"By the time Bush received his briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had begun to stand down from the alert"
Before Sept. 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
Washington Post, 17 May 2002

"On September 11 America was wholly unprepared for an attack on its own soil. These two pilots - with call signs 'Duff and Nasty' - were the first to be scrambled on news planes were being hijacked. Yet incredibly there were just four fighter planes on standby in the north eastern United States."
Gavin Hewitt, BBC News  - Video report
BBC Online, (Real Video) 29 August 2002

"If, as has been reported, some of the terrorists used the names by which intelligence agencies knew them, the attacks could have been disrupted, perhaps completely defeated, simply by requiring all airlines to deny them boarding and report their reservations to law enforcement agencies. "
Cathal Flynn
FAA Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security 1993 - 2000
9/11 Commission, Seventh Public Hearing

"Reprising the scene in the White House on 9/11, [head of counter terrorism  Richard] Clarke says he took a call from Dale Watson, the FBI's counterterrorism chief. 'We got the passenger manifests from the airlines,' Watson said. 'We recognize some names, Dick. They're al-Qaida.' Clarke recalled: 'I was stunned, not that the attack was al-Qaida but that there were al-Qaida operatives on board aircraft using names that FBI knew were al-Qaida.' Watson told Clarke that 'CIA forgot to tell us about them.'"
Truth as a Weapon
New York Times, 25 March 2004

"The CIA had information about three of the Sept. 11 hijackers at least 20 months before the attacks occurred but failed to pass the information on to other agencies, a congressional investigator said on Friday.....By the time the suspected hijackers entered Malaysia, the CIA knew al-Mihdhar's name, passport number, and birth information, and that he had a U.S. multiple-entry visa issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia...."
CIA Knew About 3 Hijackers 20 Months Before 911 Attacks
Reuters, 20 Sept 2002

"In a further interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio Springmann revealed more of his claim of a CIA operation which has brought large numbers of people from the middle east to the US, issuing them visas and training them to be terrorists. According to Springmann some of the September 11 bombers were granted US entry visas via the US consulate in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] facilitated through arrangements made by the CIA (additionally Newsweek reported 15 September [2001] FBI information suggesting that 'five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.' ). Springmann suggests that those who died on September 11 may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives. In this respect the French newspaper Le Figaro reported last year that the CIA had met with bin Laden in Dubai in July 2001 and made no attempt to arrest him."
Finishing the Jigsaw Puzzle - Did Sept 11 victims die for Enron?
'Fight Smart' - 8 March 2002

"This Joint Inquiry confirmed that these same two future hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had numerous contacts with a long time FBI counterterrorism informant in California and that a third future hijacker, Hani Hanjour, apparently had more limited contact with the same informant. In mid- to late-2000, the CIA already had information indicating that al-Mihdhar had a multiple entry U.S. visa and that al-Hazmi had in fact traveled to Los Angeles, but the two had not been watchlisted and information suggesting that two suspected terrorists could well be in the United States had not yet been given to the FBI. The San Diego FBI field office, which handled the informant in question, did not receive that information or any of the other intelligence information pertaining to al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, prior to September 11, 2001. As a result, the FBI missed the opportunity to task a uniquely well-positioned informant -- who denies having any advance knowledge of the plot --- to collect information about the hijackers and their plans within the United States.... During one of their last contacts, al-Hazmi advised the informant that he was moving to Arizona to attend flight training, but the informant did not advise the FBI of this information until after the September 11 attacks.... When the FBI’s San Diego field office determined after the attacks that a long-time FBI counterterrorism informant had had numerous contacts in 2000 with two of the September 11 hijackers, personnel there were immediately suspicious about whether the informant was involved in the plot. Subsequently, however, all of the field office personnel, including senior managers and various case agents, concluded that the informant was unwitting of, and had no role in, the September 11 plot... Several questions remain, however, with regard to the informant’s credibility.... the informant told the FBI that the hijackers did nothing to arouse the informant’s suspicion, but the informant also acknowledged that al-Hazmi had contacts with at least four individuals the informant knew were of interest to the FBI and about whom the informant had previously reported to the FBI. Third, the informant has made numerous inconsistent statements to the FBI during the course of interviews after September 11, 2001... In its November 18, 2002 written response to the Joint Inquiry, the FBI has acknowledged that there are 'significant inconsistencies' in the informant’s statements about these contacts. The FBI investigation regarding this issue is continuing.... The Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s efforts to interview the informant in order to attempt to resolve those inconsistencies. The Administration also would not agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on the informant... What is clear, however, is that the informant’s contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the Intelligence Community’s best chance to unravel the September 11 plot. Given the CIA’s failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, intelligence information on the significance and location of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 –
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
24 July 2003

"I, myself, still have two key questions today that I believe are important for this committee to answer. The detailed answers to them will deserve, and be afforded, the scrutiny of a nation, and must stand the test of time and exhaustive investigation. First, if the CIA passed information regarding Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi to the FBI prior to the June 11, 2001 meeting - in either January 2000 or January 2001 - then why was that information not passed, either by CIA or FBI Headquarters personnel, immediately to the New York case agents, criminal or 'Intel', investigating the murder of 17 sailors in Yemen when more information was requested? A simple answer of 'The Wall' [between intelligence and criminal cases] is unacceptable. Second, how and when did we, the CIA and the FBI, learn that Al-Mihdhar came into the country on either or both occasions, in January 2000 and/or in July 2001 and what did we do with the information?"
Statement for the Record of Special Agent, New York Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation
on Joint Inquiry into the Events of September 11, 2001
Before the Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives
20 September 2002

"On July 10, 2001, an FBI Phoenix field office agent sent an 'Electronic Communication' to four individuals in the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) and two individuals in the Usama Bin Ladin Unit (UBLU) at FBI Headquarters, and to two agents on International Terrorism squads in the FBI New York field office. In the communication, the agent expressed his concerns, based on his first-hand knowledge, that there was a coordinated effort underway by Bin Ladin to send students to the United States for civil aviation-related training. He noted that there was an 'inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest' in this type of training in Arizona and expressed his suspicion that this was an effort to establish a cadre of individuals in civil aviation who would conduct future terrorist activity. The Phoenix agent’s communication requested that FBI Headquarters consider implementing four recommendations... However, the FBI Headquarters personnel did not take the action requested by the Phoenix field office agent prior to September 11, 2001. The Phoenix communication generated little or no interest at either FBI Headquarters or the FBI’s New York field office."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 –
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
24 July 2003

"During the summer of 2001, the U.S. Intelligence Community was in a state of heightened alert, due to concern about an imminent al-Qa’ida attack. However, this concern was not reflected in the FBI’s National Law Enforcement Threat System (NLETS) reports, which are the means through which the FBI communicated terrorist threat information with state and local law enforcement entities."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 –
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
24 July 2003

"....[there] was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States..... [the briefing stated] 'FBI information since [1998]  indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.'....No CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] or other NSC [National Security Council] meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this report.... We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. "
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260 - 262)

"Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. We had such facts too. As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up [in our fighter aircraft].”
Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov
Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12 September 2001

"Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected
terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks.... even after the [1998 African embassy] bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests."
Called Off the Trail?
ABCNews 19 Dec 2002

"There's so much more. God, there's so much more. A lot more."
FBI agent, Robert Wright, who is being officially prevented from telling the public about how his efforts to investigate al-Qaeda pre-911 were blocked by his supervisors
'Called off the trail?' - ABC News, 19 Dec 2002

"FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.... the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year".
FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated
Guardian, 7 November 2001

"Tension Between FBI Chiefs Ex-FBI director Louis Freeh's new book, 'My FBI,' has kicked up controversy over its stinging attacks on Bill Clinton. But it has also frayed relations with current director Bob Mueller. Freeh takes a little-noticed shot at his successor in the book, describing a testy encounter in the early days of the Bush administration with an 'acting deputy attorney general' - a clear reference to Mueller who at the time held that post. In Freeh's account, the acting deputy A.G. tells him the department now has  new top priorities - guns, drugs and juvenile crime. Freeh replies that terrorism and 'just about everything else' are more important. 'Those are our marching orders,' Mueller says, according to Freeh's account. 'Those aren't my marching orders,' Freeh shoots back. Freeh then writes that 'lockstep, blind obedience' by an FBI director to 'potentially unlawful or even 'dumb orders' is a 'formula for disaster.'  Mueller declined an invitation to attend Freeh's book party last week after telling one bureau official that Freeh was 'too controversial,' according to a Freeh associate who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.'"
Fabricated Links?
Newsweek, 26 October 2005

"... in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. Loftus has confirmed that it was O’Neill who originally discovered the AL Qaida pipeline memo after the Embassy bombings in Africa. O’Neill gave an overview of the Enron block to two French authors who will soon be publishing in the United States..... The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s whole house of cards will collapse".
What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
Press Release, former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, 31 May 2002

"Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism ....  In the book 'Bin Laden, la verite interdite ('Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July [2001] in protest over the obstruction.... The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime 'as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Until now, says the book, 'the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that'. But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, 'this rationale of energy security changed into a military one', the authors claim. 'At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs',' Brisard said in an interview in Paris."
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
Inter Press Service, 15 November 2001

"A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July [2001] that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin."
US 'planned attack on Taleban'
BBC Online, 18 September 2001

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, July 2004 (p 137)

"A poll released this week by Scripps Howard News Service found that 36 percent of Americans believe 'people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.'"
They remain convinced: U.S. behind 9/11
Lowell Sun (Massachusetts), 12 August 2006

"Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz wrote to President Bill Clinton in 1998 urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a 'hazard' to 'a significant portion of the world's supply of oil'. In the letter, Rumsfeld also calls for America to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations and says the US should not be 'crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council'. Those who signed the letter, dated January 26, 1998, include Bush's current Pentagon adviser, Richard Perle; Richard Armitage, the number two at the State Department; John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, under-secretaries of state; Elliott Abrams, the presidential adviser for the Middle East and a member of the National Security Council; and Peter W Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. It reads: 'We urge you to seize [the] opportunity and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the US and our friends and allies around the world. 'That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power..... If Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil, will all be put at hazard."
Rumsfeld Urged Clinton to Attack Iraq
Sunday Herald, 16 March 2006

If An Invasion Of Afghanistan, Strongly Connected To Al Qaeda, Was 'Unthinkable' Before America's 9/11 'Pearl Harbor'
How 'Unthinkable' Was An Invasion Of Iraq, With No Connection?

"A national ad campaign being launched on Thursday features the stories of people who remember where they were when they heard of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The ads were conceived for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation by Gerry Graf, executive creative director of the TBWA/Chiat/Day ad agency, who was in a Los Angeles hotel room when his wife called to tell him a plane had hit the trade center.'The first thing I thought was this was our Pearl Harbor,' Graf said."
9/11 ads ask where you heard the news
Associated Press, 30 August 2006

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, July 2004 (p 137)

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like anew Pearl Harbor."
Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project For The New American Century, September 2001

"The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11...."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan ... I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
General Wesley Clark
'Winning Modern Wars', p 130

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that 'al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House'. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).  Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias 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. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).... The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.... the so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: 'To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11' (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). ... The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. ..... The BBC reported that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October'. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs' (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001). Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies...."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

"More than one-third of Americans suspect federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new poll.... Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them 'because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.'"
One in 3 Americans say US aided 9/11
New York Post, 3 August 2006

Twenty Things We Know Five Years After 9/11 - Click Here

1962 - Aiming At Cuba

"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans [now available online at the National Security Archive at George Washington University] were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: 'We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,' and, 'casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.' Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes. The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.... The documents show 'the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,' writes Bamford.... The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job. Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan 'pretext' operations at least through 1963. One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.... Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained. 'The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,' says Bamford."
U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
ABC News, 1 May 2001

View Original 'Operation Northwoods' Documents At The National Security Archive, George Washington University - Click Here

2001 - Aiming At Afghanistan And Iraq

"....for the foreseeable future oil will remain an essential commodity. Greater attention must therefore be given to increasing supplies of oil in ways that diversify supplies from areas other than the Persian Gulf. The most promising new source of world supplies is the Caspian region, which appears to contain the largest petroleum reserves discovered since the North Sea. This geopolitical crossroad, which includes Iran, Russia, and a number of newly-independent states [i.e. the 'stans'] struggling with post-Soviet modernization and dangers of Islamic extremism, demands more attention by American policymakers."
AMERICA’S NATIONAL INTERESTS
A Report from The Commission on America’s National Interests, July 2000
Co-authored by Richard Armitage et al [pdf]
(Richard Armitage, a supporter of the PNAC agenda, became deputy Secretary of State with specific responsibility for Pakistan and other Asian states in 2001)

"A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July [2001] that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin."
US 'planned attack on Taleban'
BBC Online, 18 September 2001

"The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News, 10 January 2004

"According to [Bob Woodward's book] Plan Of Attack, it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William S. Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious 'discussion about Iraq and different options.' Bush assigned Cheney to focus as vice president on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons."
Bush ordered secrecy on war plans, book claims
Guardian Weekly,  22-28 April 2004

"CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.... Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld."
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11
CBSNews, 4 Sept 2002

"Within hours of 9/11 Dick Cheney seizes the initiative.... and Donald Rumsfeld puts Iraq on the table."
'The Dark Side'
PBS Frontline, 20 June 2006

"Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies throughout the government who advocated a robust and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq... After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 'You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though there's a private line, private communication between those two,' former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.'"
'The Dark Side'
PBS 'Frontline' Documentary Report, 20 June 2006

"The story of Dick Cheney and Iraq is illuminating both as a study of the most powerful Vice-President in US history, and of the inner workings of the Bush White House.... Silence and secrecy are key elements in the Cheney act that have sustained him at the top of Washington into a fourth decade.... no one has any idea what Mr Cheney says to Mr Bush when they are alone.... The Bush-Cheney private moments go to the heart of Mr Cheney’s extraordinary role..... Mr Bush has ceded vast areas of power to him. While most Vice-Presidents are fobbed off with largely meaningless areas of policy and are watched like hawks by the President’s aides, Mr Cheney has been entrusted with pivotal polices like energy...."
The White House Svengali
London Times, 24 April 2004

"It's been painfully obvious the administration not only fought the creation of the [9/11] commission but that their objective was the war in Iraq, and one of the notions that was built on was there was a direct connection between al Qaida and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not. So therefore they didn't want the 9/11 commission to get going.... I can't say, as a commissioner, to the Congress and the American people, that I had full access to all the documents pertaining to 9/11 and here's the conclusion. I can't say that.... This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I'm not going to be part of that. I'm not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious."
Former Senator Max Cleland who stepped down from the 9/11 Commission December 2003
Interview with Salon.com, 21 November 2003

How The British Public Was Persuaded To Back This Mission

"The media magnate Rupert Murdoch is expected to offer Tony Blair a senior role in his News Corporation empire when he stands down as Prime Minister. Allies of Mr Blair insist he has made no decisions about his plans when he leaves Downing Street - almost certainly next year. But some friends say a seat on the board of News Corp could tempt the outgoing Prime Minister, as it would dovetail neatly with the lucrative United States lecture circuit. Mr Blair's popularity at home may be waning, but he remains big box office in America. His close relationship with Mr Murdoch will be highlighted tomorrow when he addresses the annual gathering of News Corp's executives and senior journalists from around the world."
Murdoch set to back Blair - for a place in his boardroom
Independent, 29 July 2006

"In addition the Times reports on a memo dated 9 July from the head of the Security Policy Division (whose name is blanked out) to John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee. It refers to Andrew Gilligan's source at the centre of the BBC's row with the government. The memo says 'The source appears to be an expert on current and recent past Iraq weapons capability, sufficiently well informed to give a statistical figure on that capability.' It would seem therefore that, even before his identity was known, there was not much doubt within the intelligence services about the expertise and knowledge credentials of Gilligan's source. Of course no such 'statistical figure' on Iraq's weapons capability featured in either of Blair's public dossiers because it is increasingly apparent now that Dr Kelly was being stonewalled from within the system. Only once Dr Kelly had started talking to journalists after the war did such a statistical figure begin to seep into the public domain, even though few have still to pay sufficient attention to this crucial fact. If the tabloid headlines the day after the publication of the September dossier had been 'Blair says only 30% chance Iraq has WMDs' (which was the opinion of the government's own unrivalled expert, Dr David Kelly) instead of 'Brits 45 mins from doom' (which is what came out of Rupert Murdoch's pro-war Sun newspaper) how likely is it that the House of Commons would have backed Bush's war for oil? Rarely can the use of spin have had such drastic consequences. The key question that remains is - who was responsible for the stonewalling of Dr Kelly?"
Iraqgate 2003
'Fight Smart', Special Report, October 2003

"You have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one canny press tycoon because he has an unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him. How else can we explain the extraordinary unity of thought in his newspaper empire about the need to make war on Iraq?....It isn't always clear exactly what Murdoch believes on any given issue, but this time we know for certain, courtesy of an interview in the Australian magazine, the Bulletin (which, by the way, he doesn't own). To cite the report of that interview in Murdoch's own Sydney Daily Telegraph, the 'media magnate...has backed President Bush's stance against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein'. .... Most revealing of all was Murdoch's reference to the rationale for going to war, blatantly using the o-word. Politicians in the United States and Britain have strenuously denied the significance of oil, but Murdoch wasn't so reticent. He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil. 'The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy... would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country.' He went even further down this road in an interview the week before with America's Fortune magazine by forecasting a postwar economic boom. 'Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.'"
Their master's voice
Guardian, 17 February 2003

"The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday pinpointed for the first time security of energy sources as a key priority of British foreign policy. Mr Straw listed energy as one of seven foreign policy priorities when he addressed a meeting of 150 British ambassadors in London. The US and British governments officially deny that oil is a factor in the looming war with Iraq, but some ministers and officials in Whitehall say privately that oil is more important in the calculation than weapons of mass destruction.... Mr Straw told ambassadors that, following a review he ordered last year, the Foreign Office drew up a list of seven medium to long-term strategic priorities, including 'to bolster the security of British and global energy supplies'".
Straw admits oil is key priority
Guardian 7, January 2003

"... we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being."
Commander of the United States Central Command overseeing US operations in Iraq
Testimony To Sub-Committee of The House Of Representatives Appropriations Committee, 13 March 2006

But The Actual Outcome Represents Heavy Mission Failure

"Two top U.S. generals said Thursday that the sectarian violence in Iraq is much worse than they had ever anticipated and could lead to civil war, arguing that improving the situation is now more a matter of Iraqi political will than of U.S. military strategy. 'The sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it,' Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.... The testimony from Abizaid and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, was the military's most dire assessment of conditions in Iraq since the war began 40 months ago. It echoed the opinion of Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq, who, in a confidential memo revealed Thursday, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that a de-facto partition of Iraq is more likely than a transition to democracy."
Top U.S. generals fear Iraq civil war
Washington Post, 4 August 2006

"Wasn't Iraqi oil money supposed to be paying for the rebuilding by now? What happened? The answer is, precious little. Although the U.S. has already burned through more cash in Iraq than it did in Germany or Japan during the entire post-World War II recovery period, it has failed to spark peace or economic renewal.  Iraq still produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein, according to the most recent State Department figures."
Marshall Plan, Minus the Plan
Los Angeles Times, 10 August 2006

"Oil jumped back near $75 on Tuesday, and momentarily surged above that number, as Israel prepared to advance deeper into Lebanon, ignoring calls for a ceasefire, and saboteurs again attacked Iraq's northern oil export pipeline.Violence in the Middle East, a region which pumps a third of the world's oil, is keeping prices within striking distance of July's $78.40 a barrel record high."
Oil jumps back near $75 on Iraq, Lebanon
Reuters, 1 August 2006

'Wising Up'
What Do An Increasing Number Of Americans Think?

"With the fifth anniversary of Sept 11 on the way, there will undoubtedly be a flood of television specials, terror-alert updates, and newspaper editorials. Yet a sizable portion of the public will likely remain dubious of the authorized version of 9/11. In a Zogby International poll from last May, 42 per cent of the sampled U.S. population believe the 9/11 Commission 'concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence' in the attacks. In a Zogby poll two years earlier, 49 per cent of New York City residents said some U.S. leaders 'knew in advance that attacks were planned on and around Sept. 11, 2001, and they consciously failed to act.' In other words, intentionally let it happen. In Canada, a May 2004 Maritz Research poll had 63 per cent of respondents agreeing strongly or somewhat that 'individuals within the U.S. government including the White House had prior knowledge of the plans for Sept. 11 and failed to take appropriate action to stop them.'... The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement is vocal and persistent, maintaining a huge number of websites and blogs, and meeting for annual conferences across North America. Yet this counterculture remains almost completely off the radar of both mainstream and alternative media."
Doubt about official version of 9/11 widespread
Vancouver Courier, 25 August 2006

"A poll released this week by Scripps Howard News Service found that 36 percent of Americans believe 'people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East.'"
They remain convinced: U.S. behind 9/11
Lowell Sun (Massachusetts), 12 August 2006

Where Are Today's 9/11 'Pentagon Papers'?
The Hidden Secrets Of Dick Cheney And Donald Rumsfeld

The Pentagon Papers

"As a former Marine commander and defense analyst in 1970, I had exclusive access to highly classified defense documents for research purposes. They constituted a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68. The Pentagon Papers made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in. Today's troops in Iraq have also been misled, as 85 percent of them believed, according to a Zogby poll from March, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with al-Qaeda. That period had several other similarities to this one. Americans saw the color photographs of the My Lai massacre; now we are seeing photographs eerily similar to those from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range. Congress was debating the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Indochina while President Richard Nixon was making secret plans to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia - including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with reports indicating that officials regularly reiterate that the nuclear 'option' is 'on the table.' What prompted me to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents - an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? I came to the conclusion that the system I had been part of as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam lied reflexively, at every level, from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had the evidence to prove it. The papers showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else's country - a country that had not attacked us - for our own domestic and external purposes. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification. That's murder. Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates - so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public - about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth - earlier than I did - before more lives are lost or a new war is launched. Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it."
Daniel Elsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers
Times Call for New Pentagon Papers
The Philladelphia Inquirer, 8 August 2006

Post-9/11 Lock-Down

"The US president, George Bush, last night signed an executive order that allows either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and former president Bill Clinton. The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978 law that allowed journalists, historians and other interested parties to read presidential papers twelve years after the term of office finished. The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the result of a lengthy legal battle over the papers of Watergate president Richard Nixon. Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former president could veto the release of presidential papers. The current president could not override a former president's veto, nor could a former president override the decision of sitting president....The immediate provocation for last night's order is believed to be an outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald Reagan's papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in January. The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain. Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now working for Mr Bush.... the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain secret in perpetuity."
Bush blocks public access to White House papers
Guardian, 2 November, 2001

Those Who Failed To Protect America On 9/11 Are Promoted

"This is the totality of Admiral Leidig's statement. He is an important figure (arguably the most important) because he was in charge of the NMCC [National Military Command Center at the Pentagon] for nearly all of the duration of the hijackings. The NMCC is the key junction point for communications between the civilian authorities (in the form of the FAA) and the military during a hijacking. Leidig's statement is very short. He says he gave full testimony about what he did on 9/11 to the commission on 29 April 2004 (if this testimony is available on the Commission's web site it is not to be found by using name 'Leidig' in the site's search facility). More details of some of his oral evidence provided during this twelfth hearing are given above. They are cause for concern. Leidig is not mentioned at all the 9/11 final report except in the footnotes. The same applies to Brigadier General Winfield. Given the absolutely pivotal role of these two individuals at the very point in the chain of command which failed on 911 (i.e. the sanctioned interface between the FAA and the military prescribed for handling a hijacking), this is 'surprising'. Leidig was asked  by General Winfield on 10 September to stand a portion of his duty on 11 September. In the event that portion coincided with the main period of the attacks. Winfield left quarter of an hour before the first strike on the WTC and returned around the end of the fourth hijacking which terminated in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 (there appears to be no testimony from General Winfield on the Commission's web site using a search on his name). According to Newsweek 24 September 2001 'On Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.' This was the second time Newsweek had reported this. On 13 September 2001 it asked 'Could the bombers have been stopped? NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill.' If there were security concerns about September 11 within the Pentagon the day before it is unfortunate that Brigadier Winfield should have handed over to a relatively inexperienced deputy just as the first hijacking was getting under way and that he did not return until a late stage in the events. According to Leidig's oral testimony at the twelfth hearing 'I was relieved on the watch by General Winfield. Right after we resolved what was going on with United 93, around that time General Winfield took over.' According to ABC News 14 September 2001 'In dozens of exclusive interviews with ABCNEWS, Congressional leaders told of chaos on Capitol Hill, Cabinet secretaries described a war council deep in a secret bunker beneath the White House, generals and sergeants told of how they ramped up for a possible nuclear strike, and the president and vice president were said to have ordered U.S. pilots to shoot down any planes threatening the nation's capital..... 'When the second aircraft flew into the second tower, it was at that point that we realized that the seemingly unrelated hijackings that the FAA was dealing with were in fact a part of a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States,' said Army Brig. Gen. W. Montague Winfield, who was at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, and alerted the top brass there.' Except that Leidig's testimony now shows that he wasn't and he didn't.  Following 911 both Leidig and Winfield were nominated by the President for promotion."
'Protocolgate' - Who Hijacked the Emergency Response Procedures on 911?
'Fight Smart', 19 September 2004

What Lies In Those Safes
At The Department Of Defense And The Office Of The Vice President?

"Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies throughout the government who advocated a robust and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq... After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 'You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though there's a private line, private communication between those two,' former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.'"
'The Dark Side'
PBS 'Frontline' Documentary Report, 20 June 2006

"Not only was Mr Rumsfeld bypassed in the normal chain of command for such a shoot-down order, but the command from Vice President Dick Cheney that the airliners be 'taken out' did not reach the fighter planes until after the last ill-fated airliner had crashed in Pennsylvania, the special commission said."
Rumsfeld 'bypassed', says probe body
Dawn (Pakistan), 18 June 2004

"[At 9:46] staff reported that they were still trying to locate Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Myers [the most senior military officer in the country that morning]. The Vice Chairman joined the conference shortly before 10:00; the Secretary, shortly before 10:30. The Chairman was out of the country....   The Vice President was logged calling the President at 10:18 [fifteen minutes after the hijackings had finished] for a two minute conversation that obtained the [shoot down] confirmation..... At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft—presumably hijacked—heading toward Washington. That aircraft was United 93. The Secret Service was getting this information directly from the FAA......The NMCC [National Military Command Centre] learned of United 93’s hijacking at about 10:03 [the same time as it crashed]. At this time the FAA had no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC learned about United 93 from the White House. It, in turn, was informed by the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA. NORAD had no information either.....  In most cases the chain of command authorizing the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of defense and from the secretary to the combatant commander. The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shoot down authority was not discussed. At 10:39, the Vice President updated the Secretary [of Defence] on the air threat conference.... As this exchange shows, Secretary Rumsfeld was not in the NMCC when the shootdown order was first conveyed. He moved to the NMCC shortly before 10:30, in order to join Vice Chairman Myers. Secretary Rumsfeld told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (Chapter 1)

"Within hours of 9/11 Dick Cheney seizes the initiative.... and Donald Rumsfeld puts Iraq on the table."
'The Dark Side'
PBS 'Frontline' Documentary Report, 20 June 2006

"A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq. Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.... The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz."
Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row
Observer, 12 September 2004

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested..... The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.... the so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: 'To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11' (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). ... The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. .....  Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies...."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans [now available online at the National Security Archive at George Washington University] were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: 'We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,' and, 'casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.' Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes. The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.... The documents show 'the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,' writes Bamford.... The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job. Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan 'pretext' operations at least through 1963. One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.... Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained. 'The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,' says Bamford."
U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
ABC News, 1 May 2001

View Original 'Operation Northwoods' Documents At The National Security Archive, George Washington University - Click Here

New August 2006 Reports
Pentagon Lied To 9/11 Kean Commission And Congress
What Exactly Was It Trying To Cover Up?

"Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate. Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said. In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said. 'We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,' said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. 'It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied.'"
9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon
Washington Post, 2 August 2006

"A member of the 9/11 commission said Wednesday that panel members so distrusted testimony from Pentagon officials that they referred their concerns to the Pentagon's inspector general.The panel even considered taking the matter to the Justice Department for a possible criminal probe, commission member Tim Roemer said. 'We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting,' Roemer told CNN. 'We were not sure of the intent, whether it was to deceive the commission or merely part of the fumbling bureaucracy.' The issues concerned Pentagon officials' testimony about the timeline of events on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.... The Washington Post and Vanity Fair both published stories about the commission's debate, and ABC News on Tuesday aired excerpts of military audiotapes. 'For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD [the North American Aerospace Defense Command] and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances,' The Washington Post reported Wednesday. 'Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington. 'In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft - American Airlines Flight 11 - long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center,' according to The Washington Post."
9/11 panel distrusted Pentagon testimony
CNN, 2 August 2006

".....whereas the passengers on that doomed flight [93]  were able to determine what was happening on board from cellphone contact with friends and family on the ground, the NORAD monitors were clueless. That should anger Congress enough to demand that the Pentagon be held accountable for its laxity..... 'We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us,' Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey who headed the 9/11 commission, told the Post. 'It was just so far from the truth. ... It's one of those loose ends that never got tied.' "
Unprotected skies
Albany Times Union, 4 August 2006

"If all of the [NORAD/FAA] after-action reports are untrue, for whatever reason, that's a lie - because they were asserted as the truth by people who knew better or should have..... The fact that the government would permit deception after a deception, whether honestly, if you can call it that, honestly intended or not. But the fact that they would continue and perpetuate the lie, suggests that we need a full investigation of what is going on and what is demonstrably an incompetent and at worst deceitful federal government..... incredible." Lou Dobbs, CNN Anchorman, on false evidence given to the 9/11 Commission CNN, 9 August 2006 (Click here to watch video of CNN report - shorter version here)

"Tonight, a new account of the government's response to September 11th points to a picture of ineptitude, confusion, and perhaps deception. A top Democrat, a Republican suggests Americans still don't know the full truth about that day.... we're one month away from the fifth anniversary of September 11th. A shocking new book by the 9/11 Commission co- chairmen, Thomas Kean [a Republican] and Lee Hamilton [a Democrat], says Americans still don't know the whole truth about their government's initial response to those terrorist attacks that day.... Two hours of chaos and confusion on September 11th, and months of government ineptitude and incorrect testimony. A new book by 9/11 commission co-chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton outlines repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration. They write, 'Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11. But it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue.' Untrue, the military's original timeline of United Flight 93. The military said FAA notified NORAD of a hijacked plane at 9:16 a.m., 47 minutes before the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. In fact, the military found out three minutes after the plane crashed. And equally untrue, the government's timeline for American Flight 77 and details about fighter jets scrambled to intercept it.  The book also alleges government officials weren't forthcoming with the investigation and it took interviews and subpoenas to shake loose valuable information."
Lou Dobbs Tonight - 9/11 Lies?
CNN, 9 August 2006
(Click here to watch video of CNN report)

"New allegations that the Pentagon misled the public about its reaction to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are emerging from the Sept. 11 commission. Although disbanded for two years, commission members are still stirring controversy, including Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. 'We to this day don't know why NORAD (the North American Aerospace Command) told us what they told us,' Kean said. Until 2003, officials with NORAD and the Federal Aviation Administration claimed U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington. Two military officers told the commission NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later, and determined the military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania."
Sept. 11 Panel Suspected Pentagon Lied
United Press International, 2 August 2006

"In a new book, co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, are critical of misstatements in Pentagon and FAA testimony, according to a report filed by CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight. The investigators write, 'Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports accident investigations, and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advance an account of 9/11 that was untrue.' Some of the testimony characterized as untrue included the military's timeline of Flight 93, which was downed in Shanksville, PA. In testimony, the Pentagon claimed it was aware of the hijacking of the United Airlines flight forty-seven minutes before it crashed in a rural field. In fact, the military didn't become aware of the situation until three minutes after the crash."
Video: New Book by 9/11 Commissioners Blasts Pentagon Mistatements
RAW STORY, 10 August 2006

"Four widows instrumental in getting Congress to push President Bush to create the 9/11 Independent Commission are insisting that it 'failed in its duties' on the heels of two recent news reports which allege that some commissioners knew they were being 'deceived' by NORAD officials, and the widows are now questioning 'the veracity of the entire Commission’s report,' RAW STORY has found.... 'Recent stories in the Washington Post, the New York Times, as well as the release of the transcripts of the NORAD tapes in Vanity Fair, clearly show that the 9/11 Commission failed in its duties,' says the widows' statement.... In light of these reports, the 9/11 widows 'question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report. The fact that the Commission did not see fit to tie up all loose ends in their final report or to hold those who came before them accountable for lying and/or making misleading statements puts into question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report,' the widows write. 'Furthermore, the lack of tenacity and curiosity, by the Commissioners themselves, to determine why NORAD had deceived them is unconscionable,' the statement continues. 'Knowing full well that the lack of military response was such a critical failure, begs the question of whether that same lack of tenacity and curiosity was applied to other critical areas of the 9/11 investigation.'"
Group of 9/11 widows 'question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report'
Raw Story, 4 August 2006

"John Farmer, a senior counsel to the commission, told Vanity Fair that the military's story was 'a whole different order of magnitude than spin. It simply wasn't true'..... Major General Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott told Mr Kean's panel that Norad started tracking United 93 at 9.16am. In fact, the plane was not hijacked until 12 minutes after that and, as the tapes grimly illustrate, it was 10.15 before technical specialist Sergeant Shelley Watson, a Norad employee, first heard the news from civilian air traffic control in Washington.... In the end, the 9/11 commission did not refer the Norad officials to the justice department but passed the matter to the inspector-generals of the Pentagon and transportation departments, who act as government watchdogs. Both departments said reports were forthcoming."
9/11 tapes expose flaws in military chiefs' testimony
Guardian, 3 August 2006

"The Sept. 11 commission was so frustrated with repeated misstatements by the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration about their response to the 2001 terror attacks that it considered an investigation into possible deception, the panel's chairmen say in a new book.... Kean and Hamilton said the commission found it mind-boggling that authorities had asserted during hearings that their air defenses had reacted quickly and were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93, which appeared headed toward Washington. In fact, the commission determined -- after it subpoenaed audiotapes and e-mails of the sequence of events -- that the shoot-down order did not reach North American Aerospace Command pilots until after all of the hijacked planes had crashed. The book states that commission staff, 'exceedingly frustrated' by what they thought could be deception, proposed a full review into why the FAA and the Pentagon's North American Aerospace Defense Command had presented inaccurate information. That ultimately could have led to sanctions. Due to a lack of time, the panel ultimately referred the matter to the inspectors general at the Pentagon and Transportation Department. Both are preparing reports, spokesmen said this week. 'Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations, and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue,' the book states."
2 members detail Sept. 11 panel's frustrations
Associated Press, August 5, 2006

"Dick Cheney, huddled in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the White House, had just urged the traveling George W. Bush not to return to Washington. The president had left Florida aboard Air Force One at 9:55 a.m. on 9/11 'with no destination at take-off,' as last week's 9-11 Commission report noted. Nor had Bush given any known instructions on how to respond to the attacks.... Nor did the real-time notes taken by two others in the room... reflect that such a phone call between Bush and Cheney occurred or that such a major decision as shooting down a U.S. airliner was discussed.... by the time Cheney issued his shoot-down order ...... the last plane-turned-missile on 9/11, had already crashed in Pennsylvania...the question of Cheney's behavior that day is one of many new issues raised in the remarkably detailed, chilling account laid out in dramatic presentations by the 9-11 Commission. NEWSWEEK has learned that some on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president's account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report. According to one knowledgeable source, some staffers 'flat out didn't believe the call ever took place.'... the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report.... The report 'was watered down,' groused one staffer."
Who Was Really In Charge?
Newsweek, 28 June 2004

"'What's strange to me about these statements to the press on the ABC News special [which aired on September 11, 2002] and many other places is, you know, a year later and beyond, you have Cheney, Rove, Andrew Card, and you have military people continuing to talk about the fact that they were watching United 93 -- they were deliberating,' [Michael] Bronner [of Vanity Fair] said. 'The reality is, even though the military tried its best to get going and tried its best to intercept these plans, they had information late every time and there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes."
New 9/11 Audiotapes Reveal U.S. Military's Information Breakdown
ABC News, 2 August 2006

"On Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
Bush: ‘We’re At War’
Newsweek, 24 September 2001

Pentagon Investigates Itself And Says It Didn't Have Accurate 9/11 Response Logs
But That's Not What The NEADS Logs Obtained By Vanity Fair Show
Why Did The Pentagon Not Use The NEADS Tapes - The Most Obvious Reference - When Preparing Its Testimony For 9/11 Commission?
The Smell Of  More Lies

"There is no evidence that senior Pentagon commanders intentionally provided false testimony to about the military's actions on the morning of the Sept 11. attacks, according to a report by the Defense Department's watchdog agency cited in the New York Times on Saturday. The Pentagon's office of inspector general said the Defense Department's initial inaccurate accounts could be attributed largely to poor record-keeping... The report was initially classified secret but was released under a freedom-of-information request by the Times. What amounted to several pages' worth were blacked out on national security grounds, the newspaper said. The Pentagon had initially suggested that the North American Aerospace Defense Command had reacted quickly to reports of the hijackings and been prepared to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the hijacked planes, United Flight 93. But investigations determined that the Pentagon was not aware of Flight 93 until after the aircraft had crashed into a Pennsylvania field. The Sept. 11 commission then requested that the inspector general investigate why senior military officials made so many inaccurate statements to the commission.... The report said commanders had found it difficult to create an accurate timeline of the events of Sept. 11 because of the lack of a well-coordinated system in logging information about air-defense operations, the Times said."
No evidence U.S. commanders lied over Sept 11 - report
Reuters, 5 August 2006

But They Did In Fact Review The NEADS Tapes
Which Are Time Stamped

"The story of what happened in that room, and when, has never been fully told, but is arguably more important in terms of understanding America's military capabilities that day than anything happening simultaneously on Air Force One or in the Pentagon, the White House, or NORAD's impregnable headquarters, deep within Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado. It's a story that was intentionally obscured, some members of the 9/11 commission believe, by military higher-ups and members of the Bush administration who spoke to the press, and later the commission itself, in order to downplay the extent of the confusion and miscommunication flying through the ranks of the government. The truth, however, is all on tape. Through the heat of the attack the wheels of what were, perhaps, some of the more modern pieces of equipment in the room—four Dictaphone multi-channel reel-to-reel tape recorders mounted on a rack in a corner of the operations floor—spun impassively, recording every radio channel, with time stamps."
'9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes'
Vanity Fair Special, August 2006

So They Didn't Lie?

"Azzarello, Farmer, and several other commission members I spoke to dismissed this fog-of-war excuse and pointed out that not only had the military already reviewed the tapes but that the false story it told at the first hearing had a clear purpose. 'How good would it have looked for the government in general if we still couldn't have stopped the fourth plane an hour and 35 minutes [into the attack]?' Azzarello asked. 'How good would it have looked if there was a total breakdown in communication and nothing worked right?'... As one of its last acts before disbanding, in July 2004, the 9/11 commission made referrals to the inspector general's offices of both the Department of Transportation (which includes the F.A.A.) and the Defense Department to further investigate whether witnesses had lied. 'Commission staff believes that there is significant evidence that the false statements made to the commission were deliberately false,' Farmer wrote to me in an e-mail summarizing the commission's referral.'"
'9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes'
Vanity Fair Special, August 2006

"I was extremely troubled, and so were the other members of the commission. This was one of the most troubling facts in the whole 9/11 investigation -  how our military failed to get the information and then, in testifying before us, didn't really give the truth.'"
Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission.
ABC News, 2 August 2006

And That May Not Be All The Pentagon Has To Hide
Why Did The Pentagon NMCC Telecom Link With Air Force One Not Connect On 9/11?

"Why would the Presidential communications systems fail when the President was still within US territory? Who was in charge of the President's communications systems on 911? This communications systems 'failure' is in addition to the one between the FAA and NMCC during the  'air threat' conference call. What are the explanations for these failures? This is one of the more remarkable aspects of the report - remarkable because so little is said on this subject. However, one of the 9/11 Commissioners, Jamie Gorelick, let slip the following astonishing information in an interview with PBS, 17 June 2004 'On Air Force One, the president was unable to reach most of the people or at least many of the people whom he tried to reach. He could not functionally lead the government from Air Force One at a time of great national stress and national emergency.' From this description it would appear it was not only the White House that the President was allegedly unable to contact. And there it would seem the matter has been left to rest.  Yet either the President has lied on this matter to cover-up his own inaction on the day or some serious questions need to be asked of those in control of Presidential communications systems on 9/11. In the PBS interview Gorelick goes on to say that the problem has since been fixed, but she doesn't confirm that she knows what the problem was. What was that problem? If it's been 'fixed' then someone knows."
'Protocolgate' - Who Hijacked the Emergency Response Procedures on 911?
'Fight Smart', 19 September 2004

"....'What's strange to me about these statements to the press on the ABC News special [which aired on September 11, 2002] and many other places is, you know, a year later and beyond, you have Cheney, Rove, Andrew Card, and you have military people continuing to talk about the fact that they were watching United 93 -- they were deliberating,' [Michael] Bronner [of Vanity Fair] said. 'The reality is, even though the military tried its best to get going and tried its best to intercept these plans, they had information late every time and there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes.'...."
New 9/11 Audiotapes Reveal U.S. Military's Information Breakdown
ABC News, 2 August 2006

But Does That Go Far Enough?
Was It The Failure Of The NMCC's Telecoms
And The Role Of Dick Cheney That The Pentagon Also Wanted To Obscure?

"Flying into Philadelphia recently, I spotted the Kean congressional report on 11 September from the 9/11 Commission on sale at the bookstalls. 'How many do you sell?' I asked. 'One or two,' was the reply. 'It'll disappear soon.' Yet, this modest, blue-covered book is a revelation. Like the Butler report in the UK, which detailed all the incriminating evidence of Blair's massaging of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, then pulled its punches and concluded nobody was responsible, so the Kean report makes excruciatingly clear what really happened, then fails to draw the conclusions that stare it in the face. It is a supreme act of normalising the unthinkable. This is not surprising, as the conclusions are volcanic. The most important evidence to the 9/11 Commission came from General Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad). 'Air force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring towards the World Trade Center and Pentagon,' he said, 'if only air traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner . . . We would have been able to shoot down all three . . . all four of them.'  Why did this not happen? The Kean report makes clear that 'the defence of US aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols . . . If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC) . . . The NMCC would then seek approval from the office of the Secretary of Defence to provide military assistance . . . ' Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority that there was no reason the procedure was not operating that morning. 'For my 30 years of experience . . .' said Monte Belger, 'the NMCC was on the net and hearing everything real-time . . . I can tell you I've lived through dozens of hijackings . . . and they were always listening in with everybody else.' But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC was never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was told, to America's top military brass.   Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, 'a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed'. As a result, Norad's commanders were 'left in the dark about what their mission was'. The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system that worked was in the White House where Vice-President Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or it could not. In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for Bush read: 'We [the CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama Bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'  On the afternoon of 11 September, Donald Rumsfeld, having failed to act against those who had just attacked the United States, told his aides to set in motion an attack on Iraq - when the evidence was non-existent. Eighteen months later, the invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and based on lies now documented, took place. This epic crime is the greatest political scandal of our time, the latest chapter in the long 20th-century history of the west's conquests of other lands and their resources. If we allow it to be normalised, if we refuse to question and probe the hidden agendas and unaccountable secret power structures at the heart of 'democratic' governments and if we allow the people of Fallujah to be crushed in our name, we surrender both democracy and humanity."
Iraq: the unthinkable becomes normal - John Pilger
New Statesman, 15 November 2004

"The Vice President was logged calling the President at 10:18 [fifteen minutes after the hijackings had finished] for a two minute conversation that obtained the [shoot down] confirmation..... At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft—presumably hijacked—heading toward Washington. That aircraft was United 93. The Secret Service was getting this information directly from the FAA......The NMCC [National Military Command Centre] learned of United 93’s hijacking at about 10:03 [the same time as it crashed]. At this time the FAA had no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC learned about United 93 from the White House. It, in turn, was informed by the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA. NORAD had no information either.....  In most cases the chain of command authorizing the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of defense and from the secretary to the combatant commander. The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shoot down authority was not discussed. At 10:39, the Vice President updated the Secretary [of Defence] on the air threat conference.... As this exchange shows, Secretary Rumsfeld was not in the NMCC when the shootdown order was first conveyed. He moved to the NMCC shortly before 10:30, in order to join Vice Chairman Myers. Secretary Rumsfeld told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (Chapter 1)

"Most vice-presidents spend their days at state funerals; Mr Cheney, more than anyone else, picked the members of the current administration. Thereafter he helped to shape the administration's policies on everything from energy policy to the invasion of Iraq.... The Republicans have repeatedly reminded Americans this week that September 11th 2001 defined this administration. But who was in charge on that terrible day? It was Mr Cheney who took most of the key decisions—from hiding the president to authorising the shooting-down of suspicious aircraft — while Mr Bush was holed up in Nebraska......"
The other president - Dick Cheney, backseat driver par excellence
The Economist, 2 September 2004

Why Did No Shoot Down Order Come Through From The President?
And What About The Mystery Of The Failed Pentagon Telecoms On 9/11?

10:18 am, 11 September 2001
The Presidential Order That Was Never Issued Until It Was All Over
What Happened On Air Force One On 9/11?

"The recordings tell a different story, and not only because United 93 had crashed before anyone in the military chain of command even knew it had been hijacked.... the answer to Nasypany's question about rules of engagement comes back in no uncertain terms, as you hear him relay to the ops floor."
'9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes'
Vanity Fair Special, August 2006

"The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with preexisting training and protocols....."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p31)

"On 9/11, the defense of U.S. airspace depended on close interaction between two federal agencies: the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p14)

"After the second aircraft impacted the second tower, the [National Military] Command Center then became a focal point for coordinating information flow. And at that point I convened - by the procedures that existed on 9/11, I convened a conference called a Significant Event Conference.... FAA tried to be included in that conference and we had difficulty throughout the morning getting them in the conference.... Most of the time they were not in the conference.... I can say that it did hamper information flow because we were getting information in a more roundabout way from FAA... I understand on that day that there were some compatibility issues between their secure phone and ours in the Command Center that caused them to drop out of the conference. But I'm not aware of the technical aspects of it.... we were connected to the White House and I was satisfied with the communications to the White House..... We were hampered that day by communications.... I can't speak to the connectivity with Air Force One. I was connected to the White House. And my understanding is Air Force One was in contact with the White House Situation Room. I was not in contact with - [Leidig is interupted here but presumably he was going to say Air Force One]....Yes, sir, there is a capability to do that [to connect the NMCC directly with Air Force One]. On that day we were connected with the White House....I don't recall, sir [why we weren't using the capability to connect to Air Force One]....."
Testimony of Admiral Leidig
The officer in command of the NMCC during most of the attacks
9/11 Commission, Twelfth Public Hearing

Given That The NMCC Did Not Connect To Air Force One
Was The Problem Really With The FAA Or Was It With The Pentagon?
The Pentagon Was The Common Denominator With Both The Failed Telecom Links On 9/11
It Did However Connect To The Vice President

"Why would the Presidential communications systems fail when the President was still within US territory? Who was in charge of the President's communications systems on 911? This communications systems 'failure' is in addition to the one between the FAA and NMCC during the  'air threat' conference call. What are the explanations for these failures? This is one of the more remarkable aspects of the report - remarkable because so little is said on this subject. However, one of the 9/11 Commissioners, Jamie Gorelick, let slip the following astonishing information in an interview with PBS, 17 June 2004 'On Air Force One, the president was unable to reach most of the people or at least many of the people whom he tried to reach. He could not functionally lead the government from Air Force One at a time of great national stress and national emergency.' From this description it would appear it was not only the White House that the President was allegedly unable to contact.And there it would seem the matter has been left to rest.  Yet either the President has lied on this matter to cover-up his own inaction on the day or some serious questions need to be asked of those in control of Presidential communications systems on 9/11. In the PBS interview Gorelick goes on to say that the problem has since been fixed, but she doesn't confirm that she knows what the problem was. What was that problem? If it's been 'fixed' then someone knows."
'Protocolgate' - Who Hijacked the Emergency Response Procedures on 911?
'Fight Smart', 19 September 2004

Evidence From The Official 9/11 And Vanity Fair Reports Indicates That NEADS Received No Information
Via The Designated FAA HQ-NMCC Communication Route For The Duration Of The Attacks
Why Has There Been No Further Investigation Into That?

"The reality is, even though the military tried [i.e. NEADS] its best to get going and tried its best to intercept these plans, they had information late every time [Note: and none of it was from NMCC, the protocol designated body for military response to hijackings] and there was no real play on any of the hijacked planes."
Michael Bronner of Vanity Fair
ABC News, 2 August 2006

"If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC) and to ask for a military escort aircraft to follow the flight, report anything unusual, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency. The NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance. If approval was given, the orders would be transmitted down NORAD’s chain of command. The NMCC would keep the FAA hijack coordinator up to date and help the FAA centers coordinate directly with the military. NORAD would receive tracking information for the hijacked aircraft either from joint use radar or from the relevant FAA air traffic control facility..... Inside the NMCC, the deputy director for operations called for an allpurpose 'significant event' conference. It began at 9:29.....The FAA was asked to provide an update, but the line was silent because the FAA had not been added to the call.... Operators worked feverishly to include the FAA, but they had equipment problems....We found no evidence that, at this critical time, NORAD’s top commanders, in Florida or Cheyenne Mountain, coordinated with their counterparts at FAA headquarters to improve awareness and organize a common response. Lower-level officials improvised—for example, the FAA’s Boston Center bypassed the chain of command and directly contacted NEADS after the first hijacking. But the highest-level Defense Department officials relied on the NMCC’s air threat conference, in which the FAA did not participate for the first 48 minutes."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004, (p17-38)

".....whereas the passengers on that doomed flight [93]  were able to determine what was happening on board from cellphone contact with friends and family on the ground, the NORAD monitors were clueless. That should anger Congress enough to demand that the Pentagon be held accountable for its laxity..... 'We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us,' Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey who headed the 9/11 commission, told the Post. 'It was just so far from the truth. ... It's one of those loose ends that never got tied.' That's unacceptable. The nation's air defenses are not loose ends. They are vital to homeland security, and it should not have taken nearly five years for the truth about their vulnerability to finally come out."
Unprotected skies
Albany Times Union, 4 August 2006

NEADS Itself Did Not Receive Presidential Shoot Down Instructions Until 10:31 Hrs

"A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes after [the last hijacking] United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania."
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Why No Clearance From Rumsfeld?

"In most cases, the chain of command authorizing the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of defense and from the secretary to the combatant commander. The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld for the first time that morning [of 9/11] shortly after 10:00. No one can recall the content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject of shoot down authority was not discussed.... "
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p 43/44)

"Not only was Mr Rumsfeld bypassed in the normal chain of command for such a shoot-down order, but the command from Vice President Dick Cheney that the airliners be 'taken out' did not reach the fighter planes until after the last ill-fated airliner had crashed in Pennsylvania, the special commission said."
Rumsfeld 'bypassed', says probe body
Dawn (Pakistan), 18 June 2004

"It is not clear how the shootdown order was communicated within NORAD. But we know that at 10:31, General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following over a NORAD instant messaging system: '10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].'"
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p 42)