Monday, May 2 2011   -   9/11 Precedents

His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

By Michael Moran
August 24, 1998
MSNBC

BRAVE NEW WORLD

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 -- At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term describing an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.

Befpre up [sic] click on my face and call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia's Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.

But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.

 

Monday, May 2 2011   -   Other Important News

A look back at the years of false reports that preceded Sunday night's announcement of the real thing
By Justin Elliott
May 2, 2011 Salon.com

Photo credit: AP

The false reports of Osama bin Laden's death began almost immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, and persisted at a rate of at least once or twice a year, every year. The reports -- generated by (usually anonymous) statements by American officials and a dizzying array of foreign sources -- often generated international headlines.

Here's a sampling:

July 2002 FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson tells a law enforcement conference of bin Laden: "I personally think he is probably not with us anymore, but I have no evidence to support that."

 

Monday, May 2 2011   -   Other Important News

Obama: Osama bin Laden is dead

By Kase Wickman
May 2, 2011
RawStory.com

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the number one most-wanted fugitive for nearly a decade, was killed in Pakistan Sunday, the White House announced.

President Barack Obama made a live statement shortly after 11:30 p.m. from the East Room of the White House.

"Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children," he began.

The U.S. received an intelligence lead last August about bin Laden's whereabouts, Obama said, and that he had enough information by Sunday to launch a targeted military operation on the compound pinpointed as bin Laden's location, in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability," Obama said. "No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

White House officials said that the operation was in cooperation with Pakistani authorities, and was carried out by Navy SEALs in helicopters who rehearsed the operation to avoid civilian casualties. Reportedly, one woman who was used as a human shield was killed.

Crowds gathered outside the White House and around the country after the speech, waving flags and singing the National Anthem. U.S. diplomatic centers are reportedly on high alert in case of retaliation.

Obama stressed that the decade-long War on Terror has never been a war on Islam. He thanked intelligence officials and counterterrorism professionals for their work over the years.

"Americans understand the costs of war," Obama said. "Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror: justice has been done."

Read Raw Story's breaking news liveblog from Sunday night for a timeline and more details.

Official: Bin Laden buried at sea
By MATT APUZZO Associated Press
May 2, 2011, 01:41:10 AM MD T
Denverpost.com

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. official says Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea.

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.

Previous news about bin Laden's death ...

 

Monday, May 2 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

by Rady Ananda
April 29, 2011
Global Research

Rather than judicially review significant evidence in the events of September 11, 2001, on April 27, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's dismissal of an Army Specialist's complaint against former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers.

One of Plaintiff April Gallop's attorneys, William Veale, didn't know whether to relate the decision to "Kafka, Orwell, Carroll, or Huxley," referring to the absurdity and dearth of reason emanating from the court regarding the deadliest attack on U.S. soil the nation has ever faced.

"The Court's decision, analogous to reviewing an Indictment in a liquor store hold-up without mentioning the guy walking in with a gun, refuses to acknowledge even the existence of the three defendants much less what they were doing that morning or saying about it afterwards," Veale added.

Of the three judges on the panel, John Mercer Walker, Jr. is first cousin of former President George H.W. Bush and first cousin once removed of George W. Bush, who used 9/11 to manipulate public emotion to support passage of the unconstitutional PATRIOT Acts and waging illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East. According to Wikipedia, Walker shares a grandfather with the 41st president, George Herbert Walker, whose daughter married Prescott Bush. A motion to force Judge Walker's removal from the case was denied, despite a clear conflict of interest.

 

Friday, April 29 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

by Noel Brinkerhoff
April 15, 2011
AllGov.com

American Airlines and United Airlines along with two airport security firms will have to pay a $1.2 billion settlement for damage caused to property during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

Approved by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the deal settles numerous property-damage lawsuits that were filed after the terrorist attacks involving American Airlines Flight 11 and United Air Lines Flight 175 struck Towers One and Two of the former World Trade Center.

The other two defendants in the case were Globe Airport Security, which screened passengers boarding American Flight 11 in Boston, and Huntleigh, which did the same for United Flight 175. Under the agreement, American Airlines and Globe will pay 60% of the damages and United and Huntleigh will pay the remaining 40%.

The plaintiffs in the case are the owners of the World Trade Center and numerous insurance companies. They had originally sought $4.4 billion from the airlines and security companies.

 

Friday, April 29 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

April 29, 2011
Email from Federation of American Scientists' "Secrecy news Blog"

As of March 2011, Congress had approved a total of more than $1.2 trillion dollars for costs associated with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other post-9/11 "war on terror" operations, the Congressional Research Service said in its most recent update on the subject. See "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," March 29, 2011.

Other new or newly updated CRS reports include the following (all pdf).

 

Thursday, April 28 2011   -   Research/Evidence

by Kevin Ryan
April 27, 2011
ULTruth.wordpress.com

Of the many unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11, one of the most important is: Why were none of the four planes intercepted? A rough answer is that the failure of the US air defenses can be traced to a number of factors and people. There were policy changes, facility changes, and personnel changes that had recently been made, and there were highly coincidental military exercises that were occurring on that day. But some of the most startling facts about the air defense failures have to do with the utter failure of communications between the agencies responsible for protecting the nation. At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), two people stood out in this failed chain of communications. One was a lawyer on his first day at the job, and another was a Special Operations Commander who was never held responsible for his critical role, or even questioned about it.

The 9/11 Commission wrote in its report that -- "On 9/11, the defense of U.S. airspace depended on close interaction between two federal agencies: the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)."[1]

According to the Commission, this interaction began with air traffic controllers (ATCs) at the relevant regional FAA control centers, which on 9/11 included Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. In the event of a hijacking, these ATCs were expected to "notify their supervisors, who in turn would inform management all the way up to FAA headquarters. Headquarters had a hijack coordinator, who was the director of the FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security or his or her designate.

The hijack coordinator would then "contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC)" and "the NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance. If approval was given, the orders would be transmitted down NORAD’s chain of command [to the interceptor pilots]."[2]

 

Monday, April 25 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

by Andy Worthington
Published April 24, 2011
WikiLeaks.ch

On Sunday April 24, 2011 WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The details for every detainee will be released daily over the coming month.

WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantanamo Prisoners

PLEASE NOTE: This article has been published in languages other than English at WikiLeaks, linked here.

In its latest release of classified US documents, WikiLeaks is shining the light of truth on a notorious icon of the Bush administration's "War on Terror" -- the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which opened on January 11, 2002, and remains open under President Obama, despite his promise to close the much-criticized facility within a year of taking office.

In thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008 and never seen before by members of the public or the media, the cases of the majority of the prisoners held at Guantanamo -- 758 out of 779 in total -- are described in detail in memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida.

These memoranda, which contain JTF-GTMO's recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released (transferred to their home governments, or to other governments) contain a wealth of important and previously undisclosed information, including health assessments, for example, and, in the cases of the majority of the 171 prisoners who are still held, photos (mostly for the first time ever).

 

Monday, April 25 2011   -   First Responders/Health Effects

by Donna Marsh O'Connor
Member, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; Mother, Vanessa Lang Langer, WTC Tower II, 93rd floor
April 23, 2011
HuffingtonPost.com

Shame on Representative Cliff Stearns and shame on each and every one of the representatives who voted to make compensation for 9/11 first responders reliant upon a check for "terrorist" activities. Shame is a concept that blankets American actions as it responded to that grave day. I won't belabor the many instances where this nation either killed or maimed others either in retribution or in the pretense at keeping the rest of us "safe" but I will say that this last act of betrayal by elected officials places all of us in greater danger. Frankly, if we don't counter this betrayal, we deserve what we get.

What has come over us? Have we completely lost the ability to function as compassionate adults in an imperfect world? Think for one minute about the ramifications of such an act:

 

Tuesday, April 19 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

1. The Bombing -- http://OKCBombing.net/

On April 19, 1995, around 9:03 a.m., just after parents dropped their children off at day care at the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, the unthinkable happened. A massive bomb inside a rental truck exploded, blowing half of the nine-story building into oblivion. A stunned nation watched as the bodies of men, women, and children were pulled from the rubble for nearly two weeks. When the smoke cleared and the exhausted rescue workers packed up and left, 168 people were dead in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The 168 victims killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building included babies and grandparents, workers at their first days on the job and those on the verge of retirement.

One woman was seven months pregnant with her first child. Another had had her wedding four days earlier. One baby had celebrated her first birthday the day before. In addition to those who lost their lives, 500 people were injured. Countless others lost friends and relatives.

2. Top Ten Reasons to Question the Official Story

By: Holland O. Van den Nieuwenhof
OKCBombingTruth.com

1. John Doe #2 And Other Accomplices

Timothy McVeigh is supposed to be the only one who drove the Ryder truck full of explosives up to the Murrah building and detonated it. But the government only produced one witness during McVeigh's trial to place him in Oklahoma City. That witness, Daina Bradley, lost her children, her mother and her leg in the bombing. Under cross-examination, she admitted that she saw McVeigh with another man, the fabled John Doe #2, in the Ryder truck. Numerous (1 2 other witnesses state that they saw McVeigh with other perpetrators the day of the bombing. There are also numerous other witness accounts of McVeigh accompanied by other men during his preparation for the bombing and even when he rented the Ryder truck. In some cases, these suspects have been identified by witnesses and yet the government claims that McVeigh was the sole actor in the tragedy of April 19, 1995.

3. Information on the surveillance tapes and Kenneth Trentadue:
Kenneth Trentadue was murdered in the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August, 1995. The authorities ruled it a suicide. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we explore the incredible story of Jesse Trentadue, Kenney's brother, who has spent the last two decades working to find out what really happened to his brother--and how it connects to the Oklahoma City Bombing. Episode 182 -- Requiem for the Suicided: Kenneth Trentadue - http://www.corbettreport.com/episode182-kenneth-trentadue/

 

Tuesday, April 19 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

"Investigate Building 7", conference held at the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT on March 26, 2011, sponsored by Investigatebuilding7.org (formerly BuildingWhat? campaign)

Video of presentations from Investigate Building 7 Conference, March 26, 2011, graciously posted by Radical Pragmatist on his blog at 911blogger.com.

The Case for a New Building 7 Investigation (three parts):

I. Foreknowledge of Building 7's Collapse by Dr. Graeme MacQueen
II. The Evolution of the Fire-based Theory for Building 7 by Kevin Ryan
III. Structural Aspects of Building 7's Collapse: Why the NIST Report is Non-explanatory by Tony Szamboti

Failure to Report: A Panel Discussion Among Journalists 3/26/11

Investigate Building 7 conference audio

 

Tuesday, April 19 2011   -   Research/Evidence

April 18, 2011
History Commons

A large number of new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons. Most of these describe events from the day of 9/11 itself, although a few entries look at pre-9/11 and post-9/11 events.

This is one of an ongoing series of irregular email alerts notifying the community of additions to a specific project.

New Entries Added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline

One new entry reveals that in April 2001, CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned that "something big [is] coming and that it very likely could be in the US." Then, about a month before 9/11, White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke visited Wall Street,to investigate the security precautions there.

 

Wednesday, April 13 2011   -   Editorials

Lessons the 9/11 Truth Movement Needs to Consider With New Urgency

by John Parulis
April 13, 2011
TruthPhalanx.com

The talk, linked to here, given by the late Utah Phillips in the summer of 2004 in Berkeley, California, sets a pathway for a new direction for activism centered on creating world wide worker unions established in non-violence and wide scale organizing.

http://truthphalanx.com/mp3/Utah_Phillips.mp3
(Thanks to Maria Gilardin, TUCRadio )

Utah Phillips is right. The progressive left needs to change tactics. The 9/11 Truth Movement can learn from the left's failures. Street marches achieve little or nothing. Look at the global anti-war marches of 2003 to stop the Iraq Invasion. Millions flooded the streets around the world in days of historic popular uprisings and demonstrations, yet the war proceeded and ever expanding wars metastasized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya. Nearly a million people have died. People continue to die from the so called 9/11 wars and billions continue to be misspent on these failings.

 

Tuesday, April 12 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Rawstory.com

STOCKHOLM -- Growth in global military spending slowed to its lowest level since 2001 last year as the world economic crisis hit defence budgets, Swedish think-tank SIPRI said Monday.

World military spending rose only 1.3 percent in 2010 to $1.63 trillion (1.14 trillion euros), after average annual growth of 5.1 percent between 2001 and 2009, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said as it released its latest report on international military expenditures.

"In many cases, the falls or slower increase represent a delayed reaction to the global financial and economic crisis that broke in 2008," the group said in a statement.

The United States significantly slowed its military investments last year but remained by far the biggest defence spender in the world and still accounted for almost all of global growth.

 

Tuesday, April 12 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, April 10th, 2011
Rawstory.com

WASHINGTON -- US prosecutors compiled lots of evidence against the five men accused of having organized the September 11 attacks on the United States, but not until this week have details been fully revealed.

The indictment charging self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others was unsealed when US Attorney General Eric Holder referred the case to the Defense Department for military trials instead of trials at a US federal court in New York.

Holder said Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi could have been prosecuted in federal court and blamed Congress for imposing measures blocking civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay inmates.

They will be tried in military courts in the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.