Phily Daily News (listed below are some of the highlights; the entire article is above) WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANSWERS TO THESE 9/11 QUESTIONS? By WILLIAM BUNCH bunchw@phillynews.com What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001? Rice has suggested in vague terms that the president's brief - prepared daily by the CIA - included information that morning about Osama bin Laden's methods of operation - including hijacking. But when the congressional committee probing Sept. 11 asked to see the report, Bush claimed executive privilege and refused to release it. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11? On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns." Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public? Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before Sept. 11? On Sept. 10, 2001, the trading ratio on United Airlines was 25 times greater than normal at the Pacific Exchange, where traders could buy "puts," high-risk bets that the price of a company's stock will fall sharply. The next day, two hijacked United jetliners crashed, causing the company's shares to plummet and ultimately leading the airline into bankruptcy. CBS News later reported that at intelligence agencies, "alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market" on the day before the attacks. The unusual stock trading suggests that someone with a sophisticated knowledge of finance also had advance information about the impending attack. But two years later, no one has been charged in this matter, and officials have not indicated even if the probe is still open. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history? In arguably the greatest understatement in U.S. history, Bush told a questioner at a California town-hall meeting in January 2002 that 9/11 "was an interesting day." Interesting, indeed. In the two years since the attacks, questions have only grown about the president's bizarre behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota classroom that America was under attack. "I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there, listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building," World Trade Center widow Lorie van Auken, a leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who have raised questions about the attacks, told Gail Sheehy in the New York Observer. Why did Bush read a children's story about a pet goat and stay in the classroom for more than a half-hour after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and roughly 15 minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him that it had been a deliberate attack? Why didn't he take more decisive action, and why wasn't he hustled to a secure area while the attacks were clearly still under way? Where are the planes' "black boxes"? Nothing is more critical to learning about air disasters than the so-called "black boxes." They are the 30-minute audio recordings of cockpit chatter and the fight-data inputs which show the speed, direction and operational condition of the plane, and which are encased in material designed to withstand a high-speed crash. Yet the government has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on the black boxes from Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and from Flight 93. FBI Director Robert Mueller has said Flight 77's data recorder provided altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder contained nothing useful. Why not? Why not release the information to the public? Why has a docile mainstream media not demanded this information? And how come none of the four "indestructible" black boxes was recovered from the World Trade Center, even as investigators said that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers had been found in the rubble, undamaged, a week after the towers's collapse? Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks? CBS News reported that the defense secretary was making notes about invading Iraq even before the fires from Flight 77 had been extinguished on the other side of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld wrote that he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H." - Saddam Hussein - "at the same time. Not only UBL" - Osama bin Laden. He added: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Rumsfeld and a number of other Bush administration officials have ties to a once-obscure policy group called the Project for a New American Century. In a 2000 white paper, PNAC - which had long urged an American invasion of Iraq - said that for the United States to assert itself properly as the world's lone superpower, "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" - would be required. That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report? It's not a total mystery. Everyone has acknowledged that the pages contain highly embarrassing information about links between the Sept. 11 hijackers and the government of Saudi Arabia, America's supposed ally in the Middle East and home to the world's largest oil reserves. One of those officials is said to be Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, whose wife, Princess Haifa, indirectly funded at least two of the Sept. 11 terrorists during their time in San Diego. The prince is so close to the Bush family that he's known, incredibly, as "Bandar Bush." This week, Time reports that just after the Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S. commercial airspace was still closed to our citizens, Bush allowed a jet to stop at 10 U.S. cities to pick up and fly home 140 prominent Saudis, including relatives of bin Laden. A new must-read book by investigative reporter Posner - "Why America Slept" - takes the conspiracy to the highest of levels of the Saudi government. He says a top bin Laden lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002, stunned investigators when - allegedly given the "truth serum" sodium pentothal - fingered three top Saudis. They were Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the Westernized owner of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem; Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief, and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir. The most incredible part of the story is what happened next. In an eight-day period in late July 2002, Prince Ahmed died at age 43 from a heart attack, Prince Turki died in a car crash and Prince Fahd "died of thirst." Coincidence? What do you think? Where is Osama bin Laden? Remember how President Bush vowed on Sept. 17, 2001, that he was determined to catch bin Laden "dead or alive"? Well, the good news is that if he wants bin Laden "alive," there's still a chance that could happen. Intelligence experts now agree that bin Laden successfully escaped his Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan back in December 2001 - when the U.S. failed to commit ample manpower to the chase - and that the al Qaeda leader is alive and well, and plotting new attacks. "We don't know where he is," Army Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for America's forces in Afghanistan, said recently. But Newsweek seems to know where to find bin Laden: in the remote, mountainous - and lawless - Kunar province of Afghanistan. The magazine chillingly reported that just five short months ago, bin Laden convened the biggest terror summit since Sept. 11 at a mountain stronghold there. The participants reportedly included three top-ranking representatives from the Taliban, several senior al Qaeda operatives and leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan. The topic was carrying out attacks against U.S. interests inside Iraq. The most chilling aspect of the Newsweek report is that bin Laden has access to biological weapons and is determined to find a way to use them against the United States. A source from the Taliban told the magazine: "Osama's next step will be unbelievable." But this week, ABC News reported that the hunt for bin Laden has been narrowed to a different area - a 40-square-mile section of the Waziristan region of Pakistan. The report said that local residents suspected of trying to inform Americans about bin Laden's whereabouts were executed in broad daylight.
Asking why an event happened on its anniversary is entirely appropriate. Looking truthfully and objectively at what happened so that we might prevent future catastrophes is the ultimate homage to the victims and families.
Saudi Royal Family + Pakistani ISI are the real axis of evil and I don't know when the neo-con wankers are going to wake up and do something about it. Without Saudi Financial aid, terrorists everywhere will have to tighten their suicide belts lol I'm convinced that if the US is ever nuked by the islamofascists....you will come to realise that the nuke didn't come from Iran or Russia or North Korea, but from PAKISTAN...Pakistan ISI has long been infested with radical Islamists and it's impossible for they’re not to be some collusion with Osama and other Al Qaeda morons. Confessions of a Terrorist Source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030908-480226,00.html Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Abu Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions. Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle. Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis." Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior isi agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom." In Posner's stark judgment, the Saudis "effectively had (bin Laden) on their payroll since the start of the decade." Zubaydah told the interrogators that the Saudis regularly sent the funds through three royal-prince intermediaries he named.
*Utterly inappropriate* Today should be set aside for families to mourn their lost loved ones, not for finger pointing purely for partisan gain. Dancing on the graves of those lost on 9-11 for political gain is truly a new low.
Your post is filled with innuendos and its context reaks of anti-government conspriacy theories. I think most people would like to honor this day and its remembrance with a positive attitude rather than criticize and blame. Pick a different day for this, and STFU. -- droxford
finding out the lapses in security and learning from our mistakes is NOT, I repeat NOT pointing fingers for partisan gain... Learning from out past mistakes is for EVERY AMERICAN'S GAIN Unless you arent really interested in preventing another attack and only protecting your partisan asses...
Asking why these innocent people died is partisan? Demanding what could have been done to save them is partisan? You don't think the survivors are asking these same questions? Don't we owe it to them to demand answers? There is no finger-pointing here. If you're too blind to your own partisanship to see that these people shouldn't have died in vain, that's your issue. But I'd much rather our government give the survivors the truth, rather than jingoistic rhetoric.
GV, I respect your opinion and the right to post this, but I think you should have done it another time.
TJ and dr.oxford, I seriously doubt anybody who is remembering their lost loved ones is coming on to the Cc.net D&D hangout forum today in order to commemorate them. Posner's book has caused quite a stir, and came out/is coming out just recently. To pretend that this isn't topical is just plain silly. I don't want to speak for GV, but how is questioning the motives of the Pakistani ISI and the House of Saud inappropriate? I disagree with his contentions that Bush or anybody associated with him knew before the fact (something that is not contained in the Posner book, I don't believe). But it's his right to make the argument. TJ, as your proud owner since yesterday, I command you to cease and desist lest I bump the social security thread again.
You know the drill around here GreenV. You'll be blamed for 9/11 and called anti-American any minute now. There's nothing wrong with posting that article. While we remember the victims of this atrocity we should also remember how we've failed them in finding out the truth behind these attacks.
Thanks for the article, it was very interesting. Perhaps it is a sensitive day for people mourning the deaths of loved ones today, but for others who didn't lose anyone but were still hurt by the attacks, I think today is an excellent day to reflect on what we need to be doing as a result of all this. Some of the article was overly conspiracy-suspicious and other parts too condemnatory, but it does remind us of some related issues that haven't been discussed the other 364 days of the year.
I agree 100-percent. Excellent points. I didn't post this article to piss people off -- I just think the survivors (and those lost) deserve answers. As a country, we failed them -- and they deserve the full truth.
That there was increased chatter as reported by top secret sources they don't want Al Qeda to know about? See the above Well shorting airline stocks is not that uncommon, especially in periods of rising oil prices but the rumor I heard was Al Qeda operatives did the shorting to finance their Jihad. They wear towels on their heads but they are not unsophisticated in the world of finance. Well he was pretty safe there away from NY and Washington, I would guess the Secret Service needed a little time to asses what was happening and decide on an action plan. Besises would you want him to break out in a panic and scare a bunch of little kids? Melted within the other 100 million tons of steel and concrete? I don't think they were tested for that condition, besides you'd probably just hear a bunch of Ali ali achbars. Because they thought he might be mad at us since we defeated him in a war? That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today. We still have to be pretty careful with the Saudi's. Like it or not they do control world oil prices. Well we didn't find him yet but we ran his ass to the end of the Earth where he is going to find it pretty hard to operate. Vegan, nothing ever runs perfectly, you can second guess anyones actions in fact it's probably a healthy exercise. But conspiricy theories are usually psycologically based rather than fact based. Like saying " there sure are a lot of blue cars" and since you've said it you tend to focus on blue cars so it does seem like there are a lot of them.
Good analysis, GP. I don't know if you read the Philly Daily News story, but it parallels a few of the ideas you have.
