Saturday, August 13 2011   -   Research/Evidence

By Jason Leopold
Truthout

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just a month away, the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have started to attract fresh scrutiny from former counterterrorism officials, who have called into question the veracity of the official government narrative that concluded who knew what and when.

Indeed, recently Truthout published an exclusive report based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with a former high-ranking counterterrorism official that showed how a little-known military intelligence unit, unbeknownst to the various investigative bodies probing the terrorist attacks, was ordered by senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's movements prior to 9/11.

 

Saturday, August 13 2011   -   Research/Evidence

A Significant Stimulus for the Reform that Never Came

10 August 2011
by Kevin Fenton
BoilingFrogsPost.com

Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the numerous "20th hijackers," was arrested ten years ago next Tuesday, outside the Residence Inn in Eagan, Minnesota. The arrest was one of the first events in a case that gave the FBI a chance to blow open the 9/11 plot, but resulted in abject humiliation for the bureau when its headquarters' string of errors was exposed in the press.

The Moussaoui case is a poster boy for the state of our knowledge about the attacks: we have some of the details, but know some are missing. Also, two key questions remain unanswered. This despite the wealth of information that came out at the trial and the fact that Moussaoui, although largely ignored by the 9/11 Commission's final report--partly due to the forthcoming trial--was a major topic of the Justice Department inspector general's report into the FBI's pre-attack failings.

These are the bare bones of the case: Moussaoui had been a known extremist for years prior to his arrest. Before the bureau first heard his name on August 15, he had been under surveillance by French and British intelligence and the CIA, although the agency would claim it only knew him under an alias. He was sent to the US for flight training by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, possibly to participate in 9/11, possibly to participate in a follow-up operation. However, he was a poor student and dropped out of basic flight school before obtaining a licence and went to learn about flying a Boeing 747, which aroused suspicion.

 

Thursday, August 11 2011   -   Research/Evidence

August 11, 2011
by Kevin Fenton
Published at 911truth.org

Following the airing of allegations by former counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke that the CIA deliberately withheld from him information about Pentagon hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, former CIA director George Tenet, former CIA Counterterrorist Center chief Cofer Black and Richard Blee, a mid-level agency official who occupied two key counterterrorist positions before 9/11, have responded with a joint statement.

Clarke said that information about the two men was deliberately withheld from him in January 2000, at the time of a key al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which the CIA monitored. Clarke alleged that, based on his knowledge of how the CIA works, Tenet authorised the deliberate withholding. Clarke added that the information was clearly important in the summer of 2001, when the CIA knew that Almihdhar was in the country and, in the words of one of Blee's former deputies, was "very high interest" in connection with the next al-Qaeda attack. However, the CIA continued to withhold some information from both Clarke and the FBI.

Mark Rossini, one of Blee's former subordinates at Alec Station, the CIA's bin Laden unit, has previously admitted deliberately withholding the information from the FBI. According to Rossini, in early January 2000 he and a colleague, Doug Miller, knew they should notify the FBI that Almihdhar had a US visa and presumably intended to soon visit the US. Miller even drafted, but did not send, a cable informing the FBI of Almihdhar's visa. However, Rossini says he and Miller were instructed by a female CIA officer known as "Michael" and Blee's deputy, Tom Wilshire, to withhold the information.

 

Thursday, August 11 2011   -   Research/Evidence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 11, 2011
Published at Colorado911Visibility.org

Press Contact:
Robert Boutton
(323) 300-5376
www.SecrecyKills.com

In a never-before-seen interview, Richard Clarke, former White House Counterterror "Tsar" to Presidents Clinton and Bush, goes on record about what he believes happened at CIA in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, accusing then-CIA Director George Tenet and two of his deputies of deliberately not informing the White House, FBI, and Defense Department about two future hijackers inside U.S., then covering up from the 9/11 investigations. His comments air and stream Thursday, August 11, 2010 at 7 p.m. MDT on Colorado Public Television (CPT12) and simultaneously go live on SecrecyKills.com, along with CIA reaction.

News of the premiere set off attacks on Clarke from three of those he singled out. Tenet and former CIA officials Cofer Black and Richard Blee, chiefs of CounterTerrorist Center and Bin Laden Station respectively on 9/11, have issued a one-page joint statement to the producers calling Clarke's comments "reckless and profoundly wrong." Significantly, this is the only statement Blee has issued publicly since the intelligence failure of September 11th and, indeed, the first time his real name has been made public in the major media.

 

Wednesday, August 10 2011   -   Other Important News

July 23, 2011
By Kevin Zeese
October2011.org

October2011.org seeks to Stop the Machine and Create a New World. It can be done. Indeed, it must be done and now is the time to do it. The thousands who have joined October2011.org know the challenges we face but we also know that the disastrous direction the country is going is unacceptable. We have seen that the normal tools - elections, lobbying and education - do not work. The U.S. is facing a crisis on many fronts - economic, environmental and in foreign relations - and the government does not respond or even makes things worse.

We certainly understand the despair, lost hope and discouragement that many Americans feel about the U.S. political system. The system seems designed to make change impossible. We also see the power and sophistication of the corporate propaganda media machine. But, we also see people in the United States seeing through the propaganda, understanding the truth and getting angry. In every rebellion around the world that has occurred in the last year - from Egypt to Spain - the view that it can't be done, the people will not rise up would have been the belief of 95% of the population before it happened. Predicting the future is not as easy as it looks. There is a lot of evidence that the time may be right for an American Awakening. The past is not always the future.

The organizers of October2011.org are well aware of the challenges we face and aware of the power of the U.S. police forces to stamp out dissent. We have faced them before. We are developing contingency plans to deal with those issues. And, we know if the police remove us on the first day, October 6, we will come back in the days that follow with even more people. We will not give up. Indeed, in Spain on the first day, the police cleared out a few hundred people, and then they came back two days later with thousands more and stayed for a month. They continue to pressure the government with their indignant independent movement demanding real, fundamental change starting with real democracy, not the phony two party charade they encounter in Spain as we also do in the United States.

 

Wednesday, August 10 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

Thursday, August 11, 2011, 7:00 -9:30 PM (MDT), with an encore airing immediately following at 9:30 PM - 12:00 AM (MDT).

Live Streaming: Of special interest, Colorado Public Television (CPT12) will be streaming this live event at: http://www.cpt12.org/911pressfortruth. At this link, viewers can also view program details, join the discussion, and pledge support.

9/11 Press For Truth: Based in part on Paul Thompson's exhaustively researched book The Terror Timeline, published in 2004 by HarperCollins, the documentary follows three mothers from New Jersey who lost their husbands on September 11th, then led a group of victims' relatives calling themselves the 9/11 Families Steering Committee in a heart-rending battle with the White House for answers and accountability. For more on the film, see www.911pressfortruth.com.

Appearing live in the CPT12 studios: Shari Bernson of CPT12 and Leland Rucker of Free Speech TV will interview Director Ray Nowosielski, Co-Creator John Duffy, and author Paul Thompson. The presentation will also include the premiere of some brand new video clips from the filmmakers' latest project and a discussion by them of the newsworthy revelations therein.

CPT12 is the first PBS station to air content addressing issues of government transparency and accountability with regard to the events of 9/11. Their PBS premiere broadcast of "9/11 Press For Truth" in June 2009, with special in-studio guests Director Ray Nowosielski, Producer Kyle Hence, and victim's family member Bob McIlvaine, was a successful fundraiser not without controversy. The station received many viewer responses, pro and con, nationally and internationally.

 

Monday, August 8 2011   -   Get Involved

TORONTO, August 8, 2011 -- A decade after the events of September 11, 2001, which resulted in the immediate deaths of nearly 3,000 people on American soil, countless victims from toxic dust, and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, international hearings on this pivotal event will begin in Toronto in September.

The events of September 11 provided a pretext for a War on Terror that has led to military invasions and occupations, and attacks upon civil and human rights throughout the world. The credibility of the official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, carried out by the U.S. Government between 2003 and 2005, has been questioned by millions of citizens in the United States and abroad, including victim family members, expert witnesses and international legal experts.

To date, open and transparent judicial hearings to question the official evidence provided by the U.S. Government have never taken place in the United States or abroad. Similarly, no perpetrators of the events of September 11 have ever been brought to justice on American soil.

A group of international citizens has therefore undertaken to privately fund and cause these independent hearings to take place. Because of the global ramifications of the events of 9/11, the initiators of this inquest have opted to select an international location outside of the United States for these hearings to proceed. The city of Toronto, Canada was chosen as an ideal "international" location because of its proximity to New York, Washington and Shanksville (the crime scenes).

 

Monday, August 8 2011   -   Get Involved

by Carol Brouillet
August 6, 2011

As the ten-year anniversary approaches, the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance is organizing its annual 9/11 Truth Film Festival to be held on Thursday, September 8, beginning at 1:00 pm at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland, and on Sunday, September 11, beginning at 1:00 pm at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Speakers and filmmakers include former Senator Mike Gravel, director of Project Censored Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation Dr. Peter Phillips, sister of fallen firefighter David Weiss from Rescue One and founder of Unite in Peace Michele Little, author of Mounting Evidence Dr. Paul Rea, author of Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism Prof. Anthony J. Hall, author of Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rites of Passage From the Love of Power to the Power of Love Anodea Judith, author of World as Love, World as Self - Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal Joanna Macy, filmmakers Ken Jenkins and Brett Smith, and radio hosts Bonnie Faulkner from "Guns and Butter," Carol Brouillet from "Community Currency" and Sherry Glaser-Love from "Our House!" In addition to the films "Psywar: The Real Battlefield Is the Mind," "You, Me & the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule," "Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup," "Hypothesis: A Documentary about Prof. Stephen E. Jones," and "9/11: Explosive Evidence -- Experts Speak Out," there will be live streaming from 9/11 events in Toronto and Seattle.

The Toronto Hearings, sponsored by the International Center for 9/11 Studies, will be held at Ryerson University for four days beginning on September 8. These hearings will examine evidence for the inadequacy of the U.S. government's investigation and will request that a full and impartial investigation be launched into the events of 9/11, which have been used to initiate military invasions and to restrict the rights of citizens. The founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Erik Lawyer, is organizing ONE: The Event - Shifting from Fear to Love, a three-day event in Seattle designed to facilitate an individual and collective shift in consciousness, encouraging the choice of " love over fear, kindness over anger, and responsibility rather than blame."

9/11 Reclaiming the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future is a benefit for the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, whose purpose is to explore the truth and meaning behind the traumatic events of 9/11, to honor the dead and dying, and to share stories, insights and research about that day, the forgotten history that led up to it, and the decade that followed. Tickets are $10 ($7 for seniors, students, and low-income) at the door and are available in advance through the Grand Lake Theater website and for the Herbst event through the City Box Office.

 

Friday, August 5 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

Just one of the Legacies of 9/11

August 4, 2011
by Kevin Fenton
Boilingfrogs

Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time.

-President Bush, December 17, 2005

In the aftermath of 9/11, reams of newsprint were given over to discussing the CIA and FBI failures before the attacks; the agency had some of the hijackers under surveillance and allegedly lost them, the bureau was unable even to inform its own acting director of the Zacarias Moussaoui case. However, the USA's largest and most powerful intelligence agency, the National Security Agency, got a free ride. There was no outcry over its failings, no embarrassing Congressional hearings for its director. Yet, as we will see, the NSA's performance before 9/11 was shocking.

 

Tuesday, August 2 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

August 2nd, 2011
by Steven Aftergood
Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

The Senate Intelligence Committee rejected an amendment that would have required the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to confront the problem of "secret law," by which government agencies rely on legal authorities that are unknown or misunderstood by the public.

The amendment, proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall, was rejected on a voice vote, according to the new Committee report on the FY2012 Intelligence Authorization Act.

"We remain very concerned that the U.S. government's official interpretation of the Patriot Act is inconsistent with the public's understanding of the law," Senators Wyden and Udall wrote. "We believe that most members of the American public would be very surprised to learn how federal surveillance law is being interpreted in secret."

The Senators included dissenting remarks, along with the text of their rejected amendment, in the Committee report.

 

Tuesday, August 2 2011   -   Other Important News

By Nancy A. Youssef
August 1, 2011
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.

Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth.

"This is a good deal for defense when you probe under the numbers," said Lawrence Korb, a defense expert at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research center. "It's better than what the Defense Department was expecting."

 

Monday, August 1 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

By Noah Shachtman
July 28, 2011
Danger Room blog at Wired.com

ASPEN, Colorado -- Ground the U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Rethink the idea of spending billions of dollars to pursue al-Qaida. Forget chasing terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, unless the local governments are willing to join in the hunt.

Those aren't the words of some human rights activist, or some far-left Congressman. They're from retired admiral and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair -- the man who was, until recently, nominally in charge of the entire American effort to find, track, and take out terrorists. Now, he's calling for that campaign to be reconsidered, and possibly even junked.

Starting with the drone attacks. Yes, they take out some mid-level terrorists, Blair said. But they're not strategically effective. If the drones stopped flying tomorrow, Blair told the audience at the Aspen Security Forum, "it's not going to lower the threat to the U.S." Al-Qaida and its allies have proven "it can sustain its level of resistance to an air-only campaign," he said.

 

Monday, August 1 2011   -   Bigger Picture

Peter Dale Scott
August 1, 2011
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 9, Issue 31 No 1, August 1, 2011.

Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America's interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.¹ Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe.

U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations - from oil to geostrategic priorities - were also at work in both instances.

In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries - Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 - the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other's excesses as an excuse for intervention.

But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA's airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)² This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies.

The pattern of U.S. collaboration with Muslim fundamentalists against more secular enemies is not new. It dates back to at least 1953, when the CIA recruited right-wing mullahs to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran, and also began to cooperate with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.³ But in Libya in 2011 we see a more complex marriage of convenience between US and al-Qaeda elements: one which repeats a pattern seen in Bosnia in 1992-95, and Kosovo in 1997-98. In those countries America responded to a local conflict in the name of a humanitarian intervention to restrain the side committing atrocities. But in all three cases both sides committed atrocities, and American intervention in fact favored the side allied with al-Qaeda.

 

Wednesday, July 27 2011   -   First Responders/Health Effects

By Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Wednesday, July 27th 2011
New York Daily News

Image: Retired Firefighter Kenneth Specht said the exclusion of cancer as a disease covered by the Zadroga health act was "absolutely unacceptable". (Photo credit: Elisa Miller for News)

They sacrificed their bodies - and in some cases, their lives - for their noble work at Ground Zero, and now they and their loved ones feel abandoned.

Scores of first responders believe they contracted cancer due to the time they spent at the toxic World Trade Center site and are outraged the disease is being excluded from the new James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

"Every time we bury a New York City firefighter: Cancer. Cancer. Cancer," said retired Firefighter Kenneth Specht, who is battling thyroid cancer.

"How can that not be included? It's absolutely unacceptable."

 

Wednesday, July 27 2011   -   Editorials

July 27, 2011
by Lew Rockwell
TheDailyBell.com

The violence perpetuated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway unleashed the usual torrent of blaming anyone who might have influenced the murderer's thought. He was first described as a right-wing Christian -- a description designed to put a certain community on notice. As more evidence rolled in, he has been more accurately described as an anti-Islamic nationalist, but the tendency to pin this violence on any non-leftist is still there.

There were footnotes in his 1,500-page manifesto to many dozens of books and articles -- including a few published by the Mises Institute. Looking at the balance of his citations, however, it's clear that his main influence had nothing to do with libertarianism. His inspiration was a point of view reminiscent of American neoconservatism. He cited articles in this tradition -- particularly on the fear and hate of Islam -- far more often than any other.

So, does this violence discredit neoconservatism, as when then-President Clinton tried to blame libertarians and the "militia" movement for the Oklahoma bombing in 1995? The point of this game is to silence the opposition, shut down debate, and fundamentally discredit the body of ideas on which the violence can be blamed.

It's pretty much been this way since the ancient world. Governments can perpetuate violence in war and against the civilian population every day, but when a private person does the same for political reasons, a struggle ensues to see which line of thinking will pay what price.

The truth is that every political point of view can be twisted into a rationale for violence. If you think that the rich should be expropriated, there are generally two ways to bring this about: you and your friends can steal from the rich directly -- maybe killing some fat cats in the process -- or you can lobby Congress to do it for you.

The second method is preferred in a democratic society. When violence against person and property operates under the cover of the law, it is rarely called out for what it truly is. It is only when the legal cover is removed that the violence shocks and alarms us. But what about the morality of it all, whether we are speaking about private violence, the redistributionist state, or the war-making imperial state? In moral substance, they amount to the same thing.