April 27, 2002 (Updated April 10, 2006)
The Wisdom Fund

What Really Happened on September 11 Remains a Mystery

The war on Afghanistan was planned before September 11, 2001

by Enver Masud

SUGGESTION: Read the FREE ebook -- "9/11 Unveiled"
Watch author's rebuttal of The 9/11 Commission Report

MUSLIMS DIDN'T DO IT

WASHINGTON, DC--The 110-story towers of the World Trade Center were obliterated. The Pentagon suffered massive damage. This much is clear. Much else remains a mystery.

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston for Los Angeles, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York at 8:48 a.m. Eighteen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767, headed from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the south tower. American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 from Washington's Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles, crashed into the western wall of the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 flying from Newark to San Francisco, crashed near Pittsburgh.

Within days Osama Bin Laden was offered as the prime suspect, although Bin Laden himself denied this "in a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera," and in an interview published in the Ummat -- a Pakistani paper, is reported to have said: "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States."

Europol's director, Jurgen Storbeck (London, Telegraph, September 15, 2001), stated: "It's possible that he [bin Laden] was informed about the operation; it's even possible that he influenced it; but he's probably not the man who steered every action or controlled the detailed plan."

President Bush, however, ignored Europol's doubts, reneged on Secretary of State Colin Powell's pledge to provide evidence, and named Osama bin Laden, and Al Qaeda as the perpetrators.

Now many insist that the U.S. government's version of events is either incomplete, or inaccurate. A best-selling French book, The Frightening Fraud, by Thierry Meyssan, makes the farfetched claim that the "U.S. invented air attack on Pentagon."

We believe that it's premature to draw conclusions about what really happened--relevant questions have yet to be answered.

For starters, in the Pentagon crash site photos, there's little or no evidence of the plane that struck the Pentagon. I live about one-half mile from the Pentagon. The first question that I asked other onlookers as we viewed the crash site was, "Where's the plane?"

The hole in the Pentagon wall appears too small to have been caused by a Boeing 757. Indeed, early reports claimed that a truck bomb had exploded, and the damage was similar to that inflicted on the USS Cole in Yemen. The gash in the hull of the USS Cole was reported to be about 30 feet by 40 feet.

Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, at a News Briefing held by Assistant Defense Secretary Victoria Clarke on September 12, 2001 at the Pentagon, when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "First of all, the question about the aircraft, there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation I'm talking about, but not large sections. In other words, there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

Did Chief Plaugher not see the plane's engines? Wouldn't the engines have survived in some recognizable form? An engine from one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center was shown lying on the street on network television. So was an engine from American Airlines Flight 587 which crashed shortly after takeoff in New York on November 12, 2001.

Another question put to Chief Plaugher at the briefing was: "Chief, there are small pieces of the plane virtually all over, out over the highway, tiny pieces. Would you say the plane exploded, virtually exploded on impact due to the fuel . . ." Plaugher responded: "You know, I'd rather not comment on that."

How did "small pieces of the plane" end up "out over the highway" when the plane reportedly disintegrated inside the Pentagon after it crossed the highway and hit the Pentagon?

It is curious that at this Department of Defense News Briefing, held approximately 24 hours after American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 which departed from Dulles airport is said to have crashed into the Pentagon, the words "Boeing," "Dulles," "flight," and "passengers" were not even mentioned. The word "plane" was mentioned once, but Chief Plaugher would "not comment on that."

It is even more curious that national news media failed to follow up on Chief Plaugher's comment that "there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing" when dozens of onlookers, relatives, and firefighters were interviewed on network television about the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

And there are other troubling questions. For example:

- What are the odds that all the "black box" flight recorders were damaged beyond use?

- Why were the alleged hijackers' names not on the passenger lists?

- Why are several alleged hijackers reported to be still alive?

- Why did Mohamed Atta, one of the alleged hijackers, take a suitcase containing a curiously worded will and burial instructions on a suicide flight?

- Why did the seat numbers of the hijackers, given in a cell phone call from Flight Attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston Air Traffic Control, not match the seats occupied by the men the FBI claims were responsible?

- Why were none of the attacking planes intercepted? It is reported that planes are routinely intercepted if they deviate from their flight path and contact can't be made.

- How did the terrorists obtain top-secret White House and Air Force One codes and signals--the stated reason for not returning President Bush promptly to Washington on September 11?

- Why did the Justice Department deny a surveillance warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui? Since 1978, it is reported, more than 12,000 such warrants were issued, only Moussaoui's was denied.

- Why does the U.S. not hold hearings on these questions, when it would serve the U.S. objective of keeping Americans focused on the "war on terrorism?"

Others besides bin Laden, also had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out the attacks of September 11. Indeed, Israel, and possibly, the U.S. armed forces should not be arbitrarily ruled out.

On the day of the attack on America, the Washington Times quoted a paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies which said that the MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence service, "Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act." Dozens of Israelis were reported to have been arrested, but the role played by this "huge Israeli spy ring that may have trailed suspected al Qaeda members in the United States without informing federal authorities" remains unclear, and "it is no longer tenable to dismiss the possibility of an Israeli angle in this story."

Field reports by the Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and other U.S. law enforcement officials, on the alleged Israeli spy ring have been compiled in a 60-page document.

John F. Sugg of the Weekly Planet (Tampa, Florida, April 22, 2002) reported that "DEA agents say that the 60-page document was a draft intended as the base for a 250-page report. The larger report has not been produced because of the volatile nature of suggesting that Israel spies on America's deepest secrets."

James Bamford, formerly Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and who has written investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, describes an operation which suggests that even the U.S. armed forces may be suspect.

Mr. Bamford's book, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century, reveals that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) drew up and approved plans for "launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba."

Mr. Bamford writes: "Codenamed Operation Northwoods, the plan . . . called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer [Chairman JCS] and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

September 11 was a godsend for the U.S. military-industrial complex. A $48 billion increase in the "defense" budget sailed through both houses of Congress, bringing U.S. military spending to $379 billion.

This, according to the Washington Post (January 27, 2002), represents "the biggest one-year rise since the Reagan buildup two decades ago and a suspension of 'the peace dividend.'" . . . It matches the combined military spending of the 15 countries with the next biggest defense budgets. (The proposed increase alone is about the same as the entire defense budget of the next biggest spender--Japan.) . . . It would roughly match, in inflation adjusted terms, the U.S. defense budget in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War.

And for 2003 the president's budget directs an additional $37.7 billion to "homeland security."

U.S. energy companies may also be about to receive a dividend.

The events of September 11, led to the U.S. war on Afghanistan--a war apparently planned prior to September 11, and possibly after U.S. negotiations with the Taliban for a pipeline broke down. According to the BBC (September 18, 2001), Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

"The Bush administration agreed on the day before the Sept. 11 attacks to force the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. That was part of the conclusion issued by the independent 9/11 commission" reported DemocracyNow.

The events of September 11 also led to an open-ended "war on terrorism," which helped justify enormous increases in "defense" and "security" spending, and the passage of "anti-terrorism" legislation long desired by some in the Justice Department.

According to The Irish Times (February 11, 2002), "The Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and the Afghan interim leader, Mr. Hamid Karzai, agreed yesterday that their two countries should develop 'mutual brotherly relations and cooperate in all spheres of activity' -- including a proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan."

It's curious that these two leaders, who only later vowed to "bury the recent history of poisonous relations" between their nations (Washington Post, April 3), could agree so quickly to the pipeline. Afghanistan's interim president Hamid Karzai, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the Bush-appointed special envoy to Afghanistan, may have facilitated the agreement.

According to George Monbiot (Guardian, February 12): "Both Hamid Karzai, the interim president, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy, were formerly employed as consultants to Unocal, the US oil company which spent much of the 1990s seeking to build a pipeline through Afghanistan."

Zalmay Khalilzad drew up Unocal's risk analysis on its proposed trans-Afghan gas pipeline according to the Irish Times. The Taliban, after initially negotiating with Unocal, had begun showing a preference for Bridas Corporation of Argentina.

While relevant questions regarding the September 11 attack went unanswered, without the benefit of UN resolutions, and despite the fact that the Taliban stated their willingness to give up Osama bin Laden for trial to an international court, the U.S. launched it's war on Afghanistan--one of the world's poorest countries, already devastated by 23 years of war and civil strife following the Russian invasion of 1979.

Irwin Arieff of Reuters reported (October 8, 2001) that U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said, in a letter to the 15-nation Security Council, that the investigation into September 11 attacks on his country "has obtained clear and compelling information that the al-Qaeda organization, which is supported by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, had a central role in the attacks." The letter added, "there is still much we do not know. Our inquiry is in its early stages."

Negroponte added, however, that "U.S. military raids on Afghanistan, joined by Britain, were launched Sunday under the authority of Article 51 of the UN charter, which allows nations under attack to defend themselves." This despite U.S. statements that 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

The war in Afghanistan created a million new refugees (adding to the existing five or six million), caused the death of 4000 civilians (about 2800 civilians were killed in the September 11 attack), and President Bush seemed intent on continuing his father's Crusade. Former president Bush is reported to have told U.S. troops in Kuwait (AFP, Janurary 19, 2000) that they were "doing the Lord's work."

Begun as Operation Infinite Justice, President Bush has vowed to save civilization itself. He has expanded his Crusade to the brutally repressed Moros of the Philippines. Israel's attack on Palestine has delayed his promised attack on Iraq.

Yet more than six months after the U.S. launched its "war on terrorism," hard evidence regarding the September 11 attack remains scarce.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, in this speech at the prestigious Commonwealth Club of California on April 19, 2002, said: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper--either here in the United States, or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere--that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot."

---
Enver Masud is an engineering management consultant, and the recipient of a Gold Award from the Human Rights Foundation for his book The War on Islam.

[The first defense is to lie. If exposed, the second defense is to investigate, but not too much; the press will publicize, but they will not get to the heart of the matter.--Howard Zinn, "Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology," HarperPerrenial (1991), p. 225]

[Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.--"Rebuilding America's Defenses," The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), September 2000]

VIDEO: "Peter Jennings on ABC 7," archive.org, September 11, 2001

[While the official number of those missing and dead will inevitably rise over the next few weeks, authorities from American Airlines, United Airlines, the Department of Defense, the New York City Medical Examiners Office and the New York City Fire Department, have released partial lists.--"War Against Terror: List of Victims," cnn.com, 2001]

[Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators.--"UPI Interviews Pakistan ISI Chief General Hamid Gul," September 14, 2001]

MEDIA ADVISORY: "Media March to War," Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), September 17, 2001

Fintan Dunne, "The Split Second Error: Exposing the WTC Bomb Plot," September 18, 2001

"How Did United Flight 93 Crash?," flight93crash.com, September 21, 2001

Nick Hopkins, "False identities mislead FBI," Guardian, September 21, 2001

Robert Fisk, "What Muslim Would Write: 'The Time of Fun and Waste is Gone'?," Independent, September 29, 2001

VIDEO: "Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?," Fox News, December 12, 2001

[. . . the building was not able to withstand the intense heat of the jet fuel fire. While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse. --Thomas W. Eagar and Christopher Musso, "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation," Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, December 2001]

[We have assumed that the entire 3,500 gallons of jet fuel was confined to just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with perfect efficency, that no hot gases left this floor, that no heat escaped this floor by conduction and that the steel and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb all the heat.

Then it is impossible that the jet fuel, by itself, raised the temperature of this floor more than 257° C (495° F). . . . It is not even close to the first critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F) where steel loses about half its strength . . .

"In the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900° C (1,500-1,700° F) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments."--"THE JET FUEL; HOW HOT DID IT HEAT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER?," 911research.wtc7.net]

[In 1945, the Empire State Building withstood the impact of a U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bomber. Fourteen lives were lost, but the steel structure remained standing after the unarmed trainer plane slammed into the building's 79th floor.--"Empire State Building Withstood Airplane Impact," Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, December 2001]

Gabriel Kolko, "Another Century of War?," The New Press (2002)

Marc Erikson, "Mr Karzai goes to Washington," January 29, 2002

Enver Masud, "What Really Happened on September 11?," February 15, 2002

VIDEO: The World Trade Center Demolition: An Analysis

VIDEO: Evidence of cutter charges in WTC 7?

Thomas R. Olmsted, "Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77," Sierra Times, March 7, 2002

"September 11 - US Government Accused, The News, March 8, 2002

["both driver and passenger were Israeli nationals. . . . one of the men had not entered the country legally, and the other was in violation of his visa."--Carl Cameron, "Police Seize Rental Truck With TNT Traces," Fox News, May 13, 2002]

VIDEO: "President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 . . . In many respects, the directive, as described to NBC News, outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks."--Jim Miklaszewski, "U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida: White House given plan days before Sept. 11," MSNBC Nightly News, May 16, 2002

[It is "beyond doubt that innocent American civilians paid with their lives because high-level elements of the Bush administration engineered blocks on U.S. intelligence agencies in order to fulfil and protect another agenda."--Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, "Did Bush Know?" May 18, 2002]

Harley Sorensen, "Heads-Up To Ashcroft Proves Threat Was Known Before 9/11," SFGate.com, June 3, 2002

["The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday that the September 11 'hijackers could have been stopped' had U.S. officials acted on intelligence information available before the terrorist attacks."--Joyce Howard Price, "September 11 Attacks Called Avoidable," Washington Times, June 9, 2002]

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and John Leonard, "The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001," Tree of Life Publications (July 2002)

[One of the September 11 hijackers . . . Ziad Jarrah . . . had a valid U.S. multiple-entry visa in his passport, a fragment of which was found at the Flight 93 crash site.--Sheila MacVicar and Caroline Faraj, "September 11 hijacker questioned in January 2001," CNN, August 1, 2002]

["Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil."--Kate Clark, "Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was ignored," Independent, September 7, 2002]

Frank Levi, "Proof of Lies And Evidence Fabrication Against The Hijacker Suspects of 9-11," Libertyforum.org, September 11, 2002

Eric Hufschmid, "Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack," Tree of Life Publications (September 2002)

Mark Zepezauer, "Boomerang! How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America," Common Courage Press (October 1, 2002)

[One year after 9/11, we still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday--Gore Vidal, "The Enemy Within," Observer, October 22, 2002]

["America's most controversial novelist calls for an investigation into whether the Bush administration deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks to happen"--Sunder Katwala, "Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11," Observer, October 27, 2002]

Michel Chossudovsky, "War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11," Global Outlook Publishing (October 3, 2002)

[. . . the US government has had long-standing ties with Al Qaeda. This is confirmed as late as 1998-1999 as the Clinton administration used Al Qaeda as an intelligence asset in the campaign to arm the KLA insurgency in Bosnia.--Reviewed by Scott Loughrey, "War and Globalization by Michel Chossudovsky," Baltimore Chronicle, November 9, 2002]

["The president clearly does not want to know the truth about Sept. 11. Otherwise he would not have appointed Henry Kissinger to head an inquiry into the origins of arguably the most successful terrorist attack in history."--Robert Scheer, Want a Cover-Up Expert? Kissinger's Your Man, Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2002]

["It was far-fetched to think Bush had been somehow complicit in the events of Sept. 11. Steal an election? Maybe. But my mind was simply unable to ponder such a gruesome possibility. Yet it is just this possibility that Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed considers in The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked."--Mike Keefe-Feldman, Who Knew?, Missoula Independent, December 12, 2002]

["Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was 'a new Pearl Harbor'. Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true."--John Pilger, What America Needed Was 'a New Pearl Harbor', December 12, 2002]

Michael Parenti, "The Terrorism Trap: September 11 And Beyond," City Lights Bookstore (2002)

["In the hours immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked for plans to be drawn up for an American assault on Iraq. The following day, in a cabinet meeting at the White House, Rumsfeld again insisted that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism." The president allegedly replied that 'public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible,' and instead chose Afghanistan as a much softer target."--Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: How the Americans Lost Their Country, January 10, 2003]

["I sat down with two Southern lawmen, a current sheriff and his immediate predecessor. These two guys looked me dead in the eye and said that, based on what they have seen with a lot of CIA-connected covert operations in the area, the CIA was somehow involved in, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks."--Daniel Hopsicker, Radio Transcript Published In The American Free Press, January 6 & 13, 2003]

["In Afghanistan it is calculated that bombing killed about 5,000 civilians directly. Up to 20,000 other Afghans died through the disruption of drought relief and the bombing's other indirect effects, according to a Guardian investigation of death rates at camps for the internally displaced."--Jonathan Steele, Counting the Dead, Guardian, January 29, 2003]

["The alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks and the head of al-Qa'ida military planning was captured in Pakistan yesterday."--Kim Sengupta, Andrew Gumbel and Andy McSmith, 9/11 'Mastermind' Arrested, Independent, March 2, 2003]

["But claims that he was the 11 September 'mastermind'--'It's hard to overstate how significant this is,' the ever loquacious Mr Fleischer told the world yesterday--are still unprovable."--Robert Fisk, A breakthrough in the war on terror? I'll believe it when we see some evidence, Independent, March 3, 2003]

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, "The Secrets of September 11," MSNBC, May 1, 2003

["These were the very questions I had asked myself on 9/11 and for several weeks after. Failing to find easy answers, I had locked the subject away."--Michele Landsberg, "Conspiracy Crusader Doubts Official 9/11 Version," Toronto Star, May 11, 2003]

Michele Landsberg, "Barbs aside, 9/11 questions aren't going away," Toronto Star, May 18, 2003

[Ted Rall (author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism), "The Fictional War on Terrorism," May 26, 2003]

[The velocities listed in this table for the two WTC planes are in excellent agreement with flight data based on radar provided by the NTSC.--Eduardo Kausel, "Speed of Aircraft," mit.edu, May 28, 2003]

Bernard Weiner, "How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer," ICH, May 28, 2003

[CBS News reported that five weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush had been briefed about an active plot by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida operatives to seize civilian aircraft. The revelations stood in stark contrast to White House spin in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that nobody in the administration or the intelligence community had "specific information" about a possible hijacking plot.--Eric Boehlert, "Bush's 9/11 coverup?", Salon, June 18, 2003]

Philip Shenon, "9/11 Commission Says U.S. Agencies Slow Its Inquiry," New York Times, July 9, 2003

Xymphora, "Questions on 9/11," Paknews.com, July 12, 2003

Paul Sperry, "Secret report undercuts Iraq connection to WTC," WorldNetDaily, July 23, 2003

Susan Schmidt and David Von Drehle, "Hill's 9/11 Probe Finds Multiple Failures," Washington Post, July 25, 2003

[ . . . the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001). --Michael Meacher, "'This War on Terrorism is Bogus': The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination," Guardian (UK), September 6, 2003]

[Immediately after 9/11, Ernst Welteke the President of Germany's state bank, the Bundesbank, confirmed that massive insider trading across the world's financial markets had occurred right before 9/11, in stocks that were devastated by the attacks. Then German cabinet minister Andreas von Bulow declared shortly thereafter that the global value of insider trading had possibly exceeded $100 billion and that the US government had deliberately allowed the attacks to happen as a pretext for conquest of the oil-rich territories of the Caspian basin and the Middle East. Von Bulow was qualified to speak on this issue. His portfolio had included supervision of the German intelligence service -- the BND -- which had issued a number of strong and very clear warnings to the CIA that hijacked airliners were going to be crashed into the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th.--Michael C. Ruppert, "9/11 Second-Anniversary Events in Germany and New York City Reveal Growing Strength, Credibility of Movement," From The Wilderness Publications, September 17, 2003

[Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.--Yuval Dror, "Odigo says workers were warned of attack," Ha'aretz Daily, September 22, 2003]

Eric Alterman, "9/11/01: Where Was George?," The Nation, October 6, 2003

Viveca Novak, "How the Moussaoui Case Crumbled," TIME, October 19, 2003

Philip Shenon, "9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files," New York Times, October 26, 2003

[Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11, or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on American soil, but did nothing to warn the USA. But thats not quite true. In August 2001, the Israelis handed over a list of terrorist suspects - on it were the names of four of the September 11 hijackers.--"Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001," Sunday Herald, November 2, 2003]

Philip Shenon, "Deal on 9/11 Briefings Lets White House Edit Papers," New York Times, November 14, 2003

David Corn, "The 9/11 Cover-up: What did Bush know about the al Qaeda threat?," LA Weekly, November 21-27, 2003

"Press Ignores 9/11 Widow's Bush Treason Suit," The Rumor Mill News, December 2, 2003

Luke Harding, "German trial of 9/11 suspect collapses," The Guardian, December 12, 2003

"9/ 11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, December 18, 2003

[The panel set up to investigate why the United States failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, faced angry questions Thursday after revelations that two of its own senior officials were so closely involved in the events under investigation that they have been interviewed as part of the inquiry.--Shaun Waterman, "9/11 director gave evidence to own inquiry," UPI, January 15, 2004]

[The unusual dual roles of the director, Philip D. Zelikow, and the commissioner, Jamie S. Gorelick, have raised fresh questions about potential conflicts of interest in the commission,--Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, "2 on 9/11 Panel Are Questioned on Earlier Security Roles," New York Times, January 15, 2004]

(Prof. Zelikow's area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, "public myths" or "public presumptions," which he defines as "beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community." In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called "'searing' or 'molding' events [that] take on 'transcendent' importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene.)

Ben Aris, "German trial hears how Iranian agent warned US of impending al-Qaida attack," The Guardian, January 24, 2004

[The commission also found that nine of the 19 hijackers had been flagged by the Federal Aviation Administration's computerized screening system but were still allowed to board their flights on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.--Dan Eggen, "Battle Over 9/11 Panel's Deadline Intensifies," Washington Post, January 29, 2004]

Dan Eggen, "9/11 Panel to Accept Summary of Briefings: Legal Challenge Scrapped; Agreement Angers Some Members, Victims' Families," Washington Post, February 11, 2004

James Gordon Meek and Kenneth R. Bazinet, "9/11 panelist may quit over Bush secrecy," New York Daily News, February 26, 2004

David Ray Griffin, "C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11," New York Times, February 24, 2004

Sen. Robert Byrd, "Fairy Tales, Bush & the 9-11 Commission," March 5, 2004

Julian Borger, "Bush ignored terror threat, claims ex-aide," The Guardian, March 22, 2004

Rupert Cornwell, "September 11 attacks: What did Bush know?," The Independent, March 27, 2004

Paul Sperry, "Is Fix in at 9/11 Commission?," Antiwar.com, March 31, 2004

David Ray Griffin, "The New Pearl Harbor," Interlink Publishing Group (March 2004)

[She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".--Andrew Buncombe, "'US knew al-Qa'ida would attack with aeroplanes'," The Independent, April 2, 2004]

[Since the engine landed 3 blocks away from Ground Zero the FBI can't say the engine was vaporized. Where is it today? Ditto for the Pentagon JT8D engine that was identified that was NOT from Flight 77.--Jon Carlson, "WTC Jet Engine Confirmed NOT From Boeing 767," rense.com, April 4, 2004]

Yuval Dror, "Odigo says workers were warned of attack," Haaretz, April 6, 2004

[He is the only person to have been convicted of involvement in the attacks.--"9/11 prisoner released on bail," BBC News, April 7, 2004]

Eric Lichtblau and David E. Sanger, "Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says," New York Times, April 10, 2004

Dana Priest, "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings," Washington Post, April 14, 2004

John Kaminski, "The Fatal Flaw In The 911 Coverup: Why can no one name the hijackers or prove they flew the planes?," Rense.com, April 17, 2004

David Johnston and Jim Dwyer, "Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent," Washington Post, April 18, 2004

[Today in a federal court in Washington, senior government lawyers will try to gag Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States".--Andrew Buncombe, "Lawyers try to gag FBI worker over 9/11," The Independent, April 26, 2004]

Paul Joseph Watson and Dan Perez, "NBC: FDNY Chief of Safety Reported Bombs Both Within the Towers and on the Planes on 9/11," Prison Planet, May 5, 2004

[The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of retroactively classifying information it gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding a former F.B.I. translator who charged that the bureau had missed critical terrorist warnings,--Eric Lichtbalu, "Material Given to Congress in 2002 Is Now Classified," New York Times, May 20, 2004]

[But the Commission, its members appointed by President Bush, is focussing on the future. . . . Given this limited mandate, almost none of the contradictions Griffin raises is likely to be discussed, or its ramifications analyzed before the case is closed.--Marc Estrin, "September Song: A Review of The New Pearl Harbor," CounterPunch, May 25, 2004]

Chip Berlet, "Critique of The New Pearl Harbor," Political Research Associates, May 26, 2004

[A year before the 11 September attacks, Niaz Khan, 30, walked into the New York office of the FBI and told agents of plans by al-Qaeda to hijack US airliners.--Antony Barnett, Lee Hannon and Martin Bright, "UK spymasters shrugged off al-Qaeda recruit's warning," The Observer, June 6, 2004]

[What I found in Florida was that the government story about the terrorist conspiracy's activities before September 11th is not just an error, it is a lie. The time line is wrong. The FBI's timeline is wrong. Everything they are doing is designed to protect an operation that was under way in southwest Florida that trained, between 1999 and September 2001, literally hundreds of Arabs to fly. . . .

A business owner at the Venice airport who checked with the DEA contact of his, to find out about what these people's connection might be after Sept. 11th. And he was told that they had a "green light from the DEA."--"Daniel Hopsicker Interview," INN World Report, June 17, 2004]

[CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.--"Bin Laden Releases New Videotape," CNN LARRY KING LIVE, October 29, 2004]

[ . . . the North Tower began its pancake collapse--"The 9/11 Commission Report," 2004, p.308]

[These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft--"The 9/11 Commission Report," 2004, p. 541--NOT TRUE, and the Report does not mention the 47 story WTC #7 which collapsed in slightly over 8 seconds.]

Enver Masud, "What Really Happened on September 11 at the Pentagon?," The Wisdom Fund, March 7, 2005

[Nevertheless, the results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial portion of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11.--"Final Report of the National Construction safety Team on the Collapses of the world Trade Center Towers (Draft)," NIST, September 2005, p141]

[NIST's investigation is often cited as proving the official theory that the plane crashes and fires caused the collapses. Yet the Report does not explain why or how the buildings totally collapsed, despite the lack of a single historical precedent for a steel-framed skyscraper totally collapsing for any reason other than controlled demolition.--Jim Hoffman, "Building a Better Mirage," 9-11 Research, December 8, 2005]

Dave Lindorff, "9/11: Missing Black Boxes in World Trade Center Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI," counterpunch.org, December 19, 2005

Video: The Taliban, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Bridas Corporation - posted February 24, 2006 [Karl W B Schwarz, Managing Director CEO, Rokkors Nanotechnologies GmbH, Vienna, Austria claims that he "turned down two RNC blank check offers to run against Clinton as governor of Arkansas."]

[According to the pancake theory, one floor fails and falls onto the floor below, causing it to fail and fall on the floor below that one, and so forth. The "pancake theory" implies that this continues all the way to the ground floor. In the case of both WTC towers, we didn't see the floors piled up when the event was all over, but rather a pulverization of the floors throughout the event. . . . clearly we cannot assume that the floors stacked up like pancakes. Looking at the data, we take the conservative approach that a falling floor initiates the fall of the one below, while itself becoming pulverized. In other words, when one floor impacts another, the small amount of kinetic energy from the falling floor is consumed (a) by pulverizing the the floor and (b) by breaking free the next floor. In reality, there isn't enough kinetic energy to do either. . . .

If there was enough kinetic energy for pulverization, there will be pancaking or pulverization, but not both. For one thing, that energy can only be spent once. If the potential energy is used to pulverize a floor upward and outward, it can't also be used to accelerate the building downward.

. . . for the building to be collapsed in about 10 seconds, the lower floors would have to start moving before the upper floors could reach them by gravity alone.

Did we see this? I believe it's pretty clear in some of the videos. The "wave" of collapse, progressing down the building, is moving faster than free-fall speed. This would require something like a detonation sequence. . . . the explanations of the collapse that have been given by the 9/11 Commission Report and NIST are not physically possible.--Judy Wood, "A Refutation of the Official Collapse Theory," presented at the 2006 Society for Experimental Mechanics Annual Conference, June 7, 2006]

[NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system - that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns - consisted of a grid of steel "trusses" integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.--"Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster," NIST, August 30, 2006]

[The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion. Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4 Billion!

In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures. How convenient that an unexpected "terrorist" attack demolished the buildings completely.--"You've got to be lucky to make $4 Billion killing on a 6-month investment of $124 Million," lifeforce@rockymountains.net, September 6, 2006]

VIDEO: Dustin Mugford, "September 11 Revisited: Were explosives used to bring down the buildings?," Infad Media Production (2006) - This movie contains eyewitness accounts and news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001, but was never replayed again on television. . . . Until now. It features BYU Professor Stephen E. Jones, Claremont Emeritus Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeff King.

VIDEO: "911 Mysteries: Demolitions," In the Wake Productions, September 15, 2006

"9/11 FACT SHEET," In the Wake Productions, September 15, 2006

[. . . approximately 8 months prior to the airplanes being flown into the twins, he sent an e-mail to then Attorney General Ashcroft informing the Attorney General that he had important terrorism-related information.--"Prior knowledge of 9/11 attacks overheard in Hebrew," muckrakerreport.com, December 1, 2006]

[Wolfgang Bohringer, the German pilot who was one of Mohamed Atta's closest associates in Florida as well as the subject of an FBI terror alert in the South Pacific, was apprehended two weeks ago and taken into custody, but then was almost immediately released after he told authorities responsible for his capture that he works for the CIA.--Daniel Hopsicker, "Was Mohamed Atta 'Close Associate' in Florida a CIA Pilot?," madcowprod.com, December 11 2006]

"At Least 7 of the 9/11 Hijackers are Still Alive," whatreallyhappened.com

VIDEO: "Five Dancing Israelis Arrested On 9/11," youtube.com, January 5, 2007

Christopher Ketcham, "What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?," CounterPunch, March 7, 2007

["First they come up with the "pancake theory", then they changed it to the "column failure theory". We don't believe that either of those theories are supported by the available evidence. . . .

"The only theory that is supported by the evidence is controlled demolition with explosives," Gage says. "You could never get a collapse event of that speed through 80 floors of intact steel structure. The laws of physics simply don't allow it."--"Independent Investigators Release Suppressed Blueprints of Destroyed World Trade Center Tower," Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, March 27, 2007]

Steve Watson, "The Mystery Of The 9/11 Car Bombs: Evidence points to multiple roaming backup teams with vans full of explosives," infowars.net, April 23, 2007

Jeremy Baker, "Former Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon speaks out on 9/11, NORAD and what should have happened on 9/11," communitycurrency.org, April 2007

[No tourist captured the impact - no TV photographer, no movie photographer, no security camera - nobody filmed it, except Naudet.--Leslie Raphael, "JULES NAUDET'S FIRST PLANE SHOT WAS STAGED," spingola.com, July 2007]

[By March 2003, with the commission's staff barely in place, the two men (Philip Zelikow, Executive Director, The 9/11 Commission, and Ernest R. May, a Harvard historian) had prepared a detailed outline, complete with "chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings" of the final report.-- Philip Shenon, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," Twelve, February 2008, p389]

[The Commission claimed that Vice President Cheney did not arrive in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until 9:58. That claim was contradicted by the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, who arrived at the PEOC around 9:20 where shortly thereafter he witnessed Cheney confirm an order that is most logically interpreted as an order not to shoot down an incoming object shortly before the Pentagon was struck. Richard Clarke's account in his book, "Against All Enemies," corroborates Mineta's timeline, which was evidently so threatening to the official story that Mineta's testimony was deleted from the 9/11 Commission video archives.-- "911 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," Pakistan Daily, June 10, 2008]

VIDEO: "Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11," zero911movie.com, June 15, 2008

John Farmer, "The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11," Riverhead Hardcover (September 8, 2009)

Karen McVeigh and Paul Lewis, "Airline pilot cleared of role in 9/11 after 'nine years of hell': Lotfi Raissi eligible for up to £2m compensation after wrongful imprisonment and damage to health," Guardian, April 23, 2010

Eric Margolis, "9/11. THE MOTHER OF ALL COINCIDENCES," ericmargolis.com, September 10, 2010

Jeff Stein, "CIA hired Karzai brother before 9/11, Woodward says," washingtonpost.com, September 10, 2010

VIDEO: "9/11: INTERCEPTED," Pilots for 9/11 Truth, June 24, 2011