- In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September
11, 2001. How well has the US government's official account of the event
held up over the decade?
-
- Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior
legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating
themselves from the commission's report. They said that the Bush administration
put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that
President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President
Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials
lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the
false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice.
-
- In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas
Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up
to fail." Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government
made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened,"
and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what
had been told to us and the public." Kean said, "We to this day
don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from
the truth."
-
- Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not
answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard
from those who supported the government's account. The commission was a
controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence.
Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts
were appointed to the commission.
-
- One member of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator Max
Cleland, responded to the constraints placed on the commission by the White
House: "If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission,
cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims,
and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised."
Cleland resigned rather than have his integrity compromised.
-
- To be clear, neither Cleland nor members of the commission
suggested that 9/11 was an inside job to advance a war agenda. Nevertheless,
neither Congress nor the media wondered, at least not out loud, why President
Bush was unwilling to appear before the commission under oath or without
Cheney; why Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission or, if the
officials did not lie, why the commission believed they lied, or why the
White House resisted for so long any kind of commission being formed, even
one under its control.
-
- One would think that if a handful of Arabs managed to
outwit not merely the CIA and FBI but all 16 US intelligence agencies,
all intelligence agencies of our allies including Mossad, the National
Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times
on one morning, air traffic control, etc., the President, Congress, and
the media would be demanding to know how such an improbable event could
occur. Instead, the White House put up a wall of resistance to finding
out, and Congress and the media showed little interest.
-
- During the decade that has passed, numerous 9/11 Truth
organizations have formed. There are Architects and Engineers for 9/11
Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for
9/11 Truth, Remember Building 7.org, and a New York group which includes
9/11 families. These groups call for a real investigation.
-
- David Ray Griffen has written 10 carefully researched
books documenting problems in the government's account. Scientists have
pointed out that the government has no explanation for the molten steel.
NIST has been forced to admit that WTC 7 was in free fall for part of its
descent, and a scientific team led by a professor of nano-chemistry at
the University of Copenhagen has reported finding nano-thermite in the
dust from the buildings.
-
- Larry Silverstein, who had the lease on the World Trade
Center buildings, said in a PBS broadcast that the decision was made "to
pull" Building 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11. Chief fire marshals
have said that no forensic investigation was made of the buildings' destruction
and that the absence of investigation was a violation of law.
-
- Some efforts have been made to explain away some of the
evidence that is contrary to the official account, but most of the contrary
evidence is simply ignored. The fact remains that the skepticism of a large
number of knowledgeable experts has had no effect on the government's position
other than a member of the Obama administration suggesting that the government
infiltrate the 9/11 truth organizations in order to discredit them.
-
- The practice has been to brand experts not convinced
by the government's case "conspiracy theorists." But of course
the government's own theory is a conspiracy theory, an even less likely
one once a person realizes its full implication of intelligence and operational
failures. The implied failures are extraordinarily large; yet, no one was
ever held accountable.
-
- Moreover, what do 1,500 architects and engineers have
to gain from being ridiculed as conspiracy theorists? They certainly will
never receive another government contract, and many surely lost business
as a result of their "anti-American" stance. Their competitors
must have made hay out of their "unpatriotic doubts." Indeed,
my reward for reporting on how matters stand a decade after the event will
be mail telling me that as I hate America so much I should move to Cuba.
-
- Scientists have even less incentive to express any doubts,
which probably explains why there are not 1,500 Physicists for 9/11 Truth.
Few physicists have careers independent of government grants or contracts.
It was a high school physics teacher who forced NIST to abandon its account
of Building 7's demise. Physicist Stephen Jones, who first reported finding
evidence of explosives, had his tenure bought out by BYU, which no doubt
found itself under government pressure.
-
- We can explain away contrary evidence as coincidences
and mistakes and conclude that only the government got it all correct,
the same government that got everything else wrong.
-
- In fact, the government has not explained anything. The
NIST report is merely a simulation of what might have caused the towers
to fail if NIST's assumptions programed into the computer model are correct.
But NIST supplies no evidence that its assumptions are correct.
-
- Building 7 was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report,
and many Americans are still unaware that three buildings came down on
9/11.
-
- Let me be clear about my point. I am not saying that
some black op group in the neoconservative Bush administration blew up
the buildings in order to advance the neoconservative agenda of war in
the Middle East. If there is evidence of a coverup, it could be the government
covering up its incompetence and not its complicity in the event. Even
if there were definite proof of government complicity, it is uncertain
that Americans could accept it. Architects, engineers, and scientists live
in a fact-based community, but for most people facts are no match for emotions.
-
- My point is how un-inquisitive the executive branch,
including the security agencies, Congress, the media, and much of the population
are about the defining event of our time.
-
- There is no doubt that 9/11 is the determinant event.
It has led to a decade of ever expanding wars, to the shredding of the
Constitution, and to a police state. On August 22 Justin Raimondo reported
that he and his website, <http://antiwar.com/>Antiwar.com, are
being monitored by the FBI's Electronic Communication Analysis Unit to
determine if <http://antiwar.com/>Antiwar.com is "a
threat to National Security" working "on behalf of a foreign
power."
-
- Francis A. Boyle, an internationally known professor
and attorney of international law, has reported that when he refused a
joint FBI-CIA request to violate the attorney/client privilege and become
an informant on his Arab-American clients, he was placed on the US government's
terrorist watch list.
-
- Boyle has been critical of the US government's approach
to the Muslim world, but Raimondo has never raised, nor permitted any contributor
to raise, any suspicion about US government complicity in 9/11. Raimondo
merely opposes war, and that is enough for the FBI to conclude that he
needs watching as a possible threat to national security.
-
- The US government's account of 9/11 is the foundation
of the open-ended wars that are exhausting America's resources and destroying
its reputation, and it is the foundation of the domestic police state that
ultimately will shut down all opposition to the wars. Americans are bound
to the story of the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attack, because it is what justifies
the slaughter of civilian populations in several Muslim countries, and
it justifies a domestic police state as the only means of securing safety
from terrorists, who already have morphed into "domestic extremists"
such as environmentalists, animal rights groups, and antiwar activists.
-
- Today Americans are unsafe, not because of terrorists
and domestic extremists, but because they have lost their civil liberties
and have no protection from unaccountable government power. One would think
that how this came about would be worthy of public debate and congressional
hearings.
|
