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THE NEW PEARL
HARBOR
Disturbing Questions about the Bush
Administration and 9/11
by David
Ray Griffin
foreword by Richard Folk
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Forword by Richard Falk vii
Introduction xi
PART ONE THE EVENTS OF 9 / 11
1. Flights 11 and 175: How Could the Hijackers' Missions
Have Succeeded? 3
2. Flight 77: Was It Really the Aircraft that Struck the
Pentagon? 25
3. Flight 93: Was It the One Flight that was Shot Down?
49
4. The Presidents Behavior. Why Did He Act as He Did? 57
PART TWO THE LARGER CONTEXT
5. Did US Officials Have Advance Information about 9/11?
67
6. Did US Officials Obstruct Investigations Prior to 9/11?
75
7. Did US Officials Have Reasons for Allowing 9/11? 89
8. Did US Officials Block Captures and Investigations after
9/11? 105
PART THREE CONCLUSION
9. Is Complicity by US Officials the Best Explanation?
127
10. The Need for a Full Investigation 147
Notes 169
Index of Names 210
Back Cover Text
OLIVE
BRANCH
PRESS
An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
Northampton, Massachusetts
First published in 2004 by
OLIVE BRANCH PRESS
An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060
www.interlinkbooks.com
Text copyright © David Ray Griffin 2004 Foreword copyright © Richard Falk
2004
All rights reserved. No pan of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publisher unless National Security in endangered and education is
essential for survival people and their nation .
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Griffin, David Ray
The new Pearl Harbor : disturbing questions
about the Bush administration and 9/11 / by David Ray Griffin.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56656-552-9 (pbk.)
1. United States—Politics
and government—2001. 2. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. 3. Responsibility—Political
aspects—United States.
4. Governmental investigations—United States. 5.
Terrorism—Government policy—United
States. 6. Intelligence service—United States.
I. Title.
E902.G75 2004 973.931—dc22
2004001096
Cover images © AP Wide World Photos Printed and bound in Canada
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Advance Praise for David Ray Griffin's
The New Pearl Harbor:
Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11
This is an important,
extraordinarily well-reasoned and provocative book that should be widely
read. Griffin
raises disturbing questions that deserve thoughtful and truthful answers from
our government." —Marcus Raskin, co-founder of the Institute for
Policy Studies
"David Ray Griffin has done admirable and
painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9-11 attacks.
It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation of
the Bush administration's relationship to that historic and troubling
event." —Howard Zinn, author of A Peoples History of the United States
"David Ray Griffin has written what America may
most of all need — a dispassionate, balanced, and exhaustively researched and
documented account of the implausible gaps and misrepresentations of the Bush
administration's official story of 9/11. Sensitive to the 'conspiracy theory'
mind-stop that has disconnected his fellow Americans from the facts of this
history-steering event, Griffin
painstakingly marshals the evidence pro and con, and follows it where it
leads. A courageously impeccable work." —John McMurtry, author of Value
Wars: The Global Market versus the Life Economy, Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada and
Professor of Philosophy, University
of Guelph
"It will be painful, and disturbing, to
turn the pages of this thoughtful and meticulously researched book. But turn
we must. For we owe the truth to those who died, and nothing less." —Colleen
Kelly, sister of Bill Kelly, jr., who was killed in the North Tower of the
World Trade Center on 9/11, and co-founder of September 11th Families for
Peaceful Tomorrows
"This is a very important book, David Ray
Griffin's carefully researched and documented study demonstrates a high level
of probability that the Bush administration was complicit in allowing 9/11 to
happen in order to further war plans that had already been made. A must-read
for anyone concerned about American foreign policy under the present
administration. —Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carpenter Professor of Feminist
Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley,
California
"This is a must-read for all who want to
get past the conspiracy of silence and mystification that surrounds these
events." —John B. Cobb, Jr., Professor of Theology, Emeritus, Claremont School
of Theology and Claremont
Graduate University
"That 9/11 has become a defining moment in
our history cannot be gainsaid. But its exact significance is an exceedingly
contentious question notwithstanding the seeming clarity of prevailing
accounts. David Ray Griffin deconstructs those accounts with a host of
unresolved puzzles strongly suggestive of some sort of culpable complicity by
US officials in the event. His book presents an incontrovertible argument of
the need for a genuinely full and independent investigation of that infamous
day." —Douglas Sturm, Presidential Professor of Religion and
Political Science, Emeritus, Bucknell
University
"David Griffin's book is an excellent
exposé of so many of the deeply troubling questions that must still be
answered fully and transparently if democratic control over political and
military leaders is to mean anything at all." —Michael Meacher,
British member of Parliament, and former Minister of the Environment
"This book is as full of research and
authoritative notes as a field full of springtime daisies. The author raises
frightening questions, and the questions beg for answers. One thing we can
conclude for certain. The events surrounding 9/11, both before and after,
cannot be simply swept under the rug of conventional wisdom.... This book
gives us a foundation to discover the truth, one that we may not wish to
hear." —Gerry Spence, trial lawyer and author of How to Argue and
Win Every Time
"David Griffins The New Pearl Harbour belongs
on the book shelves of all those who, in any way, doubt the veracity of the
accounts presented to the public by the Bush administration concerning the
worst terrorist attack in America's history. The facts presented in this book
are disturbing — and they should be. Griffin's
book goes a long way in answering the age-old question inherent in American
political scandals: What did the President know, and when did he know
it?" —Wayne Madsen, author, journalist, syndicated columnist
"Griffin's
The New Pearl Harbor ought to be read by any American who values our
democracy and understands the importance of retaining the basic trust of the
people for any such democracy to survive over time." —Joseph C.
Hough, President, Union Theological Seminary in New York
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this book, I received an enormous amount of help and support. The
greatest help came, of course, from the authors upon whose work I drew.
Without the work of Nafeez Ahmed and Paul Thompson, this book would not have
even been begun, and without the books by Thierry Meyssan and Michel Chossudovsky, it would have
been far less complete. And then there are all those reporters and
researchers who have published relevant material in newspapers and magazines,
on television shows, or on the Web, some of whom were labouring away long before
Ahmed and Thompson began their work. To some of these reporters and
researchers I am indebted only indirectly, through their influence on my
primary sources; to others, I am directly indebted. I have acknowledged the
work of at least many of them in the notes. The attempt to discover the truth
about 9/11 and bring it to light has been a very cooperative enterprise, one
involving hundreds of intensely dedicated, mostly unpaid, investigators.
I have received help from many other people, including Tal Avitzur, John
Cobb, Michael Dietrick, Hilal Elver, Richard Falk, Allison Jaqua, Gianluigi
Gugliermetto, Colleen Kelly, John McMurtry, Pat Patterson, Rosemary Ruether,
Pamela Thompson, and Sarah Wright. I wish also to thank all those who took
time to express in writing their support for this book.
I am indebted to Richard Falk for reasons that go far beyond his gracious
willingness to write the Foreword. It was through his influence that I first
began working on global political matters. He has been my main discussion
partner about these matters. And it was through him that I became connected
with Olive Branch Press of Interlink Publishing.
I am especially grateful for this connection. The two people with whom I have
worked at Olive Branch — Pamela Thompson and Michel Moushabeck — have not
only been delightful collaborators. They have also manifested the kind of
commitment to this book that authors usually only dream about.
I am appreciative of my institution, the Claremont School of Theology, and
especially its president, Philip Amerson, and its dean, Jack Fitzmier, for
their unstinting support of academic freedom and their recognition of the
need for the schools faculty to write about vital public issues of the day.
Finally, I am, as usual, most indebted to the ongoing support from my wife,
Ann Jaqua.
FOREWORD
David Ray Griffin has written an extraordinary book. If carefully read with
even just a 30-percent open mind, it is almost certain to change the way we
understand the workings of constitutional democracy in the United States
at the highest levels of government. As such, this is a disturbing book,
depicting a profound crisis of political legitimacy for the most powerful
sovereign state in the history of the world — a country, furthermore,
embarked on the first borderless war, with no markers of victory and defeat.
If The New Pearl Harbor receives the sort of public and media
attention that it abundantly deserves, it should alter the general public
debate and exert a positive influence on how the future unfolds. It is rare,
indeed, that a book has this potential to become a force of history.
What makes The New Pearl Harbor so special
is that it explores the most sensitive and controversial terrain — the broad
landscape of official behavior in relation to the tragedy of 9/11 — in the
best spirit of academic detachment, coupled with an exemplary display of the
strongest scholarly virtue: a willingness to allow inquiry to follow the path
of evidence and reason wherever it leads. And it leads here to explosive
destinations, where severe doubts are raised about the integrity and
worldview of our leadership in those parts of the government that exercise
the greatest control over the behavior and destiny of the country,
particularly in the area of national security, which includes a war overseas
and the stifling of liberties at home. Griffin
brilliantly makes an overwhelming argument for a comprehensive, unhampered,
fully funded, and suitably prominent investigation of the entire story of how
and why 9/11 happened, as well as why such an unprecedented breakdown of
national security was not fully and immediately investigated as a matter of
the most urgent national priority. There are so many gaping holes in the
official accounts of 9/11 that no plausible coherent narrative remains, and
until now we have been staggering forward as if the truth about these
traumatic events no longer mattered.
Griffin
shows, with insight and a firm grasp of the many dimensions of the global
security policy of the Bush Administration, that getting 9/11 right, even
belatedly, matters desperately. The layer upon layer of unexplained facts,
the multiple efforts by those in power to foreclose independent inquiry, and
the evidence of a pre-9/11 blueprint by Bush insiders to do exactly what they
are now doing on the basis of a 9/11 mandate is why the Griffin assessment
does not even require a reader with a normally open mind. As suggested,
30-percent receptivity will do, which means that all but the most
dogrnatically blinded adherents of the Bush presidency should be convinced by
the basic argument of this book.
It must be underscored that this book does not
belong in the genre of "conspiracy theories," at least, as Griffin himself points
out, in the pejorative sense in which that term is usually understood. It is
a painstakingly scrupulous look at the evidence, with an accounting of the
numerous discrepancies between the official account provided by the US government
and the best information available.
Of course, it is fair to wonder, if the conclusion
toward which Griffins evidence points is correct, why this
story-of-the-century has not been clearly told before in this country. Why
have the media been asleep? Why has Congress been so passive about fulfilling
its role as a watchdog branch of government, above all protective of the
American people? Why have there been no resignations from on high by
principled public servants followed by electrifying revelations? There have
been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity
made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but as far as
I know, no American until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the
courage, and the intelligence to put so many pieces together in a single
coherent account.
Part of the difficulty in achieving credibility
in relation to issues this profoundly disturbing to public confidence in the
basic legitimacy of state power is that the accusatory voices most often
heard are strident and irresponsible, making them easily dismissed as
"paranoid" or "outrageous" without further consideration
of whether the concerns raised warrant investigation. In contrast, Griffins
approach is calm and his argument consistently well-reasoned, making his
analysis undeniably compelling.
But there are troubling forces at work that
block our access to the truth about 9/11. Ever since 9/11 the mainstream
media have worked hand-in-glove with the government in orchestrating a mood
of patriotic fervour making any expressions of doubts about the official leadership
of the country tantamount to disloyalty. Media personalities, such as Bill
Maher, who questioned, even casually, the official narrative were given pink
slips, sidelined, and silenced, sending a chilling message of intimidation to
anyone tempted to voice dissident opinions. Waving the American flag became a
substitute for critical and independent thought, and slogans such as
"United We Stand" were used as blankets to smother whatever
critical impulses existed. This thought-stopping equation of patriotism with
unquestioning acceptance of the present administrations policies has played
into the hands of those presidential advisors who have seen 9/11 not as a
national tragedy but—in the phrase used by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld during a TV interview with Jim Lehrer on the second anniversary of
the attacks—"a blessing in disguise."
As the spell cast by patrioteering has begun to
wear off, there is another related dynamic at work to keep us from the truth—
what psychiatrists describe as "denial." The unpleasant realities
of the Iraq
occupation make it difficult for most Americans to acknowledge that the whole
undertaking, including the death and maiming of young Americans, was based on
a willful distortion of reality by the elected leadership of the
country—namely, the suggestion that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
This unpleasantness is magnified many times over if what is at stake is the
possibility that the terrible events of 9/11 were from the outset, or before,
obscured by deliberately woven networks of falsehoods. Part of the impulse to
deny is a desperate wish to avoid coming face-to-face with the gruesome
realities that are embedded in the power structure of government that
controls our lives. Griffin's
book is a much-needed antidote for the collective denial that has paralyzed
the conscience and consciousness of the nation during these past few years.
At the very least, it should give rise to a debate that is late, but far
better late than never. Long ago Thomas Jefferson warned that the "price
of liberty is eternal vigilance."
There is no excuse at this stage of American
development for a posture of political innocence, including an unquestioning
acceptance of the good faith of our government. After all, there has been a
long history of manipulated public beliefs, especially in matters of war and
peace. Historians are in increasing agreement that the facts were manipulated
(1) in the explosion of the USS Maine to justify the start of the
Spanish-American War (1898),
(2) with respect to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
to justify the previously unpopular entry into World War II.
(3) in the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, used by the White House to
justify the dramatic extension of the Vietnam War to North Vietnam, and, most
recently,
(4) to portray Iraq as harboring a menacing arsenal of weaponry of mass
destruction, in order to justify recourse to war in defiance of international
law and the United Nations.
The official explanations of such historic events as the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the assassination of President Kennedy have also
not stood up to scrutiny by objective scholars. In these respects, the
breaking of trust between government and citizenry in the United States
has deep historical roots, and is not at all merely a partisan indictment of
the current leadership associated with the right wing of the Republican
Party. But it does pose for all of us a fundamental, haunting question. Why
should the official account of 9/11 be treated as sacrosanct and accepted at
face value, especially as it is the rationale for some of the most dangerous
undertakings in the whole history of the world?
As Griffin
shows, it is not necessary to go along with every suspicious inference in
order to conclude that the official account of 9/11 is thoroughly
unconvincing. His approach is based on the cumulative impact of the many soft
spots in what is officially claimed to have happened, soft spots that relate to
advance notice and several indications of actions facilitating the prospects
of attack, to the peculiar gaps between the portrayal of the attack by the
media and government and independent evidence of what actually occurred, and
to the unwillingness of the government to cooperate with what meager efforts
at inquiry have been mounted. Any part of this story is enough to vindicate
Griffin's basic contention that this country and the world deserve a
comprehensive, credible, and immediate accounting of the how and why of that
fateful day. Such a step would exhibit today the enduring wisdom of Ben
Franklins celebrated response when asked what the Constitutional Convention
in Philadelphia
had accomplished:
"A republic, if you keep it." —Richard Falk
INTRODUCTION
The attacks of 9/11 have often been compared
with the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
Investigative reporter James Bamford, for example, has written about
President Bush's behavior "in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor.">1 CBS News
reported that the president himself, before going to bed on 9/11, wrote in
his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the
21st century took place today.">2
This comparison has often been made for the
sake of arguing that the American response to 9/11 should be similar to the
American response to Pearl Harbor. Just
after the presidents address to the nation on September 11, 2001, Henry
Kissinger posted an online article in which he said: "The government
should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the
way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended — with the destruction of the
system that is responsible for it.">3 An
editorial in Time magazine that appeared right after the attacks urged:
"For once, let's have no fatuous rhetoric about 'healing.'. . . A day
cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage.
What's needed is a unified, unifying Pearl Habor son of purple American
fury.">4
Some of the comparisons have pointed out that
the attacks of 9/11 did indeed evoke a response, calling for the use of US
military power, similar to that produced by Pearl Harbor.
Quoting a prediction made in 2000 by soon-to-be top officials in the Bush administration
that the changes they desired would be difficult unless "a new Pearl
Harbor" occurred,>5 Australian journalist John
Pilger wrote: "The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the new Pearl Harbor.'">6 A
member of the US Army's Institute for Strategic Studies reported that after
9/11, "Public support for military action is at levels that parallel the
public reaction after the attack at Pearl Harbor.">7
These comparisons of 9/11 with Pearl Harbor do not seem unjustified. The events of
9/11, virtually everyone agrees, were the most important events of recent
times — for both America
and the rest of the world. The attacks of that day have provided the basis
for a significant restriction on civil liberties in the United States (just as Pearl
Harbor led to restrictions on the civil liberties of Japanese
Americans).>8 Those attacks have also been the basis
of a worldwide "war on terror" led by the United States, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq being the two major episodes
thus far.
The Bush administrations "war on
terror" is, moreover, widely perceived as a pretext for a more
aggressive imperialism. Phyllis Bennis, for example, says that 9/11 has
resulted in "foreign policy imposed on the rest of the world through an
unchallenged law of empire.">9 Of course, a few
historians have been pointing out for some time that American leaders have
long desired an empire covering the whole world.>10
But most critics of US
foreign policy believe that the imperialism of the Bush II administration,
especially since 9/11, has been much more explicit, far-reaching, and
arrogant.>11 Richard Falk has, in fact, referred to
it as "the global domination project.">12
Although there was an outpouring of good will toward America after
9/11 and a widespread willingness to accede to its claim that the attacks
gave it a mandate to wage a worldwide war on terrorism, this good will was
quickly exhausted. American foreign policy is now criticized around the world
more widely and severely than ever before, even more so than during the war
in Vietnam.
The American answer to all criticism, however, is 9/11. When Europeans
criticized the Bush administrations intention to go to war against Iraq, for example, several US
opinion-makers supportive of the war explained the difference in perception
by saying that the Europeans had not suffered the attacks of 9/11.
The Failure of the Press
Given the role of 9/11 in leading to this much
more explicit and aggressive imperialism, some observers have suggested that
historians will come to look back on it as the real beginning of the 21st
century.>13 Nevertheless, in spite of the virtually
universal agreement that 9/11 has been of such transcendent importance, there
has been little public scrutiny of this event itself. On the first anniversary
of the 9/11 attacks, the New York Times wrote: "One year later,
the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad
daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic.">14 That was the case in part because the Bush
administration, arguing that an investigation would be a distraction from the
needed "war on terrorism," resisted the call for a special
commission. But the publics lack of information about 9/11 was also due in
large part to the fact that the Times and the rest of the mainline
press had not authorized investigative reports, through which the publics
lack of knowledge might have been overcome. Another year later, furthermore,
the situation remained virtually the same. On September 11, 2003, a writer
for the Philadelphia Daily News asked: "why after 730 days do we
know so little about what really happened that day?">15
The American press has, in particular, provided
no in-depth investigation of whether the official account of what happened
fits with the available evidence and is otherwise plausible.>16
Many newspaper and television stories have, to be sure, raised several
disturbing questions about the official account, showing that there are
elements of it that do not seem to make sense or that seem to contradict
certain facts. But the press has not confronted government officials with
these apparent implausibilities and contradictions. The mass media have not,
moreover, provided the public with any comprehensive overviews that lay out
all the disturbing questions of which they are aware. There have been many
very important stories by a number of journalists, including the
internationally known, award-winning journalist Gregory Palast and Canada's
award-winning Barrie Zwicker (see notes >16 and >18). But such stories, if even seen, have been largely
forgotten by the collective consciousness, as they have remained individual
products of brilliant and courageous reporting, having thus far not been
allowed to add up to anything significant. Finally, although strong
criticisms of the official account have been presented by many otherwise credible
individuals, the mass media have not exposed the public to their views.
Criticisms of the official account are, to be
sure, inflammatory, for to reject the official account is to imply that US
leaders, including the president, have constructed a massive lie. And if they
did construct a false account, they would have done so, most people would
assume, in order to cover up their own complicity. And that is indeed the
conclusion of most critics of the official account. That would certainly be
an inflammatory charge. But how can we claim to have a free press — a Fourth
Estate — if it fails to investigate serious charges made against a sitting
president on the grounds that they are too inflammatory? The charges against
President Nixon in the Watergate scandal were inflammatory. The charges
against President Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair were inflammatory. The
various charges brought against President Clinton were inflammatory. In all
these cases, however, the press reported the issues (albeit in the first two
cases rather belatedly). It is precisely in such situations that we most need
an independent press.
But the press has failed to do its job with
regard to 9/11 even though if the official account of 9/11 were found to be
false, the consequences would be enormous — much more so than with any of
those prior scandals. The official account of 9/11 has been used as the
justification for the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq,
which have resulted in the deaths not only of thousands of combatants but
also of far more innocent civilians than were killed on 9/11. This account
has been used as the justification for dozens of other operations around the
world, most of which are largely unknown to the American people. It has been
used to justify the USA PATRIOT Act, through which the civil liberties of
Americans have been curtailed. And it has been used to justify the indefinite
incarceration of countless people in Guantanamo
and elsewhere. And yet the press has been less aggressive in questioning
President Bush about 9/11 than it was in questioning President Clinton about
his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a very trivial matter by comparison.
The failure of the American media in this
regard has been admitted by some insiders. For example, Rena Golden,
executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International, was quoted
as saying in August of 2002 that the American press had censored itself on
both 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan.
"Anyone who claims the US
media didn't censor itself," Golden added, "is kidding you. And
this isn't just a CNN issue — every journalist who was in any way involved in
9/11 is partly responsible.">17 As to why this
has been the case, CBS anchorman Dan Rather has said:
There was a time in South Africa
that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented.
And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a
flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear
that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.>18
Rather's confession surely
explains at least part of the press's reticence to question the official
account, especially since journalists perceived as unpatriotic are in danger
of being fired.
One of the chief critics of the official
account, Thierry Meyssan, suggests that Americans have viewed any criticism
of the official account to be not only unpatriotic but even sacrilegious. On
September 12, Meyssan reminds us, President Bush announced his intention to
lead "a monumental struggle of Good versus Evil.">19
On September 13, he declared that the next day would be a National Day of
Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks. And on September
14, the president himself, surrounded by Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi,
and an imam as well as four previous presidents and many members of Congress,
delivered the sermon. In this sermon, he said:
Our responsibility to history is already clear:
to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against
us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when
stirred to anger....In every generation, the world has produced enemies of
human freedom. They have attacked America, because we are freedom's
home and defender. And the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of
our time....[W]e ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us
patience and resolve in all that is to come.... And may He always guide our
country. God bless America.>20
Through this unprecedented event, in which the
president of the United
States issued a declaration of war from a
cathedral, Meyssan observes, "the American government consecrated...its
version of events. From then on, any questioning of the official truth would
be seen as sacrilege.">21
9/II and the Left
If raising disturbing questions about the
official account would be seen as both unpatriotic and sacrilegious, it is
not surprising that, as both Rena Golden and Dan Rather admit, the mainline
press in America
has not raised these questions. It is also not surprising that right-wing and
even middle-of-the-road commentators on political affairs have not raised
serious questions about the official account. It is not even surprising that
some of them — including Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and
political ethics — have declared that the accusation of official complicity
is beyond the pale of reasonable debate, so that any arguments on its behalf
can simply be ignored. Elshtain, calling the suggestion that American
officials, including the president, were complicit in the attacks
"preposterous," adds: "This sort of inflammatory madness
exists outside the boundary of political debate" and therefore does not
even "deserve a hearing.">22 From this
perspective, it is not necessary to examine the evidence put forward by
critics of the official account, even though some of these critics are fellow
intellectuals teaching in neighboring universities — such as two
well-respected Canadian academics, economist
Michel Chossudovsky and social philosopher John
McMurtry. >23 Although Elshtain points out that
"[i]f we get our descriptions of events wrong, our analyses and our
ethics will be wrong too,">24 she evidently
thinks it unnecessary to consider the possibility that the official
description about the events of 9/11 might be wrong. Although this attitude
is unfortunate, especially when it is expressed within the intellectual
community, it is not surprising.
What is surprising, however, is that America's leftist critics of US policy,
who are seldom worried about being called either unpatriotic or sacrilegious,
have for the most part not explored, at least in public discourse, the
possibility of official complicity.>25
These critics have, to be sure, been extremely
critical of the way in which the Bush administration has responded to 9/11.
They have, in particular, pointed out that this administration has used 9/11
as an excuse to enact policies and carry out operations that have little if
any relation to either punishing the perpetrators of the attacks or
preventing further such attacks in the future. They have even pointed out
that most of these policies and operations were already on the agenda of the
Bush administration before the attacks, so that 9/11 was not the cause but
merely the pretext for enacting them. These critics also know that the United
States has many times in the past fabricated an "incident" as a
pretext for going to war — most notoriously for the wars against Mexico,
Cuba, and Vietnam.>26 But few of these critics have
seriously discussed, at least in public, whether this might also be the case
with 9/11, even though a demonstration of this fact, if it were true, would
surely be the most effective way to undermine policies of the Bush
administration to which they are so strongly opposed. Abjuring a
"conspiracy theory, they accept, at least implicidy, a "coincidence
theory," according to which the attacks of 9/11 were, from the
administrations point of view, simply a godsend, which just happened to allow
it to carry out its agenda.
An example is provided by Rahul Mahajan, a
brilliant and outspoken critic of US imperialism. He analyzes the themes of US imperialism since 9/11 in the light of the
document alluded to earlier that mentioned the need for a "new Pearl Harbor," this being Rebuilding America's
Defenses, which was prepared by the Project for the New American Century.
Three of the major themes of this document, Mahajan emphasizes, are the need
to place more military bases around the world from which power can be
projected, the need to bring about "regime change" in countries
unfriendly to American interests, and the need for greatly increased military
spending, especially for "missile defense" — explicidy understood
not as deterrence but as "a prerequisite for maintaining American
preeminence" by preventing other countries from deterring us. Mahajan
then points out that "[t]he 9/11 attacks were a natural opportunity to
jack up the military budget" and that the other ideas in this document,
in conjunction with the well-known preoccupation of Bush and Cheney with oil,
provided the major themes of their post-9/11 imperial strategy. Mahajan also
notes that this document said that the desired transformation of the military
would probably be politically impossible "absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor."
And Mahajan even adds that "within a year they [the authors of this
document] had their Pearl Harbor and the
chance to turn their imperial fantasies into reality." After pointing
out all of this, however, Mahajan opts for coincidence over conspiracy,
saying: "Conspiracy theorists will no doubt rejoice, but this, like so
many events in the history of US foreign policy, is simply another example of
Pasteur's famous axiom that 'Fortune favors the prepared mind.">27
Mahajan may, of course, be right. But he gives
us no reason to think so. He, in particular, reveals no sign of having
studied the evidence provided by those who have argued that the attacks could
have been successful only through the complicity of the US
government.
How This Book Came About
Whether or not it is true that Mahajan
dismissed the evidence without examination, it was certainly true of me.
Until the spring of 2003, I had not looked at any of the evidence. I was
vaguely aware that mere were people, at least on the Internet, who were
offering evidence against the official account of 9/11 and were suggesting a
revisionist account, according to which US officials were complicit. But
I did not take the time to try to find their websites. I had been studying
the history of American expansionism and imperialism quite intensely since
9/11, so I knew that the US
government had fabricated "incidents" as an excuse to go to war
several times before. Nevertheless, although the thought did cross my mind
that 9/11 might likewise have been arranged, I did not take this possibility
seriously. It seemed to me simply beyond belief that the Bush administration
— even the Bush administration — would do such a heinous thing. I
assumed that those who were claiming otherwise must be "conspiracy
theorists" in the derogatory sense in which this term is usually
employed — which means, roughly, "crackpots." I knew that if they
were right, this would be very important. But I was so confident that they
must be wrong — that their writings would consist merely of loony theories
based on wild inferences from dubious evidence — that I had no motivation to
invest time and energy in tracking these writings down. I fully sympathize,
therefore, with the fact that most people have not examined the evidence.
Life is short and the list of conspiracy theories is long, and we all must
exercise judgment about which things are worth our investment of time. I had
assumed that conspiracy theories about 9/11 were below the threshold of
possible credibility.
But then a fellow professor sent me an e-mail
message that provided some of the relevant websites. Knowing her to be a
sensible person, I looked up some of the material on the Internet, especially
a massive timeline entitled "Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen?" by an
independent researcher named Paul Thompson.>28 I was
surprised, even amazed, to see — even though Thompson limits himself strictly
to mainline sources >29 — how much evidence he had
found that points to the conclusion that the Bush administration did indeed
intentionally allow the attacks of 9/11 to happen. At about the same time, I
happened to read Gore Vidal's Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the
Cheney-Bush Junta, which pointed me to the most extensive book on 9/11, The
War on Freedom: How and Why America
Was Attacked September 11, 2001, by Nafeez Ahmed, an independent
researcher in England.
>30 Ahmed's book provides an organized, extensively
documented argument that directly challenges the accepted wisdom about 9/11,
which is that it resulted from a "breakdown" within and among our
intelligence agencies. >31 Ahmed, like Thompson,
suggests that the attacks must have resulted from complicity in high places,
not merely from incompetence in lower places. Ahmed's and Thompsons material
taken together, I saw, provided a strong prima facie case for this
contention, certainly strong enough to merit an extensive investigation by
the American press, the US Congress, >32 and the
9/11 Independent Commission, >33 all of which had
thus far operated on the assumption that 9/11 resultedfrom intelligence and
communication failures.
I also saw, however, that the work of Thompson
and Ahmed was not likely to reach very many of the American people.
Thompson's timelines, while extremely helpful for researchers with the time
and patience to work through them, were not easily readable by ordinary
citizens, partly because they were available only online and partly because,
as the name "timeline" indicates, the evidence was arranged
chronologically rather than topically. >34 And,
although Ahmed's evidence was in a book and was arranged topically, the book
was quite long and contained far more material than needed to support the
basic argument. Much of this additional material was, furthermore, in the
book's early chapters, so that one had to work through several chapters
before getting to the evidence that directly contradicted the official
account. If the important information provided by Ahmed and Thompson were to
reach many people, including busy members of Congress and the press,
something else would be needed.
I decided, accordingly, to write a magazine
article that would summarize the main evidence and also point interested
readers to the studies of Thompson, Ahmed, and others presenting a
revisionist account of 9/11. But that article grew into a book-length
manuscript, because I soon found that, even though I tried to limit myself to
the most important evidence, it was impossible within the confines of an
article to present an intelligible account that would do justice to the
evidence that has been provided by these researchers.
After I began writing, furthermore, I learned
of the work of the previously mentioned French researcher, Thierry Meyssan,
in particular his hypothesis that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon could
not have been a Boeing 757, which is what Flight 77 was, but must have been a
guided missile. When I first learned of this revisionist hypothesis, I —
probably like most people now reading my report of it — assumed it was
completely absurd. Surely the difference between a gigantic 757 and a
relatively small missile is so great that if the Pentagon had been hit merely
by a missile, Pentagon officials could not have convinced anyone that it was
a 757! Did we not learn from press reports that the hole created in the side
of the Pentagon was 200 feet wide and five stories high? Had we not learned
from one of the passengers on Flight 77 — TV commentator Barbara Olson — that
it was headed toward Washington?
And had not eyewitnesses identified it? Virtually everyone, including most
critics of the official account of 9/11, accepted the idea that the Pentagon
was hit by Flight 77. How could they all be wrong? Nevertheless, after I got
Meyssan's books and read them for myself, I saw that his case as absurd as it
had seemed at first glance, is quite strong. I eventually became convinced,
in fact, that it is with regard to the strike on the Pentagon that — assuming
Meyssan's descriptions of the evidence to be accurate the official account
seems most obviously false. Or at least that it is tied for first place for
this honor. The fact that the official account of the strike on the Pentagon
is still widely accepted provides an especially good example, therefore, of
the fact that most of the public has simply not been exposed to the relevant
evidence. The present book seeks to bring together all the major strands of
this evidence.
No previous book has done this. Ahmed's book,
while easily the most comprehensive, does not have much of the evidence
contained in Thompson's timelines and in Meyssan's books. And Meyssan's books
while containing important evidence not available elsewhere, do not have most
of the information provided by Ahmed and Thompson. The same is true of the
other most important book in English on the subject, Michel Chossudovsky's War
and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11. As its subtitle
indicates, it focuses on the background to 9/11, dealing with 9/11 itself
only briefly. In the present book, I have brought together what seems to me
the most important evidence found in these >35 and
some other sources. >36
The Book's Contents
As I see it, five major types of evidence have
been raised against the official account. The first type, which involves
inconsistencies and implausibilities in the official account of what happened
on 9/11 itself, is discussed in the four chapters of Part I. The four other
types of evidence are discussed in Part II. All this evidence is organized in
terms of a number of "disturbing questions," >37
which are disturbing precisely because they suggest that official account is,
as the tide of the English translation of Meyssan's first book on the subject
calls it, a "big lie." >38 They are also
disturbing beause they suggest the revisionist thesis that the attacks of
9/11, which President Bush has rightly called evil, were carried out
with the complicity or so officials of the Bush administration itself. In the
Conclusion, I ask whether the best explanation of the evidence presented in
the prior chapters is indeed, as the revisionists suggest, official
complicity in the attacks of 9/11. I then discuss the implications for the
kind of investigation now needed.
Possible Meanings of "Official
Complicity"
Although the revisionist writings on which this
book draws charge official complicity in the attacks of 911, one thing
missing in them is any careful discussion of just what they mean by
"official complicity." There are at least eight possible views of
what official complicity in the attacks of 9/11 might mean. In order that
readers can decide, as they examine the evidence, which kind of official
complicity, if any, the evidence supports, I list these eight possible views
here in ascending order of seriousness — meaning the seriousness of the
charge against the Bush administration that the view would imply.
1. Construction of a False Acount: One
possible view, is that although US officials played no role in facilitating
the attacks and did not even expect them, they constructed a false account of
what really happened — whether to protect National Security, to cover up
potentially embarrassing facts, to exploit the attacks to enact their agenda,
or for some other reason. Athough this would be the least serious charge, it
would be sufficiently serious for impeachment — especiallv if the president
had lied about 9/11 for personal gain or to advance some pre-established
agenda, such as attacking Afghanistan
and Iraq.
2. Something Expected by Intelligence
Agencies: A second possible view is that although they had no specific
information about the attacks in advance, some US
intelligence agencies — such as the FBI, the CIA, and some intelligence
agencies of the US
military — expected some sort of attacks to occur. Although they played no
role in planning the attacks, they perhaps played a role in facilitating them
in the sense of deliberately not taking steps to prevent them. Then, having
done this without White House knowledge, they persuaded the White House after
9/11 not only to cover up their guilt, by constructing a false account, but
also to carry out the agenda for which the attacks were intended to gain
support.
3. Specific Events Expected by Intelligence
Agencies: A third possible view is that intelligence agencies (but
not the White House) had specific information about the timing and the
targets of the attacks.
4. Intelligence Agencies Involved in
Planning: A fourth possible view is that intelligence agencies (but not
the White House) actively participated planning the attacks.
5. Pentagon Involved in Planning: A fifth possible
view is that the Pentagon (but not the White House) actively participated in
planning the attacks
6. Something Expected by White House: A
sixth possible view is that although the White House had no specific
knowledge of the attacks in advance, it expected some sort of attacks to
occur and was a party to facilitating them, at least in the sense of not
ordering that they be prevented. >39 This view
allows for the possibility that the White House might have been shocked by
the amount of death and destruction caused by the attacks that were actually
carried out.
7. Specific Advance Knowledge by White
House: A seventh possible view is that the White House had specific
foreknowledge of the targets and the timing of the attacks.
8. White House Involved in Planning: An
eighth possible view is that the White House was a party to planning the
attacks.
As these possibilities show, a charge that 9/11
involved "complicity" or "conspiracy" on the part of US
officials can be understood in many ways, several of which do not involve
active involvement in the planning, and most of which do not involve
presidential involvement in this planning. One reason these distinctions are
important is that they show that discussion of the idea of official
complicity — whether such complicity is being charged or rejected — needs to
be more nuanced than is often the case. For example, the charge that Jean
Bethke Elshtain rejects as "preposterous" is the "charge that
American officials, up to and including the president of the United States,
engineered the attacks to bolster their popularity." >40
In so wording it, she not only equates the charge of official complicity with
the eighth of the possible views listed above, which is the strongest charge,
but also ties this charge to the imputation of a specific motive to
the American officials allegedly involved — that of bolstering their own
popularity. Having dismissed that highly specific charge as preposterous, she
evidently assumes that the whole idea of official complicity has been laid to
rest. But there are many other possibilities.
For example, Michael Parenti, one of the few
well-known leftist thinkers to have suggested some form of official
complicity, points out, like Mahajan, that the attacks were so convenient
that they have provoked suspicion: "The September terrorist attacks
created such a serviceable pretext for reactionism at home and imperialist
expansion abroad as to leave many people suspecting that the US government
itself had a hand in the event." Parenti at first seems to dismiss this
suspicion as completely as Mahajan, saying: "I find it hard to believe
that the White House or the CIA actively participated in a conspiracy to
destroy the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, killing such large
numbers of Americans in order to create a casus belli against
Afghanistan." >41
Parenti, however, does not stop there. Citing
an article by Patrick Martin, who refers to some facts suggesting official
complicity, Parenti endorses Martins conclusion — that although the US government
did not plan the details of the attacks or anticipate that thousands of
people would be killed, it "expected something to happen and
looked the other way." >42 Parenti thereby
illustrates the second or, more likely, the sixth of the possible views.
In any case, I have found, as I have said, that
the revisionists have made a strong prima facie case for at least some
version of the charge of official complicity. To say that they have made a convincing
case would require a judgment that the evidence that they cite is
reliable. And, although I have repeated only evidence that seemed credible to
me, I have not independendy verified the accuracy of this evidence. As the
reader will see, this evidence is so extensive and of such a nature that no
individual — especially no individual with very limited time and resources —
could check out its accuracy. It is for this reason that I claim only that
these revisionists have presented a strong prima facie case for official
complicity, strong enough to merit investigations by those who do have the
necessary resources to carry them out — the press and the US Congress. If a
significant portion of the evidence summarized here holds up, the conclusion
that the attacks of 9/11 succeeded because of official complicity would
become virtually inescapable.
I should perhaps emphasize that it is not
necessary for all of the evidence to stand up, given the nature of the
argument. Some arguments are, as we say, "only as strong as the weakest
link." These are deductive arguments, in which each step in the
argument depends on the truth of the previous step. If a single premise is
found to be false, the argument fails. However, the argument for official
complicity in 9/11 is a cumulative argument. This kind of argument is
a general argument consisting of several particular arguments that are
independent from each other. As such, each particular argument provides
support for all the others. Rather than being like a chain, a cumulative argument
is more like a cable composed of many strands. Each strand strengthens the
cable. But if there are many strands, the cable can still hold a lot of
weight even if some of them unravel. As the reader will see, there are many
strands in the argument for official complicity in 9/11 summarized in this
book. If the purported evidence on which some of these are based turns out to
be unreliable, that would not necessarily undermine the overall argument.
This cumulative argument would then simply be supported by fewer strands. And
some of the strands are such that, if the evidence on which they are based is
confirmed, the case could be supported by one or two of them. >43
"Conspiracy Theories"
Before turning to the evidence, however, we
should pause to consider the fact, to which allusion has been made, that it
seems widely assumed that any such case can be rejected a priori by
pointing out that it is a "conspiracy theory." Indeed, it almost
seems to be a requirement or admission into public discourse to announce that
one rejects conspiracy theories. What is the logic behind this thinking? It
cannot be that we literally reject the very idea that conspiracies occur. We
all accept conspiracy theories of all sorts. We accept a conspiracy theory
whenever we believe that two or more people have conspired in secret to
achieve some goal, such as to rob a bank, defraud customers, or fix prices,
we would be more honest, therefore, if we followed the precedent of Michael
Moore, who has said: "Now, I'm not into conspiracy theories, except the
ones that are true." >44
To refine this point slightly, we can say that
we accept all those conspiracy theories that we believe to be true, while we
reject all those that we believe to be false. We cannot, therefore, divide
people into those who accept conspiracy theories and those who reject them.
The division between people on this issue involves simply the question of
wich conspiracy theories they accept and which ones they reject. >45
To apply this analysis to the attacks of 9/11:
It is false to suggest that those who allege that the attacks occurred
because of official complicity are "conspiracy theorists" while
those who accept the official account are not. People differ on this issue
merely in terms of which conspiracy theory they hold to be true, or at least
most probable. According to the official account, the attacks of 9/11
occurred because of a conspiracy among Muslims, with Osama bin Laden being
the chief conspirator. Revisionists reject that theory, at least as a
sufficient account of what happened, maintaining that the attacks cannot be
satisfactorily explained without postulating conspiracy by officials of the
US government, at least in allowing the attacks to succeed. The choice,
accordingly, is simply between (some version of) the received conspiracy
theory and (some version of) the revisionist conspiracy theory.
Which of these competing
theories we accept depends, or at least should depend, on which one we
believe to be better supported by the relevant facts. Those who hold the
revisionist theory have become convinced that there is considerable evidence
that not only suggests the falsity of the received conspiracy theory, which
we are calling "the official account," but also points to the truth
of the revisionist theory. I turn now to that evidence.
FOOTNOTES for the
Introduction
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Frequently Cited Works
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. The War on Freedom:
How and Why America
Was Attacked September 11, 2001. Joshua Tree, Calif.: Tree of Life Publications, 2002.
Chossudovsky, Michel. War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September
11. Canada:
Global Outlook, 2002.
Meyssan, Thierry. 9/11: The Big Lie. London:
Carnot, 2002 (translation of L'Effioyable imposture [Paris: Les Editions Carnot, 2002]).
— Pentagate. London:
Carnot Publishing, 2002 (translation of Le Pentagate [Paris- Les
Editions Carnot, 2002]).
Thompson, Paul. "September 11: Minute-by-Minute," Center for
Cooperative Research. After the first citation in a chapter, this timeline
will be cited simply as Thompson, followed by the time. For example: Thompson
(8:55 AM) or Thompson, 8:55 AM, depending how he marks it on his website.
— "Was 9/11 Allowed to Happen? The Complete Timeline," Center for
Cooperative Research. After the first citation in a chapter, this timeline
will be cited simply as "Timeline," followed by the date under
which the information is found. Both timelines are available on the website
for the Center for Cooperative Research (www.cooperativeresearch.org).
Introduction
1James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret
National Security Agency (New
York: Anchor Books, 2002), 633.
2Washington Post, January 27, 2002.
3Henry Kissinger, "Destroy the Network," Washington
Post, September 11, 2001 (washingtonpost.com), quoted in Thierry Meyssan,9/11:
The Big Lie (London:
Carnot, 2002), 65.
4Lance Morrow, "The Case for Rage and Retribution," Time,
September 11, 2001.
5The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's
Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (www.newamericancentury.org),
51. This document will be discussed further.
6John Pilger, New Statesman, December 12, 2002.
7Leonard Wong, Institute
of Strategic Studies, Defeating
Terrorism: Strategic Issues Analysis, "Maintaining Public Support
for Military Operations" (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/public.pdf),
quoted in 9/11: The Big Lie, 127.
8On these restrictions and their consequences, see Nancy Chang, Silencing
Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti- Terrorism Measures Threaten
Our Civil Liberties, Foreword by Howard Zinn (New York: Seven Stories,
2002).
9Phyllis Bennis, Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the
September 11th Crisis, Foreword by Noam Chomsky (Northampton, Mass.:
Olive Branch Press, 2003).
10See Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising America.
Empire (1960; New York: Norton, 1974); Walter LaFeber, The New Empire:
An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (1963; Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998); Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America's
Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967)-
Lloyd C. Gardner, Walter F. LaFeber, and Thomas J. McCormick, Creation of
the American Empire (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973); Laurence Shoup and
William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and
United States Foreign Policy( New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977);
Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of
Right (New York:. Hill and Wang, 1995).
11"More than any single policy," says Bennis, "the
biggest cause of international anger against the United States is the
arrogance with which US power is exercised" (Before and After, xv).
12"Resisting the Global Domination Project: An Interview with
Prof. Richard Falk," Frontline, 20/8 (April 12-25, 2003).
13For example, Rahul Mahajan, The New Crusade: American's War
on Terrorism (New York:
Monthly Review, 2002), 7.
14New York
Times, September 11, 2002.
15William Bunch, "Why Don't We Have Answers to These 9/11
Questions?" Philadelphia Daily News online posting, September 11,
2003.
16The media in several other countries have, by contrast,
presented investigative reports. In Canada, for example, journalist
Barrie Zwicker presented a two-part examination, entitled "The Great
Deception: What Really Happened on September 11th," on January 21 and
28, 2002 (MediaFile, Vision TV Insight [www.visiontv.ca]). In Germany, the public discussion has been such
that a poll in July of 2003 revealed that 20 percent of the German population
believed that "the US
government ordered the attacks itself" (Ian Johnson, "Conspiracy
Theories about September 11 Get Hearing in Germany," Wall Street
Journal, September 29, 2003, A1).
17Press Gazette, August 15, 2002.
18Rather's remarks, made in a interview on Greg Palasts BBC
television show Newsnight, were quoted in a story in the Guardian, May
17, 2002. This statement is quoted in Greg Palast, "See No Evil: What
Bush Didn't (Want to) Know about 9/11," which is contained in Palast's The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization,
and High-Finance Fraudsters (Plume, 2003), which is the Revised American
Edition of his 2002 book (with a different subtitle). This essay was also
posted March 1, 2003, on TomPaine.com.
19"Remarks by the President in Photo Opportunity with the
National Security Team" (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001
/09/20010912-4.html).
20"Presidents Remarks at National Day of Prayer and Remembrance"
(www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001 /09/20010914-2.html).
21The material in notes 19-21 is quoted in 9111: The Big Lie,
77, 76-77, 79.
22Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of
American Power in a Violent World (New
York: Basic Books, 2003), 2-3.
23See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation: The Truth
Behind September 11 (Canada:
Global Outlook, 2002), and John McMurtry, Value Wars: The Global Market
Versus the Life Economy (London:
Pluto Press, 2002), Preface.
24Elshtain, 9.
25To some extent, this fact reflects a matter of principle — a
concern that devoting attention to possible conspiracies is diversionary.
Some of the reasons for this wariness are valid. One concern is that a focus
on exposing conspiratorial crimes of present office-holders may reflect the
naive asssumption that if only we can replace those individuals with better
ones, things will be fine. Underlying that worry is the concern that a focus
on conspirators can divert attention from the more important issue of the
structural problems in the national and global order that need to be
overcome. But although those dangers must be guarded against, we should also
avoid a too strong dichotomy between structural and conspiratorial analysis.
For one thing, although structural analysis is essential for any deep
understanding of social processes, structures as such, being abstractions, do
not enact themselves. They are influential only insofar as they are embodied
in agents — both individual and institutional — who act in terms of them.
These agents, furthermore, are not fully determined by the dominant values of
their societies. They have degrees of freedom, which they can use to act in
ways that are more or less wise, more or less just, and more or less legal.
When political leaders enact policies that are egregiously unjust, dangerous,
and even illegal, it is important to replace them with leaders who are at
least somewhat better. Finally, and most important, the exposure of a
conspiracy may, rather than diverting attention from a society's problematic
structures, turn attention to them. For example, if it became evident that
our national political leaders caused or at least allowed the attacks of 9/11
and that they did so partly because they had deeply embodied certain values
pervasive of our society, we might finally decide that a society-wide
reorientation is in order.
26This practice is, of course, not unique to America. It
is generally agreed, for example, mat the "Mukden incident," in
which an explosion destroyed part of the Japanese railway in Manchuria, was
engineered by Japanese army officers "as an excuse to conquer Manchuria" (Walter LaFeber, The Clash:
US-Japanese Relations Throughout History [New York: Norton, 1997], 166).
27Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Seven Stories, 2003), 59, 50,
48.
28Paul Thompson's main timeline, entitled "Was 9/11 Allowed
to Happen? The Complete Timeline," lists possibly relevant events
extending over many years and fills some 200 single-spaced pages.
29This is one respect in which Thompson sees himself as differing
from some other researchers, such as Michael Ruppert, mentioned in note 36,
below.
30Gore Vidal, Dreaming War. Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush
Junta (New York: Thunder's Mouth/Nation
Books, 2002); Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001 (Joshua Tree Calif,
Tree of Life Publications, 2002). Vidal, one prominent member of the American
left who has rejected the official account of 9-11, endorses Ahmed's book --
calling it "the best, most balanced report, thus far" (l4) -- and
summarizes some of its argument.
31See Breakdown: How America's
Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (Washington:
Regnery 2002), by Bill Gertz, a journalist for the Washington Times. A more
recent version of this thesis is provided in Gerald Posner, WhyAmerica
Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (New York: Random House, 2003) Posner
attributes the failure to breakdowns (xi), blunders (xii, 169), missed
opportunities (xii, 146), investigative mix-ups (34), mistakes (150, 155,
169), incompetence and bad judgment (142, 167), stifling bureaucracy (173),
and especially the failure of agencies to share information with each other (35,
44-47, 59, 178). "The failure to have prevented 9/11," asserts
Posner, "was a systemic one" (xii). The task before us, therefore,
is simply to fix the system. As Walter Russell Mead says (without criticism)
in a book review, "the message of Why America, Slept is on balance
a hopeful one.
Incompetence in our security establishment is something we can address"
("The Tragedy of National Complacency," New York Times, October
29, 2003).
32A Joint Inquiry into the attacks was carried out in 2002 by the
intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Although this Joint Inquiry had completed its final report by December of
2002, the Bush administration long refused to allow it to be released. Only a
very brief summary of this final report was made public (it can be read at http://intelligence.senate.gov/press.htm
under December 11, 2002). Finally, late in July 2003, the final report itself
was released. Although discussions in the press described the report as
surprisingly critical, the criticism was limited to charges of incompetence.
Significant portions of the final report were, to be sure, deleted in the
name of national security, but I see no reason to believe that these deletions
— which reportedly involved foreign countries, especially Saudi Arabia
— contained any accusations of complicity in 9/11 by US officials. Possible
reasons for the inadequacy of the Joint Inquiry's report are discussed in
Chapter 10.
33Although its official name is the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks upon the United
States, it is informally known as the 9/11
Independent Commission. President Bush had long opposed the creation of any
such commission, claiming that it would take resources away from the war on
terrorism. But embarrassing revelations from the Joint Inquiry (see previous
note) reportedly left him little choice (Newsweek, September 22,
2002). In November of 2002, Bush signed a bill establishing the commission
(the website of which is www.9-11commision.gov). Problems in relation to this
commission are discussed in Chapter 10.
34In the meantime, Thompson has been developing articles in which
the material is organized in terms of a large number of topics, which
continues to grow. He also has a growing number of articles in which he
discusses various dimensions of the controversies about 9/11. His website is
therefore becoming increasingly easy to use.
35Implicit in this statement is the fact that I do not endorse all
arguments in the main sources I employ. Meyssan, for example, has some
theories that I find implausible and others that seem at least insufficiently
supported by evidence.
36One failing of this book is that I have usually made no effort
to discern, with regard to various stories and facts reported, which
investigator or researcher was first responsible for reporting them. This
means that I have surely in many cases failed to give proper credit. One
example involves the fact that I cite Paul Thompson's timelines abundantly
while citing Michael Ruppert's website, From the Wilderness
(www.fromthewilderness.com or www.copvcia.com), relatively rarely. And yet
Ruppert was one of the earliest major critics of the official account of
9/11. In fact, in Thompson's statement of "credits and sources," he
says: "This timeline started when I saw the excellent timeline at the
From the Wilderness website and began adding to it. I found that timeline to
be a great resource, but it wasn't as comprehensive as I wanted. My version
has since grown into something of a monster, but the inspiration still lies
with From the Wilderness" (www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/index.html).
Ruppert, furthermore, is simply one example of several researchers, such as
Jared Israel, who were publishing information challenging the official
account almost immediately after 9/11. To try to sort all of this out in
order to assign proper credit, however, would detract from the task of
getting the challenge to the official account into the public discussion.
Most researchers, as far as I can tell, seem more interested in this than in
receiving credit. The question of proper credit, in any case, is one that
would appropriately be answered by some historian of this movement if it is
successful.
37In suggesting that there are many disturbing questions that have
thus far not been answered,I am to some extent reflecting the attitude of the
organizations formed by families of the victims of the attacks, one of which
is, in fact, called "Unanswered Questions" (see
www.UnansweredQuestions.org). Other organizations with websites include
Familiy Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission
(www.911Independentcommission.org), Voices of September 11th (www.voicesofsept11.org),
9-11 Citizens Watch (www.911Citizenswatch.org),
and the 9/11 Visibility Project (www.septembereleventh.org).
38This book, cited in previous notes, is a translation of
Meyssan's L'Effroyable imposture (Paris Les Editions Carnot, 2002).
39This view of the White House could be combined with any of the
previous five views insofar as those views deal only with the involvement of
other US
agencies. This sixth view, therefore, has five possible versions. The same is
true of the seventh and eighth views.
40Elshtain, 2-3.
41Michael Parenti, The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond
(San Francisco: City Lights, 2002), 69, 70.
42Parenti, 70-71, citing Patrick Martin, "US Planned War in
Afghanistan Long Before September 11," World Socialist Conference,
November 20, 2001 (www.wsws.org/artides/2001/nov2001/afghn20.html);
the quoted words, which summarize Martins position, are Parenti's.
43I emphasize this point because some polemicists, when confronted
by a book whose conclusion they do not like, seek to undermine this
conclusion by focusing on the few points that they believe can be most easily
discredited. That tactic, assuming that good evidence is really presented
against those points, is valid with regard to a deductive argument. In
relation to a cumulative argument, however, it is tactic useful only to those
concerned with something other than truth.
44Michael Moore,
Dude, Where's My Country? (New
York: Warner Books, 2003), 2.
45To refine the point a little more: There are some conspiracy
theories that, although we may not be convinced of their truth, we find at
least plausible, so we are willing to entertain the possibility that
they might be true. We are open, accordingly, to reading and hearing evidence
intended to support them. There are other conspiracy theories, by contrast,
that we find completely implausible, so we tend to suspect the
intelligence or sanity of people who believe them or who even entertain the
possibility of their truth. Whatever facts they offer as evidence we reject
out of hand, holding that, even if we cannot explain these facts, the true
explanation cannot be the one they are offering. But the question of what we
find completely implausible — 'beyond the pale' — is seldom determined simply
by a dispassionate consideration of empirical evidence. Plausibility is
largely a matter of one's general worldview. We are also influenced to some
degree by wishful-and-fearful thinking, in which we accept some ideas partly
because we hope thay are true and reject other ideas because we would find
the thought that they are true too frightening. At least sometimes, however,
we are able, in spite of our prejudgments, to revise our prior ideas in light
of new evidence. Most revisionists about 9/11, in presenting their evidence,
seem to be counting on this possibility.
Part One
The Events of 9/11
CHAPTER ONE
Flights 11 and 175: How could the
Hijacker's Missions have succeded?
In many respects, the strongest evidence provided by critics of the
official account involves simply the events of 9/11 itself. At 8:46 AM, one
hijacked airplane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center
(WTC). At 9:03, another crashed into the South Tower. And at 9:38, the
Pentagon was hit. In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked
airplanes, however, not one of these planes should have reached its target,
let alone all three of them. It is also far from clear how the New York
attacks could have succeeded in the sense of causing the buildings of the WTC
to collapse. There are, furthermore, disturbing questions about the third
airliner — whether it was really the aircraft that hit the Pentagon — and
about the fourth one — whether it was the one plane that was shot
down. Finally, after examining questions that have been raised about all
these matters, I will look at questions raised by President Bush's behavior
that day. The present chapter, however, deals only with Flights 11 and 175
and the collapse of the WTC buildings.
American Airlines Flight II
The first plane to be hijacked was American
Airlines (AA) Flight 11, which left Boston at 7:59 AM. At 8:14, besides failing
to respond to an order from FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) ground
control to climb, its radio and transponder went off, >1
suggesting that it had possibly been hijacked. At 8:20, with FAA
ground control watching its flight path on radar, the plane went radically
off course, leading ground control to conclude that it had probably been
hijacked. At 8:21, flight attendants reported by telephone that the plane had
definitely been taken over by hijackers, who had already killed some
people. At 8:28, the plane turned toward New York. At 8:44, Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon talking about terrorism with
Representative Christopher Cox.
"Let me tell ya," the Associated
Press quoted Rumsfeld as saying, "I've been around the block a few
times. There will be another event. Therewill be another event." >2 And, if he in fact said this, he was right. Two
minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the WTC's North Tower. This
was 32 minutes after evidence that the plane had possibly been hijacked and
25 minutes after knowledge that it definitely had been.
Skeptics about the official account believe
that the attempt to crash an airliner into the WTC could not have been
successful under normal circumstances. The basic problem, they argue, is that
there are standard procedures for situations such as this and that, if they
had been followed, Flight 11 would have been intercepted by fighter jets
within 10 minutes of any sign that it may have been hijacked. Had the plane
then failed to obey the standard signal to follow the fighter jets to an
airport to land, it would have been shot down. This would have occurred by
8:24, or 8:30 at the latest, so that the question of whether to shoot down a
commercial airliner over the heart of New York City would not have arisen.
As evidence, the skeptics cite FAA regulations,
which instruct air traffic controllers:
Consider that an aircraft
emergency exists...when:...There is unexpected loss of radar contact and
radio communications with any... aircraft.... If...you are in doubt that a
situation constitutes an emergency or potential emergency, handle it as
though it were an emergency. >3
Accordingly, at 8:14, the loss
of radio contact alone would have led the flight controller to begin
emergency procedures. The loss of the transponder signal would have made the
situation doubly suspect. The controller, after finding that it was
impossible to re-establish radio contact, would have immediately contacted
the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon and its North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which would have immediately had
jets sent up — "scrambled" — from the nearest military airport.
According to spokespersons for NORAD, from the time the FAA senses that
something is wrong, "it takes about one minute" for it to contact
NORAD, and then NORAD can cramble fighters "within a matter of minutes
to anywhere in the United States." >4
"According to the US Air Forces own website," reports Nafeez Ahmed,
an F-15 routinely "goes from 'scramble order' to 29,000 feet in only 2.5
minutes" and then can fly at 1,850 nmph (nautical miles per hour). >5 If normal procedures had been followed, accordingly,
Flight 11 would have been intercepted by 8:24, and certainly no later than
8:30, 16 minutes before it, in the actual course of events, crashed into the
WTC. Furthermore, even if radio contact and the transponders signal had not
been lost, the fact that the plane went radically off course at 8:20 would
have led the FAA to notify the military. Every plane has a flight plan, which
consists of a sequence of geographic points, or "fixes," and,
according to a report by MSNBC:
Pilots are supposed to hit each
fix with pinpoint accuracy. If a plane deviates by 15 degrees, or two miles
from that course, the flight controllers will hit the panic button. They'll
call the plane, saying "American 11, you're deviating from course."
It's considered a real emergency. >6
So, even if the FAA had waited
until the plane went off course at 8:20, the plane should have been
intercepted by 8:30, or 8:35 at the latest, again in plenty of time to
prevent it from going into New York City.
As to what would occur upon interception, Ahmed explains by quoting the FAA
manual:
[The interceptor military craft
communicates by] Rocking wings from a position slightly above and ahead of,
and normally to the left of, the intercepted aircraft.... This action conveys
the message: "You have been intercepted." The commercial jet is
then supposed to respond by rocking its wings to indicate compliance, upon
which the interceptor performs a "slow level turn, normally to the left,
on to the desired heading [direction]." The commercial plane then
responds by following the escort. >7
If Flight 11 had been thus
intercepted but did not respond, it would, according to standard
procedures, have been shot down. Marine Corps Major Mike Snyder, a NORAD
spokesman, after telling the Boston Globe that NORAD's "fighters
routinely intercept aircraft," continued:
When planes are intercepted,
they typically are handled with graduated response. The approaching fighter
may rock its wingtips to attract the pilots attention, or make a pass in
front of the aircraft. Eventually, it can fire tracer rounds in the airplanes
path, or, under certain circumstances, down it with a missile. >8
The question raised by critics,
of course, is why this did not happen in the case of Flight 11. Why was the
plane not even intercepted?
Some confusion about this matter, they point out, was created by VicePresident
Cheney during an interview on "Meet the Press" on September16, in
which he suggested that the "question of whether or not we would
intercept commercial aircraft," as well as the question of whether it
would be shot down, was "a presidential-level decision." This
statement, point out the critics, confuses two matters: intercepting and
shooting down, and interception is a routine matter, which occurs well over a
hundred times a year. >9 The confusion of these two
matters was also aided by General Richard Myers, then Acting Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, >10 in testimony to the
Senate Armed Services Committee on September 13, in which he
stated:"[A}fter the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of
NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was at that
point to start launching aircraft." >11 He,
like Cheney, implied that fighters would be sent up to intercept flights only
if ordered to by commanders at the highest level. But interception occurs
routinely, as a matter of standard operating procedure, even if shooting down
a plane would be, as Cheney implied, "a presidential-level
decision."
Moreover, although some researchers have accepted the view that a hijacked
plane could be shot down only with presidential authorization, >12Thierry Meyssan points out that the military
regulations seem to say otherwise. According to these regulations,
In the event of a hijacking,
the NMCC [National Military Command Center] will be notified by the most
expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of requests
needing an immediate response — forward requests for DoD [Department of
Defense] assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval. >13
Accordingly, concludes Meyssan,
the regulations give the responsibility for shooting down hijacked airplanes
"to the Secretary of Defense." Furthermore, as the phrase beginning
"with the exception" shows, if the Secretary of Defense cannot be
contacted in time, other people in the line of command would have the
authority. According to a Department of Defense document cited by Meyssan:
It is possible to formulate to
any element in the chain of command "Requests needing Immediate
Response." These arise from imminently serious conditions where only an
immediate action taken by an official of the Department of Defense or a
military commander can prevent loss of lives, or mitigate human suffering and
great property damage. >14
According to this reading, many
people in the line of command would have had the authority to prevent the
"loss of lives" and "great property damage" that occurred
when AA Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the WTC.
One might argue, to be sure, that at that time no one would have known that
the plane was going to do that. But, critics of the official account would
reply, that argument — besides not explaining why Flight 11 was not at least
intercepted — would not apply to the second plane to crash into the
WTC.
United Airlines Flight 175
UA Flight 175 left Boston at 8:14 AM, which was
just when the FAA was learning that Flight 11 may have been hijacked. At
8:42, its radio and transponder went off and it veered off course. Knowing by
then that the earlier flight had definitely been hijacked and was flying
across New York City, FAA officials would surely have been ready to contact
the military immediately. They, in fact, reportedly notified NORAD at 8:43. >15 NORAD should have had fighter jets intercepting
this plane by 8:53. And by this time, being 7 minutes after the first
hijacked plane had hit the WTC, the fighters certainly should have been ready
to shoot down this second hijacked plane if it did not immediately follow
orders. Instead, however, no planes intercepted Flight 175, and it crashed
into the WTC's South Tower at 9:03.
Another disturbing feature about this crash,
especially to the families of the victims, is that at 8:55, a public
announcement was reportedly broadcast inside the South Tower, saying that the
building was secure, so that people could return to their offices. Such
announcements reportedly continued until a few minutes before the building
was hit, and may have contributed "to the deaths of hundreds of
people." >16 Paul Thompson asks: "Given
that at 8:43 NORAD was notified Flight 175 was hijacked and headed toward New
York City, why weren't people in the building warned?" A disturbing
question, since Thompson's implication seems to be that perhaps someone other
than the hijackers was seeking to ensure that a significant number of lives
were lost.
In any case, given the fact that this plane hit
the WTC 17 minutes after the first crash, none of the reasons that could be
imagined to explain why standard procedures broke down with regard to the
first plane — such as inattentive air traffic controllers, pilots at military
bases not on full alert, or the assumption that the plane's aberrant behavior
did not mean that it had been hijacked — could be used to explain why Flight
175 was not shot down or even intercepted. For one thing, by then all the
technicians at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector "had their headsets
linked to the FAA in Boston to hear about Flight 11," so NORAD would
have been fully aware of the seriousness of the situation. >17
Even more puzzling is why in another 35 minutes, at 9:38, the Pentagon would
be hit, but we will wait until the next chapter to examine this third flight.
The present task is to consider the official account of the first two flights
and the response of the critics.
Why Were Flights 11 and 175 Not Intercepted?
One of the strange things about the official
account, say its critics, is that there has been more than one version of it.
General Myers, in his aforementioned testimony to the Senate Armed Services
Committee on September 13, said: "When it became clear what the threat
was, we did scramble fighter aircraft." When asked whether that order
was given "before or after the Pentagon was struck," Myers — who
was acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — replied: "That order,
to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck." >18 One problem with this statement, point out critics,
is that officials at NMCC would have become clear about "what the threat
was" long before the Pentagon itself was hit at 9:38. It would have been
clear at least by 8:46, when the WTC was hit and another hijacked plane was
heading in its direction. Another problem, of course, is that it was not
necessary for officials at NMCC and NORAD to understand fully "what the threat
was" in order for there to be jets in the air to intercept Flights 11,
175, and any unauthorized aircraft headed toward Washington. Standard
operating procedures should have taken care of all those things.
This version of the official account was also
told by at least two other officials. According to a story in the Boston
Globe on September 15, Major Mike Snyder, speaking for NORAD, said that
no fighters were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. And on September
16, when Tim Russert, during his aforementioned interview with Vice President
Cheney on "Meet the Press," expressed surprise that although we
knew about the first hijacking by 8:20, "it seems we were not able to
scramble fighter jets in time to protect the Pentagon," Cheney did not
dispute this statement. >19
The major problem with this first version of
the official account, of course, is that it says that military behavior
completely contradicted standard procedures, which call for jets to be
scrambled as soon as a suspected hijacking is reported. Despite the fact that
statements by Myers and Cheney seemed to suggest otherwise, it requires no
command from on high for fighter jets to be scrambled. Rather, the critics
point out, an order for them not to be scrambled is what would require
a command from on high. For example, Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel,
commenting on the fact that the standard emergency systems failed on 9/11,
say: "This could only happen if individuals in high positions worked in
a coordinated way to make them fail." >20
Within a few days, in any case, NORAD began
saying that it did have planes scrambled but they arrived too late. >21 To the critics, however, this second version seems
almost as strange as the first.
According to this version, NORAD was not
notified by the FAA of the hijacking of Flight 11 until 8:40. This would have
been 26 minutes after the plane's radio and transponder went off and 20
minutes after it went off course. Allan Wood and Paul Thompson write:
Is NORAD's claim credible? If
so, the air traffic controllers...should have been fired and subject to
possible criminal charges for their inaction. To date, however, there has
been no word of any person being disciplined.... If NORAD's claim is false,
and it was indeed informed within the time frame outlined in FAA
regulations..., that would mean NORAD did absolutely nothing for almost
thirty minutes while a hijacked commercial airliner flew off course through
some of the most congested airspace in the world. Presumably, that would
warrant some very serious charges. Again, no one associated with NORAD or the
FAA has been punished. >22
The lack of disciplinary action
suggests either that this story is false or that the relevant parties at FAA
and/or NORAD did what they had been instructed to do.
This account has more anomalous features. After
NORAD received word of the hijacking, according to this account, it did not
give the scramble order until 8:46, six minutes after it had been notified.
Furthermore, NORAD inexplicably gave this order not to McGuire Air
Force Base in New Jersey, which is only 70 miles from NYC, but to Otis Air
National Guard Base in Cape Cod, which is over 180 miles away.
That would have made no difference with regard
to Flight 11, of coursebecause 8:46 was when it was striking the WTC.
In the meantime, however, NORAD says that it
had received notification at 8:43 from the FAA of Flight 175's hijacking, so
the two F-15s that were given the scramble order at 8:46 were sent after this
flight instead. But, inexplicably, the F-15s are said not to have taken off
until 6 minutes later, at 8:52.
However, perhaps the strangest feature of this
story, from the viewpoint of the critics, involves its failure to explain,
even with all those delays, why the planes did not arrive in time to stop the
second attack on the WTC. At 8:52, there were still 11 minutes until 9:03,
when Flight 175 would hit the second tower. Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Duffy,
a pilot said to have flown one of the F-15s, has been quoted as stating that
he "was in full-blower all the way," which would mean he was going
over 1,875 nmph. >23 At this speed, the F-15s would
have been covering over 30 miles a minute. Hence, allowing the standard 2.5
minutes for them to get airborne and up to speed, they should have reached
Manhattan in about 8 minutes, having a full 3 minutes left to shoot down the
errant airliner. And yet, according to this second version of the official
account, the F-15s were still 70 miles away when Flight 175 crashed into the
South Tower. >24 Indeed, according to NORAD's
timeline, it took them 19 minutes to reach the city. So, if the story about
jets from Otis is even true, they must have been traveling at far less than
"full blower" — in fact, if we accept NORAD s timeline, more like
700 mph. >25
Furthermore, even if the times in this story
are adjusted enough to account for the fact that the planes were late, there
is still the question of why the order was not given to McGuire Air Force
Base. As Ahmed says, an F-15 flying at 1,850 nmph "would cover the
ground from New Jersey's Air Force Base to New York in under 3 minutes, and
thus could have easily intercepted Flight 175." >26
So, the critics conclude, even if this second story is accepted, the WTC's
second tower should not have been hit. Finally, the claim that jets were
scrambled to try to stop this second hijacked plane still leaves us with no
explanation as to why standard procedures were not followed with regard to
the first one. Accepting this second version of the official account
would, furthermore, leave us puzzled as to how General Myers, Vice President
Cheney, and the NORAD spokesman could have at first believed that no planes
whatsoever had been scrambled until after the Pentagon had been hit.
Accordingly, some critics, including some with
military experience, think t |