Wednesday, September 14 2011   -   In the Media

Former minister says group was prepared to see bin Laden put on trial prior to 9/11, but US was not interested.

September 11, 2011
Aljazeera.net

The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the US government showed no interest, according to a senior aide to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Taliban’s last foreign minister, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that his government had made several proposals to the United States to present the al-Qaeda leader, considered the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, for trial for his involvement in plots targeting US facilities during the 1990s.

"Even before the [9/11] attacks, our Islamic Emirate had tried through various proposals to resolve the Osama issue. One such proposal was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC]," Muttawakil said.

"But the US showed no interest in it. They kept demanding we hand him over, but we had no relations with the US, no agreement of any sort. They did not recognise our government."

The US did not recognise the Taliban government and had no direct diplomatic relations with the group which controlled most of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

But proposals by the Taliban were relayed to the US through indirect channels such as the US embassy in Pakistan or the informal Taliban office for the UN in New York, Muttawakil said.

Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11, confirmed that such proposals had been made to US officials.

 

Wednesday, September 14 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

KPFA Special Broadcast for September 11, 2011

911's Footprint on America ten years later - September 11, 2011 at 4:00pm
KPFA --Hour Two of debate -- moderator Mickey Huff on The Science around the Twin Towers collapse.
Browse other online episodes of this show
More information about this show

911's Footprint on America ten years later - September 11, 2011 at 3:00pm
KPFA -- Hour One of debate -- moderator Peter Phillips 911 Commission Report
Browse other online episodes of this show
More information about this show

 

Wednesday, September 14 2011   -   In the Media

September 12, 2011
By Barbara Liston
Reuters

The former co-chair of a Congressional inquiry after the September 11, 2001 attacks called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation following a news report linking the hijackers to a Saudi Arabian couple who lived in Florida.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham said he has no reason to doubt the news report, which said the Saudi Arabian couple abruptly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind a full refrigerator, clothes, furnishings and a new car in the driveway.

The report was published by BrowardBulldog.org., a nonprofit Internet news site and was simultaneously published on the news website of the Miami Herald.

If true, it reveals another Saudi terrorism connection that was never disclosed by the FBI to the public or to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks, said Graham, who was co-chair of the committee.

The FBI office in Tampa issued a statement on Monday saying the Sarasota case was one of many leads that "were resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Graham called the Sarasota case "eerily similar" to the FBI's failure to tell the intelligence committee about a former Saudi civil servant, Omar al-Bayoumi, who supported two hijackers while they were living in San Diego. Graham said an investigator for his committee independently unearthed the information about al-Bayoumi.

 

Tuesday, September 13 2011   -   Editorials

By Paul Craig Roberts
September 11, 2011
Information Clearing House

In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with "A Day of Remembrance," a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.

During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and engineers presented the results of years of their independent research into all aspects of 9/11 to a distinguished panel consisting of the honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court who was an investigative judge who presided over terrorism cases and three distinguished scholars of high renown and judgment. The distinguished panel's task is to produce a report with their judgment of the evidence presented by the expert witnesses.

The Toronto Hearings were streamed live over the Internet. I was able to watch many of the presentations over the four days. I was impressed that the extremely high level of intelligence and scientific competence of the witnesses was matched by a high level of integrity, a quality rare in US politics and totally absent in the American media.

As I stressed in my recent interview about 9/11 with Jim Corbett and Global Research, I am a reporter, not an independent researcher into 9/11. I pay attention when the fact-based community finds problems with the official propaganda. Perhaps this reflects my age. My generation was raised to believe in evidence and the scientific method. George Orwell and other writers warned us of the consequence of succumbing to government propaganda as a result of disinterest in the truth or government manipulation of one's patriotism.

 

Tuesday, September 13 2011   -   In the Media

A congresswoman demanded details be revealed to the public about FBI investigation into Saudi family with ties to hijackers in Sarasota.
By Dan Christensen
Special to The Miami Herald

A decade after the FBI found ties between a Saudi family living quietly near Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers, a Florida Democratic congresswoman is calling on the House Intelligence Committee to investigate whether agents revealed their findings to Congress.

Kathy Castor said she was troubled over reports that federal agents discovered a luxury home where the family was living was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers and phone calls were linked between the home and the terrorists, but Congress was not told of the discovery.

Senator Bob Graham:

 

Tuesday, September 13 2011   -   Resources and Materials

HistoryCommons.org has been offline the last few days, including the Complete 9/11 Timeline, as we reported early morning 9/11 as part of our story about the CIA threatening the "9/11: Press for Truth" filmmakers. It is a relief to report this morning that the site is once again available.

If you have not been aware or taken advantage of this astounding research tool, or participated in the development of this "experiment in open-content civic journalism," I encourage you to do so. The 32 individual timelines hosted at HistoryCommons offer an astounding wealth of information drawn from the media on subjects such as the events on 9/11, it's environmental effects, anthrax, Iraq war, neocon influences on US politics, George W. Bush's treatment of American troops, electoral politics, and much more.

Students often write to me asking where and how to start researching on some aspect of 9/11 or related matter for class projects and research papers; HistoryCommons.org is where I tell them to start. Not only is the information presented in a comprehensible manner, every single entry is thoroughly sourced. I challenge anyone to review what's at HistoryCommons.org and maintain their belief that people asking questions are lunatics or morons.

Thank you, Paul Thompson and all of you who dedicate your time, voluntarily, to civic journalism and assembling this incredibly valuable historical record. I know our posterity will thank you, as well. Welcome back!

 

Tuesday, September 13 2011   -   In the Media

September 12, 2011
Source: 9/11 Truth News

30+ 9/11 Truth Hit Pieces In 2 Weeks

For the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the mainstream media has offered an unprecedented level of apparent bias against reasonable people invested in justice for the victims of 9/11. The majority of articles below imply that "truthers" are driven by a fear of chaos and uncertainty to draw comfort from misdirected rage. Most of the articles make sweeping generalization about those involved while others are outright insulting.

9/11 Truth Hit Piece #1 -- CNN World
"Conspiracy theories are for losers"

The Author: Dr. Joseph Parent and Dr. Joseph Uscinski

The Setup: "The world is awash in conspiracy theories. ["9/11 "truther" beliefs"] [...] The "birther" conspiracy theorists [...] Obama is a secret Muslim intent on instituting Sharia Law [...] the president blew up the Deepwater Horizon [...] Osama bin Laden is not dead [...] the Holocaust never happened [...] the world is run by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons or the Federal Reserve. The list sprawls on."

The Premise: "When Republicans are in power, right-leaning villains such as big business dominate conspiracy theorizing. When Democrats are in power, left-leaning villains such as socialists become the top peril."

Misdirection: "Although conspiracy theories have anti-democratic aspects, in this respect they are very fair: All of us get to play the villain eventually."

 

Tuesday, September 13 2011   -   Editorials

September 11th, 2011
by Michael Meacher MP
published at Meacher's Blog

9/11 remains one of the most misunderstood events in modern history. The first myth is that it came out of the blue on an unsuspecting America. In fact it is known that 11 countries provided advance warnings to the US about the 9/11 attacks, including Russia and Israel which sent 2 senior Mossad experts to Washington in August 2001 with a list of terrorist suspects that included 4 of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. Moussaoui, now thought to be the 20th hijacker, was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners, and Newsweek later revealed (20 May 2002) that an agent had written that month that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers. Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism chief in the White House, has since said that "50 CIA personnel knew that al-Hamzi and al-Mihdhar (2 of the hijackers) were in the US in July-August 2001, including the Director", but never passed the information to the FBI. And the former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has stated that "the information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence".

Second, 9/11 is portrayed as acts of unprovoked aggression perpetrated without cause other than wilful violence. In fact Osama bin Laden repeatedly demanded in the 1990s that the US should end its occupation of Saudi Arabia containing the two holy cities of Islam, should stop retaining in power Arab tyrannies in order to preserve Western interests in the Middle East particularly oil, and should cease its indiscriminate support for Israel against the Arab world -- all of which demands were ignored by the US. Of course that does not conceivably condone or justify an appalling atrocity like 9/11 which killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 Britons. But nor does it justify the following decade-long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan which the US Brown University estimates 'very conservatively' cost the deaths of 137,000 civilians (which the Lancet calculated at a million) and created more than 7.8 million refugees.

 

Monday, September 12 2011   -   Truth Movement News

September 12, 2011
by Hereward Fenton
ThePunch.com.au

On this sad anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in post-war history I am reminded of the prophetic words spoken by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Eisenhower was the supreme commander in western Europe who had led America to victory against one of the most evil regimes in history, a man who had witnessed the depths of human depravity, and wanted finally to warn us that the war machine which had been created to defend freedom in WWII could equally be used for the opposite purpose, and that it was up to the American people to guard against this possibility.

Eisenhower coined the phrase "military industrial complex" which became the catch-cry of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, describing an economic and political fusion of power involving armaments manufacturers, construction companies, banks, democratic governments and puppet dictatorships.

 

Sunday, September 11 2011   -   Other Important News

>Note from former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds
Sunday, 11. September 2011
Boiling Frogs

On Thursday, September 8, 2011, the CIA issued legal threats against producers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy on their discovery of the identities of the two key CIA analysts who executed the Tenet-Black-Blee cover-up in the case of two key 9/11 hijackers. The analysts were referred to only by first names initially, but were going to be fully named in a follow up segment.

Nowosielski and Duffy are working with legal advisors and we will have more on this soon. Meanwhile you can listen to our recent exclusive interview with the producers and their discovery here at Boiling Frogs Post:

Podcast Show #55: The Boiling Frogs Presents Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy (see link below)

Also, here are related interviews with Paul Thompson based on the expose by the two producers: Part 1 & Part 2. (also at story below)

The producers' website was taken down yesterday. We are in touch with them, and we will keep you informed. Please disseminate this stunning new development, the CIA's panic, and the content of their interview. Thank You.

Sibel Edmonds

 

Sunday, September 11 2011   -   Research/Evidence

9 September 2011
By Kevin Fenton
BoilingFrogsPost.com

Although the story of the CIA's actions in the run-up to 9/11 is complicated, at a fairly early point in any examination of them it becomes clear the agency committed multiple failures, and that these failures enabled the attacks to go forward. The key issue that remains in dispute ten years on is whether these "failures" were deliberate or simply the product of overwork and incompetence. Making an informed judgment means taking the time to look at all the failures, put them in order, and analyze what it all means.

Perhaps the most comprehensible problem is the scope of the CIA's failings. There was not one error by some lowly neophyte, but a massive string of failures. As Tom Wilshire, one of the key CIA officials involved in the withholding of the information commented to the Congressional Inquiry, "[E]very place that something could have gone wrong in this over a year and a half, it went wrong. All the processes that had been put in place, all the safeguards, everything else, they failed at every possible opportunity. Nothing went right."

In addition, some of the failures were extremely serious. For example, the alleged failure by Alec Station, the CIA's bin Laden unit, to inform CIA Director George Tenet that Flight 77 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar was in the country in August 2001 is simply beyond comprehension. Added to this, the failures were committed by a small group of intelligence officers, centered on Wilshire and his boss Richard Blee, and focused on a few al-Qaeda operatives, in particular Almihdhar and his partner Nawaf Alhazmi. Finally, one of the officers who withheld information has admitted this publicly, and a second reportedly in private, and some surviving documents contradict the "incompetence excuse."

 

Sunday, September 11 2011   -   Research/Evidence

10 September 2011
by Sibel Edmonds
BoilingFrogsPost.com

Filmmakers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy join us to discuss their extensive research, interviews and findings which have resulted in the unmasking of three former top CIA officials- George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee- and their role in withholding intelligence on two key 9/11 hijackers and subsequent cover-ups. Duffy and Nowosielski provide us with a detailed account of their new interview with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and his allegations against the CIA officials- Tenet, Black and Blee -- accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence from the White House, the FBI, Immigration and the State and Defense Departments. They discuss two key CIA analysts who were instrumental in this cover up, a joint statement issued by the three accused CIA officials in response to Clarke's allegations, and more!

Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy produced the film "Press for Truth," which documented the journey of four 9/11 widows as they lobbied the Bush White House to convene an independent commission to probe the attacks. They recently launched a new transparency web site SecrecyKills.com.

Here are our guests Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy unplugged!

Link for interview with Ray Nowosielski & John Duffy [1:08:53]

RELATED: Two interviews with Paul Thompson regarding this same topic, here and here

 

Saturday, September 10 2011   -   First Responders/Health Effects

by Michelle Chen
September 9, 2011
In These Times

Photo Credit: Roberto Schmidt, AFP / Getty Images at In These Times)

This weekend, the public will mourn a site of loss, recasting the painful memories and haunting fears that still hover over the aftermath at Ground Zero. But the people who worked and breathed that tragedy in the days and months following September 11 won't be at the primary commemoration ceremony for the families of victims. The Mayor's decision to limit the attendees by excluding the 9/11 first responders is an unnerving metaphor for an unhealed scar of 9/11. Many of the rescue and recovery workers who labored at Ground Zero have been plagued by a metastasizing medical crisis, aggravated by chronic political failure.

This week, 9/11 firefighters and police chiefs rallied to demand changes to the rules governing compensation for health problems tied to poisonous air and debris at Ground Zero. They want federal funds to support treatment for cancer, which is currently omitted from the primary legislation covering Ground Zero-related medical needs. For years, researchers have been uncovering fresh evidence of widespread and devastating illnesses afflicting a large portion of people exposed to the aftermath; ongoing health issues range from crippling lung and breathing problems to post-traumatic stress disorder. But adequate funding for 9/11 workers has often been ensnared in political gridlock, not to mention the general incompetence of the healthcare system.

 

Saturday, September 10 2011   -   Research/Evidence

Sunday 11 September 2011
by: Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold
Truthout

Senior Pentagon officials scrubbed key details about a top-secret military intelligence unit's efforts in tracking Osama bin Laden and suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from official reports they prepared for a Congressional committee probing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, new documents obtained by Truthout reveal.

Moreover, in what appears to be an attempt to cover up the military unit's intelligence work, a September 2008 Defense Department (DoD) Inspector General's (IG) report that probed complaints lodged by the former deputy chief of the military unit in question, the Asymmetrical Threats Division of Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), also known as DO5, about the crucial information withheld from Congress, claimed "the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission."

But the IG's assertion is untrue, according to the documents obtained by Truthout, undercutting the official narrative about who knew what and when in the months leading up to 9/11.

Much of JFIC's work on al-Qaeda and Bin Laden remains shrouded in secrecy and has not been cited in media reports revolving around pre-9/11 intelligence, which has focused heavily over the past decade on CIA and FBI "intelligence failures." Only a few details about the military intelligence unit have surfaced since then, notably in two previous reports published recently by Truthout.

 

Saturday, September 10 2011   -   In the Media

By Corey Kilgannon
September 9, 2011
City Room Blog at NewYorkTimes/Region

Photo credit: Benjamin Norman for The New York Times. A meeting of people at a cafe in Greenwich Village on Thursday night of people who have alternate views of what happened on 9/11.

"No bullhorning during the memorial."

That's always been the rule of thumb among "truther" demonstrators at ground zero on Sept. 11, out of respect for relatives of victims of the terror attack, said Mike Skuthan, 32, a Web designer from Long Island who attends the demonstrations every year.

But after this Sunday's memorial, Mr. Skuthan said, the bullhorns and signs will again be brought out and the groups will walk from one location to another in Manhattan chanting their message and engaging passers-by to help them call for a new investigation into the attacks.

"You have the usual chants -- '9-11 Truth Ends Wars,' or 'Two planes, three buildings,' " Mr. Skuthan said. "The popular one this year will probably be, 'Ten years, no justice.' "

Members of the so-called 9-11 Truth movement range from extreme conspiracy theorists who believe that the Bush administration engineered the attacks to consolidate power, roll back civil liberties and help oil mogul friends. But then there are more moderate factions that simply insist that top government officials know more about the attacks than they have acknowledged, and then used then used the attacks as a pretext for invading Iraq. A large percentage of activists outline -- often in great detail -- what they call inconsistencies in government explanations of the attacks, which many call a governmental cover-up.