BOOK REVIEW

9-11 and Peculiar Behavior
A review of the best three books on 9-11

by Joan d’Arc and Al Hidell

This day will go down in history as the day fate convened, buildings pancaked, steel beams sizzled and NORAD didn't scramble. And what happened pre-9-11 is just as weird.

The slogan "The New Pearl Harbor" is much more than just a hackneyed media catchphrase indicating that America had been attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001, and a massive military response was in order. The expression is loaded with hidden meaning.

True, Henry Kissinger wrote on 9/11/01, "the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended - with the destruction of the system responsible for it." Time magazine called for "a unified Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury." Yet, the most chilling reference came directly from Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. in 2000 when they asserted that a global expansion of the military would not be possible "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

Does this pre-9-11 use of the slogan suggest White House foreknowledge of the event and complicity in some form? David Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor opens many cans of worms we might not want to open, for squirming in those rusty old cans is an historical fact Griffin doesn’t quite put into words: Did Roosevelt have advance warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that catalyzed America's participation in the second world war? Reading The New Pearl Harbor brings to mind the words of Hartford Van Dyke, author of The Skeleton in Uncle Sam's Closet, who recently wrote in a letter to Paranoia:

"I was born June 4, 1940, at Honolulu, Hawaii. My father’s uncle, Gerald Mason Van Dyke, in G-2 intelligence, sent the warning message about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Thursday afternoon, 2 PM, December 4, 1941, from Honolulu, Hawaii. The message was received by Rear Admiral Paulus Prince Powell in Washington, D. C. Powell relayed the message to Knox and Forrestal, who then wanted to get the U.S. fleet out of Pearl Harbor and put a defense perimeter around the Hawaiian Islands. Knox told Stimson. Stimson told Roosevelt. Roosevelt had Knox, Forrestal and Powell put under military guard and held at gunpoint until after the Pearl Harbor attack, for which there had been 66 hours forewarning." ("The Van Dyke Letters," paranoiamagazine.com)

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. P

 

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.