9/11 Tribute (Has Every Single Person in Government With Any Integrity Left Already Gone?)

Contributions to this blog's operation are always welcome!

Not really news (anymore):

Big Banks Fined Mega-Billions; CEOs Remain Untouched, Above the Law*

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World Trade Center Building 7 was 610 feet tall, 47 stories, and would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane on 9/11, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 8 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11. In the 6 years since 9/11, NIST has failed to provide any explanation for the collapse. In addition to NIST’s failure to provide an explanation, absolutely no mention of Building 7’s collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." [To watch a video of the collapse, click here http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/WTC7_Collapse.wmv ]

The most interesting part of all this 9/11 Tribute (lack of national coverage as a given) seems to be that it's been revealed that hundreds, if not thousands, of people knew that the official story was balderdash all along. Not, as the conspiracy theory goes, that if anything had actually been underhanded that plenty of people would have told about it, but since no one ever did, nothing else must have happened. . . .

But as the U.S. attacks Iraq/Syria (wherever a scent of ISIS/L emanates from now on), no one will ever divulge again what they know now on pain of . . . .
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The plot thickens.

Finally.

Or at least the reporting does.

After years of persistence a group in New York has secured the necessary number of valid signatures to put on the ballot a vote to investigate the cause of the collapse of the three WTC buildings. The official account, if correct, means that existing fire and building codes are insufficient to protect the public and that all other steel high rise structures are subject to the same failure. The group has been clever to frame the issue in terms of public safety and not in terms of 9/11 truth.

New York authorities, of course, continue to oppose the initiative. The question now rests on a judge’s ruling. It is difficult to imagine a judge going against the government in such a major way, but the group will have made the point that the government has no confidence in the truth of its own story.

Over these 13 years, physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, and first responders have provided massive evidence that completely disproves the official account of the failure of the three skyscrapers. The response to experts has been for non-experts to call experts “conspiracy theorists.” In other words, the defenders of the government’s story have no scientific or factual basis on which to stand. So they substitute name-calling. 

9/11 was used to fundamentally alter the nature of the US government and its relationship to the American people. Unaccountable executive power has replaced due process and the checks and balances established by the US Constitution. In the name of National Security, executive power knows no restraints. Essentially, Americans today have no rights if the government targets them.

Those Americans born after 9/11 were born into a different country from the rest of us. Having never experienced constitutional government, they will not know what they have lost.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts is now in Paul Krugman scream mode.

And he's making no secret of it.

September 10, 2014

9/11 After 13 years

Paul Craig Roberts

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

A generation of Americans has been born into distain and distrust of Muslims.

A generation of Americans has been born into a police state in which privacy and constitutional protections no longer exist.

A generation of Americans has been born into continuous warfare while needs of citizens go unmet.

A generation of Americans has been born into a society in which truth is replaced with the endless repetition of falsehoods.

According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security State of the World’s Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.

That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.

The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get intercepter jet fighters into the air.

The National Security Council failed.

All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America’s NATO and Israeli allies.
Air Traffic Control failed.

Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of such a failure is zero.

If such a thing had actually happened, there would have been demands from the White House, from Congress, and from the media for an investigation. Officials would have been held accountable for their failures. Heads would have rolled.

Instead, the White House resisted for one year the 9/11 families’ demands for an investigation. Finally, a collection of politicians was assembled to listen to the government’s account and to write it down. The chairman, vice chairman, and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission have said that information was withheld from the commission, lies were told to the commission, and that the commission “was set up to fail.” The worst security failure in history resulted in not a single firing. No one was held responsible.

Washington concluded that 9/11 was possible because America lacked a police state.

The PATRIOT Act, which was awaiting the event was quickly passed by the congressional idiots. The Act established executive branch independence of law and the Constitution. The Act and follow-up measures have institutionalized a police state in “the land of the free.”

Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset dying of renal failure, was blamed despite his explicit denial. For the next ten years Osama bin Laden was the bogyman that provided the excuse for Washington to kill countless numbers of Muslims. Then suddenly on May 2, 2011, Obama claimed that US Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden in Pakistan. Eyewitnesses on the scene contradicted the White House’s story.

Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be bin Laden’s hideaway. The numerous obituaries of bin Laden’s death in December 2001 went down the memory hole. And the SEAL team died a few weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden was said to have been dumped into the Indian Ocean wrote home that no such burial took place.

The fairy tale story of bin Laden’s murder by Seal Team Six served to end the challenge by disappointed Democrats to Obama’s nomination for a second term. It also freed the “war on terror” from the bin Laden constraint.

Washington wanted to attack Libya, Syria, and Iran, countries in which bin Laden was known not to have organizations, and the succession of faked bin Laden videos, in which bin Laden grew progressively younger as the fake bin Laden claimed credit for each successive attack, had lost credibility among experts.

Watching the twin towers and WTC 7 come down, it was obvious to me that the buildings were not falling down as a result of structural damage. When it became clear that the White House had blocked an independent investigation of the only three steel skyscrapers in world history to collapse as a result of low temperature office fires, it was apparent that there was a coverup.

After 13 years people at home and abroad find the government’s story less believable.

The case made by independent experts is now so compelling that mainstream media has opened to it. Here is Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth on C-SPAN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zbv2SvBEec#t=23

After years of persistence a group in New York has secured the necessary number of valid signatures to put on the ballot a vote to investigate the cause of the collapse of the three WTC buildings. The official account, if correct, means that existing fire and building codes are insufficient to protect the public and that all other steel high rise structures are subject to the same failure. The group has been clever to frame the issue in terms of public safety and not in terms of 9/11 truth.

New York authorities, of course, continue to oppose the initiative. The question now rests on a judge’s ruling. It is difficult to imagine a judge going against the government in such a major way, but the group will have made the point that the government has no confidence in the truth of its own story.

Over these 13 years, physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, and first responders have provided massive evidence that completely disproves the official account of the failure of the three skyscrapers. The response to experts has been for non-experts to call experts “conspiracy theorists.” In other words, the defenders of the government’s story have no scientific or factual basis on which to stand. So they substitute name-calling.

9/11 was used to fundamentally alter the nature of the US government and its relationship to the American people. Unaccountable executive power has replaced due process and the checks and balances established by the US Constitution. In the name of National Security, executive power knows no restraints. Essentially, Americans today have no rights if the government targets them.

Those Americans born after 9/11 were born into a different country from the rest of us. Having never experienced constitutional government, they will not know what they have lost.

The anthrax attacks of October 2001 have been forgotten, but Professor Graeme MacQueen in The 2001 Anthrax Deception (Clarity Press, 2014) shows that the anthrax attacks played an essential role in setting the stage for the government’s acquisition of unaccountable police state power. Two Democratic Senate committee chairmen, Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy, were disturbed by the Bush regime’s overreach for carte blanche power, and were in a position to block the coming police state legislation and the ability of the executive branch alone to take America to war.

Both senators received anthrax letters, as did major news organizations. The TV network news anchors, such as Dan Rather, who compared the collapse of WTC skyscrapers to buildings brought down by controlled demolition, had not yet been fired by Republicans on framed-up charges.

Initially, the anthrax letters, which caused the deaths of some USPS employees, were seen as the second stage of the 9/11 attack. Fear multiplied. The senators and media shut up. Then it was discovered that the anthrax was a unique kind produced only by a US government military facility.

The response to this monkey wrench thrown into the government’s propaganda, was the FBI’s frame-up of a dead man, Bruce Edwards Ivins, who had been employed in the military lab that produced the anthrax and was driven to suicide by the false charges. The dead man’s colleagues did not believe one word of the government’s false story, and nothing in the dead man’s past indicated any motive or instability that would have led him to such a deed.

Initially, the US government tried to frame up Steven Jay Hatfill, but despite the best efforts of the New York Times and Nicholas Kristof the attempt to frame Hatfill failed. Hatfill received $5 million from the US government for the false accusation that ruined his life. So the corrupt US government moved on to Ivins.

Ivins was dead and couldn’t defend himself, but his colleagues did.

The entire episode stinks to high heaven. Justice is something that exists outside the borders of the United States. Never expect to find justice within the United States.

Most Americans are unaware of the extent to which the federal government owns the experts who can contradict its fairy tales. For example, no competent physicist can possibly believe the official story of the destruction of the three WTC buildings.

But physics departments in US universities are heavily dependent on federal money. Any physicist who speaks his mind jeopardizes not only his own career but also the career of all of his colleagues. Physicist Steven Jones, who first pointed to the use of thermite in the destruction of the two towers had to agree to having his university buy out his tenure or his university was faced with losing all federal financing.

The same constraints operate in the private sector. High rise architects and structural engineers who express doubts about the official explanation of the collapse of three skyscrapers are viewed by potential clients as Muslim apologists and conspiracy kooks. The clients, of course, have no expert knowledge with which to assess the issue, but they are indoctrinated with ceaseless, endless, repetition that 9/11 was Osama bin Laden’s attack on America. Their indoctrination makes them immune to facts.

The 9/11 lie has persisted for 13 years. Millions of Muslims have paid for this lie with their lives, the destruction of their families, and with their dislocation. Most Americans remain comfortable with the fact that their government has destroyed in whole or part seven countries based on a lie Washington told to cover up an inside job that launched the crazed neoconservatives’ drive for Washington’s World Empire.

And on the current "terrorism" front, we hear from our leader that we must re-bomb Iraq (or continue re-bombing them, which we never actually stopped doing due to our romance with drones).

On September 5, the White House Office of the Press Secretary headlined ”Remarks by President Obama at NATO Summit Press Conference.”

He called things today “a time of transition (and) testing.” He claimed “NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan is coming to an end” despite America intending permanent control of its Eurasian colony.

He irresponsibly accused Russia of “aggression against Ukraine.” He claimed it “threatens our vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace.”

He left unexplained Washington’s full responsibility for Ukraine’s crisis conditions. It’s wanting all former Russian republics and Warsaw pact countries made NATO members.

It’s wanting US bases encircling Russia and China. It’s wanting long-range multiple warhead nuclear missiles targeting their heartlands.

It’s wanting unchallenged first-strike capability. It’s risking humanity-destroying global war in the process.

America dominates NATO. It defrays 75% of its budget. It calls the shots.

It bullies, pressures and bribes less belligerent members to support its imperial agenda.

It wants increasing amounts for global militarism. Dominant NATO nations deplore peace. The Alliance’s mission is war-making.

Its Readiness Action Plan and Rapid Response Force target Russia.

The Russian Federation’s Foreign Ministry called its Wales summit “hardly surprising.” NATO “cannot change its genetic code by definition,” it said.

“(I)nterfering in the affairs of foreign states did not emerge yesterday or today.”

The official conspiracy theory (the NIST one) has had its flaws exposed for over a decade.  Too bad the public has never been informed by the mainstream American media.

No Airliner Black Boxes Found at the World Trade Center? Senior Officials Dispute Official 9/11 Claim

By Consensus911.org

Global Research, September 10, 2014

Consensus911

NEW YORK – As disappearing airliners continue to dominate the headlines, new evidence is surfacing to negate official claims that the black boxes from the 9/11 planes were never found.

Firemen working at the Ground Zero in October 2001 claim to have found three of the four virtually indestructible boxes. The telltale flight recorder “pinging” had earlier been reported by the director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, and was confirmed by radio frequency detectors.

This information is presented by the 24-member 9/11 Consensus Panel, which uses a rigorous medical model to establish its evidence.  The Panel has produced, over a three-year period, 44 peer-reviewed Consensus Points refuting official claims concerning the events of September 11, 2001.

Although 19 Muslim hijackers allegedly broke into the cockpits and commandeered four aircraft on 9/11, none of the eight pilots “squawked” the 7500 hijack code.

Nor is there any proof that the lost radar signals (which made NORAD interception difficult) resulted because alleged hijackers turned off the cockpit transponders.

This lack of proof is compounded by the fact that NORAD’s traditional procedures to intercept aircraft that deviate from course, or lose radar and radio contact, were not followed on 9/11.

Strangely, NORAD’s commander-in-chief, General Ralph Eberhart, had scheduled for the morning of 9/11 an unprecedented number of annual military air drills that involved most of the U.S. Air Force.

After being informed of the real-world attacks, Eberhart’s bewildering activities and decisions caused critical delays that led to an utterly failed military response.

His accounting of these delays, published in NORAD’s September 18, 2001, timeline, was reversed when he testified before the 9/11 Commission in 2003.

Further questions regarding official behavior arise in “Point MC-10:  The Activities of NYC Mayor Giuliani on September 11, 2001.”

Giuliani told ABC’s Peter Jennings in the morning that while he and his Emergency Management team – who were in a building at 75 Barclay Street where they had set up temporary headquarters after the Twin Towers were struck – he had been warned that the World Trade Center was going to collapse.

Giuliani failed to warn others of this notification. How he knew that the Twin Towers were going to collapse and why he did not pass this on requires intensive investigation under oath.

The 9/11 Consensus Panel joins such people as its Honorary Members, and more recently, 30-year career NSA official and whistle-blower William Binney, in calling for a new investigation into 9/11.

Source:  The 9/11 Consensus Panel @911consensus

Contact list:  http://www.consensus911.org/media-contacts/

Coordinator:  Elizabeth Woodworth, emwoodworth@gmail.com

Point MC-10:  The Activities of NYC Mayor Giuliani on September 11, 2001

Introduction

One of the most surprising events of 9/11 was that New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told ABC’s Peter Jennings in the morning that while he and his Emergency Management team – who were in a building at 75 Barclay Street where they had set up temporary headquarters after the Twin Towers were struck – had been warned that the World Trade Center was going to collapse, so they had decided to [escape from] leave the Barclay Street building.

He later gave the 9/11 Commission a quite different account about which building was expected to collapse.

The 9/11 Commission did not ask him about the apparent contradictions, so the account he gave the Commission must be considered the official story.

The Official Account

On 19 May 2004, Mayor Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission. Volunteering to tell what he had done on the morning of September 11, 2001, Giuliani said that, after finishing breakfast at a hotel some distance away from the World Trade Center, he was told that a twin-engine plane had crashed into the North Tower. While in a van trying to get to the World Trade Center, Giuliani and his breakfast companions learned that the World Trade Center’s South Tower had been struck by a second plane, making it clear to him that a terrorist attack was underway.

Giuliani and his companions then found that the van could get no farther than Barclay Street, at which point the Police Commissioner notified him that 7 World Trade (which housed Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management) had been evacuated, so they would instead set up a command post at 75 Barclay Street. Giuliani told the Commission that, after going inside 75 Barclay Street and while waiting to talk to Vice President Dick Cheney on the phone:

“I heard a click, the desk started to shake, and I heard next Chief Esposito, who was the uniformed head of the police department, . . . say, ‘The [South] tower is down, the tower has come down.’ And my first thought was that one of the radio towers from the top of the World Trade Center had come down. I did not conceive of the entire tower coming down, but as he was saying that, I could see the desk shaking and . . . then all of a sudden I could see outside a tremendous amount of debris and it first felt like an earthquake, and then it looked like a nuclear cloud. So we realized very shortly that  we were in danger in the [Barclay  Street] building, that the building could come down. . . . So the police commissioner and I, and the deputy police commissioner, we jointly decided that we had to try to get everyone out of the building.”

So Giuliani and his team left the Barclay Street building, because “if something happened and the building crashed, you’d virtually have all of city government gone.”[1]

The Best Evidence

Giuliani’s account to the 9/11 Commission contains two serious contradictions with what Giuliani had told Peter Jennings:

(1) He did not tell the Commission that he had been warned that the World Trade Center was going to collapse.

(2) He told the Commission that he and his people left the Barclay Street building for fear that this building might collapse.

 The Peter Jennings Interview

While being interviewed during the morning of 9/11 via telephone by Peter Jennings, then the anchor at ABC News, Giuliani said that after he learned about the attack on the World Trade Center,

“I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it [the South Tower] did collapse before we could actually get out of the [Barclay Street] building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out.”[2]

Giuliani’s statement to Jennings agreed in part with the account he later gave the 9/11 Commission, but he did not  tell the Commission about being “told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse.”   Also, whereas he had told Jennings that he was concerned that the Twin Towers were going to collapse, he told the Commission that he instead was worried that he and his people were “in danger in the [Barclay Street] building, that the building could come down.”

 Although the 9/11 Commission failed to ask Giuliani about these contradictions – no mention of concern that the World Trade Center would collapse; new concern that the Barclay Street building might collapse – WNBC reported that in May 2007, he was asked about the Jennings interview by a small group of people with a video camera.[3]  A young woman, after reminding Giuliani of his statement to Jennings that “no steel structure in history has ever collapsed due to a fire,” asked: “How come people in the buildings weren’t notified? And who else knew about this? And how do you sleep at night?” Giuliani replied: “I didn’t know the towers were going to collapse.” A male member of the group then reminded Giuliani that he had indeed told Jennings that he had been notified in advance that the towers were going to collapse, adding, “Who told you the towers were going to collapse in advance, sir?” Giuliani replied:

I didn’t realize the towers would collapse. . . . Our understanding was that over a long period of time, the way other buildings collapsed, the towers could collapse, meaning over a 7, 8, 9, 10-hour period. No one that I know of had any idea they would implode. That was a complete surprise.[4]

But this explanation contradicts Giuliani’s statement to Jennings—“we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building.” According to that statement, he had clearly expected an imminent collapse of at least one of the Twin Towers.

Giuliani’s Claim about Other Building Collapses

Giuliani’s alternative explanation also contradicted factual evidence.

In the first place, in speaking about “the way other buildings collapsed,” he implied that steel-framed high-rise buildings had previously collapsed. (Otherwise, the mention of collapsed buildings would have been irrelevant.) In fact, the young woman’s statement, that “no steel structure in history has ever collapsed due to a fire,” is not controversial. Two months after 9/11, for example, New York Timesreporter James Glanz wrote that “experts said no . . . modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.”[5]

Also, although Giuliani claimed that he expected a tower to collapse over a 7-10 hour period, steel-framed buildings had burned, some of them longer than 10 hours, without collapsing:

·       In 1988, the 62-story First Interstate Bank Building in Los Angeles burned for 3½ hours, with 64 fire companies battling the blaze. The fire gutted offices from the 12th to the 16th floor, with “no damage to the main structural members.”[6]

·       In 1991, a huge fire in Philadelphia’s One Meridian Plaza lasted for 18 hours and gutted 8 of the building’s 38 floors. “Beams and girders sagged and twisted . . . under severe fire exposures,” said the FEMA report, but “the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.”[7]

·       During the 1990s, a series of experiments were run in Great Britain to see what kind of damage could be done to steel-framed buildings by subjecting them to extremely hot, all-consuming fires that lasted for many hours. After reviewing those experiments, FEMA said: “Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900°C (1,500-1,700°F) in three of the tests. . . , no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.”[8]

·       Finally, illustrating that the laws of nature had not changed in 2001, a 50-story building fire in Caracas in 2004 raged for 17 hours, completely gutting the building’s top 20 floors, and yet this building did not collapse.[9]

 However, although the implicit claim that steel-framed buildings had collapsed after burning for several hours was false, his statement was: “Our understanding was that over a long period of time, the way other buildings collapsed, the towers could collapse” (emphasis added). However, even that is false, because Robert F. Shea, the acting administrator of FEMA’s Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, said: “No one who viewed it that day, including myself, believed that those towers would fall,”[10] and this view was confirmed by multiple firefighters and other experts.[11] 

 Accordingly, there is no basis for a revisionist account, according to which Giuliani did not      tell ABC’s Peter Jennings that he had been warned that “the World Trade Center was going to collapse.” Given the fact that Giuliani did say this, the next question is:  Who gave Giuliani this information?

Who Told Giuliani that the World Trade Center Was Going to Collapse?

A partial answer may be found in the oral histories recorded by the Fire Department of New York.  

·       Deputy Assistant Chief Albert Turi reported that, at a time when they had no indication of any structural instability, “Steve Mosiello, Chief Ganci’s executive assistant, came over to the command post and he said we’re getting reports from OEM that the buildings are not structurally sound,”after which “Pete [Ganci] said, well, who are we getting these reports from? . . . Steve [Mosiello] brought an EMT person over to the command post. . . Chief Ganci questioned him, where are we getting these reports? And his answer was . . . we’re not sure, OEM is just reporting this.”[12]  

·       Steven Mosiello’s statement shows that this “EMT person” was Emergency Medical Technician Richard Zarrillo, who said: “John [Perrugia] came to me and said you need to go find Chief Ganci and relay the following message: that the buildings have been compromised, we need to evacuate, they’re going to collapse. I said okay.” After he and Steve Mosiello told Ganci that the buildings were going to collapse, Ganci said “who the fuck told you that?” Mosiello told Ganci and others: “I was just at OEM. The message I was given was that the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get our people out.[13]

·       John Peruggia said: “They [people in the fire operations center] advised me that the Office of Emergency Management had been activated.” Later, Peruggia reported that “I was in a discussion with Mr. Rotanz [the deputy director of planning and research of the OEM[14]]. . . [and some] engineer type person, and several of us were huddled talking in the lobby and it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers wasquite significant and they were very confident that the building’s stability was compromised and they felt that the North Tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse. I grabbed EMT Zarrillo, I advised him of that information. I told him he was to proceed immediately to the command post where Chief Ganci was located. . . . Provide him with the information that the building integrity is severely compromised and they believe the building is in danger of imminent collapse.”[15]

·       Peruggia was asked whether they were talking about “just the one building or both of them,” to which he said: “The information we got at that time was that they felt both buildings were significantly damaged.”[16]

As these testimonies show, the message that the towers were going to collapse came from the OEM. Accordingly, if Giuliani, as he told Peter Jennings, was informed that the towers were going to collapse, the warning must have originated from the OEM. 

However, the OEM was under Giuliani’s control.[17] So although Giuliani said that he and others at 75 Barclay Street “were told” that the towers were going to collapse, it was his own people in his own office who were providing this warning.

The only remaining question is: How could people in the OEM have known – given the virtually universal belief that a total collapse of the towers would have been impossible – that the towers were going to collapse?

The Fire Chief Who Expected the Towers to Fall

Chief Ray Downey was reportedly an exception to the 9/11 Commission’s stated belief that “none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible.”[18] And this was an important exception, because, as 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said, Downey was a “very respected expert on building collapse.” In fact, said a FDNY battalion chief, Downey was “the premiere collapse expert in the country.”[19]

FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen had told the 9/11 Commission that Downey had said to him, “Boss, I think these buildings could collapse.”[20] As to why, according to Downey’s nephew Tom Downey, his uncle had been “worried about secondary devices in the towers, explosive devices that could hurt the firemen.”[21]

During his Oral History interview, FDNY chaplain Father John Delendick said that after the top of the South Tower appeared to explode, he asked Downey whether jet fuel had blown up. Downey replied “at that point he thought there were bombs up there because it was too even” – meaning that it had been too even to have been produced by exploding jet fuel.[22]

Conclusion

The account Mayor Giuliani gave to the 9/11 Commission in May 2004, according to which he got out of the building at 75 Barclay Street for fear that it would come down, is contradicted by the account he had given on the morning of 9/11 to ABC’s Peter Jennings.

When Giuliani was challenged to explain why he had not told people in the towers that they were going to collapse, he claimed that he “didn’t realize the towers would collapse” and that “No one that [he knew] of had any idea they would implode.” This is in stark contrast to Giuliani’s statement to Peter Jennings that he was told that the Twin Towers were going to come down.

 How Giuliani knew that WTC Buildings I and II were going to come down is a question that has not been asked publicly of Giuliani by the mainstream media or any government body.  This is a question that must be asked of Giuliani, while he is under oath.

References for Point MC-10

[1] 9/11 Commission Hearing,” 19 May 2004.

[2] This statement, made on 9/11 to Peter Jennings of ABC News, can be read and heard at “Who Told Giuliani the WTC Was Going to Collapse on 9/11?” What Really Happened (Updated), August 27, 2010.   

[3] A televised video of this encounter, entitled “Activists Confront Giuliani over 9/11,” was formerly available at http://web.archive.org/web/20070601065253/http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=112179, and may now be viewed here.

[4] A video of this encounter, entitled “Activists Confront Giuliani over 9/11,” was formerly available at http://web.archive.org/web/20070601065253/http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=112179, and may now be here.

[5] James Glanz, “Engineers are baffled over the collapse of 7 WTC,” New York Times, November 29, 2001.

[6] United States Fire Administration, “Interstate Bank Building Fire Los Angeles, California May 1988.”

[7] “High-Rise Office Building Fire, One Meridian Plaza Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Federal Emergency Management Agency, 19.

[8] FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, “Appendix A: Overview of Fire Protection in Buildings,” A-9.

[9] Robin Nieto, “Fire Practically Destroys Venezuela’s Tallest Building,” October 18, 2004.

[10] “Learning from 9/11: Understanding the Collapse of the World Trade Center,” Hearing before the Committee on Science, House of Representatives, 6 March 2002 (http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy77747.000/hsy77747_0f.htm).

Of course, WTC 7 was different:  Many people became convinced that it would come down, but this was after the Twin Towers had come down and after they had been told that it was going to come down. See:  9/11 Consensus Panel, “Point WTC7-7: Foreknowledge of the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7”  (http://www.consensus911.org/point-wtc7-7/).

[11] To give a few examples:

·    John Skilling, the architect primarily responsible for the structural design of the Twin Towers, when asked in 1993 what would happen if one of the towers were to suffer a strike by an airliner loaded with jet-fuel, replied that “there would be a horrendous fire” and “a lot of people would be killed,” but “the building structure would still be there.” (Eric Nalder, “Twin Towers Engineered to Withstand Jet Collision,” Seattle Times, 27 February 1993.

·       An investigator with the Bureau of Investigations and Trials said that “no one ever expected it to collapse like that” (Oral History: Lieutenant Murray Murad, 20).

·       A firefighter battalion chief said that after “everything blew out on . . . one floor,“ he thought that the top of the South Tower was going to come off and fall down, but “there was never a thought that this whole thing is coming down” (Oral History: Battalion Chief Brian Dixon, 15).

·       Another firefighter said: “You just couldn’t believe that those buildings could come down. . . . [T]here’s no history of these buildings falling down” (Oral History: Lieutenant Warren Smith, 14-15, 30-31, 32).

·       Even the 9/11 Commission said that, to its knowledge, “none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible” (The 9/11 Commission Report, 302). One apparent exception was Chief Ray Downey, who was a collapse expert, but he had become convinced that explosives had been placed in the buildings Tom Downey, The Last Men Out: Life on the Edge of Rescue 2 Firehouse, [New York, Henry Holt, 2004]).

·       Likewise, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) wrote: “No one interviewed indicated that they thought that the buildings would completely collapse” (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, “The Emergency Response Operations,” 72) . One apparent exception was Chief Ray Downey, who was a collapse expert, but he had become convinced that explosives had been placed in the buildings; see Tom Downey, “The Last Men Out: Life on the Edge of Rescue 2 Firehouse,” New York, Henry Holt, 2004).

[12]
Oral History: Chief Albert Turi, 13-14.

[13] Oral History: EMT Richard Zarrillo, 5-6.

[14] “Rotanz was assigned to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management in 2000,” Urban Hazards Forum, FEMA, 2002.

[15] Oral History: Chief John Peruggia, 4, 17. 

[16] Oral History: Chief John Peruggia, 17.

[17] A document titled a “Brief History of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management” said: “1996: By executive order, the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management is created. The Director reports directly to the Mayor.”

[18] The 9/11 Commission Report, 302

[19] Roemer’s statement was made during a 9/11 Commission Hearing.

[20] 9/11 Commission Hearing, 18 May 2004. Von Essen had already told this story in his book, Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York, New York, William Morrow, 2002, 22.

[21] Tom Downey, The Last Men Out: Life on the Edge at Rescue 2 Firehouse (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).

[22] Oral History: Father John Delendick, 5.  Father Delendick added: “As we’ve since learned, it was the jet fuel that was dropping down that caused all this.” But what is important is what he reported that Downey, the expert, had said.

This post is also available in: French

And who said no one has done the work and put all the available data together? John O'Neill's successors know.

9/11: The Mysterious Death of John O’Neill, FBI Counterterror Chief in Charge of the Osama bin Laden Investigation
The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11

By Chaim Kupferberg

Global Research, September 11, 2014

Global Research 13 June 2002

This article was first published by Global Research on June 13, 2002. You can access the original archive here.

In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center, the finger of guilt was directed toward the only plausible author for such a sophisticated and ruthless act of terror – Osama bin Laden.

Throughout the late ’90′s, we were informed that bin Laden had declared war on America by reason of the American military presence on Saudi soil in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. We were told how bin Laden, ensconced in Afghanistan, headed up a world-wide terror franchise whose sophistication and global reach dwarfed that of the Iranian-financed Hizballah or Islamic Jihad (previously, the most widely known of the terror organizations among the masses in the Middle East).

Bin Laden’s organization, al-Qaida, was presented to us as something entirely new in the annals of terrorism – a far-flung, sophisticated empire of terror, possessing – possibly – weapons of mass destruction, while having no clear or viable state sponsor behind it (as the Afghani Taliban were merely its resident protectors).  In short, by September 11, the United States now had a bona fide enemy – and, as they say in criminal justice parlance, a suspect with motive, means, and opportunity.

And while I was a bit taken at how quickly – and confidently – the fingers were pointing only hours after the 9/11 bombings, I was positively shaken by the first red flag that popped up. His name was John O’Neill – or more precisely, he is the seam that shows. Dated September 12, in a Washington Post article by Vernon Loeb, it was revealed that O’Neill, who died in his capacity as head of security for the World Trade Center, was also formerly the New York FBI Counterterror chief responsible for the investigation into Osama bin Laden. That could perhaps be written off as one of those freak synchronicities. There were the other items – reported quite blandly, in that “there’s nothing to see here, folks” tone – that gave me that sinking feeling. Apparently, O’Neill had a falling-out with the Ambassador to Yemen over his investigative style and was banned from returning there. But then there was that other nugget that I had trouble digesting – that O’Neill had resigned from a thirty-year career in the FBI “under a cloud” over an incident in Tampa – and then left to take up the security position at the WTC (only two weeks before!).

The seam that shows…

For the bulk of his career, like most of his FBI colleagues, John O’Neill was largely unknown to the public at large – respected in his circle, to be sure, yet scarcely meriting much mention in the media – beyond being referenced now and then as an expert on counterterrorism. Yet in the few months leading up to September 11, O’Neill was now suddenly the subject of a series of seemingly unrelated controversies – the first, in July, involving his dispute with the State Department over the conduct of the bin Laden investigation in Yemen; and the second, in August, in which he was reported to be under an FBI probe for misplacing a briefcase of classified documents during an FBI convention in Tampa.

In the light of the aftermath of this second controversy – the documents were found, “untouched”, a few hours later – one wonders why this seemingly minor news would merit such lengthy coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times. Keeping in mind the fact that these latter articles on O’Neill appeared a mere three weeks before he was to die in the rubble of the Twin Towers, one wonders if this wasn’t a well-orchestrated smear campaign against O’Neill, with a bit of unintended “blowback” – as this now-discredited counterterror chief in charge of all bin Laden bombings would finally make the news as a fatal casualty of bin Laden’s final bombing. Coincidence? Or was there something more here that would bear investigating?

My gut told me that, in the months preceding September 11, somebody was out to either discredit John O’Neill or, alternatively, to plant disinformation that could later be used to divert any investigator from a fruitful reconstruction of the forces behind 9/11.  Or, quite possibly, was a mistake made – one pointing the way toward a plan whose scope goes well beyond the designs of Osama bin Laden? In other words, could we spot the telltale fingerprints of a propaganda campaign preceding 9/11?

Well, as they say, a hypothesis is only as good as its usefulness in ferreting out reality. My hypothesis:   that the events of September 11 were planned by those who not only had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out the plan, but also were best placed to manage the consequences stemming from it, as well as managing the flow of information. If this were an “inside job”, the first thing to do was to look at who conveyed specific information on bin Laden before – and I stress, before – 9/11, for they were most likely involved wittingly or not with those who masterminded it.

Virtually the first “smoking gun” was presented the day after 9/11, when Vernon Loeb and Dan Eggen reported in the Post that Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al Arabi newspaper in London, “received information that he [bin Laden] planned very, very big attacks against American interests” only three weeks before 9/11. Moreover, the article reported that Atwan “was convinced that Islamic fundamentalists aligned with bin Laden were ‘almost certainly’ behind the attacks.”

Incidentally, Atwan had personally interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996 – among the very few to do so. As reported by Michael Evans in the August 24, 1998 issue of The Times, Atwan “is trusted by bin Laden.”

Curious, perhaps, that Atwan seemed to be one of the major “point men” used in elaborating the Osama bin Laden “legend”, as they say in intelligence parlance. In a U.S. News article dated August 31, 1998, Atwan informs us that bin Laden “is a humble man who lives simply, eating fried eggs, tasteless low-fat cheese, and bread gritty with sand. He hates America.” No flash in the pan, this interviewer. Apparently, bin Laden kept Atwan’s business card tucked away in his toga pocket.

“Bin Laden phoned this newspaper, phoned me last Friday,” Atwan revealed in an ABC News LateLine Transcript dated August 25, 1998. We’ll come back to ABC News shortly.

While solidly implicating bin Laden the day after 9/11, Atwan was also the media’s “go-to” guy back in 1998 when he informed us, after President Clinton bombed tool sheds in Afghanistan, that bin Laden issued this threat against the United States:   “The battle has not started yet. The response will be with action and not words.”

In the same article (which I took from Nando Times), ABC News is the source for an additional threat called in by Ayman al-Zawahiri, a senior bin Laden aide:   “The war has just started. The Americans should wait for the answer.” Only a few months before that, ABC had conducted its televised interview of bin Laden. By the summer of 1998, primed by Atwan, ABC NEWS, and a surprisingly small clique of well-worn sources, we had come to know bin Laden as America’s latest “Saddam”, “Qaddafi”, “Noriega” – take your pick and set your bomb sites.

By October 2000, when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in Yemen, in case there was any doubt, Atwan offered Reuters his helpful analysis with regards to the source of blame:   “I do not rule out that this was undertaken by Osama bin Laden. Yemeni groups don’t have the experience to carry out this kind of operation.”

Atwan informed Reuters that bin Laden “was unlikely to claim direct responsibility for Thursday’s attack for fear of U.S. reprisals.” One can imagine, then, that Atwan gave his trusting phone mate cause for many a sleepless night. With friends like these…

Leading up to 9/11, by the Spring of 2001, an incriminating wedding videotape, apparently implicating bin Laden in the Yemen bombing, was circulating around the Middle East after being broadcast on the ubiquitous al-Jazeera television station (reconstituted from the BBC TV Arabic Service – more on them later). In the video, bin Laden, according to the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper (more on them later, too), recited a poem celebrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (shades of deja vu here?)

This from the ABCNEWS.com site dated March 1: “Al-Hayat, which carried a photo of bin Laden and his son at the wedding, said its correspondent was the only journalist at the ceremony, also attended by bin Laden’s mother, two brothers and sister who flew to Kandahar from Saudi Arabia.”

And yes, here, too, Atwan offers his thoughtful review of the bin Laden video, courtesy of PTI, datelined London June 22, 2001:   “[Atwan] said the video was proof that the fugitive Saudi millionaire [the Bruce Wayne of terrorists] was fit, well equipped and confident enough to send out a call to arms.” Why this sudden need for proof? According to Atwan in the same article: “There have been rumours that [bin Laden] is ill and that he is being contained by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is quite clear from the film that he is in good health to the point where he can fire a rifle, and is free to operate as he chooses.” In other words, limber enough for his starring role in the months ahead.

So who is Abdel Bari Atwan and why is he anxious to tell us so much?

According to the Winter 1999 issue of INEAS (Institute of Near Eastern and African Studies), Abdel Bari Atwan, a Palestinian, was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1950. Educated at the American University of Cairo, Atwan moved to Saudi Arabia and worked as a writer for the al-Madina newspaper.

In 1978, he moved to London, where he became a correspondent for the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. In 1988, after shuffling around between Saudi-owned papers, Atwan was offered a position as editor of al-Quds al-Arabi. By his account, he was offered a position as the executive editor of the Saudi-owned al-Hayat (of the bin Laden wedding video coup), yet turned it down to produce a more independent newspaper as a challenge to the “empires” of the Saudi-dominated dailies.

Al-Quds began production in April 1989. A little more than a year later, Saddam invaded Kuwait and al-Quds stood alone as the only Arab newspaper opposed to the Persian Gulf War – at least by Atwan’s account. According to Atwan:   “Without the Gulf War, we wouldn’t have taken such political lines, which made us well recognized and well respected.”

In November 1996, Bari-Atwan braved a twelve-hour car ride through muddy roads, attired in shabby Afghani rags in below-zero weather, and gave us the early scoop on bin Laden, conducting a one-on-one interview in bin Laden’s [bat]cave. From then on, the mainstream media – CNN, ABC, BBC, Sky News – looked to Bari-Atwan and al-Quds as the “independent” voice of the Arab street.

Incidentally, in a discussion concerning the matter of Saudi domination of the Arabic media, taken from the Carryon.oneworld.org site, Atwan, as editor of his struggling independent, was facing off against Jihad Khazen, the editor of the Saudi-owned al-Hayat.

As Atwan proudly related in support of his independence:  “One day I was called by the BBC-TV Arabic service [whose staff later reconstituted itself as al-Jazeera television]: ‘There’s a story on your front page today, saying such and such. Is it true?’

I asked why he should doubt it and he replied: ‘It’s not published in al-Hayat [his job offer] or al-Sharq al-Awsat [his alma mater].’ ” Atwan boasts: “At least I can say we are 95 to 96 per cent independent” – leaving out the 4 to 5 per cent spent on bin Laden, I presume. Whether or not al-Quds truly is independent, this is the cover story the mainstream media buys into when they come trolling for their “independent” evidence.

So, to elaborate further on this (so far) fruitful hypothesis, it is my contention that al-Qaida and bin Laden are elaborate “legends” set up to promote a plausibly sophisticated and ferocious enemy to stand against American interests.

I am not, however, implying that bin Laden himself is a total fabrication. Rather, it is my contention that confederates, believing themselves to act on behalf of bin Laden, are being set up in a “false flag operation” to perform operations as their controllers see fit.  And who are these controllers? If they’re anything resembling the folks who brought you Hizbullah and Hamas, you wouldn’t be sweating the suitcase nukes (made in America), the Ames strain anthrax (made in America), the MI5-like “sleeper agents” and coded “go” messages.

Instead, you would be dodging primitive nail bombs and road mines – and not needing Abdel Bari Atwan to feed you the lowdown on the blame.

In view of the fact that bin Laden is of Saudi origin, that much of the “evidence” on the Arab side initially originated from Saudi-owned or Gulf Anglo-client state sources, and that Saudi Arabia is the major financial sponsor of the Taliban brand of fundamentalism in Afghanistan (as a counter-point to Iran), I believe it is fair to say that Saudi Arabia might possibly be implicated. ”

Most likely, the Saudis performed their roles as subservient proxies. We’ll get to the ultimate controllers soon enough (if you haven’t already guessed where this is going). And now, to fill out the picture further, it is necessary to name an equally essential partner as proxy – Pakistan, or, more specifically, Pakistan’s version of the CIA – the ISI (Interservices Intelligence Directorate).

And this is where we begin to “close the circle” of our close-knit pre-9/11 propaganda clique. Returning again to the above-mentioned Dan Eggen and Vernon Loeb Post article of September 12, we’re offered – in a powerful little side-bar – more critical evidence implicating bin Laden for the attacks the day before.

This time, the bombshell is offered by Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail, Abu Dhabi Television’s bureau chief in Islamabad. According to Ismail, a bin Laden aide called him “early Wednesday on a satellite telephone from a hide-out in Afghanistan,” praising the attack yet denying any responsibility for it.

As it turns out, Ismail was also among the select few to conduct his very own bin Laden interview, published by Newsweek in its April 1, 1999 issue. Here is how Newsweek described Ismail’s good fortune:   “Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail’s mobile phone rang just before prayers on December 18. ‘Peace be upon you, ‘ said the voice on the line. ‘You may not recognize me, but I know you.’ ” And thus was Jamal Ismail invited on his own mud-soaked incursion to the bin Laden [bat]cave.

Searching deeper, I found an interesting obscure article penned by respected Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufszai in The News Jang, and dated May 3, 2000.  It details the detention of two men of Kurdish origin, accused by the Taliban of spying for American and Israeli intelligence. As Yusufszai relates it, he spoke to the only journalists allowed by the Taliban to interview the detained men – Jamal Ismail and his cameraman.

Apparently, Ismail had a special relationship with the Taliban, allowing him this rare privilege above other journalists. And, as we shall shortly see, so does Yusufszai.  One wonders who debriefs them at the end of a workday.

But more interestingly, by May 5, as reported by Kathy Gannon for the Associated Press, the story acquires – as they say – “new legs.” Not only are the basic elements of the Yusufszai story mentioned, but the article leads off with the bombshell that one of the detained men revealed that he was recruited by the United States to find Osama bin Laden. It finishes with a little coda implicating bin Laden in the 1998 embassy bombings.

Thus, in the space of two days, Yusufszai’s Pakistani “spy” article sprouts a bin Laden addition when fertilized by the American Associated Press – and nicely provides a plausible explanation as to why a Kurd would be prowling around Afghanistan on behalf of the United States.

Yusufszai, incidentally, moonlighted as an ABC News producer, charged with guiding ABC News correspondent John Miller through the Afghani marshes to the bin Laden [bat]cave – one of the very few American journalists to be accorded such an honour (and also, as it happens, a good friend of bin Laden arch-foe John O’Neill. But not chummy enough to direct O’Neill on to bin Laden’s hideaway). Moreover, Ismail and Yusufszai are mentioned together in a CNN article posted January 4, 1999 – the former for his Newsweek interview, the latter for his own bin Laden dialogue for TIME Magazine the day later.

Rahimullah Yusufszai, regarded by New York Times reporters John Burns and Steve LeVine as “one man who has seen more of the Taliban than any other outsider,” is also named by The Nation, in its article of January 27, 1997, as “one of the favourite journalists of [Pakistan's] ISI…one of the organizations funding and arming the Taliban. ”

It’s a small world after all. In the September 29, 2001 article of PressPlus, Yusufszai’s ABC colleague, John Miller, mused about running into his buddy John O’Neill in Yemen while reporting on the U.S.S. Cole bombing the year before. “He said, ‘So this is the Elaine’s of Yemen.’ ”

“There is a terrible irony to all this,” Miller said. I’ll say:   Miller, one of the very few Americans who can give a first-hand account of bin Laden, bumps into his friend, bin Laden’s chief investigator, while both are investigating a bombing in Yemen that will later be tagged onto bin Laden – and only a year before O’Neill dies at the hands of… allegedly …bin Laden.

Now, following the logic of my hypothesis, if the bin Laden threat was, pre-9/11, a close-knit propaganda campaign, one would expect to find the same names showing up repeatedly in combination with one another. This, too, applies to the American commentators. Let us return to the August 1998 American bombings of bin Laden’s tool sheds as an example. 

The night of the bombing, Rahimullah Yusufszai received a call from bin Laden aide Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a report from the Associated Press. Later, Yusufszai obtained for ABC News exclusive photos of the damage to bin Laden’s camp. Further commentary describing the layout of the bin Laden camp was furnished to the Washington Post by former CIA analyst and terrorism expert Kenneth Katzman, as well as Harvey Kushner of Long Island University.

Only little more than a week before that, Katzman and Kushner were offering their assessment of bin Laden’s culpability for the embassy bombings in Africa in a Washington Post article penned by Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus.

They were joined in this effort by Vincent Cannistraro, the ABC news analyst who also escorted John Miller to his bin Laden interview, as well as provided running commentary in the days immediately following 9/11.

Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, provided covert aid to the Afghani mujaheddin in the late ’80′s, as well as supervised CIA operations with the contras. He was also one of the point men in the notoriously circumspect investigation at Lockerbie.

In the above-noted Loeb and Pincus article – in which bin Laden is quoted from the ABC News Miller and Yusufszai interview – Cannistraro weighs in with his assessment of the embassy bombings: “I believe Osama bin Laden is the sponsor of this operation, and I think all of the indications are pointing that way.”

Soon after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, a Vernon Loeb Post article, dated October 13, 2000, proceeded to implicate bin Laden through the detailed information provided by Kushner, Katzman, and Cannistraro.

Earlier, in a Vernon Loeb Post article dated July 3, 2000, Yusufszai, Kushner, and Cannistraro unveiled bin Laden aides Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muhammed Atef as the men to watch as bin Laden’s likely successors, with a helpful tidbit on the Zawahiri biography thrown in by the Saudi-owned al-Sharq al-Awsat.

None of the above, of course, is offered as the “smoking gun” pointing the way to a propaganda conspiracy, nor are my chosen examples meant to be exhaustive in evidencing this point.

According to Felicity Barringer, in a New York Times article dated September 24, 2001:    "A good deal of the public information on bin Laden comes from the journalists who went to Afghanistan to interview him, including [Peter] Bergen, … Peter Arnett, John Miller, Rahimullah Yusufzai, and Jamal Ismail.”  The article further makes reference to Vernon Loeb, Al Quds al-Arabi (Atwan), Judith Miller, Al Jazeera, and Brian Jenkins (formerly of Kroll Associates – the security firm that obtained the WTC position for John O’Neill by way of Jerry Hauer).

Clearly, I have also not heretofore made mention of the other experts who have worked assiduously toward building our knowledge base on bin Laden – Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Yossef Bodansky, and various British and EU elites. However, the above examples do show how the information flow on bin Laden could be plausibly managed by the skilfully placed revelations of a relatively insular clique of “experts” called upon repeatedly by the mainstream media.

Here is how it would work:  A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the “scoops” that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news sources – the four TV networks, TIME, Newsweek, CNN – where the parameters of debate are set and the “official reality” is consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain. In other countries, this is what is known as propaganda – or, put less politely, psychological warfare.

But before I leave this topic, I would like to provide an example of “news management” that is revealing for what is omitted – that is, the “smoking gun” of Pakistani ISI involvement in the events of 9/11.

On October 9, 2001, the Times of India dropped this little bombshell:   “Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday that [ISI Chief Mahmud Ahmad] lost his job because of the “evidence” India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen. Mahmud.”

What makes this particular piece so devastating is that only days before, much of the mainstream American media was touting the news of a “key link” in the chain of evidence linking bin Laden to the events of September 11 – namely, a $100,000 wire transfer to the hijackers from a shadowy operative linked to bin Laden.

Yet once this operative was “outed” as being linked instead to the Pakistani ISI Chief, any propaganda gains initially made through this evidence would now crumble.  One possible reason might stem from this Karachi News item, released only two days before September 11:

“[Pakistani] ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood’s week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, State Department sources say he is on a routine visit in return to [sic] CIA Director George Tenet’s earlier visit to Islamabad…What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmood’s predecessor, was here during Nawaz Sharif’s government the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys…”

In other words, this was a propaganda piece that went disastrously wrong. After October 9, bin Laden’s alleged paymaster could now be linked to a U.S. “ally” who spent the days before 9/11 in deep consultation at the Pentagon.

The US authorities immediately went into damage control mode by insisting on the quiet retirement of the “outed” ISI chief. Thus removed from the public eye, the ISI Chief’s role in all this could be effectively ignored, and an American media black-out could be safely assumed.

Such a scenario certainly fits in snugly with my hypothesis, which I will now proceed to elaborate completely.

The events of September 11 were masterminded by those who were in the best position to manage the consequences – namely, those most able to manage the flow of information, those most able to coordinate all the elements necessary for the perpetration of a successful operation (subverting airport security, guiding the planes to their specific targets), and most significantly, those who stood to reasonably benefit in the aftermath.

Conspiracies, by their very nature, are not crimes of passion. They may involve rational, albeit cold-blooded, attempts to achieve a desired end by employing the most effective means available. It is for this reason that “mainstream” terror groups like Hamas and Hizbullah largely avoid attacking American interests where such attacks would serve no practical interest.

For all their talk of Jihad, these terror groups tend to plan their specific attacks with an eye to the consequences that could reasonably be expected to follow. Thus, knowing the moral and political constraints of Israeli deterrent strategies, they calibrate their attacks to elicit consequences that are most tolerable for them – and hence, manageable.

Yet surely, in the light of the cult of suicidal martyrdom, such considerations no longer hold sway. Perhaps.

But then, in the case of such a far-flung anti-Zionist movement as al-Qaida, one would expect at least a little more exertion against Israeli interests than has heretofore prevailed – unless, of course, the “point” of al-Qaida was to provide a plausible dire threat to American interests where none had then existed.

In any case, as nobody has noticed this particular anomaly, there was no need for any needless exertion of resources in order to bolster a credibility that needed no bolstering in this one particular sector.

Motive, means, and opportunity. While I presented the Saudis and Pakistani intelligence as clear-cut proxies, the only motive these elements would have to benefit from a crime of this nature is an assurance that no punishment would be forthcoming but rather, they would be on the right side of power and wealth among those in a position to determine the booty.

Another anomaly:   on the very day that the ISI Chief was in deep consultation at the Pentagon, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the head of the Afghani Northern Alliance – a cultishly popular figure within that group, and a mortal foe of Pakistan’s ISI – was assassinated by two terrorists posing as cameramen.

Keeping in mind the fact that, throughout the ’90′s, American leaders such as Clinton, and American companies such as Unocal, were largely throwing their support over to the Taliban in opposition to the Northern Alliance (or United Front), it seems rather convenient that, in the aftermath of 9/11, the way was now cleared for the Northern Alliance to be co-opted as an instrument for setting up a more pliant Afghani government (now headed, incidentally, by a former consultant to Unocal).

So who are the ultimate controllers? To begin with, the circumstantial evidence seems to point to an operative clique primarily based out of New York City and the State of Florida. I stress the word “operative”, as this clique appears to consist of subservient agents involved in laying the preparations. Once again, John O’Neill serves as an effective Rosetta Stone in interpreting the raw outlines of this operative clique (which is by no means a “rogue” clique).

The FBI and CIA elements involved in counterterrorism have a checkered past. For one, Oliver North in the 1980′s served as Counterterrorism Chief while he used his office as a cover to deal with such narco-terrorists as Monzar al-Kassar (who figures in the crash at Lockerbie – also investigated by Cannistraro).

In the late ’90′s, O’Neill was transferred from the federal office of Counterrorism to the New York Counterrorism Office of the FBI – and it was the New York branch which was then designated as the primary investigator of all overseas investigations involving bin Laden.

Moreover, this branch was also involved in the somewhat suspect investigation of TWA 800 – investigated by O’Neill and reported upon by ABC’s John Miller, who was formerly the Deputy Police Commissioner of Public Relations for the NYPD before he joined up with ABC.

As regards New York, there is another element involved in germ warfare operations. Actually, a multi-million dollar bunker – serving as a command and control center in the event of a biological attack – was set up at 7 World Trade Center at the direction of Rudolph Giuliani, who also oversaw the mass spraying of malathion over the boroughs of New York City when the West Nile Virus hit town a few summers previously.

The man Giuliani placed in charge of that operation, Jerry Hauer, also happened to be the man who found John O’Neill the position at the World Trade Center, as well as being the one who – by his own admission – identified O’Neill’s body.

Moreover, there has been a widespread campaign on to link the threat of al-Qaida with that of a mass biological attack. At least the day after September 11, the link – as the Anthrax mailings had yet to arise – was not so apparent.

Yet on PBS’ Frontline, the New York Times’ Judith Miller (no apparent relation to John Miller, as far as I’m aware), accompanied by the New York Times’ James Risen, was interviewed as an expert on al-Qaida.

Several weeks later, Judith Miller would once more make the headlines as the apparent recipient of an anthrax mailing which turned out to be a false alarm – yet was all the same conveniently timed with the well-publicized launching of her book on…germ warfare.

As was later discovered, the anthrax mailings petered out once the news leaked that a DNA test revealed the material to be of the Ames strain of anthrax, an agent synthesized out of a CIA laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Nevertheless, this was sufficient to fast-track Bioport’s exclusive license for the anthrax vaccine toward FDA approval. Formerly, Bioport’s experimental anthrax vaccine was being forcibly administered – under threat of court-martial – to hundreds of thousands of American servicemen (in conformity with Bioport’s exclusive and lucrative contract with the Department of Defense).

Incidentally, Judith Miller, along with Jerry Hauer, was among 17 “key” participants in a biowarfare exercise known as “Dark Winter” – a think tank-funded scenario that aimed to study the nationwide effects of a hypothetical smallpox outbreak.

One of the sponsors of that exercise was the Anser Institute of Homeland Security, an organization established before September 11, 2001.  Interestingly enough, the curious phrase “homeland security” was starting to creep up with increasing frequency in the vocabularies of certain political cliques (Dick Cheney, the Hart-Rudman Commission, et al.) in the year or two leading up to 9/11.

The point of the above-noted information is to draw attention to an apparent propaganda campaign to prepare the public for a catastrophic biological attack. As with the Twin Towers, the blame for any coming attack may be duly and plausibly assigned by those who carefully laid the groundwork in preparing us for this eventuality.

As for Florida, the connection with this state is obvious, for not only was the first anthrax mailing directed to the Florida offices of the National Enquirer, but many of the accused hijackers were also reported to receive their pilot training from flight schools in Venice and Tampa.  

Notably, it was a Florida bank account to which hijacker Mohamed Atta allegedly deposited his 9/11 pay cheque.  Moreover, Florida, by way of the MacDill Air Force Base, is also Central Command for the war in Afghanistan.

In addition to its function as Central Command for the war on terrorism, MacDill is - outside of Langley – also a major base of the CIA. Thus, in the CIA’s own backyard, we find the infrastructure and financial support that went into the planning for the events of 9/11.

And, as we so often find with events surrounding 9/11, another synchronicity – for coincidentally enough, the woman who reportedly happened to find an apartment for one of the alleged hijackers was the wife of the senior editor of the National Enquirer.

Moreover, her husband, Michael Irish, also happened to make use of an airfield that reportedly served as flight training for some of the hijackers. I emphasize the word “reportedly,” as the possibility always exists that this “reported fact” may be nothing more than disinformation, strategically placed to divert attention from a possibly more subtle truth.

In intelligence operations, foreign assets are often placed with resident “controllers” whose job it is to supervise the asset as well as provide accommodations as the need arises.

Who are Michael and Gloria Irish? Or, perhaps more revealingly, what kind of social circles do they run with? This is certainly an avenue worth exploring – by reason of its many synchrocities if for nothing else. Again, the seam that shows.

As a little side-note, Tampa experienced its own mass spraying of malathion, a mutagenic pesticide, when it encountered a med fly outbreak the year before New York’s West Nile outbreak.  In the end, the flies were contained through a sterile med fly program administered out of MacDill Air Force base.

So, to sum up, it appears that the events of September 11 were planned years in advance, with the groundwork being carefully laid by a propaganda campaign orchestrated to convince the public that the United States has a plausibly sophisticated nemesis with the motive, means, and opportunity to perpetrate a devastating act of terror against Americans.

Toward that end, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been used as the primary proxy agents to run a “false flag” operation, setting up and financing the infrastructure of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Through madrassas based in Pakistan, Saudi and Yemenite militants were instructed in the Saudi brand of Wahabbi Islam, and subsequently “graduated” to the camps that were set up in Afghanistan – again, under Saudi and Pakistani sponsorship.

Stateside, the operative agents were mostly based out of New York City and Florida. In the aftermath of 9/11, elements in the American government are now widely disseminating information in vast quantities, overwhelming the populace and lending credibility to the government’s version of events.

Thus, post-9/11, the actions of this formerly insular propaganda clique are no longer perceptible. Information is now being doled out in generous portions to credulous reporters who are outside the loop, yet perform their unwitting service as “bottom feeders” in the downward flow of information.
In all cases, the actions of these proxy agents and operative planners are sufficiently distanced and compartmentalized from the true masterminds to create a condition of “plausible deniability”.

In short, the proxies have also been set up as possible patsies with evidence that has been carefully laid to incriminate them should cracks in the “official story” become too discernible. Moreover, the groundwork has already been carefully laid to cast aspersions on another convenient patsy – the Jews, by way of the State of Israel and its supporters.

Already, for those prone to perceive Jewish conspiracies, the reliable vein of anti-Semitism – combined with anti-Zionism – has been mined to distract the masses and to create a modern version of the ritual blood libel, thereby further “muddying the waters” should the true masterminds be threatened with exposure.  

In other words, the present difficulties in the Middle East work perfectly to set up the State of Israel as a plausible alternative suspect with motive, means, and opportunity.

Toward that end, a low-level “buzz” has been circulating over the Internet (and especially in Europe) of an Israeli spy ring that was rounded up in the days after September 11.  Whether or not these reports are credible is not the point.  Most likely, there was a spy ring operating, and various Israelis were unwittingly set up as patsies, to be exposed should the need arise.

Thus, while evidence may be marshaled to taint the Saudis, Pakistanis, or Israelis, the real guilt must inevitably lie with those in the best position to manage the flow of information as well as reliably benefit from the new order created, primarily, the political and corporate elites of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union – also, as it happens, the very parties orchestrating the global war on terrorism.

In this respect, the Saudis, Pakistanis, or Israelis have far less to gain (other than the benefits of going along with the designs of the rich and mighty).

I could go on and further highlight the obvious geostrategic gains of those who are clearly managing the flow of information – the proverbial pipelines, oil, wealth, and so forth. But I think those purported benefits are a bit of a “red herring” – more of a side benefit than the main motivating factor.

Americans and their allies would have easily supported a thrust into Afghanistan for a provocation far less costly and bloody than this (such as Kuwait in the early ’90′s).  It is no small act to intentionally take down such an overarching symbol of financial stability as the Twin Towers, and chance killing thousands in the process.

Such a conspiracy, if in fact perpetrated from within, would by its nature necessitate a huge structural, cultural, and demographic change. The very brazenness of the act, the naked aggression, would necessitate a tenacious determination to achieve the ends for which these actions were perpetrated.

There is no going back now. An infrastructure is being laid out – one that will, finally, provide a dissident-proof totalitarian oligarchy composed of like-minded elites served by an under-class kept under constant surveillance.

The edifice of this regime is being constructed, brick by brick, with the mortar of the Office of Homeland Security (to centralize and coordinate an effective police state), the Freedom Corps (to indoctrinate the most idealist – and therefore activist – elements of the populace toward service to the state), and the Patriot Act (to provide the legal basis for subverting long-held rights under the screen of national security).

If all of this sounds strangely familiar, if it is redolent of Huxley and Orwell, that is perhaps because Huxley and Orwell were both intimately involved with the elites of their time – in fact, were fully subsumed among them – in ways that made their future projections abundantly prescient, and, in their minds, inevitable.

With further refinements in mind control technologies – yes, they do exist – as well as the monopolization of the food supply by way of sterile seed “terminator technology” – the approval for which was granted in the months following 9/11 – the masses may be perpetually culled and exploited by those who hold the keys to this fully managed society.

If this notion of reality strikes you as somewhat dissonant, at odds with your own personal experience, it may be perhaps that we have not quite arrived there yet, and that you have personally not felt the corrosive lash of political corruption and governmental malfeasance.

In all likelihood, you have not read the mountain of evidence detailing political and elite deviant behaviour in this country.

You may even be dismissive of “conspiracy theories”, yet wholly unaware of the well-documented attempts by the CIA and FBI to subvert, surveil, and propagandize the populace through programs such as Project Mockingbird (media infiltration) and MK-Ultra (mind control through chemical, hypnotic, or electro-magnetic means).

These programs are effected primarily through “think tanks” that are set up across the United States for the purpose of disseminating information and propaganda under the rubric of “expertise”.

Moreover, various foundations, such as the Rockefeller or Ford Foundations, are often used as funnels to finance and feed the arteries of these propaganda networks. In the 1970′s, a good deal of this structural corruption was officially exposed – in a “limited hang-out” – by way of the Church Commission, as well as the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Thereafter, much of the most damaging revelations were played down or ignored by the mainstream media, and the waters were then muddied by a stream of outlandish conspiracy theories – aliens, Elvis, etc. – that merely served to discredit the information that was most credible. “Muddying the waters”, incidentally, is a tried and true staple of the intelligence craft.

It is really just a matter of familiarizing yourself with all the documented anomalies that do not accord with the received, mainstream reality put forth to you by the mainstream media. As a practical guide to begin, you might want to confine your search to strictly “mainstream” sources, as I have sought to do in attempting to construct my case on 9/11. My evidence is by no means exhaustive. In fact, it is merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Yet proceeding in this direction, under my hypothesis, has been most fruitful in analyzing the various anomalies that pop up now and then.

Any simple keyword search of the following terms may be helpful in pointing toward a more substantive understanding of the elites who ultimately guide your fortunes: “Iran-Contra” , “Mena”, “BCCI”, “Project Paperclip”, “Michael Aquino”, “Paul Bonacci”, “Operation Northwoods”, “MK-Ultra”. Much of the information on these topics is credible and well-documented. More disturbingly, it highlights behavior committed by the very same elites who are now interpreting the events of 9/11 for you. Read for yourself, and decide, at the end of the day, how much credibility you will continue to accord to those who claim to be the proper trustees of your fate and well-being.

(Chaim  Kupferberg is a freelance researcher and writer. Copyright © Chaim Kupferberg 2002. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed.)

And no one believes that there is any real evidence for another "conspiracy theory" (in addition to the official one).

Press Release:  World Trade Center Bldg. 7’s Controlled Demolition:  9/11 Consensus Panel Releases New Evidence from Witness Testimonies and Architectural Drawings

June 2, 2014 – The 24-member 9/11 Consensus Panel – which includes physicists, chemists, engineers, commercial pilots, attorneys and lawyers – today announced three new studies confirming the controlled demolition of World Trade Center 7.

The studies scientifically refute the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claim that, for the first time in history, fire caused the sudden and complete collapse of a large, fire-protected, steel-framed building on 9/11. 

(Note that whereas the Consensus Panel uses a scientific methodology to peer-review its work, the NIST report was not peer-reviewed.)

The first Panel study deals with the NIST computer simulations, which purported to show that fire-induced thermal expansion caused a girder to be pushed off its seat at Column 79, thereby initiating a global collapse of the entire 47-storey building at 5:21 in the afternoon.  

However, a recent FOIA request has produced WTC 7 architectural drawings showing that the NIST simulations omitted basic structural supports that would have made this girder failure impossible. 

The second Consensus Panel study deals with NIST’s claim that it did not recover any steel from this massive steel-frame skyscraper.

This is extraordinary, given the need to understand why a steel-frame building would have completely collapsed for the first time in history from fire alone, and to thereby prevent a recurrence.

We know now that some of the steel was recovered.  Photographs recently obtained by researchers show the strange curled-up paper-thin WTC 7 steel, with a NIST investigator pointing it out. 

The third Panel study shows that on September 11, 2001, many people were told hours in advance that WTC 7 was going to collapse.

MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield said early in the afternoon: “I’ve heard several reports from several different officers now that that is the building that is going to go down next.” 

Many members of the New York Fire Department were confidently waiting for the building to come down:

Firefighter Thomas Donato: “We were standing, waiting for seven to come down. We were there for quite a while, a couple hours.”

Assistant Commissioner James Drury: “I must have lingered there. There were hundreds of firefighters waiting to — they were waiting for 7 World Trade Center to come down.”  

Chief Thomas McCarthy: “So when I get to the command post, they just had a flood of guys standing there. They were just waiting for 7 to come down.”

In addition, CNN and the BBC made premature announcements.

This foreknowledge corroborates the evidence presented in previous Consensus Points (WTC7-1 to WTC7-5) that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition.

Source:  The 9/11 Consensus Panel  consensus911@gmail.com  @Consensus911

Contact List:   http://www.consensus911.org/media-contacts/
Co-founders:   David Ray Griffin, Elizabeth Woodworth

Fascinating, ain't it?

"But, it's a coincidence. Right boss?"

"There's no such thing as coincidence, Tony."

- Jethro Gibbs


*

That is beyond comprehension, a clear travesty of justice, but it has become commonplace in America. Just look at the following list of U.S. and some foreign banks that have been fined billions of dollars. Not one of their top executives has been prosecuted in connection with the violations of the law that led to these fines:

$25 billion - Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, BAC, and Ally Financial - 2012

$13 billion - J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. — 2013

$9.3 billion - Bank of America, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan & 10 others — 2013

$8.5 billion - Bank of America – June 2011

$2.6 billion - Credit Suisse AG – May 2014

1.9 billion - HSBC Holdings, HSBA - 2012

$1.5 billion – UBS, AGUBSN - 2012

$1.4 billion - 10 Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan – 2003

What fraudulent practices brought on these massive fines? They involved mortgage foreclosure processing abuses, claims over residential-backed mortgage securities, deceptive mortgage loan application processes, associated tax evasion, manipulated interbank lending rates, and conflicts of interest between research and investment banking sectors.