- Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall.
- Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.
- All the king's horses and all the king's men
- couldn't put Humpty together again.
-
- Today in America, we are witness to a great unraveling,
the likes of which we have never seen before. There are no historical precedents.
For many months now the official narrative about the September 11, 2001
terrorist attack on America has been coming apart, and I mean: at the seams.
The official story about that terrible day is disintegrating. The trend
shows no sign of abating and in recent weeks it even appears to have accelerated.
At the present rate, soon there will be nothing left of the official version
of events but a discordant echo and a series of extremely rude after shocks.
-
- Is our nation prepared to face those rude shocks?
-
- The unraveling began within weeks of the release of the
9/11 Commission Report (in July 2004) with the shocking revelation that
members of the 9/11 commission were convinced that government officials,
including NORAD generals, had deceived them during the investigationin
essence, had lied to their faces during the hearings.[1] According
to the Washington Post the members of the commission vented their frustrations
at a special meeting in the summer of 2004. The panel even considered referring
the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.
-
- The unraveling continued in 2006 with the release of
a follow-up volume, Without Precedent, authored by the two men who had
co-chaired the commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. The men
had come under increasing fire ever since the release of their final report
for presiding over what many now believe was a failed investigation. Stung
by so much criticism, Kean and Hamilton felt the need to explain (and defend)
themselves. The gist of their 2006 book is easily summarized. They write:
"We were set up to fail."
-
- The bleeding continued in May 2007 with the stunning
announcement that former BYU physicist Steven Jones had found residues
of thermate, a high temperature explosive, in the dust of the collapsed
World Trade Center.[2] The discovery has the gravest implications
for our nation, and probably for this reason the announcement went reported
in the US media. In a later chapter I will discuss this important evidence
in detail.
-
- Yet another startling revelation occurred in December
2007 when we learned that the CIA destroyed evidence, in the form of audio-tapes,
deemed vital to the official investigation.[3]
- The news prompted 9/11 Commission co-chairs Kean and
Hamilton to fire off an angry salvo in the New York Times in which they
charged that the CIA had obstructed their investigation.[4] Their
blunt accusation was explosive and should have caused every American to
sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, the average American probably failed
to connect the dots because, as usual, the US media offered nothing in
the way of helpful context or analysis. We were fed the usual diet of tidbits
and sound bytes: a wealth of minutiae. The big picture remained elusive.
-
- But back to the unraveling story.
-
- Starting in 2002, the CIA conducted interrogations of
captured Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh,
at undisclosed CIA prisons outside the US. During these interrogations
the CIA resorted to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the
CIA's euphemism for torture) to extract information.[5] The methods
included "waterboarding," which induces a sensation of drowning
in the unlucky individual. Evidently, the CIA decided for its own internal
reasons to video-tape these early interrogation sessions. However, years
later (in 2005), Jose A, Rodriquez, the CIA's Director of Operations, ordered
the tapes destroyed. For what reason? Well, according to current CIA Director
Michael V. Hayden, because the tapes posed "a serious security risk."[6] Hayden
went on to clarify his rather cryptic remark, and explained to the press
that if the tapes had become public they would have exposed CIA officials
"and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers."
The excuse was flimflam, but the US media hung on Hayden's every word as
if he were speaking gospel. The press certainly did not throw him any hard
balls. Nor did they press him on the point.
-
- Hayden also claimed that the CIA had notified the appropriate
committee heads in Congress in 2005 before destroying the evidence. But
according to the Times this was immediately denied by the top two members
of the House Intelligence Committee. A spokesman for Representative Peter
Hoekstra (R-MI), who at the time chaired the oversight committee, said
that he was "never briefed or advised" that the tapes even existed,
let alone "that they were going to be destroyed."[7]
-
- Kean and Hamilton had a similar reactionoutrage.
In their article they state categorically that the CIA never informed them
about any taped interrogations, despite their repeated requests for all
pertinent information about the captured Al Qaeda operatives, who were
then in CIA custody. In fact, as damaging as the news about the CIA's destruction
of evidence surely was, the story exposed an even more serious problem.
One might naturally assume that the official commission charged to investigate
the events of 9/11 would have had unfettered access to all of the evidence
pertinent to the case, including government documents and key witnesses.
This goes without saying. Access was vital to the success of the investigation.
How else could the commission do its work? Yet, it never happened.
-
- CIA Stonewalled the Official Panel
-
- In their article Kean and Hamilton summarize their dealings
with the CIA.[8] They describe their private meeting with CIA Director
George Tenet and how he denied them access to the captured members of Al
Qaeda. Which means, of course, that the panel never had a chance to conduct
its own interviews. Tenet even denied them permission to conduct second-hand
interviews with the CIA interrogators, which Kean and Hamilton felt were
needed to "to better judge the credibility of the witnesses and clarify
ambiguities in the reporting."[9] Ultimately, the commission
was forced to rely on third-hand intelligence reports prepared by the CIA
itself. Many of these reports were poorly written and incomplete summaries[10] which,
according to the co-chairs "raised almost as many questions as they
answered."
-
- In order to resolve the many uncertainties the commission
prepared a list of questions, which they then submitted to the CIA. The
questions covered a range of topics, such as the translations from the
Arabic, inconsistencies in the detainees' stories, the context of the questioning,
how the interrogators followed up certain lines of questioning, and the
assessments of the interrogators themselves. But the CIA's response was
less than helpful. In their article Kean and Hamilton state that "the
[CIA] general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies."
This is a bland way of saying that the agency stiffed the panel. Not satisfied,
Kean and Hamilton made another attempt to gain access to the captives,
but were again rebuffed during a head-to-head meeting with Tenet in December
2003. For this reason the ambiguities and other questions went unresolved
and still flaw the commission's final report. Yet, as I have indicated,
the more serious problem was the panel's lack of access to begin with,
a problem that was by no means obvious until the recent story broke in
the mainstream press. As we now know, Kean and Hamilton had inserted a
caveat in their report (on page 146) conceding that they were denied access
to the witnesses. Most readers, however, probably pass right over it without
understanding its awful significance. I know I did, the first time I read
the report.
-
- The latest unraveling also came with a twist. Not even
Porter J. Goss, CIA Director at the the time, knew that the tapes had been
destroyed. That decision, as noted, was made by Jose A, Rodriquez, the
CIA's Director of Operationsas in covert operations. According
to the Times, Goss was angered to learn he had been left out of the loop.[11] But
Goss declined to make a public statement. What are we to make of this?
Why was the CIA chief kept in the dark about the destruction of evidence
deemed vital to the 9/11 investigation? This is just as shocking as the
destruction of the tapes because it points to a disconnect in the chain
of command. Was the CIA's covert branch, long notorious for staging rogue
operations, up to its old tricks? Are there loose cannons at Langley still?
-
- The 9/11 Commission Report was packaged and sold to the
American people like some trendy product. The US media has told us countless
times it is the definitive version of the events of September 11, and in
2008 most Americans probably take this for granted. When something is repeated
enough times on television people begin to believe it whether it is true
or not. This is what happens when mass marketing is made to serve a political
agenda. We witnessed a similar phenomenon during the run-up to the 2003
US invasion of Iraq, when President G.W. Bush's mantra about Saddam's Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMD) and his supposed links to Al Qaeda were drummed
into the brain of every American. Today, of course, we know different.
None of it was true. Yet, on the eve of that war a Washington Post poll
found that 70% of Americans believed that Saddam was responsible for 9/11.
The case is a sobering example of the power of the corporate media to shape
public opinion withlet us call it by its true namepropaganda.
-
- OK. It is now 2008. Is America prepared to face reality?
The 9/11 Commission's lack of direct access to the captured members of
al Qaeda can only mean that the official 9/11 investigation was fundamentally
compromised from the outset. No other conclusion is possible, given the
latest disclosures. In their recent article Kean and Hamilton do not repudiate
their own report, at least, not in so many words. But they come close.
They insinuate that the CIA's stonewalling now calls into question the
veracity of key parts of the official story, especially the plot against
America supposedly masterminded by Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and approved
by Osama bin Laden. Until now, the nation has assumed that all of this
was soundly based on the testimony of the captured al Qaeda operatives,
several of whom supposedly confessed. This is the story told in the 9/11
Commission Report. However, when you probe more deeply you discover the
devil lurking in the details. I personally believe there was a plot by
al Qaeda to attack America. Yet, without independent confirmation about
what the captives actually confessed to, precisely what was said and by
whom, indeed, whether they confessed at all, there is absolutely no way
for us to know how much of the official story is true and how much was
fabricated by the CIA for reasons we can only guess.
-
- For all that we know, the entire story is a pack of lies.
It comes down to whether the CIA is telling the truth. Should we believe
them? Another important question is: How did the miscarriage of a lawful
process of discovery happen, given that Congress invested the 9/11 Commission
with the authority to subpoena evidence?
-
- Philip Shenon's New Book
-
- Now, in February 2008, along comes a new "tell-all"
book by Philip Shenon with much to say about the above, and some answers.[12] His
book's sub-title, The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission, sounds
very promising. Nor does the author fail to deliver. Shenon covered the
9/11 Commission for the New York Times and over the course of the investigation
he personally interviewed many of the commissioners and staff. His book
is an overnight best-seller, and for good reason. It is a well-written
expose and affords our best look yet at what went on behind-the-scenes.
Instead of burdening us with his personal opinions, Shenon plays the role
of reporter, and describes what happened through the eyes of the commissioners
and staff. The book provides valuable insights into why the investigation
failed.
-
- Of course, we already knew large parts of the story.
We knew about National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice's incompetence,
for example, and about the serious conflicts of interest on the commission,
particularly in the case of Philip Zelikow, who served as the panel's executive
director. In that capacity Zelikow controlled many facets of the investigation,
including the scheduling of witnesses and the vital flow of information
between the staff and commissioners. Zelikow also edited (and, no doubt,
doctored) the final report. In addition to being a long-time confidante
of Rice, with whom he coauthored a book, Zelikow served on Bush's transition
team and even drafted a national security strategy paper that became the
basis for the Bush administration's attempts in late 2002 to justify the
coming war against Iraq. It is hard to believe that Kean and Hamilton,
who claim their goal was to lead a nonpartisan investigation, would have
knowingly hired such a mana neoconto manage
the day-to-day affairs of their panel. According to Shenon, it only happened
because Zelikow failed to report the full extent of his ties to the Bush
administration when he submitted his resume for the job. If Zelikow had
been more forthcoming he would have been instantly eliminated from consideration.
But this hardly excuses Kean and Hamilton for failing to properly vet the
candidate.
-
- Shenon's most important revelation is sure to fuel the
unraveling process. Shenon names CIA Director George Tenet as one of the
government officials whom the commissioners and staff were certain had
lied during the hearings.[13] Tenet gave testimony on three occasions
(in addition to the private meetings with Kean and Hamilton) and in each
of these hearings the CIA Director suffered from a faulty memory, frequently
responding with "I can't remember." Initially, the commissioners
were inclined to be sympathetic and gave the director the benefit of the
doubt. (Tenet's supporters at the agency reportedly made excuses for their
boss: George could not remember because he was dead-tired, physically exhausted
from dealing with the war on terrorism, and suffering from sleep deprivationnot
getting enough shuteye.[14] Poor old George.) But gradually the tide
turned. By Tenet's third appearance it was obvious to everyone he was perjuring
himself.
-
- Curiously, there no mention of this spectacle in the
9/11 Commission Report. Why not? Kean gave the reason at the panel's first
public hearing in New York City, when he said: "Our...purpose will
not be to point fingers." The comment was not well received. According
to Shenon, it prompted a rumble in the audience, including sneers from
the families of the victims who wanted those officials responsible to be
held accountable.[15]
-
- It is important to understand that when Tenet stiffed
the commission he was carrying on a time-honored Langley tradition. For
the first 25 years of its existence the CIA functioned entirely outside
our constitutional framework of government. Like it or not, this is the
disturbing reality. The state of affairs prevailed until the Watergate
era when the Church hearings exposed a laundry list of criminal activities
by the CIA, such as domestic spying, the assassination of foreign leaders,
the overthrow of governments, plus the nasty habit of deceiving Congress.
The Church hearings shocked the nation and led to the creation of House
and Senate intelligence committees to provide the democratic oversight
that was sorely lacking. At any rate, that was the intent. But as with
so many good ideas it never worked as expected. The CIA soon found ways
around the oversight process. This is not surprising when you consider
that the agency's expertise is clandestine operations. Today, the Intelligence
Committees in both houses are widely viewed as a joke, and despite a chorus
of denials from the agency and its admirers the perception is undoubtedly
correct. To his credit, Shenon touches on the problem. The author mentions
that one of the commissioners, former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), once
served on the Senate Intelligence Committee but quit in frustration because
of the lack of any serious business. Said Gorton: "I felt it was a
useless exerciseI never felt I was being told anything that
I hadn't learned in the Washington Post."[16] Does such an agency
deserve our trust and respect?
-
- As to why Kean and Hamilton did not make more aggressive
use of their authority to subpoena evidence, Shenon's answer is not very
satisfying but rings true. The co-chairs were overcautious because they
wished to avoid a legal showdown that would drag out in the courts.[17] A
legal stalemate threatened to delay their investigation beyond the mandated
deadline, which in their view would have been tantamount to a Bush victory.
It was a huge mistake, however. Had Kean and Hamilton stood tough and issued
blanket subpoenas early in the investigation as their legal counsel advised,
the inevitable showdown in the courts would have worked in their favor.
Bush and Tenet would have been perceivedcorrectlyas
obstructing the investigation and would have come under increasing pressure
and scrutiny. That sort of confrontation would have served the discovery
process and the cause of 9/11 truth. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. This
helps to explain why the official investigation failed in its stated objective:
"to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding
9/11."[18]
-
-
- Although Philip Shenon supports the official narrative,
his research was so narrowly focused that his rather casual discounting
of "conspiracy theorists" can do no harm to the 9/11 truth movement.
(Here, of course, "conspiracy theorist" means anyone who does
not agree with the official conspiracy theory.) Judging from his book,
Shenon appears to be genuinely unaware that in 2007 the evidence shifted
decisively in favor of the "conspiracy theorists." It is ironic
that, whatever his personal views, his book is likely to speed the unraveling
process.
-
- The showdown with the CIA, though long delayed, appears
to be developing as I write, and it portendsI believea
coming shift in the terms of the debate, away from the previous discussion
about the incompetence of officials and "security failures" to
more grave issues. But how this important drama will be played out remains
unclear. Obviously, a new legally empowered investigative body is urgently
needed, since the 9/11 Commission no longer exists. While there are many
reasons to worry about the futurewe have entered the
most dangerous time in our historythe good news is
that, once begun, the unraveling process is irreversible. It moves in only
one direction: forward. As in the famous nursery rhyme, the official reality
is falling apart and the pieces will never be put back together again.
-
-
- Mark H. Gaffney's forthcoming book, The 911 Mystery Plane
and the Vanishing of America, will be released in September 2008. Mark's
latest, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, was a finalist for the 2004 Narcissus
Book Award. Mark can be reached for comment at <mailto:markhgaffney@earthlink.net>markhgaffney@earthlink.net
Visit Mark's web site at <http://www.gnosticsecrets.com>www.gnosticsecrets.com
-
-
- 1 Dan Eggen, "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by
Pentagon," The Washington Post, August 2, 2006.
-
- 2 The Jones paper is posted at http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf
-
- 3 Mark Mazzetti, "CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing
Interrogations," New York Times, December 7, 2007.
-
- 4 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, "Stonewalled
by the CIA," New York Times, January 2, 2008.
-
- 5 "CIA destroyed terrorism suspect videotapes. Director
says interrogation tapes were security risk. Critics call move illegal,"
NBC News, December 7, 2007.
-
- 6 Mark Mazzetti, "CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing
Interrogations," New York Times, December 7, 2007.
-
- 7 Ibid.
-
- 8 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, "Stonewalled
by the CIA," New York Times, January 2, 2008.
-
- 9 The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, W.W. Norton &
Co., New York, p.146.
-
- 10 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History
of the 9/11 Commission, Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2008, p.391.
-
- 11 Mark Mazzetti, "CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing
Interrogations," New York Times, December 7, 2007.
-
- 12 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History
of the 9/11 Commission, Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2008, p. 360.
-
- 13 Ibid., p. 360.
-
- 14 Ibid., pp. 258-260.
-
- 15 Ibid., p. 99.
-
- 16 Ibid., p. 229.
-
- 17 Ibid. pp. 94 and 201.
-
- 18 The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, W.W. Norton &
Co., New York, p. xvi.
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