Happy 9/11 Day!

[FreelancePoliceman]

Since the powers that be have decided Americans should be inundated with another annual flood of 9/11 propaganda, but this time bigger and badder to commemorate its 20th anniversary, and since there still seem to be people who haven't realized that the American government itself was behind these attacks, I thought maybe it would be fun to discuss what happened that day. I'm too lazy to provide citations as I'm writing this, but if any particular claim strikes you, feel free to ask about it.

Ali Abdelsaoud Mohamed
Peter Dale Scott wrote a brief bio of this guy I'll plagiarize:

...Mohamed [w]as a man who was important in al Qaeda and personally close to Osama bin Laden.¹ He was also intimate and important to U.S. intelligence, although one would never guess this from the 9/11 Commission Report.² Finally, he was the principal trainer for the al Qaeda terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and destroyed it eight years later.
Mohamed, who worked at times for the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army, was in the 1980s a sergeant on active duty with the Fifth U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg.³ In 1989, while still on the U.S. Army payroll, he was training candidates at the al-Kifah Center for al Qaeda's jihad.⁴ Special Forces had since the 1950s been training foreign nationals in terrorism, both at Fort Bragg and also in Germany.⁵ Only in 2006 did the American public learn that in Afghanistan he trained al Qaeda terrorists in how to hijack airliners -- including "how to smuggle box cutters onto airplanes."⁶

Ali Mohamed was known in the al Qaeda camps as Abu Mohamed al Amriki -- Father Mohamed the American.⁷ A member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, he swore allegiance in 1984 to that group's cofounder, the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became a top aide to bin Laden. (It was on al-Zawahiri's instructions that Mohamed first infiltrated U.S. intelligence services; and in addition, Mohamed helped al-Zawahiri to enter America in 1993 and 1994 to raise money).⁸ The 9/11 Commission Report mentioned Ali Mohamed and said that the plotters against the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were "led" (their word) by Ali Mohamed.⁹ That is the report's only reference to him, although it is not all the commission heard.

U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who had negotiated a plea bargain with Mohamed, testified at some length about him to the 9/11 Commission:

Ali Mohamed...trained most of al Qaeda's top leadership -- including Bin Laden and Zawahiriand most of al Qaeda's top trainers. Mohamed taught surveillance, countersurveillance, assassinations, kidnaping, codes, ciphers and other intelligence techniques. Mohamed surveilled the American embassy in Nairobi in 1993. And he was well trained to do it: Mohamed spent 17 years in the Egyptian military (with commando training and experience in embassy security). He left the Egyptian army to join the United States Army and was stationed at the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg from 1986 to 1989, when he became an United States citizen. He gave some training to persons who would later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he arranged Bin Laden's security in the Sudan in 1994 after an attempt on Bin Laden's life, and he visited the al Qaeda cell in Kenya. From 1994 until his arrest in 1998, he lived as an American citizen in California, applying for jobs as an FBI translator and working as a security guard for a defense contractor.¹⁰

Interesting as Fitzgerald's information was, what he omitted was far more interesting. To begin with, Mohamed was not just an FBI job applicant. He was an FBI informant, from at least 1992 if not earlier.¹¹ Furthermore, from 1994 "until his arrest in 1998 [by which time the 9/11 plot was well under way], Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries."ÃÃâ€*’Ãâ€*ââ⠀šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ÃƒÆ’ƒÂ¢Ã¢â€Å ¡Ã‚¬Ã…¡ÃÃâ€*†™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒââ ‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ�¹² Shortly after 9/11, Larry C. Johnson, a former State Department and CIA official, faulted the FBI publicly for using Mohamed as an informant, when it should have recognized that the man was a high-ranking terrorist plotting against the United States. In Johnson's words, "It's possible that the FBI thought they had control of him and were trying to use him, but what's clear is that they did not have control."ÃÃâ€*’ââ‚ ¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚à ‚ÂÂ�¹³

Mohamed's contacts with U.S. intelligence antedated his relationship to the FBI. In the early 1980s Mohamed was employed by CIA in Germany as ÃÃâ€*’¢ÃƆ™Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãâ₠¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ’…âââ €šÂ¬Ã…“contract agent," then dismissed as a security risk.¹⁴ Despite being on a State Department watch list, he was able to return to America in 1985 (on what an FBI consultant has called "a visa program controlled by the CIAÃÃâ€*’â€Ã …¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ �") and obtain a job as a defense industry security officer with American Protective Services in Sunnyvale, California.¹⁵ As mentioned already, in 1986 he became a sergeant with U.S. Army Special Forces.¹⁶

For someone on a watch list to be admitted in the United States on a special visa program suggests that he may have been already recruited as a U.S. intelligence agent. What happened next is even more suggestive: In 1988, he apparently used his leave [from the U.S. Army] to take an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. Upon achieving the rank of sergeant, he received an honorable discharge from the army three years after joining. �¹⁷ It is not unheard of for members of the U.S. armed forces to violate regulations and join other armies, but this is nearly always in order to operate for the United States in a covert capacity.¹⁸ The public has since been told that Mohamed, while on a leave from the U.S. Army, went to Afghanistan and trained “the first al-Qaeda volunteers in techniques of unconventional warfare, including kidnappings, assassinations, and hijacking planes." ... ¹⁹ This was in 1988, one year before he left active U.S. Army service and joined the Reserve.

In 1993, Mohamed had been detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver airport, when he inquired after an incoming al Qaeda terrorist who turned out to be carrying two forged Saudi passports. Mohamed immediately told the RCMP to make a phone call to the United States. The call, to Mohammed's FBI handler, John Zent, secured his release.²⁰ The FBI-directed release of Mohamed by the RCMP affected history. The encounter took place before Mohamed flew to Nairobi, photographed the U.S. Embassy in December 1993, and delivered the photos to bin Laden. According to Mohamed's negotiated confession in 2000, after the 1998 bombing of that embassy, "Bin Laden looked at the picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber."²¹

However, the 9/11 report is utterly silent about Mohamed's links to CIA and the FBI. It is clear the report's authors did not want to admit that as late as 1998 the U.S. government had continued to work with and protect a trainer of al Qaeda terrorists, even after al Qaeda had already launched a lethal attack against U.S. citizens in the first World Trade Center bombing.

In August 2006 there was a National Geographic TV special on Ali Mohamed.²² This presentation should be taken as the next official fallback position on Ali Mohamed, because John Cloonan, the FBI agent who worked with Fitzgerald on Mohamed, helped narrate it. Here's what TV critics wrote about its contents: "Ali Mohamed manipulated the FBI, CIA and U.S. Army on behalf of Osama bin Laden. Mohamed trained terrorists how to hijack airliners, bomb buildings and assassinate rivals. [D]uring much of this time Mohamed was...an operative for the CIA and FBI, and a member of the U.S. Army.²³ ... Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989, training radical Muslims who would go on to assassinate Jewish militant Meir Kahane and detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant while writing most of the al Qaeda terrorist manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa. ²⁴ That Mohamed trained al Qaeda in hijacking planes and helped write the al Qaeda terrorist manual is confirmed by Lawrence Wright, who has seen U.S. government records.²⁵

According to Cloonan, Mohamed was also familiar with the 9/11 plot. "I don't believe he was privy to all the details, but what he laid out was the attack as if he knew every detail," Cloonan said in the National Geographic documentary. "This is how you position yourself. I taught people to sit in first class." Mohamed described teaching al Qaeda terrorists how to smuggle box cutters onto airplanes."²⁶ If these latest revelations about Ali Mohamed are true, then:

1. A key planner of the 9/11 plot, and trainer in hijacking, was also an informant for the FBI.

2. This operative trained the members for all of the chief Islamist attacks inside the United States, the first World Trade Center bombing, the New York landmarks plot, and finally 9/11 -- as well as the attacks against Americans in Somalia and Kenya.

3. And yet for four years Mohamed, already named as an un-indicted conspirator, was allowed to move in and out of the country. Then, unlike his trainees, he was allowed to plea-bargain.²⁷ As of March 2007, Ali Mohamed had not yet been sentenced for any crime.²⁸

....

ALI MOHAMED AND THE 9/11 PLOT

Did the U.S. government (including the CIA) continue to use Mohamed as an informant, even after 1998 when he was under arrest? According to Berger, "Mohamed was one of the primary sources for the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily brief (PDB) entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.""ÂÂÂÂ�⁵¹ But Mohamed may have supplied this information before his arrest, as much of the relevant information in the PDB would appear to date from 1998 or earlier. At the heart of the August 6 brief was a disguised double reference to Mohamed himself: Al-Qaida members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qaida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ [Egyptian Islamic Jihad] member lived in California in the mid-1990s."ÂÂÂÂ�⁵²

Ali Mohamed is simultaneously one of the two found guilty in the embassies plot (the other was his friend Wadih el-Hage) and also the EIJ member who lived in California.⁵³ CIA, in its warning to President Bush about Mohamed's "support structure," did not reveal that he had been in federal custody for almost three years. But Berger, who was a researcher for the National Geographic show, adds flesh to the possibility that Mohamed's "support structure" was capable of helping to create 9/11: "Ali A. Mohamed ... knew al Qaeda was sponsoring flight training for terrorists. He knew of at least one specific terrorist operation centered on a suicide airplane attack. And he knew at least three terrorist pilots personally. He was linked to at least one of the specific schools visited by the 9/11 hijackers. He knew the internal procedures of the security company that maintained two checkpoints used by hijackers at Boston's Logan Airport.⁵⁴ ... Whether or not Mohamed knew the particulars of the 9/11 plot, he knew a lot. Businesses and institutions exploited by Mohamed and his close associates were re-used by virtually all of the 9/11 hijackers as they prepared for the attack."⁵⁵

What is clear is that shortly after 9/11, Mohamed readily confessed to FBI Agent Cloonan that he had taught al Qaeda terrorists how to hijack airplanes. Such powerful admissions against self-interest are hard to explain without some unusual immunity having been conferred upon him. Even harder to explain is the fact that Mohamed has not to date been sentenced for the crimes to which he had confessed earlier.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT'S PRAISE FOR THE HANDLERS OF ALI MOHAMED

The 9/11 report, summarizing the convictions of Mohamed's trainees for the World Trade Center bombing and New York landmarks plots, talks of "this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort."⁵⁶ It says nothing about the suppressed evidence found in Nosair's house, including "maps and drawings of New York City landmarks," which if pursued could have prevented both plots from developing in the first place.

What explains the 9/11 report's gratuitous and undeserved praise for the "superb" effort of Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI in the New York landmarks case? Did the report's authors recognize that this was an especially sensitive area, which if properly investigated would lead to past U.S. protection of terrorists? This question returns us to Peter Lance's charge that Fitzgerald had evidence before 1998 to implicate Mohamed in the Kenya embassy bombing, yet did nothing and let the bombing happen. Did U.S. authorities have advance evidence before the 9/11 attack, and again do nothing?

As a first step all U.S. agencies should release the full documentary record of their dealings with Ali Mohamed, the FBI and CIA informant who allegedly planned the details of the airline seizures. Of particular relevance would be everything to do with Mohamed's December 1994 interview with authorities after the subpoena that he ignored, one month before he applied successfully to work with the Burns International Security Company. Only a full investigation of these facts will satisfy those who accuse members of the U.S. government of assisting the 9/11 plot or of failing to prevent 9/11 from happening.⁵⁷

The 9/11 Commission probably knew more about this situation than they let on. It cannot be just a coincidence that the person they selected to write the staff reports about al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot, and to conduct the relevant interviews, was a man who had a personal stake in preventing the full truth about Mohamed from coming out. This man was Dietrich Snell, who had been Fitzgerald's colleague in the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's office, and had helped Fitzgerald prosecute Ramzi Yousef. It was Snell who presumably drafted the praise for the superb effort by his former colleague Fitzgerald and the FBI. Of the nine people on Snell's team, all but one had worked for the U.S. government, and all but two for either the Justice Department or the FBI.⁵⁸

Hey! Why was the guy who trained the hijackers on the FBI and CIA payroll? Weird, huh? It gets weirder!

The American military is most likely the most sophisticated in the world. Why was it unable to intercept any of the hijacked airplanes for 1.6 hours?

The official narrative is that this didn't happen due to a combination of bad luck and almost every single person in the FAA and military's chain of command being extraordinarily incompetent. The "bad luck" is that on the day of 9/11 only (not 9/10, not 9/12), all but four military aircraft remained in the northeastern United States. Why was this? Well, the others were relocated; primarily to Colorado, Alaska, and Canada, where military exercises had been scheduled -- some simulating hijackings of commercial aircraft (!). This created a great deal of confusion when the FAA tried to contact the Pentagon to ask for scramblers; apparently there was difficulty establishing if this was just a part of the "war games" scheduled for that day.

Now for the incompetence: on 9/10, Air Force General Ralph Eberhart had lowered INFOCON to its lowest level, meaning not only that monitoring of network access was minimal or disabled, and it's likely impossible to establish who accessed the computer systems on that day, but also allowed the network of the air defence computer system to be more easily penetrated, possibly explaining why communication between the FAA and military suddenly became jammed for a time, or why a source that was never identified reported that the plane which had already crashed into the North Tower was actually headed toward DC from the northeast -- while in reality, the plane that hit the Pentagon was inbound from the west. The military's attention was redirected toward this "Phantom AA11," which no longer existed, allowing Flight 77 to fly unintercepted toward its target. However, when pilots were about to intercept this "Phantom AA11," and presumably then discover it didn't exist, a command post then sent them to fly around the Atlantic Ocean for some reason -- allowing AA77 to circle D.C. without interference before finally striking the Pentagon.

When UA93 was being hijacked, wouldn't you know it -- another false report came in! This one claimed a plane was heading west from Ohio, while UA93 was in fact heading east from Ohio, and eventually crashed (there's another weird topic) in Pennsylvania. The false report tracked another plane, Delta 1989, which despite being real had not been hijacked, and landed safely.

Oh, and only once the Delta flight landed, and all four actually hijacked airplanes were destroyed, were the war games suspended. Yes, even after the Pentagon had been struck, the Air Force higherups apparently believed it was a great idea to keep its exercises functioning as usual!

There's a wealth of information, publically acknowledged, that American intelligence knew Al Qaeda was planning an attack, and that it would possibly involve the use of aircraft. I can link any number of sources to this effect if anyone's interested. Does it make any sense for the Air Force to remove all but four of its aircraft from the region most likely to be targeted by an event like this at any time? Does it strike anyone as plausible they decided to do this, coincidentally, on the very day of 9/11, and not one day earlier or later?

If you believe this was an unfortunate coincidence, maybe you can also accept the series of unfortunate coincidences that were the status of the chain of command in the FAA and military.

On 9/11, the FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, who eventually gave the order to land all flights (and good for him! One of the only acts of competency that day), was going through his first day on the job. He was required, however, to coordinate with the FAA's Hijack Coordinator, Lieutenant General Mike Canavan, who was in Puerto Rico at the time of the attack and couldn't be reached. Did he designate a replacement during this time? No; it seems he'd forgotten to do this. Sliney made his order on his own initiative, since he didn't know what else to do. However, the Hijack Coordinator was the only person in the FAA who was supposed to contact the military -- specifically the National Military Command Center -- in the event of a hijacking, and due to Canavan's absence there was delay and confusion in establishing communication between these agencies.

The Director of the NMCC was Montague Winfield, but, wouldn't you know it, he was also absent that day. On September 10th he instructed Captain Charles Leidig to fill in for him -- this was also Leidig's first day on the job, and he had only been recently certified to hold that position.

After the NMCC was contacted, the NMCC was supposed to contact the Secretary of Defence, who at the time was Donald Rumsfeld. If approval were given, orders would be transmitted down NORAD's chain of command. Care to guess where Rumsfeld was --? That's right; he was nowhere to be found! Rumsfeld has said he was given a note saying the WTC had been hit about 15 minutes before the Pentagon was hit, so this would have been about 9:22 AM. In the meantime he decided to finish his breakfast meeting, then join another meeting -- and did not contact the NMCC. Then, after the Pentagon was hit, what did Rumsfeld decide to do? Take charge of the situation and begin to issue orders; for instance issue approval to scramble jets should there be more attacks? Position himself somewhere where he could stand by to receive additional information? No! Instead he went out and started helping carry bodies and whatnot on the Pentagon lawn, where cameras were conveniently pointed to demonstrate to the public what a great guy he was to dirty his hands with manual labor. For these 30 minutes he was out doing this photo op, nobody in the military could find or contact him, or even had any idea where he was. By the time he eventually got around to contacting the NMCC, all four planes had crashed. Confusingly, however, Rumsfeld has also said he was only "gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39" -- well after the Pentagon had been hit and even furthermore after he'd received a note concerning the hijackings. Make what you like of that.

The captain of NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) was Colonel Robert Marr, who attempted to scramble jets to stop the hijacked planes. But with Rumsfeld MIA, the only other person who could bypass the requirement to contact the Secretary of Defence was Marr's superior officer, Major General Larry Arnold. When he tried to contact Arnold, Marr was told that Arnold was in a meeting and couldn't be reached by phone. Instead, Marr had to dispatch a physical messenger to search for Arnold. By the time Arnold was dragged from his meeting and could telephone Marr to give his approval, it was too late to intercept AA11 (the other two planes which struck their marks weren't intercepted due to difficulties mentioned earlier).

Why was Marr the only person in the hierarchy to think to do this? What about, for instance, the commander of NORAD, Ralph Eberhart (again, the guy who'd lowered the security level of INFOCON)? According to his testimony, he was only told there were hijackings "practically at the same time American 11 slammed into the North Tower," but only became aware there was an "ongoing and coordinated terrorist attack" after the second impact. General Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also absent from his post, which was instead filled by his deputy, General Richard Myers. Eberhart called Myers around this point and they apparently resolved on nothing substantial; neither one of them apparently thought to cancel the war games or try to repurpose the aircraft engaged in them. Then, like Rumsfeld, instead of taking charge, perhaps making some phone calls, Eberhart decided the best use of his time was to drive for 30 minutes from Peterson Air Force Base to the Cheyenne Mountain base, during which he couldn't be reached by phone.

To recap: Sliney was on his first day at his job, Canavan was absent, Winfield was absent, Montague was absent and his replacement was on his first day at the job, Rumsfeld intentionally vanished, Arnold was absent, and Eberheart like Rumsfeld made himself absent. These were key figures in the chain of command! Marr and Sliney the only figures who showed any degree of competence or initiative (especially Sliney, given this was his first day). What the fuck went wrong here?

Unfortunately there has never really been a serious inquriry. You might think that the 9/11 Commission would, for instance, ask Eberheart why he didn't cancel the war games as soon as he became apprised of the situation, or ask the same of Myers, who was serving as his superior officer. Well, it didn't. In fact, both were promoted: Eberheart was asked to head the U.S. Northern Command, created by the Bush admin in 2002 following the attacks, while Myers was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 13, only two days after his incompetence had gotten people killed.

Now to me, this all sounds a little too convenient. Too many things went wrong. Too many people were absent. Two people out of ~10 in the chain of command to issue shootdown orders were on their first day at the job. If the hijackings had occurred on any other day of the year it's difficult to imagine their success. The idea that the stars aligned just to allow the hijackers to complete their goal -- it stretches credulity, especially given that the US and several other countries had prior knowledge that Al Qaida would be committing an attack soon on American soil, and had a good idea they'd be using aircraft. I assume this is more or less common knowledge, so I won't elaborate on this too much at the moment, but I may edit this post later to go into greater depth re. what was known by intelligence before the attacks, especially if anyone expresses interest.

But for now, I'd like to get into the really creepy stuff.

Dick Cheney's Mysterious Orders

Flight AA77 apparently crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 AM. UA93 crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03. Cheney's famous order to shoot down nonresponsive aircraft came certainly after the AA77 Pentagon crash; in his autobiography he places it even after the UA93 crash, at "around 10:15." Incidentally, this differs from The Washington Post's famous dramatized account of events which seems to place a shootdown order at 9:32 AM. I think it's fairly obvious the WP article should be taken with a few grains of salt; I only mention it since it exists for some reason, is famous for reasons I understand even less, and it serves as an example of how fucking useless the MSM are at doing competent investigative journalism.

What's really interesting, though, is the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, who gave yet a third account of what happened when he was with Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. He gave this testimony to Congress describing the buildup to the Pentagon strike (i.e. this occurred before the Pentagon was hit):

I was made aware of it [the shootdown order] during the time that the airplane coming in to the Pentagon -- there was a young man who had come in and said 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?' Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant.

Mineta believed that this referred to a shootdown order. Two problems with that are that the order didn't actually seem to be issued until later; another problem is, obviously, that the plane which hit the Pentagon was not, obviously, shot down.

Now there seem to me like only two possible orders you could give regarding a hijacked plane inbound to the country's capital: either shoot it down, or don't shoot it down. What other possible orders would you give? Given that nothing happened, doesn't it seem likely that the orders were to ensure that nothing happened?

Well, maybe you're too skeptical to go this far yet. Still, i think you have to grant that Mineta's testimony would at least merit some investigation as it conflicted with Cheney's account of the shootdown order. Yet Mineta's report was inexplicably excluded from the 9/11 Commission Report, which doesn't even acknowledge his presence in the PEOP; furthermore the Commission went so far as to delete Mineta's recorded testimony from its website (you can find clips elsewhere online). The Commission Report also goes with Cheney's account of events, placing the shootdown order after the Pentagon had been hit -- in fact, it only has Cheney even entering the "underground tunnel leading to the [PEOC]" at the exact same time the Pentagon was struck, 9:37. The CR then has Cheney remaining in the tunnel before entering the PEOC for twenty minutes, trying to complete a call to the President -- this despite the fact that the PEOC was equipped with several telephones -- only entering the PEOC at 9:58. The CR also rewrote Cheney's encounter with the young man to take place "sometime between 10:10 and 10:15" in order to reconcile it with the official chronology of this shootdown order, and has him asking Cheney explictly about shootdown authorization, not unspecified "orders."

But remember how AA77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37? Three guesses as to what's wrong with this picture.

Instead the Commission tries to make this conversation refer to UA93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before hitting its target (supposedly the US Capitol). But the problem with this is Mineta's testimony makes no fucking sense in this light. I don't believe anyone has ever suggested Mineta lied -- he had no reason to -- so if he was confused, he'd have to be pretty terribly confused to give the testimony he did. Firstly, the Commission's report has Cheney out of the picture making strange phone calls in a tunnel during the time the Pentagon was hit; how did Mineta imagine him there at the time? Or if Mineta simply confused AA77 and UA93, how did he remember the plane being "10 minutes out," when the plane crashed more than 10 miles from DC? (the 9/11 CR eliminates Mineta's reference to the plane being 10 miles out; instead has it at 60 miles out at the closest it got.)

Thirdly, Cheney himself contradicted the Commission's report of events on September 16 in an interview on NBC, in which he stated he was taken to the PEOC shortly after the 2nd tower was hit at 9:03, having his Secret Service detail physically lift him and carry him almost immediately after the 2nd tower was struck. Wouldn't he have said "when the Pentagon was struck" if that's when he really had been entering the bunker? There are also other witnesses which saw Cheney entering or getting ready to enter the PEOC around 9:03 (when the south tower of the WTC fell): David Bohrer, White House Photographer, was quoted by ABC News saying: "Just after 9 AM Vice President Dick Cheney was in his West Wing office when two or three agents came in and told him 'Sir you have to come with us.'" Richard Clarke, National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism at the time, also reported SS agents telling Cheney he needs to move immediately after the South Tower collapse. Ashley Estes, now Ashley Estes Kavanaugh (yes, married to that Kavanaugh), who was the personal secretary of Bush, reports seeing the SS with Bush coming past her "as the second plane hit." Eric Edelman, Undersecretary of Defence, was in the PEOC, and testified that "I was already down in the PEOC with the Vice President when we got word that there had been an explosion in the Pentagon." So either A) at least five witnesses, as well as Cheney himself, were all independently mistaken about what time Cheney was moved to the PEOC tunnel entrance, and then entered the PEOC soon afterward, or B) for reasons in conflict with a search for truth, the 9/11 Commission Report misrepresented events.

It seems pretty obvious that the CR deliberately sought to obscure when Cheney was in the PEOC. Why would it? Why would the 9/11 Commission ignore Mineta's testimony and remove it from its website? Because the only explanation of Mineta's testimony that makes any sense was that Cheney issued an order not to shoot down AA77.

Oh, by the way, the man Cheney talked with in the PEOC was later identified as Douglas Cochrane. The 9/11 Commission interviewed him -- but classified his testimony. Just something to think about.

The above image by the way is sourced from this page, which goes into some additional detail. It also has some notes sourced via FOIA "restating that the calls in the command bunker were that "The plane is 30 miles out" and "The plane is 10 miles out" and that the calls were made at 9:31a.m. and 9:34 a.m., respectively." I'm too tired to take a look at this at the moment but check it out if you like.


I'm getting tired now, but I'm posting this in order to force myself to complete a writeup of the impacts themselves tomorrow. In the meantime use this thread to discuss whatever you like about 9/11; also feel free to suggest edits, corrections, additional info, etc, which I'll add to this post since people are more likely to read the first post in a thread than engage with posts hidden in the middle of a thread. I'll also probably edit this post tomorrow since I'm sure there are grammatical errors and bad style. Probably I will. Maybe. Maybe not.

[FreelancePoliceman]

Jet Fuel Doesn't Melt Steel Beams

Reserved since I don't know what the character limit is:

[xerx]

This is tangentially related, but I've been anxiously waiting for the 2020's since 2010, when I'd read about this guy's predictions RE. the coming collapse of the 'American empire' (which is supposed to happen between 2020 and 2025). His mathematical model factors in a society's contradictions in order to guess the probability of its collapse. He had apparently used his model to correctly predict the collapse of the USSR.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7yk...oviet-collapse

In the case of the USSR, the main structural contradictions were as follows: the working class was increasingly repressed and unable to self-organise through trade unions (ironic given the country's Communist pretensions); the wealthier 'bourgeoisie' or elite had money to spend, but nothing to buy from domestic production, leading to economic stagnation; Russian intellectuals wanted more freedom of expression; minorities wanted more autonomy; and peasants wanted more freedom of movement

For the USA:

* economic contradictions such as 'overproduction relative to demand', unemployment and the increasing costs of climate change;

* military contradictions including rising tensions between the US, NATO, and its military allies, along with the increasing economic unsustainability of war;

* political contradictions including the conflicting roles of the US, UN and EU;

* cultural contradictions including tensions between US Judeo-Christianity, Islam, and other minorities;

* and social contradictions encompassing the increasing gulf between the so-called 'American Dream', the belief that everyone can prosper in America through hard work, and the reality of American life (the fact that more and more people can't).

[FreelancePoliceman]

This is tangentially related, but I've been anxiously waiting for the 2020's since 2010, when I'd read about this guy's predictions RE. the coming collapse of the 'American empire' (which is supposed to happen between 2020 and 2025). His mathematical model factors in a society's contradictions in order to guess the probability of its collapse. He had apparently used his model to correctly predict the collapse of the USSR.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7yk...oviet-collapse

For the USA:

Why; do you believe he's right?

Decline of the American empire was probably easy to see since 20 years ago if you could look past pop culture -- American empire overextended when Europe was destroyed, and predicting its collapse is a bit like predicting the sun's going to set.

Anyway, I didn't read the article too heavily but it seems he predicted "US global power ending by 2020," which was wrong.

Still, saying the American empire is collapsing seems a bit trite at this point. We've apparently decided on eternal hostility with the continent of Asia and are losing the conflict; Europe is breaking free; we're losing power in even Latin America. The instant empires begin to fail comes about when the ruling class has more to gain by plundering the empire than by preserving it, and that's what we see -- a humiliating 20 year war that winds up accomplishing nothing in Afghanistan is an obvious waste of imperial power and influence, but it sure made some elites a lot richer, so that's what ended up happening. This kind of behavior has no reason not to continue, and so it will. But you don't need to construct any complicated models to understand this.

[xerx]

Why; do you believe he's right?

Decline of the American empire was probably easy to see since 20 years ago if you could look past pop culture -- American empire overextended when Europe was destroyed, and predicting its collapse is a bit like predicting the sun's going to set.

Anyway, I didn't read the article too heavily but it seems he predicted "US global power ending by 2020," which was wrong.

Oh, I don't know whether or not he's right. I'm just curious about whether or not his prediction will come true, and we'll find out soon enough. Yes, I know that his exact predicted date was 2020, but I'll give him some leeway until 2025 (his original prediction).

Still, saying the American empire is collapsing seems a bit trite at this point. We've apparently decided on eternal hostility with the continent of Asia and are losing the conflict; Europe is breaking free; we're losing power in even Latin America. The instant empires begin to fail comes about when the ruling class has more to gain by plundering the empire than by preserving it, and that's what we see -- a humiliating 20 year war that winds up accomplishing nothing in Afghanistan is an obvious waste of imperial power and influence, but it sure made some elites a lot richer, so that's what ended up happening. This kind of behavior has no reason not to continue, and so it will. But you don't need to construct any complicated models to understand this.

I have a very good recollection of what it was like 20 years ago (when he made his predictions) and it was far from certain that the American Empire would collapse. In fact, that idea was something of a fringe, nihilistic belief.

To all appearances, the American system had completely eviscerated its ideological competitors, and the American establishment seemed unassailable. Wars happened overseas, to obscure countries, whilst the American army was newly-minted as a "peacekeeping" force, and foreign dispatchments took the appearance of police actions rather than wars. Highly influential people wrote books proclaiming the "End of History" and the "Pax Americana", and it was easy to believe that "Capitalist Democracy" would be the permanent political system of the entire human race. I'm not exaggerating—it may sound like some parallel dimension, but seemingly intelligent people even believed that capitalism would transform China into a democracy (by growing the bourgeois middle class, which would go on to demand political rights).

It certainly doesn't seem like that today. You're quite right to point that out.

[FreelancePoliceman]

To all appearances, the American system had completely eviscerated its ideological competitors, and the American establishment seemed unassailable. Wars happened overseas, to obscure countries, whilst the American army was newly-minted as a "peacekeeping" force, and foreign dispatchments took the appearance of police actions rather than wars. Highly influential people wrote books proclaiming the "End of History" and the "Pax Americana", and it was easy to believe that "Capitalist Democracy" would be the permanent political system of the entire human race. I'm not exaggerating—it may sound like some parallel dimension, but seemingly intelligent people even believed that capitalism would transform China into a democracy (by growing the bourgeois middle class, which would go on to demand political rights).

I didn’t phrase it well, but that’s what I meant — you had to look past ideological fluff like like this and the huge cultural perception that the empire had achieved permanent stability or something and actually take a hard look at actual conditions by, say, the repealing of Glass-Steagal (hello, 2008!) or what NAFTA was doing (and NAFTA was just exacerbating a trend already happening by that point); trying to destroy your own working class because doing this makes it cheaper to buy from Mexico — not the sign of future stability. Everyone notices the cracks now because they’ve become impossible to ignore, but they didn’t just suddenly develop from nowhere.

[Baqer]

9/11 wasn't an inside job, it just never happened. Where you there when it happened? No of course not, it was just really good cgi.

[xerx]

I didn’t phrase it well, but that’s what I meant — you had to look past ideological fluff like like this and the huge cultural perception that the empire had achieved permanent stability or something and actually take a hard look at actual conditions by, say, the repealing of Glass-Steagal (hello, 2008!) or what NAFTA was doing (and NAFTA was just exacerbating a trend already happening by that point); trying to destroy your own working class because doing this makes it cheaper to buy from Mexico — not the sign of future stability. Everyone notices the cracks now because they’ve become impossible to ignore, but they didn’t just suddenly develop from nowhere.

That's all apparent now, but, back then, it wasn't obvious that NAFTA's problems weren't some teething stage before the utopia. Only someone with ideological conviction would have been confident in saying otherwise. Conviction isn't a substitute for empirical evidence, and neoclassical economics seemed like a fairly successful system on the whole (even if there were glaring problems that economists refused to countenance), and better than the alternatives. The right-ward shift (towards social democracy) of hitherto radical-Leftist political parties happened (in the 1990's) for a reason.

[FreelancePoliceman]

That's all apparent now, but, back then, it wasn't obvious that NAFTA's problems weren't some teething stage before the utopia. Only someone with ideological conviction would have been confident in saying otherwise. Conviction isn't a substitute for empirical evidence, and neoclassical economics seemed like a fairly successful system on the whole (even if there were glaring problems that economists refused to countenance), and better than the alternatives. The right-ward shift (towards social democracy) of hitherto radical-Leftist political parties happened (in the 1990's) for a reason.

Yes, because the economy was working well then. Unless you believe the present is somehow disconnected from the past, then many of the seeds of what we’re seeing now were laid before 9/11, and you don’t need ideological conviction to draw cause-end-effect conclusions. That the chattering classes were wrong is besides the point; they’ve never seen beyond the tip of their noses.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Hmm I think you are using T info to reveal what my F hunches sorta already suspected upon.

Only thing- I don't really know if it was 'too convenient' that so many people were absent that day. Americans are notorious for being fat and/or lazy and just because a person was way up there in the chain of command or a Deep State reptile agent person doesn't make me think it would be any different. In fact I think it would even be more so this way.

That there wasn't a good enough back-up plan if so many people were absent also doesn't surprise me. Suits talk a big game about 'safety' and 'security' when the cameras are on them but in reality they don't give a shit and they just wanna lazily do whatever. ESEs would be much more likely to not be lazy and to respond appropriately but they are usually secretaries and not military commanders.

And I think people grossly over-estimate how "sophisticated" the government and military really is as well. I obviously don't know shit about that str8 man stuff - but it sure seems that way. They seem to have the manpower to bully weaker targets or something but over-all it doesn't seem that strong or secure either. The capitol building was raided easily - was that an inside job as well?

[FreelancePoliceman]

Hmm I think you are using T info to reveal what my F hunches sorta already suspected upon.

Only thing- I don't really know if it was 'too convenient' that so many people were absent that day. Americans are notorious for being fat and/or lazy and just because a person was way up there in the chain of command or a Deep State reptile agent person doesn't make me think it would be any different. In fact I think it would even be more so this way.

That there wasn't a good enough back-up plan if so many people were absent also doesn't surprise me. Suits talk a big game about 'safety' and 'security' when the cameras are on them but in reality they don't give a shit and they just wanna lazily do whatever. ESEs would be much more likely to not be lazy and to respond appropriately but they are usually secretaries and not military commanders.

And I think people grossly over-estimate how "sophisticated" the government and military really is as well. I obviously don't know shit about that str8 man stuff - but it sure seems that way. They seem to have the manpower to bully weaker targets or something but over-all it doesn't seem that strong or secure either. The capitol building was raided easily - was that an inside job as well?

OK, I'm still drafting a post on the impacts themselves, which have a lot of more obvious problems that aren't really possible to dismiss as incompetence. What I've written so far -- yes, it's speculation, but I think the conclusions I'm trying to indicate make much more sense than the official story.

As for what I have so far, though: it's not just that the military/FAA was incompetent, and not even that people were promoted because of their incompetence, but that there are so many "coincidences" that went wrong that day it's difficult to imagine 9/11 could have succeeded on any other day. It happened on the one day virtually all military aircraft were drawn out of the northeast; these war games simulate the very thing that's happening in real life, causing confusion establishing if hijackings are really occurring; two people in a critical chain of command just so happened to be on their literal first day at their post; two others to all appearances intentionally made themselves vanish; this was one day after the security level of INFOCON was dropped to its lowest level; a command post decides to send pilots responding to a legitimate hijacking to fly aimlessly around the Atlantic; and for all this time nobody thinks to stop the war games distracting the attention and resources of the military in order to respond to these hijackings until they've reached their targets. At what other time would 9/11 have been feasible to pull off? Seriously, if this had been tried the day before, the week before, the month before -- it would have been impossible! And this is before getting into Mineta's testimony. If you were top brass trying to secretly prevent a military response to planned hijackings, what would you do differently?

And lol, yes, the capitol attack was also an intelligence operation. Like 9/11, it's not that those people didn't actually exist, but they were encouraged and allowed to do what they did in order to whip up support for the intelligence-military-industrial complex -- except this time from liberals, who switched from ACAB to back-the-blue as soon as it was Trump supporters being targeted.

[xerx]

Yes, because the economy was working well then. Unless you believe the present is somehow disconnected from the past, then many of the seeds of what we’re seeing now were laid before 9/11, and you don’t need ideological conviction to draw cause-end-effect conclusions. That the chattering classes were wrong is besides the point; they’ve never seen beyond the tip of their noses.

I don't disagree that the seeds were planted well before 9/11. But that's not the point. The point is that, without good empirical evidence, you could have drawn cause-and-effect conclusions in the other direction (that the establishment was correct, though not perfectly so) just as easily. Alternatives (like Marxist and Austrian economics) were themselves discredited due to failures of their own.