9/11 Truth Article
“The Truth Will Set Us Free”
A look at the 9/11 Truth Movement and a compelling new book
By Abe Haim
September eleventh. We’ve been told time and time again that this day changed everything. Indeed a lot has changed in the past three years. These changes started before we had even begun getting over the shock of seeing three thousand murdered before our eyes. Our government’s leaders were already engaged in a serious roll-back of our civil liberties here at home, while speaking openly about never-ending war abroad. This new governing mindset goes well beyond the Bush administration or Democrat vs. Republican. In comments this June by Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat took a seemingly inadvertent cue from Aldous Huxley. Addressing the use of torture by American interrogators, he implied that it may now be justified, describing our post-9/11 society as a “brave new world.” (1)
As Americans have struggled to come to terms with the new paradigms imposed by Sept. 11, an ever-growing number have started taking a closer look at what actually happened that day. The idea that the world’s most powerful military had been unable to defend its own headquarters, much less the nation’s largest city, was simply incredible. Many people throughout the world were incredulous from the very beginning.
Soon after the attacks, the families of 9/11 victims began demanding answers. They formed groups like the Family Steering Committee, which fought furiously for an investigation, finally pressuring the Bush Administration into creating the official 9/11 Commission. This commission hasn’t lived up to the expectations of the families, who became increasingly frustrated as its process came to a close. The Committee’s website includes a long list of important questions that the Commission failed to address (2). A May 22 statement announced that “The Family Steering Committee remains dissatisfied with the quality of questioning during the Commission’s public hearings.” It went on to say that “The Commission’s continued lack of aggressive questioning … raises concerns about the credibility and value of the Commission’s final report.” (3)
There has also been a group of independent researchers, who began collecting evidence and posting it on the Internet right after 9/11. Despite being largely ignored by the American mass media, both mainstream and alternative, this small group of devoted citizens persisted, slowly spreading their message by word of mouth and building networks. By 2004, an integrated movement had coalesced to demand the people learn the truth about Sept. 11. The 9/11 Truth Movement brings together everyone who demands a thorough and truly independent investigation of the Sept. 11 tragedies.
A leader in this in this movement is David Ray Griffin, a professor of philosophy at Claremont College, who published The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (TNPH) early this year. Drawing on the work of earlier researchers, Griffin addresses the most relevant questions with impeccable reasoning in this concise yet comprehensive volume. Boasting a powerful endorsement from Howard Zinn (4), author of A People’s History of the United States, this book has the potential to reach a large audience and significantly affect the future of American politics.
TNPH begins with a careful examination of the failure of the U.S. air defense system to carry out routine procedures in a timely manner on 9/11. Long before Sept. 11, specific procedures had been established for dealing with planes that may be hijacked. They called for fighter jets to be immediately scrambled from the nearest Air Force base to intercept the plane, make direct visual contact with that plane, and, if necessary, shoot it down. “In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes,” Griffin says, “not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.” (5)
There have been three official accounts of what exactly happened regarding an Air Force response or lack thereof. The first account, put out immediately after 9/11, was exemplified by General Myers, then acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 13, 2001, he was asked when the first order had been given to scramble fighter jets to defend the nation. Myers replied, “That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.” (6)
The second official account debuted when the military released a timeline on Sept. 18, claiming that fighter jets had indeed been scrambled to intercept each hijacked flight before it struck its target but failed to reach any of the hijacked planes in time. The timeline included significant delays in notification by the FAA, which the military in turn blamed for these failures.
Upon this official timeline’s release, independent researchers found a couple of major flaws. They asked why fighter jets had been scrambled from Otis ANGB on Cape Cod to intercept the planes bound for NYC, and from Langley AFB in coastal Virginia to intercept the planes bound for D.C., as the timeline stated, instead of from the much closer McGuire and Andrews bases respectively. The researchers also looked at the takeoff times listed in the timeline and calculated that even from those more distant bases, the fighter jets should have intercepted the planes before they crashed.
The third official account came out this summer, with the release of the official 9/11 Commission’s report. The report’s first chapter claims that the FAA’s notification of the military was so ridiculously delayed that the military only had a nine-minute warning for one of the hijacked flights and that they weren’t notified about any of the others until after they crashed. As Griffin put it in a recent interview, this report “gives a completely revisionist timeline that is aimed at showing that the FAA is peopled by a bunch of incompetent idiots, who you wonder how they ever could have passed a civil service exam given their performance that day, as portrayed by the commission, in order to get the military off the hook” (7)
The official response to questioning about why more wasn’t done to prevent 9/11, is that they were completely unaware of the possibility of this sort of attack. This claim was epitomized by Condoleezza Rice in a May 2002 briefing, when she said, “I don't think anybody could have predicted … that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” (8)
It’s been noted by many that Rice’s words contradict the historical record. The term “kamikaze pilot” dates back to WWII, when Japanese pilots crashed their planes into American naval vessels. Kamikaze attacks were attempted against Israel in 1986 and France in 1994, the same year that a Cessna pilot crashed just outside the White House. In July 2001, less than two months before 9/11, there was fear that such attacks would be launched against the G-8 Summit in Genoa, and anti-aircraft artillery were deployed. (9) Tom Clancy, a popular author with close ties to the military, even wrote two novels in the mid-’90s about a scenario in which a jumbo-jet was crashed into the U.S. Capitol. So why would an official like Rice try to make such an obvious deception?
Another troubling peculiarity of 9/11 is the behavior that day of America’s Commander in Chief and those around him. Footage of Bush sitting in a Florida classroom for ten minutes (10) after the second plane hit the Twin Towers while he listened to kids read a story about a pet goat has now been made famous by Fahrenheit 911. As disturbing as that apparent negligence is, Griffin takes a closer look and finds even more troubling unresolved questions. He documents that Bush’s staff knew the first plane had hit the Towers before the motorcade arrived at the school. Upon his arrival at the school, the president was quoted by the Associated Press telling the principal that “a commercial plane has hit the World Trade Center and we’re going to go ahead and do the reading thing anyway.” (11) Bush was at the elementary school for a total of about 45 minutes, including the speech he made there after finally leaving the classroom. All of this happened while the attacks were underway, which raises some disturbing questions: Why did Bush go into the school in the first place and then stay as long as he did? Why did he do his photo-op when he should have been overseeing the nation’s defense during this crisis? Why would the Secret Service let him enter the school and then stay so long, at a place and time that had been publicized well in advance, if they didn’t know that the school would not be a target?
The questions raised here are just a few of the many addressed by The New Pearl Harbor and the fledgling 9/11 Truth Movement. In addition to Howard Zinn, a number of prominent people have joined those demanding answers and endorsing TNPH and the movement, including actor Ed Asner and Global Exchange and Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin. (12)
While it may be discomforting to deal with these sorts of questions, as citizens concerned by what our government has done under the pretext of 9/11, it’s crucial that we demand the truth about what actually happened that day. As Richard Falk, author of The Great Terror War, writes in TNPH’s foreword, “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?” (13)
Sources cited:
1) http://www.news-leader.com/today/0618-Democratsw-114386.html 2) http://911independentcommission.org/questions.html 3) http://911independentcommission.org/nychearings52204.html 4) http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040525170003817 5) TNPH p. 3; 6) TNPH p. 8; 7) An audio recording of this interview is available to download online at http://209.81.10.18/data/20040803-Tue1700.mp3 The quote cited begins about 22 minutes into the recording.; 8) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/20020516-13.html 9) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1444922.stm For more in depth discussion of the kamikaze issue, read a 2002 statement from a 9/11 widow at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/18/se.02.html and a brief article at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040527222832444 10) cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a907petgoat and cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a916sarasota 11) TNPH p. 58; 12) http://www.911truth.org/index.php?topic=endorsements 13) TNPH p. x
A look at the 9/11 Truth Movement and a compelling new book
By Abe Haim
September eleventh. We’ve been told time and time again that this day changed everything. Indeed a lot has changed in the past three years. These changes started before we had even begun getting over the shock of seeing three thousand murdered before our eyes. Our government’s leaders were already engaged in a serious roll-back of our civil liberties here at home, while speaking openly about never-ending war abroad. This new governing mindset goes well beyond the Bush administration or Democrat vs. Republican. In comments this June by Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat took a seemingly inadvertent cue from Aldous Huxley. Addressing the use of torture by American interrogators, he implied that it may now be justified, describing our post-9/11 society as a “brave new world.” (1)
As Americans have struggled to come to terms with the new paradigms imposed by Sept. 11, an ever-growing number have started taking a closer look at what actually happened that day. The idea that the world’s most powerful military had been unable to defend its own headquarters, much less the nation’s largest city, was simply incredible. Many people throughout the world were incredulous from the very beginning.
Soon after the attacks, the families of 9/11 victims began demanding answers. They formed groups like the Family Steering Committee, which fought furiously for an investigation, finally pressuring the Bush Administration into creating the official 9/11 Commission. This commission hasn’t lived up to the expectations of the families, who became increasingly frustrated as its process came to a close. The Committee’s website includes a long list of important questions that the Commission failed to address (2). A May 22 statement announced that “The Family Steering Committee remains dissatisfied with the quality of questioning during the Commission’s public hearings.” It went on to say that “The Commission’s continued lack of aggressive questioning … raises concerns about the credibility and value of the Commission’s final report.” (3)
There has also been a group of independent researchers, who began collecting evidence and posting it on the Internet right after 9/11. Despite being largely ignored by the American mass media, both mainstream and alternative, this small group of devoted citizens persisted, slowly spreading their message by word of mouth and building networks. By 2004, an integrated movement had coalesced to demand the people learn the truth about Sept. 11. The 9/11 Truth Movement brings together everyone who demands a thorough and truly independent investigation of the Sept. 11 tragedies.
A leader in this in this movement is David Ray Griffin, a professor of philosophy at Claremont College, who published The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (TNPH) early this year. Drawing on the work of earlier researchers, Griffin addresses the most relevant questions with impeccable reasoning in this concise yet comprehensive volume. Boasting a powerful endorsement from Howard Zinn (4), author of A People’s History of the United States, this book has the potential to reach a large audience and significantly affect the future of American politics.
TNPH begins with a careful examination of the failure of the U.S. air defense system to carry out routine procedures in a timely manner on 9/11. Long before Sept. 11, specific procedures had been established for dealing with planes that may be hijacked. They called for fighter jets to be immediately scrambled from the nearest Air Force base to intercept the plane, make direct visual contact with that plane, and, if necessary, shoot it down. “In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes,” Griffin says, “not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.” (5)
There have been three official accounts of what exactly happened regarding an Air Force response or lack thereof. The first account, put out immediately after 9/11, was exemplified by General Myers, then acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 13, 2001, he was asked when the first order had been given to scramble fighter jets to defend the nation. Myers replied, “That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.” (6)
The second official account debuted when the military released a timeline on Sept. 18, claiming that fighter jets had indeed been scrambled to intercept each hijacked flight before it struck its target but failed to reach any of the hijacked planes in time. The timeline included significant delays in notification by the FAA, which the military in turn blamed for these failures.
Upon this official timeline’s release, independent researchers found a couple of major flaws. They asked why fighter jets had been scrambled from Otis ANGB on Cape Cod to intercept the planes bound for NYC, and from Langley AFB in coastal Virginia to intercept the planes bound for D.C., as the timeline stated, instead of from the much closer McGuire and Andrews bases respectively. The researchers also looked at the takeoff times listed in the timeline and calculated that even from those more distant bases, the fighter jets should have intercepted the planes before they crashed.
The third official account came out this summer, with the release of the official 9/11 Commission’s report. The report’s first chapter claims that the FAA’s notification of the military was so ridiculously delayed that the military only had a nine-minute warning for one of the hijacked flights and that they weren’t notified about any of the others until after they crashed. As Griffin put it in a recent interview, this report “gives a completely revisionist timeline that is aimed at showing that the FAA is peopled by a bunch of incompetent idiots, who you wonder how they ever could have passed a civil service exam given their performance that day, as portrayed by the commission, in order to get the military off the hook” (7)
The official response to questioning about why more wasn’t done to prevent 9/11, is that they were completely unaware of the possibility of this sort of attack. This claim was epitomized by Condoleezza Rice in a May 2002 briefing, when she said, “I don't think anybody could have predicted … that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” (8)
It’s been noted by many that Rice’s words contradict the historical record. The term “kamikaze pilot” dates back to WWII, when Japanese pilots crashed their planes into American naval vessels. Kamikaze attacks were attempted against Israel in 1986 and France in 1994, the same year that a Cessna pilot crashed just outside the White House. In July 2001, less than two months before 9/11, there was fear that such attacks would be launched against the G-8 Summit in Genoa, and anti-aircraft artillery were deployed. (9) Tom Clancy, a popular author with close ties to the military, even wrote two novels in the mid-’90s about a scenario in which a jumbo-jet was crashed into the U.S. Capitol. So why would an official like Rice try to make such an obvious deception?
Another troubling peculiarity of 9/11 is the behavior that day of America’s Commander in Chief and those around him. Footage of Bush sitting in a Florida classroom for ten minutes (10) after the second plane hit the Twin Towers while he listened to kids read a story about a pet goat has now been made famous by Fahrenheit 911. As disturbing as that apparent negligence is, Griffin takes a closer look and finds even more troubling unresolved questions. He documents that Bush’s staff knew the first plane had hit the Towers before the motorcade arrived at the school. Upon his arrival at the school, the president was quoted by the Associated Press telling the principal that “a commercial plane has hit the World Trade Center and we’re going to go ahead and do the reading thing anyway.” (11) Bush was at the elementary school for a total of about 45 minutes, including the speech he made there after finally leaving the classroom. All of this happened while the attacks were underway, which raises some disturbing questions: Why did Bush go into the school in the first place and then stay as long as he did? Why did he do his photo-op when he should have been overseeing the nation’s defense during this crisis? Why would the Secret Service let him enter the school and then stay so long, at a place and time that had been publicized well in advance, if they didn’t know that the school would not be a target?
The questions raised here are just a few of the many addressed by The New Pearl Harbor and the fledgling 9/11 Truth Movement. In addition to Howard Zinn, a number of prominent people have joined those demanding answers and endorsing TNPH and the movement, including actor Ed Asner and Global Exchange and Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin. (12)
While it may be discomforting to deal with these sorts of questions, as citizens concerned by what our government has done under the pretext of 9/11, it’s crucial that we demand the truth about what actually happened that day. As Richard Falk, author of The Great Terror War, writes in TNPH’s foreword, “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?” (13)
Sources cited:
1) http://www.news-leader.com/today/0618-Democratsw-114386.html 2) http://911independentcommission.org/questions.html 3) http://911independentcommission.org/nychearings52204.html 4) http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040525170003817 5) TNPH p. 3; 6) TNPH p. 8; 7) An audio recording of this interview is available to download online at http://209.81.10.18/data/20040803-Tue1700.mp3 The quote cited begins about 22 minutes into the recording.; 8) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/20020516-13.html 9) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1444922.stm For more in depth discussion of the kamikaze issue, read a 2002 statement from a 9/11 widow at http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/18/se.02.html and a brief article at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040527222832444 10) cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a907petgoat and cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a916sarasota 11) TNPH p. 58; 12) http://www.911truth.org/index.php?topic=endorsements 13) TNPH p. x