In The
New Pearl Harbor, Griffin dares to ask a question
not taking up the slightest space (at least consciously)
in darkest corridors of the American psyche: "Is
complicity by US officials the best explanation for 9-11?"
As Griffin writes, once the dust settled the New York
Times had the presence of mind to write, "One
year later, the public knows less about the circumstances
of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight
than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic."
Of course,
this gaping hole in our understanding was directly due
to the fact that President Bush had personally resisted
the appointment of a 9-11 commission, using the plum ridiculous
excuse that it would be a "distraction from the war
on terrorism," i.e. the drumbeat of "whodunit"
might beat louder than the war cry "Iraq or Die."
So the crime scene was treated as rubble to be removed
and scrap to be sold, and the people of this great country,
who deserve to know what happened that day, continue to
know less about the crime of the century than they know
about a shipwreck in the Atlantic almost a hundred years
ago.
The Scale
of Complicity
Does this example bespeak of conspiracy, collusion,
or simply cover-up of some sort of crime? In order to delineate
the subtle nuances of such claims, Griffin offers a "scale
of complicity." As readers examine the abundant 9-11
evidence he provides, they can personally decide which step
in a progression of Bush administration involvement that
particular evidence might support. Following is a concise
articulation of Griffin's attempt to clarify what us conspiracy
nuts might mean when we allege "official complicity":
1.
Construction of a False Account. The view
that US officials played no role in facilitating the attacks
and did not expect them, but constructed a false account
of what really happened, perhaps for reasons of national
security, the embarrassment factor, or to exploit the
attacks to enact their own agenda.
2.
Something Expected by Intelligence Agencies.
The view that although they had no specific information
about the attacks in advance, some intelligence agencies
did expect some attacks to occur and did nothing to prevent
them.
3.
Specific Events Expected by Intelligence Agencies.
The view that intelligence agencies (but not the White
House) had specific information about the timing and targets
of the attacks.
4.
Intelligence Agencies Involved in Planning.
The view that intelligence agencies (but not the White
House) actively participated in the attacks.
5.
Pentagon Involved in Planning. The view
that the Pentagon (but not the White House) actively participated
in the attacks.
6.
Something Expected by the White House.
The view that the White House expected some sort of attacks
and did nothing to stop them.
7.
Specific Advanced Knowledge by the White House.
The view that the Bush Administration had specific foreknowledge
of the events, including targets and timing.
8.
White House Involved in Planning. The
view that the Bush Administration itself was a party to
planning the attacks.
 |
Griffin
goes on to illustrate what he refers to as a "strong
prima facie case for official complicity" based
on evidence obtained from the following sources: Eric
Hufschmid (Painful Questions, reviewed here),
Peter Meyer ("The World Trade Center Demolition"),
Thomas Eager ("Why Did the World Trade Center
Collapse?"), Jeff King ("The WTC Collapse"),
Paul Thompson ("9-11 Timeline") and Thierry
Meyssan's missile theory, among other sources. Although
the book covers many more topics, a discussion of
a few of those will suffice here. |
Standard
Operating Procedure
As Griffin states, "In light of standard
operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes,
none of these planes should have reached its target, let
alone all three of them." He outlines standard operating
procedure in the event of a hostile takeover of an airplane,
guidelines long in effect from when airplane hijackings
were fairly routine. Loss of radio contact and transponder
signals would have set wheels in motion at the FAA. The
controller would immediately contact National Military
Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon and the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which would have scrambled
(sent) jets immediately. According to NORAD, it takes
about a minute for the FAA to contact NORAD and it takes
NORAD a matter of minutes to dispatch military jets anywhere
in the US. An F-15 can move from "scramble order"
to 29,000 feet in 2.5 minutes and can fly at 1,850 nautical
miles per hour. Accordingly, Flight 11 could have been
intercepted by 8:24, no later than 8:30, a full sixteen
minutes before it wound up crashing into the WTC.
So where was
pre-emptive "purple American fury" on the morning
of 9-11? Major Mike Snyder of NORAD said no fighters were
scrambled until the Pentagon was hit. In addition, while
interviewing Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press,"
Tim Russert expressed surprise that jets were not scrambled
in time to protect the Pentagon, when there was knowledge
about the first hijacking at 8:20. Cheney did not dispute
this statement. As Griffin points out, it requires "no
command from on high" for fighter jets to be scrambled
in a suspected airline hijacking; however, it does require
such a command for them not to be scrambled (i.e., a "stand
down" order).
In fact, it
was learned in June 2004 that NORAD was confused, delayed
and distracted on the morning of 9-11 by numerous preplanned
war games drills. On that morning, NORAD radar screens
reportedly showed up to 22 hijacked planes, and it had
been briefed to expect as many radar blips as part of
the exercise drills. Who was in charge of these drills?
Dick Cheney. (This is a #8 on the scale of complicity.)
Griffin also
concludes that Flight 93 may have been shot down. At 9:58,
as the passengers tried to gain control of the craft,
a passenger talking on her cell to her husband indicated
a group had forced their way into the cockpit. Her husband
heard a "whooshing sound, a sound like wind."
Another passenger, just before losing phone contact, reported
an explosion and white smoke. The last thing heard on
the cockpit recorder, according to the associated press,
was the sound of wind, suggesting the plane had been holed.
Evidence suggests Flight 93 was shot down by a missile
after it seemed the passengers had gained control of it.
As we now know, from his bunker inside Raven Rock, Dick
Cheney's command superseded the orders of the Pentagon,
the FAA or the White House. (This is unquestionably a
#8.)
The
Demolition Theory
In Painful Questions, An Analysis of
the September 11th Attack, Eric Hufschmid performs
a methodical analysis of multiple pictures and video
of the collapse of the towers, testing the physical
plausibility of the official explanation - now known
as the "Pancake Theory" - against something
we used to know as "Reality." As Hufschmid
explains, the credibility of the official theory hinges
on how hot the fires were in the towers and how long
the fires continued to heat the steel beams. Thomas
Eager, engineer from MIT (and arbiter of the official
theory), has argued that the massive steel beams in
the towers could only have collapsed if they were
heated to the point where they lost 80% of their strength.
This feat would require very large fires applied to
the steel beams for a considerable length of time
to heat them to about 1300 degrees F. Hufschmid shows
many pictures of the towers, in none of which are
great flames leaping from the buildings. Indeed, according
to Hufschmid, dark smoke and lack of flames indicate
the fires were suffocating. |
|
Hufschmid's
analysis of this baffling trial by fire is a must-read
for anyone trying to understand this first event in history:
the collapse and disintegration of not one steel building
by fire, but three on the same day! He shows that large
pieces of the towers along with pulverized concrete were
ejected horizontally 150 feet. If the towers were simply
pancaking, why would the pieces be so forcefully ejected?
In fact, 100,000 tons of concrete from each tower was
pulverized to a fine powder. Where did this energy come
from? Certainly not, he illustrates, from concrete slabs
bumping into each other at 20 or 30 mph. Hufschmid concludes
that the airplane strikes alone could not have succeeded
in causing three steel framed buildings to collapse.
Hufschmid
reports that pieces of steel beams "melted and vaporized"
not only due to supposed heat but due to a "corrosive
contaminant … released in the fires." The FEMA
report noted that "the severe corrosion and erosion
of samples" was an "unusual event." FEMA
also could find no clear explanation for the source of
the sulfur it found on two of the structural steel samples.
The New York Times noted in a Feb. 2002 article,
"no fire in any of the buildings was believed to
be hot enough to melt steel outright." The article
referred to this as the "deepest mystery." Hufschmid
demystifies it for us, but the answer causes most of us
to do the ostrich thing. It certainly does feel better
to see no evil; unfortunately, it's not the way to solve
a crime and nobody has yet argued that this was not a
crime scene.
As Hufschmid
drives home again and again, fire will not affect steel
unless exposed for a long enough period of time to penetrate
the steel. The more massive the beams, the longer time
is needed. In fact, fire has never in history caused a
steel structure to collapse. As Hufschmid reports, the
fire in the South Tower was insignificant in comparison
to a fire in an office building ten years earlier, at
One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia. FEMA wrote in its
report on that fire, "despite extraordinary exposure
the [steel] columns continued to support their loads."
 |
How did a
56-minute fire bring down a steel building like the South
Tower? Why did the North Tower stand for twice as long
with a larger fire? Why did Building 7 collapse at the
end of the day, as a finale to the whole event? Is it
the questions that are painful, or is it the conclusions
we must finally face that are painful? As Hufschmid concludes,
judging by the high temperature of the rubble five days
after the collapse, it appears that explosives were used.
Who wanted that building to come down? Were New York officials
complicit in some way too?
Hufschmid
analyzes videos that show that the South Tower collapsed
in ten seconds and the North Tower in eight seconds. This
means that pieces of the North Tower fell as fast as objects
free-fall through air without hitting any obstacles. He
asks, how did massive steel beams fall through 100 floors
without slowing down? Hufschmid's painful answer: explosives
were used to implode the building, and seismographs and
eyewitness evidence back up the Demolition Theory.
Many witnesses,
including firemen, reported hearing, feeling or witnessing
effects of explosions. As each tower was collapsing, seismographs
21 miles away at Columbia University recorded a 2.1 magnitude
earthquake beginning at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 magnitude quake
at 10:28:31. The shocks increased in the first five seconds,
dropped to a lower level for about 3 seconds and slowly
tapered off. Hufschmid suggests this is evidence of a
demolition controlled by a computer program, which worked
its way down the building. Hufschmid charges that Building
7 in the WTC complex, which inexplicably toppled at the
end of the day, was the command center for the computerized
demolition.
The Hijackers
In one section, Hufschmid suggests the planes were
being controlled remotely or were following a homing signal.
One strong point backing up this theory is that it doesn't
necessitate "expert" pilots, a fact that has come
to light regarding some of these flight school attendants.
In fact, the Remote Control Theory doesn't require Middle
Eastern kamikaze hijackers at all, although the story is
quite a bit more exciting once it's dressed up with turbans
and an "evil" anti-Christian religious doctrine.
On the other
hand, Mohamed Atta, alleged 9-11 ringleader and alleged
pilot of the first plane to hit the WTC, was indeed an
experienced pilot. In fact, he had already obtained pilot's
licenses from six other countries prior to his arrival
in America. So, what was he doing at a beginner's flying
school? Was it all part of his cover, the setting up of
a convenient paper trail? This is just one of several
facts about grim-faced Atta that don't fit the official
9-11 theory.
These facts
and more have been exposed by investigative reporter Daniel
Hopsicker in Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta &
the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida. You see, Hopsicker
did something unusual. He actually studied the early media
accounts, particularly the local Florida reporting, of
Atta and the flight school he attended, Huffman Aviation.
Then he did lots of legwork, and tracked down credible
eyewitnesses who actually knew or had seen Mohamed Atta
and his associates prior to 9-11.
 |
Mohamed
Atta: Party Animal
The picture of Atta diverges quite sharply
from the official "lone group of Islamic fundamentalists"
line. In fact, some of the scenarios sound like something
from a late-night comedy skit: Atta living with a
"lingerie model" and stripper with spiky
pink hair, Amanda Keller; Atta hanging out in a lime-green
Speedo by the apartment pool; Atta being groped by
a drag-queen in Key West; Atta listening to "Beastie
Boys" CDs; Atta getting wasted on Stoli vodka
and rum and Cokes; Atta in a three-day cocaine and
booze binge; and Atta eating pork chops. All in all,
not your typical Islamic fundamentalist. |
This gets
to the fundamental, if you will, question of who attacked
America and why. As Hopsicker suggests, "The idea
that the 9-11 attack stemmed directly from fanatic Islamic
fundamentalism might have been 'rendered inoperative'
if Atta's hijinks had surfaced…" One possibility
that Hopsicker doesn't consider is that the hijackers
were in fact raised as Islamic fundamentalists, and their
behavior changed because they were let loose among the
temptations of America knowing that they did not have
long to live.
More serious
than Atta the party animal is Atta's extensive pilot's
training. Hopsicker speculates that Atta's status as a
"foreign flight student" may have "merely
been a 'legend,' or 'cover' story, that allowed him to
move freely around the United States while engaged in
activities not limited to coordinating and readying the
9-11 attack." Also problematic to the official theory
are: his travels to Newark, Las Vegas, Miami, Boston,
Prague, and Madrid, prior to 9-11; and his meetings with
various German and Swiss nationals, some of whom flew
in just to meet with him. After the meeting, according
to Amanda Keller, "everybody was somber-looking and
kind of quiet." Kind of the way people might appear
after discussing the mass murder of thousands of people,
or their own impending deaths?
In addition,
Atta's six months in Venice, Florida, including his presence
just weeks before the attacks, has inexplicably been left
out of his official FBI bio. Indeed, Hopsicker does a
good job of documenting a very clear FBI cover-up - a
pattern of unacknowledged facts - and the intimidation
of witnesses into silence. That is, several witnesses
whose stories didn't fit the official line told Hopsicker
of FBI efforts to pressure them into silence. Another
inconvenient fact that has gone largely unspoken is the
fact that Atta regularly used two airports that have been
linked to various covert ops for the past forty years.
Naturally,
one might ask whether Keller and the other witnesses Hopsicker
spoke with are credible. In this writer's view, their
stories do have the ring of truth. Not only do they tend
to corroborate each other, but certain aspects (such as
Atta's strip clubbing and living with Keller) have been
confirmed by other sources. Also, there would seem to
be little financial motive for them to lie, since Hopsicker
clearly lacks the financial resources and national recognition
of, say, the National Enquirer. Indeed, this raises the
question of why the tabloids didn't jump all over Keller's
story ("My Sex and Drug Orgies with Mohamed Atta").
Did the tabloids simply have a momentary lapse of good
taste? Or are they in the business of promoting only government-approved
sensationalism?
Links
to the U.S. Military
Another fact about Mohamed Atta that's been covered-up:
He was part of an e-mail discussion list devoted to Middle
Eastern issues. One would think the authorities would have
given the list a lot of scrutiny, especially considering
the fact that several of the names on Atta's list appear
to have been, or still are, employees of U.S. defense contractors.
Then again, perhaps this is why the list has not received
much scrutiny.
Speaking of
military contractors, we have the strange case of Maryem
Bedoui, a 21-year old Tunisian who was attending a Florida
flight school at the same time as hijackers Atta and Al-Shehhi
(albeit a different school). Two weeks before 9-11, she
made an unauthorized nighttime landing at a Lockheed Martin
airstrip near Orlando. Lockheed is of course a major U.S.
defense contractor. She had run out of gas, she explained
at her deportation hearing. She also acknowledged being
friends with one of Mohamed Atta's roommates, but denied
any involvement in the 9-11 plot.
Then there's
the fact, confirmed by several media reports, that Atta
and up to seven of the alleged 9-11 hijackers had received
flight training at secure U.S. military installations.
They had done so as part of a pilot training exchange
program between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. This fact actually
supports the official version of events, in that it explains
how the terrorist pilots were skilled enough to complete
their missions without the need for remote controls or
homing devices. On the other hand, it opens up a large
can of worms. How high did the terrorists' connections
go in the Saudi government? Just how "radical"
and "fundamentalist" were the hijackers, considering
that they had been selected by the Saudis and approved
by the U.S. for a military exchange program? Why were
flight students "with Saudi affiliations" allowed
to enter the U.S. with "only cursory background checks,
and sometimes none," according to a Florida flight
instructor quoted by Hopsicker.
Indeed, Mohamed
Atta seemed to have a thing for exchange programs. Hopsicker
reveals that Atta had been part of "an elite international
'exchange' program run by a little-known private organization
which has close ties to powerful American political figures
like David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger." The
American/German "Congress-Bundestag Program"
picked up the tab for trips Atta made to Cairo, Istanbul,
and Syria in 1994-1995. Hopsicker even suggests that Atta
assumed an "Islamic fundamentalist pose" prior
to his visit to Cairo, perhaps as a way to infiltrate
the world of Islamic fundamentalists. After reading Hopsicker's
Welcome to Terrorland, Mohamed Atta looks less
like a disgruntled terrorist and more like an international
undercover intelligence operative.
9-11 and
Covert Ops
All in all, Hopsicker makes a strong case that 9-11
was more than the work of a lone cadre of Islamic fundamentalists.
First, Atta and his crew simply did not behave like Islamic
fundamentalists. Second, rather than being a disgruntled
loner, Atta traveled "in some very interesting circles,"
was connected to the Saudi elite, and may have even been
a spy. Hopsicker also points to tantalizing possible connections
between the alleged terrorists and the U.S. military,
U.S. defense contractors, and even various CIA operatives.
Likewise, he suggests that German and Swiss nationals
may have been involved in the plot.
 |
Hopsicker's
work as an investigator is first-rate, and he provides
lots of new dots to connect. He himself, however,
does not do much dot connecting. In other words,
he does a good job of poking holes in the official
theory, but devotes very little space to articulating
his own alternative theory. The closest he comes
is in two sentences, when he asks, "Could the
CIA have been running a covert operation in Venice
[FL]? Training pilots for Osama bin laden, in an
effort to penetrate his organization, that somehow
had gone horribly wrong?" Perhaps, though this
theory - that 9-11 was carried out by radical Islamics
who "double crossed" their American handlers
- essentially fits the official theory, and implies
that 9-11 really did take the government by surprise.
(On Griffin's scale of complicity, this would be
a #1 or #2.)
Even
if it wasn't a CIA front, Huffman Aviation, which
trained at least five of the alleged 9-11 terrorists
including Mohamed Atta, appeared to benefit from
some sort of high-level government connections.
In fact, co-owner Wally Hilliard was a friend of
Bill Clinton. "Wally knew Clinton well,"
confirmed one former employee, "Clinton called
Wally a couple of times when I was there."
Furthermore, local law enforcement sources told
Hopsicker that they were told to "stay away
from that operation." When a competitor tried
to report various infractions by Huffman's owner
to the FAA, he was told by an FAA representative,
"I suggest you back out of this." Most
notably, the FBI seemed strangely uninterested in
the fact that Huffman and other area flight schools
had experienced an increase in Arab flight students. |
As the Washington Post reported, "Federal
authorities have been aware for years that suspected terrorists
with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight training
at schools in the United States." So, why wasn't
anything done? Were investigations quashed, due to Saudi
influence or Hilliard's political connections? Or was
the FBI reluctant to meddle in CIA-protected turf? A former
Huffman executive told Hopsicker flatly, "Early on
I gleaned that these guys [the 9-11 hijackers] had Government
protection. … They were let into this country for
a specific purpose. It was a business deal."
The fact that
Atta was seen meeting with Huffman co-owner Rudi Dekkers
less than a month before the 9-11 attacks - a meeting
the FBI and Dekkers deny took place - deepens the mystery,
as does the fact that Huffman's hangar at the Venice Airport
had been used to maintain aircraft owned by a notorious
CIA proprietary company, Caribe Air. Also conspicuous
is the fact that in 2003, Dekkers and another Dutch national
whose flight school happened to train some of the hijackers
were both nearly killed in separate air crashes.
By investigating
just two aspects of 9-11, Mohamed Atta and the flight
school he attended, Daniel Hopsicker has managed to poke
significant holes in the official story. The failure of
the combined investigatory resources of the Executive
Branch and Congress to uncover and deal with the facts
and questions Hopsicker raises goes beyond mere incompetence.
It smacks of a cover-up. The logical question, then, is
what is being covered up? The possibilities have to do
with the involvement of the United States and foreign
governments with the 9-11 hijackers. If such involvement
was limited to pre-9-11 associations, then the goal of
the cover-up would be to avoid political embarrassment.
However, if such involvement extended to government knowledge
of and even participation in the 9-11 plot, the stakes
would be much higher.
This takes
us back to Griffin's scale of complicity. Did the White
House simply "construct a false account" (#1),
did certain entities have specific knowledge (#2-5), or
did stand-down orders facilitate the event (#6-8)? Indeed,
Griffin discusses in detail the baffling behavior of the
president, concluding that it "reinforces the conclusion
that government and military officials at the highest
level had advance knowledge of, and conspired to allow,
the traumatic events of that day." (This would be
#8. Are we getting the hang of it now?)
Anyone who
tries to assert government involvement in 9-11 is classified
as that most maligned of all social animals: a "conspiracy
theorist"! Of all the ridiculous things, who knew
something as flaccid as the "Pancake Theory"
would finally usher in the New World Order? Notably, for
those still at a loss for a motive for Bush administration
collusion in (what's to them a mere) 3,000 deaths, The
New Pearl Harbor includes a discussion of a document
called "Vision for 2020," the sole aim of which
is to "protect American investments abroad"
(as well as in outer space).
When this
oil-soaked regime finally achieves their corporate capitalist
militarist global agenda, they will no longer be our leaders.
The difference is simply another scale: They'll be our
Overlords.
References
Griffin, David
Ray, The New Pearl Harbor, Disturbing Questions about
the Bush Administration and 9-11, InterlinkBooks.com,
2004.
Hopsicker,
Daniel, Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta &
the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida, The Mad Cow Press,
2004, www.madcowprod.com.
Hufschmid,
Eric, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September
11th Attack, www.erichufschmid.net/PainfulQuestionsBook.html,
2002.
