9/11: Ignorance is Strength?

Ignorance is Strength?

Crimes of the State

I recently read a pathetic article by a professor, Paul Campos, who claims to teach law at the University of Colorado. It revealed such ignorance of the subject matter that I cannot imagine the motivation behind Campos' protestations.

Campos dressed his smear attack up in an article supposedly about Joe Lieberman, but the propaganda techniques were clearly aimed at discrediting the September 11th truth seekers. To back up Campos' arguments, he provided nothing at all, except for name calling.

Here is what the Rocky Mountain News, and Commondreams.org saw fit to print as a credible observation:

"(Someone who claims "the situation in Iraq is a lot better than it was a year ago" deserves precisely as much respect as someone who claims President Bush carried out the 9/11 attacks)." -Paul Campos

This is a smear job that requires no argument, no support, no exculpatory evidence, nor intelligence of any sort. Goebbels could not have done better. The dictate is that: '9/11 skeptics deserve no respect.' Once respect is made verboten, nothing anyone can say about it can matter. The case is closed.

The case is not closed, however.

Campos even turns it up a notch, delving into the realms of Hannity and O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Coulter:

"I'm pretty sure the former e-mails come from pathetic lunatics living in basements, who post their rants on Web sites that get 10 hits per day."

Campos implies that the corporate media near blackout regarding 9-11 government complicity is a kind of proof that is beyond question: anyone who dissents must be a "pathetic lunatic" living in a basement, and their communications cannot have a large following.

This has been the climate that the government has fostered since the attacks. George W. Bush stood up at the U.N. General Assembly and told the world:

"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty." -George W. Bush, Nov. 10, 2001

As no trial has taken place to find "the guilty", we are to accept Bush's finger as the unquestionable arbiter, and the decider of who is or is not guilty.

Interestingly, the FBI recently admitted that they had no "hard evidence" connecting Osama bin Laden to 9-11, and his official "Most Wanted" page makes no mention of September 11th at all.

People like Paul Campos seem to have swallowed Bush's marching orders unquestionably, and they continue to churn out rubbish like the citations above.

But is the government's story true?

Unlike Paul Campos, I am prepared to provide evidence to support my claims that the 9-11 attacks were -- at the least -- aided and abetted by persons in the federal government, and could not have happened the way they did without the active participation of some government officials.

Far from being a minor fringe of basement dwellers, as the uninformed Campos alleges, there are tens of millions of Americans today who share this view. Zogby International found 49.3% of New Yorkers believed that people in the federal government knew of the 9-11 attacks in advance and "consciously failed to act." (Zogby, August, 2004) In that same poll 66% of New Yorkers wanted new and legitimate investigations into September 11th.

A more recent national poll found that 45% believe that:

"...Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success."

A 42% section believe that the, "US government and 9/11 Commission are covering up." This correlates to tens of millions of Americans who have bothered to investigate the subject matter, unlike professor Paul Campos.

As a professor of law, does Campos not have some responsibility to scrutinize what is in essence an obvious cover-up? The Bush white house has not been subtle in their desire to suppress the truth of September 11th. They fought against creating an independent commission for over a year. They asked the top Democrats in congress repeatedly to limit any investigations. They withheld millions of pages of documentation:

"...Bush Administration resisted or delayed providing the (9-11) Commission with important information. For example, the Administration’s refusal to turn over documents forced the Commission to issue subpoenas to the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration. The Administration also refused for months to allow Commissioners to review key presidential intelligence briefing documents." - Secrecy in the Bush Administration, Representative Henry Waxman, Truthout

And worse still, they stacked the "independent" 9-11 commission with insiders who had so many conflicts of interest that some of them had to testify to their own commission. The "exectutive director" Phillip Zelikow, the man who exerted the most control over the "investigation", was part of the George W. Bush administration transition team and a co-author with National Security Adivisor Condoleezza Rice (who is a suspect in the attacks).

What's more, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were allowed to testify together, behind closed doors, without taking an oath and with no transcript at all recorded of their claims. What sort of law professor can look at this situation in toto, and shrug it off as if it didn't matter?

MOTIVE

I suppose if Campos doesn't understand the motives behind September 11th, he cannot understand why people have taken it upon themselves to investigate actors in our own government.

Campos writes:

"These people always claim that the 9/11 attacks were actually carried out by the U.S. government to create a pretext for the Iraq war."

Paul O'Neil, Bush's first Treasury Secretary seems to think Iraq had some part in things:

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11." -CBS 60 Minutes

But it goes far more deeply than that:

"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." -Rebuilding America's Defenses, Project for a New American Century, September 2000.

The Bush administration foreign policy was designed and executed primarily by members of the controversial Project for a New American Century think tank. Members included V.P. Dick Cheney, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, and the president's brother Jeb Bush (who has links to the September 11th cover-up and to the Florida flight school operation).

It is the Project for a New American Century that demanded Bill Clinton attack Iraq in 1998, and it is these people who actually did attack Iraq in 2003, in a war crime that was based on lies and fabrications. It is also at the PNAC where we find the ominous prediction of a "new Pearl Harbor."

"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, Project for a New American Century, September 2000

Bush wrote in his diary, on the evening of September 11th, 2001:

"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." -George W. Bush, reported in Washington Post, January 27, 2002

The PNAC isn't, however, just concerned with the oil rich nation of Iraq. Far from it -- after initially attacking Afghanistan, they are currently targeting Iran. Their concern is global, and their ambitions insatiable. What they covet is "full spectrum dominance", and unquestioned military "supremacy." This is imperial domination, the ability to "pre-emptively" wage wars, as laid out in Bush's National Security Strategy documents. These acts are also technically war crimes, completely illegal under the United Nations' Charter and under the US Constitution "supreme law of the land" clause, Article 6.

And they were politically untenable on September 10th 2001. Yes, on September 10, Bush was an illegitimate president who was not elected by a majority, and who it was learned had actually lost the Florida recount. His approval ratings were low, and his prospects for launching wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran were slim to nil.

They Lied Repeatedly About Being Warned

The White House Press Secretary, Ari Flieischer, aboard Air Force One that day, was asked if there were any warnings. His two word response to the press: "No warnings."

Similarly, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice lied continuously about pre-9/11 warnings:

"No one predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile..." -Condoleezza Rice, CBS News, 5/17/02

"And had this President known of something more specific, or known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it. (...) To the degree that hijacking was an issue, it was traditional hijacking." -Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice, May 16 2002, Whitehouse

So why weren't airport screeners warned? She admits here that "hijacking WAS an issue."

"Had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it." -Rice to 9-11 Commission, CNN

That's interesting, since the opposite was true:

"Newspapers in Germany, France, Russia and London reported in the months before September 11th of a blizzard of warnings delivered to the Bush administration from all points on the compass. The German intelligence service BND warned American and Israeli agencies that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack important American targets. Egypt warned of a similar plane-based plot against Bush during the G-8 summit in Genoa last June, a warning taken so seriously that anti-aircraft batteries were placed around Columbus Airport in Italy."

"Last August (2001), Russian intelligence services notified the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been trained for suicide missions, and Putin himself confirmed that this warning was delivered "in the strongest possible terms" specifically regarding threats to airports and government buildings. In that same month, the Israeli security agency Mossad issued a warning to both the FBI and CIA that up to 200 bin Laden followers were planning a major assault on America, aimed at vulnerable targets. The Los Angeles Times later confirmed via unnamed US officials that the Mossad warnings had been received." -Newsweek, May 20, 2002

In Genoa, at the G-8 summit, it was reported:

"U.S. President George W. Bush will not stay with other world leaders because of fear of terrorist attack." -G8 summit death shocks leaders, CNN, July 21, 2001

Previously, Richard Clarke warned the Bush administration in a memo:

"We urgently need . . . a Principals level review on the al Qida network." -January 25, 2001, Bush administration Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke's Memo

And, of course the famous Presidential Daily Briefing:

"Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.(...) CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives." -August 6, 2001, Presidents' Daily Briefing (heavily redacted unclassified version)

“White House officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes.” -What Happened? Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry,ABC News, 5/16/02

After Bush received numerous warnings, and after his own experience at the Genoa summit, his behavior during the September 11th attacks is either the result of massive brain trauma, or it reveals something far more sinister.

ACTIONS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

I'll leave it to another article to touch upon the Pakistani ISI financing of Mohamed Atta, and the high-level meetings between ISI chief Ahmed and Bush administration operatives.

So what happened on September 11th?

It's pretty hard to ignore that after Bush was told by Andrew Card that, "America is under attack," at about 9:05am, in the Booker Elementary School classroom, Bush continued to sit there. And to sit there. And to sit there.

Why did our fearless leader do that?

One clue appeared in the Washington Times, and seems to answer the question (because they told him to!):

"The president noticed someone moving at the back of the room. It was White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, maneuvering to catch his attention without alerting the press. Mr. Fleischer was holding up a legal pad. Big block letters were scrawled on the cardboard backing: DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET. " -Suddenly, a time to lead, By Bill Sammon, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 7, 2002

The Secret Service did nothing to secure the President, and left him at a publicly announced location -- out in the open -- as unknown (?) numbers of hijacked passenger planes swirled around the nation's skies. Standard procedure with the Secret Service is always to whisk away the protected person to a safe location at the first hint of danger. This protective action is what Dick Cheney claimed happened to him, although the actual time of this occurrence is in dispute. Why wasn't the same protection afforded to frontman Bush?

Standard procedures were not followed on September 11th 2001, and not just with the Secret Service.

Bush admits that he was aware that the first plane had struck the World Trade Center North Tower even before he entered the classroom.

“Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida ... and my Chief of Staff, well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane...” -Bush, White House, 1/5/02

So, when the second plane hit, there was no room for doubt about what was happening, even forgetting about all the behind the scenes communications with Secret Service, NORAD, and the FAA. But planes don't just crash into buildings without going off course first.

Hijackings had been known to FAA as early as 8:13am.

"At approximately 8:13, Flight 11 was instructed by air traffic controllers at the FAA’s Boston Center, in Nashua, New Hampshire, to climb to 35,000 feet. The plane did not obey the order and its transponder was turned off. Air traffic control manager Glenn Michael said, “we considered it at that time to be a possible hijacking.” [AP, 8/12/02] According to FAA regulations, that was the correct decision: “Consider that an aircraft emergency exists ... when ... there is unexpected loss of radar contact and radio communications with any ... aircraft.” [FAA Air Traffic Control Regulations, Chapter 10, Section 2-5 ]" -An Interesting Day, Allan Wood & Paul Thompson

Why would Bush sit there, and why should he not "SAY ANYTHING YET?" After all, he claims to have seen the first tower impact before even walking into the classroom.

At 9:05am, the Pentagon had still not been attacked, and would not be for another 32 to 40 minutes, depending upon which account you accept. This was plenty of time to do something about it, such as to send up fighter aircraft from Andrews Air Force Base, 10 miles from the Pentagon, which had two active squadrons of fighters whose mission was:

"To provide combat units in the highest possible state of readiness." -Andrews Air Force website, POWERFUL EVIDENCE THAT AIR FORCE WAS MADE TO STAND DOWN ON 9-11, The Emperor's Clothes, July 2002

The order for Andrews to scramble fighters and to defend Washington DC from the attack did not happen.

Rather, the Andrews Air Force Base website was changed to eliminate the "highest possible state of readiness" from the descriptions. Some pundits claimed that Andrews was not supposed to protect Washington DC, mimicking the new and revised Andrews website, but that is absurd. Andrews is where Air Force One flies into and out of (as it did later that same day with Bush aboard, escorted by three fighter jets).

Andrews had the 121st Fighter Squadron/113th Fighter Wing with F-16s, as well as the 321st Marine Attack Fighter Squadron equipped with FA/18s.

Immediately after the Pentagon was attacked Andrews Air Force Base provided an "air cap" cover over Washington DC.

"Air defense around Washington is provided mainly by fighter planes from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland near the District of Columbia border. The D.C. Air National Guard is also based there and equipped with F-16 fighter planes, a National Guard spokesman said."

"But the fighters took to the skies over Washington only after the devastating attack on the Pentagon..." --San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 September 2001

"It was after the attack on the Pentagon that the Air Force then decided to scramble F-16s out of the DC National Guard Andrews Air Force Base to fly cover, a--a protective cover over Washington, DC." --NBC Nightly News, (6:30 PM ET), September 11 2001

Air Force General Richard Myers: "When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked..."

Senator Carl Levin: "Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?"

MYERS: "That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck." -Senate Armed Services Committee Transcript, Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff

Why no protection before the attack on the Pentagon? It certainly "became clear what the threat was" at 8:45am, when the first World Trade Center Tower was devastated by a hijacked commercial airliner! Mr. Myers would have us believe that it took an additional hour for people in the Pentagon to realize how serious the situation was, and to do anything about it.

That is Myers' testimony, and for that they made him the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Vice President Richard Cheney

No account of 9-11 would be complete without the actions of Dick Cheney, the "prime suspect" in the words of former LAPD detective Michael Ruppert.

There actually was a shortage of jet fighter craft on the morning of September 11th (although you would think they could have located 1 to protect Washington DC, given 80 minutes advanced warning). This shortage happened because a minimum of five known major war game exercises were occuring simultaneously (Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon). These exercises pulled most of the Northeast sector's fighter jets up and into Canada and Alaska.

Other simulations running during the 9-11 attacks included a live "hijacking drill" and a simulation of a plane crashing into a building by the National Reconnaissance Office just as actual planes started crashing into actual buildings.

Coincidentally, Dick Cheney was the person in direct command of all military preparedness exercises, given the responsibility by Bush on May 8 of 2001:

"President Bush May 8 directed Vice President Dick Cheney to coordinate development of U.S. government initiatives to combat terrorist attacks on the United States." -US State Department, Cheney to Oversee Domestic Counterterrorism Efforts, President announces new homeland defense initiative

"Therefore, I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm." -Bush, May 8, 2001, Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction

"Although the announcement focused on weapons of mass destruction, the central issue and rationale for Cheney's management role was 'seamless' communication and coordination of responses." -Crossing the Rubicon, p.414, Michael Ruppert

Next we have Dick Cheney arriving in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) at a time that is not able to be pinpointed.

"(Transportation Secretary Norman) Mineta testified that he arrived at the PEOC at 9:20 a.m. and that Vice President Cheney was already present with his staff. "The 9/11 Commission Report" states that Cheney himself arrived at the PEOC at 9:58, a stunning 38 minute contradiction to Mineta’s testimony." -The Mineta Testimony: 9/11 Commission Exposed, By Gregor Holland

Now, with a plane headed towards the Pentagon, Dick Cheney was in charge as "Commander in Chief". The Secret Service was calling the shots, "with a system that allowed them to see what FAA's radar was seeing." (Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies)

This brings us to the shocking and damning testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, which you should really download and watch for yourself: Windows Media (1.81MB) / Real Media (1.83MB) / Quicktime (13.96MB).

Mineta: “During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!??” -Lee Hamilton questions Norman Mineta, 9-11 Commission Hearings

Just what are those "orders," and who was the officer questioning Cheney? These are the things we don't learn from the 9-11 Commission cover-up. But a bit of intuition and common sense brings us to reality: the order was to not shoot down the bogey. No shots were fired. No Surface to Air Missile left its tube. No jet fighter intercept was made.

The officer was clearly prodding Cheney to come to a different conclusion than the current standing order. He did not.

CUTTING IT W-A-Y SHORT

Returning to the sneering sarcasm of Paul Campos, I really can't believe that he has read ANY of these hard to refute facts about September 11th. If he had, he would certainly not be so trite and dismissive, in effect defending the Bush regime (incompetently, without facts) despite the guilty behavior they have displayed, the criminal actions they have taken subsequently, and their predictions of a "new Pearl Harbor" before the fact.

It is irrational to absolve the people who benefitted most from the crime, just because they told you to.

The case against Bush et al. is large and complicated, and clearly beyond the capacity of a lot of people to grasp. I don't know what kind of "law" Campos purports to teach over at the University of Colorado, but I might consider saving my tuition and going elsewhere.

Yell at Paul Campos here: paul.campos@colorado.edu.

Yell at CommonDreams here: editor@commondreams.org

Yell at the Rocky Mountain News here.

____________________________________________

John Doraemi Publishes Crimes of the State at:
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

PS.

The ending to Norman Mineta's story came recently when the testimony above was mentioned on Fox's Hannity and Colmes show, by Dr. James Fetzer of Scholars for 9-11 Truth (June 22, 2006).

Fetzer stood his ground and he recounted what Mineta said about the plane approaching the Pentagon. The next day Norman Mineta resigned as the US Transportation Secretary.

###