A few intrepid investigators are examining the circumstances surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. May their tribe increase. Unfortunately, the few public figures who have called for a congressional investigation were met with invective, scorn, and slander in the press. In an interview with Pacifica Radio, Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney states her reasons for requesting an investigation.

McKinney: It was incredible sitting in the room on the day that secretary Rumsfeld gave his presentation to members of the Armed Services Committee. Of course I serve on the House Armed Services Committee, and every year the Secretary of Defense comes before that Committee with a statement on the budget. Now, the 48.1 billion $ increase that Secretary Rumsfeld requested was interesting because basically what he said was we can afford it. Notwithstanding the fact that the Pentagon has lost 2.3 trillion dollars that we very well cannot afford to have lost.

Bernstein: Lost it? Where did they lose it?

McKinney: Well, that's a darn good question. You would think that Arthur Anderson is their accountant over there. They have lost 2.3 trillion dollars, and they don't know where to find that money. And of course the Secretary acknowledged the fact 2.3 trillion dollars remain unaccounted for, but in his testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, the Secretary said that the US can afford it.

McKinney: The father [George Bush Senior] sits on the board of an organization called the Carlyle Group. Now when we had Frank Carlucci come to testify at the House International Relations Committee shortly after George W was sworn in…

Bernstein: former Defense Secretary

McKinney: former Defense Secretary -- and we have a requirement that organizations that come before our committee, the House International Relations Committee, have to disclose Federal contracts. And so I requested of our chairman, Chairman Hyde, whether or not the Carlyle Group would be subjected to that requirement, since everyone else has to do it. And of course the Carlyle Group was not required to make any disclosure as to the Federal contracts that it had. That in itself means that they are skirting the rules of the House. Notwithstanding that, the fact that the father sits on the board of the Carlyle Group, which is one of the highest level defense contractors in the country. I think they're number 11 or 12 in defense contracts.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020426Utwater6.html

Mike Ruppert lays out a minute by minute account of the attacks and the perplexing responses (or lack of them) from officials.

From the Wilderness Timeline of 9-11

Why Did No Fighter Jets ‘Scramble' to Protect Washington D.C.?

"Our research has been carried out mainly by volunteers. Newspapers and TV news departments have full-time research staffs. The important media have bureaus in Washington DC, just a few miles from the Andrews airbase. Why haven't newspapers and TV news programs reported the truth: that Andrews job was to protect DC?

This failure is especially striking because some media did report that fighters scrambled from Andrews, but only after the Pentagon was hit. Thus they were aware that Andrews was supposed to defend D.C."

Here are selected articles from Daniel Hopsicker’s series about the pilot training provided to the alleged highjackers. You might want to peruse the entire series.

Death in Venice (Florida) by Daniel Hopsicker

Things are not what they seem in Venice.

Did Terrorist Pilots Train at U.S. Military Schools?

"In addition to having been inducted into the U.S. flight training program by two Dutch- owned flight schools in Venice, Florida, as many as six of the terrorists, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, also received training at U.S. military facilities, according to a flurry of stories between Sept 15 and 17 in the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Knight Ridder newspapers. The story had an extremely short life."

FBI Cover-up of Mohamed Atta’s Last Days

"'They loaded two Ryder trucks (of Huffman Aviation and Venice Police Department documents) right outside that (police station) window,' one Venice law enforcement official told us.

"‘And then they drove them right onto a C130 military cargo plane at Sarasota airport which flew out with Jeb Bush aboard. The FBI took all our files. Everything.'"

The Many Guises of Mohamed Atta Xymphora (May 4, 2002)
"Why was Atta so extraordinarily sloppy in his relations with government bureaucracy (driving without a licence, not attending at his court hearing, abandoning a plane at Miami airport, and having, of all things, visa problems), all out of line with what is supposedly the al-Qaeda training manual which insists on terrorists keeping a low profile, unless he was trying to create an obvious record of his existence and identity in the United States? My guess is that the person playing the role of Mohamed Atta was an American citizen, possibly of Iraqi descent (and certainly of Arab descent, in order to have the language skills, cultural knowledge and general appearance), and a highly trained pilot and intelligence operative, whose real name we'll never know. We do know he was willing to kill himself for a cause. What cause would that be?"

"After seven months of CIA, the Bush administration and the mainstream corporate media aggressively pushing the idea of an "intelligence failure" and that the CIA was "caught unaware" by the September 11th attacks, the Deputy Director of the CIA is clearly admitting foreknowledge."

What did Ashcroft know and when did he know it?

"The fact that Ashcroft didn't take commercial flights after July 2001 meant that he knew that an attack was planned on some U. S. target using a commercial aircraft. The fact that Ashcroft didn't take commercial flights after July 2001 meant that he did not know where or when the attack would occur, for otherwise he could simply avoid the dangerous flights."

"US intelligence agencies have known since at least 1995 that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists had enrolled at flight schools in the US to obtain training that would allow them to hijack commercial jets and fly them into buildings. One such plot, whose target was to be CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was outlined in the 1996 trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."

Highjack suspects Alive and Well

"Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well.

The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt."

Historians, Public Interest Groups Sue to Stop Bush Order

"The Presidential Records Act of 1978 was meant to shift power over White House documents from former presidents to professional government archivists and ultimately to the public," commented National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton. "But the Bush order attempts to overturn the law, take the power back, and let presidents past and present delay public access indefinitely."

Bill Aimed at Reversing Bush Order on Public Records By George Lardner Jr.

"Aiming bipartisan fire at what it described as the Bush administration's alarming penchant for secrecy, a group of House Republicans and Democrats yesterday introduced legislation to cancel President Bush's executive order restricting the release of presidential records.
Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Calif.), the chief sponsor of the measure, said the order was a violation of 'the letter and spirit' of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which declared for the first time that the records of a former president belong to the public."

Bush Tries to Close the Vault of History By Joe Conason

"Most Americans will perhaps regard the Bush executive order as a trivial matter, of little or no concern at a time when the nation is struggling against murderous enemies abroad (and possibly at home). Yet as we ought to have learned during the Cold War, it is precisely at such moments that loyalty and patriotism require resistance to the curtailment of basic liberties. The President's attempt to close the vault on history has nothing to do with prosecuting the war against terrorism, and everything to do with covering up embarrassments both past and future."

In an Addendum to his review of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson (The Nation, May 6, 2002), Eric Alterman says, "George W. Bush's Executive Order 13233, which effectively eviscerates the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by fiat, is designed to insure that no historian can ever provide this kind of public service again. Twenty Democrats and three Republicans are co-sponsors of a bill to restore it. Write your representatives and tell them to get on board."

In the New Statesman (April 29, 2002) Mark Thomas comments on the US government's foot-dragging in the investigation of Enron offshore accounts.

"On 8 February 2002, a month into the Congressional hearings, and two months after Enron's stock had become less popular than a contemporary jazz solo, the Cayman Islands government issued a press release. It stated that the Cayman Islands government would be happy to co-operate with the US in the inquiry, should the US request it.
This might seem insignificant, but at the time, Enron had nearly 700 subsidiaries registered in the Cayman Islands and not one person from the entire US government had had the wisdom, time or power to request the disclosure of these companies' details. If I were a US citizen seeking to be reassured of my government's probity and diligence, I would at this stage be heading for the hills with a hundredweight of beef jerky, a hunting rifle, a do-it-yourself nuclear bunker and a lot of Van Halen Cds."

The Real Shadow Government The Albion Monitor

". . . while Americans were transfixed by his swaggering cowboy talk, Bush and his gang were quietly continuing their real mission: Wiping out pesky laws and regulations that their campaign contributors don't like. The Bushites are doing this at the behest of their corporate pals, of course, which make up the real shadow government. While the press has lately given attention to the secret high-level meetings between Cheney's energy task force and Enron (among others), Bush staffers have routinely taken marching orders from business executives. Documents obtained this month by the National Resources Defense Council shows that the White House created part of an Executive Order via cut-and-paste, lifting sections from an e-mail sent by an offical at the American Petroleum Institute."

Do we know the actual American body count in Afghanistan?

"Though United States has admitted very less casualties during her seven-month war against terrorism since October 7, 2001 but it is estimated that it has suffered around 400 casualties in Afghanistan and many dead bodies of the soldiers are lying on the US combat ships in the Arabian Sea."

Conspiracy Theory March 7, 2002 By Rebekah Gleaves

"A string of scientists working on similar projects all over the world are found dead. A mysterious Russian with ties to biological warfare tells tales of threats that boggle the mind. A Tennessee driver-testing center employee is burned to death after being implicated in a license-selling scandal. And the United States government pushes states to adopt a doomsday law that dramatically reduces civil rights."