The Official Story

[JackRiddler]

1) The 19 hijackers did it as described in The 9/11 Commission Report and have been correctly identified, at least as to name, nationality and status as al-Qaeda recruits on a suicide mission to attack the WTC and Washington.

2) They were dispatched and financed by the al-Qaeda network under Osama bin Ladin, KSM et al., and had no witting help from outside that network. They had no state sponsorship and were not agents of any state. (Especially not any ally of the US.)

3) No one in the US government or its agencies or security contractors was involved in originating, orchestrating or facilitating the attacks; no one saw it coming and deliberately allowed it to happen so as to gain power, implement an agenda, or exploit business opportunities.

4) (OPTION) The subsequent official investigations were authentically motivated to uncover, not to coverup.

Those who accept 1-3 are part of the community who believe the Official Story, regardless of additional disagreements among them.

Since reality always requires a degree of consensus, it will be easy for sophists to pretend otherwise, but hard not to look stupid doing it. "It's only rocket science."

Official Story is either of the first two options at the following link - everything from 3 on up is 9/11 Skepticism.

http://summeroftruth.org/lihopmihopnohop.html

The worst enemies of disclosure are the ones who have tried to create artifcial enmities among those who question the official story, rather than to promote unity above all in the demand for disclosure.

[CJCRANE]

1. Good definition nt

[petgoat]

2. Unity Schmoonity--No unity with bigots, liars, or advocates of violence. nt

[JackRiddler]

3. I said artificial enmities...

You're talking about real differences. And I agree.

The primary artificial enmity would be "LIHOP v. MIHOP" and other variants of demanding the most extreme version of "9/11 Truth" (or the dumbest theories) so that even people who reject the official story end up attacking the 9/11 truth "movement." The ones doing that tend to be bigots, liars and advocates of violence. You can think of a few such examples, no?

[petgoat]

6. Who winds up attacking the 9/11 Truth Movement?

Other than Nico, I mean.

Even Dr. Wood's attacks on Dr. Jones were not on the movement
as a whole, but on Jones as an individual.

So I guess you'll have to define what you mean by attacks on the
movement.

Seems like most of those who do the movement harm do so in the guise
of friendship--luring people into counterproductive activities and
ideas.

I don't understand why people with extreme, specific theories
find it necessary to attack those who espouse more moderate,
more crowd-pleasing positions. I'll suppose it's because they
think they've found the smoking gun of 9/11, and they're frustrated
that it hasn't made them rock stars.

I think there's a place for almost everybody. (But not bigots,
liars, and advocates of violence.) Even the guy who hollers
"9/11 Was an Inside Job!" at subway crowds--even while he's
engendering the response "What an asshole!" is freeing up space in
the citizens' minds to think "Gee, what if he's right?"

I understand the wishes of the 911research crowd to inhibit the
space-beamers and no-pentagon-planers and TV-fakery advocates.
Since my own predilection is to regard science-fiction as essential
brain-food--as long as you recognize that it's fiction--I regarded
their disapproval of speculative theories as almost moralistic.
But then, I have a science degree and I can be trusted to engage
in safe-speculation. Recognizing the damage done to less-discriminating
but respected activists by Captain Eric May's disaster predictions
and the tall tales of that hero feller, I'm becoming less tolerant
of bullshit. The damage was also to me--fallout from challenging that
assholery has cost me emotionally such that I've lost probably four
months productivity out of the last seven.

As to Dr. Wood specifically, her billiard ball paper was sufficiently
unimpressive to me that I haven't given much time to her theories or
to their alleged debunking at the Journal of 9/11 Studies. I don't
think I need to read either of them to be confident that Dr. Wood's
expression of the exotic weapons thesis is flawed, that the debunking
is thus a straw man argument, and that my belief is reasonable that
we don't know what kind of secret weapons the military has and thus
can not discard the exotic weapons theory. As far as I know the
hyperbaric thesis is still on Jim Hoffman's table. Using no more than
an amateur screenwriter's imagination I can propose a couple of sources
of energy available on the scene for electric-based weapons (capacitor
banks fed from the subway power source over a period of months or
floated in on submarine barges in the Hudson River). And nobody has
yet explained the complete pulverization of 220 acres of carpeting,
180,000 tons of concrete, and 220 acres of steel floor pans.

[mhatrw]

4. Wonderful post.

A big :toast: to everyone who agrees that the official story is a crock of shit!

An even bigger :wtf: to everyone who thinks that the bullshit official story necessitates a never-ending state of war.

[wildbilln864]

5. yes indeed. nt

[LARED]

8. Please clarify

to everyone who thinks that the bullshit official story necessitates a never-ending state of war.

Are you stating that those that believe the so called official story advocate a never-ending state or war?

[JackRiddler]

9. the words are clear...

Intent is unknowable, but there is no reason for you to ask that based on the syntax, which has only one possible reading. Or don't you read English?

[LARED]

12. Let me be more clear

Does he believe that those that believe the so called official story necessarily believe it justifies a never ending ear.

Believing the so called official story and believing it justifies a never ending war are not the same thing.

[wildbilln864]

27. never ending ear!?

:rofl:

[HamdenRice]

14. I think he means this:

If the 9/11 attacks were carried out by a widespread, stateless, impenetrable terrorist network, as alleged by the official story, then the "war on terror," a "long war" that will go on as long as there are such terrorist networks, appears to be the only way to achieve security.

By contrast, if AQ was a limited criminal terrorist organization that had been thoroughly penetrated by various friendly intelligence agencies, and if the methods and tactics that had managed to penetrate AQ before 9/11, that managed to chanel intelligence about AQ to Washington, that managed to prevent the millenium plot, could also easily have prevented 9/11 if the Bush administration had wanted to prevent it, then the "war on terror" is a monumental waste of human life, public resources, property and international diplomatic capital.

[JackRiddler]

15. I think he is a she.

[mhatrw]

21. What I'm saying is that the myth of 9/11 serves as the justification

for a never-ending state of war. Thus the self-appointed protectors of that myth are keeping the world safe for the never-ending Global War on Terror.

[SDuderstadt]

22. Another stupid either-or argument....

it assumes there are only two choices even though one could "protect the myth" and still not support or promote the War on Terror. Take a Logic class, mhatrw

[mhatrw]

23. When you protect its justification, like it or not, you *are* supporting the War on Terror. n/t

[SDuderstadt]

24. You need to take a class in Logic, mhatrw...

then you wouldn't make such blindingly silly claims.

[mhatrw]

25. My logic is flawless. You are simply in denial. n/t

[SDuderstadt]

26. Anyone who repeatedly commits logical fallacies....

can't lay claim to faultless logic. In fact, I'm willing to bet you've never actually studied Logic. Here's a quick way to tell. In Logic, can an argument be valid, yet still not true? Simple question. Answer yes or no, then explain why you chose that answer. I mean, your silly response when I called you on the "false dilemma" fallacy you committed the other day demonstrates you had no idea what you were talking about.

[mhatrw]

28. You have no idea who I am, and you don't know a logical fallacy

from a leprechaun fairy-tale.

See if you can follow this logic:

1) The Global War on Terror (tm) is effectively a never-ending war.

True or false?

2) The official myth of 9/11 is the primary justification of the Global War on Terror (tm).

True or False?

Therefore, one necessary result of actively working to protect the official myth of 9/11 from questioning is to facilitate a never-ending state of war.

I never asserted nor would ever assert that every self-designated protector of the official 9/11 myth supports a state of never-ending warfare as a matter of personal political conviction. That would be a false dilemma. One can conceivably choose to protect the official 9/11 myth for a myriad of reasons. Instead, my logically unassailable assertion is that, regardless of the motivations and beliefs of any self-designated protector, the (perhaps unintended) result of protecting the 9/11 myth against questioning is the facilitation of the Global War on Terror (tm).

Maybe I can illustrate this for you with an analogy.

I'm not at all convinced that global warming is an irreversible, 100% man-made phenomenon. However, I support solar, wind, water and any other clean and renewable energy sources as well as conservation for many reasons, and I don't support burning fossil fuel at an increasing rate for many reasons.

In light of this, whether or not the Earth is capable of regulating its temperature with humans continually screwing with the Earth's tiny top layer of crust and atmosphere is, to me, not a particularly critical issue. The Earth may or may not be able to regulate its temperature within boundaries that are humanly comfortable under current environmental pressures. IMHO, I simply doubt that anybody knows the answer to this question with any certainty yet.

On the other hand, I'm not going to make it my life's mission to debunk those who feel that global warming is 100% proven because, either way, I completely agree with their overall energy agenda.

This is something that "official 9/11 myth protectors" could stand to learn.

Trying to shut down legitimate questioning of 9/11 necessarily benefits those who profit from the never-ending Global War on Terror (tm). Look what the "9/11 Changed Everything" meme has wrought: the Iraqi invasion and occupation, a state of never-ending warfare, a "Bush doctrine" of military pre-emption, a culture of authoritarian secrecy, an assault on our Bill of Rights, a crisis of Constitutional separation of powers, the alienation of most of former allies, the complete loss of our nation's credibility with the rest of the world and a bankrupt treasury raided by a slew of war profiteers at the expense of all other taxpayers. And that's just a partial list. Meanwhile, we simply haven't taken any of the obvious, concrete steps that would help to secure our nation against the threat of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. What could possibly be the explanation for this?

Moreover, why would anyone want to spend his or her precious time propping up a meme in whose name so much harm has been done? Why would anyone want to actively work to shut down all questioning of the basis of such a destructive meme? Unless you actually support the Global War on Terror (tm), wouldn't just about any other activity be a far better use of your time?

[wildbilln864]

32. So well said!

No wonder there was no rebuttal. Thank you.
:hi:

[Name removed]

Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mhatrw]

60. Vacuous personal attacks, guilt by association, and misdirection all in one post.

No wonder a "logician" like you deemed this worthy of a repost!

[SDuderstadt]

62. No, it;'s a computer problem but...

don't let that stop you from leaping to conclusions. I'm still chuckling at your allegation of "guilt by association" and I'll strive to make the "personal attacks" less vacuous.

[wildbilln864]

196. I don't know how you can keep getting away with these desperate attacks.

You don't fucking know me!

[Marksbrother]

201. Tis curious.

Maybe there's a clue in that Garth Brooks song about high and low places.

[SDuderstadt]

206. So, you're implying the mods are turning a blind eye towards me?

Why don't you notify them directly? I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

[Bolo Boffin]

207. Why, the CT advocates here couldn't start alerting what they complain about so frequently.

That would mean getting down off their cross and doing something.

[Kalun D]

162. GOOD POST

dayyuuummm

there's some intelligent people here in the dungeon!!!!

[wildbilln864]

211. Yes there are!

He's one of the best IMHO. :hi:

[number6]

208. thanx : long live the search for truth ! Death to the OCT

:thumbsup: :grouphug: :fistbump: :applause: :toast:

:thumbsup: :grouphug: :fistbump: :applause: :toast:

and the official story IS a crock of shit!
I mean shit

[Perry Logan]

7. I rest my case.

JackRiddler has made an honest attempt to frame the "official story," but you'll notice that other Truthers have already challenged his version. It didn't take very long, because Truthers disagree about everything.

Nor can JackRiddler document that what he has written, however reasonable, is really "the official version." As I say, there is actually no such entity as the "official story." It's the primary straw man that drives the Truth Movement.

It's naive to assume that the perpetrators would even put out a single, coherent official story. Even if they were competent enough to do so, they would never create such an easy target for their critics.

Since there is nothing there, each Truther cooks up his or her own, private, unique version of "the official story." Needless to say, this straw man is easy to knock down, and the Truthers can laugh about how lame the cover story is.

But when they agree that the official story is nonsense, they're each thinking of a different story, so it means nothing.

[JackRiddler]

10. You have a case?

'I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

You thought the non-plus-ultra of idiot theories was the claim that no planes hit the Towers.

But then an alleged postmodern artist said, no claim was ever made at all, and the 9/11 Commission Report didn't exist except in the mind of its detractors - appropriate, given that its authors had already abandoned and forgotten it.

But then you thought, never mind, this is just too stupid to go on, and incoherence alone makes neither art nor omelettes. Beyond double-think, there is no think at all. To cite what Orwell might have had his citizen of the ideal state say, "Quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack. Quack!"

[Perry Logan]

16. C'mon, man. I never said "No claim was made at all."

[JackRiddler]

11. oh, by the way.

you'll notice that other Truthers have already challenged his version. It didn't take very long, because Truthers disagree about everything.

01) I am not a "Truther," except insofar as you get to apply labels to me I would never use and do not accept, in which case I would use the same right to call you a Miserable Idiot. (Mods: pls. note conditional form for purpose of point.)

02) No one's challenged a thing about what I wrote in OP yet, nor would every discussion, question or clarification constitute a "challenge," nor would a genuine challenge lead to your conclusion, unless reality is a function solely of consensus.

03) In other words you didn't even wait for it to happen before you posted your prepared "point."

04) Since no two people respond to him in quite the same way, Perry Logan doesn't exist; so I must be crazy for responding to him.

05) This message will self-crunch in five talking points. GOTO 01.

[CJCRANE]

19. The argument runs something like this.

"I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing." "But", says Man, "the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It proves you exist, and so therefore you don't. QED." "Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that", and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy", says Man, and for an encore he goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

[petgoat]

20. I like this inherently contextualized Native American creation story

BOY: Grandfather, how did the world come to be?

GF: Oh that's easy. Coyote was walking along the lakeshore one day and
he picked up some mud out of the lake and he packed it into a ball and he
threw it up in the air and that's how the world was made.

BOY: Oh.


Years later, BOY: "Father, if Coyote made the world, who made Coyote and
the lake and the mud?"

Father: "You know son, I've always wondered that myself."

[Diane_nyc]

30. "Other Truthers have already challenged his version"? Where?

Perry Logan wrote:

JackRiddler has made an honest attempt to frame the "official story," but you'll notice that other Truthers have already challenged his version.

Really? I can't find any post by a "Truther" challenging JackRiddler's definition of the "official story." I've found some disagreement on other points, but not about his definition of "the official story" itself. Could you please provide either a link or a post number?

Nor can JackRiddler document that what he has written, however reasonable, is really "the official version." As I say, there is actually no such entity as the "official story."

Can you cite an official sourse that differs from what JackRiddler has defined as "the offical story"?

It's naive to assume that the perpetrators would even put out a single, coherent official story.

1) What JackRiddler has defined as "the official story" is a very general outline and can include variants, such as the different time lines given by NORAD at different times. So the official story is not single and coherent. But there are some common themes on which all variants agree. And it seems to me that JackRiddler has correctly identified those common themes, or at least some of them.

2) Your use of the word "perpetrators" assumes an "inside job" hypothesis. Not everyone who questions the offical story believes that 9/11 was a full-fledged "inside job." I, for example, don't doubt the role of real live Al Qaeda terrorists. I'm more inclined to suspect criminal negligence on the part of high officials, and possibly LIHOP.

[wildbilln864]

31. May I say...

welcome to the DU dungeon Diane. :hi:

[SDuderstadt]

33. In case you didn't know, Diane...

WildBill is our official mascot and head cheerleader. Most of the time, we can't figure out wtf he's talking about.

[JackRiddler]

36. Stalk.

[Ghost in the Machine]

47. That's all he has...

Have you *ever* seen an intelligent or informative post from him? I haven't. All I've seen is his stalking and harrassing of SLAD, which he now seems to moving towards wildbill as well.

What more do you expect from someone who claimed that "there was NO DEBRIS found in Indian Lake"? He's ill-informed, and has nothing of substance to add to a discussion at all, yet he likes to screech to others about "reading comprehension skills"... :eyes:

[Laurier]

37. What are those "common themes on which all variants agree" to which you refer?

Please elaborate.

And,

I, for example, don't doubt the role of real live Al Qaeda terrorists. I'm more inclined to suspect criminal negligence on the part of high officials, and possibly LIHOP.

It is good to hear that you do not personally doubt the existence of terrorists whose existence has long been established. That puts you a cut above some of the conspiracy fantasists here.

But, as to criminal negligence or LIHOP, have you any evidence whatsoever in support of either? If so, please post it.

(edited because I messed up the crappy quoting function available here - I really wish DU would get with the 21st century when it comes to available options on message boards!)

[Diane_nyc]

38. The common themes are JackRiddler's items 1 to 3 in the O.P.

As for my reasons to suspect at least criminal negligence and possibly LIHOP:

1) Bush dawdling in the classroom reading "My Pet Goat." Given that he was only one of two people in the country allowed to authorize the shootdown of a plane, he should have gone ASAP to the private room he went to later, to be available immediately for consultation in the event that any plane needed to be shot down.

2) http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">The 9/11 Commission Report says: "The FAA, the White House, and the Defense Department each initiated a multiagency teleconference before 9:30. Because none of these teleconferences - at least before 10:00 - included the right officials from both the FAA and Defense Department, none succeeded in meaningfully coordinating the military and FAA response to the hijackings."

What took "the right officials" so long to get together? It was already obvious by 9:15 that "America is under attack," as Andrew Card whispered in Bush's ear at that time.

3) The lack of air defense. There has been quite a bit of debate over whether NORAD should reasonably have been expected to have been able to intercept the planes. But, as far as I am aware, no one has yet done the research necessary to prove this either way. (See http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/air-defense/">Air defense failures, war games, etc. on my blog. Note: The research has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. More about this later.)

4) Evidence of foreknowledge: See my blog post http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/foreknowledge/">U.S. government foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?.

5) The non-cooperation by Saudi Arabis, a supposed U.S. ally, in the U.S. government's investigations into the identities of the hijackers. (See my blog posts http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/current-views-summary/">My current views on 9/11 - brief summary and http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/saudi/">9/11 - The Saudi connection?.)

[Sweet Pea]

43. read Touching History by Lynn Spencer.

"3) The lack of air defense. There has been quite a bit of debate over whether NORAD should reasonably have been expected to have been able to intercept the planes. But, as far as I am aware, no one has yet done the research necessary to prove this either way. (See Air defense failures, war games, etc. on my blog. Note: The research has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. More about this later.)"

She does an excellent job outlining what the NORAD/air defense situation was like on that day (actually the entire book is excellent - highly recommended for anyone wanting a better grasp on what went on that day with regards to all aviation aspects).

Anyone who has any military aviation experience can see the big picture and how the confusion of that day contributed to the situation and what the North American air defense element had DEVOLVED into in the 10 years since we didn't have any Soviet Bear and Badger aircraft to be concerned about flying down the east coast or into the Alaskan ADIZ.

Its all there for anyone who wants to find the answer. NORAD was tasked with air defense of the continent, with the prime threat being from without (vice within). Initial cap (combat air patrol) stations, when faced with a vacuum of specific targeting data, are out over the ocean, which is where the expected threat vector is/was. That is where confusion reigned when fighters were indeed airborne, but in the early stages of this extremely muddled and unclear situation military controllers had to wait for FAA-clearance to enter airspace over NYC.

Why?

Airspace deconfliction was a big problem. The military owned certain airspaces offshore in the areas in question, but the FAA retained ownership of the airspace up and down the eastern US corridors. Over 4,000 aircraft were still in the air around this time, the FAA and the military had never been required to execute this level of coordination in the air corridors of the eastern US, and what resulted was an escalating level situational awareness that involved a graduated situational awareness beginning where nobody knew fuck all what was happening, and eventually everyone knew what was happening - but that took time.

Ultimately, the military declared AFIO, which in effect trumped any FAA airspace ownership questions, but again, this took time:

(Bob) Marr also decides that he is done waiting for FAA approval for his fighters to enter New York Airspace. If there is heat to take later, then he'll take it, but now he is going to defend. He will play his ace card. There is one method for the military to override the FAA's authority over the airspace, and it is called AFIO, Agreement for Fighter Interceptor Operations. The declaration of AFIO gives the military emergency authority to enter FAA-controlled airspace without permission, taking over the responsibility for aircraft separation. Marr doesn't feel he has any choice. He's not waiting any longer for the FAA controllers to get airliners out of the way. He's going to make it clear he means business, and now. On his direct line to the Operations floor below, Marr directs (Kevin) Nasypany to declare AFIO for New York Airspace and to immediately move the fighters over the city.

From http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Touching-History/Lynn-Spencer/e/9781416559252/">Touching History

[Diane_nyc]

50. Air defense failures on 9/11/2001

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210239">I wrote here:

3) The lack of air defense. There has been quite a bit of debate over whether NORAD should reasonably have been expected to have been able to intercept the planes. But, as far as I am aware, no one has yet done the research necessary to prove this either way. (See http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/air-defense/">Air defense failures, war games, etc. on my blog. Note: The research has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. More about this later.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210272">Sweet Pea replied:

43. read Touching History by Lynn Spencer.

...

She does an excellent job outlining what the NORAD/air defense situation was like on that day (actually the entire book is excellent - highly recommended for anyone wanting a better grasp on what went on that day with regards to all aviation aspects).

Anyone who has any military aviation experience can see the big picture and how the confusion of that day contributed to the situation and what the North American air defense element had DEVOLVED into in the 10 years since we didn't have any Soviet Bear and Badger aircraft to be concerned about flying down the east coast or into the Alaskan ADIZ.

How do you know that "anyone who has any military aviation experience" would see the same "big picture" that you do? Do you personally have military aviation experience? Do any of your friends?

Sweet Pea wrote:

Its all there for anyone who wants to find the answer.

Does the book say what was customarily done about aircraft in distress? What was customarily done, for example, when a plane lost radio contact? Was it not customary to send a fighter jet to intercept the plane?

According to a 1994 http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9476.htm">GAO report on continental air defense:

Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD’s alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft (referred to as scrambled) 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites’ total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress.

Admittedly this was written back in 1994, in a report which recommended slashing the budget for air defense. However, I find it hard to imagine that the annual numbers of "aircraft in distress" that needed to be intercepted, and the number of "unidentified aircraft" that needed to be "visually inspected," would have miraculously decreased all that terrible much after 1994 too, although these operations no doubt would have taken longer, on average, after the number of Air Force bases with scramble-ready planes was so drastically cut down.

Back to Sweet Pea:

NORAD was tasked with air defense of the continent, with the prime threat being from without (vice within). Initial cap (combat air patrol) stations, when faced with a vacuum of specific targeting data, are out over the ocean, which is where the expected threat vector is/was. That is where confusion reigned when fighters were indeed airborne, but in the early stages of this extremely muddled and unclear situation military controllers had to wait for FAA-clearance to enter airspace over NYC.

Why?

Airspace deconfliction was a big problem. The military owned certain airspaces offshore in the areas in question, but the FAA retained ownership of the airspace up and down the eastern US corridors. Over 4,000 aircraft were still in the air around this time, the FAA and the military had never been required to execute this level of coordination in the air corridors of the eastern US

Really? I find it very hard to believe that "the FAA and the military had never been required to execute this level of coordination in the air corridors of the eastern US" - or, at least, something reasonably close to this level of coordination.

Had there never been any "aircraft in distress" in "the air corridors of the eastern US"? Furthermore, it seems to me that in such a busy area as "the air corridors of the eastern US," it would be especially urgent to intercept aircraft in distress, to prevent collisions with other aircraft.

Admittedly, the above is just a common-sense argument. And, of course, the government doesn't necessarily operate according to common sense.

To settle this issue, what's needed is for someone to take the time to plow through the FAA's http://www.asias.faa.gov/portal/page?_pageid=56,86203,56_86223:56_86227:56_96434&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL">Accident/Incident Data System and the NTSB's http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/HELPFILE.HTM?x_form=#General_info">Aviation Accident Database, looking at all accident/incident reports, say, for the year from September 10, 2000 up to September 10, 2001, and find those reports, if any, that mention calls to NORAD. From amongst those accidents or incidents where NORAD was called, one should extract (1) the report number, (2) the date, (3) the type of aircraft, (4) the time when the problem was first noticed by an air traffic controller, (5) the time when NORAD was called, (6) the time that the plane was intercepted, (7) the location where the problem was first noticed, and (8) the location where the plane was intercepted.

I don't have time to do this research right now, alas. Perhaps I'll have time for this at some point in the future. At least the FAA's online database appears to be working now, which it wasn't the last time I looked at it.

[Sweet Pea]

67. Funny you should ask that!

How do you know that "anyone who has any military aviation experience" would see the same "big picture" that you do? Do you personally have military aviation experience? Do any of your friends?

Yes, I do have military aviation experience. Many of my friends do, and many of my friends are also airline pilots, as well, now. So, when I say "anyone who has any military aviation experience" would indeed see the same "big picture" because they would know and understand and realize that the entire NORAD alert fighter makeup is significantly changed from earlier years and the fact there were only 4 alert fighters (2 at Otis and 2 at Langley) loaded with fuel tanks and weapons on the east coast is nothing out of the ordinary.

The GAO report is typical out-of-date information and proves the adage "complex information in the hands of someone who doesn't understand it can be a dangerous thing". Back in the mid 90's, we still had this huge monolithic alert posture set up at dozens of airfields around the nation. Do you know what happens when you have a bunch of aircrew sitting in aircraft 24 hours a day sitting some sort of alert? You end up launching them, oftentimes for the slightest reason, and chalk it up to training (aircraft pilot or ground crew or alert launch crew)/aircraft maintenance evaluations/flight time. I see no problem with the number of launches back then, but then I am aware of the make-up of the organization that was responsible for those evolutions.

As far as your other comments, I've noticed one of the biggest problems the Twoofers have is this concept they have of the perfect government organization, where everything works the way THEY think it should work -which includes perfect 20/20 vision FORWARD into history where everyone knows immediately exactly what is going on, where every aircraft, machine, radio, or communications device work perfectly the first time you employ it and where minor or major players always makes the precise move, which is always the most perfect decision, and there is no fault, failure, ambiguity, confusion, problem, question, query, whatever, ANYWHERE in this perfect world of theirs.

Another problem the Twoofers have is they thing things should run the way *they* think they should be run. Case in point is the FAA and military communications/coordination on 9/11. The fact that YOU find it hard to believe there wasn't better comms and coordination between the two only shows your ignorance (not used as a pejorative) with the entire process. What YOU think the process should be like means fuck all, if you excuse the expression. What IS important is what reality was, how the process ran on 9/11, and how it is changed now.

Your perfect world only in your mind. Truth of the matter is nothing like that ever came close to happening on 9/11. No, the FAA and the military never had any reason to execute such a close relationship before, and the fact that *you* find that hard to believe only makes it clear you are not exactly well versed in this business/concept. The fact *you* find that hard to believe only means *you* don't understand the problems that were present on 9/11. Try educating yourself on the entire process and on the history of the last 20 years with regards to North American air defense. THEN come on back and we'll chat. Read Spencer's book. That'll be a good start.

[Diane_nyc]

69. Please calm down ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210329">My previous post, to which http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210401">you responded here, did contain the following disclaimer:

Admittedly, the above is just a common-sense argument. And, of course, the government doesn't necessarily operate according to common sense.

My post also described a proposed research project that could, hopefully, settle this issue once and for all (if/when I have the time to do it). What do you think of my proposed research project?

In any case, there was no need for you respond so rudely, with blanket insults and name-calling such as "Twoofers." Kindly cut that out in future posts to me.

[Sweet Pea]

71. Calm down?

Ma'am, I tire of poorly constructed arguments in this field of national defense from those using a foundation of nothing but ignorance and conjecture - the standard "make shit up if you don't know something" variety.

That is what your opening post in this thread consisted of, in my opinion, and I let you know that. I try not to opine much in areas where I lack sufficient expertise, but I know aircraft (former naval aviator) and I know the Pentagon (worked in the building many times before and after 9/11 and was a mile away when it was hit) and I know the military neighborhood (national security) you are traipsing through and I was not impressed, to say the least, with your thoughts and offerings. I do not take it kindly when I see someone march in here (or anywhere, for that matter), with little or no demonstrated experience in this "stuff" and spout off wildly conjured stories of "stand downs" and "why weren't interceptor aircraft on the tails immediately" bullshit when the bottom line is, if you'll pardon my directness, you don't know shit about what went on or should have gone on.

So go ahead and execute your little research project. It is ground that has been tilled by more experienced persons than you, but if you think you can contribute something salient and cogent to the discussion, by all means - knock yourself out. I'd advise you, however, to educate yourself as much as humanly possible on the issues you are looking into - specifically NORAD, alert status, aircraft capabilities, alert fields, standard operating procedures, pre-planned responses, what operating procedures are now as compared to 15 years ago, etc. These are not trifling matters, and if you choose to weigh in on these issues military and related to military security, please do your homework.

edited for spelling check

[Diane_nyc]

73. Opinions....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210595">Sweet Pea wrote:

Ma'am, I tire of poorly constructed arguments in this field of national defense from those using a foundation of nothing but ignorance and conjecture - the standard "make shit up if you don't know something" variety.

That is what your opening post in this thread consisted of, in my opinion, and I let you know that. I try not to opine much in areas where I lack sufficient expertise

So, you're in the habit of refraining from holding even tentative opinions, subject to correction later, on matters you're not an expert on? Or, at least, you're in the habit of refraining from voicing all such tentative opinions?

If so, I think it would behoove you to become more accepting of the fact that most people are not so shy about voicing admittedly nonexpert opinions. I would suggest that you save your ire for people who dogmatically hold on to uninformed opinions and who refuse to make any effort to learn more about the things they talk about.

If you insist on believing that people should never or rarely voice any opinion, even a tentative opinion, on matters that they aren't experts on, then, well, it's good you're not a teacher. A good teacher encourages students to participate in class, even to give wrong answers, rather than just to sit and say nothing.

My opinions on air defense have all been voiced in an explicitly tentative manner. You don't seem to have noticed that.

By the way, you voiced a (NOT explicitly tentative) opinion about me, and you're not an expert on me.

So go ahead and execute your little research project. It is ground that has been tilled by more experienced persons than you, but if you think you can contribute something salient and cogent to the discussion, by all means - knock yourself out.

The important thing about the FAA's http://www.asias.faa.gov/portal/page?_pageid=56,86203,56_86223:56_86227:56_96434&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL">Accident/Incident Data System and the NTSB's http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/HELPFILE.HTM?x_form=#General_info">Aviation Accident Database is that they are public data, any analysis of which can be readily verified by anyone who has the time to do so, rather than privileged information that is directly knowable only by people with experience in the field. That's important when dealing with a topic on which many people are inclined to distrust the experts.

[Sweet Pea]

91. Interesting

If you insist on believing that people should never or rarely voice any opinion, even a tentative opinion, on matters that they aren't experts on, then, well, it's good you're not a teacher. A good teacher encourages students to participate in class, even to give wrong answers, rather than just to sit and say nothing.

Again, as a matter of fact, I have two undergraduate teaching degrees and a master's in national security issues. I have taught in the military, in high school when I left active duty in the middle 90's and recently, in the last few years at the corporate level.

A "good teacher" would indeed, as you suggest, encourage participation in class, but not from a position of ignorance, I would hope you agree. I would never place myself in a physics or a calculus classroom and "encourage" students to opine on things they have no idea about, especially if I had a woefully poor understanding of the topics, as well. If, on the other hand, I was in a history classroom, I would most certainly pose the "what if?" questions to the students, but would *only* accept answers and ideas after they educated themselves on the subjects at hand. What IF the raids into Canada during the French and Indian War (that part of the Hundred Year's War between Britain and France that occured in North America) resulted in victory for the French and Canada was a wholly French possesion in the years that later became the American revolution? What would North American have looked like? Would there even have BEEN an American Revolution if Canada had been under French control in the 1770's? I hope you get the point.

There are not many more things in this world that are more useless than someone opining on something they have no clue about. Its like those who, in the time immediately after 9/11, state there are 30 or however many military bases within a hundred miles of New York and Washington DC, so WHY, for God's sake (!!) didn't' we have interceptors out there intercepting! Many of those bases, they chose to be ignorant on, were naval bases with ships, were military shipyards or personnel headquarters, were training fields, were scheduled to be closed by BRAC and as a result had no hardware located there, were operational bases with no flights scheduled there, were helicopter bases, or for some such reason had absolutely no way whatsoever they could participate in this confusing event.

I am a fervent believer in asking questions, but only from a position of knowledge and prior education on a subject. SO, I re-iterate, educate yourself on the matters at hand if you choose to do your little "research" project. As one of my university professors hammered into us, "go from the known to the unknown". Going from the "unknown to the even more unknown" isn't just bad education, it is the foundation of hilarity and disdain and sets one up for well-deserved intellectual abuse.

[Diane_nyc]

92. Teaching methods ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210946">Sweet Pea wrote:

A "good teacher" would indeed, as you suggest, encourage participation in class, but not from a position of ignorance, I would hope you agree. I would never place myself in a physics or a calculus classroom and "encourage" students to opine on things they have no idea about, especially if I had a woefully poor understanding of the topics, as well.

Actually, in subjects like math and computer science, some of the best teachers do encourage their students to opine (a little bit) on things they have no idea about. This is part of what's known as a "problem-solving approach." The point is to get students thinking about a problem before the teacher explains how to solve it. (See, for example, http://cnx.org/content/m14800/latest/">Itnroduction to teaching mathematics through problem-solving by Tessa Welch. Note specifically the statement that the teacher "must be able to cope with a variety of divergent, and sometimes erroneous, thinking" before explaining the correct method.) The idea is that students can more readily learn how to solve a particular kind of problem if they have first thought (for at least a little bit) about an instance of the problem before they learn how to solve it.

Admittedly, teaching history is different from teaching math. Perhaps there is nothing similar to a "problem-solving approach" that is direcly applicable in the teaching of history.

However, even in fields like history and politics, it seems to me that many people would be most apt to learn about those topics that they've already wondered about, and perhaps speculated on, before learning about them. Of course, that's true only if people's preliminary speculations are nondogmatic and they are genuinely willing to learn. But, without such preliminary thought, it seems to me that many people would be disinclined to learn about what would otherwise be just a bunch of dry, dull facts as far as they are concerned.

I'm sorry for jumping to the conclusion that you're not a teacher. But I'm surprised that you seem not to have heard of the "problem-solving approach." Or perhaps you just have not taught in fields where a "problem-solving approach" is applicable? Or perhaps you just strongly disagree with that approach in favor of some other approach?

Anyhow, out of the classroom and into the real world ....

The inescapable fact is that nearly everyone does hold opinions on topics they know very little about. For example, nearly everyone has an opinion on the Iraq war, though very few people have bothered to learn much about it. Not only that, but nonexperts get to express their opinions not just by talking, but by voting. That's democracy, like it or not.

So there's not much point in getting mad at people merely for voicing nonexpert opinions. I can understand getting irritated at people for holding nonexpert opinions dogmatically and refusing to learn, but not for the mere fact of voicing nonexpert opinions even tentatively.

[JackRiddler]

49. Your point 2 is what the 9/11 CR says, but here's what the FAA said...

in a press release on the occasion of one of the 9/11 Com hearings. The following text was ignored as the CR moved to implicitly blame FAA slowness and unsourced "mistaken information" like Phantom Flight 11 -- and to ignore the scheduled military activities of the day, the wargames and drills that put the lie to "no one could have imagined" and demand an answer to the question, how was it imagined? Who scheduled these scenarios? The 9/11 Com also ignored Clark's book and its clear description of a principals' meeting run by Clark and including Myers and Rumsfeld long before 9:30, as well as the fact that Mineta and Clark both place Cheney in the PEOC in advance of the Pentagon crash.

The FAA memo archived here http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797

FAA clarification memo to 9/11 Independent Commission

May 22, 2003

Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center, FAA headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service, and other government agencies. The US Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD on a separate line. The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, including Flight 77. Other parties on the phone bridges, in turn, shared information about actions they were taking. NORAD logs indicate that the FAA made formal notification about American Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m., but information about the flight was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal notification.

In the final minutes of the last 9/11 Commission hearings of June 2004 I witnessed Kerrey (who was brought in as the "maverick" to replace Cleland, who had refused to continue with what he called a whitewash and a scam) screaming at the FAA panel for having been incompetent, while earlier he had told the military panel that they came out "smelling like roses."

Confusion, incompetence, crossed lines of communication, bureaucracy, lack of preparation -- these were indeed all present, but do not explain the suspicious behaviors and mutually exclusive stories (hence: falsehoods) told by elements of the chain of command (Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers in advisory, Eberhard, Winfield/Leidig, Mies) or the fact of the wargame scenarios mirroring the actual events.

Confusion and incompetence do not rule out conscious malfeasance -- in fact, contrary to the usual apologist propaganda they are prerequisite to the success of wrongdoers, as confusion et al. create the right environment within which corruption prospers.

To your list you could add: there are precedents for black ops, putsches, and the strategy of tension, so not to ask in the first place in an "investigation" is to guarantee than any such corruption and manipulation will go undiscovered.

[Diane_nyc]

51. Typo correction (9:05, not 9:15), and the varying official reports

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210239">I wrote here:

2)http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.htm">The 9/11 Commission Report says: "The FAA, the White House, and the Defense Department each initiated a multiagency teleconference before 9:30. Because none of these teleconferences - at least before 10:00 - included the right officials from both the FAA and Defense Department, none succeeded in meaningfully coordinating the military and FAA response to the hijackings."

What took "the right officials" so long to get together? It was already obvious by 9:15 that "America is under attack," as Andrew Card whispered in Bush's ear at that time.

First, a belated typo correction: "9:15" should have been "9:05."

Anyhow, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210327">JackRiddler replied:

49. Your point 2 is what the 9/11 CR says, but here's what the FAA said...

in a press release on the occasion of one of the 9/11 Com hearings. The following text was ignored as the CR moved to implicitly blame FAA slowness and unsourced "mistaken information" like Phantom Flight 11 -- and to ignore the scheduled military activities of the day, the wargames and drills that put the lie to "no one could have imagined" and demand an answer to the question, how was it imagined? Who scheduled these scenarios? The 9/11 Com also ignored Clark's book and its clear description of a principals' meeting run by Clark and including Myers and Rumsfeld long before 9:30, as well as the fact that Mineta and Clark both place Cheney in the PEOC in advance of the Pentagon crash.

You then gave a link to http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797">a copy of the FAA memo, and quoted it.

I agree that there were many different and conflicting reports published by different government offices, and by the same government offices at different times. I quoted the CR to show that even the most glaringly biased and Bush-adninistration-friendly report implies criminal negligence on someone's's part. Perhaps I should have made my point clearer.

You wrote:

Confusion, incompetence, crossed lines of communication, bureaucracy, lack of preparation -- these were indeed all present, but do not explain the suspicious behaviors and mutually exclusive stories (hence: falsehoods) told by elements of the chain of command (Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers in advisory, Eberhard, Winfield/Leidig, Mies) or the fact of the wargame scenarios mirroring the actual events.

Conflicting accounts do not, in and of themselves, imply that someone is lying. Honest mistakes are certainly possible. But what does suggest a coverup is the consistent pattern of successive "corrections" from various NORAD reports, and then the 9/11 Commission, and then, finally, the NORAD tapes. With each new revision, the military comes out, more and more, "smelling like a rose," for every single one of the four hijacked planes. Why? And can we be sure that the NORAD tapes weren't doctored in any way, e.g. by altering timestamps?

You also wrote:

Confusion and incompetence do not rule out conscious malfeasance -- in fact, contrary to the usual apologist propaganda they are prerequisite to the success of wrongdoers, as confusion et al. create the right environment within which corruption prospers.

Agreed here too.

To your list you could add: there are precedents for black ops, putsches, and the strategy of tension, so not to ask in the first place in an "investigation" is to guarantee than any such corruption and manipulation will go undiscovered.

Very good point.

[JackRiddler]

53. Ahem. Thanks for a fine post but...

Note where you say, "Conflicting accounts do not, in and of themselves, imply that someone is lying."

They certainly raise the possibility. But wait, where in that text did I say "lying"?

ME: "mutually exclusive stories (hence: falsehoods) told by elements of the chain of command"

Example to clarify: if two stories are mutually exclusive = at least one is false = a falsehood has been told. Lying is a question of motive. Since the contradictions went unaddressed by the 9/11 CR, no real investigation of them was held. (Or if a real one was held, they decided to give us the pap-for-suckers version. What a surprise.)

[Diane_nyc]

57. You're right. You said "falsehoods," not "lying." nt

[JackRiddler]

52. Furthermore...

How did Able Danger and the Mossad list of August 2001 both manage to cite the exact four names who would later be credited as the ringleaders among the 19? Where did each get their info? How did the French know what was coming, as amply documented by Hamden Rice on this board? How did Jordan name the operation in advance correctly as "The Big Wedding"? What were the Russians talking about, in their warning of 25 pilots having infiltrated into the US to conduct a terror operation?

Amateur official story defenders, such as those who have made a cottage industry piggybacked on the cottage industry of 9/11 truth, usually rationalize all this preemptively as not specific enough, coincidental, after-the-fact quarterbacking, etc., thus missing the point: You don't know what it meant until you know, you can't just make plausible-sounding excluses without investigating. So why weren't these matters pursued in investigation? Where did the information come from in each case and how did it get so widespread, and yet remain so opaque (supposedly) to the US defense and law enforcement agencies? How does one come to foreknowledge of a plot supposedly so hermetically sealed in the first place that only the 19 knew what they would do, and they had no accomplices or state support? (Except insofar as they did, but those reports are also soon forgotten.) Meanwhile, by "coincidence," ringleaders Alhazmi and Almidhar on arriving in the US meet a guy (Bayoumi) who's getting payments from the Saudi embassy, supposedly for the first time at the airport; they make such good friends on the spot that he guides them to their San Diego apartment rented from a landlord who lives in-house and happens to the FBI's local Muslim informant (Abdussattar Shaikh, also a Republican). But wait, Shaikh's supposedly clueless and the 9/11 Commission will declare his name redacted, even though it was in the press, sweep it under the rug. (Look up the Dr. Graham stories by Sander Hicks for more dirt in this direction.)

But in contrast to the amateur official story fans such as one finds on this board, the professional official story creators of the US government investigations take a far more revealing approach to the matter of the foreign warnings and indicators of specific foreknowledge within US agencies, as well as allied governments: they ignore it altogether, all of it. They don't waste a word attempting to clarify it. That silence speaks volumes, as does the laughable attempt by Kean-Hamilton to characterize Able Danger as historically insignificant, or their more recent moves to put some ass-covering distance between themselves and their report.

Meanwhile, we now know the details of the official story as told in the 9/11 CR most germane to attack planning and execution come from CIA print summaries of alleged confessions by alleged perpetrators whom the 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to see; they may or may not be the men we're told they are and their confessions were extracted by torture at Guantanamo; the alleged tapes of these interrogations were first denied to exist, and are now said to have been destroyed. Or wait, what do we know? Every link in that chain is suspect! And the now heavily bearded KSM (or is that "KSM") just wants to die a martyr and have it done, already. Shouldn't we give him closure after a military show-trial timed to brainwash Americans during the last two months of the election?

THE WHOLE THING STINKS.

It's only through an unreflecting free pass for "American" motives and "American" policies, which Americans have been conditioned to grant (like nationals of any country), that the official story is still so stubbornly clung to by a minority of the world, albeit a majority in the US. Anyone who looks at history and doesn't start from the premise that nothing from the US national security establishment can be trusted until independently confirmed is already a sucker in the making. The proper default assumption is that the White House and Pentagon are always lying about "national security" matters, or at any rate seeking to engineer your responses via selective information designed to reinforce whatever war or nemesis is next on the schedule. Their words absent verification deserve no more credence than a Soviet encyclopedia.

[Diane_nyc]

56. 9/11 warnings/foreknowledge info: Thanks very much, and two questions

To JackRiddler: Thanks for http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210338">your very informative post.

52. Furthermore...

How did Able Danger and the Mossad list of August 2001 both manage to cite the exact four names who would later be credited as the ringleaders among the 19? Where did each get their info?

I was awre of Able Danger, but not the Mossad list of August 2001. Is the latter documented on the Cooperative Research site? If so, I'll find it there.

How did the French know what was coming, as amply documented by Hamden Rice on this board?

If you can easily find the relevant posts by Hamden Rice, I would appreciate it very much if you could post some links.

[JackRiddler]

59. 2 questions...

France by HR:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=678886&mesg_id=678886

It's from Dasquie, co-author of The Forbidden Truth, a very important book regardless of his belief in incompetence theory.

Mossad list, if not on Timeline, check for Oliver Schroem of Die Zeit and see my page translating German articles from 2001-2002 about Atta on my site, summeroftruth.org, which is currently down due to, I think, server issues. The URL should be as follows:

http://summeroftruth.org/atta.html

[Diane_nyc]

64. Thanks for the info. nt

[Kalun D]

164. You Go Gurrl!!

3) The lack of air defense. There has been quite a bit of debate over whether NORAD should reasonably have been expected to have been able to intercept the planes. But, as far as I am aware, no one has yet done the research necessary to prove this either way. (See Air defense failures, war games, etc. on my blog. Note: The research has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. More about this later.)

Don't ever be dissuaded by supposed "experts" telling you the OCT is correct on defense stand-down. Remember that quickly claiming to be an expert in this type setting is one of the 8 traits of the disinformant.

911 was an obvious defense stand-down just looking at the news articles released at the time and using common sense, you don't need to be an aeronautics expert. The official timelines just don't jive with normal documented SOP of the FAA and NORAD.

The research proving it has already been done, just keep looking. But additional research is always welcome.

The FAA reported 67 NORAD scramble/intercepts between September 2000 and June 2001 (FAA News Release, August 9, 2002).

In case of hijack, which can be signified by any one of, off course, radio off, transponder off, the FAA is to notify NORAD immediately, that means within one minute. All 4 of the 911 planes had most of these 3 red flags.

the standard average time for NORAD from scramble to intercept is 10 minutes.

From the time the first plane was a known hijack till the Pentagon was struck is over 1 hour.

This is in the heart of the most heavily defended airspace on the planet. The distance from Andrews, the home of Air Force One, to the Pentagon is 10 minutes, DRIVING IN A CAR.

Even if you could say there's no "strip alert" planes at Andrews, which is ludicrous since it defends the White House and Capital building, they should have been able to easily scramble non strip alert planes to defend the Pentagon.

NORAD's story about 911 has changed 3 times, the 911 Omission Report is the 3rd version of that story. Which one is true and which ones are false? Or if someone lies to you twice do you trust them the 3rd time?

The 911 CR could have easily traced what happened merely by starting with the intercept pilots and working backwards through the chain of command. The fact that they didn't shows what a sham the 911 CR is.

[SDuderstadt]

165. "the standard average time for NORAD from scramble to intercept is 10 minutes".

Please provide some proof of this. In fact, please provide proof of any of your assertions.

http://www.911myths.com/html/intercepts__norad_and_the_faa.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/67_intercepts.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/intercept_time.html

[Kalun D]

166. PROOF

"the standard average time for NORAD from scramble to intercept is 10 minutes". Please provide some proof of this. In fact, please provide proof of any of your assertions.

Who needs proof, when basic common sense and in this case basic math prove the point?

If the distance from Andrews AFB to the Pentagon is less than ten minutes DRIVING IN A CAR, then why wouldn't you be able to scramble a strip alert jet from there in under 10 minutes? LOLZ!!

and why does that unknown source, unknown author website keep popping up?

why do people constantly rely on a site of unknown provenance to back up their points?

If something is of unknown provenance how do we know it's not just disinfo propaganda?

[SDuderstadt]

167. Because Andrews was not on alert that morning...

How many times does this need to be explained to you?

I'll take actual proof over your " common sense" any day.

[Kalun D]

168. How do we know that?

...

Because Andrews was not on alert that morning

Is that why the Andrews ANG website on 911 said they were "in the highest possible state of readiness"

So the pentagon, white house, and capitol building are undefended?

And even if Andrews didn't have strip alert planes, which is ludicrous BTW

how come they couldn't intercept, when from the time the first plane was a known hijack until 77 hit the Pentagon was over 1 hour?

The home base of Air Force One and they couldn't get an intercept jet in the air in under ONE HOUR?

I'll take actual proof over your " common sense" any day.

linking to a website of unknown provenance is not "actual proof"

[SDuderstadt]

169. Dude, you don't link to anything in your post...

So don't lecture me about not substantiating something. As far as 911 myths is concerned, it's properly sourced, so this is just more of your bullshit.

I have repeatedly explained the difference between "combat-ready" and "on alert" before. I am not doing it again.

If you'd bother to actually read the 9/11 Report, you'd learn that the most notice NORAD had of any hijacked plane was 9 minutes in the case of AA77. How you think NORAD could have intercepted anything under those circumstances, is beyond me.

No one said the White House, Pentagon and the Capitol building isn't defended. It just doesn't work the way it does in your imagination. I don't find your personal incredulity about these matters all that compelling.

And we know Andrews wasn't on alert on 9/11, because we know the bases that were that day and Andrews war not one of them.

"The Air National Guard exclusively performs the air sovereignty mission in the continental United States, and those units fall under the control of the 1st Air Force based at Tyndall. The Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fighters and pilots on call around the clock. Besides Homestead, alert birds also sit armed and ready at Tyndall; Langley AFB, Va.; Otis Air National Guard Base, Mass.; Portland International Airport, Ore.; March ARB, Calif.; and Ellington Field, Texas".

http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1299/home2.htm

Dude, all this information is publicly available. Why can't your seem to find it? Do your even look for it?

[Kalun D]

170. Terminology

Did I say "combat ready"?

what is the difference between "in the highest possible state of readiness" and "strip alert"?

are you sure "in the highest possible state of readiness" is not just a generic laymans term not meant to be specific like "combat ready" or "strip alert"?

If you were going to effectively defend the most important locations in the USA would you publically announce the status of your planes at the closest military airport?

If you were going to say anything about your defense capabilities would you under state or over state their status?

If you were going to effectively defend the white house, the Capitol, and the Pentagon would you have "strip alert" planes at Langley, 130 miles away or at Andrews, just 5 miles away?

"And we know Andrews wasn't on alert on 9/11"

who says? the people that "failed" to defend on 911?

who says? Bush's hand picked Commission?

"If you'd bother to actually read the 9/11 Report, you'd learn that the most notice NORAD had..."

Why is the 911 Report the 3rd version of what NORAD said happened on 911? Why did they change their story 3 times? Which version if any are really true?

How credible is the 911 Report if they allowed bush and Cheney to "testify" off the record and not under oath?

Is "testimony" that is not under oath even considered to be testimony in a court of law?

"Dude, all this information is publicly available."

Seriously if you were defending Washington would you publicize ALL the information on your defenses, like every single plane that was on strip alert? or would you have some planes at the NEAREST base that you didn't tell anyone about?

[SDuderstadt]

171. Dude...do you know what an ADIZ is?

Since our defenses were outward-looking on 9/11 and the anticipation was that a threat would come in from outside our borders, why wouldn't we want other countries to know what our capabilities are? You are always taking routine facts, trying to put the worst possible spin on things, then pretend that proves your goofy theories. When you have that smoking gun, let us know.

[Kalun D]

172. Defenses

"Since our defenses were outward-looking on 9/11 and the anticipation was that a threat would come in from outside our borders"

Uhh, the 100 average intercepts per year were inside or outside of our borders?

"why wouldn't we want other countries to know what our capabilities are?"

You see I have a knife, you pull out a gun. Would it be wise for me to have a hidden gun if I was going to defend myself?

If you knew all I had was a pistol, couldn't you just bring a shotgun or machine-gun?

[Kalun D]

173. Analogy

""why wouldn't we want other countries to know what our capabilities are?""

You live in a neighborhood where crime is not that bad, but it is a possibility.

Of these two choices which one would be better for your defense?

A. You have a gun 130 ft away in the garage. You tell everyone that you have a gun 130 ft away out in the garage. If anyone attacks you are going to have to run out to the garage to get your gun. AND the criminals know you're going to have to run out to the garage to get your gun.

B. You have a gun 130 ft away in the garage. You tell everyone that you have a gun 130 ft away out in the garage, BUT you also have a gun in the nightstand right by the bed. AND YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE GUN IN THE NIGHTSTAND BY THE BED. Because that way you have a better chance of getting the drop on someone who thinks you have to go out to the garage for your gun. A smart criminal may at least assume you have a gun by the bed but he doesn't know specifically what kind of gun it is and exactly how to prepare to defeat it.

----------------------------
Here's another. It's public knowledge that there's strip alert planes at Langley. You are a pilot terrorist trying to attack the White House. You know you can get to the White House before the planes 130 miles away at Langley can intercept you. BUT you also know there's a military airbase called Andrews just 10 miles away from the White House. What do you do?

A. Assume for certain that there's no strip alert planes at the closest base to the White House and you go ahead and plan your attack knowing Andrews is not going to be a problem.

B. Assume that strip alert planes at Andrews are a distinct possibility, and plan your attack accordingly.

How did the "terrorists" know there was going to be no planes coming from Langley, and that they could take over an hour till they hit the Pentagon?

This so called OCT "explanation" about the Pentagon "attack" could not get any more farcical.

[SDuderstadt]

174. "It's public knowledge that there's strip alert planes at Langley"

Please prove this.

[Kalun D]

175. It's been several years

since I've argued this point

please refresh my memory

What are the ANG bases that had strip alert planes on 911?

[SDuderstadt]

177. Do you have proof of your claim or not?

I'm thinking you don't.

[Kalun D]

178. Changing the Story

So now you're claiming there was NO strip alert jets on 911?

[SDuderstadt]

179. Jesus....no...

Can you follow a simple conversation?

[SDuderstadt]

180. Wait a minute....

You've got this thing so jumbled up that you're actually agreeing with my claim and I didn't catch it. I don't know what you mean by "strip alert" but if it's the same thing as "on alert", you just proved my claim. Andrews was NOT "on alert" that morning...they were "combat ready" which is one level of readiness below "on alert". Fighters were scrambled from Langley and Otis air bases because those bases WERE "on alert".


"Truthers", unfortunately, have a way of making everyday occurrences sound sinister.

P.S. I don't know if anyone else feels like this but, for some reason, I always like saying "fighters were scrambled"...I have no idea why...it just sounds cool.

[Kalun D]

176. CORRECTION

How did the "terrorists" know there was going to be no planes coming from Langley, and that they could take over an hour till they hit the Pentagon?

Should have read;

How did the "terrorists" know there was going to be no planes coming from ANDREWS, and that they could take over an hour till they hit the Pentagon?

[Old and In the Way]

209. Apparently, W forgot to alert Andrews.

Here's an interesting entry at History Commons-

From http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=121st_f...

(9:04 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Andrews Air Force Base Pilots ‘Launched into Action,’ Yet No Fighters Take Off
Edit event

At Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, many of the pilots with the District of Columbia Air National Guard (DCANG) are in the headquarters of the 121st Fighter Squadron. They had immediately been suspicious after learning of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. One pilot, Heather Penney, later recalls having wondered, “How do you make a mistake like that?” After the second plane hits at 9:03, someone yells, “We’re under a terrorist attack!” A routine meeting of pilots quickly breaks up. According to Lt. Col. Steve Chase, who is at the operations desk: “People just launched into action. There was a buzz in the unit. People got on the radio and telephones to higher headquarters.” Andrews Air Force Base, which is home to the presidential jet Air Force One, is located ten miles southeast of Washington, DC. According to Knight Ridder,
“Air defense around Washington, DC, is provided mainly by fighter planes from Andrews.” Yet, according to the 9/11 Commission, the first fighters to take off from Andrews are not airborne until 95 minutes later, at 10:38 a.m. (see (Between 9:55 a.m. and 10:38 a.m.) September 11, 2001). <9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 44> The DC Air National Guard’s 113th Wing includes the 121st Fighter Squadron and the 201st Airlift Squadron. It flies the F16-C and F16-D Fighting Falcon jet fighters. Unlike other Guard units, the DCANG reports to the president, instead of a state governor. The 113th Wing works closely with Secret Service agents who are across the runway in the Air Force One hangar.

[Bassman66]

39. There are people here who are desperate

to paint everyone in "the truth movement" with the same brush, they create for themselves a supposedly easy target. "They're all goofy".

They have no interest in acknowledgeing the wide spectrum of questions there are about 9/11, they don't want any answers about 9/11 themselves and they are unwilling to acknowledge that some of the goofier stuff could actually be Government sponsored COINTELPRO.

By their fruits you shall know them.

[SDuderstadt]

55. Another stupid srawman....

Show me where we've said there are no legitimate questions about 9/11.

[Diane_nyc]

58. I would be interested to hear what you think the legitimate questions are....

Also, do you favor a new and more truly independent investigation (or commission) with subpoena power?

[SDuderstadt]

61. I have said repeatedly that I think...

a lot of questions need to be answered about the Bush administration's utter lack of preparation for 9/11 and I especially want to know more about how they exploited 9/11 to enlarge presidential power, disregard the constitution and used it to propel us into a stupid, costly (lives and money) unnecessary war. I think their preparation leading up to 9/11 was meager and flawed and their reaction to 9/11 bordered on criminal (I'm being charitable).

The 9/11 Commission DID have subpoenba power, so it's a given that any new investigation would, of necessity, need the same power. As far as the "independent" part (if you're implying non-governmental), I'm all ears as to the mechanism. While the 9/11 Commission was far from perfect, I believe that the Bush administration obstructed and interfered to keep a light from shining on the things I mentioned before.

Having said that, I don't believe either LIHOP or MIHOP can be supported in any concrete sense. In that light, I don't think it is necessary to re-investigate anything pertaining to:

Foreknowledge
Supposed Military Standdown
CD of WTC's 1, 2 or 7
Whether the Mossad did it
Whether planes actually struck any of the buildings
Any stupid theories that the WTC was destroyed with nuclear weapons
Etc.

To0 be blunt, I believe the 9/11 Truth movement has, unfortunately, been hijacked by some (not all or even most) people with limited critical thinking skills who go around positing the most bizarre theories and, regrettably, giving us liberals a bad name (in some quarters) at a time when we're ascending. In fact, I believe in almost everything provisionally, meaning I'll take the best explanation on the facts until something arises that is more compelling. My biggst beef with many of the "truthers" here is their propensity to jump on board even the most absurd theories, aided and abetted by an extreme lack of critical thinking skills.

Maybe you can add some much-needed credibility here (assuming you're a truther). I, for one, am open to spirited, intelligent debate. What I am not open to is being constantly accused of being a Bush shill simply because I ask the "truth movement" to apply the same standards of proof they demand of the "official story" to their own claims. I hardly think that's too much to ask.

[Diane_nyc]

66. What's meant by an "independent" investigation/commission

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210370">SDuderstadt wrote:

The 9/11 Commission DID have subpoenba power, so it's a given that any new investigation would, of necessity, need the same power. As far as the "independent" part (if you're implying non-governmental), I'm all ears as to the mechanism.

By "independent," I don't mean "non-governmental." I mean that it should not be under the thumb of the executive branch, and that is should be free of conflicts of interest generally. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to be "independent," in this sense, but wasn't, due to Zelikow's ties to Condoleeze Rice and other people in the Bush administration.

While the 9/11 Commission was far from perfect, I believe that the Bush administration obstructed and interfered to keep a light from shining on the things I mentioned before.

Agreed.

Having said that, I don't believe either LIHOP or MIHOP can be supported in any concrete sense. In that light, I don't think it is necessary to re-investigate anything pertaining to:

Foreknowledge

So you think we should just take the Bush administration's word for it that there weren't any sufficiently specific and credible warnings? Why?

Supposed Military Standdown

Even if you don't believe there was a full-fledged "stand down," do you nevertheless believe that the responses of the FAA and the military should be looked at in more detail? At least to hold people accountable for negligence or incompetence, if nothing worse?

By the way, according to the NORAD tapes, there was indeed a "stand down order," or at least a no-shoot order, albeit presumably too late to have any effect. (See my blog post http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/explicit-stand-down-order-found-norad-tape-timestamps-altered-to-bury-it/">Explicit stand-down order found! NORAD tape timestamps altered to bury it???.)

Whether the Mossad did it

To me the interesting question about the Mossad is not whether they "did it" (I don't think they did, either), but how specific their warnings were to the U.S. government.

To0 be blunt, I believe the 9/11 Truth movement has, unfortunately, been hijacked by some (not all or even most) people with limited critical thinking skills who go around positing the most bizarre theories and, regrettably, giving us liberals a bad name (in some quarters) at a time when we're ascending.

The 9/11 Truth movement consists of people across the political spectrum, not just "liberals." In fact, the more bizarre theories tend to be promoted primarily by right wing populists such as Alex Jones.

What I am not open to is being constantly accused of being a Bush shill

Alas I've noticed, on both sides of the debate, a tendency for people to make sweeping generalizations about people who disagree with them.

[Diane_nyc]

76. To SDuderstadt: The post you asked to see again is above.

Kicking this thread, to help SDuderstadt find it, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206336&mesg_id=210665">as requested here.

[rschop]

72. Reply to post by SDuderstadt:

I have said repeatedly that I think...
Posted by SDuderstadt:

You said you do not want any investigation of "Foreknowledge". Then "SDuderstadt" you have much explaining to do, yes indeed you have a whole lot of explaining to do:

Explain why the CIA had photographs of Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Salem al-Hazmi for 21 months prior to 9/11 and did not give these photos to the FBI until August 23, 2001, only after FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie found that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US?

Then explain why they the CIA continued to hide the photo of Khallad Bin Attash from the FBI criminal investigators until after the events on 9/11 had taken place? By hiding this photo, FBI Agent Steve Bongardt had no way to prevent FBI HQ Agent Corsi from taking the investigation of Mihdhar away from his team of Cole investigators. This photo tied Khallad to the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting in January 2000 where the Cole bombing was planned and also tied both Mihdhar and Hazmi who were photographed at this same meeting to the planning of the Cole bombing. Had this investigation not been taken away from Bongardt, it is inconceivable his team would not have prevented the attacks on 9/11.

Explain why FBI Agent Dina Corsi did not give the information that the CIA was hiding the photo of Khallad to FBI Agent Steve Bongardt and his team of Cole investigators when she clearly knew this on August 22, 2001 as indicated in the FBI IG report, and knew that this photo meant that Bongardt and his team should have been given this investigation?

Explain why when FBI Agent Gillespie told Corsi and Wilshire that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US, and Wilshire knew for sure that these terrorists were going to take part in a huge attack inside of the CIA was aware of, he never alerted anyone at the FBI. I have several emails from Wilshire that prove Wilshire knew Mihdhar and Hazmi were going to take part in this attack. Since he sent this email to his CIA CTC managers, they were all also aware of this information.

Explain why when the entire CIA knew after August 23, 2001, when they were told by Gillespie that both long time al Qaeda terrorists Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US, and the CIA was well aware a huge al Qaeda attack was about to take place inside of the US that would kill thousands, no one at the CIA, and the CIA IG report says 50-60 people had all of this information, alerted the FBI so this attack could be prevented?

Explain why when FBI Agent Soufan, lead FBI investigator on the Cole bombing, asked FBI Director Louis Freeh in November 2000 to ask CIA Director George Tenet, if the CIA had any information on an al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur and any information on Khallad Bin Attash, Freeh said the CIA had none of this information, when Freeh himself was aware of this meeting and even knew that Khalid al-Mihdhar had attended this meeting. The information that Freeh was aware of this information is located on page 181 of the 9/11 Commission report and page 248 of the FBI IG report. Explain why Freeh had criminally obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing.

Explain why when Wilshire's job as liaison to Michael Rolince manager of the ITOS unit was to provide CIA information to be exploited in FBI criminal investigations, he did just the opposite and made sure CIA information was kept hidden from FBI criminal investigating teams, as documented in the FBI IG report!

SDuderstadt, you need to explain all of this, and show the whole world that the CIA and the agents at FBI HQ who the CIA had enlisted to help them carry out this massive criminal conspiracy did not deliberately allow the attacks on 9/11 to take place!

All of the information that backs up the above is found in the FBI IG report, the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan and evidence item #939 entered into the Moussaoui trial on March 11, 2006.

[SDuderstadt]

74. Ever heard of "begging the question", rschop?

Ever heard of "trying to shift the burden of proof"?

You're doing both. I don't have any explaining to do. YOU need to prove each of those assertions before anyone needs to explain anything. When you can do that, then there is something to discuss but we still have nothing to explain. Your subtle attempt to put those of us who don't buy stuff without concrete evidence on the defense is truly laughable.

SDuderstadt, you need to explain all of this, and show the whole world that the CIA and the agents at FBI HQ who the CIA had enlisted to help them carry out this massive criminal conspiracy did not deliberately allow the attacks on 9/11 to take place!

The above is my favorite part. You're demanding that I prove a negative? Pray tell, exactly how am I supposed to do that? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?


For the record, I am, by no means, saying the Bush administration had no warning of 9/11. I am saying that the word "foreknowledge" implies LIHOP or MIHOP, which is far from proven at this point, nor do I think it will be proven, but if it can, I'm all ears.

In the meantime, you need to back off a little bit. We don't owe you or anyone else anything.

[rschop]

75. Reply to "Ever heard of "begging the question" ?"

You stated that there need to be no investigation of Foreknowledge.

But you clearly have provided absolutely no facts to back up your position, none at all!

I stated that facts as I found them in the FBI IG report, the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan and evidence item #939 entered into the Moussaoui trial on March 11, 2006. I have already posted this information on this blog with exact page numbers, and in fact in the last blog posted the page numbers to the 9/11 Commission report and FBI IG report to even prove that FBI Director Louis Freeh had obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing.

You wrote, "YOU need to prove each of those assertions before anyone needs to explain anything. When you can do that, then there is something to discuss but we still have nothing to explain."

I have already done that if you read my prior posts. As I stated above I have even posted the exact names of the government reports and even the exact page numbers of these reports that prove all of this. All of this is also listed the in the book I wrote "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" again with even the exact sections from these reports added in very exact time lines so there is absolutely no mistake on the accuracy of any of this information.

You can go look at these reports yourself, I have again listed them in the prior post. As I said I have already posted all of this material many times on this blog and this information is also found on Paul Thompson's Time line available on the web. Anyone with a few minutes of time can find and also verify independently all of this information.

If you can not explain any of this then why do you claim to know what you are talking about when you do not!

It is also clear that you have never done any research into any of this information or you would have been already aware of all of this information by now yourself. Have you even read the 9/11 Commission report or the FBI IG report or the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan or even the CIA IG report? It appears you have never read any of these official government reports, at all, ever.

Your post: "The above is my favorite part. You're demanding that I prove a negative? Pray tell, exactly how am I supposed to do that?"

First you claim no investigation is needed on "Foreknowledge". Second you do not have to prove a negative. Just prove after the information I have given you that you can come up some other rational explanation why people at FBI HQ and CIA under took actions to make sure no investigations were going to take place of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US. So far you haven't been able to explain any of this!

You can not even explain why when the CIA and FBI HQ knew a huge al Qaeda attack was about to take place inside of the US, and they knew on August 23, 2001 that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US and knew that these two were known to be long time al Qaeda terrorists they claimed they just could not connect these two "al Qaeda terrorists" to this huge "al Qaeda attack", even after having 40,000 employees and spending 44 billion a year on intelligence. This does not begin to even pass the smell test! Try to explain that SDuderstadt!

Obviously "SDuderstadt" you can not explain even a single one of these times the FBI HQ agents and CIA agents blocked information from going to the FBI criminal investigators and or explain why they then finally shut down all of the critical FBI investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US, investigations that that could have prevented the attacks on 9/11. Almost 3000 people died on 9/11 and this government owes the US people an explanation on why they let these huge attacks take place.

[noise]

77. The transcripts of Joint Inquiry and 9/11 Commission

interviews with many of the key officials are classified. I would love to know WTF Frasca was doing. Should we assume Frasca deserves no blame simply because the evidence is classified? AFAIK, the guy hasn't appeared on a single news show. Don't you want to know what he was doing in the lead up to 9/11?

[rschop]

83. Reply to noise

The FBI IG report has much information on Frasca, and his work to block the FBI investigation of Moussaoui by FBI Agent Harry Samit.

Incredible as it may seem the evidence entered into the Moussaoui trial on March 11, 2006 called "Substitution for the testimony of John", who we all know now is Tom Wilshire, former deputy chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit, described email contact between Wilshire and Maltbie and Frasca. So here it is, Wilshire knows Mihdhar and Hazmi are inside of the US by August 22, 2001 and know they are here to carry out a massive al Qaeda attack everyone it seems at the CIA and FBI HQ is aware of, and at the same time Wilshire is working with FBI HQ Agent Dine Corsi to sabotage any chance FBI Agent Steve Bongardt and his team of Cole investigators have to investigate and be part of the search for Mihdhar. And at the same time Wilshire makes email contact with Maltbie and Frasca on August 24, and it is clear he had been keeping up to date prior to this date on the investigation. Wilshire is told the Minneapolis FBI agents had the INS arrest Moussaoui because they thought Moussaoui was an al Qaeda terrorist trying to get training on a 747 in order to take part in an aircraft hijacking aimed at the World Trade Center Towers. And yet Wilshire not keeps all of this information secret but continues to hide the photo of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur to insure that Bongardt and his team have no evidence to tie Mihdhar and Hazmi to the planning of the Cole bombing, which would then allow them to take back this investigation of Mihdhar. He knows by hiding this information the FBI will never be able to finds Mihdhar in time and as a result thousands of Americans will perish in this huge al Qaeda attack

When Margaret Gillespie forced the CIA Bin Laden unit to issie the world wide alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi on August 23, 2001, everyone in the CIA Bin Laden unit, and the entire CIA hierarchy was aware of this same information. Yet according to the CIA IG report even though 50-60 people at the CIA were aware of this information no one alerts the FBI criminal investigators to try to prevent this huge attack the CIA is aware of, even when they all know Mihdhar and Hazmi are inside the US in order to take part in this huge attack.

GO FIGURE!

[Diane_nyc]

90. Your posts are very interesting. Please create a journal here on DU and add your posts to it. nt

[SDuderstadt]

89. All of the information that backs up the above is found in the FBI IG report"

If this is true, then it shouldn't be hard to excerpt the appropriate sections of the IG's report and other relevant materials. I haven't been able to absorb all of the IG's report yet, but I'm not finding the information characterized the way you're claiming. I'd be happy to have you set me straight but, at least as of right now, your claimed sources do not seem to support your conclusions.

I'll be blunt, rschop. I think you're primarily here to sell your book. I think your overall purpose is to tantalize other members into visiting your website and buying your book. I also have to say I find parts of your overall narrative simply implausible. For example:

This book is an account of how I found out about the attacks on 9/11 on February 11, 2001 on a trip out to New York from San Francisco. The information I was able to put together was as follows:

They would use four to five al Qaeda terrorists per plane using concealed four inch knives as weapons, to hijack these planes.

I have two questions here. You claim you had deduced all this information 7 months before the attacks. Did you disclose this information to the FBI or anyone else in law enforcement prior to 9/11? If the answer is no, why didn't you? How did you know the hijacking would be carried out using 4 inch knives? What troubles me about your account is that everything you are citing (from the website, not the book, which I haven't read) was readily available from any number of news sources AFTER 9/11. If you could reveal something that was not generally known, that would make your account far more credible.

The terrorists would be in place and ready to carry out this attack by September 1, 2001, and would carryout this attack some where between September 1 and September 14, 2001.

On September 8, 2001, I went through Logan airport to see if I could spot the al Qaeda terrorists who were going to hijack these airplanes in front of the airport departure security points surveying the security procedures to find out how they could get their weapons, the four inch knives through security without alerting security personnel.I apparently missed seeing them by just a few hours.

Here's my question. If you believed the attacks would take place between 9/1 and 9/14, why would you wait until 9/8 to see if you could spot the al Qaeda terrorists?

On September 11, 2001 after the attack, I immediately contacted the FBI field office in Boston and gave them this information. Not only myself but almost every single person in my company was aware of this attack.

If, as you claim, almost every single person in your company was aware of this attack (I assume in advance), do you have a sworn affidavit from any of them to this effect? For that matter, did you take any steps to conclusively document any of this in such a manner as to establish when you actually uncovered it (for example, mailing yourself something certified mail with a date anytime prior to 9/11 that you can produce unopened)?

I'm sorry, Schop...I think there's something fishy here. Again, I'd love for you to set me straight on this. It would also be convincing if you could, as I noted earlier, excerpt the relevant portions of the IG Report, etc. that support your claims. Otherwise, I'm just not buying your story and I think it's a little snarky if you joined DU just for the purpose of flogging your book.

[Diane_nyc]

97. To rschop (Robert Schopmeyer): Request for some specific quotes and citations

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210861">SDuderstadt wrote:

It would also be convincing if you could, as I noted earlier, excerpt the relevant portions of the IG Report, etc. that support your claims.

or at least excerpt some of the most important relevant portions? I second this request by SDuderstadt. In my case I don't mean to accuse you of anything, but, on general principles, I think that those who make claims of fact should be willing to provide some specific evidence. In this case, this means giving us specific quotes and citations rather than just referring us, in a general way, to a book or to a big long report.

Anyhow, on your website http://www.eventson911.com/">Prior Knowledge of 9/11, you make the following claims which might be verifiable too:

When the Joint Inquiry Committee of the House and the Senate had their investigation of 9/11, I gave them this information and the FBI reports on how I had known about the events on 9/11, to one of their investigators a Michael Jackson, and to Rick Cinquergrana, who at one time was in charge of this investigation.

On April 13-14, 2004 I gave this information to the 9/11 Commission.

rschop, is there any kind of paper trail regarding your dealings with the Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission? If so, could you please give us some specifics on that, too? It might help to answer the doubts that some folks here have voiced about your story.

[rschop]

103. RE: Request for some specific quotes and citations

From prior post:

It would also be convincing if you could, as I noted earlier, excerpt the relevant portions of the IG Report, etc. that support your claims.

Yes here is the most salacious of the conclusions:

That FBI Director Louis Freeh had obstructed his own FBI investigators into the Cole bombing investigation.

Account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan: Pages 66-67 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2006

In November, 2000, a month after the Cole bombing, Soufan sent the agency (the CIA) the first of several official queries. On Soufan's behalf, the director of the F.B.I. sent a letter to the director of the C.I.A., formally ask­ing for information about Khallad, and whether there might have been an Al Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia before the bombing. The agency said that it had nothing. Soufan trusted this response; he thought that he had a good working relationship with the agency.


Page 238-239 FBI IG report:


In the midst of the Millennium period concerns in late 1999, the NSA analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to Al Qaeda activities directed against U.S. interests. The communications indicated that several members of an "operational cadre" were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000. Analysis of the communications revealed that persons named Nawaf, Khalid and Salem were involved. In early 2000, the NSA analyzed what appeared to be related communications concerning a "Khalid."

The NSA's reporting about these communications was sent, among other places, to FBI Headquarters, the FBI's Washington and New York Field Offices, and the CIA's CTC. At the FBI, this information appeared in the daily threat update to the Director on January 4, 2000.(This is the FBI IG report and the Director refereed to here is the Director of the FBI Louis Freeh. Here is the proof he had obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing!)



Your post:


"When the Joint Inquiry Committee of the House and the Senate had their investigation of 9/11, I gave them this information and the FBI reports on how I had known about the events on 9/11, to one of their investigators a Michael Jackson, and to Rick Cinquergrana, who at one time was in charge of this investigation.

On April 13-14, 2004 I gave this information to the 9/11 Commission.

Your request:

"rschop, is there any kind of paper trail regarding your dealings with the Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission? If so, could you please give us some specifics on that, too? It might help to answer the doubts that some folks here have voiced about your story."

Yes see the emails from Rick Cinquergrana is located right at the back of the book. Rich agreed with the FBI in this email, that I should not feel I was at fault for these attacks for not going to the FBI before hand. Also you can call Tim Roemer, Bob Kerrey or Richard bin-Vinesta, the commissioners I gave this 150 page dossier of FBI interviews to. Roemer is now in Washington DC, Kerrey is head of New School University in New York City and bin-Vinesta is a lawyer in Washington DC. I got no receipts for these dossiers. But if you get CSPAN and look at CIA Director Tenets giving his oath to the 9/11 commission on April 14, 2004, I am sitting right directly him two rows back. The first two rows were reserved for the relatives of the people killed on 9/11.

I had called Al Felzenberg, assistant to Phillip Zelikow at the end of March 2004 when I found out the hearings on April 13-14, 2004 on the intelligence failures were coming up. I offered to email these FBI reports and Joint Inquiry emails to the commissioners and even offered to testify under oath to the 9/11 Commission over how it had been possible to figure out virtually all of the details of these attacks ahead of time. After one week when I had not heard back from Felzenberg I called him back and asked what was going on, did they want these FBI reports or not? He said he had talked to the 9/11 Commissioners and he had found that there was not one commissioner that wanted to know how anyone could have figured out the attacks on 9/11 a head of time. I was so mad at this ridicules answer that I immediately made reservations and flew out to the hearing the night of April 13, 2004 to attend these hearings and give the commissioners personally who I thought who were the most inquisitive copies of these FBI reports. These commissioners were stunned at this information and came over the next day to ask me numerous questions. Kerrey asked why I was not working for the CTC unit of the CIA and Roemer asked how I knew it as the World Trade Center Towers that these terrorists were going after. The answers to these questions are in the book. It was clear from this experience that Zelikow and Felzenberg were spiking much of the information going to the 9/11 Commissioners and only letting through the information they wanted the commissioners to hear.

[SDuderstadt]

104. This gets goofier by the minute....

Now we're being asked to look for Tenet getting sworn in before the 9/11 Commission and notice that rschop is sitting directly behind him two rows back. I don't know about anyone else, but I have no freakin' idea what rschop looks like and, even if I did, this would only prove he attended part of the hearings.


And it gets goofier from here. According to rschop:

Yes here is the most salacious of the conclusions:

That FBI Director Louis Freeh had obstructed his own FBI investigators into the Cole bombing investigation.

Account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan: Pages 66-67 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2006

In November, 2000, a month after the Cole bombing, Soufan sent the agency (the CIA) the first of several official queries. On Soufan's behalf, the director of the F.B.I. sent a letter to the director of the C.I.A., formally ask­ing for information about Khallad, and whether there might have been an Al Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia before the bombing. The agency said that it had nothing. Soufan trusted this response; he thought that he had a good working relationship with the agency.


Page 238-239 FBI IG report:


In the midst of the Millennium period concerns in late 1999, the NSA analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to Al Qaeda activities directed against U.S. interests. The communications indicated that several members of an "operational cadre" were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000. Analysis of the communications revealed that persons named Nawaf, Khalid and Salem were involved. In early 2000, the NSA analyzed what appeared to be related communications concerning a "Khalid."

The NSA's reporting about these communications was sent, among other places, to FBI Headquarters, the FBI's Washington and New York Field Offices, and the CIA's CTC. At the FBI, this information appeared in the daily threat update to the Director on January 4, 2000.(This is the FBI IG report and the Director refereed to here is the Director of the FBI Louis Freeh. Here is the proof he had obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing!)

How in the world does the disjointed mess above prove that FBI Director Freeh obstructed the FBI's investigation into the Cole bombing? All it seems to indicate to me is that rschop's reasoning processes are as fuzzy as his writing skills are poor.

[rschop]

118. Reply: This gets goofier by the minute....

Why are you are unable to figure this out SDuderstadt?

This clearly shows that Soufan had asked FBI Director Freeh in November 2000 to ask CIA Director Tenet for any and all information that the CIA might have had on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. From this we now know that Freeh had been given this exact information in January 2000 by the NSA and was also given this information again by the CIA, and this information appeared in his FBI daily briefings, yet Freeh never gave this information to Soufan, and his own FBI lead Cole investigators.

HELLO! How could this be made any simpler?

I have no idea from this extremely simple excepts why you are unable to comprehend this very simple information! Small wonder you can not figure this out.

I also gave you and every one else many more of the exact excerpts for these FBI IG reports, information you claim you could not find in this report.

[SDuderstadt]

121. How much information do you think an FBI Director gets in the course of his job?

Do you honestly think that they recall every single piece of information they've received or looked at? That's where I'm having trouble with your claims, as well as your attempts to insult my intelligence and impugn my motivation. It's hardly my fault that your claims are not believable and your "analysis" is faulty. All you've seemed to do is show that there were breakdowns in onformation sharing which, not coincidentally, is what the IG concluded. To reach the conclusion that you have evidence of a "massive criminal conspiracy", you'd need a hell of a lot more information than you have.

I have some advice. Quit pretending you're here to engage in principled and reasoned debate and admit, instead, that you're here to flog your book.

[rschop]

124. RE: How much information do you think an FBI Director gets in the course of his job?

The Office of the Director of the FBI produces one page of material a day called the FBI Daily Briefing for the Director of the FBI each day of the week.

Freeh was not only told about this meeting in Kuala Lumpur by the NSA but had this very information added right into one of these daily briefings in January 2000. He is given this information not only by the NAS in the form of an official NAS cable on this meeting with the first names of the people who attended this meeting, but he is also given information on this meeting again by the CIA, as detailed in the 9/11 Commission report.

Then in November 2000 FBI Director Freeh, makes an "official request" to the Director of the CIA on the behalf of his lead investigator on the Cole bombing, FBI Agent Ali Soufan, for any information on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 and for any information on Khallad bin Attash, at that time Khallad was known by the FBI and also the CIA as the mastermind of the Cole bombing. At this time the Cole bombing is the FBI's most important investigation, and Soufan is the FBI lead investigator on this investigation. It appears this is the most important meeting ever held outside of Afghanistan by the al Qaeda terrorists, and several high level al Qaeda terrorists were known to be attending this meeting. Page 66 account of Soufan, New Yorker July 10-17, 2006.

Then after he had received this information from both the NAS and even the CIA, on what at the time appears to be the most important meeting ever held by the al Qaeda terrorists he later tells FBI Agent Ali Soufan that the CIA has no information on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur and that they had no information on Khallad Bin Attash. You first ask for this this source information, information that you your self had asked for, but you go on to post the following.

First you state that the source information from the account of Ali Soufan and the FBI IG report is "goofy", your words, and a "real mess".

But then you go on to say:

How much information do you think an FBI Director gets in the course of his job?


"Edited on Sat Jun-21-08 02:54 AM by SDuderstadt

Do you honestly think that they recall every single piece of information they've received or looked at? That's where I'm having trouble with your claims, as well as your attempts to insult my intelligence and impugn my motivation. It's hardly my fault that your claims are not believable and your "analysis" is faulty. All you've seemed to do is show that there were breakdowns in information sharing which, not coincidentally, is what the IG concluded. To reach the conclusion that you have evidence of a "massive criminal conspiracy", you'd need a hell of a lot more information than you have."

In answer to this post:

Freeh tells FBI Agent Ali Soufan that the CIA has no information on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur and that they had no information on Khallad Bin Attash.

But Soufan had mentioned that this meeting had taken place in January 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, so if Freeh forgot, a highly doubtful supposition, and for which you have no proof what so ever, all Freeh or his assistants had to do was go back to these one page daily briefings in January, the date of the meeting and look for this information right in Freeh's own daily briefings. The information Soufan wanted was right in Freeh's January one page daily briefings.

Since Tenet said the CIA did not have any of this information, the CIA and Tenet must also have forgotten about this same meeting, and must have lost all of their CIA records on this meeting and the many photographs that were taken of al Qaeda terrorists attending this meeting. Is that your contention also, the FBI and the CIA just have very bad memories and lost records? Then what else explains the failure of the CIA to give Freeh the information on this meeting, and the failure of Freeh to give this information to FBI Agent Ali Soufan. You seem to have a rather large whole in your explaination!

But we know they did not loose their record of this meeting since the CIA cables were referenced many times in the next year as detailed in the FBI IG report and the photos of Mihdhar and Hazmi were shown to the FBI agents on the Cole bombing in June 11, 2001 at a FBI/CIA meeting in New York City.

But lets go down into this account in a bit more detail!

Before Soufan had asked Freeh to request this information from the CIA and Director Tenet, Soufan had asked for this information from the CIA Yemen station in November 2000 and provided them with a passport photo of Khallad. But the CIA Yemen station said that they and the CIA had no information on any al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur or on Khallad Bin Attash. (page 66 Account of Soufan, New Yorker July 10-17)

(From the FBI IG report 269)

But the FBI IG report says that once Soufan's passport photo of Khallad was identified by the joint source, CIA personnel over seas requested the photos of Khallad and Mihdhar in December 2000 from the CIA Bin Laden unit taken at Kuala Lumpur so these photos could be also be shown to the joint source.

But the information these over seas personnel sent back with this request to the CIA Bin Laden unit was the exact same information that Soufan had given to the Yemen CIA station so this request had to have come from the Yemen CIA station.

In January 2001 according to the FBI IG report this photo of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur was identified by the joint source

"in early January 2001, the CIA showed the Kuala Lumpur surveillance photographs to a joint CIA/FBI source, and the source stated that "Khallad" was in one of the photographs. This identification could have led the FBI to focus on who else was at the Malaysia meetings with Khallad, the purported mastermind of the Cole attacks, which could have led the FBI to identify and locate Mihdhar. However, we concluded that, despite the CIA's assertions, the source's identification of Khallad in these photographs was not known by the FBI. (FBI IG report 313)

This identification of Khallad in the Kuala Lumpur photo went back to the CIA Bin Laden unit. So in January 2001 the CIA Bin Laden unit, the Yemen CIA station and the CIA handler for the joint source all knew Khallad had been positively identified at Kuala Lumpur with Mihdhar and Hazmi. But none of these people in any of these groups told Soufan or the FBI as stated right in the FBI IG report. But since this request for the Khallad and Mihdhar Kuala Lumpur photos was made in December 2000, right after Soufan's request for the exact same information it is clear that when Soufan made his request the Yemen CIA station already had the information Soufan had asked for and they deliberately lied to Soufan and said they did not have this information. Many people at the CIA were also aware of this identification, the CIA Bi Laden unit for one, and not a one of them provided the FBI or Soufan with this information.

But with holding information from an on going criminal FBI investigation is a criminal offense. Since many people were involved and they all committed criminal acts this makes this a criminal conspiracy to withhold this information from the FBI and Soufan. Since at this point the Director of the CIA, the manger of the CIA CTC, much of the CIA Bin Laden unit , the Yemen CIA station and even the CIA handler for the joint source were all involved, this makes this a wide ranging criminal conspiracy at the CIA that looks like it had even involved the Director of the FBI Louis Freeh!.

This is no small point. Almost 3000 people died an absolutely horrible death on 9/11 at the hands of the al Qaeda terrorists, had any of the people at the CIA that knew about the Kuala Lumpur meeting and the people who had atended this meeting, given this information to Soufan or the FBI, none of these 3000 people would have died on 9/11! They all or most all would still be alive today!

So if we now look in detail at your post:

"That's where I'm having trouble with your claims, as well as your attempts to insult my intelligence and impugn my motivation. It's hardly my fault that your claims are not believable and your "analysis" is faulty. All you've seemed to do is show that there were breakdowns in information sharing which, not coincidentally, is what the IG concluded. To reach the conclusion that you have evidence of a "massive criminal conspiracy", you'd need a hell of a lot more information than you have."

The above is just such evidence and all of this comes out of the FBI IG report with the addition of the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan. It is clear that the account of Soufan added in almost all of the missing pieces to the FBI IG report, but the big question is how is it even remotely possible when this information on Soufan is just missing from the FBI IG report, that the FBI IG did not know who Soufan was when he was the lead FBI investigator on the Cole bombing and the planning if the Cole bombing came together with the planning of the attacks on 9/11 at the Kuala Lumpur meeting. Why is he all but missing from the FBI IG report? Was this done to make the FBI IG report a deliberate cover up and even cover over the crimes of the Director of the FBI himself?

GO FIGURE!

[SDuderstadt]

125. Look, rschop....

Can you even read? I said it was YOUR WRITING that is a mess, not your source, and I am saying it is your twists and turns that are getting goofier, because you intertwine excerpts from the IG's Report (he's the IG for the DOJ, not the FBI, as you keep referring to it) with your own comments, which could confuse people as to what the IG is concluding. On top of that, you asked us to look at C-Span's coverage of Tenet being sworn in so we can see you sitting at the hearing. What that would prove about your claims is beyond me even, assuming we knew what you look like. Pathetic. Let's make it clear: the IG found nothing like what you're concluding and specifically blames breakdowns for the failures. Of course, you have to sensationalize it once more and claim that the IG must be covering up the FBI Director's crimes.

On top of that, you keep referring to the New Yorker piece as the "Account of Soufan" as if to imply that it is a direct interview of Soufan when it isn't. It is, in fact, an article by Lawrence Wright entitled "The Agent" (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/10/060710fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all) written in advance of his book, "The Looming Tower". What follows below are two excerpts from a Q&A session with Wright by the New Yorker's Amy Davidson, followed by numerous excerpts directly from Wright's article. And, you know what's funny? Even Wright (Pulitzer Prize winner) whom, I believe we can assume, knows a HELL of a lot more than you do, repeatedly describes interagency turf battles, mistrust between the agencies, misinterpretations of the "Wall" and various other things. What you won't see is anyone claiming that the CIA was part of some "massive criminal conspiracy" to keep the FBI from preventing the 9/11 attacks.

I'd also like to clarify your claim. Are you claiming that the various breakdowns were intentional in order to facilitate/aid the 9/11 attacks by any agency?? If, you are (and you are at least implying it), it's funny that Wright has no such take like yours, nor does the IG. Again, this is your (poorly supported and, in fact, ludicrous) spin. Beyond that, you continually claim the specific plot was known to people who deliberately failed to preven it; Wright, of course, talks about "missed opportunities" to uncover the plot and subsequently prevent it. There is a huge difference between missed clues and warning signs, as well as intelligence failures, and the overt, deliberate criminality you are accusing just about everyone of. I grew up in the time of J. Edgar Hoover and various DCIA's like Casey, Helms, etc. and my general distrust of these agencies survives today, although I am far more likely to regard them as "necessary evils", while feeling they need to have even stronger oversight. However, that is a far cry from your unfounded and poorly reasoned conjecture.

Now, assuming that it wasn’t sheer ill will on the C.I.A.’s part, why would it withhold that information?

Well, there are various theories. One is that the C.I.A. simply wanted to hang on to the information for itself. The agency was afraid of disclosing something to the F.B.I. that would then come out in a trial. Once intelligence is made public, it’s no longer useful to the agency. There are people in the F.B.I. who believed that the C.I.A. had hoped to recruit, as informers, the two Al Qaeda cell members who arrived in America in 2000. It had nobody inside the Al Qaeda organization, and here were two members of the inner circle, in America. I think the most likely answer to your question is that the problem was a mix of personality clashes and the C.I.A. being overwhelmed by the number of threats that were coming in at that time.

In the article, you mention a policy that people referred to as “the Wall.” What was that?

The Wall stemmed from a 1995 law that sought to keep from criminal investigators information that was deemed to be relevant solely to foreign intelligence. It was originally designed to prevent such information from flowing out of the intelligence division of the F.B.I. into the hands of criminal prosecutors and into trials. But the bureau misinterpreted the law and used it to force its agents to withhold information from one another—even agents who were on the same squad. So if you have a criminal agent and an intelligence agent on the same squad, investigating the same crimes, one cannot disclose to the other what he knows.

In fact, the C.I.A. knew a lot about Khallad and his ties to Al Qaeda. The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have long quarrelled over bureaucratic turf, and their mandates place them at odds. The ultimate goal of the bureau in gathering intelligence is to gain convictions for crimes; for the agency, intelligence itself is the object. If the agency had responded candidly to Soufan’s requests, it would have revealed its knowledge of an Al Qaeda cell that was already forming inside the United States. But the agency kept this intelligence to itself.

“I come from a generation of F.B.I. agents who have always worked closely with the C.I.A.,” Soufan told me. At the time he joined the bureau, law enforcement had become internationalized. In the nineteen-nineties, his mentor, O’Neill, had established close relations with foreign police services, an approach that sometimes encroached on the C.I.A.’s territory. In 1999, O’Neill sent Soufan and his supervisor, Pasquale D’Amuro, to Jordan, where authorities had discovered that jihadis linked to Al Qaeda were plotting to bomb tourist sites and hotels. Information that the Jordanians shared with Soufan made him realize that the intelligence that the C.I.A. was reporting was deeply flawed. His analysis forced local C.I.A. representatives to withdraw twelve cables that they had sent to agency headquarters. On the floor of the C.I.A.’s station in Amman, Soufan discovered a box of evidence that had been given to the agency by Jordanian intelligence. Such evidence is what the F.B.I. needs in order to mount prosecutions, and no one had examined the box’s contents or turned it over to the bureau. In the box, Soufan found a map of the proposed bomb sites, which proved crucial in the prosecutions of twenty-eight plotters in Jordan, twenty-two of whom were convicted. Soufan’s success embarrassed the C.I.A., deepening the rift between the two institutions. “The C.I.A. people couldn’t stand the fact that Ali’s opinion and analysis were correct,” an F.B.I. counterterrorism official who worked with Soufan told me. “He was an Arabic speaker and an F.B.I. agent on the ground who was running circles around them.”

In March, the C.I.A. learned that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles two months earlier, on January 15th. Had the agency checked the flight manifest, it would have noticed that Mihdhar was travelling with him. Once again, the agency neglected to inform the F.B.I. or the State Department that at least one Al Qaeda operative was in the country.

Although the C.I.A. was legally bound to share this kind of information with the bureau, it was protective of sensitive intelligence. The agency sometimes feared that F.B.I. prosecutions resulting from such intelligence might compromise its relationships with foreign services, although there were safeguards to protect confidential information. The C.I.A. was particularly wary of O’Neill, who demanded control of any case that touched on an F.B.I. investigation. Many C.I.A. officials disliked him and feared that he could not be trusted with sensitive intelligence. “O’Neill was duplicitous,” Michael Scheuer, the official who founded Alec Station but has now left the C.I.A., told me. “He had no concerns outside of making the bureau look good.” Several of O’Neill’s subordinates suggested that the C.I.A. hid the information out of personal animosity. “They hated John,” the F.B.I. counterterrorism official assigned to Alec Station told me. “They knew that John would have marched in there and taken control of that case

The C.I.A. may also have been protecting an overseas operation and was afraid that the F.B.I. would expose it. Moreover, Mihdhar and Hazmi could have seemed like attractive recruitment possibilities—the C.I.A. was desperate for a source inside Al Qaeda, having failed to penetrate the inner circle or even to place someone in the training camps, even though they were largely open to anyone who showed up. However, once Mihdhar and Hazmi entered the United States they were the province of the F.B.I. The C.I.A. has no legal authority to operate inside the country.

In the end, the C.I.A.’s failure to inform the F.B.I. may be best explained by the fact that the agency was drowning in a flood of threats and warnings, and simply did not see the pivotal importance of this intelligence. Whatever the reason for the C.I.A.’s lapse, many F.B.I. investigators remain furious that they were not informed of the presence of Al Qaeda operatives inside America. Mihdhar and Hazmi arrived twenty months before September 11th. Kenneth Maxwell, Soufan’s former supervisor, told me, “Two Al Qaeda guys living in California—are you kidding me? We would have been on them like white on snow: physical surveillance, electronic surveillance, a special unit devoted entirely to them.” Of course, the F.B.I. had other opportunities to prevent September 11th. In July, 2001, an F.B.I. agent in Phoenix suggested interviewing Arabs enrolled in American flight schools; a month later, the bureau’s Minnesota office requested permission to aggressively investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, who later confessed to being an Al Qaeda associate. Both proposals were rejected by F.B.I. supervisors. But Mihdhar and Hazmi were directly involved in the September 11th conspiracy. Because of their connection to bin Laden, who had a federal indictment against him, the F.B.I. had all the authority it needed to use every investigative technique to penetrate and disrupt the Al Qaeda cell. Instead, the hijackers were free to develop their plot until it was too late to stop them.

The June 11th meeting was the culmination of a strange trend in the U.S. government toward hiding information from the people who most needed it. In this regard, the F.B.I. was as guilty as the C.I.A. A federal law at the time prohibited the sharing of information arising from grand-jury testimony, but the F.B.I. took it as a nearly absolute bar to revealing any investigative evidence and, as a result, repeatedly turned down requests for information from other intelligence agencies. (The Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11 claimed that the law “came to be used simply as an excuse for not sharing information.”)

In 1995, the Justice Department established a policy, known as “the Wall,” which regulated the exchange of foreign intelligence information between agents and criminal investigators. Managers at F.B.I. headquarters misinterpreted the policy, turning it into a straitjacket for their own investigators. Intelligence agents were warned that sharing such information with criminal agents could mean the end of their careers. The Wall, the F.B.I. decided, separated even people who were on the same squad. The F.B.I. also began withholding intelligence from the White House. Every morning on the classified computers of the National Security Council, there were at least a hundred reports, from the C.I.A., the N.S.A., and other intelligence branches, but the F.B.I. never disseminated information.

The C.I.A. embraced the idea of the Wall with equal vigor. The agency frequently decided not to share intelligence with the F.B.I. on the ground that it would compromise “sensitive sources and methods.” For example, the C.I.A. collected other crucial information about Mihdhar that it did not provide to the F.B.I. Mihdhar, it turned out, was the son-in-law of Ahmed al-Hada, the Al Qaeda loyalist in Yemen whose phone number operated as the network’s switchboard. After arriving in New York on July 4th, Mihdhar flew to San Diego and rented an apartment. From there, he made eight calls to the Hada phone to talk to his wife, who was about to give birth. In the I-49 squad’s office, there was a link chart showing the connections between Hada’s phone and other phones around the world. Had a line been drawn from Hada’s Yemen home to Mihdhar’s San Diego apartment, Al Qaeda’s presence in America would have been glaringly obvious.

The week that O’Neill retired from the bureau, the F.B.I. analyst at Alec Station who had been reviewing intelligence on the Malaysia meeting realized that Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the U.S. She passed the information to Dina Corsi, at F.B.I. headquarters. Corsi, alarmed, sent an e-mail to the supervisor of the I-49 squad, ordering the unit to locate the Al Qaeda operatives. But, she added, because of the Wall no criminal investigators could be involved in the search. As it turned out, there was only one intelligence agent available, and he was new. An F.B.I. agent forwarded Corsi’s message to Steve Bongardt, Soufan’s top assistant. He called her. “Dina, you got to be kidding me!” he said. “Mihdhar is in the country?” He complained that the Wall was a bureaucratic fiction that was preventing investigators from doing their work. In a conversation the next day, he said, “If this guy is in the country, it’s not because he’s going to fucking Disneyland!” Later, he wrote in an e-mail, “Someday somebody will die—and, Wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective.” The new agent’s attempt to find Mihdhar and Hazmi proved fruitless.

I'll say it once more, rschop. I believe you're primarily here to sell your book and, if you have to falsely accuse and libel people in the process, that's a trade-off you're willing to make. I don't buy the vast majority of your story, whether it is taking exception to your sloppy research and analysis or outright rejecting your fiction about "figuring out the plot in advance", your weak rationalization as to why you failed to approach someone who could actually take steps to disrupt the plot (which, frankly, is why your accusations of others failing to act similarly is so risible).I have also asked repeatedly if you can provide any documentation whatsoever of having informed others of the plot in advance and you always fail in that regard. In fact, it seems that your proof of all these things is...YOU!

Tell me something, rschop? Why should we take your word for anything? After reading direct evidence of your poor writing skills (I mean, really..."You seem to have a rather large whole in your explaination!" or "But we know they did not loose their record of this meeting..."??) we're supposed to believe your motivation is to get at the truth? I'll state it directly. I believe you're playng fast and loose (see how "loose" is used properly?) with the truth to sell your book and smearing people in the process. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you have evidence of any of the criminal activity you allege, I strongly suggest you approach the Attorney General or a U.S. Attorney (perhaps you should wait until we have a Democratic administration, just to be on the safe side) and ask them to consider a criminal referral/empaneling a Grand Jury. But, I'll warn you in advance. If you believed you couldn't go to the FBI BEFORE the 9/11 attack because you wouldn't be taken seriously, I'm afraid you'll actually be laughed at by the DOJ. Maybe you could write a book about it.

[noise]

126. How dare anyone question Wright or the DOJ IG!

The CIA is highly aware of the January 2000 al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia (see January 5-8, 2000), which was considered so important that CIA Director George Tenet and other CIA leaders were repeatedly briefed about it (see January 6-9, 2000). The CIA has photos of bin Attash and al-Quso attending the meeting (see January 5-8, 2000 and Shortly After), which took place only a few days before al-Quso’s meeting with bin Attash in Thailand. Yet the CIA does not respond to Soufan’s clearly stated request. Author Lawrence Wright will later comment, “The fact that the CIA withheld information about the mastermind of the Cole bombing and the meeting in Malaysia, when directly asked by the FBI, amounts to obstruction of justice in the death of seventeen American sailors .”

Link

The FBI was tasked with preventing domestic terrorist attacks. If anyone at CIA had an issue with that they were free to resign. Getting 3,000 people killed because of turf battles is a vomit inducing thought. One would hope that CIA officials weren't that pathetic.

The CIA's July 10 briefing with Rice should have put an end to any turf battle idiocy (if that was indeed applicable). Rice, Hadley and Clarke were all in attendance and since they were not CIA one would think their tolerance of turf battle nonsense would be zero. Yet it seems not a single one of these three officials thought to invite the FBI to this important meeting or at the least make sure all CIA intelligence was shared with the FBI Counterterrorism Division. The names of key al Qaeda operatives (known by Alec Station at the time of this briefing) in the US would have been actionable intel.

[SDuderstadt]

127. Rschop can question Wright or the IG all he wants...

but their writings and conclusions contradict rschop's conclusions. I'll go with them. What's laughable here is that he relies on them to "prove" his claims.

[noise]

128. Wright doesn't know what happened

That is why he put forth some educated guesses. Guesses being the key word.

Are we to believe all the FBI officials involved acted in good faith? They just happened to be overly concerned about upsetting FISA judges and overstepping Gorelick wall boundaries?

[SDuderstadt]

129. Wright doesn't know what happened?

And rschop does? I think it's interesting that you characterize Wright's take as mere "guesses" but don't apply that description to rschop's conjecture. Unbelievable. I think it's fair to say that Wright looked into it in far more detail than rschop and found no reason to make goofy claims like his.

[noise]

130. Rschop doesn't know either

Only the officials who were there know what actually happened. IMO, Rschop's analysis is more honest than Wright's or the DOJ IG's in regards to the known conduct of Alec Station and FBI ITOS officials. Their conduct was bizarre. Possible al Qaeda recruitment, turf battles, FISA approval concerns and Gorelick wall restrictions all come across as BS.

FBI agent Steve Bongardt puts it in the proper perspective:

“If this guy is in the country, it’s not because he’s going to f***ing Disneyland!”

Link

[SDuderstadt]

131. So, what's your theory?

The CIA knew the attack was coming and just let it happen?

[noise]

132. Seems to be the case n/t

[rschop]

133. RE Noise, GREAT POSTS AND KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

VERY GOOD JOB NOISE AND GREAT POSTS!

KEEP WRITING THESE GREAT POSTS!

Very good summaries of some of the simple facts.

I would suggest everyone get Wright's comments on the internet "after" he wrote the "Looming Tower" to see that he actually finally states in very clear terms that the CIA had obstructed the investigation of the FBI agents on the Cole bombing. I will also post his comments on this to the blog! To find this just goggle FBI Ali Soufan or Lawrence Wright.

Lying to or with holding information from any on going criminal investigation or obstructing any FBI investigation "IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE"!

It does not make any difference if you are the CIA, or GOD, or Jesus Christ, you are a criminal committing criminal acts if you are doing this!

It was also possible to even find out why Wright did not immediately connect the account which he got directly from FBI Agent Bongardt to a criminal conspiracy at the CIA.

As I said before with only the FBI IG account it was not possible to conclude a criminal conspiracy had existed. The information on FBI Agent Ali Soufan had been apparently striped out of this report and this was the missing information that proved a criminal conspiracy at the CIA.

It was only after I filled in detailed times lines from the FBI report with the account of Ali Soufan that it was possible to clearly show a massive criminal conspiracy at the CIA to hide information from the FBI.

Again it is a criminal offense to either lie to the FBI or withhold information from any on gong FBI criminal investigation. Numerous times the CIA was asked for this exact information and they lied, they said they had none when the had more that enough to have helped find the Cole bombing killers and even stop the attacks on 9/11.

But there is no explanation at all why FBI Director Freeh would have obstructed his own investigation of the Cole bombing or why CIA Director Tenet did not give Freeh the details on this meeting after an official FBI request to the CIA from Freeh that originally came from the most important on going criminal investigation at the FBI into the murder of 17 US sailors.

How do you EXPLAIN THAT.

(Actually I have the reasons they did this and these reasons are consistent with all of the other information I was able to obtain. )


TO SAY FREEH HAS A BAD MEMORY IS ASININE AT BEST!

Then did Tenet forget also, did both the CIA and FBI not have records of this meeting. But we know that Freeh had a record of this right in his daily briefing papers. Why did Freeh not ask his staff, if he had a bad memory, to look up his daily briefing papers from January 2000 the month Soufan said that there was meeting in Kuala Lumpur attended by Khallad Bin Attash, the mastermind of the Cole bombing.

Did everyone at the CIA also have a bad memory, and did they have no records of this meeting? But we already know the CIA did have records and had many photographs of from Kuala Lumpur of Khallad, Mihdhar and Hazmi attending this meeting, since eventually they gave these photos to the FBI after it was too late for the FBI to prevent the attacks on 9/11.

How do you explain that?

But the 800,000 gorilla is that there is now email available written by Tom Wilshire, former deputy chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit, sent in July 2001 to his CIA CTC mangers that says on July 5. 2001 he is sure people at Kuala Lumpur are connected to the numerous warnings of impending massive al Qaeda attack.

Then on July 13, 2001 he says in email that the information on Kuala Lumpur should be passed to the FBI and asks for permission to do this.

Then on July 23, 2001 he again asks why he has not been given permission to pass this information to the FBI and again says that the people at Kuala Lumpur, in particular Mihdhar will be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda operation!

Since Wilshire knew that Mihdhar and Hamzi were traveling companions and he knew they had traveled from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok together, it is clear by association he also must have felt that Hazmi will possibly also be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda operation. He had sent this email to his CTC CIA managers on these dates so they were all aware of this information also!

But we now know that on August 22, 2001 he was told by FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US and he knew they were long time al Qaeda terrorists and that a huge al Qaeda attack was just about to take place inside of the US and even knew these terrorists were going to take part in this attack, explain why he did not alert the FBI criminal investigators.

EXPLAIN THAT.

Instead he continues to hide the photos of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur from the FBI criminal investigation team headed by FBI Agent Steve Bongardt until Corsi had taken away any chance Bongardt had to be part of this investigation, knowing by doing this Bongardt will have no evidence to connect Mihdhar to the Cole bombing and will have no way to take back the investigation of Mihdhar. He knows as a result the FBI will never have enough time find Mihdhar and as result thousands of Americans are going to perish in these attacks. He is in effect shutting down the only effective FBI criminal investigation team that could have found Mihdhar in time!

Incredible he makes email contact with Maltbie and Frasca on August 24, 2001, contact we now know had also taken place several days before this, so he also knows Moussaoui was arrested by the FBI who thought he was as an al Qaeda terrorist training to get flight training on a 747 in order to take part in an aircraft hijacking aimed at the WTC Towers. (Maltbie and Frasca are the two FBI supervisors in the FBI RFU who are sabotaging FBI Agent Harry Samit's investigation of Moussaoui). So by August 24, 2001 Wilshire has all of this information and never alerts the FBI criminal investigators.

After FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie issued the world wide alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi on August 23, 2001 every one at the Bin Laden unit and in fact the CIA hierarchy also knew this information. The CIA IG report says that the number of people who knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi numbered at least 50-60 people. Yet no one alters to the FBI to this horrific information or stops Corsi from sabotaging any chance Bongardt has to investigate and search for Mihdhar!

Almost 3000 people were murdered on 9/11, in a most horrific death, and no one can explain why when the CIA knew about this attack, knew it would kill thousands of Americans, knew that some of the al Qaeda terrorist who were going to take part in this attack were in the US by August 22-23, 2001, they did nothing to stop this attack. This includes Wilshire, and his CIA CTC managers and since information at the CIA went up the CIA hierarchy every quickly all of the top management the CIA include Black and Tenet.

EXPLAIN THAT!

[SDuderstadt]

140. Ummm, Dude...

The date of the New Yorker article was July 10th of 2006. The publication date of "The Looming Tower" was August 6, 2006. Are you now claiming that Wright wrote the book in less than a month before it was published? Also, why don't you provide a link to "Wright's comments on the internet "after" he wrote the "Looming Tower" to see that he actually finally states in very clear terms that the CIA had obstructed the investigation of the FBI agents on the Cole bombing."? He made his comments (chalking the lapses up to anything BUT intentional obstruction) in both the article in the New Yorker and the Q&A I cited in an earlier post AFTER he had already written "The Looming Tower". Do you even read what you write for believability before you just launch it out there?

The further we go down this road, the more your story falls apart. I have a question. Who fact-checked your book? Unless this was self-published, I'd be very interested to know what your "publisher" thinks of all your sloppy research.

[rschop]

151. RE Links to Wright and his comment the CIA had obstructed the Cole bombing investigation

These are the links and even the source material you had asked for indicating that Wright in later interviews said the CIA had obstructed the FBI criminal investigation into the Cole bombing and the murder of 17 US sailors.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=lawrence_wright_1

Author Lawrence Wright will later say: “The FBI’s investigating the death of 17 American sailors and they’re asking the CIA for information that would solve the crime. And the CIA is refusing, essentially obstructing justice.”

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Wright/wright-con5.html

Interview of Lawrence Wright:

"Anyway, Ali, while he was questioning the people involved in the Cole bombing, developed leads to a meeting that had taken place earlier that year, in January of 2000, somewhere in Southeast Asia, as it happens in Kuala Lumpur. Three times he and O'Neill queried the CIA, asking for information about this meeting, and three times the CIA refused to respond. Just set aside 9/11, what happened; Sufan is investigating the death of seventeen American sailors and the CIA is essentially obstructing justice and refusing to help him. They knew about the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, they had surveilled it, they had the Malaysian authorities surveil it for them, they had photographs of the participants who included some of the plotters of the Cole bombing but also two future 9/11 hijackers who flew from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles and then to San Diego."

You wrote:

The date of the New Yorker article was July 10th of 2006. The publication date of "The Looming Tower" was August 6, 2006. Are you now claiming that Wright wrote the book in less than a month before it was published?

But I had written:

I would suggest everyone get Wright's comments on the internet "after" he wrote the "Looming Tower" to see that he actually finally states in very clear terms that the CIA had obstructed the investigation of the FBI agents on the Cole bombing. I will also post his comments on this to the blog! To find this just goggle FBI Ali Soufan or Lawrence Wright.

There is nowhere I can find that I made any claim for the actual dates of the Wright material:

"Are you now claiming that Wright wrote the book in less than a month before it was published?"

I stated that "after" he (Wright) wrote "Looming Tower" he came to the conclusion that the CIA had obstructed the investigation of the FBI agents on the Cole bombing. Nowhere do a state any relationship between the dates of the New Yorker article and his book Looming Tower! The "after" means Wright may not have realized that the CIA had obstructed the criminal investigation by the FBI into the Cole bombing until after he wrote the Looming Tower. So that is why this conclusion is not in Looming Tower or the New Yorker account of Soufan.

Obstructing a criminal investigation is a criminaloffensee, more than two people doing this makes this a criminal conspiracy. Since this obstruction was carried out by many people in many different groups at the CIA over a large span of time this makes this a massive criminal conspiracy at the CIA.

[SDuderstadt]

153. Do you understand what the phrase "essentially obstructing" means?

Why does Wright put the qualifier "essentially" before the word obstructed, rschop? Why not just say, they "obstructed"? It's because Wright is making a distinction. Nowhere does Wright ever state that the CIA acted to obstruct the FBI investigation to keep the FBI from bringing the Cole bombers to justice. Instead, he lays out a scenario in which turf wars and fears that ongoing investigations might be compromised by another federal agency are largely to blame for the lack of cooperation and information-sharing.

Are you a lawyer, rschop? I doubt that you are. You write "Obstructing a criminal investigation is a criminaloffensee, more than two people doing this makes this a criminal conspiracy. Since this obstruction was carried out by many people in many different groups at the CIA over a large span of time this makes this a massive criminal conspiracy at the CIA". How exactly would you go about charging the CIA in this matter? Do you think that intent would enter into the equation? Hint: that's why Wright uses the phrase "essentially obstructing", because, as he has hypothesized, this was a result of turf wars, etc. not an outright attempt to keep the Cole bombers from being brought to justice. Do you see anywhere where Wright suggests that anyone should be charged?

Again, why don't you contact a US Attorney or, in fact, the Attorney General himself and demand to know why no one has charged the CIA in this case? Do you honestly think a CIA agent, acting in his/her capacity as a federal officer, is held to the same standard, either de facto or de jure, as anyone else? I am hardly arguing that the lack of cooperation or information-sharing is not a problem, but you keep throwing words like "criminal offense" and "criminal conspiracy" around when, in practicality, no charging official in the US government would bring such charges.

As far as your comments about the dates, when you give such imprecise information, the reader is forced to guess what you are talking about. In any event, as usual, you are bending Wright's words to fit your desired end. You can go on and on as much as you want about this but, in the end, the reasson that no one at the CIA is being charged for these "criminal offenses" or this "criminal conspiracy" is because no one of importance remotely believes that the CIA "essentially obstructed" the FBI with the intent of keeping justice from being brought to bear. If you have evidence to the contrary, you should provide it. It's real simple for you to throw these terms around and leave out important context like intent.

I'll say it again. Your purpose here is to sell your book. I also still do not believe your rather absurd excuse for why you did not contact the FBI with your information PRIOR to 9/11.

[noise]

142. Thanks

Your posts and the work of Paul Thompson and Kevin Fenton at Cooperative Research are excellent sources for people seeking to understand what went on at Alec Station and the FBI ITOS in the lead up to 9/11.

Regardless of Wright's views on the issue it was a big deal for Alec Station to withhold intel from the Cole investigators. It affected the Cole investigation and efforts to prevent a major terrorist attack which turned out to be 9/11.

[rschop]

148. Thanks noise, you posts are excellent and much appreciated

Thanks noise for your excellent posts. While Paul, Kevin and myself can find the information you and some of the other bloggers are doing a very important function by providing this information to a wider audience.

Keep up the good job and lets hope some day the American people will finally know more fully why their government failed them so badly to keep them safe on 9/11.

Again keep up your excellent posts and questions!

[rschop]

134. RE: Rschop doesn't know either

Noise, Great posts, but I do know!

I have inside information!

I would prefer if no one asks how I obtained this information!

[SDuderstadt]

137. Oh, Jesus....

"I have 'inside information' "....take my word for it. Of course, when you're backed into a corner, just claim you have "inside information". Unfuckingbelievable. Anyone who buys rschop's stories, especially after this, make sure you call me if someone offers to sell you a bridge. I think I can save you some money.

"

[rschop]

100. RE:All of the information that backs up the above is found in the FBI IG report"

While there are many questions here I will try to answer them as best I can.

Your post:

I have two questions here. You claim you had deduced all this information 7 months before the attacks. Did you disclose this information to the FBI or anyone else in law enforcement prior to 9/11? If the answer is no, why didn't you? How did you know the hijacking would be carried out using 4 inch knives? What troubles me about your account is that everything you are citing (from the website, not the book, which I haven't read) was readily available from any number of news sources AFTER 9/11. If you could reveal something that was not generally known, that would make your account far more credible.

I knew immediately the FBI would not do anything with my information since it was all based on speculation. I recently called FBI Agent Vince Tagleri, the first FBI agent I had a sit down interview with just after the attacks on 9/11, and asked him what I could have done to have been believed at the FBI so they would have taken action to stop these attacks.

He said I would have had to tell them that I had more then just speculation, but the issue is at the time I did not have anything that was more than speculation, and even through I was completely convinced this huge attack was going to take place I realized that had no way to get the FBI to start any investigation since I knew they "NEVER" start any investigation based on speculation especially speculation from anyone outside of the FBI. They were in a catch 22 situation, they could not start any investigation without information that was more than speculation, but they could never get this information without first starting an investigation. I knew that and the FBI knew that, but those are their rules! And I can see why, if they did start investigations based on speculation their investigations could then be all over the map with no real direction or focus.

What did I know that was not generally known:

In the FBI interview I stated that the terrorists had 4-inch knives and not box cutters, and that the planning in Afghanistan had started in February 1999. I also stated in a email summary of the FBI interveiew that the next attack would be a shoe bomb, and I even have the email to the FBI that states exactly that! It turns out the terrorists had used 4-inch knives and not box cutters although this was not generally known for another 2 years, and that they had started their planning in Afghanistan in February-March 1999 and not in September 1998 as the CIA had stated in the October 2002 Joint Inquiry hearings. I had described the exact start date for the planning of these atatcks at least two years before the CIA was aware of this information, and they finally confirmed this date after capturing KSM. The shoe bomb attack in December 2001 is now common knowledge. This email to the FBI in September 2001 on the shoe bomb attack is located right in the back of the book.

Here's my question. If you believed the attacks would take place between 9/1 and 9/14, why would you wait until 9/8 to see if you could spot the al Qaeda terrorists?

I was in a terrible situation because of urgent business issues that I was unable to do anything about and it was not until September 8, 2001 that I had a chance to fly out to Boston, which was in fact also for a business trip. I had to fly to Japan the first week of September for an urgent business meetings during the entire week. I got back to San Francisco on September 7th and then flew out to Boston on the 8th of September. I was sure that if I was right, the terrorists would be at the airport security points at eastern airports the week ahead of the attack trying to figure out how to get the 4-inch knives I thought they would be using through the airport security points. I knew they were going to use 4-inch knives since I had been horrified ever since the FAA ruling in the mid-1990s that allowed passengers with 4-inch knives to legally board US aircraft.

I knew from my analysis that one of the people behind these attacks was Mohammed Atef and I considered him, after analyzing the attacks on the USS Cole and the east Africa embassies to be a genius of adaptive planning. That meant he drilled the terrorist who were going to carry out any attack to check the security points many times prior to the attack, and then go back and re-plan if necessary. There is no way these two attacks would have been so successful in my opinion without this type of planning. Since I had estimated that the actual planning for the attacks on the WTC Towers had started in February 1999 in Afghanistan, and that they had first started to send terrorists into the US starting in February 2000, by the time of the attacks they had already invested almost 2 1/2 years into this plan, and it was inconceivable to me that they would also not do this last level of security check and then adjust their plans on how to get these 4-inch knives through security. When I did not see them on the 8th of September I thought at that time, on Saturday night, that they possibly had moved their attack out a few weeks.

My big mistake was on Sunday on September 9, 2001. I was at first planning to go back to Logan to see if I could spot them at the airport and then decided that the security arrangements on Sunday would be so different than those found during the regular week day that the terrorists would know if they went to Logan on Sunday they would get a false sense of the real week day security issues and they just would not be found out at the airport on that date. It turns out that Mohamed Atta flew into Logon on Sunday and spent 7 hours on September 9th at the airport taking down copious notes on the security at the American Airlines security check point. Even in hindsight this is almost inconceivable to me, it literally looks like last minute planning for an attack they had already spent 2 1/2 years planning for. This even to this day makes no sense to me, but those are the facts!

If, as you claim, almost every single person in your company was aware of this attack (I assume in advance), do you have a sworn affidavit from any of them to this effect?

"Yes I do have a sworn affidavit from them to this effect". I gave this affidavit to the FBI investigators when I sat down for a full on sit down interview with them just after the attacks on 9/11. This affidavit had been signed by the employee I had first told about this attack on February 19, 2001 just after I got back form New York. This is all in the book.

If you read the book and see the evidence I had that I had started with to analyze these terrorists, you will see that it was almost impossible to come to any other conclusion other that they were going to go after the WTC Towers, and the attack would involve hijacked aircraft and take place in the first two weeks of September 2001. After I uncovered this information and was horrified at what I had concluded, I then came up with 10 arguments to try to prove that this attack was not going to take place or if it did it would involve a target other then the WTC Towers. But every argument I could throw at this proved that this attack was going to take place and that it had to be against the WTC Towers and one argument even re-confirming that the attack would take place in the first two weeks in September.

I even finally concluded that this it was just inconceivable that this attack would not take place. PLEASE READ THE BOOK IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW THIS WAS DONE! The book is 650 pages, way too many pages to repeat the whole book here. It turns out that it did not take any brains at all to put this together just some simple common sense and using just some basic publicly available information of these terrorists and their motivations from material they had actually written down themselves!

It turns out, and the basic point that this book makes, is that there was more than enough publicly available information for anyone with even a modest amount of common sense to have done the same thing and come to the same conclusions.

By carefully building time lines from the many government investigations of 9/11 it was finally possible to understand what had happened that had allowed these attacks to take place. In fact it was possible to prove that the CIA themselves knew in July 2001 that Mihdhar and Hazmi were going to take part in the huge attack inside of the US that the CIA was aware of. When they found out that both of these terrorists were inside of the US on August 22/23, 2001, they not only did not alert the FBI criminal investigators to this information but deliberately forced all of the FBI criminal investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US to be shut down! They did this knowing that the result would be thousands of Americans would perish in these attacks.

There is now more than enough information in these publicly available reports to conclusively prove this, this infromation is summarized into detailed time lines right in the book. Essentually the governemts own reports prove that a massive crimianl conspiracy took place at the CIA with FBI HQ units that the CIA had subjugated, the ITOS unit and the Office of the Director of the FBI had allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place.

I posted information from this book because this is the question raised in many of these blogs. Since I have posted summaries of the book in many of these same blogs with exact page number to the various government reports you do not even have to read the book to view this information. I have even listed exactly where on the internet you can also find the exact same information if you want to independently do this research yourself.

[SDuderstadt]

101. I still don't get something, rschop...

can you even see the contradiction here?

On the one hand, you claim that you could not go to the FBI because they would regard your warnings as mere speculation, even though you describe yourself as doing thorough analysis beforehand. If, as you claim, it was on the basis of this analysis that you drew the conclusions you drew, why would you fear that the FBI would regard it as mere speculation? Something is not adding up here. You can't, on the one hand, describe your conclusions as arising from the kind of analysis you claim to have done, then turn around and dismiss it as speculation or being perceived as speculation. If your analysis was of the manner you describe and you were so certain the attacks would accur, why WOULDN'T you go to the FBI and even risk your analysis not being taken seriously? At least, that way, it would have been on the record.


As far as your claim that you knew that 4 inch knives were going to be used and that this was not generally known until several years later, it seems like you're in the clear here, EXCEPT the source for your claim that you disclosed this to the FBI in a post-9/11 interview is, well, YOU! So, as earlier, are we just supposed to take your word for this again, or, do you have any sort of documentation of this? I don't find your convenient ex post facto claims to be very convincing, sort of like the "Texas sharpshooter" syndrome. And, no, I don't want to buy your book.

The other thing that troubles me is that you claim various entities, including the FBI, knew the attacks were coming and elected to let them happen. It's possible that you didn't suspect this (assuming it is remotely true) until later, which would better explain this, but I still have trouble with your claim that you thought your warnings would be dismissed, then you claim the FBI and others actually were aware of the forthcoming attack and let it take place. I also don't buy your claim that you were certain that a very deadly attack was sure to occur somewhere between 9/1 and 9/14 but that the reason you didn't go to Boston prior to 9/8 was that you had pressing business somewhere. If, as you claim, you were certain that thousands of people were going to die, why couldn't you have moved this pressing business either forward or conduct it later? Your claim makes little sense.

I also have a problem with your tendency to make some ubsubstantiated claim here, then either say, "read my book" or say that we need to do our own research. This is bullshit. You claim to have a sworn affidavit from one of your employees verifying that your claim that you figured it out in advance is true. Do you link to this affidavit anywhere on your website, or are we just supoosed to take your word for it? I have the same problem with you directing us to source material and challenging us to do our own research to prove your claims. For example, you make numerous claims that "X hid this from Y". So far, I have only been able to complete the summary report of the CIA IG, but this summary makes reference to misallocation of resources, resources being overtaxed or wrongly focused and information not being shared for a variety of reasons.

What I have yet to find is something that says or concludes "X hid this from Y". As far as I know, you are taking the source material and making unwarranted conclusions. What I want to hear from you is something to the effect that, "the IG's report states X, which is confirmed by Z and concludes that X hid this from Y", not your interpretation of what you think it means. Just because you have a take on something, doesn't mean that proves it. Lay out your case and quit referring us to your book unless you're admitting (as I suspect) that your presence here is to primarily gin up your book sales. There are far too many holes and inconsistencies in your various accounts and conclusions for me to buy your story.

[rschop]

115. RE "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" and my contacts with the FBI

In my latest post I just laid out the case that the FBI director had obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing. I even have added in excepts right from the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan and the FBI IG report. Even you SDuderstadt should be able to see the iron clad proof from this material. I will repeat this information at the bottom of this post:

As anyone can see, the information I had and conclusions I came to were based on a great deal of logic and analysis to put this together, but anyone who has even half a brain can see that it was still all based on an analysis of the motivation of the people who had written the al Qaeda document called the Fatwa. I in fact had no physical evidence of this attack of any kind, nothing at all. Other than this one document and some public available information I had absolutely no physical evidence at all to back up any of my conclusions, evidence the FBI requires prior to starting any criminal investigation.

The FBI never reacts to this kind of analysis and both I and the FBI knew it, and I knew they never would have used my information to start an investigation. From the many sit down interviews that I had with FBI criminal investigators, they said that I just did not have enough information for them to use to start any investigation, they needed some physical proof of what I was saying. Since these people are professional FBI criminal investigators, I take them at their word so again it is clear that you do not know what you are talking about contacting FBI criminal investigators.

It also turn out that several other people had come to exactly the same conclusions that I had come to. Rich Rescorla security chief for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center South Tower had come to almost the exact same conclusion that I had, that the al Qaeda terrorists were going to hijack aircraft and crash these aircraft into the World Trade Center Towers in order to bring down these towers. He was so sure of this he held regular evacuation drills for the Morgan Stanley employees at the World Trade Center South tower. Did Rescorla ever put his concerns into writing or call the FBI, I can't find any evidence that he did!

You wrote: What I have yet to find is something that says or concludes "X hid this from Y". As far as I know, you are taking the source material and making unwarranted conclusions. Here is the material and the conclusions that I came to:

From the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan,lead FBI investigator on the Cole bombing from page 71:

The week that O'Neill retired from the bureau, the F.B.I. analyst(this is FBI IOS Agent Margaret Gillespie) at Alec Station who had been reviewing intelligence on the Malaysia meeting realized that Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the U.S. She passed the information to Dina Corsi, at F.B.I. headquarters. Corsi,alarmed, sent an e-mail to the supervisor of the I-49 squad, ordering the unit to locate the Al Qaeda operatives. But, she added, because of the Wall no criminal investigators could be involved in the search. As it turned out, there was only one intelligence agent available, and he was new. An F.B.I. agent forwarded Corsi's message to Steve Bongardt, Soufan's top assistant. He called her. "Dina, you got to be kidding me!" he said. "Mihdhar is in the country?" He complained that the Wall was a bureaucratic fiction that was preventing investigators from doing their work. In a conversation the next day, he said, "If this guy is in the country, it's not because he's going to fucking Disneyland!" Later, he wrote in an e-mail, "Someday somebody will die—and, Wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective." The new agent's attempt to find Mihdhar and Hazmi proved fruitless.

But from the FBI IG report page 300-301:

On August 21, Mary, aka Margaret Gillespie, located the CIA cables referencing Hazmi's travel to the United States on January 15, 2000. Mary checked with a U.S. Customs Service representative to the CTC about Hazmi's and Mihdhar's travel. She discovered that Mihdhar had entered the United States on July 4, 2001, and had not departed. In addition, she confirmed that Hazmi had traveled to the United States in January 2000.

On August 22, Mary met with Donna, aka Dina Corsi, at FBI Headquarters and informed her of Mihdhar's July 4 entry and Hazmi's travel to the United States in March 2000....Mary and Donna met with John, aka Tom Wilshire, on August 22 in his office at FBI Headquarters to discuss their(it was actually Mary's discovery) that Mihdhar recently had entered the United States and there was no record of his departure.


From the FBI IG report page 302

On August 22, 2001, Donna sent an e-mail to the New York FBI Special Agent who we call "Glenn." In the e-mail, Donna advised Glenn that she had obtained Mihdhar's flight manifest. Donna also wrote, "the reason they were looking at Midhar is relatively general - basically they were looking at all individuals using the name Khalid because of some threat information." Significantly, the e-mail also advised that the CIA had additional surveillance photographs beyond those she had taken to New York, and the source had identified one of the individuals in these additional photographs as Khallad. Donna said that she was "requesting the details on that ."



FBI IG report page 303:

To expedite the investigative process and provide a "heads up " to the New York Field Office that the information was coming, on August 23 Donna telephoned an agent on the Bin Laden squad in the New York Field Office who we call "Chad." To comply with the wall, the New York Field Office had designated agents as either "criminal" or "intelligence," and Chad was an intelligence agent. Donna discussed with Chad Mihdhar's most recent entry into the United States and FBI Headquarters' request for the New York office to open a full field intelligence investigation to locate Mihdhar. Donna told the OIG that she did not normally telephonically contact the field on these types of issues, but there was some urgency to her request because the FBI did not want to lose the opportunity to locate Mihdhar before he left the United States. She told us, however, that Mihdhar's significance continued to be his potential connection to Khallad and the Cole attack - not that he was operational in the U.S.

FBI IG report page 304-305:

Chad explained that the attempt to locate Mihdhar seemed to relate to the criminal investigation of the Cole attack, and efforts to locate an individual normally would be handled through a sub-file to the main investigation and not as a separate full field investigation. Nevertheless, he told Donna that New York would open an intelligence investigation (due to her insistence).

On August 23, Donna sent an e-mail to John (aka Tome Wilshire) concerning her telephone conversation with Chad. She advised in the e-mail that " will open an intelligence] case." In the e-mail she also discussed a connection that had been made between Mihdhar in Malaysia to another suspect in the Cole attack (this has to be Khallad, at this time known to be the mastermind of the Cole bombing). She wrote, "I am still looking at intel, but I think we have more of a definitive connection to the Cole here than we thought." She ended by stating that she was working on the EC requesting a full field investigation, but doubted that it would be completed that day. (Note at this time it appears that FBI Agent Dina Corsi did not realize that Tom Wilshire was already fully aware that Khallad had been photographed at Kuala Lumpur and was also aware that this connected Mihdhar and Hazmi to Khallad and the planning of the Cole bombing)

On the morning of August 28, Donna sent Chad a draft copy of an EC requesting the intelligence investigation to locate Mihdhar. In the cover e-mail, Donna stated, "here is a draft" and that the EC had not been uploaded due to some tear line information that was not yet approved for passage. She concluded, "I do want to get this going as soon as possible."

The EC, entitled "Khalid M. Al-Mihdhar" with various aliases, stated in the synopsis, "Request to open an intelligence investigation." The EC outlined Mihdhar's travel to the United States in July 2001, his previous travel to the United States with Hazmi in January 2000, the background on and his attendance at the Malaysia meetings, his association with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to al Qaeda activities, and similarities between Mihdhar's travel and that of Cole suspects Quso, Ibrahim Nibras, and Khallad.

As to the identification of Khallad in the Kuala Lumpur photographs by the source, Donna told the OIG that she did not include this information because it had not yet been officially passed to the FBI, although she had requested the passage from a CTC Representative to the FBI. While Donna had relayed urgency to opening the investigation in her telephone conversation with Chad and in her cover e-mail, she designated the EC precedence as "routine," the lowest precedence level.( NOTE: This is even on the surface absurd, she wants an intelligence ingestion opened as fast as possible but then says it should be a routine investigation when the EC is written up. It is clear that Corsi only wanted an intelligence investigation to block Bongardt and his criminal investigators from the investigation any of Mihdhar or Khallad. Had the photo from Kuala Lumpur of Khallad benne sent over by Wilshire over on August 23, 2001 at the same time the photos of Mihdhar and Hazmi taken at Kuala Lumpur were sent over, Bongardt would have immediately realized that when they were shown these photos of Mihdhar and Hazmi taken at Kuala Lumpur in the June 11, 2001 meeting in New York that the CIA and Wilshire had been hiding at that time the photo of Khallad Bin Attash taken at the same meeting! Bongardt would have known that this would have been prima fascia evidence of a criminal conspiracy at the CIA in withholding critical evidence form an on going criminal FBI investigation and Wilshire knew it also!

Scott, (aka FBI Agent Steve Bongardt) received the EC on August 28. Scott, who had been at the June 11 meeting and had discussions with Donna about the Kuala Lumpur photographs, contacted Donna to discuss the appropriateness of opening an intelligence investigation as opposed to a criminal investigation. Donna told the OIG that when she realized that the EC had been disseminated to Scott, she asked Scott to delete it because it contained NSA information and therefore required approval for review by criminal agents. Scott told the OIG that he deleted the EC as she requested.

Shortly thereafter, Scott, Donna, and Rob engaged in a conference call to discuss whether the case should be opened as a criminal instead of an intelligence investigation. Scott told the OIG that he argued that the investigation should be opened as a criminal investigation due to the nexus to the Cole investigation and the greater investigative resources that could be brought to bear in a criminal investigation. Scott explained that more agents could be assigned to a criminal investigation due to the squad designations. He also asserted that criminal investigation tools, such as grand jury subpoenas, were far quicker and easier to obtain than the tools available in an intelligence investigation, such as a national security letter.

August 29, 2001: After Scott was told he and his team would could not be allowed to take part in the investigation and search for Mihdhar and Hazmi, the FBI IG Report continues on page 308:


That same morning, Scott responded in an e-mail to Donna stating:
.. .where is the wall defined? Isn't it dealing with FISA information? I think everyone is still confusing this issue.. .someday someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.' Let's hope the National Security Law Unit will stand by their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL, is getting the most 'protection'.


The passport photo of Khallad had also already been sent to both the CIA and FBI HQ by FBI Agent Ali Soufan in November 2000 and again to the CIA in April 2001. Not once did Dina Corsi, aka Donna ever mention to FBI Agent Steve Bongardt and his team of Cole investigators that the CIA had this photograph of Khallad from Kuala Lumpur. Instead she not only hides this information from Steve but then strips any chance that he and his team could investigate and search for Mihdhar, knowing that this photo of Khallad directly connected him to Mihdhar and Hazmi and to the same Kuala Lumpur meeting, where the planning of the Cole bombing had taken place!
She now knows that these three long time al Qaeda terrorists are criminally connected to the Cole bombing. Yet she specifies an intelligence investigation with absolutely no urgency, and closely coordinated her work with John, aka Tom Wishire the former deputy chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit, who had hidden this very same information from the FBI on numerous prior occasions. Had Bongardt known about the Kuala Lumpur photo of Khallad he never would have allowed Corsi to strip him of this investigation. Clearly Bongardt is aware that Mihdhar and Hazmi are in the US in order to take part in what he must feel is a horrific al Qaeda terrorists attack, but he has absolutely no way to get this investigation of Mihdhar back to his team. The claim that the NSA boiler plate on all of their information prevented her from giving him this information is ridiculous in this situation because this boiler plate clearly stated that the NSA warning on giving this information to criminal investigators was null and void in the face of any threat to people or property in the US. Everyone at the FBI HQ and CIA knew about this horrific al Qaeda attack that was just about to take place inside of the US, that would kill thousands of American.

Now as to the statement by FBI HQ Dina Corsi:

"As to the identification of Khallad in the Kuala Lumpur photographs by the source, Donna told the OIG that she did not include this information because it had not yet been officially passed to the FBI, although she had requested the passage from a CTC Representative to the FBI.

NOTE: The CIA had the "source" identify Khallad from the Kuala Lumpur photo in January 2001 in response to FBI Agent Ali Soufan's request to the CIA Yemen in November 2000 asking for information on any meeting the CIA knew about in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 and if the CIA had any information on Khallad Bin Attash. When this identification was made the CIA Bin Laden unit, the CIA Yemen station and the CIA handler for the joint source were all aware of this identification and the knowledge that Khallad had been identified by the FBI at that time as the mastermind of the Cole bombing, but none of these people at the CIA ever told the FBI or Soufan of this identification even when they all knew it had been initiated by Soufan. This was clearly makes this a wide ranging criminal conspiracy at the CIA to withhold critical information from an on going FBI criminal investigation and clearly a felony by many people at the CIA! Her argument is that because of a prior criminal conspiracy to hide this information from the FBI it was then OK to continue this conspiracy to hide the same information. Again the boiler plate on the NSA information nullified any issue with passing the NSA information to the FBI.

Bongardt never knew about the Khallad photo from Kuala Lumpur until after the attacks on 9/11.

Bongardt never even knew Corsi had been with holding the fact that the CIA had been hiding this photo of Khallad from them.

Bongardt never knew on August 22, 2001 when Gillespie told Corsi and Wilshire that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US that Wilshire knew immediately that these two long time al Qaeda terrorists were inside of the US in order to take part in the huge al Qaeda attack the CIA was already aware of. His email on July 5, 2001 and July 23, 2001 to his CIA CTC mangers clearly states this.

Bongardt never knew that the meeting with the CIA set up for June 11, 2001 had been a CIA sting on the FBI to see out what the FBI knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi.

Bongardt and Soufan never knew that Freeh had obstructed their Cole bombing investigation in November 2000 by hiding information on the Kuala Lumpur meeting.


Here is another occasion of the obstruction of the Cole investigation by the Director of the FBI himself, Louis Freeh. He sent this request to Louis Freeh after he had been told by the CIA Yemen station that the CIA had no information on Khallad on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur in November 2000!

Account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan: page 66-67 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2006

In November, 2000, a month after the Cole bombing, Soufan sent the agency (the CIA) the first of several official queries. On Soufan's behalf, the director of the F.B.I. sent a letter to the director of the C.I.A., formally ask­ing for information about Khallad, and whether there might have been an Al Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia before the bombing. The agency said that it had nothing. Soufan trusted this response; he thought that he had a good working relationship with the agency.


Page 238-239 FBI IG report:


In the midst of the Millennium period concerns in late 1999, the NSA analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to Al Qaeda activities directed against U.S. interests. The communications indicated that several members of an "operational cadre" were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000. Analysis of the communications revealed that persons named Nawaf, Khalid and Salem were involved. In early 2000, the NSA analyzed what appeared to be related communications concerning a "Khalid."171

The NSA's reporting about these communications was sent, among other places, to FBI Headquarters, the FBI's Washington and New York Field Offices, and the CIA's CTC. At the FBI, this information appeared in the daily threat update to the Director on January 4, 2000.

9/11 Commission report page 181:

The Counterterrorist Center,(CTC CIA was headed by Cofer Black at the time) had briefed the CIA leadership on the gathering in Kuala Lumpur and the information had been passed on to Berger, the NSC staff and to Director Freeh and other at the FBI..

This is clear evidence that FBI Director Louis Freeh had criminally obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing by withholding the information on the Kuala Lumpur meeting. Had this information been passed to the Cole investigators, they clearly would have had the enough time to have prevented the attacks on 9/11.

And why was the information on FBI Agent Ali Soufan stripped completely out of the 9/11 Commission report and even the FBI IG report, information which would have allowed anyone to quickly see that a massive criminal conspiracy had taken place at the CIA to hide critical information from an on going FBI investigation, a conspiracy that even the Director of the FBI had taken part in!

How is it even possible that the FBI IG investigators did not know who the lead FBI investigator on the Cole bombing was?

GO FIGURE

[SDuderstadt]

120. "anyone who has even half a brain..."

The above phrase is an old rhetorical trick referred to as "psychic foreclosure", in which the speaker, through language, attempts to argue an issue is not debatable, by implying that anyone that disagrees is not smart. That won't work here, rschop.

As anyone can see, the information I had and conclusions I came to were based on a great deal of logic and analysis to put this together, but anyone who has even half a brain can see that it was still all based on an analysis of the motivation of the people who had written the al Qaeda document called the Fatwa. I in fact had no physical evidence of this attack of any kind, nothing at all. Other than this one document and some public available information I had absolutely no physical evidence at all to back up any of my conclusions, evidence the FBI requires prior to starting any criminal investigation.

The FBI never reacts to this kind of analysis and both I and the FBI knew it, and I knew they never would have used my information to start an investigation. From the many sit down interviews that I had with FBI criminal investigators, they said that I just did not have enough information for them to use to start any investigation, they needed some physical proof of what I was saying. Since these people are professional FBI criminal investigators, I take them at their word so again it is clear that you do not know what you are talking about contacting FBI criminal investigators.

Here rschop is up to his old tricks yet once more. Are you honestly suggesting that the FBI did not already have ongoing criminal investigations of al Qaeda, rschop? Indeed we did of the embassy bombings, as well as other attacks. Are you saying that the FBI would just dismiss any information/analysis because it wasn't "physical evidence"? I hardly believe that is the case. And who said it had to start as a criminal investigation anyhow? Are you claiming that people don't provide the FBI with tips on an ongoing basis? Are you further claiming that the FBI can't investigate these tips unless a full-fledged criminal investigation is warranted? You assert that you talked to "professional FBI criminal investigators"; of course, again we have absolutely no evidence of this except for your word and, beyond that, I guess you just expect us to believe you when you claim they told you they had to have physical evidence before they could follow up in any way. You go on to claim "it is clear that you do not know what you (referring to me) are talking about contacting FBI criminal investigators", which is another attempt at psychic foreclosure. For the record, my next-door neighbors are a husband-and-wife FBI agent team, so I am not without resources in this respect.

All of this raises another question. Why are all your contacts with the FBI AFTER 9/11, as you have stated in other posts? I find it extremely difficult to believe that you didn't want to know exactly what you had to have to even go to the FBI until AFTER it was already too late. Why would someone contact the FBI ex post facto to see if their assumptions were true instead of determining what the guidelines were ahead of time? And, if you were sure of your assumptions, why would you have to ask the FBI afterwards? If you had any doubts, wouldn't the time to have resolved them been PRIOR to the attacks? You claim to have determined where, when (within a window of roughly two weeks) and how the attacks were going to take place, yet you didn't approach the FBI to tip them off or, at the least, see what else they might require in order to make it actionable?

Your actions (or lack thereof) are simply not consistent with someone who supposedly felt so strongly that you had uncovered the plot. What led you to believe BEFORE the attack that you could not approach the FBI? Your AFTER-THE-FACT contact with them? How would you have known what they were going to say before you talked to them? In fact, anyone can go to the www.fbi.gov and click on the link that says "Submit a Crime Tip". At the bottom it says, "Please describe your information". Of course, it doesn't say you have to have physical evidence to contact them about suspected criminal or terrorist activity. In fairness, this is from the current website, so it does not necessarily reflect practices prior to 9/11. In addition, one of my undergraduate school friends, who is now a lawyer representing victims of the Enron scandal, was a special assistent to Judge William Webster, when Webster was the FBI director. When I approached Paul regarding your claim, he burst into laughter when he heard your assertion and said it was "silly on its face". In fact, investigation of such matters are governed by "The Attorney General's Guidelines for FBI Foreign Intelligence Collection and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations", which have, in fact, existed well in advance of 9/11. I'd invite you to peruse those guidelines and detail precisely where "physical evidence" is required to launch an investigation. Your claim makes little, if any. sense.

Everyone at the FBI HQ and CIA knew about this horrific al Qaeda attack that was just about to take place inside of the US, that would kill thousands of American.

Really, rschop? EVERYONE at the FBI knew? Or, is this just more of your typical hyperbole? Nothing you provide proves your claim here. As a matter of fact, in wading through the material you've provided, it's difficult to tell who is saying what, because you've intertwined your own commentary with the FBI IG Report excerpts, etc. For example, it's pretty clear the IG is not stating "this was clearly makes this a wide ranging criminal conspiracy at the CIA to withhold critical information from an on going FBI criminal investigation and clearly a felony by many people at the CIA!", but are your words instead, indicated by the really bad writing and the absence of similar conclusions in the IG's report. Now, whether you are doing this deliberately to give people the impression that the IG is either making or endorsing your claims of "massive criminal conspiracies" or "clearly a felony" is difficult to tell. These are YOUR conclusions and, to be blunt, I believe you are putting the worst possible construction on events based upon your take on peoples' states of mind which, for the life of me, I don't know how you would know. Of course, if you're trying to sell a book, hyperbole helps.

I'm not pretending to have read all of the IG's full report but, even from reading the executive summary, it's clear the IG is not coming to the same conclusions you are, although I think you, again, sometimes intend for it to come off that way. Your writing is so imprecise and difficult to follow, it's possible that it serves this very end. In any event, the IG's Report instead cites things like:

Systemic impediments that hindered the sharing of information
between the CIA and the FBI ........................................................ 316
1. Use of detailees...................................................................... 316
2. FBI employees’ lack of understanding of CIA reporting
process.................................................................................... 323
3. Inadequate procedures for documenting receipt of CIA
information............................................................................. 325
4. Lack of appropriate infrastructure in FBI field offices ......... 327
5. OIG conclusion on impediments to information sharing ...... 330

At the request of the FBI Director, we examined what the FBI knew
before September 11 that was potentially related to the terrorist attacks. We
focused on the FBI’s handling of the Phoenix EC, the Moussaoui case, and the
information about Hazmi and Mihdhar, two of the September 11 terrorists.
Our review found that the FBI had failed to fully evaluate, investigate,
exploit, and disseminate information related to the Phoenix EC, the Moussaoui
case, and the Hazmi and Mihdhar matter. The causes for these failures were
widespread and varied, ranging from poor individual performance to more
substantial systemic deficiencies that undermined the FBI’s efforts to detect
and prevent terrorism.

By describing the action and inaction of individual FBI employees in this
report, particularly the lower-level employees whose conduct we discuss in
detail, we do not suggest that they committed intentional misconduct. Nor do
we think that they are responsible individually for the FBI’s deficiencies in
handling the information related to the September 11 attacks. We believe it
would be unfair to blame these individuals, who often worked with insufficient
resources and with overwhelming impediments. Many pursued their duties in
good faith, making difficult judgments about where to focus their efforts.
Some performed aggressively and well. Others did not do all they could have
and should have to respond to the information they received. While the FBI
should examine the performance of the individuals who we describe in this
report, we do not believe they are personally responsible for not preventing the
attacks or should be blamed for the tragedy that occurred.

Rather, we believe that widespread and long-standing deficiencies in the
FBI’s operations and Counterterrorism Program caused the problems we
described in this report. For example, the FBI did not handle the Phoenix EC
appropriately or give it the attention it deserved. The FBI did little with the
Phoenix EC before the September 11 attacks because of the FBI’s inadequate
analytical program, insufficient supervision of analysts in the program, the
focus on operational priorities at the expense of strategic analysis, the failure to
adequately share intelligence information, and the lack of adequate tools to
facilitate information sharing within and outside the FBI.

So, the IG describes persistent and widespread breakdowns, not the "massive criminal conspiracy" you claim, nor does it support your claim of obstruction by anyone, including Louis Freeh (who I happen to dislike). It's real simple, rschop. In debate and Logic, a basic principle holds that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'm hard-pressed to regard your claims as anything less than extraordinary, but it's equally clear that you have failed miserably to provide the required extraordinary evidence.

Your overall claim breaks down into no less than three parts. That you 1) figured out the details of the 9/11 attacks pretty much through your analysis 2) that you did so prior to 9/11 and told numerous people and 3) that your analysis demonstrates a "massive criminal conspiracy" that proves the FBI knew of the coming attacks and purposely let them happen. I'm sorry, but my conclusions are that you 1) can claim anything you want as to your investigation AFTER the attacks took place and you don't appear to have taken any steps to prove that you figured it out in advance 2) Even though you claim to have some sort of affidavits from employees you informed of the plot prior to 9/11, despite repeated requests for evidence of such affidavits, you continue to evade the question and 3) I keep waiting for your "smoking gun" as far as the "massive criminal conspiracy" to "purposely allow the attacks to happen" and you NEVER deliver.

What we get instead is your rather flawed analysis which, coincidentally, does not appear to improve the more we debate this back and forth. I'll say it one more time. I believe you're here to primarily sell your book and I think your claims are, to put it mildly, grossly exaggerated.

[Flatulo]

106. Please clarify something...

Here you state...

> I knew they were going to use 4-inch knives since I had been horrified ever since the FAA ruling in the mid-
> 1990s that allowed passengers with 4-inch knives to legally board US aircraft.

But you later state...

> it was inconceivable to me that they would also not do this last level of security check and then adjust their
> plans on how to get these 4-inch knives through security.

Can you clarify? If it was legal to carry a four-inch knife onto a commercial flight, then why were the terrorists scheming on how to smuugle the knives aboard?

[SDuderstadt]

107. Excellent question, Flatulo

I think rschop's "story" is riddled with holes. I suspect he's here to sell a book that isn't doing too well because it's not credible. He's also posting on RW websites.

http://headingright.com/2007/04/26/george-tenant/

[Flatulo]

108. Hard to tell... he sure does seem to have all a lot of details down out pretty well...

I have a hard time keeping the timeline and all the players straight in my brain. I need something graphical like a PERT chart to track the inter-relationships.

[SDuderstadt]

109. I don't think many of his conclusions are warranted....

looks pretty flimsy so me.

[Flatulo]

110. I am only a neophyte... I bow to your superior logic skills...

I do find the poor grammar and spelling in his posts to be a bit annoying.

Still, I have read all his posts with interest.

As my drunken sod of a dad used to say, "It don't cost ya nothing to listen..."

[Diane_nyc]

111. Premature accusations against rschop. But more evidence/documentation from rschop would be nice.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=211060">Flatulo wrote:

106. Please clarify something...

Here you state...

> I knew they were going to use 4-inch knives since I had been horrified ever since the FAA ruling in the mid-
> 1990s that allowed passengers with 4-inch knives to legally board US aircraft.

But you later state...

> it was inconceivable to me that they would also not do this last level of security check and then adjust their
> plans on how to get these 4-inch knives through security.

Can you clarify? If it was legal to carry a four-inch knife onto a commercial flight, then why were the terrorists scheming on how to smuugle the knives aboard?

I see no contradiction here. Perhaps the hijackers were just double-checking to make sure that they could, indeed, carry these knives on board without needing to "smuggle" them?

To others here, especially SDuderstadt: Let's cut out the accusations that rschop is lying, shall we? I think it's premature to judge his veracity one way or the other.

On the other hand, I do think we're justified in questioning rschop and his claims.

And it would be nice if rschop would provide (here, not just in his book) some documentation of at least some of the specific things that he observed before 9/11 which led him to conclude that a terrorist attack was imminent, and which led him to conclude specifically that it would occur during the first half of September, and to figure out which airports would be involved, etc.

[SDuderstadt]

112. Show me where I accused him of lying....

what I am asking for is verification of his claims, otherwise they don't ring true. I believe he is here to sell his book, Period.

[Diane_nyc]

113. Okay, you don't explicitly accuse him of lying, but ....

But some of your phrasing does come across as making such an accusation, rather than just asking for clarification and evidence. For example:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=211054">Here, you wrote:

104. This gets goofier by the minute....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=211038">Here, you wrote:

There are far too many holes and inconsistencies in your various accounts and conclusions for me to buy your story.

Perhaps you didn't mean to come across as accusatory. In that case, I would suggest more diplomatic phrasing, such as:

"Your story seems inconsistent because A seems inconsistent with B, and because X seems inconsistent with Y. Could you please clarify?"

and

"If you want me to take your story seriously enough to consider buying your book, then you'll need to provide some specific documentation of points X, Y, and Z here in this forum, with quotes and citations, not just refer us to your book or to a big long report."

[SDuderstadt]

114. With all due respect, Diane...

rschop's story does not ring true nor does he ever provide sufficient evidence to believe him. I frankly don't care how this comes off. I have asked him repeatedly for this information. Sorry.

[rschop]

119. RE: With all due respect, Diane...

At the time of the FBI sit down interviews I also offered to have any of my employees be interviewed by the FBI criminal investigators and also offered in writing in the summary of the interviews that I sent back to the FBI, summaries that are located right in the book, to answer any question at any time at any place while using a polygraph test, questions on any subject that the FBI might want to ask me. I don't know how you could get any more specific than that.

I also offered to testify under oath subject to all of the laws of perjury, to the both the Joint Inquiry Committee of the House and the Senate and to the 9/11 Commission and provided both of them statements in writing to this exact effect!

[SDuderstadt]

122. You claimed previously that you had affidavits from...

some of your employees. Where are they?

[rschop]

136. RE: You claimed previously that you had affidavits from...

I think I have already answered your question on this. The affidavit was given to the FBI to FBI Agent Vince Taglieri when I went into the FBI just after the attacks on 9/11 to do a full on sit down interview.

You have my permission to ask the FBI and FBI Agent Vince Tagieri for a copy of this affidavit if you want, they posses the only copy of this document and I am sure it has been kept safe with them. So you can ask the FBI for this document.

At the FBI sit down interview, I also offered to have any of my employees testify to the FBI under oath in a sit down interview on this same subject just as I had done, and the fact that almost everyone in my company had known about these attacks on 9/11 since February 2001.

When I sent the summary of the interview back to the FBI, in writing I said I would be more than happy to testify under oath using a polygraph machine at any time on any question the FBI would like to ask.

When I contacted the investigators of the Joint Inquiry Committee of the House and the Senate I said in writing that I would be more than happy to testify under oath to the investigators or in Joint Inquiry public hearings, and gave the exact same statement in writing to the 9/11 Commission. These statements are at the back of the book.

[SDuderstadt]

138. No, YOU ask the FBI for this affidavit...

Do you honestly expect us to believe you gave the FBI your only copy of such a critical document?


More and more, your argument boils down to: "All this really happened! Trust me! Scout's honor!". Jesus, rschop...do you honestly think you can pull this off?


"I would prefer if no one asks how I obtained this information!".


LOLOLOLOLOL!

[rschop]

117. RE: But more evidence/documentation from rschop would be nice.

Just did , see my latest post. I will also add in a post when I get time on how it was possible to determine to within a two week window when this attack would take place and the several pieces of information that confirmed this time period.

[rschop]

116. Reply to Please clarify something...

Excellant question. I was convinced that while the terrorits were going to use 4-inch knives they still wanted to get on these planes with the least secuirty notice as possible. Airport security finding 4-5 young middle eastern males all getting on the same flight and all carying 4-inch knives could clearly have triggered a further security search.

[Bassman66]

78. Presupposition

"a lot of questions need to be answered about the Bush administration's utter lack of preparation for 9/11"

You are presupposing they were not prepared. Your other question is not about 9/11, it's about polcies after 9/11.

That's why people don't believe you SD when you say you want answers.

[SDuderstadt]

86. I don't give a flying fuck if you believe me or not, Bassman

I am not "presupposing" they were not prepared anymore than you are presupposing "Bush knew". Jesus.

[Bassman66]

93. You have imposed limits on a new investigation

Why?

Do you not think that the possibility of foreknowledge should be investigated?

[SDuderstadt]

102. I have answered this over and over...

apparently you can't comprehend the distinction between disregarding warnings and "foreknowledge" which means they were "in on it"

[Bassman66]

135. Why do you want to rule out foreknowledge.

Why not have an open investigation?

What kind of investigation says "these are the answers now what are the questions"? Oh, yes I forgot, we already had one of those.

[SDuderstadt]

139. I am not ruling out foreknowledge...

I am asking to see concrete proof of it. In the absence of such proof, it's more reasonable to assume there was not foreknowledge rather than to assume there was. Let's be clear about one thing: I am using "foreknowledge" to refer to direct knowledge of specific, critical plot information, not warnings or clues.

[Bassman66]

141. It's reasonable assume there was not foreknowledge

The investigation would investigate that, that's what investigations are for.

Why do you want to rule it out upfront? Doesn't make any sense.

[SDuderstadt]

144. This is amazing...

the subject line of my post says, spefically, I am not ruling out foreknowledge. Then you stupidly ask me why I am ruling out foreknowledge, Unfuckinbelievable.

[Bassman66]

145. Parameters

"I am using "foreknowledge" to refer to direct knowledge of specific, critical plot information, not warnings or clues."

Why the parameters? Always the parameters.

Why do you want to rule out foreknowledge of specific crtical plot information?

[vincent_vega_lives]

143. They're all goofy

Paraphrase:

Evidently, "They're all goofy".reflects an impression that some has gotten after reading this forum for a long time.

On the other hand, it would be far easier for you to settle this issue by citing a bunch of counterexamples - and preferably a bunch of counterexamples having to do with content and not just epistemology.

[Diane_nyc]

146. Non-parallels .....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=211760">This post by vincent_vega_lives is apparently intended as a parody of http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=211373&mesg_id=211706">this post of mine. I should point out some key differences between my original post and vincent_vega_lives's parody.

vincent_vega_lives's parody was written as a reply to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=210241">this post by Bassman66, which said:

39. There are people here who are desperate

to paint everyone in "the truth movement" with the same brush, they create for themselves a supposedly easy target. "They're all goofy".

They have no interest in acknowledgeing the wide spectrum of questions there are about 9/11, they don't want any answers about 9/11 themselves and they are unwilling to acknowledge that some of the goofier stuff could actually be Government sponsored COINTELPRO.

By their fruits you shall know them.

On the other hand, my post was a reply to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=211373&mesg_id=211632">this post by SDuderstadt, which was addressed to HamdenRice and contained the following:

I'm still waiting for you to give us the names of the "most of the OCTers" who believe the 9/11 Commission Report is totally correct and complete. I really don't understand why you can't seem to name any. It's certainly apparent you haven't got the slightest bit of proof for your rather silly claim.

And here are the parts of my post (in reply to SDuderstadt) that vincent_vega_lives left out in his parody:

It would be extremely difficult to prove a universal generalization like this. To prove it, Hamden would have to take the time to build a list of links to every post by "most of the OCTer" in this forum, and then you, in turn, would have to take the time to re-read all those linked posts. Obviously, that's not feasible.

...

Perhaps it's a wrong impression. But asking Hamden to prove it it obviously going to go nowhere.

Thus, my post was a response to SDuderstadt's apparently repeated requests for proof of HamdenRice's universal generalization about the beliefs of "most of the OCTers." On the other hand, vincent_vega_lives's parody was not a response to a request for proof of the universal generalization "they're all goofy."

(ETA: The point of my reply to SDuderstadt was not to defend HamdenRice's universal generalization, but rather to question the productiveness of SDuderstadt's habit of responding to it by requesting proof. I'm already getting tired of the endless bickering around here, so, every now and then, I'll be suggesting possible ways to cut it short. That was the intent of my post.)

A further non-parallel: vincent_vega_lives's parody included my mention of the distinction between epistemology and content of the "official story" (e.g. the 9/11 CR). But "goofiness" implies that someone's thought processes are disordered, and thus inherently is, primarily, a matter of epistemology. On the other hand, amongst the people whom HamdenRice and others here think of as "OCTers," there are at least a few people here who agree with the "Truthers" here that the 9/11 Commission Report is untrustworthy for various reasons (an epistemological issue), yet who, as far as I can tell so far, consistently seem to defend the content of the 9/11 Commission Report. (Note: In that last sentence, note the word "seem" and the qualifier "as far as I can tell so far.")

[vincent_vega_lives]

149. While not "parallels"

as it was not in response to a request for proof of the universal generalization "they're all goofy."

It is my impression that I have come to over time. Hence it requires no "proof". :hi:

[Diane_nyc]

150. Is Paul Thompson "goofy"? Are the Jersey Girls "goofy"? nt

[Make7]

152. Is Mickey Mouse's dog "Goofy"? ( n/t )

[SDuderstadt]

154. This is as good a time as any to tell this...if you're offended by risque jokes, stop now!

Mickey Mouse went to consult a divorce attorney about dissolving his marriage to Minnie. After listening to Mickey at length, the attorney finally said, "I hate to disappoint you, Mickey, but I'm afraid that your claim that you think Minnie is a little crazy just isn't enough to justify a divorce". At that point, Mickey, becoming indignant, stood up and said, "I didn't say I think she's a little crazy! I said I think she's fucking Goofy!."

[vincent_vega_lives]

156. Come to think of it

Pluto is a dog, Mickey is a mouse, What IS Goofy?

[vincent_vega_lives]

157. THEY ARE GOOFY

if they think:

1. Any building on 9-11-01 was brought down with explosives, thermite, thermate, mini-nukes, death-rays, mind control or pod planes.

2. No commercial aircraft loaded with passengers hit WTC-1, WTC-2, and/or the Pentagon.

3. NORAD "stood down" on 9-11-01.

4. Flight 93 could not have crashed in Shanksville.

[SDuderstadt]

158. I agree 100%

The evidence that these things happened is undeniable.

[Kalun D]

163. I agree

157. THEY ARE GOOFY

if they think:

3. NORAD "stood down" on 9-11-01.

158. I agree 100%

The evidence that these things happened is undeniable.

LOLZ!

[Diane_nyc]

159. Paul Thompson and the Jersey Girls

To vincent_vega_lives:

As far as I am aware, Paul Thompson does not advocate any of the claims mentioned in http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=212004">your post.

Paul Thompson has a website, http://www.unansweredquestions.org/timeline/">The Complete 9/11 Timeline. He's also one of several people involved in the Cooperative Research site which has another, more recent http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project">Complete 9/11 Timeline. For more about Paul Thompson, see also:

• http://www.nowpublic.com/paul_thompson_july_22nd_2005">Unofficial transcript of Paul Thompson’s morning statement at the July 22nd Congressional Briefing: The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later: A Citizens’ Response – Did They Get It Right?


• http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/16/085310.php">review of The Terror Timeline by Paul Thompson


• http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/911_terror_timeline_by_paul_thompson.jsp">blurb for The Terror Timeline

As for the Jersey Girls, I'm not sure what they believe. But they were the main leaders of the lobbying effort that brought the 9/11 Commission into being. Do you feel that they were "goofy" for doing that?

For more about the Jersey Girls and their efforts, see the video 9/11: Press for Truth.

[Diane_nyc]

155. Clarifying my aim here ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=211808">As I wrote here:

(ETA: The point of my reply to SDuderstadt was not to defend HamdenRice's universal generalization, but rather to question the productiveness of SDuderstadt's habit of responding to it by requesting proof. I'm already getting tired of the endless bickering around here, so, every now and then, I'll be suggesting possible ways to cut it short. That was the intent of my post.)

For more about what I was trying to accomplish, and how and why, please see my latest post to SDuderstadt, titled http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=211373&mesg_id=211859">Burden-of-proof vs. counteracting prejudices and bridging longstanding communication gaps.

(ETA: See also my subsequent post to SDuderstadt, titled http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=211373&mesg_id=211921">What do YOU do when something seems "obviously" true, but would be very time-consuming to prove?.)

[Diane_nyc]

160. Are these people "goofy"?

• http://rawstory.com/news/2008/FBI_documents_contradict_Sept._11_Commission_0228.html">FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report by Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story, Thursday, February 28, 2008, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=196617&mesg_id=196617">discussed here on DU


• http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080531_Pinning_the_blame_for_terror.html">Suing the Sauidis: Pinning the blame for 9/11 by By Chris Mondics, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sat, May. 31, 2008, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x211500">discussed here on DU (see also http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade">BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince by David Leigh and Rob Evans, The Guardian (U.K.), Friday February 15, 2008)


• Questions about the reliability of confessions obtained via torture, e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/22ksm.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin">Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation by Scott Shane, New York Times, June 22, 2008, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x211539">discussed here on DU


• http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report by Alan Miller, OpedNews, September 23, 2007, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=176166&mesg_id=176166">discussed here on DU

[HamdenRice]

13. Excellent post!

It is general enough to encompass both the 9/11 CR and the short hand version usually spun by the mainstream media.

[Perry Logan]

17. Note the bias contained in the phrase "official story."

The phrase "official story" biases the argument from the start, doesn't it? The word "story" clearly implies that something was made up. It's just more spin--and more straw.

[JackRiddler]

18. Ah, there we go...

People just think the government always feeds them PR, on those few occasions when it isn't lying. Why? What's happened to this world? O, woe.

[Diane_nyc]

147. The word "story" - as in "news story"?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=206792&mesg_id=206948">Perry Logan wrote:

17. Note the bias contained in the phrase "official story."

The phrase "official story" biases the argument from the start, doesn't it? The word "story" clearly implies that something was made up. It's just more spin--and more straw.

Actually, the word "story" does not necessarily imply that something was made up. For example, "news stories" are presumably not "made up" (although they are certainly fallible).

[Bassman66]

29. Thanks JR

Your posts are always well worth reading.

[Bassman66]

40. Sorry Jack, don't know where else to post this

Dear all,

Please watch this recent speech given by John Pilger - one of the last real investigative journalists still standing.

http://video.google.com/?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wv

If someone can give it it's own thread that would be great. It kinda touches on the OP subject - media complicity.

It's brilliant.

[Sweet Pea]

41. Pilger?

No thanks. I prefer a little integrity and honesty in my reporters.

[Bassman66]

42. There is none better than Pilger.

The truth about America hurts.

[Sweet Pea]

44. Well....

you keep thinking that and all will be fine in your little world.

[Bassman66]

45. Perhaps you could give us an example

of John Pilgers dishonesty.

[Sweet Pea]

46. Well....for starters...

he wrote that United Nations sanctions killed more than 60,000 Iraqi children each year. Blaming the UN for whatever deaths occurred in Iraq during the 90's instead of laying blame where it should have squarely sat - on Hussein's shoulders - is enough for me to see Pilger for what he is - a lying, sensationalizing author of trash tabloid bullshit designed for shock value rather than "news", to HELL with the truth.

But, like I said, knock yourself out. I'm sure he appreciates your support.

[Bassman66]

48. No, the sanctions killed the children

The UN were responsible for the sanctions not Saddam Hussein.

Got any more?

[JackRiddler]

54. Thanks.

At least I know what sort of politics you have beyond 9/11 denialism.

[Sweet Pea]

63. The politics of reality

While at the same time, you have given proof of your politics besides Trooferism - specifically that the evil UN kept poor Saddam from feeding and healing all the poor children in Iraq - especially the Kurdish children, more specifically the Kurdish children of Halabja. Although in this case, the "cure" for their sicknesses and their hunger was a tad more draconian than the diseases.

[JackRiddler]

65. Halabja? You mean the front where the Iranian and Iraqi forces armed by the West and USSR...

used poison gas on each other?

[Bassman66]

68. "Trooferism"

Did you ever get out the playground?

[rschop]

70. Reply to "The Official Story"

I think JackRiddler has done an excellent good job of presenting the common sense view of what is thought of as "the official story". It is basically the 9/11 Commission report. But the book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" has a much more accurate account of 9/11. In fact since it was based almost exclusively on official government accounts of 9/11, I think in time it will be considered to be the final and most accurate official account of 9/11.

I first started writing this book by creating very detailed time lines from both the Joint Inquiry investigation of 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission report. I had decided to write this book after attending the 9/11 Commission hearings on April 13-14, 2004, and watching the Director of the CIA George Tenet lie to the 9/11 Commissioners. In response to questions from Tim Roemer, if Tenet knew a huge al Qaeda attack was coming that would kill thousands of Americans, what had he told the President in August 2001, he said he had not talked to George Bush at all in August, 2001.

But Bill Harlow, spokesman for the CIA, said right after Tenet's testimony that Tenet had lied to the 9/11 Commission. Harlow said Tenet had flown down to Crawford on August 17, and talked to Bush in Washington on August 30, 2001. Evidence now shows he had also flown down to Crawford on August 24, 2001, just after finding out about Moussaoui and the fact that both al Qaeda terrorists Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were known to be inside of the US. At these hearings I presented to a number of the 9/11 Commissioners, a 150 page dossier of summaries of the FBI interviews I had been part of and correspondence with Joint Inquiry investigators on how I had accidentally found out about the attacks on 9/11 in almost every detail on February 11, 2001. The FBI had said I should not feel it was my fault that these attacks had taken place and the Joint Inquiry investigators had agreed with the FBI.

When the FBI IG report was un-redacted in May 2006, this was added to the book and filled in most of the missing pieces of the story in the time line. The FBI IG report was a much more detailed account of what actually occurred prior to 9/11. But, there were still many unanswered questions, like why had the CIA known about Mihdhar and Hazmi for 21 months before they gave the FBI this information, and even then why had the CIA continued to hide the photo of Khallad they had taken at Kuala Lumpur from the FBI. It was obvious this was still not the whole story.

It was finally the account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan, that finally filled in almost all of the remaining pieces to this story. While this account was not an official government report, it had been detailed by FBI Agent Steve Bongardt to Lawrence Wright, and was vetted by John Miller FBI information officer. When this account was added to the final time line it became abundantly clear that a massive criminal conspiracy had existed at the CIA to hide information from the FBI criminal investigators on numerous occasions. This was the information on the al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, and the fact that Walid (Khallad) Bin Attash, master mind of the Cole bombing, had attended this meeting with Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Salem al-Hazmi, planning the Cole bombing. It was even possible to find the reasons this conspiracy had taken place.

This information in fact had been deliberately hidden from the FBI investigators on at least 12 separate occasions detailed in the book. Other posts list these reports and the page numbers of these occasions. The worst part was that the CIA, and the groups at FBI HQ they had subjugated, the office of the Director of the FBI and the ITOS unit, not only blocked information from the FBI criminal investigators but finally shut down all investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US. The ITOS RFU unit including Maltbie and Frasca shut down FBI Agent Harry Samit's investigation of Moussaoui, and the ITOS Bin Laden unit with Corsi and Wilshire, former deputy chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit and at this time liaison to the manger of the ITOS, Michael Rolince, shut down FBI Agent Steve Bongardt's investigation of Mihdhar.

In October of 2007, email from Wilshire to his CTC managers in July 23, 2001 was found that stated that Wilshire was sure that Mihdhar and by association Hazmi would be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda operation. It is now clear that on August 22, 2001, when FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie found that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US and took this information to Corsi and Wilshire, that Wilshire clearly knew both Mihdhar and Hazmi were here to take part in the huge attack the CIA was aware of. When he and Corsi were sabotaging Bongardt's investigation of Mihdhar, he knew that the FBI would be unable to find Mihdhar in time, and as a result that thousands of people would perish in this huge al Qaeda attack. Every date, every email, every page number has been added to this book to completely document this massive criminal conspiracy that prevented the FBI criminal investigators from stopping this attack on 9/11. A summary of this information is located at www.eventson911.com.

[Diane_nyc]

79. Your previous posts

rschop wrote:

Other posts list these reports and the page numbers of these occasions.

What other posts? Can you find them easily and provide links?

Have you considered creating a journal here on DU, and displaying your more important posts there? This would make it a lot easier to refer back to previous posts of yours.

[rschop]

84. RE: Diane_nyc

Thanks for your input and suggestion. I will add links to my other posts, you can also get all of this information in my book at www.eventon911.com. You can also search for rschop, this will list all of my other posts. These posts summarize this book which carefully documented every page in these reports where I found this information.

It is a terrible tragedy that the conclusions in my book, show the CIA and the groups the CIA had taken over at FBI HQ had deliberately allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place but from the many years worth of research and from very carefully constructed times lines from these government reports you can come to no other conclusion. HOW SAD!

[Diane_nyc]

87. Design of the website www.eventon911.com ?

You might want to fix your website design so that your website can be read in Mozilla Firefox as well as in Microsoft Internet Explorer. In Firefox, there's a lot of text overlap to the point of being unreadable.

[rschop]

88. RE : Diane_nyc

Thanks will do.

[Bassman66]

80. I just watched 'Press for Truth' again this afternoon

it's been a while.

God, I am so angry, so very, very angry.

This is the real 9/11 issue, this is where the focus should be.

Why did the Government fight tooth and nail to avoid an investigation and then once they had no choice why did they then do their best to obstruct it and control it's direction (and succeed)?

'Press for Truth' - THE 9/11 Video

[Diane_nyc]

81. I agree. "9/11: Press for Truth" is a great video.

There are details one can nitpick, but, on the whole, it's an excellent documentary, emphasizing some of the most important issues.

[Bassman66]

82. "9/11: Press for truth" is a great reminder that...

the 9/11 Commission report said this:

To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.

Yes it really said that. Let's say if it was found to be the I.S.I. then that would be "of little practical significance"?

Can you believe it? That got away with saying that. That is part of the "Official Story" that so many here are prepared to spend so much time and effort into defending.

Holy shit!

I can not stress how great a video "9/11: Press for Truth" really is.

[Sweet Pea]

94. In the very next paragraph...

the report states:

Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government—or foreign government official—supplied any funding.

They also state that this operation cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute - a paltry sum, really, when you consider the wealth of bin Laden, for example.

In any event, taking quotes out of context is not usually a good thing to do.

[Bassman66]

96. You'r e kidding, right?

Seriously?

You're saying that knowing who funded 9/11 is of "little practcal significance"? is this bizarro world?

Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government—or foreign government official—supplied any funding.

They've seen no evidence? Really? There certainly is evidence, why don't they discuss that evidence and tell us why it's not credible?

Amazing.

[JackRiddler]

98. So.

First they make an absurd statement - don't follow the money! it's unimportant! - then they tell a lie. Because if they haven't seen any evidence (which is not necessarily proof, merely evidence) of such ties, then they're lying. Unless they spent the years of their investigation in a sensory deprivation chamber.

[Bassman66]

99. That is possibly the most truly astonishing...

..entry in the 9/11 CR.

I just can't believe that they put that in and kept a straight face.

And there are people here willing to defend it.

"no practical significance".

What!

[Diane_nyc]

105. "of little practical significance" -- what does this mean?

Relevant paragraphs from http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch5.htm">9/11 Commission Remport, Chapter 5:

To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance. Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding. If a particular funding source had dried up, al Qaeda could have easily tapped a different source or diverted funds from another project to fund an operation that cost $400,000-$500,000 over nearly two years.

The Funding of the 9/11 Plot
As noted above, the 9/11 plotters spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack. The available evidence indicates that the 19 operatives were funded by al Qaeda, either through wire transfers or cash provided by KSM, which they carried into the United States or deposited in foreign accounts and accessed from this country. Our investigation has uncovered no credible evidence that any person in the United States gave the hijackers substantial financial assistance. Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government-or foreign government official-supplied any funding.131

The above two paragraphs are preceded by a lengthy explanation of where Al Qaeda, as a whole, is believed to have gotten its funding. So the question of Al Qaeda's funding as a whole is not said to be "of little practical significance," just the more specific question of how some of that larger pool of money got allocated to the 9/11 attacks in particular.

Still, the allocation of money to the to the 9/11 attacks in particular would indeed be of practical significance if the U.S. government's aim were to arrest and try the terrorists in a court of law. Anyone involved in funding the 9/11 attacks themselves could (I would think) be charged with a greater crime than those who were merely involved in the funding of Al Qaeda as a whole.

So I guess the funding of the 9/11 attacks is "of little practical significance" because the U.S government's aim has not been to charge the terrorists with crimes and try them in a court of law, but rather just to detain some of them in an extralegal manner.

And, of course, to use them as a justification for war.

Anyhow, here is the relevant http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Notes.htm">end note from the second paragraph quoted above:

131. The hijackers spent more than $270,000 in the United States, and the costs associated with Moussaoui were at least $50,000. The additional expenses included travel to obtain passports and visas, travel to the United States, expenses incurred by the plot leaders and facilitators, and the expenses incurred by the people selected to be hijackers who ultimately did not participate. For many of these expenses, we have only fragmentary evidence and/or unconfirmed detainee reports, and can make only a rough estimate of costs.The $400,000 to $500,000 estimate does not include the cost of running training camps in Afghanistan, where the hijackers were recruited and trained, or the marginal cost of the training itself. Finally, the architect of the plot, KSM, put the total cost at approximately $400,000, apparently excluding Moussaoui's expenses. Intelligence reports, interrogations of KSM, June 3, 2003; Apr. 5, 2004. Our investigation has uncovered no evidence that the 9/11 conspirators employed hawala as a means to move the money that funded the operation. Indeed, the surviving plot participants have either not mentioned hawala or have explicitly denied using it to send money to the United States. Adam Drucker interview (Jan. 12, 2004); Intelligence report, interrogation of KSM, April 5, 2004; Intelligence report, interrogation of detainee, Apr. 2, 2004; Intelligence report, interrogation of Ramzi Binalshibh, Apr. 7, 2004. On domestic U.S. and foreign government funding, see, e.g., Adam Drucker interviews (Jan. 12, 2004; May 19, 2004); Dennis Lormel interview (Jan. 16, 2004); FBI response to Commission question for the record, July 13, 2004. As discussed in chapter 7, we have examined three transactions involving individuals in San Diego. Based on all of the evidence, we have concluded that none of these transactions involved a net transfer of funds to the hijackers.

[Bassman66]

123. That is just unbelievable.

Isn't it?

They are not chasing the money providers even though in law they are as guilty as the hijackers.

Would evidence that the I.S.I. provided some of the funds be of "little practical significance"?

Have they not seen that evidence?

Did they lie?

A new investigation is needed.

[Bassman66]

85. I love the Jersey Girls...

they give me hope for the future.

Really!

Not all Americans are bad, in fact most are probably the biblical eqiuvalent of the lost sheep.

How do the people get control back?

[Bassman66]

95. Why is "9/11: Press for Truth" locked in the..

..political videos forum?

Can we have a thread on it in this forum?

[JackRiddler]

161. Bumping because the question of whether there is an official story is back!

JICI and The 9/11 Commission Report are the two main texts of the official story. Of non-governmental texts, the KSM story as told by Yosri Fouda is an essential element.

[vincent_vega_lives]

181. It's weird

reading posts you made in the past that you have little recollection posting.

[leftofthedial]

182. 5) Anyone who disagrees with any part of 1 - 3

is some kind of insane, wack-a-doodle, fringe nutjob.

[JackRiddler]

183. Oh! I see!

I didn't get it at first, but I see you're proposing this as a component of the official story.

Yeah, to many, many people it seems to be.

[leftofthedial]

185. It is clearly part of the OCT propaganda effort

(as usual for "official" stories)

[JackRiddler]

184. I suppose I should add an optional 3a, really...

Many seem to implicitly include the following proposition, actually not so much among the OCT people on this board:

3a) Insofar as incompetence or mistakes (such as a failed sting) on the part of US agencies was involved in failing to prevent the attacks, it was not wanton, criminal, or sufficient to warrant firings of personnel (or even to block promotions). The question must take a secondary priority compared to the need for unity and moving on in the face of a dire threat.

[vincent_vega_lives]

186. OCT

19 Highly educated, motivated and determined individuals took advantage of

uncoordinated and budget hamstrung intelligence services,

an uninterested administration fixated on Iraq,

a hopelessly untrained, disjointed airport security network

a useless immigration enforcement agency which only worked with voluntary compliance

and long standing convoluted hijacking response protocols which were based on compliant hijackings,

to turn a critical part of our transportation system into weapons of mass destruction.

They planned this for years, financed it, resourced it, trained for it and rehearsed it in detail.

[Marksbrother]

187. That's why they're called True Believers, folks

It's a neat little scenario. Simple, plausible for the masses, and goofier than Goofy. Oh, and silly, too.

[vincent_vega_lives]

189. I am willing to listen

to what you think is silly about it.

[SDuderstadt]

191. Nice try, but it's actually "truthers" like you who are "true believers"...

for example, your claim that "no planes crashed on 9/11" is contradicted by nearly everything imaginable, yet you persist in making this goofy claim. Even your own "side" shuns you, dude, Have you ever noticed that virtually none of them come to your defense? Why is that? Hint: Because they find your unsustainable claims embarrassing.

Maybe you should look up the definition of "true believer".

[Marksbrother]

192. Spoken like a True Believer

[SDuderstadt]

193. Unfortunately for you, dude...

there's actually evidence for what I believe, despite your hand-waving and ludicrous claims that all the evidence must've been faked. Let us know when you've discovered that smoking gun, dude. Otherwise, don't call us...we'll call you.

[Marksbrother]

194. Unfortunately, your post is too goofy and silly to bother with

[JackRiddler]

188. Thanks.

I think that's an able summary that would meet with a broad consensus among the 9/11 Commissioners, a majority of politicians (possibly even most Republicans, except for the third point), reporters with the corporate media outlets, and the Joint Intel Committees.

So there is an official story. Most of which I think is bullshit, but it's there. It exists.

The closer we get into the details, of course, the more we'll find conflicting versions of details, also multiple revisions over time in certain key areas, like the air events timeline, etc.

[vincent_vega_lives]

190. Apart from the speculation on CD and CGI, ect

what parts to you specifically think is bullshit and why?

[JackRiddler]

204. Please feel free to search my thousands of posts on this forum from the past few years.

Including several that are on the front board, right now. As this question is a bit bigger than I want to cover in post no. 204 on this particular thread. Thanks.

[rschop]

195. re: OCT

It looks like you have completely overlooked the information that is both available not only the internet but even on this Forum.

The statement "19 Highly educated, motivated and determined individuals took advantage of uncoordinated and budget hamstrung intelligence services" is not borne out by the facts.

I have proven with iron clad proof that even includes government documents that have been directly taken from official US government sources and off official US government web sites that the CIA working with groups inside of FBI HQ they had subjugated knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11. These documents include the DOJ IG report and the material that is found on the official web site for the Moussaoui trial.

Not only did they hide the information that came from the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting in January 2000 from the FBI criminal investigators on the Cole bombing but these same groups then shut down all investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US, even the FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi by FBI Special Agent Steve Bongardt and his team, knowing at the time that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US in order to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack that would kill thousands of Americans. See www.eventson91.com and my Journal.

Either you do not read the material that has already been presented in this forum, or more likely you pretend not have read this material.

[vincent_vega_lives]

197. Sounds like you have the smoking gun then.

and they put the evidence on their websites huh?

I have proven with iron clad proof that even includes government documents that have been directly taken from official US government sources and off official US government web sites that the CIA working with groups inside of FBI HQ they had subjugated knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11. These documents include the DOJ IG report and the material that is found on the official web site for the Moussaoui trial.

Wow why haven't you brought this to the media? I mean with iron clad proof, a grand jury indictment should be a peice of cake.

[rschop]

198. re: Wow why haven't you brought this to the media?

I have!

See www.eventson911.com, it is all explained there, even the fact that I have brought this not only to the media but even to many people in high places in Washington DC. I have even called some of these people in Washington DC directly with this information!

As I have said before the fact that "the CIA working with groups inside of FBI HQ they had subjugated knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11", has to now be all but an open secret in Washington DC.

“I mean with iron clad proof, a grand jury indictment should be a piece of cake.”

Hardly, everyone knows this is a political hot potato. People in the media are out and out cowards and part of a type of journalism called echo journalism. No one wants to be first and face the wrath of the CIA, the FBI HQ and even the political class in Washington DC. They all know they will stop getting fed if they bite the hand that feeds them.

I would also suggest you take a look at the very documents on this site. I will leave it to you to prove these are not official US government documents or summaries of US official investigations on 9/11.

[vincent_vega_lives]

199. Cowards?

Like Woodward and Bernstein types? I'm sure there are plenty of ambitious and enterprising journalists who would JUMP at the chance to make a name for themselves and indict the Bush administration.

Political hot potato's sell news. You don't think Watergate was a political hot potato? You don't think the Pentagon Papers were a political hot potato?

[rschop]

203. re: I'm sure there are plenty of ambitious and enterprising journalists who would JUMP at the chance

From prior post:

"Like Woodward and Bernstein types? I'm sure there are plenty of ambitious and enterprising journalists who would JUMP at the chance to make a name for themselves and indict the Bush administration."


Who are there Woodward and Bernstein types? I have not met any. If fact I can give a list of the excuses they have given not to print this information if you like.

By the way I have already sent my book to the Washington Post to be forwarded to Woodward. I had given him a short summary of my horrific findings in person when he came to San Francisco to talk in front of the Commonwealth Club in November 2006. It was after I gave him a summary of one of the items in my book that he had asked that I send him at the Washington Post, a copy of the book, "Prior Knowledge of 9/11", which I did.

His comments to me in response to my summary were stunning!

[vincent_vega_lives]

200. Your Iron Clad proof

is open to interpretation. Looks to me like a case of interagency chaos, disjointedness and bureaucratic inertia. Typical of state of US intelligence agencies for the past 30 years.

[rschop]

205. re: Your iron cald proof is open to interpretation.

In a subsequent post I will give you summary of this information. I will show that there can be no known way this could be interpreted as anything other than the CIA working with groups inside of FBI HQ they had subjugated knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11.

This summary will conclusively show that not only did they engage in many criminal acts to hide the information that came from the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting in January 2000 from the FBI criminal investigators on the Cole bombing but these same groups then used criminal actions to shut down all investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US, even the FBI criminal investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi by FBI Special Agent Steve Bongardt and his team, knowing at the time, that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US in order to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack that would kill thousands of Americans.

If you actually believe what you wrote in your post, then you should provide an interpretation that shows they did not knowingly, deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11.

I don’t know how you will be able to do this.

[rschop]

210. re: Looks to me like a case of interagency chaos, disjointedness and bureaucratic inertia.

From prior post:

"Looks to me like a case of interagency chaos, disjointedness and bureaucratic inertia. Typical of state of US intelligence agencies for the past 30 years."

NO SHIT DICK TRACY!

Congratulations, that is exactly what these agencies wanted you to believe. When it became clear that both the CIA working with FBI HQ had deliberately and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11, and this information had become a fire storm in the US media, these agencies had nowhere else to go but to say it must have been "interagency chaos, disjointedness and bureaucratic inertia" all caused by underfunded, undermanned, over worked and over burdened agencies.

But it became clear from later information found in the DOJ IG report and the evidence items from the Moussaoui trial that the CIA working with groups inside of the FBI HQ they had subjugated, the ITOS section and the office of the Director of the FBI, had criminally withheld material evidence from the FBI Cole investigators. They finally shut down the investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi, when FBI criminal investigators discovered that these al Qaeda terrorists were inside of the US preparing to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack. When the CIA and FBI HQ shut down Bongardt's investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi they clearly knew that this would all but make it all but impossible to find Mihdhar and Hazmi in time to prevent the al Qaeda attacks that both the CIA and FBI HQ were aware of.

They even shut down the investigation of all al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US, which included Harry Samit’s investigation of Moussaoui. They clearly knew that this would make it impossible to connect Moussaoui back to the rest of this al Qaeda plot. Incredibly when former CIA deputy chief of the Bin laden unit, Tom Wilshire knew Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US preparing to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack, information he and Dina Corsi were desperately trying to keep secret from the FBI criminal investigators, he stayed closely in touch with Michael Maltbie and David Frasca of the RFU unit, and found out that Maltbie was at the exact same time shutting down Harry Samit’s investigation of Moussaoui. It is clear that in addition to his orders to block any investigation by the FBI criminal investigators of Mihdhar and Hazmi, it looks like he had also been ordered to keep tabs on other FBI investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US.

[rschop]

212. Re: Your Iron Clad proof is open to interpretation.

If you really believe this, which I doubt, then please present your interpretation of the evidence found on the web site www.eventson911.com, to show that the CIA working with the FBI HQ did not intentionally allow the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11.

All of the information on this site comes from either actual documents or summaries that are from official US government sources and web sites.

I don’t think you will be able to come up with any possible interpretation that will do this!

But since your post clearly says, "Your Iron Clad proof is open to interpretation" let’s see your interpretation of this evidence that shows that the CIA working with the FBI HQ did not intentionally allow the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11!

[Marksbrother]

202. There's a third option

In addition to:
"Either you do not read the material that has already been presented in this forum, or more likely you pretend not have read this material."

Isn't it also possible that he hasn't read the material? Sometimes a True Believer will imply that they've read things when in
fact they're bluffing about having done so.