In alt.alien.visitors Sir Arthur C. B. Wholeflaffers A.S.A. <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote:
: In article <22754-3D7FB36D-64@storefull-2296.public.lawson.webtv.net>, Charles
: Smith says...
:>We were attacked by a group of people...
: Exactly, but since there was never ANY public hearings on the subject,
: we do not know who those "group of people" were.
: Now if you're a spOOk or tied to the military establishment,
: (like many members of this newsgroup) then you have to
: follow orders. But if you are a concerned citizen
: who really cares about society, you would seek
: to find the answer to this question. It is obvious
: to any researcher that there are direct ties to the
: military/intel communities to 9/11. Now if the
: truth ticks you off, as it does Hughe, Patrick O-BORG,
: UBOB, JGBkack, Davis/Shitley, Twit/Sludge, then
: please leave these groups. These are groups about
: the truth!! Good luck!
: Here is a good place to start your journey:
: http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm
: - - - -
: One year after the terror attacks: still no official investigation into
: September 11
: By Patrick Martin
: One year after the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed more than
: 3,000 people, there has not been a single public congressional hearing, no
: official report has been prepared, and many of the most basic facts remain
: shrouded in secrecy.
: Despite its public show of sympathy for the victims and their families, the
: Bush administration is denying them what is their most basic right: a
: thorough investigation into the causes of the attacks on the World Trade
: Center and the Pentagon and the circumstances in which they took place.
: It is now twelve months since the worst terrorist attack in history—one that
: was carried out without any interference from the US national security
: apparatus, the largest in the world. Yet not a single person has been held
: accountable.
: As a New York Times article published on the anniversary noted, this failure
: to investigate is unprecedented for a disaster of such scope. A public probe
: into the sinking of the Titanic, the newspaper noted, began the morning
: after the survivors arrived in New York City. The Warren Commission felt
: compelled to report its findings on the Kennedy assassination by the first
: anniversary of the president’s murder. Similar investigations were conducted
: into the US military failure at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the explosion that
: destroyed the Challenger space shuttle, and other disasters.
: Referring to official investigations by the US Congress and other agencies
: into the Titanic tragedy, the Times wrote: "No inquiry remotely similar in
: scope, energy or transparency has examined the attacks of last Sept. 11....
: One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801
: deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew
: within weeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of the ocean in the
: dead of night."
: Airline crashes are routinely investigated with great thoroughness, and the
: results released to the public. When an explosion destroyed TWA Flight 800
: after takeoff from New York in 1996, bits and pieces of the aircraft were
: painstakingly assembled in a huge hangar on Long Island, and pored over by
: forensic scientists and Boeing engineers until the cause of the
: explosion—the ignition of vapors in the center fuel tank, rather than a
: terrorist bomb—was determined.
: There has been no such probe into the destruction of four hijacked
: airplanes, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a large section of
: the Pentagon. One year after September 11, the US government has not even
: released the passenger lists maintained by the airlines, the information
: from the two data recorders recovered from the doomed planes, or the
: transcripts of communications between the pilots and air traffic controllers
: on the ground. No evidence has been presented to confirm that 19 Arab men
: actually boarded the planes, to show that they were, in fact, the hijackers,
: or to identify them by their real names and nationalities.
: A policy of stonewalling
: The Bush administration has barred virtually any release of information
: about September 11. For nearly six months, it successfully blocked
: congressional hearings and rebuffed calls for a special commission of
: inquiry. Then it worked out a deal with the Democratic and Republican
: congressional leaders to consign the investigation to hearings held jointly
: by the House and Senate intelligence committees. These hearings have been
: held behind closed doors, with the promised public hearings repeatedly
: postponed.
: This official stonewalling is the most staggering fact about September 11,
: one largely ignored by the American media.
: Last May and June the cover-up by the Bush administration received a severe
: jolt. A series of media reports emerged documenting the fact that US
: intelligence agencies received advance warnings of the terrorist attacks.
: Among the revelations:
: * In July 2001 an FBI agent in Arizona sent a memo to headquarters noting
: the presence of Islamic fundamentalist students at a local flight training
: school, and urging a nationwide check for similar activity. It went
: unanswered.
: * In August 2001 FBI agents in Minneapolis asked for permission to
: investigate Zaccarias Moussaoui, an Islamic fundamentalist they believed
: might be planning to hijack a 747 jet on a suicide mission. FBI headquarters
: refused.
Only one of two refused in many years. . .
: * In August 2001 Bush was briefed by the CIA about the danger of hijackings
: organized by Al Qaeda, but no increased security was ordered for airlines or
: airports. Nor was there any mobilization of air defense units.
Dispite it only taking 22 minutes to contact a civilian plane when the pilot
died while enroute. . .
: * On September 9, Bush had on his desk, awaiting his signature, a draft
: National Security Decision Directive for war against Afghanistan, drawn up
: and approved by his top advisers a week before the World Trade Center
: attack.
: The Bush administration deliberately diverted attention from these
: revelations, issuing a series of unsubstantiated and hysterically worded
: terror alerts, announcing that it would establish a new Department of
: Homeland Security, and then claiming that a Chicago man arrested earlier,
: Jose Padilla, was an Al Qaeda operative who had planned to explode a
: radiological "dirty bomb" in an American city.
Since found to be unsubstantiated. . .
: Once the intelligence committees began their closed-door hearings, the Bush
: administration counterattacked, seizing on press reports that the National
: Security Agency had intercepted Al Qaeda communications the day before the
: attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Vice President Cheney
: charged that someone in Congress was virtually guilty of treason for leaking
: this information, and the FBI began investigating its investigators, the
: members and staff of the two intelligence panels. The result: public
: hearings were pushed back to late September, and could be postponed even
: further.
: The administration has gone so far as to deny to the victims’ families
: themselves basic information about the suicide-hijackings. Citing a "grave
: threat to national security," government lawyers have obtained court orders
: barring the disclosure of evidence sought by family members for use in
: damage lawsuits against the airlines, the airport security firms and others
: whose negligence may have contributed to the success of the hijackings.
: Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence
: Committee, conceded in an interview on the anniversary of September 11 that
: there was enormous pressure from the Bush administration to shelve the
: hearings entirely. He indicated that significant new revelations about the
: terrorist attacks could emerge, which he described as "bombshells."
: What is the Bush administration hiding?
: There is no innocent explanation for the Bush administration’s conduct.
: There are no national security secrets to protect about the details of the
: hijackings, of which Al Qaeda is much better informed than the American
: people. Bush, Cheney & Co. conduct themselves like men with something to
: hide. Their methods of cover-up and provocation indicate a consciousness of
: guilt and a fear of exposure.
: What are they afraid of? Until an objective and impartial investigation
: proves otherwise—the kind of investigation that cannot be carried out by any
: branch of the American state—it is not possible to state definitively what
: the connection is between the US government and September 11. But there are
: several likely scenarios.
: One scenario is that at least some of those involved in the attacks were
: known to the US government, not merely as possible terrorism suspects, but
: as past collaborators. This is highly plausible given the longstanding ties
: between the American government and Islamic fundamentalist
: terrorists—heavily recruited and financed in the 1980s for guerilla warfare
: against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
: The revelations that have emerged constitute prima facie evidence that
: elements within the US state apparatus were running interference for those
: who organized the hijackings, protecting them from surveillance and arrest
: through a virtual stand-down of normal counterintelligence and air defense
: procedures.
: Complicity on the part of these forces does not necessarily mean that
: September 11 was organized in every detail by the US government. It is quite
: possible that those who facilitated the activities of the hijackers thought
: that a standard hostage-taking was being planned, and did not envision the
: scale of the damage and casualties. They might have wanted the action to go
: forward to provide a suitable pretext for American military intervention in
: Central Asia and the Middle East, for which a simple hijacking would have
: sufficed. It is undeniable that the Bush administration seized on the
: September 11 atrocities as the pretext for implementing far-reaching war
: plans long in the making.
: Whatever the exact connection, the White House is clearly frightened that
: any serious investigation into September 11 would produce a political
: uproar, plunge the Bush administration into a deep political crisis, and
: disrupt its plans for wider war.
: A central question in analyzing any crime is "who benefits?" There is no
: question that from that standpoint, September 11 has allowed the extreme
: right-wing faction of the American ruling elite, which seized the White
: House through a Supreme Court-sanctioned political coup, to carry out a
: program that they knew had little popular support.
: Unanswered questions
: The World Socialist Web Site has raised many of the issues that need to be
: investigated and questions that need to be asked about September
: 11—questions that strongly suggest the attacks did not come out of the blue
: and catch the US government totally unawares.
: * Why did FBI headquarters rebuff the concerns of agents in Minneapolis and
: Arizona who cited the threat of hijackings by Islamic fundamentalists?
They were Saudi citizens. . .
: * Why did FBI headquarters block any serious investigation into Zaccarias
: Moussaoui, arrested more than a month before September 11?
Again, a Saudi citizen. . .
: * Why was Mohammed Atta, the alleged organizer of the attacks, permitted to
: enter and leave the United States freely despite having been under
: surveillance by US intelligence agents in Europe as a suspected terrorist?
Was he a Saudi?
: * Why were two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi,
: allowed to live freely in San Diego in the months before September 11, and
: even have their number listed in the phone book, although they were on a CIA
: watch list as suspected terrorists?
Good question, were they Saudi citizens?
: * Why has none of the essential information about the hijacked flights been
: released: the list of passengers, black box recordings, flight data recorded
: by air traffic control facilities?
Good question. . .
: * Five of the hijackers were reported to have trained at US military
: facilities. What were they trained for, and why?
Haven't four of the hijackers turned up alive?
: * What are the connections between Al Qaeda and bin Laden personally, and
: the CIA and other US intelligence agencies that sponsored the Islamic
: fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan for more than a decade?
Carlyle Group oh, and Saudi Arabia
: * What electronic information on the activities of Al Qaeda was available to
: the US government prior to September 11, and why was it not acted on?
A lot and no one knows. . .yet. . .
: * Why were US air defense fighters not ordered into action as soon as the
: first hijacking was reported by air traffic controllers?
Our when they refused to respond to radio and radically changed course. . .
: * Why did US Attorney General John Ashcroft stop flying commercial airliners
: in July 2001, and why did a group of high Pentagon officials on September 10
: cancel flights scheduled for the next morning?
His life is more valuable then yours?
: * Who are the speculators who made huge futures bets against the stocks of
: American Airlines and United Airlines—but not the stocks of other
: airlines—in the week before the hijackings?
They are still watching the funs and they haven't been "picked up". . .
: Recent press reports have raised new questions. The British newspaper
: Independent reported September 7 that a top Taliban emissary provided secret
: warnings to the US government that Osama bin Laden was planning a major
: attack on American soil. The warning was delivered by an aide to Wakil Ahmed
: Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister at the time, who was concerned that
: a terrorist strike within US borders would provoke, as it did, an American
: invasion of Afghanistan.
Samrt man, what you might call an American patriot, or a self-protecting
individual. . .
: The Taliban emissary first went to Pakistan, where he met US Consul General
: David Katz and another American official, possibly from the CIA, in the city
: of Peshawar during the third week of July 2001. He delivered the message
: that bin Laden was preparing a "huge attack," but his two interlocutors did
: not pass on the warning to Washington.
Damn!
: This brings to five the number of countries that warned US intelligence of
: the upcoming attacks: Germany, Russia, Israel and Egypt, as well as
: Afghanistan.
Well there you have it, they are foreigners!
: In its issue dated September 16, Newsweek magazine revealed that an FBI
: informant was the roommate of Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, the two
: hijackers who later lived in San Diego while they were on a CIA watch list.
: The two first arrived in San Diego in January 2000, allegedly after
: attending a meeting in Malaysia of Al Qaeda operatives.
: According to the magazine, "In September, 2000, the two moved into the home
: of a Muslim man who had befriended them at the local Islamic Center. The
: landlord regularly prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account.
: He was also, sources tell Newsweek, a ‘tested’ undercover ‘asset’ who had
: been working closely with the FBI office in San Diego on terrorism cases
: related to Hamas."
: A year later, when Almihdhar and Alhazmi were identified as two of the
: hijackers whose plane struck the Pentagon, the informant called his case
: agent, according to the Newsweek account. "I know those guys," he said.
: "They were my roommates."
: The role of the media
: Insofar as the American media has published anything that questions the
: official version of September 11, it is only to suggest that the CIA and FBI
: were incompetent bureaucracies that failed to adapt to new forms of
: terrorist attack, or even (in the most ludicrous and reactionary version),
: were too restrained by their own democratic principles to conduct effective
: counterintelligence actions.
: This attitude is expressed quite clearly in the most important American
: media outlet, the New York Times. The leading US newspaper has denounced
: criticism of the Bush administration for blocking an investigation into the
: terrorist attacks, calling such comments "gotcha politics."
: This indulgent attitude is in stark contrast to the conduct of the Times
: during the right-wing campaign to subvert and destabilize the Clinton White
: House. The newspaper sanctimoniously condemned the slightest failure on the
: part of the White House to divulge details of the president’s sex life or to
: produce documents on a 20-year-old failed real estate investment.
: But there are no editorial blasts from the Times about the Bush
: administration’s refusal to permit any investigation into the biggest single
: act of mass murder in US history, nor any calls for the appointment of an
: independent commission or a special prosecutor.
: In the two weeks leading up to the anniversary of September 11, the Times
: has used its news pages to conduct a virtual campaign of exoneration of the
: CIA, the FBI and the Bush administration against any suggestion of
: negligence, let alone complicity, in relation to September 11. Thus an
: August 28 article on the Zaccarias Moussaoui case cited uncritically a
: Senate report suggesting that FBI counterterrorism experts were merely
: "ignorant of federal surveillance laws" when they refused to allow the
: Minneapolis agents to press for a search warrant. It reported as fact the
: absurd suggestion in the Senate document that FBI supervisors were simply
: too scrupulous about observing constitutional safeguards.
: On September 8 the Times published a lengthy commentary on the factors that
: contributed to the failure to prevent the attacks. The entire article
: amounted to a diversion from the real issue of government foreknowledge and
: the government’s failure to act on what it knew. Among the red herrings
: advanced in this article were "the complacency Americans shared about the
: security of their continent," due to the existence of the Atlantic and
: Pacific oceans; "innate resistance" to intrusive domestic spying, "along
: with other pressures to preserve civil liberties"; failure to recruit spies
: inside movements like Al Qaeda because of "a retreat from traditional
: espionage"; and even a slow start for the Bush administration because of
: "the bitter battle over the disputed 2000 election."
: Finally, on the eve of the anniversary, the Times published a lengthy
: recounting of the movements of the various Al Qaeda operatives who played
: the main role in organizing the September 11 attacks. This contains the
: following paragraph, describing the alleged organizer of the hijackings,
: Mohammed Atta:
: "Mr. Atta himself was a near perfect person to carry out the plot. He had no
: record of terrorist activities and so he would not be under suspicion by
: Western intelligence agencies. He was well-educated and spoke both German
: and English fluently, which would enable him to operate without difficulty
: in the United States. He was also a grimly determined man, disciplined,
: reliable and not likely to flinch."
: This comment alone brands the Times account as a cynical whitewash. It is
: well known and well publicized in Europe—although generally concealed by the
: US media—that Atta was under surveillance by US intelligence for several
: months during 2000. According to the German public television channel ARD,
: Atta was followed as he traveled between Hamburg and Frankfurt and bought
: large quantities of chemicals that could be used in making explosives.
: By way of exception, Washington Post columnist William Raspberry noted
: recently: "The CIA was monitoring hijacking leader Mohamed Atta in Germany
: until May 2000—about a month before he is believed to have come to the
: United States to attend flight school. Does it make sense that the
: monitoring stopped when he entered this country?"
: The American media systematically avoids drawing the political conclusion
: that flows from the growing list of revelations, the inconsistencies and
: implausibilities in the official version of events, and the open hostility
: of the government to any investigation or public accounting: the Bush
: administration has something to hide. What it is hiding, moreover, must be
: of great significance, given the enormous effort being expended.
: Congress, the Democratic Party and the American media are all implicated in
: a sordid effort to conceal the truth from the American people and the world.
I will watch the frothing begin. . .
Garry