Page 31.
Alex Jones interviews Dean Haglund. Prison Planet. January 2005. Video viewable at: http://www.prisonplanet.tv/articles/january2005/120105haglund.htm

FAA IV: SLINEY'S AUTHORITY, UNLIMITED YET UNSURE

2007-03-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Ben Sliney’s Odd Initiation
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / They Let It Happen
March 22 2007

Benedict Sliney, on the set of “Flight 93,” (2006), reliving his high-pressure first day as FAA national operations manager

Besides the NMCC and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Federal Aviation Administration, through whose system the 9/11 attacks occurred, was in weird hands on that weird day. Benedict Sliney had experience with FAA air traffic control dating back to 1964, but from the early 1980s took an 18-year hiatus to practice law in Manhattan. [1] He made a name for himself defending NY’s transit authority against passenger lawsuits, and once suing the FAA on behalf of fellow air traffic controllers. He gave up law in mid-2001, which he surrendered only, he says, after his 72-year-old secretary unexpectedly retired.

“I could not work without her, […] I wasn't going to continue. I didn't like law anyhow, it paid well, but it's very demanding in terms of time. I maintained my friendship of course with people in the FAA. The person in charge of the command center asked me, when I would complain about the law to come back to the FAA and I did.” [2]

This was apparently in mid-2001 when some combination of FAA connections, leadership skills, whatever, gave him a sudden career change back to the Administration, and straight to the top: National Operations Manager, a short, powerfully titled post described by USA Today as “the chess master of the air traffic system.” The paper explained “when he accepted the job overseeing the nation's airspace a few months earlier, Sliney wanted to be sure he had the power to do the job as he saw fit. "What is the limit of my authority?" he asked the man who had promoted him. "Unlimited," he was told.” [3] He got the job, and over the next several weeks set to re-learning the ropes and the two decades of technological and procedural changes since his old days.

It was hoped he’d learn enough to fulfill his normal, routine, functions. But Sliney’s new job also made him the man who would, theoretically, be responsible for such unprecedented things as ordering nationwide ground-stop of all air traffic, not that it ever had been an issue before. And he would also be the very guy in charge of requesting fighter assistance in the event of a suicide hijacking, on the off-chance that should ever be needed, which also had never ever happened once in the US. So perhaps understandably, these more esoteric duties were seemingly passed over a bit.

Tuesday being the slowest air travel day, little was expected (?) as Sliney clocked in for his first day at the FAA national operations center in Herndon Virginia, smack between Dulles Airport, the capital, and the Pentagon, at some time before 8:00 am on September 11. But it didn’t stay quiet for long; “It was a very short time,” Sliney later remembered, before he received the first clue this day would not be routine. At about 8:25 am, one of his assistant informed him “that they had an admission that a flight attendant was stabbed. Now it's starting to take a road that we hadn't been down before. It swiftly escalated after that.” [4] Somewhat less swiftly, the FAA response to the unfolding attack, largely overseen by Sliney, was measured, graduated:

8:15-20ish – Numerous calls sent to FAA from flight attendants Ong and Sweeney onboard Flight 11, clearly telling of a hijacking in progress.

8:24 - a transmission intended for the passengers on Flight 11 but accidentally sent system-wide by the hijackers, was received: "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be OK." After Sliney learned of this line, USA Today reported, “the words will haunt him all morning. "We have some planes." Some? How many?” [5]

Before 8:46 – Sliney later described “an unidentified aircraft,” that is, with no transponder, “at 16,000 feet approaching New York City from the northwest at a pretty moderate ground speed of 300 knots. No one was working and we did not know who the aircraft was.” [6] Without transponders, we're told, it was hard to tell one of the thousands of blips from the next (which, if true, made the system completely useless)

8:46-8:50 - Sliney receives word from New York of a “small plane” crash into the World Trade Center. They turn on CNN in the control center. “That was no small plane, Sliney thinks.” Within minutes his suspicions were confirmed: it was the missing AA11. [7]

9:03 – The second plane, UA175, hits the second tower, and New York’s air space is ordered shut down, a multi-state area cleared of air traffic in the first such unprecedented move of the morning. Realizing this is an attack, and twenty minutes into it, Sliney scrambles to make up for lost time. It was time for bold – but not hasty - action.

9:15 – American Airlines orders no more AA takeoffs in the northeast. No concrete moves from Sliney in Herndon yet, just listing all troubled, possibly hijacked flights on a dry erase board. “The moves aren't strong enough for some of the air traffic specialists at the center,” says USA Today, “who bombard Sliney with advice. "Just stop everything! Just stop it!" The words ring true to Sliney.” [8] Haunted by knowledge of more planes, Sliney responds. Seconds tick by. (one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi... ten more minutes pass)

9:25 - AA77 has now been unaccounted for as well, for thirty minutes. Sliney issues another unprecedented order: full groundstop. No FAA controlled flights are to take off, anywhere in the country. The skies are full enough, but it wasn't yet time to order them cleared altogether.

“Amid the shouts and chatter and conflicting reports,” USA Today reported, Sliney “reminds himself: Don't jump to conclusions. Sort it out.” Indeed, deliberation seems his strong point: “since the second Trade Center tower was hit, Sliney has considered bringing every flight down,” the paper reported. It wasn’t until after the Pentagon was hit with AA77 at 9:38 that “the manager in charge of the nation's air traffic system is certain. He has no time to consult with FAA officials in Washington,” and made his snap decision all on his own to have all air traffic get out of the sky ASAP. "Order everyone to land! Regardless of destination!" Sliney shouted, since shouting helps orders get back in time to when they might have done some good. [1] The 9/11 Commission agreed that Sliney “ordered all FAA facilities to instruct all aircraft to land at the nearest airport” at exactly 9:42, 56 minutes after the first strike of the war against his native New York, an hour and twenty minutes after the first hijacking was known of.

Is that slow or fast? There’s not much precedence to judge by, but a faster response is at least feasible, by Sliney’s own account. US News reported in June 2004 that “he says he would have stopped everyone sooner,” had he not been left out of the pre-9/11 terror warning loop. Ominous predictions that had been issued that summer about al Qaeda’s potential air designs “never reached key people like Benedict Sliney.” [10] Whoever preceded Sliney in the NOM position likely had been aware of the threat, considering for example, the August 2001 CIA memo "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly," and the high-level meeting Richard Clarke called on July 5, including FAA, and warning “something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.” But the manager who might’ve known the score on what to expect, and probably had a better understanding of what could be done in response, was just not working out. And his replacement, being a first-day rookie not clued into the earlier threat assessments, was in effect a blank spacer inserted, by chance we are to believe, into a key spot in the air defense system.

Sliney was not the top link at FAA, of course. He had superiors like FAA administrator Jane Garvey and her deputy Monte Belger, and running all the way up to Transportation Secretary Norman “fuck pilot discretion” Mineta, in the PEOC beneath the White House with Cheney and Rice. But Sliney was the top hands-on guy with radar screens in front of him, called on to make major decisions that morning beside the ground stop. He told the 9/11 Commission about his first call with NORAD, at some point before 8:46:

“NORAD […] asked me if I were requesting a military intervention. And I indicated to NORAD that I'm advising you of the - of the facts of this particular incident. I'm not requesting anything. I wasn't sure I even had the authority to request such a thing. And when the lady persisted at NORAD, I asked her if I could call her back and I went to the domestic event net, which is available to all facilities and most of the major facilities around it, and I queried NORAD and the FAA headquarters as to whether or not I had such authority to ask for intervention by the military or a scramble on this particular aircraft, and they did agree that I had such authority after a discussion on the virtues of collaboration. However, I indicated further when I agreed that we should collaborate on such decisions, but if time did not permit it, did I have that authority, I persisted in that and they said that I did. I didn't know that prior to that moment in time.” [11]

CNN’s Paula Zahn explained further “Mr. Sliney says these conversations took several minutes and by the time he received an answer, the aircraft was past Manhattan,” meaning, I presume, past gone into the WTC. [12] Sliney had unlimited authority but like Bullwinkle the moose, he didn’t know his own strength, at least not precisely enough to do much of use on 9/11. He learned his powers eventually, of course, but too late. I’m not sure how long after 9/11 he held the NOM job, but by the time of his candid and well-covered May 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission, he had switched over to Operations Manager for the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, another slot that had been vital on 9/11. This shows he’s serious about FAA; he didn’t just come on just for 9/11. That would look suspicious...

Pure coincidence is the official reason such man was put into such a spot at just that time, but the agency of chance is already strained enough to explain the events of that morning without adding this to its burden. If indeed Sliney were placed to help facilitate the attacks, it’s important to consider whether his part was really central or important enough to warrant the risk of dropping the spacer into his spot less than an hour before the attacks began. Delays in ground stop and military escorts seem to have had little overall effect, only helping keep the skies as cluttered as normal, limiting radar tracking. Even swift action would not clear the skies immediately anyway. This is secondary. As for his requests for fighter assistance, with or without Sliney’s involvement, fighters were off the ground just after the first plane hit, which is reasonably swift. Even if scrambled sooner, the total disempowerment of the defending fighter pilots was beyond his mandate and would have happened either way. His well-timed placement then serves as another redundant screw-up that helps cancel out the culpability of the others. The precision of the placement makes it also seem a possible distraction, but one engineered in advance, which is telling.

Curiously, Ben Sliney was able to regain the limelight again and add another title to his resume with another unexpected job offer – an actor, playing the part of himself in the 2006 film Flight 93 (which I have yet to see). He had become a piece of history, an ironic 9/11 artifact, the first-day guy! Man what a first day; Murphy’s law, we can all relate to that! He was initially brought on by director Paul Greengrass as an adviser on re-enacting his part of the morning of 9/11 – what it was like at the center, how to accurately reflect the events. Oddly parallel to his actual switch back to FAA moths before 9/11 as a last-minute replacement, Sliney explained in a 2006 interview: “they hired an actor to play me. And he was having a little difficulty with it. And after two days, they asked me to do it. I got a note under the door. 5 in the morning, I was getting ready to go to the set, could you please bring your suit, tie, shoes. At the bottom it said “this is not a test. This is not a drill.” [13]
---------
Back to "Federal Attack Assistance?" Masterlist

Sources:
[1], [2], [4], [13] United 93: An Interview with National Operations Manager Ben Sliney
By Tonisha Johnson April 2006. http://www.blackfilm.com/20060421/features/bensliney.shtml
[3] Adams, Marilyn, Alan Levin and Blake Morrison. “Part II: No one was sure if hijackers were on board.” USA Today. Posting date unlisted.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-08-12-hijacker-daytwo_x.htm
[5], [7], [8], [9] Part I: Terror attacks brought drastic decision: Clear the skies
By Alan Levin, Alan, Marilyn Adams and Blake Morrison, USA Today. August 13 2002.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-08-12-clearskies_x.htm
[6], [11] Benedict Sliney Testimony 9/11 Commission. May 21 2004. Via CNN. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/17/pzn.00.html
[10] Levine, Samantha. “In the skies, a scary 'failure of imagination.” US News And World Report. June 28 2004. Posted June 20 2004. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040628/28nine11.b.htm
[12] Paula Zahn Now. “Chilling Audio From 9/11 Hijack Played at Hearing.” Aired June 17, 2004. Transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/17/pzn.00.html

FIRST DAY JITTERS

2007-03-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

SLINEY, LEIDIG, MYERS: THREE DEFENSE LINKS SWAPPED AT THE LAST MINUTE
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
January 1 2007
Last Update: 3/19

9/11 was just such a weird day, who could think it relevant that among the other oddities of that morning The FAA was being run by a first-day rookie? Benedict Sliney was just getting his feet wet as the National Operations Manager when four civilian airliners were hijacked amid confused reports of about a dozen possible hijacks. While Sliney had superiors like FAA administrator Jane Garvey, he was called on to make major decisions that morning. He told the 9/11 Commission: “NORAD […] asked ME if I were requesting military intervention. And I indicated to NORAD that I’m advising you of the facts of this particular incident – I’m not requesting anything. I wasn’t sure I even had the authority to request such a thing.” [1] Perhaps he hadn’t watched the training video closely enough the day before.

But was the Chain of Command he and the others at FAA informing any better organized? The National Military Command Center (NMCC), beneath the Pentagon, is the command and control “nerve center” for the military leadership if America comes under attack. While this usually does not happen, the NMCC sits ready, watched over and coordinated by the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) and is used for other activities requiring centralized coordination – like passing on requests for fighter assistance in case of a hijacking and, I’d guess, coordinating air-based War games, of which there were at least five on 9/11.

Then Captain Charles J. Leidig - acting NMCC Director for almost precisely the 90 minutes of the 9/11 attacks

Army Brigadier General Montague Winfield was originally slated to be in charge of the NMCC that morning, but the previous day he had decided to take some time off, asking a recently qualified but inexperienced rookie, Navy Captain Charles Leidig, to stand in as DDO in the morning. This is confirmed by Leidig’s own testimony to the 9/11 Commission. His written statement was the shortest they received at just over one page, large font, double spaced. It stated blandly “on 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, US Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty […] on the following day. I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001.” [2] At that very minute, the first plane was right between its hijacking (about 8:15) and its impact with the WTC (8:46).

The remarkable request was presumably for some other, lesser, reason. But Leidig’s rookie status (only qualified to be DDO a few weeks earlier) and the emerging crisis did not interrupt the transfer and Winfield left. I can’t say whether this had any operational role in 9/11 or the lack of defense against it, or was related to the air-based war games that have been acknowledged, but both seem probable. And while certainly the timing of this admitted September 10 request is beyond coincidence, none of the involved parties have offered any explanation - it has remained both curiously open and unexplained.

But war games or no, Leidig’s job there wound up more than a drill. As the 9-11 Commission’s final report explained “the job of the NMCC in such an emergency is to gather the relevant parties and establish the chain of command between the national command authority […] and those who need to carry out their orders.” [3] This includes, among others, the Defense Secretary and JCS Chairman. Acting Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General Richard Myers – like Leidig, filling in as of the morning of 9/11 – claims total ignorance of the attack until about 9:40, and the 9/11 Commission confirmed that he arrived at the NMCC and joined the conference in session just before 10:00, over an hour after the attack began and just as it was ending.

By the time Myers arrived at 10:00, regular DDO Montague Winfield had taken the center over again from Leidig, but Rumsfeld, the middle link in the “national command authority” chain Leidig was tasked with “gathering,” was still MIA. Winfield would later state “for 30 minutes we couldn't find him. And just as we began to worry, he walked into the door” at 10:30 – nearly a half hour after the attack was over. [4] While he’d been at the building all morning, officially he’d been too busy loading injured into ambulances for the TV cameras to take his part in the defense, though accounts of his whereabouts vary greatly.

So here is the graphic representation of Leidig’s unorthodox stand-in shift and the results of his work to “gather the relevant parties” during the 111 minutes that hijacked attack craft were attacking the heart of America’s financial and military might. By whatever confluence of factors, the room was kept vacant of upper leadership until Leidig relenquished control and the attack ended. We should be left wondering why the parties weren’t gathered, what was so special about Leidig that he had to be there to fail to gather them, and who knew the day before just how badly he would fail when inserted in the morning?

Leidig did try to do things on his own as Myers and Rumsfeld kept their distance, initiating a phone bridge and significant event conference at 9:29, a line that the 9/11 Commission clarified did not have FAA on it. One minute later, Leidig announced that he was just told American 11 was still airborne. [5] It was also precisely at 9:30 that the Langley fighter pilots finally took off, and so Leidig gave them this new ghost target, which wound up distracting them from the very real Flight 77 as it closed in on his own location and entered radar screens again. The fighter pilots were never informed of the attack plane until after they saw smoke rising from the Pentagon after 9:37. The Commission admitted the FAA was not on the line with Leidig, but blames them anyway: “we have not been able to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information,” and left it at that [emphasis mine]. [6]

Since that day, Leidig has been promoted – first to Commandant of Midshipmen in September 2003, then to U.S. Defense Representative to the Pacific micro-states. Later he assumed command of U.S. Naval Forces Marianas and Navy Region Marianas and advanced to Rear Admiral status. Leidig is recipient of numerous service medals over his distinguished career, none specifically for his service on 9/11, of which his official Navy bio makes no mention whatsoever. [7]

[After I posted this, it occured to me to state I'm not accusing Adm Leidig of anything in particular, nor Sliney, Myers, or even Rumsfeld individually. I only present this in the public interest to help clarify the record - nothing personal.]

Sources:
[1] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Panel one, Day two of 12th public hearing. Staff statements on the military and civilian aviation authorities. Washington D.C. June 17, 2004. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2001-06-17.htm
[2] Flocco, Tom. "NMCC ops director asked substitute on 9-10 to stand his watch on 9-11.” Prison Planet. June 18 2004. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2004/061804askedsubstitute.htm
[3] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[4] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. “The Terror Timeline.” New York. Regan Books. 2004. Page 456.
[5] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[6] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 26
[7] Commander Naval Forces Marianas: Rear Admiral Charles J. Leidig. US Navy bio. http://www.guam.navy.mil/bio_adm.htm

FAA III: MISTAKEN FAA INFO: SOME OR THE?

2007-03-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Now let’s look at a report from onboard Flight 11, reportedly placed by a flight attendant just seven minutes before impact: Two crew members in the cockpit – presumably pilot and co-pilot – were stabbed. Communications were briefly cut, then another call came two minutes later - news came across that “a passenger in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B” with one shot fired. The killer was pegged as muscle hijacker Satam al Suqami. The victim was Daniel Lewin, founder Akamai tech and Israeli special agent, possibly an international counter-terror operative. “That call was put through by Suzanne Clark of FAA corporate headquarters,” an early FAA memo reported, supposedly based on flight attendant reports she’d just received (from who precisely is unsure). Five minutes later, the memo explains, Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center and disappeared for good.

This memo was released as a first draft, but never released in final form, as it had by then become “protected information,” and the final FAA record reflects no gunshots fired anywhere that day. Worldnet ran an article about this in February 2002, explaining that “the FAA, while confirming the document is authentic, claims the report of Lewin's shooting, written several hours after the Sept. 11 hijackings, was premature and inaccurate.” While this call mentioning the gunshot was not recorded, an FBI account of it was leaked to the media, though eventually eclipsed by another, recorded call from attendant Amy Sweeney. In this account, and referring to the same two passengers, “a hijacker also cut the throat of a business-class passenger, and he appears to be dead."

There are different opinions on the story change from firearm to blade, from FAA cover-up of abysmal security to simple communications errors. The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report made several mentions of the possibility of a gun on board Flight 93 (which they found in error), but no mention at all of any gun on AA11. It was completely ignored.

But the most interesting thing about this discredited FAA memo for the study at hand is the times listed in it: the calls from the flight were reportedly placed at 9:18 and 9;20, and five minutes later, “at 9:25 am, this flight crashed directly into one of the towers of the world trade center.” The actual crash was at 8:46, 32 minutes earlier. The 9/11 Commission just presumed a typo it seems, and shifted the time frame back an hour, placing two calls from Amy Sweeney at 8:19 and 8:21. So following this pattern, if we shift the impact back an hour as well, the plane would have crashed at 8:26. So now we have two separate “typos” and an impact time out of alignment with the others. Time zone lag is the not a reason – it was 9:25 nowhere in the world when Flight 11 ended.

But of course what was happening at 9;25 was that minutes-old reports that Flight 11 was airborne being passed on through the air defense system. Are these 9:18-9:20 report of violence on the ghost flight 11 what actually got Flight 11 reported as airborne at that time? It’s the kind of thing that would make a controller have to “presume” where the plane actually was, since no one was actually seeing it? Or is it just a coincidence that this incongruous memo matches both the plane and time of this noted but un-examined “mistaken FAA information,” as well as its origins at national HQ in DC? They weren’t able to find it, but I may have that very info they so desperately wanted, found in their discard pile of confused reports from that crazy day.

Next: Sliney's Authority: Unlimited But Unsure
Back to FAA Masterlist

CHENEY AND THE SHOOT-DOWN ORDER

2007-03-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

White House Conter-terrorism Czar Richard Clarke explained in his account of 9/11 how at 9:30 he told his deputy in the PEOC to inform Vice President Cheney “we need to authorize the Air Force to shoot down any aircraft […] that looks like it is threatening to attack […] Got it?” [1] Accounts differ as to whether or not the vice president “got it” at this point, but Clarke says the shoot-down order was agreed upon by Bush and Cheney some time before the president’s plane took off at 9:55. This was in a call he remembered getting from his deputy with Cheney who informed him “Air Force One is getting ready to take off […] fighter escort is authorized. And […] tell the Pentagon they have authority from the President to shoot down hostile aircraft, repeat, they have authority to shoot down hostile aircraft.” It’s not clear why this aide thought Clarke was a link in the Chain of Command to pass the order on, but Clarke wrote “I was amazed at the speed of the decision coming from Cheney and, through him, from Bush.” [2]

But at least one other account seems to back up an even earlier order. Recall that Cheney was informed of flight 77 closing in on Washington at about 9:33. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told the 9-11 Commission in 2003 that he saw Cheney give what he interpreted as a shoot-down order at this time. [3] The BBC documentary Clear the Skies records Mineta’s recollection of a plane reported coming in fast. Cheney was informed it was 30 miles out, and he ordered it shot down. He was informed again that it was 10 miles out and the aide asked if the orders still stood. Mineta recalls “the vice president sort of whipped his head around and said “of course they do.” [4] This account was placed in the documentary, which is based on a ticking timeline of the events, in the time slot right before the Pentagon impact at 9:37.

But the official story is that the order was finally transmitted from the President to Cheney, with a casual “you bet,” at just about 10:05, for sure before 10:10, or maybe 10:18 - this has been hotly contested. The 9-11 Commission, in a rare and curious show of contrariness, got into a bit of a brawl with Cheney over this phone call. In June 2004, as the final report was released, Newsweek reported:

“[S]ome on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president’s account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report […] some staffers “flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.” When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction […] the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report.” [5]

Cheney and Rice share a tense moment in the PEOC on 9/11. Photo chosen for presence of Cheney on the phone.

The Commission finally caved to Cheney’s protests and simply concluded in their final report “there is no documentary evidence for this call.” But they did get some subtle hints of this earlier argument worked in. For example, they note that neither Cheney’s wife Lynn nor his Chief of Staff Libby, who were nearby, can recall this call being made. [6]

By 10:15, Cheney was ordering a phantom flight shot down, saying the President had “signed-off on the concept.” Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Libby’s underling, urged Cheney to “confirm the engage order,” since he “had not heard any prior conversation on the subject with the President.” [7] This confirmation call, unlike the first, was logged at 10:18 and found by the commission. The final report also notes that Bush informed Press Secretary Fleischer at 10:20 that he had just passed on the historical shoot-down order.

The clear but subtle implication is that perhaps Cheney issued this order on his own and only ran it by Bush at 10:18 – or at least Libby, Lynn, Bolten, and the 9/11 Commission have made it look that way, for reasons that are unclear. But Bush stubbornly insists standard procedure was observed, and that he passed the order on whenever Cheney says he did. He said this in the secret hearing he had with the commission in Cheney’s presence, not under oath, off the record, with no recordings, minutes, or direct quotes allowed. They summed up Bush’s recollection:

“The President said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been an interceptor pilot. The President emphasized to us that he authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft.” [8]

Much has been made of Cheney’s aggressive application of the shoot-down order once he finally had it. In an incident eerily similar to Mineta’s recollection cited above, Cheney urged the shoot-down of United 93 as it was reported closing in at about 10:10. This was read by the Secret Service as a radar track, but, the Commission concluded, was actually a projection of 93’s path if it ,hadn’t just crashed. But it gave Cheney a chance to do something. Informed the plane was eighty miles out, Cheney quickly “authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane.” Again he was informed when the projected plane was 60 miles out and wanted to know if the order still stood. “Scooter” Libby described Cheney’s confirmation to the 9-11 Commission as swift - “in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.” [9] But he only started swinging almost the exact minute there was nothing left to swing at, giving an impression of decisive leadership without actually screwing up a perfectly good terror attack.

Besides the vague possibility of ordering the shoot-down of 93 without the Presiden't approval, another Cheney contribution to the 9/11 mythos is his instant response to the plane's crash. Once it became clear that 93 had gone down short of Washington, everyone wondered if it had been shot down. Yet without any of the evidence that would later surface from the audio record of the doomed flight’s last moments, without the benefit of having heard anyone cry “let’s roll,” Cheney already knew the official story. “The Vice President was a little bit ahead of us,” said Eric Edelman, Cheney's national security advisor. “He said sort of softly and to nobody in particular, ‘I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.’” [10] What an eerily acurate guess.

[1] Clarke, Richard A. “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” New York. Free Press. 2004. Page 7.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. "The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute." New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 431.
[3] See [2]. Thompson. Page 431.
[4] "Clear the Skies." BBC Video. 2002.
[5] Klaidman, Daniel and Michael Hirsh. “Who was Really in Charge?” Newsweek. June 28, 2004.
[6] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. Authorized First Edition. New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Pages 40-41
[7] See [5]. Klaidman and Hirsh.
[8] See [6]. Page 40.
[9] See [6]. Page 41
[10] CNN. “Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker.” September 12, 2002. Accessed at: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/

FAA I: THE COVER-UP ON PAGE 34

2007-02-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / They Let It Happen
2/27/07

The current official story of what precisely happened on 9/11 has changed repeatedly, from the first chaotic report to the stalled and limited investigations culminating with the 9/11 Commission. Some major changes ere set in stone with the publication of their final Report in mid-2004. One that caught my attention was the assymmetry of White House accounts and evidence over the shoot-down order passed from Bush to Cheney at some vague time after 10:00 am. While all their evidence points to a call at 10:18 officially the Commission maintained the White House story that the call was placed at about 10:10, neither Bush nor Cheney recalls exactly when, and no records exist. [1]

Another changed story I’d noticed also became a central focus of "Nick7261" at Above Top Secret, who posted what he felt was “the strongest evidence of some sort of government cover-up.” He found this compelling seam in the pages of the 9/11 Commission’s final report, where they pointed out that NORAD had given them “incorrect” information regarding their awareness of and reaction to the hijackings of Flight 93 and 77. This is pivotal, since even many skeptics can see why the NY attack planes could have slipped through our defenses by sheer earliness and the whole “it’s never happened before” thing. By 9:03 am it had happened twice, and was looking to happen again, reportedly as many as eleven planes were suspected hijacked, and still no defenses showed late enough in the game to shoot AA77 or UA93 out of the sky. This might seem embarrassing to some.

Regarding the May 2003 testimony of NORAD officials, the Commission found three main issues of contention:
1) at 9:16 am NEADS (North East Air Defense Sector) received notification from the FAA that Flight 93 was hijacked.
2) NORAD received notification at 9:24 am that Flight 77 was hijacked.
3) As the Commission put it: “In their testimony and in other public accounts, NORAD officials also stated that the Langley fighters were scrambled to respond to the notifications about American 77, United 93, or both.”

Chairmen Kean and Hamilton and their cohorts decided all these assertions were “incorrect,” and chose to publish another, stranger version. But rather than simply alter the record silently, they drew attention to the changes in the text of their actual report, on page 34. Regarding the first point, NEADS’ notice of 93’s hijacking, they explained “this statement was incorrect. There was no hijack to report at 9:16. United 93 was proceeding normally at that time.” Indeed, by my research, the hijacking seems to have occurred at just about the time the pentagon was stricken at 9:37.

The Commission give no explanation of how NEADS was able to submit a timeline that was clearly false on at least this point; not having been given one, they probably didn’t feel like guessing a reason. The closest they came was in hinting “those accounts had the effect of deflecting questions about the military’s capacity to obtain timely and accurate information from its own sources. In addition, they overstated the FAA’s ability to provide the military with timely and useful information that morning.” (p 34) They didn’t like to look weak, so they overstated their abilities, both internally and with regard to FAA.

But either way, their explanation for the other two less-than correct statements are more interesting and bring us to our first major anomaly. The Commission found that NORAD had been informed by an unnamed FAA employee that Flight 11 did not fly into the WTC and was heading south towards Washington. Nick found on study “out of the entire 567-page 9/11 Commission Report, only one page covers how Flight 77 was able to avoid U.S. Air Defense and hit the Pentagon,” and that’s page 34, where they clarified that the Capital’s air defense was gunning for a ghost while a third real weaponized airliner, and soon a fourth, was targeting DC unseen. This is explosive evidence, indicating to me something, at best, on the far side of negligence.

So after the report’s release, we have two stories, one covering the other. Nick wondered if the new version were true, who gave the false info on Flight 11, why, and why the anonymity? And if the original NORAD version delivered under oath were true, then why did the Commission replace it with the new FAA version instead without seeking clarification on that perjured testimony? Certainly budgetary restraints, time pressures, and limited subpoena powers would be cited if we asked, but either way, there’s a slew of questions left unanswered, and possibly a cover-up. Nick speculated as one possibility that “the 9/11 Commission fabricated the story that the fighters were chasing a plane that didn't exist to explain how two hijacked planes were flying unimpeded towards their targets.” I had to admit it sounded plausible, and started digging in a little bit.

Next: The Phantom Flight 11
Back to FAA Masterlsit

Sources:
[1] 9/11 Commission Final report, pages 40-41.
[2] Ibid. Page 34.

ROADMAP SWAP/CHENEY’S “EFFORT”

2007-02-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

BEFORE AND AFTER MAY 8: CLARIFYING THE RECORD
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
December 17 2006

Office of What?

Dick Cheney: behind the scenes = behind it all? Who could NOT suspect that face?

There has been much attention and much confusion within the 9/11 Truth community centered on the mysterious mid-2001 “counter-terrorism task force” headed by Vice President Cheney and its possible role in the 9/11 attacks. From this has emerged three main takes: the passive LIHOP (Let it Happen on Purpose), active LIHOP (scramble defense on 9/11), and MIHOP (Make It Happen on Purpose) interpretations, each with their variations.

- Basic gist for a passive LIHOP theorist: Bush creates a task force to “prevent” terrorist attacks, tasking it to Cheney, whose pals want a “New Pearl Harbor.” Cheney gets the staff going just one day before 9/11 and so it fails to prevent the attack. Cheney’s stalling prevented implementation of previously recommended measures that could have stopped the 9/11 hijackers on the ground and so is evidence of allowance, which was also alleged – if not proven - over the original Pearl Harbor attack.

- Active LIHOP: In addition to maybe leaving the door open to the terrorists, Cheney prepared the field for the attack by scheduling several air-based military war games, some of which had fighter jets sent far away from the East Coast, and others whose similarity to the attack confused air defenses.

- Basic MIHOP (Make it Happen on Purpose) interpretation: Cheney used this task force to “prepare” for the attack by mobilizing FEMA Urban Search and Rescue teams to Manhattan the night before, presumably to facilitate evidence removal after the demolitions. And he arranged the war games, whose programming and possibly “live-fly” drones may have actually carried out the attack rather than just opening the skies. The “worst fears” being prepared for came true, and Cheney probably coordinated it all through his task force and an unidentified “Maestro.”

While all three and their various derivative theories are intriguing and have their evidence, I have a strong case to argue that these theories are seriously flawed. I myself was suckered in to the particular MIHOP interpretation at one point, seeing in it a neat way to tie the reviled Dick Cheney in with the war games of 9/11 and even the deployment of the FEMA rescue workers allegedly in Manhattan the night before the attack. Mike Ruppert was pushing the first half of that (but decidedly not the second), and it seemed intriguing and quite plausible. But the more research I do, the less clear all these links become. It’s not to say they aren’t there, just that if they are they aren’t as in the open as people seem to think. After I cover the flaws with both the LIHOP and MIHOP takes, I’ll propose a third interpretation of the import of this elusive agency.

There is a lot of confusion around the issue, enough so that people don’t even agree on what precisely to call the thing: Gregor Holland, in a 2004 piece from the New Zealand site Scoop (and later re-run by Prison Planet), explained that “the Office for Domestic Preparedness was the effort assigned to Dick Cheney by George W. Bush on May 8, 2001.” [1] But The Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP), which Holland correctly cites as an entity within U.S. Department of Justice, was actually created at DoJ in 1998 “to develop and administer training and equipment assistance programs for state and local emergency response agencies.” [2] The Center for Cooperative Research got it much closer, reporting in their timeline “May 8, 2001: Bush entrusts Vice President Cheney to head the new Office of National Preparedness, a part of FEMA.” [3] A 2002 House of Representatives report made no mention of a Cheney role in Bush’s creation of the Office of National Preparedness (ONP) on May 8 “for greater coordination among federal agencies in responding to a terrorist attack." They also noted "the President located the ONP within FEMA,” not in the White House. [4]

Bush’s original May 8 order stated the ONP “will be responsible for implementing the results of those parts of the national effort overseen by Vice President Cheney that deal with consequence management.” [5] The ONP were the front line water carriers to implement Cheney’s findings, and so there was clearly a higher level than them where these decisions were made, based not at FEMA but in the White House. As far as I can tell, this has no name, most commonly referred to as the “effort” that was indeed tasked to Cheney on May 8. It was neither ODP or ONP. The 9/11 Commission referred to this vaguely as “an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness.” [6] “Looking at” means a committee-oriented review process to give the ONP its direction, so I call this higher level “Cheney’s effort” or “the effort.”

The Roadmap Swap and the LIHOP take
Before I relate more on the May decree, we need to understand the timing “coincidence” I call “the Roadmap Swap.” It began on January 31 2001: Bush was just sworn-in as the 43rd President, with Cheney and all the PNAC people looking for their “new Pearl Harbor” on his coattails. That day, an elite panel was just completing its own assessment of the threat of such catastrophic events in the coming decades: The U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. Created by President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1998, and co-chaired by former Senators Gary Hart (D) and Warren Rudman (R), the commission unveiled their new report “Roadmap for National Security: Imperative for Change” at a press conference. Among the excerpts read live by Gary Hart on January 31 2001 was this ominous prophecy:

“States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction, and some will use them [...] Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers. […] Our military superiority will not entirely protect us” [7]

According to Hart, Congress began to take the commission’s suggestions seriously in March and April, and started introducing legislation to implement some of the recommendations, one of which was the creation of something called a “Homeland Security Department.”” [8] The commission scheduled another meeting for May 7, hoping some administration officials would attend this time. Instead, the meeting was cancelled and replaced with a brand-new policy review process. Hart said of the ultimate end of his commission “frankly, the White House shut it down […] The President said ‘please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the Vice President.” [9]

As National security Adviser Rice later explained, “The vice president was later, I think in May, tasked by the president to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations [from] the Gilmore report and the Hart-Rudman report and so forth and to try to make recommendations about what might have been done.” [10] This is where the May 8 decree comes in, apparently timed to answer the questions raised by the cancellation of Hart-Rudman’s scheduled meeting the previous day, and Bush’s statement seemed to address what they had probably meant to talk about. “No governmental responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of our nation and its citizens,” the one-page release stated, so “I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm.” Bush explained that the responses to a successful WMD attack were widely tasked to various agencies, a recipe for disaster. He expressed the need for these responses to become “seamlessly integrated, harmonious, and comprehensive.” [11] The release offers very little insight into Cheney’s role, mostly dedicated to explaining the new ONP, which Bush asked FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh to create.

Much has been made of the relevance of this swap, comparing the slow pace of Cheney’s effort compared to the urgency recommended by the Hart-Rudman Commission. Paul Thompson concluded in The Terror Timeline (2004) that the January report put forth fifty suggestions to "stop terrorists inside the US,” but every one was “ignored by the Bush administration.” Former Senator Gary Hart (D) later implied to Salon in April 2004 that the ONP/Cheney effort was created to prevent Congress from acting on his commission’s findings – though the purpose was left unexplained. [13] Apparently Al Franken made a big deal of satirically calling the Bush response to the Hart-Rudman plan “Operation Ignore.” Dave Pierre at the “Frankenlies” website took issue with this: “Franken leads many readers to believe that the commission’s report was some urgent call for President Bush to revamp the entire national security infrastructure immediately,” and that their refusal to do so may have contributed to 9/11. But Pierre aptly pointed out that “the Commission’s report clearly took a long-range outlook on how the United States should approach its national security," specifically, over 25 years. "In fact, the commission wrote, ‘We propose significant change, and we know that change takes time.’” [14]

In other words, if the roadmap swap really was meant as a delaying operation, either to deny a bi-partisan plan in favor of the Cheney/PNAC model, or to keep the road to 9/11 unobstructed - it was hardly needed. No recommendations were really expected except in the span of years and election cycles, not four-month cycles. If the Commission’s plans had been allowed to run their course, 9/11 would still have occurred. Scratch the passive LIHOP take, Cheney’s effort has nothing to do with it.

Hands-On Management?
Then to the active LIHOP and MIHOP interpretations: The few mainstream reports I’ve seen paint Cheney's effort as strictly paper-pushing review, but many in the Truth movement see something more sinister. For example, in Crossing the Rubicon, Mike Ruppert takes the stance that this task force put Cheney in “a quiet but unequivocal hands-on management role, before, during, and after 9/11.” He flatly asserts that the May 8 Order “placed Dick Cheney in charge of planning, preparing for, and coordinating all US response to the terror attack,” response that went well beyond FEMA ground response to the strikes and up into the military level of the air defense. [15] Considering the aberrantly poor response that then happened four months later, this is a damning charge.

I have respect for Ruppert’s works and have in the past considered myself a fan, but in this case at least I’m not so sure he has adequate evidence to back up this claim. For example, Ruppert decided the order tasked Cheney’s effort with coordinating “planning and training” against terror threats, a central part of his linking Cheney with the war games of 9/11, at least one of which posed a hijacking threat. But the release actually tasks the ONP, not Cheney, with “planning, training, and equipment needs” of local first responders, and placed naither in charge of scheduling war games.

So the nation's response to a WMD attack was to be looked at, tinkered with, and perhaps indirectly run by the enigmatic Dick Cheney - shortly after his colleagues at the PNAC had noted the utility of a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.” Four months later the worst terrorist (non-WMD) attack in Human history occurred, seamlessly sliding through all defenses and causing catastrophic (and catalyzing) harm to the American people, with a death toll on par with the “old” Pearl Harbor. While all this seems somewhat beyond the realm of coincidence, especially considering the relative rapidity of these events lining up within one year, to imply direct connections between them at this point seems premature. In the days before the attack, the coincidences would only get more precise and chilling, but not necessarily more relevant.

Abbot Helms “The Effort”

Admiral Steven Abbot, Director of Cheney's "effort," in October 2001

The 9/11 Commission explained that after the May 8 announcement creating Cheney’s effort and the ONP “the next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an Admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it.” [16] Cheney's first hire in June was his point man on coordinating the effort, Navy Admiral Steven Abbot, who has now become one of Mike Ruppert’s “persons of interest” in 9/11. He is a Rhodes scholar with an impressive military career, being a top commander in Europe during the conflict in Kosovo, and just retired as he got his new call to duty. Cheney also hired an embryonic staff of two to assist Abbot: researcher Carol Kuntz, who started her review right away, and Col. John Fenzel III, formerly director of Cheney’s secretive Energy Task Force and now Abbot’s staff director. [17] They were to report to Congress on their findings by October 1, a deadline that must have seemed impossible as September dawned and they still had no staff to direct and no base to operate from.

The 9/11 Commission reported “the Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred.” [18] In fact Abbot, Fenzel and Kuntz were finally given White House security clearance and got to work on the day before the fateful attack. [19] Abbot told the Congressional Quarterly in 2004 “I didn’t begin to work full time [on the effort] until early September. I got my pass to the White House complex on the 10th of September.” [20] What, if anything, did this staff do in the next 24 hours?

While Abbot’s official job was purely review – that is, research and recommendation - he did bring his connections and his many skills to the table. Ruppert found that Abbot was a trained fighter pilot, insanely experienced with a variety of craft, routinely hired as a test pilot for new technologies, and generally one with supreme understanding of managing the air dimension. Thus, Ruppert reasoned, Abbot may be an excellent candidate for Maestro, the coordinator of air-based exercises on 9-11 that “jump-started” response to the attack. [21]

Ruppert claims Abbot had also previously been in charge of the National Military Command Center (NMCC) beneath the Pentagon, the war room that sat empty of leadership on 9/11 while Rumsfeld and Myers ignored the attack. The acting NMCC Director that morning had been Captain Charles Leidig, asked to stand-in the day before for 90 of the 111 minutes of the 9/11 attack. Both having been from the Navy, Ruppert wondered “if Leidig and Abbot had ever served together or if Abbot had any influence in Leidig’s placement in the NMCC,” a placement which was, after all, requested bare hours after Abbott punched in for his first day of work at the White House. [22] No matter what to make of it all, this Cheney-Abbott-Leidig seam sewn into the fabric of the 9/11 story just about 24 hours before the actual attack is a highly curious and intriguing coincidence and makes Ruppert’s overall case start to make sense.

It's also worth noting that Abbot’s whereabouts and actions during the attack have not been publicized as far as I’ve seen. He was not questioned by the 9/11 Commission in any of their twelve public hearings, and was not even mentioned by name in their final report, referred to only as “an admiral from the Sixth Fleet,” (his name is in the footnote for this, citing a previously existing book by Steven Brill.) The Commission either never asked after him or he never returned their calls. As the man leading Cheney’s new preparedness task force, to be absent from all accounts as the biggest lack of preparedness in history happens on his second day on the job – and to remain unquestioned and virtually unnamed - that’s certainly anomalous, and raises the question of what skill set he was really using that morning.

A Post-9/11 Script Written in a Pre-9/11 World
While all this is speculation, what is known is that the attack gave Abbot and some of those around him a quick promotion; Cheney’s effort was the seed that would become the previously recommended Homeland Security Department. A White House spokeswoman later stated “the president was able to very quickly after September 11 stand up the Office of Homeland Security [since] a great deal of work had already been put into this issue.” [23] This was mainly the work that Carol Kuntz had overseen in mid-2001, and even in retrospect looks like a logical follow off of the Hart-Rudman Commission’s recommendations. Thus it should not be surprising that a White House press release from October 29 announced that Abbot was being promoted to the new Office of Homeland Security, as its Deputy Director, directly under Tom Ridge. [24]

So essentially what happened is previous ideas on securing the homeland were taken in together by Cheney’s effort, reviewed by Abbot’s crew, and, after the attack that clarified its need, used to set up the Office of Homeland Security and eventually DHS. Thus on May 8, Bush essentially tasked Cheney to create the Department of Homeland Security, which wouldn’t even make enough sense to do outright until after 9/11. This may be a coincidence, as the government certainly would argue if asked, but it is a rather spooky seam of foresight I think. Thus far it’s been largely eclipsed by these charges that Cheney’s effort was precisely the mechanism for allowing or orchestrating the attacks. It was probably no more responsible than its counterpart the USA PATRIOT Act, also clearly written before 9/11 considering its haste of production and signing into law as soon as it made sense - one month after the attacks, and a few days after the Anthrax Scare that had cleared capitol Hill.

Recall as well that a plan for the war in Afghanistan and a global campaign against al Qaeda was placed on Bush’s desk September 9. According to Paul O’Neill and others, the war in Iraq was largely planned before 9/11. The Patriot Act was written, and as we’ve just seen, the skeleton at least of the DHS was set up shortly before 9/11 as well. These are facts, and whether Bush gave Cheney the joystick to control the actual attacks or not, the general thrust of the Post-9/11 world was already set. You tell me: what does effort thusly directed in the months between Bush’s coronation and the “catalyzing event” really imply? Let It Happen? Make It Happen? Or simply It Will Happen?

Sources:
[1] Holland, Gregor. "UQ Wire: Long Debunked Rumor Validated by Giuliani: FEMA in NYC prior to 9-11 for Project TRIPOD terror drill, scheduled for 9-12." Scoop, Independent News. June 3 2004. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0406/S00031.htm
[2] "Office for Domestic Preparedness." Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/ojp/index.html
[3], [13] "Profile: Office of National Preparedness." Center for Cooperative Research. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=office_of_national_preparedness
[4] The Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, & Emergency Management Hearing on The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of National Preparedness. April 11 2002.
http://www.house.gov/transportation/pbed/04-11-02/04-11-02memo.html
[5], [11] "Statement by the President: Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction." For Immediate Release, Office of the Press Secretary. May 8, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010508.html
[6] 9/11 Commission Final Report, page 40.
[7] US Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, (1999), p. 141
[8] Paul Thompson and the center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. 2004. Page 98.
[9] See [8] Page 89.
[10] NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES Ninth Public Hearing
Thursday, April 8, 2004 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC CHAIRED BY: THOMAS H. KEAN
http://news.lp.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/911comm40804tran.html
[12] McCaleb, Christopher. "Disaster agency to coordinate terrorism response." CNN. May 8, 2001. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/05/08/senate.terrorism.02/
[14] "Operation Ignore"? Someone is ignoring some facts." http://www.frankenlies.com/lies/commission.htm
[15] Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon. 2004. Page 412.
[16] 9/11 Commission Final Report, Page 204.
[17], [20], [23] Rood, Justin. "Cheney Task Force on Terrorist Threats Never Met Before Attacks." Congressional Quarterly. April 15, 2004. http://page15.com/2004/04/cheney-task-force-on-terrorist-threats.html
[18] 9/11 Commission Final Report, page 204.
[19] See [8]. Page 106.
[21] See [15]. Pages 418-421.
[22] See [15]. Page 420
[24] “Gov. Ridge names Deputy Director of Homeland Security.” White House Press Release. October 29, 2001. Accessed August 5, 2005 at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011029-6.html

MISSION CLARIFICATION

2007-02-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

One of the Otis pilots said of the confusing orders he was given as he finally entered New York airspace “neither the civilian controller or the military controller knew what they wanted us to do." [1] They were fighters, made to get there quickly, identify their target, and fight. On 9/11 they were unable to do any of these. Langley pilot “Lou” called it the “smoke of war.” He noted to Jere Longman “no one knew exactly what was going on.” [2]

For a stunning example of what they were not told, Otis lead pilot Duff claims he and Nasty were never told about the history-making crash of American 11 six-minutes before they took off – and in fact believed they were still going to intercept it until they saw the smoke coming off Manhattan island, by then coming from both towers. Nearly a year after the attack, Duff still couldn’t recall hearing that the first plane had hit, as Aviation Week reported:

“‘Huntress,’ the NEADS weapons control center, had told Duffy his hijacked target was over John F. Kennedy International Airport. He hadn't heard about the United aircraft yet. “The second time I asked for bogey dope [location of AA11], Huntress told me the second aircraft had just hit the WTC. I was shocked… and I looked up to see the towers burning,” He asked for clarification of their mission, but was met with “considerable confusion.” [3]

He told the BBC that news of UA175’s impact was “obviously a shock to both Nasty and I, because we thought there was only one aircraft out there.” [4] According to the Cape Cod Times, “by the time (the pilots) heard a word about a second hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, it had already smashed into the second tower before the horrified eyes of millions on TV.” [5] In other words, people watching CNN had more information than the defending pilots. This is an absolutely stunning failure that has not gotten the coverage it deserves.

The Langley pilots faced similar hurdles. First, as we’ve seen, they were given no information on the location and distance to their target and flew the wrong direction based on confused orders. After they were finally ordered to change directions and rocket north towards New York at 600 mph, they just happened to pass the Pentagon and saw the smoke billowing from it. Lou said “holy smoke, that’s why we’re here.” As Jere Longman explains it:

”The lead pilot was asked on his radio to verify whether the Pentagon was burning…. “That’s affirmative,” Honey replied.” But not having been informed of a plane in the area, the pilots presumed it was a truck bomb or something of that nature.” [6]

After confirming the attack there was complete, they were then sent to investigate. The 9/11 Commission noted that Honey told them “you couldn’t see any planes, and no one told us anything.” The Commission concluded “the pilots knew their mission was to divert aircraft, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked airliners.” [7]

“I looked up to see the towers burning." “Holy smoke, that’s why we’re here.” “The smoke of war.” In both cases, despite the most advanced tracking and communications technology in the world, the pilots of the first wave were informed of their failure to prevent the attacks via primitive smoke signal. Especially in a situation like 9/11, the old adage “knowledge is power” applies. With a track record like this of sharing knowledge with the defending pilots, the question arises – were these men meant to do anything other than provide a veneer of defense?

According the Jere Longman, the Langley pilots, in addition to never being informed of Flight 77, “did not even learn about Flight 93, or a plane crashing in Pennsylvania, until they returned to Langley.” This was around 2 pm. [8] Two hijacked planes had targeted Washington – AA77 and UA93. The Langley pilots were somehow never told of either. So why were they even in the air? According to the 9/11 Commission, they were chasing American 11 an hour after it crashed.

Sources:
[1] Dennehy, Kevin. “'I Thought It Was the Start of World War III'” The Cape Cod Times. August 21, 2002. http://www.poconorecord.com/report/911-2002/000232.htm
[2] Longman, Jere. "Among the Heroes." Page 222.
[3] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
[4] BBC video. Clear the Skies. 2002.
[5] See [1]. Dennehy.
[6] See [2]. Page 76.
[7] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 45
[8] See [2]. Page 222.

"THERE'S ONE TERRIBLE PILOT"

2007-01-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

THE PRESIDENT STUMBLES INTO 9/11
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let it Happen
December 12 2006

One gaping hole in Bush’s account of his long dance with responsibility on 9/11 is how he first learned of the attack in New York and what he thought about it. Numerous people in the motorcade heading to the school before 9:00 were alerted to the first crash, and several eyewitness accounts have Bush informed before or shortly after arriving at the school that an airplane, probably a small private plane, had hit the World Trade Center. Bush himself has admitted to being informed by Andy Card, Carl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice; one report has the president musing in response that maybe the pilot had a heart attack, another that maybe it was bad weather. In all, Alan Wood and Paul Thompson at the Center for Cooperative Research counted six different stories of people informing him of this first plane’s crash. [1]

But Bush also has a seventh version, and it’s perhaps the most fascinating. On at least two occasions, Bush implied that he first heard of the crash from a TV left on in the hallway he was wandering before entering Miss Daniels’ room. At right around 9:00, a couple of minutes before the second plane hit, Bush said he “saw an airplane hit the tower” on the TV news. [2] But this is highly unlikely, as no footage of this event was aired until CNN obtained a video copy of the impact from a French camera crew that evening. Perhaps he meant to say he saw “the first plane had hit the tower,” and he was watching the smoking aftermath, which we all saw. But he repeated and clarified the story on January 5th, 2002; “when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on.” [3]

To my knowledge, no other government officials have backed this up – apparently the president had wandered off on his own at this point. These incongruous stories are certainly a curious window onto the President’s psychology. Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11, so why are his memories so strange and so obviously untrue?

Either way, the clincher is when he later recalled his thought process upon learning of the first plane to a Florida third grader named Jordan:“I used to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there - I didn't have much time to think about it." [4]

Let’s check the reasoning behind this conclusion, comparing it to Bush’s own experiences in the previous two months. In late July, Bush himself had been sleeping, dreaming peacefully of Crawford while floating on an aircraft carrier in Italy when he attended the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa. This accommodation replaced the standard posh hotel on order of the Secret Service after warnings were received of a suicide hijacking threat (the crashing a plane into a building kind) against the collection of world leaders. According to the Los Angeles Times, Italian authorities closed the airspace over the venue and set up anti-aircraft guns, though the Summit continued with no incident. [5]

About two weeks later, after returning to Washington and then departing for a vacation in Crawford to dream of Genoa, Bush was informed of some kind of hijacking threat in the U.S. This was in his famous August 6th daily CIA briefing, entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” which Bush later clarified he asked for in response to the Genoa affair. It stated that “FBI information […] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” [6] Traditional hijackings, it should be noted, do not really require any preparations, nor do they involve federal buildings on the ground. If by preparation they meant flight training, and if the building scoping was related to the air threat, the message should have been clear – suicide hijackings to bomb targets on the ground, as had been threatened at Genoa. It's not clear if this was clearly conveyed to the President at the briefing.

So in Bush’s mind, then:
Two-moth old threat of suicide hijacking (where a plane flies into a building)
+ One month old warning of possible “attack” involving a hijacking and/or New York buildings
+ A plane actually flying into a New York building known to attract terrorist attacks
= “Horrible accident… Terrible pilot.”

Is this chain of logic believable, even from George W. Bush? A year later, he still held to his story. He told 60 Minutes in an anniversary interview “I thought it was an accident. I thought it was a pilot error. I thought that some foolish soul had gotten lost and - and made a terrible mistake.” [7] “I was concerned about it, but there were no alarm bells,” he said elsewhere. And so, his services not required to deal with freak accidents, he calmly entered Miss Daniels’ room and surrendered to the power of story time at about 9:03, just as the second plane hit the WTC’s south tower.

Of course he learned a bare three minutes later that it was indeed terrorism and they were officially two-for-two, yet he failed to act decisively. I'm not terribly concerned with the five-to-seven minute Pet Goat episode, though the Booker Video is gripping. the problem for me is the next 55 minutes. Everybody who's broached the subject agrees that the only way the hijacked planes could have been stopped so late was by shooting them down and only the President could authorize that. By the official account anyway, he did not issue this authorization until about 10:05 or even as late as 10:18 - an hour or more after Andy Card's famous whisper and just as it became clear that the last plane had crashed.

But someone kept all the fighters well away from the targets anyway so Bush's serious dereliction of duty never became an issue. And once those planes completed their work unhindered, as Bush concluded to little Jordan, “when I got all the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America.” [8] And he should know, as the self-appointed collecter of payments on "hell's" behalf.

Sources:
[1] An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11 By Allan Wood, Paul Thompson. Center for Cooperative Research.
[2] Bush, George W. “President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting” Orlando, FL. White House Press Release. December 4, 2001.
[3] Bush, George W. “President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California.” Ontario, Calif. White House Press Release. January 5, 2002.
[4] See [2]. Orlando.
[5] “Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit” Los Angeles Times. September 27, 2001.
[6] [partial] “Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” CNN. April 10, 2004.
[7] “Bush Talks about the Moments of 9-11 as they unfolded for him.” CBS News. September 12, 2002.
[8] See [2]. Orlando.

THE WARGAMES AND DRILLS (masterlist)

2007-01-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

HOW COULD PEOPLE SO PREPARED FAIL TO STOP THE ATTACKS?

Michael Ruppert was among the first to draw major attention to the War Games of 9/11, a complex of drills in US airspace confusingly similar to the terrorist attack. These revelations, fleshed out for him by Barbara Honegger, formed what Ruppert called “in my opinion – the holy grail of 9/11 research,” noting how they seem to have scrambled the defense and were probably coordinated by a Maestro working for Dick Cheney. [1] The most high-profile breach of the subject yet was in March 2005 when Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), acting on Ruppert's tips, questioned Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers on the subject. She asked Myers "whether or not the activities of the four wargames going on on September 11th actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks." Myers of course insisted that they in fact "enhanced our ability to respond." [2] anyone who's looked at the details of the air defense that day knows how ludicrous this statement really is.

While still a mystery to the wider public, these curiously-timed drills have received much attention and discussion within the 9/11 Truth movement - Emanuel Sferios, as he questioned the faulty claims of Loose Change and the ilk on the five year anniversary, cited as continued strong evidence eclipsed by the crap “the simultaneous wargames that were taking place on the morning of 9/11, and that prevented NORAD from intercepting the planes before they hit their targets.” [3] For those unfamiliar, here is a basic run-down of what we know and how (this is only partly compiled at the moment and will be edited and expanded over time).

NORAD EXERCISES:
(NORAD = North American Aerospace Defense Command, a US-Canada treaty organization launched during the Cold War)
USA Today reported in April 2004 that NORAD had run exercises before 9/11 simulating suicide hijacking attacks: “one of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise […] the target was the Pentagon – but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic.” Most of these drills imagined hijackings originating overseas and coming in over the Atlantic, but USA Today noted “there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington State that were “hijacked.” [4] This drill was “conducted later” than July 2001, but not after September 11, and the date is apparently classified. Could this actually be the template for one of the war games of 9-11 itself?

1 > OPERATION VIGILANT GUARDIAN: The ironically dubbed “Vigilant Guardian” was the first to be widely acknowledged. The exercise to simulate a “crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.” Three different accounts of first notification of a hijacking indicate that there may have been simulated hijackings in at least Vigilant Guardian.

2 > OPERATION NORTHERN VIGILANCE: An "out-dated" Cold War exercise set up in the arctic with Canadian assistance to watch Russian meneuvers across the North Pole and "deny" them this attack route. But by drawing fighter and attention north, it opened another attack route on the East Coast...

3 > OPERATION NORTHERN GUARDIAN: Also set up in the Arctic and apparently related to Northern Vigilance, mentioned in the Toronto Star alongside it. Otherwise no details I’m aware of and undeserving of its own post.

4 > OPERATION VIGILANT WARRIOR: Mentioned exactly once as far as I know, by former White House counter-terror Czar Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies. Should have included "live-flies," actual planes in the air (manned or under remote control) pretending to be hijacked for the benefit of effective training.

In summary, these four NORAD exercises may have helped “jump-start” response on 9-11 by:
- Drawing fighters and attention away from the East Coast,
- Confusing commanders with the similarity of the drills to the actual attack,
- Inserting false radar blips, at least during the crucial first phase of the attack that hit New York.
- Possibly contributing, with continued radar inserts, to the presence of “ghost planes” like the phantom Flight 11 that distracted fighters from Flights 77 and 93.
- Possibly confusing the sky with remote-controlled live-flies.

The 9/11 Commission, tasked with brushing up the Official 9-11 for the history books, addressed the war games briefly. In one of their hearings, Commissioner John Lehman described them as one of the “happy circumstances” of 9-11, yet their final report makes no mention of any of them.

Other Drills (non-NORAD):

1 > GLOBAL GUARDIAN: Conducted alongside NORAD's Vigilant Guardian, GG was directed from the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) center in Nebraska, and involved three E-4B National Airborne Operations Center planes, the “Doomsday” planes of the Cold War intended to control nuclear forces from the air in times of crisis. There are a also a couple of other bizarre coincidences surrounding Offutt that morning covered in the post.

2 > Unnamed NRO plane-into-building drill: First revealed in 2002 - National Reconnaissance Office - air-based recon via spy satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles. Corder connection?

3 > TriPOD: Trial Point of Dispensing, drill for bioweapons attack, lower Manhattan, sheduled for 9/12/01, but had its center set up with FEMA people on 9/11. The TriPOD center, as it turns out, served perfectly as the base to run response to the WTC collapse. How convenient. The main question remaining is - what type of FEMA people were there?

4 > TIMELY ALERT: Force Protection exercise, Army, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Allegedly related to 9/11, but apparently not. But then again... (link coming soon)

5 > Alleged Drill at Pentagon - plane-into-building, Mascal connection, Arlington Fire Dept. Bush expected there - Secret service at Helipad. Honegger and allegations of drill based on Fort Monmouth contingent and Burlingame connection.

PSYCHIC RUMSFELD'S WANDERINGS

2007-01-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

Even as he did nothing about it, the Defense Secretary apparently developed a clairvoyant connection with the unfolding attack (at least according to Rumsfeld and a lackey). Just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and apparently unaware of any hijackings in progress, Rumsfeld was talking about terrorism and the future of the Defense Department at a meeting in the Pentagon. He later told CNN’s Larry King that he had said “there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong, healthy Defense Department that contributes to - that underpins peace and stability in our world.” [1] According Representative Christopher Cox, who was present, Rumsfeld said at 8:44 “let me tell ya’, I've been around the block a few times. There will be another event.” He then repeated it for emphasis, “There will be another event.” Two minutes later he was vividly proven correct when American 11 hit the North Tower.

At 9:36, Rumsfeld was aware there was an attack underway, but reportedly knew nothing of flight 77 heading straight for him. At that time, the Secretary was still in the Pentagon, now hanging out alone with Representative Cox. According to the U.K. Telegraph, the men were watching TV coverage of the smoking towers in Manhattan when the old man said “believe me, this isn't over yet. There's going to be another attack, and it could be us.” “The next minute, just seconds later,” Cox recalled in a press release, “Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.” Cox, for one, was left with no doubt who was in charge, and urged Americans to “listen and unite” behind the President and Rumsfeld. [3]

Action Rumsfeld, dead center (screen shot, America Remembers)

But Rumsfeld didn’t seem to do anything useful with his alleged psychic powers. After his magic show for Cox, he left his 4th floor office and went outside. The Secretary wandered around to the blast site on the other side of the monstrous building and started helping the wounded, well in view of the television cameras. That’s great that he wanted to help, but paramedics get paid to do that. He gets paid to be link #2 in the national defense chain of command in a wartime emergency, and one who had recently upgraded his responsibility for just this sort of event. He could have helped the grounds crew mow the grass as well, but that didn’t have the same propaganda power as helping the bleeding and dying.

Besides, near the ambulances would have been a dangerous place for the Defense Secretary to linger – as a self-described scholar of such things, he should have known that terrorists often conduct a second strike right when the rescue workers show up. While his security personnel were reportedly not pleased with this decision, Rumsfeld himself almost seemed to know that wasn’t part of the plan. He remained there for about fifteen minutes, by most accounts, until his security detail rushed him away.

Richard Clarke offers a different, more logical account. Clarke claims Rumsfeld was in on his Counter-terrorism conference when it started, between 9:10 and 9:25. As he entered the Video center with its bank of television screens, Clarke “could see people rushing into studios around the city,” including “Rumsfeld at Defense.” [4] Upon receiving word the Pentagon was hit by a plane, Clarke noted “I can still see Rumsfeld on the screen, so the whole building didn’t get hit.” [5]

But the 9/11 Commission, based on Rumsfeld’s testimony, concluded the secretary was in his office, getting his daily intelligence briefing as the attack began. After he was interrupted to be told a second plane had his in New York, “he resumed the briefing while awaiting more information. After the Pentagon was struck, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts.” [6] This leaves very little time either for Clarke’s teleconference or a meeting on “the future of terrorism and the Defense Department.” These accounts simply don’t add up.

But we know where he wasn’t. Some officials had already gone down to their battle stations in the NMCC bunker even before the Pentagon was hit (which was already more than a half-hour after everyone knew we were at war), and others joined them around 9:45 and after. By 10:00, Montague Winfield had taken the NMCC over again from Leidig, and would later state “for 30 minutes we couldn't find [Rumsfeld]. And just as we began to worry, he walked into the door” at 10:30. [7] Top-notch 9/11 researcher Paul Thompson wondered “shouldn't Rumsfeld have reported to the NMCC long before? For nearly an hour, apparently no one knew if he was killed in the Pentagon explosion or not.” [8] Up to this point, he actually knew very little of the response going on. The 9-11 Commission’s final report noted “Rumsfeld told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39.” [9] The last hostile aircraft had crashed thirty-six minutes earlier.

[1] CNN. “Where were You on 9-11?“ Larry King Weekend. September 7, 2002. Accessed November 12, 2004 at: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/07/lklw.00.html
[2] Cox, Christopher. “Chairman Cox's Statement on the Terrorist Attack on America.” Press Release. September 11, 2001. http://cox.house.gov/html/release.cfm?id=33
[3] Langley, William. “Revealed: what really went on during Bush's 'missing hours'” The Telegraph. December 16, 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F16%2Fwbush16.xml
[4] Clarke, Richard. against All Enemies. Page 3.
[5] 37. Clarke. Pages 7-8.
[6] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[7] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. New York. Regan Books. 2004. Page 456.
[8] See [7]. Page 456.
[9] See [6]. Page 44

BOJINKA part VI: BRZEZINKSI'S BOMBSHELL / WHAT WAS LEFT OUT

2007-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Much of the information I’ve drawn on so far in analyzing Bojinka is from an excellent article on the plot published in December 2001. It was by Matthew Brzezinski, ordinarily a writer of fiction known for his 2001 novel Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism's Wildest Frontier, which was praised by Foreign Affairs magazine as “a shake-your-head, laugh-out-loud book, but one with a good deal to say.” [1] Yet he has also written one of the most widely read factual accounts of Bojinka’s discovery, originally published as “Bust and Boom” in the Washington Post magazine, and published elsewhere as “Operation Bojinka’s Bombshell.” In the article, Brzezinski noted “the suicide attacks coincided, almost to the day, with another fifth anniversary: the 1996 conviction, in a Manhattan court, of Bojinka's original plotters.” [2] September 11 is hardly close enough to the 5th to constitute much of an anniversary, but it does help Brzezinski close his article on an ominous note that ties this fantastic plot yet closer to the far more fantastic 2001 attacks. He also took a hard line in the new “War on Terror.” He said of suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere “the last thing we want is having these guys back in circulation.” But he advised patience in taking them out; “we would be better served interrogating the life out of them rather than carrying out any sort of ‘swift justice.’” [3]

Aida Fariscal, whom Brzezinski describes as “a disgruntled former cop,” and his primary source for the article, was cited by the CIA for her leading role in busting up Bojinka and saving perhaps thousands of lives. After 9/11 she said “this should have never, ever been allowed to happen. All those poor people dead.” [4] (Does she know of another way to get “useful casualty lists?”) In a Washington Post Q and A session with Brzezinski following release of his story, one question pitched was “how much of the evidence that was documented in the Philippines […] could have been fabricated? I'm not questioning the veracity of your reporting. I'm just wondering if the Philippine government is seeking for a handout to “combat terrorism” when in reality they might use it for other operations.” Brzezinski admitted money was a factor, but noted of Fariscal’s account “I tend to believe its authenticity since her interests and those of the Philippine [government] don't necessarily coincide. Besides U.S. intelligence sources have not disputed any of its validity, even though the material is clearly embarrassing to them.” [5]

While we might wonder what the Filipinos did with the money they were given (Clinton, the Pope, and eleven airliner bombings, all narrowly averted in one arrest! That’s gotta be worth some Benjamins), one could also wonder what American authorities would get out of the bargain. The embarrassment from Brzezinski’s “bombshell” may have seemed a small price to pay for such a coup of a cover story for Shadow 9-11. And it could’ve been more embarrassing, but Matt had damage control in mind. Despite Bojinka in both its phases, as he had just reported it, he said after his story was published, “no one imagined something like this [was] possible, and there was no US precedent to justify heightened security. Bojinka was about blowing planes up, not hijacking them.” [6]

As Matthew noted: “Bojinka was about blowing planes up, not hijacking them.” From Matt’s account were missing two key elements that might have made the connection unavoidable. Suicide attack from the air was there, but it was one guy in a small plane – the missing links to become 9/11 would be an increase in scale - hijacking an airliner - and multiplying that into synchronized suicide hijackings.

Peter Lance, a veteran investigative reporter with ABC News, TV writer (Miami Vice, Missing Persons, etc.), and a regular guest on Coast to Coast AM, is a respected expert the massive government “cover-up” over its incompetence and underestimation of al Qaeda. [7] Lance is not a subscriber to Shadow 9-11 by a long shot, but his analysis of the Bojinka plot is worthy of note. In his book 1,000 Years for Revenge (2003) he explained that Murad’s phase two was from the beginning centered not on crop dusters with bombs but on a suicide hijacking of an airliner. Lance cites as clear evidence a January 20, 1995 memo written by Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, Murad’s main interrogator:

”What the subject [has] in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit, and dive it at the CIA headquarters. He will use no bomb or explosives. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute.” [8]

While Brzezinski’s two-phase Bojinka collectively hinted at 9/11, Mendoza’s account is of a plan that Lance accurately calls “a virtual blueprint of the 9/11 attacks,” if one simply multiplies by four - or divides by three. Lance also cites Murad mentioning ten other men receiving flight training at the time of his arrest, indicating that phase two was more ambitious even than what happened, planning eleven suicide hijackings to match the lofty number in the famous phase one. [9] Murad’s “more trained pilots” were already hitting the books and the simulators at the time of his arrest, and pending the provision of eleven teams of backup “muscle” hijackers, the plan was set. Philippine authorities say they passed all this information on to their U.S. counterparts. [10]

So why the earlier reports from U.S. and Philippine sources referring to a bomb-laden crop-duster or Cessna at the heart of Murad’s plot (when the plot is mentioned at all)? Was Mendoza’s memo, or the batch of terrorists earning their wings, suppressed from the record for some reason? Why didn’t Brzezinski’s investigation turn up this exaggerated 9-11 script written up in 1994, instead offering a muted, distanced version like a Muslim Frank Corder?

THE MIRACLE PASSPORTS

2007-01-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

While there is some evidence directly contradicting the FBI’s hijacker identification, the very logic behind their strongest positive evidence is itself the weakest link in the chain. For example, the miracle passports:

Al Suqami's Passport, found after plane impact and catastrophic collapse, from which nearly nothing survived.

Just five days after the attack, ABC News reported a remarkable find at the WTC site, where the four “indestructible black boxes” and two cockpit voice recorders were supposedly never found and presumed destroyed. An FBI "grid search” turned up the laminated paper passport of Satam al Suqami (#4). [1] Shortly thereafter, the Manchester Guardian reported, ringleader Mohammed Atta’s passport {#1) was discovered two blocks away from the twin towers. “We had all seen the blizzard of paper rain down from the towers,” the paper noted, “but the idea that Atta's passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism.” [2] While it has raised eyebrows in certain circles, as far as the official story, Atta’s incredible passport has passed through INS screens, traffic stops, airport screens, the plane’s explosive impact, and possibly the towers’ collapse before being found and widely accepted as hard proof of his involvement.

On September 13, a “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Student Identity Card” was found at the Pentagon fingering hijacker Majed Moqed (#14), and believed by the secret Service to have been forged. [3] Suicide pilot Ziad Jarrah’s passport (#16) was also found, badly burnt but with just his picture and name intact and readable, at the impact site of flight 93 in Pennsylvania, as pictured below. [3]

Clearly visible and readable: Ziad Jarrah. Not much else survived the crash of Flight 93.

Three attack scenes. Four crashes. Four passports. Four times a miraculous find even one or two of which is beyond the realm of easy believability. But the again acceptance of the official myth has never relied on facts but rather of a deep fear of the alternative, so the evidence has been taken.

Sources:
[1] “No Signs of Survivors: Recovery Efforts Intensify; FBI Launches ‘Grid’ Search.” ABC News. September 16, 2001. Accessed June 19, 2004 at: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_recovery_010916.html
[2] Karpf, Anne. “Uncle Sam’s Lucky Finds.” The Guardian. March 19, 2002. Accessed December 2, 2004 at: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/disinfo/deceptions/guardian_usluckyfinds.html
[3] Secret Service report for the FBI PENTTBOM investigation, Oct. 10, 2001. Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, Chp 2 - 9/11 Commission.
[4] Thompson, Paul. “The Two Ziad Jarrahs.” http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essayjarrah

TERRORLAND V

2007-01-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

A Map of coincidences surrounding 9/11 and the follow-up Anthrax scare, made by the author in 2004
Refer to the other Terrorland posts for more detail on the terrorists and flight training. Posts on the Anthrax attack hopefully coming eventually.

(Click image to enlarge to readable size - opening in a new window allows you to reference this map when readin other posts.)

HEADING AND SPEED

2007-01-13T16:00:00.000-08:00

The five fighters were scrambled not toward their targets, already hundreds of miles distant. Instead, they were sent out over ocean on complicated and apparently confused flight plans. Otis pilot Duff said they departed on a “2-8-0 heading - basically towards New York City.” [1] But the route recorded by Paul Thompson in his Terror Timeline book shows a path south over the ocean instead of west-southwest along the coast.

The Langley fighters were sent due east, over the ocean, instead of north-northwest to the Pentagon. The 9/11 Commission concluded in their final report. “unlike a normal scramble order, this order did not include a distance to the target, or the target’s location.” [2] Confused orders and/or noise restrictions over land have also been cited as reasons for this easterly flight. In July 2004, Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN) issued a rare criticism of NORAD, whose massive failures “left this country defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history.” Dayton noted that when 77 hit, the Langley fighters were still far to the east, “farther [from the Pentagon] than they were before they took off.” [3]

The speed of the fighters once airborne is impossible to gauge unless we see the path actually flown in a given time. They were both sent the wrong direction at first, so we know they didn’t take the shortest, straight-line routes, and exact information on this is incomplete, perhaps top-secret. So a reconstruction seems incredibly tedious and uncertain.

But even in accounts that cite or imply actual speeds we see serious disagreements. Jere Longman, in his book Among the Heroes, explained that the Langley pilots “were sent east over the Atlantic Ocean, and then north up the coast They likely reached six hundred miles an hour in a couple of minutes.” [4] Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, said with no embarrassment that the pilots flew “like a scalded ape,” topping 500 mph. [5] Literally, there are cars that have driven faster than that.

An important factor to consider, as widely noted by defense apologists, is that supersonic flights on intercepts over the continental U.S. were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency, sonic booms being considered noise pollution. But an aircraft must travel at least 750 miles per hour for a sonic boom to be heard on the ground. So why were they reported to be going 150-250 mph slower than supersonic – even though they were over the ocean instead of over land? And why was this EPA regulation allowed to interfere with the defense on 9/11 instead of being ignored like all the others?

To hear the Otis pilots speak, the rule was ignored. Duff said clearly to the BBC “I was supersonic.” [6] Aviation week described Duff and Nasty as “flying supersonically.” On another occasion, he said “it just seemed wrong. I just wanted to get there. I was in full-blower all the way.” [7] An F-15, like the one he was flying, can travel a top (full-blower) speed of 1,875 mph (compared to a 767's top speed of just under 600mph). An F-16 (like those sent from Langley) can top out at 1500 mph. Clearly somebody isn’t telling the truth here.

Scrambled sooner, sent the right direction, and allowed to floor it, these fighters may well have made a difference – yet the prime worry, apparently, was avoiding an EPA speeding ticket.

Sources:
[1] “Clear the Skies: 9/11 Air Defense.” BBC Video. 2002. Produced and directed by Peter Molloy, Hosted by Gavin Hewitt.
[2] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. “The 9/11 Commission Report.” New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Page 27.
[3] Ruppert, Michael C. “Crossing the Rubicon.” Gabriola Island, BC, CA. New Society Publishers. 2004. Page 440.
[4] Longman, Jere. “Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back.” New York. Harper Collins. 2002.
[5] Thompson, Paul. The Failure to Defend the Skies on 9/11.” Posting Date unlisted. Accessed November 29, 2004 at: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essayairdefense
[6] See [1].
[7] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
[8] Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research. “The Terror Timeline.” New York. Reagan Books. 2004. Page 380.

MYERS: WHEN THINGS ARE HAPPENING

2007-01-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

MYERS, WHEN THINGS ARE HAPPENING
ACTING CHAIRMAN ACTING AS IF NOTHING'S AMISS
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
January 10 2007

Gen. Richard Myers, CJCS from Sept. 2001-Sept. 2005

In September 2001 Air Force General Richard Myers was Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, scheduled on the 13th to be promoted and replace outgoing Chairman Henry Shelton. Myers was able to get a slight head start, taking over as acting JCS Chairman on the morning of September 11th as Shelton left on a trip to Europe on prearranged but unspecified business. [1] It was supposed to be a routine day, of course, but the nation's top military officer, and the optional number three link in the National Defense Chain of Command was filled at the last moment by Myers, who took the spot just as the day’s JCS/NORAD war games, and the 9/11 hijackings, began.

But he while he was, perhaps unwittingly, caught in a ready-made conspiracy theory crossfire, Myers was not in the thick of things during the battle of the World Trade Center or even the Pentagon strike. According to American Forces Press Service, Myers:

“was on Capitol Hill that morning in the offices of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland to discuss his confirmation hearing to become chairman. While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. “They thought it was a small plane or something like that,” Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call. Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet. “Nobody informed us of that,” Myers said. “But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit.” [2]

Myers’ recollection, then, was that his fifty-minute meeting with Cleland (apparently from about 8:50 to 9:40) just sort of eclipsed the whole attack for him. Are we to believe that no one would bother to interrupt the Acting JCS Chairman, perhaps legally required to coordinate the defense, for over a half an hour after the second plane hit? This was the point at which everybody else, even President Bush, realized we were under attack. It was bigger and uglier and closer to home than Pearl Harbor by far, and Myers says nobody pulled his head out of the sand for him at all, that he just stumbled into awareness after his meeting had run its course, at the moment the third plane hit.

Myers then drove across town to the NMCC beneath the wounded Pentagon, which he later described as “essentially my battle station when things are happening.” [3] Or in this case, as things just got done happening. The 9/11 Commission says he arrived and joined the conference in session just before 10:00. [4] The last plane, Flight 93, crashed at 10:06 and the attack was over.

Sources:
[1] Balz, Dan and Bob Woodward. “America's Chaotic Road to War: Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours After Attack.” Washington Post. January 27, 2002. Page A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26
[2] Rhem, Kathleen, Sgt. 1st Class. “Myers and Sept. 11: “We Hadn't Thought About This.”” American Forces Press Service. October 23, 2001 Accessed November 6, 2004 at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10232001_200110236.html
[3] General Richard B. Myers, Senate Confirmation Hearing. Senate Armed Services Committee. September 13, 2001. Accessed August 5, 2005 at: http://www.attackonamerica.net/genrichardbmyerssenateconfirmationhearing9132001.htm
[4] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 38.

BOJINKA VII: PROFESSED IGNORANCE / MAINTAINING THE FOCUS

2007-01-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Bojinka’s second phase, when seen head-on, shows that the evolution to the full-on coordinated suicide airliner tactics of 9-11 was in fact complete as 1995 dawned. No wonder U.S. authorities and their allies and relatives have so distanced themselves from awareness of it, and hewn such a close line of quarantine around references to it. Immediately after September 11 was allowed to happen, the implications started dropping that they were never told about phase two at all. For example, FBI spokesman John Collingwood wrote a letter to the Washington Post in October 2001:

“The FBI had no warnings about any hijack plots. There was a widely publicized 1995 conspiracy in Manila to remotely blow up 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific, but that was disrupted. And, as is the practice, what was learned in that investigation was widely disseminated, even internationally, and thoroughly analyzed by multiple agencies. It does not connect to the current case.”[1]

Collingwood makes no reference at all to the part of the plot that clearly “connects.” By Peter Lance’s account, Murad was turned over to the FBI in April 1995. After a few weeks with the flight student, the Bureau produced a final memo on May 11. For whatever reason, with access to Philippine interrogators’ reports and to Murad himself, the memo contained not a word about any suicide plot. [2] Thus what was widely available for analysis was indeed void of phase two references.

And at the 1996 trial it went completely unmentioned. Even Colonel Mendoza, who had headed the interrogation and discovered phase two, was never called to testify, and himself went totally unmentioned in the trial, even by his assistant when he testified. Lance noted that by these omissions, “the FBI seemed to be going out of its way to avoid even a hint of the plot that was ultimately carried out on 9/11.” [3]

In all the detail in Richard Clarke’s account of Bojinka, he made no mention at all of Murad nor of his phase two and its suicide plane attacks, even in its tamer Brzezinski version. The 9-11 Commission described the Bojinka plot, by name, as “the intended bombing of twelve U.S. commercial jumbo jets over the Pacific during a two-day span.” [4] They did not mention Murad’s second phase either, but their reference to 12 jets is interesting. At least one CNN report from 1996 said 12 planes were to be involved, perhaps including Murad’s solo hijacking, as mentioned in Mendoza’s memo, meaning the Commission indirectly verified this early awareness.

And officials can’t come right out and say they’ve never heard of phase two; Rex Hudson noted it in his 1999 report. Vincent Cannistrano, former CIA counter-terrorism director, said “no question about it. We knew about the pilots and suicide plots.” As for why this did not lead to any workable prediction of 9-11, he explained, they “just didn't put two and two together.” [5]

After the alleged costs of that bad math became clear, the official U.S. mantra indeed remained “unprepared, unforeseen, unimagined.” A flood of revelations of advance warnings hit the news in the spring of 2002 to curious effect; on the one hand, these revelations eclipsed earlier allegations of direct government execution and kept the terrorists center stage. But on the other hand, they demonstrated that no imagination or foresight was required to prevent the hijacking attacks.

An embarrassed Bush administration responded by repeating the same mantra even louder. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice went on the defensive, claiming repeatedly on May 16th the government had no idea that an airborne terrorist attack was even a possibility. Rice said “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use […] a hijacked airplane as a missile” [6] Fleischer told reporters “never did we imagine what would take place on September 11th, where people used those airplanes as missiles and as weapons.” He also took some heat off the President, stating that Bush “did not… not… receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers. This was a new type of attack that had not been foreseen.” [7]

Even in 2004 the story held; Bush himself stated on April 13 “there was nobody in our government, and I don’t think the previous government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.” [8] There’s a certain desperate evasiveness in these confused and clearly false assertions. The obvious explanation for this is that, as they’ve argued, they couldn’t have prepared to meet the threat because they’d never even imagined it. But they had to know people would see right through this position as stories about warning flooded out, with no sign of stopping.

While Bojinka phase two was a great idea, one must wonder, after Murad’s disastrous arrest and interrogation, would al Qaeda be dumb enough to have expected to succeed? If Philippine investigators and American report-writers are any indication, the element of surprise should have been blown years before a scaled-down Bojinka was realized on September 11th. In fact, the reason that the administration can claim they’ve never heard of the tactic is because it has never before happened. Numerous attempts have been made, but world governments and simple bad luck had thwarted all such plots up to that point. But somehow Bojinka finally came true in one place and at one time only - at the very military and financial heart of the world’s sole Superpower on September 11, 2001. They insist they simply hadn’t realized there was such a threat there to defend against.

And this is, curiously, a long-term silence. Throughout this chapter we’ve seen evidence of a see-no-evil strategy towards this tactic, from the FBI to the Pentagon to the Bush White House, from 1994 until the 9-11 attacks, with continued affirmations of ignorance to the present time. It almost smells like a long-held Pentagon proprietary concept, a rainy day project that can never be talked about, neither confirmed or denied, a top-secret Scenario 12-E. It first appeared, we are told, in the wake of the Corder crash and the failed Eiffel Tower attack as the silenced Cetron report. Within weeks of being handed to the Pentagon, it became tangled with al Qaeda via the prescient Bojinka phase two, extracted from Abdul Murad, that we hardly heard a peep about until after 9/11.

While Sonny Razon saw the occurrence of the first successful suicide hijacking attack as proof the U.S. had ignored his warnings, perhaps they actually did listen very closely, and the success of Shadow 9/11 is the proof.

PHANTOM FLIGHTS

2007-01-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

Two hijacked planes had targeted Washington – AA77 and UA93. The Langley pilots, those nearest to Washington during the attack were somehow never told of either. So why were they even in the air? According to the 9/11 Commission, they were chasing American 11 an hour after it crashed. According to the 9/11 Commission, they were going to intercept Flight 11. While the Otis pilots had been looking for it until at least 9:03 am, well after it had crashed, somehow it was misreported to NEADS at 9:21 that American 11 was still airborne and headed for Washington. Thus, the commission concludes, the Langley pilots were going to intercept the ghost flight nearly an hour after it crashed. The Commission reported: “we have not been able to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information.” [1]

Did someone make this up, or were they actually seeing it as a radar blip on their screens? During the course of the 9/11 Commission’s hearings, I recall an official testifying that a number of reported hijackings that morning turned out to be “phantoms.” These non-existent planes turning up as real on radar screens further confused response, notably by distracting the Langley pilots from a real plane – American 77 – that was official invisible on these same screens until right before it hit the Pentagon.

FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told Richard Clarke, after the first two planes had crashed, “we have reports of eleven aircraft off course or out of communications, maybe hijacked.” [2] Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said “we probably had maybe about ten unaccounted for planes.” [3] Florida State Congressman Adam Putnam, who was aboard Air Force One with President Bush, was told at 11:30 there was a threat against them. Putnam explained “at the time… [the President] said that there were six aircraft that were not accounted for.” [4] In his bunker beneath the White House, Cheney had at least two possible run-ins with ghost planes, which he aggressively ordered shot down. Were all of these simply the result of confusion and uncertainty, with every communications problem getting a plane called in as a possible hijack? Or was there something stranger at work?

Among the air-based War Games being held that morning was Operation Northern Vigilance, set up in the arctic with Canadian assistance. They were there, NORAD explained, “to monitor a Russian air force exercise” that was happening just on the other side of the North Pole. [5] In addition to possibly drawing fighters and radar attention away from the East Coast, Northern Vigilance also, for whatever reason, involved radar “inserts,” blips that would look like planes to radar controllers but in reality corresponded to nothing. How many inserts were used, on whose screens, and inserted into which air traffic regions are all questions that remain unanswered. As it became clear an attack was underway, at 9:00 am, NORAD officially cancelled the exercise and erased the inserts. But until that time, they may have added to the confusion in the air. And this is only the reported possible source of such phantom flights. There are so many other ways in which false radar/transponder data could be seen as real and thus conceal the attack planes beneath a swarm of decoys. The confusion would only have to hold for about 30-45 minutes, just long enough to get all the targets – or at least all but one – through our normal air defenses. If this was the plan, it worked like a charm and the catalyzing event was realized.

Sources:
[1] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 26
[2] Clarke, Richard A. “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” New York. Free Press. 2004. Page 4.
[3], [4] “Clear the Skies.” BBC Video. 2002.
[5] Ruppert, Michael C. “Crossing the Rubicon.” 2004. Page 342.
[6] Thompson and the CCR. The Terror Timeline. 2004. Page 386.

BOJINKA V: FLORIDA 2001: BOJINKA BECOMES 9/11?

2007-01-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Clearly the U.S. government knew, and had been reminded, that suicide pilots presented a serious threat. But if they’d been watching for Bojinka, they’d have seen 9/11. Murad’s “more trained pilots” would be widely reported to be training inside the U.S. in the months before the attacks, in Minneapolis, Phoenix, and elsewhere, but these reports would go ignored and buried. One famous arrest was made, but no leads beyond that were followed, and all evidence points to purposeful top-down counter-counter-terrorism.

The three out of four 9/11 suicide pilots that trained in Jeb Bush’s Florida were apparently never even reported or noticed at all, even as their plot, it seems, took a serious turn there. In fact, they didn’t seem to know what they were doing at first. While they pursued flight training for big jets, or anything they could get enrolled for, they also were looking at buying their own small planes.

As ABC News reported, ringleader Mohammed Atta, supposedly financed by Saudi billionaires, went to the United States Department of Agriculture in Spring 2001 for a $600,000 loan to buy their first crop-duster. He was turned down, which might have had something to do with his dozen or so not-so-subtle hints he dropped to the loan agent that he wanted to use the plane to attack America. The agent, one Johnelle Bryant, described Atta’s eyes as “black” and “evil,” and she passed a polygraph test. Her superiors placed some sort of gag order on her, but she bravely defied it to sit down and tell her story to ABC (“Face to Face with Evil”). Perhaps it was Atta’s alleged threat to slit Bryant’s throat and steal the money that had something to do with getting turned down, but luckily it didn’t get him reported. She didn’t say a word until after she saw his face on the news in mid-September.

The ABC story explained:
“Being turned down for the loan altered the hijackers' plans. According to law enforcement officials, packing twin-engine planes with explosive chemicals, making it a flying bomb, had been the terrorists' plan since the mid-1990s. When Atta reported to his group that he could not get a loan to buy smaller planes, the plan was switched to hijacking passenger jets, according to what Abu Zabaydah, a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, has told American interrogators since his capture.”

We are to believe the evolution from Bojinka to 9/11 happened right there, in front of Johnelle Bryant’s USDA office in mid-2001, as the plotters regrouped from their failure to fund the project with American government loans. One can only wonder how Johnelle feels about this, or whether she even believes her own story or Zabayadah’s extracted confession.

Source: Ross, Brian. “Face to Face With a Terrorist: Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking Funds Before Sept. 11.” ABC News. June 6, 2002. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/ross_bryant020606.html

FLIGHT 93 AND THE AUDIO RECORD

2007-01-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

The biggest problem for the remote control theory is the audio record: the phone calls, transmissions, and cockpit voice recorders that prove the hijackers were present and presumably responsible for the attacks. This is really not as big a problem as most people would like to think, easily achievable with a few voice actors, voice technology, or even a few real “victims” in on the plot and held back from destruction. But questioning these pivotal phone calls is hard, a supremely emotional issue. How does one imply that someone was lied to that cruelly, or offer probably false hope their loved ones are still alive? Thus this issue has been largely danced around.

Nonetheless, the audio record has its problems: Cockpit audio of the hijackers talking to the passengers was accidentally heard, recorded, and later presented from flights 11 and 93. That both Ziad Jarrah and Mohammed Atta would be able to run the hundreds of controls necessary to fly these monsters into their targets, but then both hit the transmit button instead of the cabin address button seems possible, but a little coincidental on two of the four flights. It seems almost as likely that these oddly feedback-laden transmissions were faked by, as Joe Vialls termed it, “an unidentified “special effects” department, perhaps hell-bent on making listeners later believe that the suitably distorted “guttural” voice belongs to an “Arab hijacker” trying to steal an American airliner.” [1]

Then there are the cockpit voice recordersby which we can normally hear what happened in the cockpit of a crashed plane. Flights 11, 175 and 77 yielded nothing (no indestructible black boxes found for any of them either, which is odd). But 93’s CVR yielded thirty minutes of audio thoroughly consistent with the inspirational official story. Family members of the victims on that flight have been allowed to listen to it but not talk about it. This means either there were hijackers and a cockpit intrusion on Flight 93, or else the CVR was simply switched off, with this recording planted in its memory before takeoff, or somehow faked later.

Otherwise the audio field is owned by phone calls from passenger and crew. The total number of calls to contend with is fairly low; only two to three calls each from flights 11, 77, and 175 have been published to my knowledge, in stark contrast to the flood of ten calls from Flight 93. Some of these calls were sent via “Airfone,” special phones built into and transmitted from the plane itself. They are designed to send phone signals from the air to the ground, offered in lieu of the FAA ban on cellular phones.

Others of the calls were placed via personal cell phones in spite of the ban, and it is to these that we now turn. In July 2004, American Airlines and Qualcomm jointly announced the development of a new technology that allowed passengers on a test flight “to place and receive calls as if they were on the ground.” [2] But what types of calls from the air were possible in 2001? Altitude seems to be the key. Canadian Economist and 9-11 revisionist Michel Chossudovsky explained “according to industry experts, beyond a certain altitude which is usually reached within a few minutes after takeoff, cell phone calls are no longer possible.” [3] This zone of reliability seems to have been about 8,000 feet, with normal cruising altitude around 30,000 feet, and thus, he concludes, “given the wireless technology available on September 11 2001, these cell calls could not have been placed from high altitude.” [4] Wireless Review explained: “Alexa Graf, AT&T spokesperson, said systems are not designed for calls from high altitudes, suggesting it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations.” [5]

By this analysis, one caller from Flight 175 and at least one from Flight 93 made cell calls from around cruising altitude that should have been impossible. Oddly, these are also the only two callers to achieve multiple calls, all others only getting out one call each as far as I’ve seen. The pivotal Todd Beamer cell call is in the unsure middle ground, with altitude unclear and changing over the course of nearly fifteen minutes with no apparent change in reception. He talked to an anonymous Verizon operator, giving an excellent account of the heroism aboard Flight 93, providing a key element of the official story in a call that is somewhat questionable.

And for what it’s worth, Flight 93 somehow wound up yielding ten times the calls per person ratio of flight 11, with more calls than from the other three flights combined. 93 yielded ten reported calls and seven callers out of only 33 non-terrorist passengers, in a plane that can seat 182. There is no reason to doubt the government’s ability to fake these few phone calls in any number of ways, nor their ability to place them in such a way that they bear all the marks of a genuine call from one of the hijacked flights, cell phone or Airfone. But on the other hand, multiple loved ones were totally convinced - if these were faked they were faked well. There are four possibilities that these calls and transmissions represent:

- a) Audio record real, hijackers present and in charge, and flew their planes into those buildings. Shadow 9/11 is bunk.
- b) Calls real, hijackers on board in a traditional hijacking scenario, with the well-known, widely warned attack then “hijacked” via remote control, leaving the obvious presumption that the Arabs did it.
- c) Calls fake, passengers but presumably no hijackers on board, as in Scenario 12-D. All communications would be cut so the outside world didn’t find out what was really going on inside the plane, and the audio we’ve been presented is entirely faked. In this case, any hijacking attack, as mentioned in warnings, would have been pre-emptively hijacked.
- d) Calls fake, no one on board the attack planes at all. The flights were drones every one, and who knows what happened with the passengers.
- e) Any permutation or combination of these – ex: Flight 93 may have been a real hijacking, traditional or suicide, with the other three planes being drones tacked on to the existing attack, using it as cover while amplifying its traumatic nature. If 93 were a genuine hijacking, it may have even been fitted with a special prototype system like Qualcomm’s to send cell calls as if from the ground to thickly document the real terrorist presence there. The plane was then presumably shot down on Dick Cheney’s orders as it headed to Washington, and was then presumed part of the otherwise faked attack.

And remember, the very integrity of the “new American Century” is at stake here. In scenario d) above, the final fate of the passengers on the attack planes is raised, and indeed there are many convoluted theories out there to explain this. For example, the four flights may have been told of a hijacking threat, crossed radar paths with duplicate drone aircraft, as in Northwoods, as they moved to land at a safe airport. The “rescued” passengers would have been off-loaded, then loaded onto flight 93 and shot down. But Shadow 9/11’s simplest explanation is that they were simply kept on their respective planes, killing two birds with one stone and keeping the evidence consistent.

Thus I can only cite questions about cell phone calls, raise the possibility of faked calls from remote locations, note the telling slant of the audio record toward one flight (93), and finally note that if one call from 9-11 is fake, and consistent with the other calls, then clearly all are fakes. But I can’t prove anything. This is not my field, and the audio record remains the weak point of Shadow 9/11. I’ll leave it to the reader whether to dismiss the whole theory for this flaw or overlook the flaw for the sake of the big picture.

Sources:
For the call chart, I referenced The Terror Timeline (2004) by Paul thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research. I thank them for their excellent work.
[1] Vialls, Joe. “‘We Have a Bomb on Board’ Messages Faked.” September 19, 2002. Accessed Nov. 16 2005 at: http://the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/Faked-Flt93-messages.htm
[2], [4] Qualcomm. Press release. American Airlines and QUALCOMM Complete Test Flight to Evaluate In-Cabin Mobile Phone Use. July 15, 2004. Accessed January 9, 2005 at: http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2004/040715_aa_testflight.html
[3] Chussudovsky, Michel. “Holes in the report, the 9/11 Cell Phone Calls.” Global Research. Aug 10, 2004. Accessed Nov 20 2005 at: http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/print.php?storyid=723&PHPSESSID=ce62971b5a6eba2e58aa8c0098173a38
[5] Harter, Betsy. “Final Contact” Wireless Review. November 1, 2001. Accessed January 9, 2005 at: http://wirelessreview.com/ar/wireless_final_contact/

BOJINKA VIII: OPERATION BRZEZINSKI

2007-01-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
Written late 2005
Posted 1/20/07

As he was asked repeatedly in his Q and A session, "Bust and Boom" author Matthew Brzezinski is indeed the nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter. A cold and calculating thinker who has been described as the Democrats’ Henry Kissinger, the elder Brzezinski has tried his hand at non-fiction, writing many books, including his 1997 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geo-Strategic Imperatives. In this book he noted, among other things, the strategic role of securing Afghanistan (as well as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and - surprise - Poland) in relation to the American empire to hedge in Russia or any other rival to control of the “Grand Chessboard” of Eurasia.

Zbig’s own earlier role in Afghanistan was pivotal, encouraging and provoking the Soviet invasion of December 1979 that triggered the Jihad where bin Laden and the other future al Qaeda leaders met and learned the tools of the terror trade. This was a conscious plan of Brzezinski’s to give the USSR “its Vietnam War” to “make the Soviets bleed for as much, as long as possible” but with no American deaths. [1] President Carter agreed, approved funding, and sent Zbig to Islamabad in January 1980 to show support for Pakistan’s resistance against the Soviet occupation. He took a little side-trip to the Afghan border to rally the international coalition of radical Islamists; dressed in a parka at the Khyber Pass, Zbig told them “your fight will prevail because your cause is right and God is on your side.” [2]

Whatever works at the time works, including dirty tricks like creating terrorist networks; but Zbig continued to boast of this as “an excellent idea” even as late as an early 1998 interview in which he asked his interviewer “what is more important in world history, the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” [2] At the time it may have seemed a toss-up, but later that year two US embassies blew up in Africa and bin Laden declared holy war on the US – his crusade started taking on its eventually convincing global dimensions as a replacement for the Soviet threat.

Zbig’s son Ian Brzezinski is now helping the Pentagon keep Central Europe “liberated” from Russian domination as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs, appointed shortly after 9/11, in November 2001. Ian is at virtually every Pentagon meeting where European diplomats are present, usually seated right next to the top U.S. official. A longtime NATO insider, he spearheaded the effort to shape its expansion into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. All seven “North Atlantic” states were approved for membership in March 2004, followed by Brzezinski’s capstone article “An Alliance Transforming.” [4] His advising record and his catalog of writings indicates that Ukraine, once the second most powerful Soviet Republic, is the final prize in this campaign, a play right out his dad’s 1997 book!

Ian's brother Mark Brzezinski has also helped in this process, as a possible Secretary of State if John Kerry had won in 2004, and otherwise devoted to the “Democratic transformations” wracking the former Soviet Space in the early years of this “new American Century” - notably the dioxin-induced Orange Revolution that turned Ukraine, of all places, upside down.

Ian’s and Mark’s sister Mika Brzezinski had worked as a reporter and host for CBS News for a few years until 2000, when she went over to MSNBC for a bit. Her return to CBS in early September 2001 was rewarded with the post of top New York correspondent. She was already reporting from the WTC before the second plane hit, and continued throughout the weeks after, anchoring millions of viewers to the latest from Ground Zero from the first moments of shock and awe through the early and raw phase of the “War on Terror” mentality. [5] Thus her timely return allowed her to have no small role in shaping the “widely perceived” part of what her father had four years earlier called the “direct external threat” that would allow “imperial mobilization.” [6] She later vied for an anchor slot on the back of such notable reportage, but lost the bid to Katie Kouric.

And then there’s nephew Matthew’s article that claims to expose the roots of al Qaeda’s sinister plan that led to all this. Some, like Matt, explain that the name Bojinka is a Serbo-Croatian slang word for “loud bang.” Some sources interpret it as meaning “chaos in the sky” or something to that effect. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected financier of both this plan and September 11, explained in a 2003 interview that Bojinka is simply a nonsense word he picked up in the international bazaar that was the Afghan Jihad. [7]

Maybe this is coincidence, but I think it also sounds a little like “Brzezinski” (pronounced Brr-jhin-skee). If I let my imagination run for a minute, and I will, I can visualize “Bojinka” starting out as a nonsense nickname Osama gave Zbigniew when they met in Pakistan in 1980. They were both in country at the same rough time and for the same reason. As we’ve seen, Brzezinski visited the bustling Khyber Pass on a side-trip from his mission to Pakistan in January. Meanwhile, the Soviet invasion had made Osama “furious,” as he later recalled, and he was far from alone. As one of many sons from the Saudi Kingdom’s second richest family, he was the top export they had at the time. He first arrived at Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass, within weeks of the invasion - January. [8]

He and Brzezinski were both there to boost the funding and the morale of the frontline troops and to show the unity of purpose in the anti-Soviet alliance: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. Thus as the top representatives of their respective allied nations, it would in fact be a bit odd if the two men hadn’t met. It is a hard name to pronounce. “Ah, here he is now, our American friend Mr. Buruz… zuzzuz.. Mr. Baarrjjuzzz… Mr. Bojinka!” (big hearty laughs all around, it evolves among the Muj into a little frontline joke, one thing leads to another…) Both men would, and have, denied such meetings; bin Laden claims he never knew he was serving America’s interests at all. But it’s an intriguing thought, and vaguely possible. Weird things abound, I’ve found, around this weird name.

Sources:
[1], [2] CNN. Cold War Experience. Episode 20. Soldiers of God. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/script.html
[3] Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
[4] U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda. Volume 9, Number 2. June 2004. (CIAO Date 9/04 - ?) Accessed November 10, 2005 at: http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fpa/fpa_jun04/
[5] Mika Brzezinski profile. CBS News. Copyright 2002. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/28/broadcasts/main527208.shtml
[6] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York. Basic Books. 1997. Pages 210-211
[7] 9/11 Commission Final Report. p 488-489
[8] Frontline: “A Biography of Osama Bin Laden.” PBS. 2001. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio.html

Terrorland II: THE DUTCHMEN COME TO TOWN

2007-01-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

Huffman Aviation’s owner Ruddi Dekkers is relentlessly portrayed by Hopsicker as a greedy, overweight, boorish pervert. He was reportedly indicted on financial charges (fraud and money laundering) in the Netherlands, and while in Florida was sued for sexual harassment (he settled out of court but then failed to pay up). An airport employee noted that Dekkers’ sudden appearance was suspicious, that he “had no aviation background as far as anyone can tell. And he evidently had no use for, nor knowledge of, FAA rules and regs.” [1] 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi received their commercial pilots licenses after training at his school. Not a good track record.

Dekkers had purchased his aviation school in May 1999 on the back of a loan from an American sponsor, Wallace J. Hilliard. [2] Wally Hilliard was a Naples native whom Hopsicker describes as a “70-year old… multi-millionaire businessman and self-styled Mormon Bishop” who apparently moves in elite circles, including having bailed out Jerry Fallwell to the tune of $1 million. [3] A local paper confirmed that though Hilliard financed Dekkers' purchase of Huffman, Dekkers was the sole stockholder. [4]

According to the same local newspaper (the Venice Gondolier), Dekkers ambitions ran into starting a commuter airline called Florida Air. “Florida Air was in service for about two months in 2001, then was grounded for financial reasons,” the paper stated. [5] Dekkers’ business partner in Florida Air, Richard Boehlke later told a reporter that Dekkers “was an oxymoron the day I met him…. I can’t believe anyone handed him millions of dollars to run a business he had no experience in.” But people in high places also threw him endorsement; according to an ad from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris used the airline: the ad reportedly read “as one of Florida's top politicians, Katherine Harris doesn't have much time to do a lot of personal traveling. So she appreciates the convenience that Florida Air offers.” [6]

The other “Magic Dutch Boy,” Arne Kruithof, while quieter, is also highly interesting. It was at Kruithof's school, Florida Flight Training Center, that Ziad Jarrah, suspected pilot of flight 93, earned his wings at the same time his cohorts trained next door at Huffman. Hopsicker maintains that this may have been no coincidence; Kruithof is also Vice-President of Aviation Aspirations, a company he apparently runs with a German man named Pascal Schreier. Aviation Aspirations provides both financial assistance and a “Mentor Program” to help aspiring young flight students around the world. Hopsicker maintains that Schreier operated out of and primarily recruited students in Hamburg, from which all three suspected 9/11 hijackers that trained in Venice came. The company's motto: “Better training because we care.” Hopsicker wondered “Could 'mentor' be just a cute way to say 'handler?’” [7] According to The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, Ziad Jarrah, unlike Atta and Alshehhi, had his training at Kruithof’s FFTC arranged in advance, while still in Hamburg. [8]

Hopsicker noted some curious services Dekkers and Kruithof allegedly provided to the government. A Venice “airport executive” told Hopsicker that a shady outfit called Britannia Aviation, working out of a hangar at Huffman, had been granted a “green light” from the DEA, a five year contract to run a maintenance facility at the Lynchburg, VA airport. Hopsicker maintained “nothing was known about the company… Britannia Aviation is a company with virtually no assets, employees, or corporate history…the company did not even possess the necessary FAA license to perform aircraft maintenance services for which it had been contracted.” In fact, financial statements prove Britannia to be “a ‘company’ worth less than $750.” Yet the local Venice Police Department “had been warned to leave them alone." [9]

Hopsicker’s argument, fleshed out further in his excellent works, indicates that Dekkers’ instant aviation company was serving a DEA-connected dummy company that had worked with a CIA-connected dummy company known to traffic drugs, while he simultaneously oversaw the training two of the 9/11 hijackers. This ‘Magic Dutch Boy’ gets more magic all the time, and when we consider his neighbor Kruithof's role as well, it seems Hopsicker was indeed witness to either a major, poorly concealed seam of the 9/11 attacks, or at least some played-out drama resembling such.

[1], [9], [10] Ahmed, Nafeez. “The War on Freedom.” 2002. Page 101.
[2], [4], [5] Mudge, Bob. “Huffman Aviation sold.” The Venice Gondolier January 25, 2003. Accessed October 30, 2004 at: http://www.venicegondolier.com/NewsArchive3/012503/tp1vn9.htm
[3] Hopsicker, Daniel. “9/11: The Evangelical Christian Connection.” Mad Cow Morning News.
April 8, 2004. Accessed October 27 2004 at: http://www.madcowprod.com/mc412004.html
[6], [7] Hopsicker, Daniel. “’Magic Dutch Boy’ escapes fiery plane crash: 9-11 cleanup crew at work?” Mad Cow Morning News. July 4 2002. Accessed October 26, 2004 at: http://www.madcowprod.com/mc242004.html
[8] 9/11 cimmission. Final Report. First Edition. Page 224

BOJINKA III: CORDER/GIA/CETRON

2007-01-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

Some claim to have predicted the threat of Muslim terrorists with hijacked airliners even before Bojinka was discovered, and here is where we enter the possible cross-over of think tank and real world. First the real world, in the second half of 1994, provided some concerns for air security. These started with Frank Eugene Corder, a 38-year-old unemployed truck driver, Army veteran, and depressions-plagued alcoholic and cocaine user whose estranged wife had just died of cancer. For what it’s worth, one anagrams of his name is “DRUNK GONE CAREFREE.”

Another anagram of Corder’s name, for what it’s worth, is “NRO RENEGADE FUCKER.” The CIA-connected National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) runs the nation’s spy satellites and aircraft reconnaissance. They dabble at least in automated flight and drones, and are closely connected with the Air Force. In yet another inexplicable curiosity, on the seven year anniversary of Corder’s little escapade, the NRO was running a simulation of a small plane-related accident on their own headquarters near both the Pentagon and Dulles Airport, from which American Airlines 77 had just taken off. The drill was reportedly cancelled once the attacks in New York became known. [1]

Late on the night of September 11, Corder apparently decided to say “goodbye, cruel world,” in a big way. He allegedly stole a Cessna airplane from a Maryland airport, drunk as a skunk, and flew out towards Washington D.C. At about 2:00 am on the 12th, his plane finally came into the restricted, supposedly well-defended airspace around the White House. No defenses showed themselves, and the plane crashed into the South Lawn unopposed, taking out part of a porch and an old tree, killing only Corder. President Clinton and his family were staying elsewhere while the executive mansion was being renovated. [2]

And then a few months later, another event on a much larger scale cast the danger from the sky in a more ominous light. On Christmas Eve, an Air France jetliner was hijacked on the ground in Algiers. After killing three passengers, the hijackers were cleared to take off, and flew their missile towards Paris. Investigators later found that the men, part of the al Qaeda-linked Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), planned to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower in protest of French control in Algeria. The hijackers were killed during a re-fueling stop in Marseilles and their plot was stopped before it could make the front page with grisly Christmas fireworks over Paris. [3]

But it was not ignored by those whose job it is to scour the news for new ideas and new dangers. In early 2002, ABC News interviewed Marvin Cetron, a “terrorism expert” with military and engineering credentials who had written a report for the Pentagon in 1994. Cetron is a noted “futurist” thinker, President of Forecasting International, and a regular guest on CNN talk shows predicting trends in everything from education to science and engineering to business and global economics. Along with Robert McNamara, (who has also served as World Bank President since his Defense Secretary days), Cetron is a Director at the World Future Society, a Bethesda-based “neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future,” including “forecasts, recommendations, and alternative scenarios.” The website explains “when people can visualize a better future, then they can begin to create it.” [4]

So what alternative scenario did he help the Pentagon visualize with his 1994 report? Cetron was concerned with the danger of an airborne suicide attack on the Capital, including such a warning in his report. Cetron told ABC:

“We saw Osama bin Laden. We spelled it out and we said the United States was very vulnerable. You could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House. And you could make a right turn and take out the Pentagon.” [5]

ABC reported that the Pentagon brass wanted that particular warning deleted from his report. “It's unclassified, everything is available,” Cetron recalled his response. But they told him, as he summed up, “we don't want it released because you can't handle a crisis before it becomes a crisis, and no one is going to believe it anyhow.” Even after he deleted the kamikaze warning, the report was scrapped and not released to the public. [6]

ABC explained that the 1994 report had cited two events “earlier that year” as precedents to ponder: “the crash-landing of a small airplane at the White House by an apparently unstable man” (Corder, September 11-12), and “French authorities’ storming of a hijacked airliner that Algerian terrorists had planned to fly into the Eiffel Tower” Thus he was aware these attack planes could be airliners. But the timeline here is odd; the GIA’s failed attack was on Christmas Eve. Is it normal for Cetron to compose an entire report in less than a week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve?

This felt like a seam to me, so I though about it a minute. At that very time but half a world away, Yousef and Murad were just days away from getting busted for Bojinka on January 6. Within a couple of weeks, interrogators in the Philippines would be extracting from Murad, via torture, something remarkably like Cetron’s double-deleted warning. Was there a mix-up somewhere? And just as Cetron’s Corder/GIA-inspired scenario was cut from the wider report before it too was deleted, Murad’s similar phase two has been largely erased from the wider Bojinka story. This alleged prediction perhaps helped the Pentagon visualize the world they wanted and now have, but Cetron apparently wasn’t allowed to talk about it until after it came true.

Sources:
[1] “Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11” Associated Press. August 22, 2002. Accessed December 8, 2005 at: http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm
[2] CNN. “Past security incidents at the White House.” February 7, 2001. Accessed May 4, 2003 at: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/07/whitehouse.incidents.02/index.html
[3] Gunaratna, Rohan. “Terror from the Sky.” Jane’s Intelligence Review. September 24, 2001. Accessed at: http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010924_1_n.shtml
[4] World Future Society. Frequently Asked Questions. 2005. Accessed November 16, 2005 at: http://www.wfs.org/faq.htm
[5] “Early Warnings: Pre Sept. 11 Cautions Went Unheeded.” ABC News. February 18 2002.http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/wnt_missedsignals_1_020218.html
[6] See [5].

TERRORLAND part I

2007-01-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

One of the more interesting aspects of the hijackers’ adventures in the US was their fondness for that tangle of airports, Air Force bases, flight training schools, sleepy retirement towns, Cuban exiles, drug smuggling, secret CIA operations and theme parks we call Florida. Florida is widely believed to be less an actual state than a CIA-front company and, recently, private playground of the Bush family; now to its list of exports has been added suicide hijackers. We’ve already seen that three of the hijackers may have trained in Pensacola, and the Bukhari-Alomari circle of Saudi pilots in Vero Beach, but we’ve hardly even touched on Florida’s three most famous terrorist trainees, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan Alshehhi and Mohammed Atta.

Here is where I start to feel like I’ve entered the swoon-headed world of convoluted and slippery conspiracy theories that feel like an octopus wrestling match. I could scarcely believe it when I realized it was again back to Florida; where Bush became President, back to Florida where bush became the new post-9-11 president, back to Florida where, we found out, three of the four pilots had prepared for the act that enabled that transformation.

All of this, the Florida connection with all the defining moments of the Bush presidency, was overseen by the President’s own brother, Governor John Ellis “Jeb” Bush; from brother to terrorist to brother and back again, in a too-tight Gordian knot. The knot tightened on September 10th as President Bush paid a visit to Governor Bush on the eve of the attack. It tightened again the next morning as the Florida-trained hijackers attacked New York and Washington, and yet again around four AM on September 12th; with a speed bordering on pre-cognition, federal authorities in Florida had descended on the flight school in Venice, less than twenty miles from where the President had been less than twenty hours before. They confiscated and relocated computers and “boxes of records” to Washington, personally escorted by Governor Bush, after the sun rose, to his brother’s people in Washington. The attack was nearly a day old when the two brothers presumably met again over these files. [1]

By the next day, investigators looking at actual evidence were following other concrete leads to Florida; the BBC reported that Mohammed Atta’s rental car, left in Boston, led authorities to his own and Marwan Alshehhi’s homes in Coral Springs. [2] The two had been taking simulator lessons near there. Soon the story blew up – it turns out that three of the four suicide pilots had also received their initial flight training at two adjacent flight schools at the Venice airport, both opened shortly before the hijackers arrived in town.

“What’s been going on in Florida?” This is a central question of investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, who has unofficially dubbed the state “Terrorland.” Hopsicker has credentials; he’s a former producer of Wall Street Week (PBS), former executive producer, Global Business (NBC), former investigative reporter for NBC News. [3] i.e. – he’s an establishment guy, so I automatically distrust him somewhat. But more recently he’s been the author of such “conspiranoid” books as Barry and the Boys and, more recently, Welcome to Terrorland. Hopsicker also lives in Venice, Florida, where three of the 9-11 pilots (Atta, Alshehhi, and Jarrah) got their initial flight training. He has looked closely at the flight schools at the venice Airport. where he seems to have a lot of connections in the aviation community (but his sources, knowledgeable though they seem, usually remain anonymous).

Hopsicker has a lot to say about the schools in question, their operators, and their allegedly vast (but factually spindly) connections behind the scenes to Saudi and Venezuelan elites. His material is extremely speculative, sometimes drawing together numerous current conspiracy theories with phrases like “might this have something to do with…” Venice-area journalist John Patten also noted Hopsicker’s “almost pure speculation about recent and current events. The dots are there, and admittedly these are some darned peculiar dots, but Hopsicker is unable to connect them,” or at least to demonstrate to the rest of us precisely how he connected them. Sometimes, Patten wrote, Hopsicker's writings are “akin to grasping for straws from another dimension.” But, he noted:

“[T]he other side of that coin is that it is possible that Hopsicker is absolutely right. Just because someone is paranoid doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't something around worth being paranoid about. Mohamed Atta did live here. So did Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. They did receive flight training here. They did participate in the events of September 11, 2001. Those last four sentences alone should be enough to make the most sensible, well-grounded person more than a little paranoid.” [4]

For starters, and more concretely, there are the Dutch owners of the Venice flight schools themselves. Hopsicker and some of his anonymous sources call these men, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof, “the Magic Dutch Boys.” One of Hopsicker’s sources pointed out that the Dutch invasion at the Venice airport in mid-1999 was “just about the time the terrorist pilots moved into town and began their lessons,” which apparently actually began a year later, in early July 2000. [5] “Two Dutch boys buying adjacent flight schools which shortly thereafter get 'overrun’ by terrorists is one damn Dutch boy too many,” a “law enforcement source” told Hopsicker. “Its untidy.” [6]

Hopsicker put his big picture as “Mohammed Atta and his terrorist cadre’s flight training in this country was part of a so-far unacknowledged U.S. government intelligence operation which had ultimately tragic consequences for thousands of civilians on September 11.” [7] I'm a little vague on his exact case, but seems to involve Atta at least being a covert CIA assett involved in drug-running operations, though some of this is based on Atta's alleged girlfriend Amanda Keller, who has since declared her testimony was all a lie. Anyway, Hopsicker does not specify why these same assest/whatever then got so out of hand and were not prevented from carrying out their monstrous attack. From the perspective of Shadow 9/11, it seems an obvious possibility that this alleged CIA operation did not go awry, but exactly as planned - it gave plausible credibility to the Patsies' ability to take the blame - if they'd actually meant to be pilots, of course, they'd've studied harder, but close enough. They took leaasons. Hopsicker, perhaps prudently, never makes such a claim outright, focusing on endless speculative detective work which does make fascinating reading.

Sources:
[1] Hopsicker, Daniel. “INS Deporting ‘Magic Dutch Boy’ Rudi Dekkers.” Mad Cow Morning News. December 4, 2002. Accessed October 26, 2004 at:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0212/S00058.htm
[2] “Evidence trails lead to Florida.” BBC News. September 13, 2001. Accessed October 30, 2004 at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1542153.stm
[3], [4] Patten, John. “Death in Venice? Local conspiracy theorist Dan Hopsicker weaves a twisted web of intrigue in the wake of September 11.” Last revised June 6, 2002. Copied October 26, 2004 from: http://www.venfl.com/features/hopsicker.htm
[5] Ahmed, Nafeez. The ar on Freedom. page 101
[6] Hopsicker, Daniel. “Was the CIA running a terrorist flight school?” Online Journal. Oct 19, 2001.
22 March 2004 Accessed December 2, 2004 at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HOP403A.html
[7] See [6]. Page 101

Suited Up for Standard Procedure

2006-12-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

To this day, opinions differ as to whether or not scrambling fighter jets was considered standard procedure in air emergencies at the time of the attacks or whether, as Popular Mechanics argued in March 2005, this was something rare and extraordinary. In their cover story “Debunking 9-11 Lies,” they tried to explain NORAD’s delays and failures by pointing out lamely that "in the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999 […] it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. […] Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). The ADIZ areas seem to be a sort of moat 'round the castle, where incoming international flights are made to identify themselves or risk being taken out. They run along the East and West Coasts and along the Mexican and Canadian borders. "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann told the magazine. [1]

They would probably have liked to say there were no intercepts at all over continental airspace, but had to cede the one instance after it was pointed out in the factual record by 9-11 revisionists, an errant plane that crossed no borders or ocean shores and yet triggered a fighter escort. On October 26, 1999, famous pro Golfer Payne Stewart was flying in his private Learjet when the cabin lost pressure and killed all on board. The plane continued on autopilot across several states, trailed by fighter jets until it finally crashed in North Dakota. The shoot-down option was publicly addressed at the time: The Washington Post reported “Pentagon officials said they never considered shooting down the Learjet” because, according to a senior defense official, ‘the (FAA) said this thing was headed to a sparsely populated part of the country, so let it go.’” [2] Now, if it had been a hijacked 757 headed for New York after one plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center…

But was this the only fighter intercept ever ordered over the continental U.S.? If intercepts simply weren't done over the mainland, why was an exception made in this one case and this one case alone? Or did they mean this was the only intercept over America that made the news? According to an article in the Calgary Herald-Tribune from a month after the attack, fighter interception for stray aircraft actually was a weekly occurrence even before 9-11: “Today […] fighter jets are scrambled to babysit suspect aircraft or "unknowns" three or four times a day. Before Sept. 11, that happened twice a week. Last year, there were 425 unknowns -- pilots who didn't file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency. Jets were scrambled 129 times.” [3] Was every one of these 129 intercepts in the year 2000 over the ocean in ADIZ areas, with none over the continental U.S.? And in the nine years before that too, with the exception of one famous golfer?

Common sense and some evidence indicate otherwise. One of the fighter pilots that was scrambled on 9-11 said in a BBC documentary on his first notification of trouble “they said the Tower [was] calling and something about a hijacking. It was flight American 11, a 767, out of Boston going to California. At the time we ran in and got suited up… It's just peacetime. We're not thinking anything real bad is going to happen out there.” The narrator of the documentary adds “neither pilot at this time has any reason to believe that this is other than a routine exercise.” [4]

This was at some point before American 11 ended – we were still in pre-9-11 peace time, if the last minutes of it, and he knew to get suited up (that is, ready for takeoff) in response to the hijacking of a trans-continental flight. This sounds like a routine, standard procedure scramble and intended intercept over continental airspace to me. Perhaps the Payne Stewart case is not so anomalous after all.

Sources:
[1] Chertoff, Benjamin et al. “Debunking 9/11 Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March 2005.
[2] Walsh, Edward and William Claiborne. “Golfer Payne Stewart Dies in Jet Crash.” Washington Post. October 26, 1999. Page A1.
[3] Slobodian, Linda. “NORAD on Heightened Alert.” The Calgary Herald. October 13, 2001.
[4] BBC Video. Clear the Skies. First Aired September 2002.

WARGAME 2: NORTHERN VIGILANCE

2006-12-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

OPERATION NORTHERN DISTRACTION

First revealed by the Toronto Star as early as December 9 2001, Northern Vigilance was set up in the arctic with Canadian assistance. As the exercise opened, NORAD explained on September 9 that it was a follow up to Operation Northern Denial, and like it was meant “to monitor a Russian air force exercise” happening just on the other side of the North Pole. [8] The Russians in fact cancelled this exercise as soon as they heard word of the attack in New York.[9]

The Northern Vigilance exercise thus drew fighters away from the East Coast that day, leaving them stationed near the Arctic Circle. One news story claimed “investigators at the September 11 Commission confirm they are investigating whether NORAD’s attention was drawn in one direction – toward the north pole – while the hijackings came in from an entirely different direction.” [10] I'm not sure how many fighter were there or how many of these may have been active in the defense otherwise, but there is a crucialirony here. The predecessor exercise Northern Denial indicates a desire to "deny" the Russians this attack route across the North Pole, but this curiously outdated drill, by drawing fighters and attention north, may have helped open another attack route for a different enemy on the East Coast at just the right time.

Northern Vigilance also reportedly involved radar “inserts,” blips that would look like attacking planes or other airborne objects on the attack but in reality would represent nothing. How many inserts were used, on whose screens, and inserted into which air traffic regions are all questions that remain unanswered. As it became clear an attack was underway, at 9:00 am, NORAD (officially) cancelled the exercise and erased the inserts. [11] But until that time at least, they couldn’t help but add to the confusion in the air.

BOJINKA IV: A REAL AND REPEATED THREAT

2006-12-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

Even without phase two or its predecessor report, Al Qaeda’s and others’ shift to suicide hijackings was not a theoretical – it actually happened and manifested itself in the real world. Numerous reminders of the tactic had popped up since 1995 in the form of foiled attempts, intercepted plots, and ominous warnings from various quarters. In November 1996, for example, Ethiopian terrorists hijacked an airliner and tried to crash it into a beach resort in the Comoros Islands for unclear reasons. Reports from the time explained that the pilots were able though to dive the plane into the sea, saving the resort by a bare 500 yards, but killing all but 52 of the 175 souls on board. [1]

Suicide hijacking was a fear at both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics (in Atlanta, GA and Sydney, Australia, respectively). In the 1996 case, Richard Clarke personally toured Atlanta looking for security breaches. He was horrified. Among his concerns was air security; ”mindful of Ramzi Yousef’s plot to blow up 747s and the images of Pan Am 103, I asked about aircraft. “What if somebody blows up a 747 over the Olympic Stadium. Or even flies one into the stadium?”” [2] Clarke could see in 1996 someone hijacking an airliner and crashing it into the stadium, and he was thinking Bojinka. In fact, this was not just a thought in Clarke’s head – security for the ’96 Olympics was actually beefed-up to meet the threat. The Chicago Tribune reported in November 2001:

”In an extraordinary aerial dragnet, launched quietly that summer and kept largely under wraps ever since, Black Hawk helicopters and U.S. Customs Service jets were deployed to intercept suspicious aircraft in the skies over the Olympic venues [...] Agents monitored crop duster flights within hundreds of miles […] Law-enforcement agents also fanned out to regional airports throughout northern Georgia "to make sure nobody hijacked a small aircraft and tried to attack one of the venues," said Woody Johnson, the FBI agent in charge of the Atlanta office at the time.”[3]

A handful of government-commissioned reports highlighted the threat of aircraft as weapons in the hands of terrorists, or at least tried to. One was a September 1999 report called “Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” It was prepared for the CIA-connected National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies. CBS News cited it in May 2002: “Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.” Author Rex Hudson explained at the time “Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters.” [4] This is one of the very few pre-9-11 admissions of phase two that I’ve seen.

The Bojinka fears that should have been closest on president Bush’s mind on the morning of 9-11 had come less than two months earlier, in Late July. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Italian authorities felt that there was a serious possibility of an attack against Bush and other world leaders attending the G8 Summit in Genoa by “crashing an airliner” into the venue. The threat was considered unsubstantiated by U.S. officials, but Italian authorities closed the airspace over Genoa and placed antiaircraft guns around the summit complex to enforce the order. For added security, the Secret Service had Bush sleep every night on an aircraft carrier just off the coast. [6] He had to have been told why he was drifting in the steel belly of that big boat instead of lying on fine linens in a posh Genoese resort.

Sources:
[1] Thompson, Paul and the center for Cooperative Research. “The Terror Timeline.” 2004. Page 18.
[2] Clarke, Richard. “Against All Enemies.” Page 106.
[3] Fineman, Mark and Judy Pasternak. “'96 Games warned of air threat.” Chicago Tribune. November 18, 2001http://www.chicagotribune.com/search/chi-0111180092nov18.story
[4] “'99 Report Warned Of Suicide Hijacking.” CBS News. May 17, 2002.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/17/attack/main509471.shtml
[5] “Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit” LA Times. September 27, 2001. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story

OTIS AND LANGLEY

2006-12-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

SCRAMBLING AGAINST THE CLOCK

According to the official pre-2004 timeline supplied by NORAD, Boston flight control had waited twenty minutes after it decided Flight 11 was hijacked to alert them, at 8:40 am. This has been widely contested, with FAA insisting it had alerted NORAD much earlier. But anyway, at 8:46 NORAD issued the scramble order to Otis Air National Guard base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts – the same minute flight 11 slammed into the North Tower. The first two F-15 pilots, Lt. Col. Timothy Duffy (code-named “Duff”) and Major Daniel Nash (“Nasty”), were off the ground to intercept American 11 six minutes later, at 8:52.

This yielded a 39-minute loss-of-contact to takeoff time for Otis. This delay, coming after months of foreign and domestic warnings of possible hijackings, is 50%, longer than reaction in the totally unexpected Payne Stewart case two years earlier. These fighters were sent to intercept American 11 six minutes after it was obliterated in its impact with the WTC. [1] They finally arrived and established a combat air patrol over Manhattan at 9:25, 33 minutes after takeoff. [2]

At about this time, more jets were scrambled from Langley AFB in Virginia, the other ready pair in the northeast. NEADS called Langley at about 9:15 and asked national guardsman “Honey” urgently “how many planes can you send?” “We have two ready,” Honey replied. “That’s not what I asked,” came the curt reply. “How many can you get airborne?” “With me, three.’” Honey said.” [3] It’s not clear why there was an insistence on sending a third jet when standard procedure was to send a pair – I looked for clues in the 9/11 Commission’s final report, but it does not seem to mention the number of fighters sent from Langley. Since only two fighters were ready, prepping this third plane would set their schedule back. “Honey,” his partner “Lou,” and the unnamed third pilot took off at 9:30, just minutes before flight 77 reappeared on radar screens closing in on Washington. The CCR lists the pilots as pilots were Major Brad Derrig, Captain Craig Borgstrom, and Major Dean Eckmann, all from the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing, then stationed at Langley, but I cannot find who was Honey, who was Lou, and ho as the third. The commission concluded they were not being sent to intercept American 77 closing in on Washington, but rather to New York to back up the Otis pilots. [4]

This was the entire first wave of national defense – five fighters, scrambled late from two bases far from the scene of the crime. More fighters would join them by about 10 am, but during the actual attack, the first wave was all there was. The following sections detail their mission, doomed to failure from the beginning.

(also linked on the air defense masterlist)

- Heading and Speed

- Information shared with the defending fighter pilots: RIDICULOUSLY inadequate

- No shoot-down order received.

Sources:
[1] North American Aerospace Defense Command News Release. “NORAD’s Response Times” September 18, 2001. Accessed May 7, 2003 at: http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/2001/norad091801.html
[2] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. Authorized First Edition. New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Page 24.
[3] "9;30 am: Langley Fighters Take Off." http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a930langleylaunch#a930langleylaunch
[4] Longman, Jere. Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back. New York. Harper Collins. 2002. Page 65.

AFGHANISTAN 2001: ON THE TREADMILL AGAIN?

2006-12-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

The Key to Eurasia / Dealing with the Devil

Even though it has generally been allowed to linger in chaos and poverty, U.S. strategists have long recognized Afghanistan as the key to Central Asia and thus to world power. Zbigniew Brzezinski noted this in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard presented Afghanistan as the heart of the “Eurasian Balkans,” a zone of instability and power vacuums “astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link […] Eurasia’s […] western and eastern extremities.” Compared to the European Balkans, “the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize:” [1]

Astride a prime export corridor for Caspian Sea oil and gas, pipeline deals continued through the 1990s with the support of Clinton’s State Department as public pronouncements and sanctions against the Taliban were underpinned with tacit approval; they provided the surest avenue to stability. But problems over their harboring of bin Laden led to a serious rift after the Embassy bombings of 1998; with US missile flying into Afghanistan, pipeline talks halted and the Taliban went into the deep freeze. They imposed a ban on Opium cultivation in 2000, a PR boost that eventually got them more US aid but which some feel was actually one of the triggers deciding on war there – after which, coincidentally, opium production resumed and skyrocketed.

Thus when Bush jr. placed his hand on that bible in January 2001, he inherited a complex policy history towards Afghanistan. Immediately, Bush’s military leadership expressed disinterest in following up on the Clinton-era plan to “roll-back” al Qaeda. This was originally driven as a response to the October 2000 USS Cole attack, but according to the 9-11 Commission, Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz called the three-month-old case “stale.” Rumsfeld agreed, saying too much time had elapsed to bother pursuing al Qaeda over the bombing. [2]

Instead the Bush administration decided, within days of coming to power, to re-open negotiations with the regime, ending the two-year silence. While the talks were secret, a few inside accounts have been smuggled out by, for one, a Pakistani diplomat involved named Niaz Naik. Naik, former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, told the BBC about what went on behind the scenes during the seven months of negotiations. The talks were “track 2 diplomacy,” mostly former government officials of interested regional nations plus Russia and the U.S. [3] This was presumably to create an aura and potential binding power of government-level negotiations, while allowing the actual governments “plausible deniability” if the meetings should become an embarrassment.

The Bush administration’s proposal seems to have been a deal trading a more open (stable) coalition government, the handover of bin Laden, and permission for pipeline construction in exchange for diplomatic recognition, lifting of sanctions, possible economic aid, and transit fees from the Caspian Sea gas crossing their territory. The Taliban made moves to improve their image to U.S. leaders and public opinion. They still retained the services of a number of public relations people, including Laila Helms. According to Brisard and Dasquie’s Forbidden Truth, The half-Afghan niece of former CIA director Richard Helms had been advising the Taliban since 1995, even before their ascendancy. [4]

A Taliban delegation toured the U.S. in early 2001, asking for better relations and drawing attention to the drought and famine in their country. They asked President Bush for economic aid and for discussions on the bin Laden issue and other impediments to good relations. [5] Conciliatory moves were made. In May, Secretary of State Powell declared the U.S. would send $33 million to Afghanistan for drought relief, with an additional $10 million specifically in thanks for the Taliban's opium ban. [6] $43 million in aid may not sound like much, but Afghanistan’s economy was so depressed, according to investigative writer Ahmed Rashid, the entire budget for administration and development for 1997 had been about US $100,000. [7]

Already the rollback of al Qaeda had been rolled back, and now diplomatic recognition, economic aid, and the ending of sanctions were all on the table, part up front in the May aid package. The Taliban continued to talk, almost like a rational party with its own survival in mind. They even started the dialog on bin Laden themselves, offering in a March meeting in Washington to turn him over to a third nation of their choosing. Admittedly this was far from a perfect deal but could have been taken as a starting point at least. The Washington Post quoted a CIA official: “We never heard what they were trying to say. We had no common language. Ours was “give up bin Laden.’ They were saying ‘do something to help us give him up.’… I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck.” [8] The offer was refused. Apparently the May aid package was an unconnected appeasement.

The talks were doomed from the beginning, although by bad faith on whose part remains an issue of contention. As disagreements over bin Laden, transit fees, and other issues continued, negotiations finally broke down completely in August, and were superceded by war plans as final preparations for the 9-11 attack got underway and America’s Defenses fell apart.

War: a Threat or a Promise?

As talks began to unravel in mid-July, U.S. representatives allegedly threatened the Taliban “either accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we’ll bury you under a carpet of bombs.” [9] Tom Simons, the former ambassador to Pakistan whose belligerence in the region is legendary, specified to Naik on the 21st “either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option... a military option.” [10]

In reality, this seems to have been the plan all along. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander General Tommy Franks had already toured the region, going to the Tajik capital Dushanbe on May 16, where he told the government that the U.S. considered Tajikistan “a strategically significant country.” [11] This was both provocation and preparation. Niaz Naik said that at a meeting in Berlin in July he was informed that 17,000 Russian troops were poised to strike, involvement was expected from Uzbekistan, and that U.S. bases were already functional in Tajikistan. [12] According to the Manchester Guardian, By May “U.S rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan,” and there were “unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana” in preparation for fighting in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. [13]

And the anti-Taliban coalition was apparently growing; Great Britain was also positioning itself for a conflict in the region, sending the “biggest naval task force since the Falklands war” to Oman, within operational distance of Afghanistan, just eight days before 9-11. According the Guardian, this was for a rapid-response training exercise called Swift Sword II, created by planners at the Northwood-based Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), “from where every major British deployment of the last 30 years - from the Falklands to the Gulf war - has been master-minded.” The Guardian piece, dated September 3, 2001, further reported that 24 surface ships and two nuclear-powered submarines had been deployed that day. 24,000 British troops, nearly a quarter of the entire army, were expected to be in Oman by the end of September. “They will be supported by 400 armoured vehicles, squadrons of fighter-bombers, and a Commando brigade,” the paper added. [14]

This was clearly a very big deal in the works, and everything was getting into place. War seemed inevitable – the question was when. According to Naik, U.S. representative Karl Inderfurth told him the idea was, if the military action went ahead, it would happen before the first snows started falling on Kabul. The BBC’s reporter seemed confident in estimating this as “around the middle of October.” [15]

Bin Laden Springs the Trap

But how could this war have been justified? A pre-emptive, unprovoked strike, in part to secure an administration-linked pipeline route, would not look good in the age of Enron, which it turns out was deeply invested in the Caspian basin. The Bush administration had to be painfully aware that they were living in a pre-9-11 world, when good pretexts were still hard to come by – and they’d already tossed out the Cole attack.

But of course a radical change in perspective was in store. It turns out al Qaeda may have been listening closely to the proceedings of the negotiations, according to a 2002 article by the respected French counter-terror expert Jean-Charles Brisard. During his investigation of the Africa embassy bombings, Brisard explained, the legendary FBI terrorism expert and ironic 9-11 casualty John O’Neill discovered an intriguing seven-page memo from “Abu Hafs.” This was a pseudonym of Mohammed Atef, al Qaeda’s military chief at the time. The memo contained intercepted details of the Unocal pipeline negotiation, information bin Laden would probably be interested to know. [16] It’s not clear whether Atef and bin Laden were keeping tabs in 2001 as Bush representatives issued their threats.

With or without this direct eavesdropping, Bin Laden could well have had the threat passed on to him in any number of ways and acted to pre-empt the United States’ military option. While it’s true the 9-11 plot we’ve been presented with was years in the making, these provocations could have helped stiffen bin Laden’s determination to speed the process along and land the first blow in a war that seemed inevitable. A later report in the U.K. Guardian speculated that “bin Laden, far from launching (the 9-11 attack) out of the blue... was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as U.S. threats.” [17] It seems clear that the Bush administration had to know these threats would get to bin Laden, whom they admitted exerted undue influence in that country. Thus they were consciously stirring the hornet’s nest by threatening, within bin Laden’s earshot, to carpet bomb his host nation. This pattern has occurred before in American history.

At the same time, the administration apparently turned a blind eye to possible mobilizations in response to these threats. Essentially, as “track two” U.S. diplomats were threatening Afghanistan and the militaries of multiple nations positioned themselves for this war, U.S. authorities kept this all from public view and acted as if there was no danger, no building state of war with attack and counterattack and whatnot. America was left unguarded, even inviting. The full catalog of warning signs and evidence of their aggressive dismissal is far beyond the scope of this chapter. But while we’re on the subject of Afghanistan, clearly an area of tension, clues that emanated from there are especially relevant and should have been closely watched for.

The War Takes a Turn

There was already a war in Afghanistan, of course – the Taliban held about 90% of the country in relative stability, but the remaining 10%, in a mountainous northeast corner near China, was still held by the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was a mish-mash of former allies and enemies in the Civil War of 1989-1996, pushed aside by the Taliban. They were still holding on in 2001 with aid from Russia, India and others, but making do without U.S. assistance.

It’s been said that the only thing keeping the Taliban and the al Qaeda-assembled militia from owning all of Afghanistan was the Northern Alliance’s top commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the “lion of Panjshir.” But Massoud felt his struggle was losing, and he asked for help from the Europeans and the Americans, who were of course in negotiation with the Taliban at that time. Massoud argued it was a bargain for the west – a relatively small amount of aid could keep al Qaeda occupied fighting in Afghanistan instead of focusing on outward activities like terrorism. The investment apparently was not made.

On April 6, Massoud addressed the European Union parliament, saying publicly “if President Bush doesn’t help us, these terrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon.” Defense Intelligence Agency documents released later confirmed that Massoud indeed had “limited knowledge” of al Qaeda’s impending attack. [19] But even as U.S. war plans evolved, he got no aid, and only a few cursory meetings from low-level U.S. officials.

According to the London Independent, the warnings had actually come from both sides in that war. Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was told in July by sources in Uzbekistan close to bin Laden that al Qaeda was planning a major attack inside the United States. In late July, Muttawakil sent an aide to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar where he met with and warned U.S. consul general, David Katz. Feeling that the warning was ignored, the minister redispatched his aid to the UN office, which also apparently failed to pass the warning up to higher authorities. [20]

In late July, sources inside al Qaeda in Afghanistan told Egyptian intelligence that 20 terrorists had slipped into the United States and that four of those were in flight training. CBS News reported that Egypt passed the warning on, expecting requests for more information, which never came. [21] Sometime in the summer, the 9-11 Commission noted, bin Laden himself mentioned in a recorded speech at a training camp that 20 martyrs were set for an attack somewhere, asking for prayers of support for their success. [22] It’s not clear whether this was available to U.S. intelligence at the time.

On August 30 it was revealed by the UPI that, based on Russian and Pakistani reports, bin Laden had recently been declared Supreme Commander of the Afghan army. [23] Is this evidence that the Taliban knew 9-11 was coming, or simply a logical response to the threats they were receiving? Either way, this was publicly available and clearly known.

The official story is that bin Laden himself was on “radio silence” in the days before the attack. James Bamford explained in his 2002 revised edition of Body of Secrets that Osama had gotten a satellite phone in 1996, making hundreds of calls with it, including to plan attacks and to call his Stepmother in Syria. The super-secret National Security Agency, (which Body of Secrets is about) had zeroed in on this line of contact - NSA officials “would even play recordings of bin Laden chatting” with her to impress special guests. [24] But Bamford, who had to play ball with the NSA to write his book, explained that:

“Since 1998, bin Laden communicates only through messengers […] One such call, picked up by NSA early in September 2001, was from a bin Laden associate to bin Laden’s wife in Syria, advising her to return to Afghanistan. At the time, it was filed away when instead it should have been one more clue, one more reason […] to worry on the morning of September 11.” [25]

Yet other sources provide a different story - on September 9 2001, according to the New York Times, the suave terrorist mastermind bin Laden was using a satellite phone, and directly called his stepmother – the one so widely recorded. He allegedly told her “in two days you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” [26] The call probably was recorded, and was probably read shortly after the attack.

But one clue could not be ignored. That same day, September 9, the Northern Alliance was beheaded - Massoud was assassinated by two suicide bombers posing as al Jazeera journalists. They had come in from the Taliban-held capital Kabul, and waited three weeks for Massoud for weeks as he fought the newly merged al Qaeda-Taliban army. These were treacherous times, but strangely, the legendary military genius finally saw fit to pause in the fighting and sit down to be interviewed by these two anxious Arabs. They then allegedly detonated a bomb hidden in their camera, a bomb that Massoud’s security personnel obviously did not find with weeks to look. A bodyguard was killed instantly, but Massoud clung to life for a few days.

This strange warning sign was not ignored in the U.S. establishment but widely noted as a bad omen. Yet the nation was left unprepared for the catastrophic and catalyzing even that occurred two days later as Massoud lay dying. Nothing was done to prevent the attack, and when it was carried out, the nation’s defenses initially fell flat. But the offensive American military machine was already set to spring into action. MSNBC reported in May 2002 that a "game plan to remove al-Qaeda from the face of the Earth" was placed on Bush's desk for his signature on September 9. The plan, according to NBC News reporter Jim Miklaszewski, covered everything from special-ops arrests and freezing assets to demands for the hand over of bin Laden and full-on war in Afghanistan should that fail. As the article notes, this plan “outlines essentially the same war plan [...] put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks” and “the administration most likely was able to respond so quickly to the attacks because it simply had to pull the plans ‘off the shelf.’” [27]

The war plan was on the President’s desk on September 9, as Bush ended his vacation in Crawford and jetted over to Florida to visit his brother. He was expected to sign the plan some time after returning to Washington on the 11th. Troops and bases were already in place in the region. Karl Inderfurth had threatened that the war would begin by mid-October - the first bombs started falling on October 7th, less than four weeks after 9-11 and slightly ahead of schedule. Provoked but un-prevented, al Qaeda’s timely attack allowed the administration to commence its war on Afghanistan right on the timeline everyone was already on before that “unforeseen” attack. They didn’t even miss a beat.

New Pearl Harbor indeed.

Sources:
[1] Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard. Page 124.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. 2004. Page 88.
[3] Ahmed, Nafeez. The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001." Joshua Tree, California. Tree of Life Publications. 2002. Page 57-60.
[4] “Bin Laden, The Hidden Truth, Chapter 1. By Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard. Published November, 2001.” (Translated from the French version here to English using Babelfish.) Original URL: http://www.intelligenceonline.com/dossiers/iof/p_livre.asp. Accessed September 28, 2005 at: http://billstclair.com/911timeline/nodate/forbiddentruth.html
[5] Robin Wright, “Taliban Asks US to Lift its Economic Sanctions,” Los Angeles Times. March 20, 2001. Accessed October 3, 2005 at: http://michaelmoore.com/books-films/f911reader/index.php?id=20
[6] LaFranchi, Howard. “Lessons from drug war: It takes time, allies.” Christian Science Monitor. October 1, 2001.Accessed at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1001/p2s1-usmi.html
[7] Rashid,Ahmed. "Taliban: Militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in central Asia." 2001. Page 125.
[8] See [2]. Page 120.
[9] Brisard, Jean-Charles and Guillaume Dasquie. Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the ailed hunt for bin Laden. 2002.
[10] http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/CK20Ag01.html
[11] See [3].
[12] 18 September, 2001. "US 'planned attack on Taleban'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm
[13] see [2]. Page 336.
[14] Wilson, Jamie and Richard Norton-Taylor. “British forces flex military muscle for £93m ‘desert war’” The Guardian. September 3, 2001. Copied March 1, 2002 from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4249315,00.html
[15] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=niaz_naik
[16] Brisard, Jean Charles. “Al-Qaida monitored U.S. negotiations with Taliban over oil pipeline.” Salon. June 5, 2002. Copied September 28, 2004 from:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/05/memo/index_np.html
[17] See [3]. Page 60.
[18] See [2]. page 121
[19] See [2]. Page 152.
[20] Clarke, Kate. “Revealed: The Taliban Minister, the US Envoy and the Warning of September 11 That Was Ignored." The Independent. September 7, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0907-08.htm
[21] See [2]. Page 43.
[22] See [2]. Page 39.
[23] See [2]. Page 123.
[24] Bamford, James. "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency." Second Edition. New York. Anchor Books. 2002.
[25] See [24]. Pages 616-617.
[26] See [2]. Page 52.
[27] MSNBC. "U.S. Planned for Attack on al-Qaida: White House given strategy two days before Sept. 11." May 16, 2002. Original URL: http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/753359.asp Accessed September 28, 2005 at: http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2002/msnbc051602.html

BOJINKA II: PHASE TWO / EVOLUTION

2006-12-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

But there was more to Operation Bojinka: a second phase, barely mentioned if at all at the time. In all the evidence and arguments in the 6,000-page transcript of the 1996 trial, there is not a single mention of this second phase, even though one of the defendants was to be the perpetrator. [1] When Philippine interrogators pressed Abdul Murad about his pilot's license, they found out that his years training at multiple American flight schools had been in preparation for one final mission. A 2002 article from the Washington Post explained. “he was to buy, rent, or steal a small plane, fill it with explosives and crash it into CIA headquarters.” [2] Murad was ready to do this, knew how to fly, had plenty of bombs in the works, and only needed a plane.

But had hoped for more, and provided his interrogators with a broader phase two plan complete with a wish list of secondary targets for simultaneous suicide plane attacks. The possible targets mentioned included the U.S. Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, and “possibly some skyscrapers,” like, for example, the ones he and Yousef had failed to bring down the first time. The only problem with carrying out this more ambitious version, Murad complained, was that “they needed more trained pilots to carry out the plot,” and of course more planes – Cessnas, Learjets, crop-dusters, anything small. [3]

Bojinaka was a famous case at the time, and had a grand scale to it that captured imaginations and the attention of writers like Tom Clancy and “John Gilnitz.” If largely forgotten as a real-world threat by 9-11, it was quickly recalled and widely commented on afterwards. But the mainstream accounts of Bojinka are universally dominated by the nightmare image of eleven airliners blowing up, flaming wreckage and thousands of corpses plunging down into the middle of the ocean. People seemed to forget or ignore phase two, since it wasn’t about to happen at the time and was so much more… lame.

It was just an idea - but what an idea. A suicidal mindset and pilot training on the part of a hijacker can turn a 767 full of innocents from a bargaining chip to a guided missile. When Aida Fariscal, the first officer on the scene the night Murad was caught, saw the footage of 9-11 years later, she gasped “oh my God, it’s Bojinka.” The following day, General Avelino “Sonny” Razon flew to Manila to issue the public statement “we told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995. Why didn't they pay attention?” [4]

Their reaction to 9-11, connecting it with Bojinka, meant they had learned the lessons of Murad’s plot and understood its wider implications. All they needed was more trained pilots, as Murad said, and different thinking about the relation between planes and bombs. This was already evident to some in 1995. Gen. Renato De Villa, who served as Philippines Defense Minister at the time, said valuable clues were discovered during Murad’s “tactical interrogation.” An article summed these up:

“First, the extremists saw the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a failure and still considered the twin towers a viable target. And more importantly, the cell seemed to be growing frustrated with explosives. They were too expensive, unstable and could give them away.”[5]

Even in Yousef’s new type of liquid bomb was an example of their shift to easier, less traceable methods. They’d already thought about cashing planes into buildings with bombs on board. Is there an easier way to get explosive things in the air and under your control? Explosions… car crashes… gasoline… jet fuel… Ah! The only thing needed to gain access to ready-made flying bombs, with no labs or chemical shipments to discover, was a few guys with box cutters and a guy who can fly - all willing to die. The government would now have us believe that they did not predict this fairly obvious evolution in thought.

sources:
[1] Terror Timeline. Page 18.
[2] Brzezinski, Matthew. “Bust and Boom: Six years before the September 11 attacks, Philippine police took down an al Qaeda cell that had been plotting, among other things, to fly explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon.” Washington Post. December 30 2001. Page W09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14725-2001Dec21?language=printer
[3], [4], [5], See [2].

The Hijacker Express Lane

2006-12-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

June 2001: as secret US-Taliban diplomacy devolves into threats of war, an increasing number of foreign intelligence warnings from Germany, Egypt, Russia, Afghanistan, etc. pour in about impending al Qaeda attacks in the US. As the last of the to-be 9-11 “muscle” hijackers enter the United States from Saudi Arabia, the State Department office there starts a little-known one-way “exchange” program called “U.S. Visa Express.” [1] Part of the long-standing friendship between the U.S. and the Saudi kingdom, it was designed to cut down on long lines, allowing Saudi citizens to enter the country without having to be interviewed at a U.S. embassy. [2] At least three of the nineteen hijackers: Abdulaziz Alomari, Salem Alhazmi, and Khalid Almidhar all used the Visa Express program to enter the country. [3]

But this was only part of a wider pattern of (negligence?) regarding Saudi Arabia that allowed in even more of the suspects. Another twelve, all but one of the “muscle” hijackers and Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of flight 77, entered the U.S. through the Kingdom’s wide-open door. Sydney Freedburg at the St. Petersburg Times re-traced the 15’s legal journeys to the US and narrowed the troubles down to two State Dept. offices in the Kingdom. “Some of the hijackers got tourist visas to come here after reportedly honing their explosives skills at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan,” Freedburg noted, and at least two, and possibly as many as nine, used stolen passports. He further summarized:

“They exploited a litany of loopholes in the system: Several didn't need an interview for permission to come here. […] Two were later placed on a terrorist watch list, but no one could find them. […] All 19 managed to get U.S. Social Security cards. inadvertently, the U.S. government rolled out a welcome mat for all of them.” [4]

Here, the word “inadvertently” must be momentarily suspended – since intentions are never that clear, let’s just settle for “the U.S. government rolled out a welcome mat for all of them.” ABC News reported in October, 2002 “none of the 15 applications reviewed was filled out properly.” Brothers Wail and Waleed Alshehri applied in mid-2000, listing their occupations as "teater" and “student.” Headed to beautiful scenic "Wasantwn," their Visas were approved.” [5]

These applications were largely handled through the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, which has a history of such openness, Freedburg noted. While serving as a consular officer in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, Michael Springmann “said he issued more than 100 visas to unqualified applicants after pressure from his State Department bosses. ‘Keep the Saudis happy,’ Springmann said he was told, apparently because they are America's biggest supplier of crude oil.” [6]

Freedburg added the “apparently” part, but Springman himself has actually cited a different reason for “keeping the Saudis happy:” they were, at the time, our biggest supplier of terrorists. In another interview, Springmann told BBC Newsnight and CBC’s Radio One that during his tenure he witnessed the operation of a terrorist “pipeline,” sponsored by the CIA:

“(The) CIA was recruiting terrorists to fight against the then Soviets… I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were people who had no ties to either Saudi Arabia or to their own country… Afghanistan was the end user of their facilities. They were coming to the US for training as terrorists. The countries that had supplied them did not want them back.” [7]

Springmann’s testimony paints a picture of an office that served as a conduit, supplying the “end user,” the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet invaders, with a constant stream of undesirables from diverse nations. These same men were then armed and trained and formed connections with each other. After the Jihad, they turned their energies elsewhere and things got ugly. In fact, the Blind Sheikh Omar Adbel Rahman, allegedly behind the 1993 WTC attack, may have entered New York via this pipeline with CIA approval in 1990, even after the afghan Jihad was over – indicating continued CIA cooperation with the al Qaeda nexus after ties were officially cut.

But even before that Springmann didn’t like what he saw, and complained about it to his superiors. As he left the scene, and for years after, he believed his complaints had shut the “pipeline” down. But after 9-11, he has serious doubts that that was ever the case. Over ten years later, Springmann maintains that all fifteen of the 9-11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia were handed their visas through his old consulate office in Jeddah. As we’ve seen above, it seems some were through Jeddah, the rest elsewhere, but his point remains valid.

> CBC” “so what does this suggest, that this pipeline was never rolled up, that it’s still operating?”
> Springmann: “Exactly. I thought it had been, because I’d raised sufficient hell that I thought they’d done it…”
> CBC: “If what you’re saying may be true, many of the terrorists who allegedly flew those planes into those targets, got their U.S. visas through the CIA and your U.S. consulate in Jeddah. That suggests a relationship ongoing as recently as obviously September. […] If the CIA had a relationship with the people responsible for September 11th, are you suggesting therein that they are somehow complicit?”
> Springmann: “Yes, either through omission or through failure to act… by the attempts to cover me up and shut me down, this convinced me more and more that this was not a pipe dream, this was not my imagination…” [8]

Even if the pipeline had been shut down for years, it couldn’t be terribly hard to re-open it and prop open wider with Visa Express-style de-regulation just in time to get the hijackers/patsies/dupes placed for the attack. They traveled in the open under the names the government would later assign, but their identities are nearly all tangled with those of men still alive. At least five of them (including Atta) have even been reported, as in the special September 15 2001 Newsweek, as being men trained at secure US military facilities – or at least confused by name with five such men. [9] All of the hijackers (if we exclude Moussaoui) encountered a law enforcement blind spot. Atta himself got at least two speeding tickets, one of which he refused to pay and got a warrant put out for his arrest! [10] And he issued death threats against a USDA employee when she refused to give him a $600,000 loan to buy a crop duster, remove the seats, and replace them with chemical tanks. [11] None were detained and they almost seem to have been protected by a higher power. Allah, they may have thought… There have been allegations that the hijackers were in fact covert operatives, drug runners, or something of the sort. Given the evidence, it can’t be ruled out.

Whoever the hijackers of 9/11 really were, wherever they really came from, and whoever really supported them, it was the US government that was tasked with protecting the people of this country – yet that government apparently threw open the gates to the barbarians right as they were massing for an attack. It’s not so much a matter of who they are or where they came from, but a matter of how did they get here and how did they avoid arrest? With these insights on the “welcome mat” rolled out we may have our answer… Besides, this embarrassing “bungling” by the State Dept. helped ensure that Visa applications would henceforth be handled by the new Homeland Security Department who promised no such screw-ups. [12]

Sources:
[1] Schmidt, Susan and Bill Miller. . “Homeland Security Department to Oversee Visa Program.” Washington Post. August 6, 2002. Page A13. Accessed November 30, 2004 at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A47861-2002Aug5¬Found=true
[2] Ahmed, Nafeez Ahmed. The War on Freedom. How and why America was Attacked September 11, 2001.” Joshua tree, Ca, USA. Tree of Life Publications. 2002. Page 106.
[3] Camarota, Steven A. “The Open Door: How Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001.” Center for Immigration Studies. Posted June 16, 2002. Accessed November 30, 2004 at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/701154/posts
[4] Freedburg, Sydney. “Loopholes leave U.S. borders vulnerable.” St. Petersburg Times. November 25, 2001. Accessed November 29, 2004 at:
http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/News/112501/Worldandnation/Loopholes_leave_US_bo.shtml
[5] Raddatz, Martha. “Sneaking into America: Sloppy State Dept. Paper Work Let Sept. 11 Hijackers Into the U.S.” ABC News. Accessed November 30, 2004 at: http://www.wanttoknow.info/021023abc
[6] See [4]
[7] See [4]
[8] See [4]
[9] “Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases: The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI.”
By George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry. Newsweek. September 15 2001. http://www.wanttoknow.info/010915newsweek
[10] Perle and Frum. “An End to Evil.” New York. Random house. 2004. page 69.
[11] Ross, Brian. “Face to Face With a Terrorist: Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking Funds Before Sept. 11.” ABC News. June 6, 2002. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/ross_bryant020606.html
[12] See [1]

THE THREE LEGS OF TRIPOD

2006-12-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

This mysterious drill is substantiated by two explicitly-linked legs of admission by involved parties, and a possible third leg that has remianed unexplained but could bring the wholeconstruct of TriPOD - and the official 9/11 - crashing down. Though widely de-bunked, the third leg is worth considering together with the others here.

Leg One: OEM Release
On May 22, 2002, NYC’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM, an earlier creation of Mayor Rudy Giuliani) issued a press release regarding a drill carried out that day in Lower Manhattan. Called Trial Point of Dispensing (TriPOD), it was the first of this name, designed to streamline “distribution of medication in the event of a biological attack” by terrorists or those rogue dictators developing weapons of mass destruction. The six-hour drill was set up around a mock “griage” (greeting and triage) center, sorting volunteers play-acting as possibly contaminated citizens, to work out any kinks before it happened for real. This seemed a prudent move given the harsh and frightening post 9/11 world the authorities insist exists just beyond their protection, but it had been originally planned in the barely-pre-9/11 world. According to the OEM release, the drill had originally been scheduled for September 12, 2001. But the attacks on Manhattan obviously superceded its first enactment. [1] The attacks also superceded and destroyed the OEM's "bunker," which was housed on the 23rd floor of Tower 7. WTC 7, of course, was damaged in the massive collapse of the twin towers, engulfed in flames from its giant diesel fuel tanks sitting atop a power station, and collapsed later that evening.

Leg Two: Giuliani's 9/11 Commission appearance:
Former New York Mayor and OEM creator Rudy Giuliani later confirmed TriPOD in his May 19, 2004 testimony before the 9/11 Commission. They chose not to re-publish his written statement and subsequent questioning, but his full comments, along with a dramatic minute-long audience mutiny, were recorded in the C-Span video, still viewable at their archive. The video has “America’s Mayor” explaining his choice for a new command center after losing the OEM bunker. He selected Pier 92. “And the reason pier 92 was selected as the command center was because on the next day, on September 12, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here from FEMA, from the federal government, from the state, from the state Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for a biochemical attack. So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill.” [2] Giuliani really wants us to know there was a drill scheduled and it was a drill about divvying up medicine in the event of a biological attack, just like OEM said TriPOD was for, so clearly he’s talking about TriPOD. Note that the command center at the Pier already had FEMA people there at the time of the attack, in preparation for this drill - not later on, in response to the attack.

But the “very distinguished” Giuliani’s account conflicts with FEMA’s earlier insistence they had no people in place before the attack, a denial necessitated by a chance slip and a bit and an old mystery.

Leg Three: Tom Kenney
Skeptics initially marveled at a “slip” from FEMA worker Tom Kenney, part of the Urban Search and Rescue division on duty at Ground Zero the day after the attack. He was interviewed by CBS’ Dan Rather, who introduced him as "Tom Kennedy - Kenney, a rescue worker with Urban Search and Recsue, which is part of FEMA." In the brief interview on Wednesday, September 12, Kenney said “we’re currently one of the first teams that was deployed to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on late Monday night and went into action on Tuesday morning. And not until today did we get a full opportunity to work the entire site.” Kenney’s was not an anomalous team either, but “one of the first,” meaning that multiple FEMA teams were deployed to New York City “late Monday night,” just hours before 9-11, indicating that someone knew.

Kenney must have misspoken, everyone said at the time. According to the Snopes website attempting to debunk this “urban legend,” the Boston Herald called Kenney's wife, who explained that her husband went there on September 11, not the day before. “She explained that he was under extreme stress and […] that it was typical of her husband to confuse dates.” The Snopes website then struggled to explain his reference the three separate days: “Kenney simply mixed up his days of the week, saying Monday when he meant Tuesday and Tuesday when he meant Wednesday.” [3] Mike Ruppert offered a believable reason for this: “He gets called up, drives many hours to New York and then works for fifty hours straight. For him 9/11 was the first day of his work week and he misspoke. That's it.” [4] So his statement on Wednesday September 12 should have been: “we arrived on late Tuesday night and went into action on Wednesday morning. And not until today did we get a full opportunity to work the entire site.” The problem is not the names of the days but what seems to be a clear reference to three distinct days. If the interview happened on the 12th, one of those days fell before 9-11. He was reportedly instructed not to speak with the media any more after this, which could explain why the Herald talked to his wife instead of to Kenney himself.

After TriPOD was first mentioned but before Giuliani verified FEMA's role in it, John Dougherty took the story on for World Net Daily in November 2002. He cited another researcher's FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to verify the deployment status on 9-11 for a “Tom Kennedy.” The researcher got no records, then got the name right, re-submitted his request, and got written proof, from FEMA itself, that FEMA "had no personnel in place Sept. 10, 2001." Dougherty concluded “if there were any doubts that those allegations were false, they have now been put to rest as a result of this research.” [5]

Thus this has never fully been resolved – and with the the TriPOD revelations, it appears there was an effort being made to explain why FEMA people actually may have been sent on the evening of the 10th. Kenney may well have known his days of the week after all, and OEM’s admission and Giuliani’s forceful reiteration may be an attempt to turn a dangerous seam into the third leg to prop up the “TriPOD” story. The Scoop site from New Zealand ran a story on this later picked up by Prison Planet that linked Kenney and TriPOD, though the exact connection was left unclear. They wondered if Giuliani’s written statement not being published was because “Rudy said something wrong.” The piece continued: "major questions exist as to why FEMA would deny being in New York City prior to 9/11 without mentioning the 9/12 bioterror drill. These questions must now be addressed as the initial suspicions of those who learned of the Tom Kenney statement have been clearly validated." [6]

If the OEM and Giuliani can speak so freely about FEMA teams being in Manhattan before the attack, why the earlier secrecy and tortured logic over Kenney’s comment? Recall here that Kenney was introduced by Rather as part of the Urban Search and Rescue division, who would not have had much of a role in a drill regarding distribution of medicine. The USR division’s job, according to their website, is “the rescue of victims of structural collapse,” which has everything to do with 9/11.

The possibility that the 9/11 response was set up the night before – and that TriPOD was merely a cover – would unravel 9/11 like nothing. I have resisted the "temptation" to contact Kenney – I’m sure he either a) has been harassed enough and has nothing to say because he really did just mix up his days or b) has too much pressure on him to say anything contrary. I'm 90% sure what answer I'd get but not so sure I'd know what to make of it anyway and and besides, I already have enough red flags next to my name on the watch lists. In fact considering all this, my enthusiasm waned. Though I had enjoyed reviving a previously de-bunked seam, I was left less than sure of it and ready to let it go.

Though I'll never give up entertaining possibilities, the most compelling argument I’ve seen to drop the issue entirely is from Mike Ruppert, who tried in mid-2004, as Crossing the Rubicon was coming out, to put this rumor to rest himself. He stated that “the "FEMA-Kennedy arrived in NY on Sept. 10th" myth is pure poison and absolutely incorrect.” Though he made too big a deal over the name confusion, he made a strong case, actually getting off his ass and calling multiple people involved with Kenney's fire team (on loan to FEMA, we learn). They all confirmed that they left on Tuesday night and sent him photos and videos of the send-off that featured Kenney and profuse 9/11 response imagery that would have made no sense the previous night.“This erroneous story is dangerously useful for the cover-up," Ruppert summarized, "and it's time to give it the axe.” [7]

Sources:
[1] New York City Office of Emergency Management. “TriPOD (Trial Point-of-Dispensing) Drill.” Accessed January 15, 2005 at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/other/sub_photos_pages/tripod.html
[2] “Eleventh public hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” May 18-19, 2004. Testimony of Rudolph Guiliani. C-Span archive video location (accessed January, 2005):
http://www.cspan.org/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=Giuliani+9-11+Commission&image1.x=0&image1.y=0&image1=Submit
[3] Mikkelson, Barbara and David Mikkelson. “Monday, Monday.” Urban Legends Reference Pages. Last Updated October 1, 2002. Accessed January 15, 2005 at: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/fema.htm
[4] Ruppert, Michael C. “TRIPOD II AND FEMA” http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060704_tripod_fema.html
[5] Dougherty, Jon. “9-11 Net Rumor Finally Put to Rest.” World Net Daily. November 27, 2002. Accessed February 19, 2005 at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29793
[6] "Long Debunked "Rumor" Validated by Giuliani: FEMA in NYC prior to 9-11 for Project TRIPOD terror drill, scheduled for 9-12." Scoop. June 29 2004. http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/june2004/062904longdebunked.htm
[7] See [4].

STRATEGY AND TACTICS

2006-11-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

STATE SPONSOR OF TERROR?
THE MILITARY TRAINING SEAM

One question I’ve always had regarding the 9/11 hijackers is if you’re going to attack America, why train there? Why run the risk of getting caught? Why not train somewhere friendly, and then go to America and commit the attack quickly and quietly? What was so special about training in the U.S. that they had to sleep in the “lion’s den” for over a year in some cases?

A possible answer seems to have been provided just days after the attack. At least five men with names matching the five hijackers were reported to have been trained at various military bases in the U.S., notably the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Florida. This was according to Pentagon documents turned over to the FBI and reported on by mainstream news outlets, notably Newsweek and the Washington Post. Newsweek reported just four days after the attack

“U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.
Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.
Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.”

The Washington Post reported on September 16 seven cases of confused identity: “Two of 19 suspects […] have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others […] have names similar to individuals listed in public records as using the same address inside the base.” Another matched a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio. Finally, “men with the same names as two other hijackers [...] appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.”

But the identities were not exact: Newsweek explained: “there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates.” The Post noted: "Some of the FBI suspects had names similar to those used by foreign alumni of U.S. military courses," the Air Force acknowledged in a statement. "However, discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people." One military source told Newsweek it was possible that the hijackers stole the identities of the foreign students, but hijacked identities are primarily based on names and birthdates, which have to be the same, neither off by decades nor even “slightly discrepant.”

So does this fact fall under the “stolen identities” heading, under the “military training of suicide hijackers under slight pseudonyms” category, or in the realm of true and odd coincidences? It’s certainly clear which way the official story evolved. The documents were eventually seen as verifying that nearly a quarter of the hijackers had probably stolen identities, all conveniently available to the Pentagon’s leadership, and eventually just taken as a further verification of the terrorists’ existence. Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker tried to clear this up by asking an Air Force Public Relations Officer about the two Mohammed Attas. She asserted that “biographically, they’re not the same [person],” but when Hopsicker asked if he could meet the Air-Force trained Mohammed Atta, she told him she didn’t think he was "going to get that information.”

What if news revealed that five men matching names of five hijackers had received training in Iraq in the 1990s? In that context, such a connection would be seen as a smoking gun, but in this case, it’s just smoke and mirrors I don’t know why the Pentagon would have been looking through lists of its own trainees immediately after the attack. Did they suspect it the work of their own? Perhaps it really was a glimpse of Shadow 9-11, the work of high-level whistleblowers, whose story was simply too big for most people to comprehend. Or maybe this is another government-sponsored seam, a red herring designed to encourage conspiracy theorists and confuse the rest of us. And of course, even more so than with the other oddities I've lookedat,coincidence remains a distinct possibility. The miliatry trains a lot of people and there are plenty of Arabs with only so many names between them.

So anyway, here is the list of hijackers with curiously similar identities to US-trained operatives: the four foreign nationals training in Pensacola were mostly related and shared names with the equally related Saeed Alghamdi (#17), Ahmed Alghamdi (#8), Hamza Alghamdi (#9) and Ahmad Alnami (#19). That would be quite a coincidence. An “Abdulaziz Alomari (#5),” with curious and little-noted identity entanglements with three different individuals, had attended aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. A Saeed Alghamdi (#17) had been to the Defense Language School in Monterrey, California - possibly the same man who bunked with the others in Pensacola, or perhaps a different person again. A Mohammed Atta (#1 of course) had attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery Alabama, the student of “strategy and tactics” at the base’s Air War College. If these identities were stolen the leader of the group picked the right pedigree, his strategically patsy-like actions while on his globetrotting terror mission belie the training.

Sources:
[1] Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases
[1] George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry. "The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI." Newsweek. September 15 2001. Accessed at: http://www.wanttoknow.info/010915newsweek
[2] Guy Gugliotta and David S. Fallis. "2nd Witness Arrested: 25 Held for Questioning." Washington Post. September 16, 2001; Page A29. Accessed at: http://www.wanttoknow.info/010916post
[3] Hopsicker, Daniel. "Did Terrorist Pilots Train at U.S. Military Schools?" Original Link: http://www.madcowprod.com/index5.html Accessed at: http://www.prisonplanet.com/did_terrorist_pilots_train_at_us_military_schools.html

BOJINKA I: A LOUD BANG IN MANILA

2006-11-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

As the official story goes, while Pope John Paul II was preparing to visit Manila in early 1995, with security ratcheting up everywhere, two early al Qaeda masterminds were mapping out his route. They were preparing to dress in ecclesiastical garb and blend in to the procession with bombs beneath their robes, and even collected pictures of the pontiff to ensure they would kill the right guy. The 9-11 Commission concluded they also plotted to assassinate President Clinton there in November, but missed their chance. [1] They were staying in a hotel (Dona Josefa Apartments, room 603) only 200 yards from the Vatican embassy, and almost as close to the local police station. They moved in on December 8, 1994. They had few visitors over the next month, but one, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), was reportedly financing their operation and was in and out of room 603.

Yousef and Murad also built a lot of bombs, one of which blew up prematurely on January 6. The two men fled their burning room, explaining they’d had a mishap with fireworks and would be back soon. Later on one of the culprits made good on his promise and was arrested by local authorities as he returned to the smoking scene. The suspect was quickly identified as Abdul Murad, an al Qaeda-linked Kuwaiti trained and licensed to fly commercial airliners in U.S. flight schools, and wanted in connection with the 1993 WTC attack. Ramzi Yousef, suspected mastermind of that attack, was the other guy in room 603, and returned with Murad. But when he saw the police, he fled, and evaded capture for a bit longer.

But Yousef did leave behind his lap-top computer and some disks, apparently too heavy to take with him as he fled. Of course they were full of top secret terrorist information. Investigators found an apparent mess of data on this computer – flight numbers, Arabic-sounding code-names, references to timers, all under the heading “Bojinka.” Yousef in fact had allegedly executed a test-run just weeks before, planting a small practice bomb beneath his seat. It worked, killing a Japanese businessman on the next leg of the plane’s flight and injuring others, forcing an emergency landing. [2]

A Graphic Used by CNN in their original reporting in 1995-96.

Bojinka was soon discovered to be the itinerary for eleven terrorists to plant eleven nitroglycerine bombs, much more powerful than the test bomb, on eleven U.S. jetliners, timed to explode simultaneously over the Pacific. And it was set up to go, possibly soon. White House Counter-terrorism “Czar” Richard Clarke mentioned Bojinka in his book Against All Enemies, by details if not by name. He wrote how he received a message from Manila regarding Ramzi Yousef and his devious plan, which featured undetectable liquid bombs to be assembled in eye drop bottles on board the planes. The bombers were then to mimic Yousef’s trial run and disembark, leaving the others to die. Clarke called the FAA and told them to stop all flights originating in the Pacific. When flights resumed, liquids were not allowed on board. [3] Officials later estimated 4,000 people would likely have died if the plot hadn’t been intercepted. Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism director later said of this plan “we had never seen anything that complicated or ambitious before. It was unparalleled.” [4]

Within a few weeks of Bojinka’s discovery, Yousef was rounded up in Pakistan and joined Murad in prison. According to Peter Lance, that wacky KSM happened to be living in the same building, and when he saw reporters from Time show up, he told them all about the arrest with his own face but the clever pseudonym “Khalid Sheikh.” [5] The next day Yousef was flown to the U.S. and helicoptered to jail in Manhattan. An FBI agent reportedly shouted to him over the noise “you see the Trade Centers down there, they're still standing, aren't they?” Yousef allegedly responded “they wouldn't be if I had enough money and enough explosives.” [6]

Yousef and Murad were joined in the conspiracy charge by an Afghan named Wali Khan Amin Shah. CNN reported on the Bojinka trial in mid-1996, starting with jury selection on May 13. [7] Ramzi knew his rights, and chose to represent himself. His co-defendants Murad and Shah retained a defense team that called five witnesses, as CNN reported, “including a police officer from the Philippines who admitted that he had mixed up evidence he had examined.” Yousef maintained he’d been framed by Philippines police, but the three were finally convicted on all counts of attempted murder and related charges on September 5. The charges carried out a mandatory life sentence at least, with the sentencing scheduled for December 5. [8] Case closed… Long silence...

Sources:
[1] 9-11 Commission Final Report. Page 147.
[2] “Oplan Bojinka.” Wikipedia. Accessed November 11, 2005 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka
[3] Clarke, Richard. “Against all Enemies.” 2004. Pages 93-94.
[4] Brzezinski, Matthew. “Bust and Boom: Six years before the September 11 attacks, Philippine police took down an al Qaeda cell that had been plotting, among other things, to fly explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon.”
Washington Post. December 30 2001. Page W09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14725-2001Dec21?language=printer
[5] Lance Page 328, cited from Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research, the Terror Timeline, 2004, Page 14
[6] Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research, the Terror Timeline, 2004, Page 14
[7] CNN. “Terrorism trial begins in New York.” May 13, 1996. Accessed November 10, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/US/9605/12/terror.plot/
[8] CNN. “Plane Terror Suspects Convicted on all Counts.” September 5, 1996. Acc. Nov. 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/US/9609/05/terror.plot/index.html

STAND-DOWN: DE JURE OR DE FACTO?

2006-11-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

September 13, 2001: The nation is still staggering, in deep shock over the most devastating act of terrorism in American history. With the body count still not finalized but sitting near 6,000 (well-down from initial estimates of 20,000), General Richard B. Myers, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), sits under oath in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This is his confirmation hearing, scheduled weeks before, to be promoted to the post of JCS Chairman, the highest U.S. military post. It was surely a bittersweet event for him. He had already started his tenure as acting JCS Chairman two days earlier - on the morning of September 11th. He had been standing in for his superior Henry Shelton, who had just that morning left on a trip to Europe on prearranged but unspecified business. [1] In the hearing, this curious coincidence was ignored, but Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) asked the candidate about the failed military response during the attack, with which Myers was closely involved.

Levin: “Was the defense department asked to take action against any specific aircraft? […] And did you take action against – for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.”
Myers: “Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.”
Levin: “Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?”
Myers: “That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.” [2]

With his first-hand knowledge of what happened only two days earlier, he maintained that his military did not scramble any fighters in response until after the Pentagon was hit by the third hijacked plane of the morning at 9:37. This was thirty-five minutes – at least - after a second hijacked airliner plowed into the World Trade Center at 9:03, clarifying to everyone we were at war – and quickly losing. How could the mightiest Air Force on Earth be so slow responding to such an urgent emergency?

This was not merely Myers’ confused recollection; the next day, Major Mike Snyder, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), backed him up on this point. According to the Boston Globe: “[Snyder] said the fighters were not scrambled for more than an hour after the first hijacking was reported, by which time the three buildings were struck […] Never before had a hijacked airliner been steered into a skyscraper, Snyder noted, in trying to explain the lack of immediate response.” [3]

So on September 14, that was the official story, confirmed by both Myers and Snyder, by both the JCS and NORAD, and generally taken as fact. Even long after this official story had changed, then-Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani would confirm this original assessment. He told the 9/11 Commission in May 2004 that he was told he just minutes before the first World Trade Tower collapsed at 9:58 that fighters had just been scrambled to protect New York “twelve minutes ago.” [4] By this account, the jets were airborne at about 9:46, exactly an hour after the first attack in New York.

It became clear with a CBS News broadcast that very night that this was actually not the case, that two fighter pilots had been sent at 8:52 from Massachusetts, and soon we had confirmation of another pair sent from Langley AFB in Virginia at 9:30. So why the early confusion?

I don't know the reason for this incongruity, but I do know the effects. On September 11, NORAD knew as of 8:40 (by their own account) that American 11 was (possibly) hijacked and headed to New York. Three minutes later, they learned a second airliner, United 175, was also (possibly) hijacked. As of 8:46, when flight 11 hit the Word Trade Center, they knew what kind of (possible) hijackings these were – just as UA175 changed course and headed for New York itself. Fighter interception should have been a no-brainer at this point, and authorization to shoot to kill should have been sought swiftly to defend future targets. Yet fifty-one minutes later, the new JCS Chairman tells us under oath, NORAD hadn’t got a single fighter off the ground? Honestly, that doesn’t even make sense. It looks like a stand-down.

Rumors began to spread of just this possibility, and persisted well past the reports on 9/14 and after that fighters were scrambled. In September 2003 Michael Meacher, former British Environment Minister, wrote an article for the Manchester Guardian called “This War on Terrorism is Bogus.” He pointed out that no fighters were scrambled from the nation’s premier Andrews Air Force Base, only ten miles from the Pentagon, during the course of the attack. Meacher wondered “was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority?” [5]

It’s a good question; Andrews is the nation’s premiere Air Force base, home of Air Force One, and touchdown point for world leaders visiting the U.S. It is in many ways the central staging ground for the most elaborate airspace defense in the world – yet no fighters were sent from there until well after the attack was over with. Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. put it “there is only one explanation. Our Air Force was ordered to stand down on 9/11.” [6]

I had always found a direct stand-down order a possibility, but too simple of one – did Meacher and Elsis mean an indirect, de facto stand-down or a direct, de jure one? A formal stand-down order is an order, official, total, and enforced as such. Are we really to believe that of the hundreds of pilots ready to take off and help in such a crisis, all told by their superiors to stay on the ground, none would be angry and courageous enough to speak up? Even I, in my profound cynicism, find this hard to swallow. A de jure stand-down seems unlikely to me, and a simplistic argument that looks for an easily identifiable smoking gun of complicity.

Mike Ruppert took this line as well in mid-2004: “There never was a stand down order issued. That would have been way too incriminating and risky a piece of evidence. And it also might have been ignored by eager fighter pilots who had trained their whole lives to respond to a hostile aircraft killing Americans. There are several statements that the "new" NORAD procedures transferring scramble authority to Rumsfeld on June 1, 2001 were ignored by several NORAD commanders on 9/11 including General Larry Arnold. That's exactly what I would have expected.” [7]

However, a close look at the facts reveals an air defense system not just broken but peculiarly broken on that “fateful” morning, with the same net result as a de facto stand-down order. That is, stand down or no, the defense was as ineffective as if there had been, and it hardly seems any less purposeful than Meacher or Elsis suggests.

Sources:
[1] Balz, Dan and Bob Woodward. “America's Chaotic Road to War: Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours After Attack.” Washington Post. January 27, 2002. Page A01. Accessed November 6, 2004 at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26
[2] General Richard B. Myers, Senate Confirmation Hearing. Senate Armed Services Committee. September 13, 2001. Accessed August 5, 2005 at: http://www.attackonamerica.net/genrichardbmyerssenateconfirmationhearing9132001.htm
[3] Johnson, Glen. "Facing Terror Attack's Aftermath: Otis Fighter Jets Scrambled Too Late to Halt The Attacks" The Boston Globe. September 15, 2001 Third Edition Page A1. Accessed at: http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/bg915.htm
[4] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute. New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 439
[5] Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada. New Society Publishers 2004 P. 309
[6] Chertoff, Benjamin et al. “Debunking 9/11 Myths.” Popular Mechanics, March 2005. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=3
[7]Ruppert, Michael C. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060704_tripod_fema.html

Three Abdul Alomaris?

2006-11-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

The cases of confused identity regarding the alleged hijackers are many and well-covered elsewhere. Here I'll cover on telling case I haven't seen anyone else take on. Not that I've really looked. I'd rather keep my illusion of a "hot exclusive story:" the tale of the three Abdul Alomaris.

This case of mistaken identity arose in the first days after the attack. The BBC reported on September 13th that the trail of evidence led investigators from a rental car left behind in Maine to two houses in Vero Beach, Florida. One house had been rented by two brothers from Saudi Arabia, Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, both certified pilots and clearly suspects at this early stage. According to the landlord, Adnan Bukhari and another man who lived in the house next door “had described themselves as Saudi pilots.” They gave as addresses Saudi Arabian Airlines PO boxes in the Kingdom. [1] A CBS News report from the following day explained that agents were questioning Adnan Bukhari, whom they described as a 41-year-old flight engineer. He was at the time a student at Flight Safety Academy, a Miami-area flight school, as had been “an apparent relative of Bukhari, Ameer Bukhari,” until he was killed in a mid-air collision exactly a year before Tuesday's attack.” [2] If by “exactly a year” they mean that Ameer, a man linked with the 9-11 hijackers through direct evidence, died in a mid-air collision on September 11, 2000, that seems more than a little spooky to me. And that it allegedly happened at a place called “Flight Safety” is less spooky than ironic.

The BBC piece states that Bukhari’s unnamed neighbor was also a Flight Safety student, also involved with Saudi aviation. Both men lived there “with their wives and children.” [3] CBS’ report from the 15th explained that this neighbor was one “Abdul Alomari.” [4] An article from the same day in the Florida paper, the St. Petersburg Times, referred to him as “Adbulrahman Al Omari.” [5] Direct evidence from the hijackers’ leavings had led investigators to this man “who lived with his wife and four children.” [6] They clarify that this was indeed one of the hijackers, seated next to Atta on Flight 11, and he apparently had not yet shown up to clarify his innocence. [7] But he was living with his family; this is something we’ve never heard of any the hijackers doing. What could be behind this bizarre identity mix-up? Did the hijacker steal the name of the happily married Abdulrahman Alomari, change it somewhat, and then commit his horrific act? Was the family rented, and the name an alias?

The U.K. paper the Telegraph reported that a man named Abdulaziz Alomari, an engineer from Riyadh, had taken flight training in the U.S. – in Denver during the early 1990s - at which time his passport was stolen. He said he went back home in 2000 and was working for the government, at the Saudi telecommunications authority in Riyadh, and was at his desk there when the 9-11 attack occurred. “They gave my name and my date of birth,” he said, “but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive.” Along with a Saudi Airlines pilot named Saeed Al-Ghamdi, Alomari told the Telegraph he was, as they put it, “furious that the hijackers' "personal details" - including name, place, date of birth and occupation - matched their own.” [8] Same name. Same locations and DOB. Still alive. Presuming this was double-checked, and the Saudis are notoriously secretive, it would be a clear indication that the man pegged as the hijackers had stolen their identities, and somehow, a Saudi Government employee’s identity had been tacked onto one of the government-identified hijackers – by who exactly and for what purpose is unclear.

Left: The real Abdulaziz Alomari, a Government employee in Saudi Arabia: “I am here. I am alive.” Right: Official mugshot of the hijacker with the same name and birthdate.

Unlike this living man, the other two Abdul Alomaris wound up in Florda. The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report gave as facts about hijacker Alomari: he was a late-arriving “muscle” hijacker, and thus required no flight-training. All the muscle hijackers, including Alomari, were between 20 and 28 years old. Alomari “had graduated with honors from High School, had attained a (university) degree… was married, and had a daughter.” [1] The report does not mention if this daughter was his only child, or one of four, nor does it either confirm or deny that his wife and daughter lived with him in the U.S. or whether he was a trained pilot. [11] The “Abdulrahman Alomari” from Vero Beach that immediate evidence indicated was one of the hijackers does not seem to be the same person. The St. Petersburg Times found, by looking at Florida records, that their Alomari was 38 years old, not “20-28,” and a trained pilot, working for Saudi Airlines, and receiving further training in Florida. Although the 9/11 Commission paints him as a late arrival, the St. Petersburg Times found that he had first gotten a Florida driver’s license in 1994. [12]

So on reviewing this evidence, it appears there may be three Abdul Alomaris:
- Abdulaziz Alomari – Alive and well, employed by the Saudi Government, received flight training in the U.S. years ago (not Florida), marital status unknown.
- Abdulrahman Alomari – Long-time resident of Florida since 1994, a trained pilot, married with four children, living and training in Florida in 2001, apparently disappeared around 9-11.
- Abdulaziz Alomari – alleged hijacker, obviously dead, married with one child, first arrived in the U.S. in mid-2001, presumably did not live with his family, presumably not a trained pilot.
Of course this is all very top-secret, so most of us will likely never know who these men were – or if they even existed. What’s disturbing is when it sometimes seems like the authorities don’t know either, or don’t care.

Sources:
[1], [5], [12] “Names of hijackers.” St. Petersburg Times (Florida). September 15, 2001. Accessed November 2. 2004 at: http://www.sptimes.com/News/091501/Worldandnation/Names_of_hijackers.shtml
[2], [7] “Focus On Florida.” CBS News. September 14, 2001. Copied November 2, 2004 from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/14/national/main311268.shtml
[3], [4], [6] “Evidence trails lead to Florida.” BBC News. September 13, 2001. Accessed October 30, 2004 at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1542153.stm
[8] Harrison, David. “Revealed: the men with stolen identities.” The Telegraph. September 23 2001. Copied Nov 3, 2004 from: http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml
[9] “Hijack 'suspects' alive and well” BBC News. September 23, 2001. Accessed November 3, 2004 at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm
[10] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9-11 Commission Final Report. Authorized Edition. New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Page 232
[11] 9/11 Commssion Final Report. Page 231.

Wargame One: Vigilant Guardian

2006-11-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

OPERATION VIGILANT GUARDIAN: The ironically dubbed “Vigilant Guardian” was the first to be widely acknowledged, notably in the BBC’s excellent 2002 documentary Clear the Skies. The exercise, as the official one-paragraph web page explains, was a regular, yearly exercise designed to simulate a “crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.” [1] As a result of Vigilant Guardian, according to NEADS Commander Colonel Robert Marr, “The fighters were cocked and loaded, and even had extra gas on board.” [2] Exact details remain classified, but it was a multi-day exercise, already going on for at least a day as the attacks began.

Three different accounts of first notification of a hijacking indicate that there were to be simulated hijackings in at least Vigilant Guardian: Major General Larry Arnold said “the first thing that went through my mind was, is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?” [3] Sergeant Jeremy Powell at NEADS, where Vigilant Guardian was being carried out, was contacted by Boston Flight Control at 8:38 am. The Boston controller told him there was a hijacked plane headed to New York. Powell responded “is this real-world or exercise?” He received the answer “no this is not an exercise, not a test.” [4]

The most relevant account is that of Lt. Colonel Dawne Deskins. As NEADS regional overseer of Vigilant Guardian, she should have understood better than anyone what to expect from the drill. Newhouse News Service reported her response to the crisis: "At 8:40, Deskins noticed senior technician Jeremy Powell waving his hand. Boston Center was on the line, he said. It had a hijacked airplane. “It must be part of the exercise,” Deskins thought. At first, everybody did. [After clarifying with FAA] Deskins ran up a short flight of stairs to the Battle Cab and reported the hijacked plane real world, not a simulation.” [5]

Name Meaning: “Vigilant or Amalgam means it is a HQ NORAD sponsored exercise. Guardian means it is a multi-command CPX, or command post exercise (no live-fly). So on 9/11, NORAD was conducting a NORAD-wide, multi-command, command post exercise with no live-fly." - Major Don Arias, NORAD press spokesman who was on duty and involved in the response the morning of 9/11, to Mike Ruppert. As reprinted in Crossing the Rubicon, page 368.

Sources:
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm
(the original page had this quote, but by 2006 the page makes no mention of a crisis but explains it is now "conducted in conjunction with USCINCSTRAT-sponsored GLOBAL GUARDIAN and USCINCSPACE-sponsored APOLLO GUARDIAN exercises. The exercise involves all HQ NORAD levels of command and is designed to exercise most aspects of the NORAD mission.")
[2] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
[3] ABC News. “Terror Hits the Towers: How Government Officials Reacted
to Sept. 11 Attacks.” September 14, 2002. Accessed at: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_1.html
[4] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 20
[5] Hart, Seely. “Amid Crisis Simulation, 'We Were Suddenly No-Kidding Under Attack.'” Newhouse News Service. January 25, 2002. Accessed May 7, 2003 at: http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html

A Yawning Gap

2006-11-26T13:22:00.000-08:00

On the evening of September 14 the first story of the Air Force response to the three-day old attack was aired on CBS News.- The two F-15 pilots were scrambled from Otis AFB on Cape Cod, Massachusetts at 8:52, just after the first plane's impact but well before the second. Despite what officials had thus far said, it seemed fighters did get airborne during the attack. This made us feel a little better.

After this news was reported, the official stance changed. On the 18th, NORAD published their final initial timeline, including the Otis scramble time as 8:52, and an additional scramble of fighters from Langley Air Force Base at 9:30, ceding two scrambles before the Pentagon was hit. This timeline changed yet again in 2004 as the 9/11 Commission released its findings. Most of the facts that follow are from this newer version of events (the scrambles just mentioned are agreed on in both versions).

At the time of the attacks, only fourteen fighters were routinely kept on ready and alert status across the US mainland. These were deployed and scrambled in pairs, so these fighters represented only seven actual deployments. Nearly all reported pre-9/11 threats of terrorist attacks, some involving hijackings, focused on New York or Washington D.C. Yet on that morning, only two of these seven deployments were in the Northeast sector, thick with air traffic (about 50% of the national total) and with threats against it (nearly all threats targeted New York or Washington). The BBC quoted Colonel Robert Marr, Commander of the North East Air Defense Sector (NEADS), as saying “I had determined, of course, that with only four aircraft we cannot defend the whole north eastern United States.” Worse, these deployments were on the northern and southern fringes of the area of vulnerability, in each case about 150 miles away from the nearest targeted site. One newspaper wondered why NORAD had left “what seems to be a yawning gap in the midsection of its air defenses on the East Coast – a gap with New York City at the center.”

> DEPLOYMENT KEY:
(Graphic by the Author, based on post-9/11 research - exact basing at the time of the attack is not clear, but clearly seems inadequate for what unfolded that day, revealing, at best, poor planning of the air defenses in a time of heightened alert)
1) Hancock Field Air National Guard Base (ANGB), Syracuse, NY. 174th Fighter Wing. Very close to Rome, NY HQ of NEADS.
2) Barnes ANGB, MA. 104th Fighter Wing
3) Bradley ANG base, CT. 103rd Fighter Wing.
4) Otis AFB, Falmouth, MA. Postings and status unclear. Scrambled two F-16s at 8:52.
5) Willow Grove, PA. 11th Fighter Wing.
6) Atlantic City ANGB, NJ. 177th Fighter Wing. Atlantic City had two F-16s In the air on 9/11 for a bombing exercise near the city. Boston flight controllers tried to contact the base at 8:34, but the phone just rang. They weren’t on “ready” status as they had been in previous years. This fighter pair was finally sent to Washington after 10:00.
7) Andrews AFB - it's actually closer than it looks here, only 10 miles from the Pentagon - home of the 113th wing DC Air National Guard and the Air National Guard Readiness Center. They did not get fighter off the ground on 9/11 until 10:42, and these were sent up without missiles. The pair sent had been in the air on a training mission in South Carolina as the attack began.
8) Langley AFB, VA. 10th Intelligence Squadron, Air Force Doctrine Center, Air Combat Command, 1st Fighter Wing. Scrambled two F-15s and an unidentified third plane at 9:30.