My Pet Goat: Lancing The Neo-Con Whitewash of  911

Tip of the Iceberg: A Few Unresolved Questions:

Was Ramzi Yousef  the Link to Oklahoma City?

Lance: They Knew

911 Commission: Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop?

Fox-Chicken Coop Revisited

Richard Mintner, Neo-Con Cover-up Artist

Recommended Reading: Peter Lance

FBI Torpedos Nancy Floyd

Conclusion: We Don’t Need the Patriot Act

 May 18, 2005
 IMC version 1.1

OK, so you read the 911 Report. Interesting reading, isn’t it?

It tells you that the 911 plot was hatched in 1996...WRONG.

As wrong as the statement that Saddam imported  aluminum tubes for use as centrifuges to enrich Uranium.

As wrong as the statement that Iraq tried to import yellowcake uranium.

The pattern of Bush administration disinformation is not restricted to the build up to the invasion of Iraq. It pervaded the post- 911 period and can only be considered a white wash.

Tip of the Iceberg: Just A Few Unresolved Questions:

The mysterious collapse of Building Seven has never been addressed. Putatively, it was neither struck by a plance, nor by burning debris, so, why did it go down?

Bush was allowed to redact at least 28 pages of the severely flawed Congressional Report, which focused on the post-1998 period, conveniently ignoring the events from 1989 forward and Bush’s father. What are they covering up?

The administration fought tooth and nail against the 911 Commission, and when they finally caved, Bush insisted on testifying off the record, in chamber, with Cheney holding his hand. He also fought testimony from Condolezzi Rice, and surrounded the PDR with secrecy, for reasons obvious to all.

The two F-16’s on the National Reconnaisance exercise were in the air on September 11 . Why were they not used to interdict the flights?

Why did the 911 report fail to mention that fact, despite hearing sworn testimony to that effect?

Spending on the Columbia shuttle accident: $50 Million. Eight People Died.

Spending on the 911 Commission:$ 14 Million. Three Thousand People Died.

Asks Lance: Where are the priorities?

Was Ramzi Yousef  the Link to Oklahoma City?

Ramzi Yousef, who was behind the first WTC bombing in 1993, apparently, through his uncle, KSM, ordered the bombing of TWA 800 from his prison cell in order to effect a mistrial in his own terror bombing case. Yet the Justice Department ruled the crash an accident

Who was Ramzi Yousef? None other than the nephew of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, one of the architects of the September 11 attack

According to respected journalist Peter Lance, the plot was hatched two years earlier, in the mind of Ramzi Yousef, who has mysterious and suggestive links to Timothy McVeigh.

 Timothy McVeigh is said to have traveled to the Phillipines, as did the 911-linked Ramzi Yousef. Did Yousef help McVeigh with the Oklahoma City bombing?

Now, I know what you are thinking. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, right?

Well...even paranoids have real enemies. And there has been a web of conspiracies, with the common thread being the sweeping of failures of the Bush administration right under the rug.

Lance: They Knew

Peter Lance was one of the first voices outspoken about the notorious Presidential Daily Briefing which warned of the pending terrorist attacks. Lance, who worked with The Jersey Girls, without whom the investigation never would have occurred,  found it  “reprehensible that Bush administration would obstruct the investigation which pertains directly to US security…and they’re stonewalling at every turn”

Numerous warnings to the US government of the pending attacks, of which the famous PDR is only the tip of the iceberg.

After Ramzi Yousef was captured in February 1995 when his Manila bomb factory went up in smoke. Colonel Rodolfo B. Mendoza, the “Richard Clarke of the Philippines”, found out about the 911 plot and delivered it to the US embassy in Manila, where it was promptly ignored.

The PDR, five weeks before 911, disclosed that Bin Laden intended a US attack. And it was known as early as 1989, from the Dagger Fatwah, that Bin Laden intended to free the Blind Shiek.

It should be pretty obvious why Bush tried to cover up the notorious PDR.

911 Commission: Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop?

Dietrich Snell was a co-prosecutor of Yousef in the Fourty Eight Hours of Terror case and he also  ran the 9/11 Commission team that wrote Staff Statement #16 on the origin of the 9/11 plot.  Looks to me like the Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop. In Lance’s words, “As I saw it, he should have been a witness before the 9/11 Commission, vs. one of its lead interrogators.”

Again, quoting Lance:

“Snell took the position that the plot was not hatched by Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 1994 (as I had found) but by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed alone in 1996. The Commission even implied that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was not a member of al Qaeda at the time.

This was absolutely ridiculous since Yousef, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Murad, Shah, Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and a dozen other New York based cell members had been part of an active al Qaeda funded cell operating in New York City since the early 1990’s. In fact the FBI had many of them under surveillance as early as July of 1989.”

Source: TWA Flight 800 and the 9/11 Commission Cover Up: An Interview With Peter Lance
by Claire E. White (September, 2004)

Fox-Chicken Coop Revisited

Incidentally, Lance found out that his interviewer for the 911 Commission would be Snell from none other than staff director Philip Zelikow -  who just so happened to have had co-written a book with Condi Rice, was on the National Security Council and had served on the Bush transition team!

The FDNY Hero Who Had It Right

A member of the NYC Fire Department with background in military intelligence collared a co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombings, yet the FBI  did not follow up on his leads. That fireman died on September 11, 2001.

Richard Mintner, Neo-Con Cover-up Artist

OK, so maybe you still have questions. With the helter skelter of theories out there, where should you turn, who should you read?

If you are looking for information, I suggest you skip the books of Richard Mintner. He is, flatly,  a coverup artist  for the neocons.

He  wrote a book called Losing Bin Laden:How Losing Bin Laden : How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror.

Former ABC correspondent Peter Lance called him on that on his neocon lapdog status in a debate mc'd by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. 

Mintner quickly backed down, and claimed his second book would be "Bush's Secret War" as if it would balance the scale. But actually the book was released as Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.

Big Difference.

Clinton losing; Bush winning.

Sounds like hack partisanship to me.

Oh – one other detail – Clinton has OK’d the release of all of his papers to the 911 commission – Full Disclosure.

The Bush administration did nothing but try to stop all investigation.

 You do the math.

Recommended Reading

 Peter Lance, on the other hand, is a journalist of the highest caliber, A five-time Emmy-award winning investigative reporter and former ABC News correspondent.

A five-time Emmy winner, Columbia graduate and former ABC  correspondent, Lance  correctly questions the received wisdom of three Presidencies- starting with Bush the Elder - and exposes mishandling of terrorism cases by the  New York  Office of FBI.

As Lance points out, the first incident of OBL-associated terrorism was  the killing of Meyer. Kahane in Manhattan on November 5, 1990. Despite having surveileed Nosair and linking him to jihadists, the FBI and NYPD  dropped the ball, prosecuting it as a run of the mill felony and ignoring its ties to international terrorism.

FBI Torpedos Nancy Floyd

Meanwhile, FBI agent Nancy Floyd recruited Ammad Salem who infiltrated the Sheik's cell as it plotted 12 bombings in  locations around NYC. Lance exposes how her superiors at the FBI undercut the investigation and Salem was sent packing. His last words: Don't call me when the bombs go off.

They did, and they did. The bombs went off, and Salem was brought back in. But it cost, dearly.

If you want to find out what is going on, read Peter Lance and ignore the neo con spinmeisters.

Conclusion: We Don’t Need the Patriot Act

Lance points out that the Patriot Act is not required.  He demonstrates that the governement had all of the laws it needed to prevent September 11, and they screwed up. And many of the failure occured during the Presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush.

© 2005 Jeremy Ellington