9/11 – A Cheap Magic Trick

Complete 9/11 Timeline

History Commons, the Web site that hosts the Complete 9/11 Timeline, is currently facing a funding crisis and urgently needs donations in order to stay online.

The Complete 9/11 Timeline is an important resource, which contains a huge amount of information relating to the 9/11 attacks. It includes over a thousand entries detailing the day of September 11, 2001, alone. It has the most detailed account there is of the numerous training exercises taking place on 9/11, and has many entries describing relevant training exercises held in the years leading up to 9/11.

The timeline has sections devoted to the official investigations of 9/11, such as the 9/11 Commission and the various investigations of the World Trade Center collapses, as well as much more.

It is important that the History Commons Web site has the necessary funds to continue. If you would like to make a donation (by credit card, PayPal, or check), Click here.

April 25, 2012
Paul Craig Roberts

Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of “detainees,” against whom no evidence exists. ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/ ) In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.

For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.

The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.

Secret evidence murders the concept of a fair trial. It murders justice and the rule of law. Secret evidence means anyone can be convicted of anything. As in Kafka’s The Trial, people will cease to know the crimes for which they are being tried and convicted.

This extraordinary development in Anglo-American law, a development demanded by the unaccountable Bush/Obama Regime, has not resulted in impeachment proceedings; nor has it caused an uproar from Congress, the federal courts, the presstitute media, law schools, constitutional scholars, and bar associations.

Having bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans just want someone to pay. They don’t care who as long as someone pays. To accommodate this desire, the government has produced some “high value detainees” with Arab or Muslim names.
But instead of bringing these alleged malefactors to trial and presenting evidence against them, the government has kept them in torture dungeons for years trying to create through the application of pain and psychological breakdown guilt by self-incrimination in order to create a case against them.

The government has been unsuccessful and has nothing that it can bring to a real court. So the Bush/Obama Regime created and recreated “military tribunals” to lend “national security” credence to the absolute need that non-existent evidence be kept secret.

Andy Worthington in his numerous reports does a good job in providing the history of the detainees and their treatment. He deserves our commendation and support. But what I want to do is to ask some questions, not of Worthington, but about the idea that the US is under terrorist threat.

By this September, 9/11 will be eleven years ago. Yet despite the War on Terror, the loss of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, an expenditure of trillions of dollars on numerous wars, violations of US and international laws against torture, and so forth, no one has been held accountable. Neither the perpetrators nor those whom the perpetrators outwitted, assuming that they are different people, have been held accountable. Going on 11 years and no trials of villains or chastisement of negligent public officials. This is remarkable.

The government’s account of 9/11 implies massive failure of all US security and intelligence agencies along with those of our NATO puppets and Israel’s Mossad.
The government’s official line also implies the failure of the National Security Council, NORAD and the US Air Force, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times in one hour on the same morning. It implies the failure of the President, the Vice President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of Defense.

Many on the left and also libertarians find this apparent failure of the centralized and oppressive government so hopeful that they cling to the official “government failure” explanation of 9/11. However, such massive failure is simply unbelievable. How in the world could the US have survived the cold war with the Soviets if the US government were so totally incompetent?

If we attribute superhero powers to the 19 alleged hijackers, powers in excess of V’s in V for Vendetta or James Bond’s or Captain Marvel’s, and assume that these young terrorists, primarily Saudi Arabians, outwitted Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Tony Blair, along with the CIA, FBI, MI5 and MI6, Mossad, etc., one would have expected for the President, Congress, and the media to call for heads to roll. No more humiliating affront has ever been suffered by a major power than the US suffered on 9/11. Yet, absolutely no one, not even some lowly traffic controller, was scapegoated and held accountable for what is considered to be the most extraordinarily successful terrorist attack in human history, an attack so successful that it implies total negligence across the totality of the US government and that of all its allies.

This just doesn’t smell right. Total failure and no accountability. The most expensively funded security apparatus the world has ever known defeated by a handful of Saudi Arabians. How can anyone in the CIA, FBI, NSA, NORAD, and National Security Council hold up their heads? What a disgraced bunch of jerks and incompetents.

What do we need them for?

Consider the alleged hijackers. Despite allegedly being caught off guard by the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was soon able to identify the 19 hijackers despite the fact that apparently none of the alleged hijackers’ names are on the passenger lists of the airliners that they allegedly hijacked.

How did 19 passengers get on airplanes in the US without being on the passenger lists?

I do not personally know if the alleged hijackers were on the four airliners. Moreover, defenders of the official 9/11 story claim that the passenger lists released to the public were “victims lists,” not passenger lists, because the names of the hijackers were withheld and only released some four years later after 9/11 researchers had had years in which to confuse victims lists with passenger lists. This seems an odd explanation. Why encourage public misinformation for years by withholding the passenger lists and issuing victims lists in their place? It cannot have been to keep the hijackers’ names a secret as the FBI released a list of the hijackers several days after 9/11. Even more puzzling, if the hijackers’ names were on the airline passenger lists, why did it take the FBI several days to confirm the names and numbers of hijackers?

Researchers have found contradictions in the FBI’s accounts of the passenger lists with the FBI adding and subtracting names from its various lists and some names being misspelled, indicating possibly that the FBI doesn’t really know who the person is. The authenticity of the passenger lists that were finally released in 2005 is contested, and the list apparently was not presented as evidence by the FBI in the Moussaoui trial in 2006. David Ray Griffin has extensively researched the 9/11 story. In one of his books, 9/11 Ten Years Later, Griffin writes: “Although the FBI claimed that it had received flight manifests from the airlines by the morning of 9/11, the ‘manifests’ that appeared in 2005 had names that were not known to the FBI until a day or more after 9/11. These 2005 ‘manifests,’ therefore, could not have been the original manifests for the four 9/11 flights.”

The airlines themselves have not been forthcoming. We are left with the mystery of why simple and straightforward evidence, such as a list of passengers, was withheld for years and mired in secrecy and controversy.

We have the additional problem that the BBC and subsequently other news organizations established that 6 or 7 of the alleged hijackers on the FBI’s list are alive and well and have never been part of any terrorist plot.

These points are not even a beginning of the voluminous reasons that the government’s 9/11 story looks very thin.

But the American public, being throughly plugged into the Matrix, are not suspicious of the government’s thin story. Instead, they are suspicious of the facts and of those experts who are suspicious of the government’s story. Architects, engineers, scientists, first responders, pilots, and former public officials who raise objections to the official story are written off as conspiracy theorists. Why does an ignorant American public think it knows more than experts? Why do Americans believe a government that told them the intentional lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction despite the fact that the weapons inspectors reported to President Bush that Hussein had no such weapons? And now we see the same thing all over again with the alleged, but non-existent, Iranian nukes.

As Frantz Fanon wrote, the power of cognitive dissonance is extreme. It keeps people comfortable and safe from threatening information. Most Americans find the government’s lies preferable to the truth. They don’t want to be unplugged from the Matrix. The truth is too uncomfortable for emotionally and mentally weak Americans.

Worthington focuses on the harm being done to detainees. They have been abused for much of their lives. Their innocence or guilt cannot be established because the evidence is compromised by torture, self-incrimination, and coerced testimony against others. They stand convicted by the government’s accusation alone. These are real wrongs, and Worthington is correct to emphasize them.

In contrast, my focus is on the harm to America, on the harm to truth and truth’s power, on the harm to the rule of law and accountability to the people of the government and its agencies, on the harm to the moral fabric of the US government and to liberty in the United States.

As the adage goes, a fish rots from the head. As the government rots, so does the United States of America.

April 13, 2012
Joanne Mariner
Justia.com

With last week’s announcement that charges against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and his four co-defendants had been authorized, the on-again, off-again military commission proceedings in the 9/11 case have now officially begun. The United States is seeking the death penalty against all five men, who are accused of the crimes of terrorism, hijacking, murder, conspiracy, and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

The case has been called the trial of the century. Sixty-six pages of the 123-page charge sheet are taken up by the long list of victims of the 9/11 attacks, from flight attendant Barbara Jean Arestegui, on American Airlines Flight 11, to passenger Honor Elizabeth Wainio, on United Airlines Flight 93.

The stakes in the case are high; the facts are extremely emotive, and the defendants could hardly be less sympathetic. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad has already claimed responsibility for planning the attacks, and the other defendants are accused of playing key organizational or financial roles in them.

For the verdict in such an important, high-profile case to be recognized as just, the trial needs to be seen as fair. The defendants should be granted basic procedural guarantees in proceedings before an independent and impartial tribunal.

But while US officials have put much recent effort into lauding the fairness of the military commissions at Guantanamo, the government still asserts that defendants before the commissions have no constitutional rights. And though the rules governing military commission proceedings have improved significantly over the years, the commissions’ basic structure is still unconducive to independence and impartiality.

Link to the rest of the article

“I’ve never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.”

- Major James Fox, Northeast Air Defense Sector, September 11, 2001

Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because of a large-scale air defense exercise they were participating in when the attacks occurred. Evidence indicates that the personnel, whose responsibilities included ordering fighter jets into the air to intercept the hijacked planes, were unclear about what was “real-world” and what was “exercise.” They may have been led to believe that the terrorist attacks were just simulated scenarios.

These individuals worked at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, New York. Audio recordings of the operations floor at NEADS reveal staffers suggesting that the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001 could have been part of the exercise. They sometimes even made jokes and laughed about what was taking place, further indicating that they were mistaking actual events for exercise simulations. Even senior commanding officers have admitted wondering if the terrorist attacks were part of the exercise.

And while staffers sometimes apparently made clear that an event was unconnected to the exercise by referring to it as being “real-world,” there is evidence that the term “real-world” may in fact be a way to describe live events played out within an exercise, perhaps involving real aircraft getting airborne, rather than just hypothetical scenarios.

Furthermore, NEADS personnel previously participated in exercises that included scenarios resembling the 9/11 attacks, such as plane hijackings and aircraft being crashed into skyscrapers in New York, and this could have increased the likelihood that they would mistake the events of September 11 for exercise simulations.

Although much remains speculative, the available evidence raises serious questions about whether the exercise at NEADS on September 11 was a deliberate tactic used to hinder skilled and dedicated professionals, thereby preventing them from stopping the terrorist attacks.

NORAD’S ‘SIMULATED AIR WAR’ ON SEPTEMBER 11
A key agency responsible for protecting the U.S. from an airborne attack, like what happened on September 11, is NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. NORAD is the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending the airspace over the United States and Canada. Within the U.S., it is divided into three sectors. The 9/11 attacks took place in the airspace monitored by its Northeast Air Defense Sector, NEADS. It was therefore personnel at NEADS who were responsible for trying to coordinate the U.S. military’s response to the hijackings. These individuals, however, were in the middle of a major training exercise when the attacks began.

“Vigilant Guardian” was an annual exercise conducted by NORAD that was several days underway on September 11. All of NORAD took part in it. [1] Vigilant Guardian has been described as a “simulated air war” and as “an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States.” [2] Remarkably, it was scheduled to include a simulated hijacking at around 9:40 a.m. on September 11. The exercise “was designed to run a range of scenarios” that day, according to Vanity Fair, “including a ‘traditional’ simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum.” [3]

Link to the rest of the article

People from around the world came together at Ryerson University in Toronto, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to present evidence challenging the official accounts of that day. A DVD of the proceeding of the “Toronto Hearings” is nearly complete. Here is a preview.

By Craig Whitlock,
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The Washington Post

Some human remains recovered from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., were incinerated and dumped in a landfill, the Defense Department said Tuesday in the latest revelation about mishandled body parts at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary.

A new Pentagon review of the troubled mortuary disclosed several other problems — including fresh allegations of fraud and misplaced remains — over the past decade despite previous assurances by Air Force officials that they had adequately investigated operations at the base.

A new Pentagon report reveals that partial remains of some 9/11 victims were sent to a landfill after they could not be identified. The victims were among those killed at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa.

The revelation that “several portions of remains” recovered from the Pentagon and Shanksville ended up in a landfill was mentioned briefly on the latter pages of a report released Tuesday after an investigation led by retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid.

The report said that the Sept. 11 remains in question “could not be tested or identified,” apparently because they were too small or charred to allow for DNA analysis. The remains were cremated and then mixed with biomedical waste at the Dover mortuary, where they were given to a contractor who incinerated them and dumped the residue in a landfill.

Link to the rest of the article

A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country’s state oil company.

From left: hijack pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah were all said to have visited the home in Sarasota while learning to fly at nearby Venice Airport Photo: GETTY

By Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie and Dan Christensen
18 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.

Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.

All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.

Link to the rest of the article

Thanks to the work of citizen investigators and patriots, we now know that the government’s version of the events of 9/11 is a tissue of lies.

Here are some of the things we have learned in the years following 9/11:

Bin Laden was working for the US government right up to 9/11. In all likelihood he died in 2001 despite the fact that the government continued to pump out videos featuring him whenever support for the war began to wane. Al Qaeda doesn’t exist either except as an asset of the intelligence agencies of the West and Israel. Adding to the absurdity is the fact that the spokesman for Al Qaeda is a American Jew whose grandfather was on the board of the Anti-Defamation League.

The purported hijackers were not devout Muslims. Instead they were patsies trained at US military bases and at flight schools connected to the CIA. Mohammed Atta, the supposed 9/11 ringleader, had a German CIA handler. He was a secularist who enjoyed cocaine, gambling, pork, and strippers. According to Atta’s father, Mohammed was still alive the day after 9/11. However his father stated that he had since been killed by US and Israeli forces. At least nine of the 19 alleged hijackers were alive after 9/11 and claimed that their identities had been stolen. Another of the alleged hijackers actually died the year before 9/11. Yet the government has failed to correct these errors or identify who really hijacked the airliners.

The three skyscrapers in the World Trade Center complex in New York were brought down by controlled demolitions. Bombs were heard going off by firefighters and policemen. Molten steel was seen pouring out of the buildings and found in the basements months after 9/11. Common office fires do not melt steel nor does jet fuel which is mostly kerosene. Nanothermates were found in the dust from the buildings – proof that they were brought down with explosives.  Nanothermites are not made in a cave in Afghanistan and the ‘terrorists’ did not have access to the buildings to wire them for demolition. The hijacked airliners were driven into the buildings to create the illusion that they brought down the towers. Security for the WTC was handled by members of the Bush family. The World Trade Center towers were heavily insured by Larry Silverstein – a Zionist with close ties to Israel’s leadership. Members of the Mossad were arrested filming and celebrating the destruction of the WTC. After being released and sent back to Israel, they went on Israeli television to say that they had been sent to ‘document’ the event. Other Mossad operatives were caught trying to penetrate federal installations, living in proximity to the hijackers, and on 9/11 were in New York in vans that police found had traces of explosives in them as well as boxcutters.

The US military had been rehearsing for a 9/11 scenario for at least a year before the event. Those exercises were later used to confuse military and FAA employees once the operation went live. Meanwhile operational command was being exercised elsewhere by Pentagon officials, CIA operatives, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

No passenger jet hit the Pentagon. Explosives were planted inside the building. The jet liner flew over the building at the same time the explosions went off. The explosives were probably set off when either a drone or a missile hit the building. Pentagon and government officials have yet to explain why the nation’s capitol was undefended for almost two hours, why none of the anti-aircraft missiles at the Pentagon worked that day, and why no jets were scrambled to defend either Washington DC or the financial center of America – New York.

Plans for imperial control of all resources in the Middle East were prepared by the Pentagon and described in the document: The Project for a New American Century. The document was a joint effort of the Anglo/American and Jewish establishment. The intelligence agencies of several different countries participated in pulling off the 9/11 attack. Israel, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Germany and other countries were involved. Everything was coordinated internally through a secret team composed of Pentagon, CIA, and FBI and NSA officials in collaboration with America’s financial and corporate leaders.

The plane that went down in Pennsylvania was shot down. The story of the passengers attempting to takeover the plane was a ruse to cover up the downing of the jet. It is likely that the plane was meant to hit Building 7 in New York which is why the building was already wired for demolition. When the plane was shot down in Pennsylvania, Building 7 had to be brought down anyway later that day.

Insider trading of airline stocks was later linked back to “Buzzy” Krongard among others. He had previously been Chairman of an investment firm that was acquired by Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank was one of the firms that purchased “put” options betting that United Airline stock would fall. After leaving the investment firm, “Buzzy” became Executive Director of the CIA under George Bush.

The mainstream media is complicit in the 9/11 cover up.  They have consistently failed to investigate it or reveal the burgeoning evidence that it was an inside job. When members of the 9/11 truth movement are interviewed, they are largely dismissed as lunatics or homegrown terrorists.

Both political parties are complicit in the cover up. Despite numerous requests to government officials to hold a real investigation, members of both parties have continued to stonewall the public. Repressive legislation aimed American citizens, free speech, and access to the internet have been the only response from Washington. However they are only following orders from Wall Street and the bankers. They are the ones who have enabled the American empire because of dollar being the world’s reserve currency. The deal with American politicians and the military would be that the government could borrow as much money as it wanted as long as it paid interest to the central bankers. In return both parties would have all the financial resources they wanted to create a welfare-warfare state while enriching individual politicians. This accounts for America’s strong support of Israel because it is Jewish bankers who founded Israel and who make up most, but not all, of the central bankers. The joint efforts between the Anglo/American and Jewish elite in the Middle East and Asia have several objectives. To control the oil, gas, and mineral resources in that area in order to control the world’s economy. To provide backing for the dollar which currently is not backed by anything. And last to eliminate Israel’s enemies so that greater Israel can be created.

In summary, there is no war on terror.  There are no Al Qaeda boogiemen.  There are no fanatical Muslims that “hate our freedom.”

There is instead a war to terrorize Americans and the people of the world into obedience. The world’s elite have had a long standing plan to establish one world totalitarian rule and the 9/11 event and phony war on terror ’terrorism’ are programs for bringing this plan to fruition.

That leaves the people of the world with a choice. Either come together to fight these hyenas or be enslaved forever. We have no other choice.