911 Inquiry Must Investigate US Military Command, Intelligence Services and Cheney

Forget Saddam - This Is The 'Dossier' The Public Needs To Read
Was The US's Failure To Prevent 911 Gross Negligence
or Something Worse?

Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Myers - Will They Be Brought To Account By 911 Commission?
911 Inquiry Must Investigate US Military Command, Intelligence Services, and Cheney

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and US Air Force General Myers
The men who failed to defend America on 911

"The [911 Commission] panel is preparing to hold private meetings in the coming weeks with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney.... [Bush] said it was unnecessary for him to testify publicly and he would not.... Relatives of Sept. 11 victims have demanded that the top government leaders testify publicly, under oath."
9/11 panel calls Tenet and Rumsfeld
Associated Press, 18 February 2004

"Well to tell you the truth I have some mixed feelings because I'm both an American and entrepreneur. So I'm pro-business and very pro-American, but at the same time I have some questions. And one of them is - just recently the 911 Commission was called a whitewash by the victims widows. I want to know what George Bush is hiding."
(US citizen calling in by phone)
Fox TV, January 2004

"Things are starting to come out [from the 911 Commission] that are quite disturbing..."
Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security, University of Maryland
Battle Over 9/11 Panel's Deadline Intensifies
Washington Post, 29 January 2004

"....at the time of the attacks the US had just four fighter pilots on alert covering the north eastern United States. US pilots were forced to take to the skies without any weapons......."
Clear the Skies
BBC Online, 29 Aug 2002

"For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented.... Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.... To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs."
9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable
CBS News, 17 December 2003

Press Reports Overview

The Day After 911 Two Significant Pieces
Appeared On The Web Sites Of The Russian Newspapers, 'Izvestia' and 'Pravda'.
How Did The Russians Know So Much About The 911 Attacks Before They Took Place
And What Had They Told The US About Them In Advance?

"... According to our intelligence agents among terrorists there were at least two Uzbeks, natives of Fergana who arrived in the USA on forged documents about ten months ago.... The organization of the International Terrorist, according to Russian Intelligence Service agents had been planning an operation against the USA more than a year and a half."
RUSSIA WARNED US OF IMPENDING 9-11 ATTACKS
Izvestia, 12 September 2001

"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

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets."
Clues Alerted White House to Potential Attacks
Fox News, 17 May 2002

"'We had clearly warned them,' said Mr. Patrushev, who is head of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. He added that their U.S. counterparts 'did not pay the necessary attention' to their warnings, the Interfax news agency reported."
Russia Gave 'Clear Warning'
Agence France-Presse, 16 September 2001

"On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room. 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon,' the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack. That intensity -- defensive in nature -- did not last. 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.... As late as July 31, the FAA urged U.S. airlines to maintain a 'high degree of alertness.' All those alert levels dropped by the time hijackers armed with box cutters took control of four jetliners on the morning of Sept. 11."
Before Sept. 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
Washington Post, 17 May 2002

"One intelligence document that Woodward described in a May, 2002 Washington Post story, although not in his book, is the Aug. 6, 2001 PDB given to Bush while on vacation at his ranch in Crawford. This is the day that intelligence officials briefed Bush on the prospect of an upcoming Al Qaeda attack and the prospect that terrorists might seek to hijack commercial airliners — a warning that critics have long charged should have triggered a more vigorous response from the White House. The title of the PDB, according to Woodward's story, was more prophetic than the White House has ever acknowledged: 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'"
Extraordinary Measures - A recalcitrant Bush administration forces the 9/11 Commission to poke into Bob Woodward's notebook
Newsweek, 18 February 2004

"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

"..... incredibly there were just four fighters planes on stand-by in the North Eastern United States [on 911].... in the bunker underneath [the White House] ... in charge there was the Vice President Dick Cheney... during those crucial hours ... The local airforce commander had so few resources available he began diverting [unarmed] jets on training missions.... Until September 11 Americans had felt secure at home. Afterwards they realised there was no such thing as immunity from the world's conflicts. That continues to inform much of the administration's thinking about Iraq..."
Gavin Hewitt, BBC News - Video report
BBC Online, (Real Video) 29 August 2002

"'We want to know why the jets at Pomona were decommissioned,' said John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general now on the [911] commission's Manhattan staff. An even larger concern is why fighters at other Air Force bases were not scrambled fast enough to protect New York City after the Federal Aviation Administration learned about the hijackings. 'That's a big question,' Kean said in a recent interview.... NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for emergency scrambles on Sept. 11. Throughout Canada and the United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert - armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes. Four years earlier, NORAD could count on having 175 jets ready to scramble, including two on the tarmac at Atlantic City's airport. With the New Jersey Air National Guard's 17 F-16s out of the picture on Sept. 11, the commission is trying to assess why the Pentagon left what seems to be a yawning gap in the midsection of its air defenses on the East Coast - a gap with New York City at the center...."
Atlantic City F-16 Fighters Were Eight Minutes Away From 9/11 Hijacked Planes
North Jersey Media Group, 5 December 2003

"[Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob] Graham acknowledged at news conference in Boca Raton last month that Glass had contact with his office before Sept. 11, 2001, about an attack on the World Trade Center."
Intelligence Panel Hears from Glass
The Palm Beach Post, 17 October 2002

"U.S. Rep. Ben Gilman has called for an investigation. 'The government knows about those involved in my case who were never charged, never deported, who actively took part in bringing terrorists into our country to meet with me and undercover agents,' Glass said."
Con Man Turned Patriot Tells All
Cox News Service, 2 August 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."
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
Inter Press Service, 15 November 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

"[911 hijackers] Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had numerous contacts with a long-time FBI counterterrorism informant while they were living in San Diego, California... In its November 18, 2002 written response to the [911 Congressional] Joint Inquiry, the FBI has acknowledged that there are 'significant inconsistencies' in the informant’s statements about these [counterterrorism] contacts [with the 911 hijackers before the attacks]. The FBI investigation regarding this issue is continuing.... The [Bush] 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. Instead, written interrogatories from the Joint Inquiry were, at the suggestion of the FBI, provided to the informant. Through an attorney, the informant has declined to respond to those interrogatories and has indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of immunity prior to testifying."
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

"Despite intelligence reporting from 1998 through the summer of 2001 indicating that Usama Bin Ladin’s terrorist network intended to strike inside the United States, the United States Government did not undertake a comprehensive effort to implement defensive measures in the United States..... As noted earlier, the Joint Inquiry has established that the Intelligence Community acquired and disseminated from 1998 through the summer of 2001 intelligence reports indicating in broad terms that Usama Bin Ladin’s network intended to carry out terrorist attacks inside the United States. This information encompassed, for example, indications of plots for attacks within the United States that would include...*attacks on civil aviation .... * attacks on Washington, D.C., [and] New York City .... * crashing aircraft into buildings as weapons..."
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

"It is a document that fundamentally questions the motives behind the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein and go to war with Iraq. Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century describes how America is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history. It targets Saddam as a threat to American interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and recommends the use of 'military intervention' as a means to fix the US energy crisis. The report is linked to a veritable who's who of US hawks, oilmen and corporate bigwigs. It was commissioned by James Baker, the former US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr, and submitted to Vice-President Dick Cheney in April 2001 -- a full five months before September 11. Yet it advocates a policy of using military force against an enemy such as Iraq to secure US access to, and control of, Middle Eastern oil fields. One of the most telling passages in the document reads: 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.'..... At the heart of the decision to target Iraq over oil lies dire mismanagement of the US energy policy over decades by consecutive administrations. The report refers to the huge power cuts that have affected California in recent years and warns of 'more Californias' ahead. It says the 'central dilemma' for the US administration is that 'the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience'. With the 'energy sector in critical condition, a crisis could erupt at any time [which] could have potentially enormous impact on the US ... and would affect US national security and foreign policy in dramatic ways.'''
The West's Battle For Oil
Sunday Herald, 6 October 2002

"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 2003

"In a remarkably frank interview with the London 'Daily Telegraph', [head of the Iraqi Congress Ahmed] Chalabi said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in providing misleading intelligence and defectors to President George W. Bush, Congress and the U.S. public to persuade them that Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently.... Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby. Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein represented a compelling threat to the United States. OSP also worked with the defence policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend. DPB members, particularly Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, played prominent roles in publicising through the media reports by INC defectors and other alleged evidence developed by OSP that made Hussein appear as scary as possible. Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq."
Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War
Inter Press Service, 21 February 2004

'Operation Mass Appeal' - How Britain's MI6 participated in this plot - click here

"The case was made [on 15 Sept 2001] for an attack against Iraq by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary and one of the more hawkish members of the Administration. He argued that September 11 provided a perfect pretext to hit Baghdad."
Decision to deal with bin Laden first, then Saddam
London Times, 29 August 2002

" The public unravelling of the grand scheme that the neo-conservatives have been privately hatching behind closed doors for years began when the Sunday Herald started to investigate the activities of an almost unknown think-tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) just over a year ago.... PNAC is a veritable who’s who of the leading lights in George 'Dubya' Bush’s administration. It was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney’s chief-of-staff and Bush’s brother, Jeb, governor of the hanging-chad state of Florida. .... One of the most cynical comments in the [PNAC] document regarding the expansion of US military power is as follows: 'The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.' The document was written, remember, before September 11."
Rise of the Neo Cons
Sunday Herald, 23 December 2003

"Deceit at Pearl Harbor highlights the fact that Roosevelt allegedly knew about the attack weeks before it occurred, yet kept this information from the public as a means of swaying public opinion in favor of joining the war after the attack had taken place. As the last surviving member of Admiral Husband Kimmel's (then Commander of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor) staff, LTC Landis also serves to disprove that the lack of readiness for the attack was the fault of Admiral Kimmel."
Deceit at Pearl Harbor: From Pearl Harbor to Midway
New Book - July 2001 - Amazon.com - click here

"...everything that the Japanese were planning to do [at Pearl Harbor] was known to the United States..."
ARMY BOARD, 1944

AS A RESULT OF THE US GOVERNMENT'S FAILURE TO PREVENT 911
INTERNATIONAL STABILITY HAS BEEN SHATTERED

WHETHER THROUGH INCOMPETENCE OR WILLFUL NEGLECT, THE PRICE OF INACTION BY A FEW IS BEING PAID BY THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY

"'What should I write about 9/11?' I asked a former New York City official....'Write that the government let us down.'... The tendency now is to play the sad bagpipes and fly the glorious flag and rally around those whose job it was to ensure that nothing like 9/11 ever happened. Yet it did. An accounting has yet to be made."
Why It Happened
Washington Post, 5 Sept 2002

SOME BIG QUESTIONS AND SOME DISTURBING EVIDENCE
(click on the link to view evidence in relation to each question)

Some Key Outstanding Questions
The 911 Commission Needs to Investigate and Answer

Why did the Bush Administration ignore the large number of advance warnings of 911, including the use of aircraft as the potential means of attack? - click here

Why were America's air defences unprepared for 911, and what opportunity did their failure create for the Bush Administration? - click here

Does the Bush Administration really think that no one knows how it used the ashes of 911 to implement a pre-meditated attack on Iraq? - click here

Seated in the White House Vice President Cheney was in command of America's defence response to the hijacking attacks on 911. Once the World Trade Centre was hit why did Cheney, a former Defense Secretary himself under the previous Bush administration, contact Richard Armitage the most senior State Department official in the country at the time, but not Air Force General Richard Myers, the most senior military officer in the country at the time? - click here

Why did the Bush Administration reduce the level of alert during August 2001 just as the warnings from overseas intelligence agencies were intensifying, particularly from the Israelis and the Russians? Will the head of the Russian Airforce give evidence to the 911 Commission? And will the head of the CIA be cross-examined on this? - click here

The BBC documentary 'Clear the Skies' has put the spotlight on the Bush Administration's failure to prepare its defences for 911. Why were US fighters pilots only available on 911 from remote locations, and after unexplained delays? Why were the pilots not informed of the serious situation both on the ground and in the air? And why were they not instructed to fly at supersonic speeds? - click here

After the World Trade Centre was attacked why were Rumsfeld and Myers, the two most senior men in the Department of Defense on the day, allowed to continue with meetings with Congressmen rather than attend to the crisis which was being watched live around the world on television? - click here

What do press reports tell us about US government foreknowledge of the attacks? - click here

Given the exceptionally high risk of attacks at the time, and given the longstanding knowledge that al Qaeda had been contemplating air attacks (at least 12 US intelligence reports over 7 years, including targets in Washington and New York), why wasn't the US airforce tooled up on 911and ready to go? Why did America allow the creation of impotent air defences before 911? - click here

Why did Bush not order the necessary full airforce response on 911 until 9.55 am, and what was Cheney telling him from the White House in the meantime? - click here

Why is US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice unwilling to give unrestricted public testimony under oath to the 911 Commission? - click here

Why is Vice President Cheney at the centre of both suspicions about 911, and suspicions about US energy policy? Why is he fighting through the courts to stop the public release of papers relating to his energy task force? - click here

What part did the US secret service and Cheney play in the slow response of America's defences to the hijackings on 911, and the failure to prepare for those attacks in the weeks before despite the warnings? - click here

What does the Bush Administration have to say about the case of Damart Vreeland relating to US government foreknowledge of the attacks? - click here

Are claims that the US intelligence services were involved in a 'Let one happen. Stop the rest' exercise (in order to create a new Pearl Harbor type pretext for the seizing of Iraq and the associated control of the Persian Gulf) inconsistent with the established facts? What is the evidence that key elements of the intelligence services deliberately stalled on apprehending the plotting 911 terrorists? - click here

What does the Bush Administration have say about the case of Randy Glass and Rajaa Gulum Abbas? - click here

Why isn't the American public getting answers to some important questions? And will the 911 Commission address the specific questions raised in February 2004 by the families of 911 victims? - click here

How much faith can be placed in the official 911 Commission originally intended by the Bush administration to be run by arch geo-political schemer, Henry Kissinger? Will it ask and vigorously pursue the most telling questions? - click here

What kind of acute circumstances would motivate a US government to execute extreme measures of deception against the American public? - click here or on graph immediately below

"The [911 Victims] Family Steering Committee believes that President Bush should provide sworn public testimony to the full ten-member panel of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States . Collectively, the Commissioners are responsible for fulfilling the Congressional mandate. Therefore, each Commissioner must have full access to the testimony of all individuals and the critical information that will enable informed decisions and recommendations. Before an audience of the American people, the Commission must ask President Bush in sworn testimony, the following questions ...... "
The [911 Victims] Family Steering Committee Statement and Questions
Regarding the 9/11 Commission Interview with President Bush
Monday 16 February 2004

"A lawyer for a widow suing the Bush administration for negligence in the 9-11 terrorist attacks asked a New Hampshire audience Wednesday to press presidential candidates on whether they will investigate the attacks.... Mariani's husband, Neil Mariani, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175, the second of two planes to crash into the World Trade Center..... [she] filed a racketeering lawsuit last year in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, accusing President Bush and top members of his administration of knowing such hijackings were imminent, but failing to prevent them for personal and political gain...."
9/11 widow in N.H. talks about her lawsuit against the government
Associated Press, 22 January 2004

"A majority of Americans believe Mr Bush lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence to make the case for war in Iraq."
Kerry says claims of affair with intern are just rumour
London Times, 14 February 2004

"The ex-police chief told [CIA veteran and terrorism expert Bob] Baer that [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed 'is going to hijack some planes.' The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence... Baer sent this information [before 911] to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said...."
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International, 30 September 2002

"Beginning in 1998 and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received a modest, but relatively steady, stream of intelligence reporting that indicated the possibility of terrorist attacks within the United States..... the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons. This information did not stimulate any specific Intelligence Community assessment of, or collective U.S. Government reaction to, this form of threat.... Prior to September 11, the Intelligence Community had information linking Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), now recognized by the Intelligence Community as the mastermind of the attacks, to Bin Ladin, to terrorist plans to use aircraft as weapons, and to terrorist activity in the United States.... the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons.... Some, but apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community and to other agencies... KSM came to the attention of the Intelligence Community as a terrorist in early 1995 when he was linked to Ramzi Yousef’s 'Bojinka Plot' in the Philippines. One portion of that plot involved the idea of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters. Through additional intelligence and investigative efforts in 1995, KSM was also connected to the first World Trade Center bombing. He was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in January 1996. The indictment was kept under seal until 1998 while the FBI and CIA attempted to locate him and arrange to take him into custody. Subsequently, indications were received that he might have been involved in the East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings."
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

"In June 2001, [***** ] disseminated a report to all Intelligence Community agencies, [**** ], military commanders, and components in the Treasury and Justice Departments emphasizing KSM’s ties to Bin Ladin as well as his continuing travel to the United States. The report explained that KSM appears to be one of Bin Ladin’s most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the United States, on behalf of Bin Ladin. According to the report, he traveled frequently to the United States, including as recently as May 2001, and routinely told others that he could arrange their entry into the United States as well. Reportedly, these individuals were expected to establish contact with colleagues already there. The clear implication of his comments, according to the report, was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities. Although this particular report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, neither agency apparently recognized the significance of a Bin Ladin lieutenant sending terrorists to the United States and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there... CTC [Counterterrorist Center] questioned this report at the time and commented: 'We doubt the real [KSM] would do this…because if it is [KSM], we have both a significant threat and an opportunity to pick him up.'"
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] a climax of concern during the summer of 2001 about imminent attacks by Al-Qa’ida upon U.S. targets....the FBI knew about terrorist interest in U.S. flight schools and in the potential use of aircraft as weapons... The CIA was made aware of the Phoenix special agent’s concerns about flight schools, but it offered no feedback despite the information the CIA possessed about terrorists’ interest in using aircraft as weapons.... The full contents of the 'Phoenix Memo' have yet to be made public, but it is astonishing that so little was made of it, especially since it drew readers’ attention to certain information already in the FBI’s possession suggesting a very specific reason to be alarmed about one particular foreign student at an aviation university in the United States... The FBI...[also] knew that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad had been involved in an extremist Islamic plot toblow up 12 U.S.-owned airliners over the Pacific Ocean and crash an aircraft in to CIA Headquarters.... being aware of ... disparate and potentially connected bits of information is at the core of all-source intelligence analysis 'fusion.' Such fusion, apparently, was quite beyond the capabilities of the FBI. Despite all the FBI knew about terrorist interest in U.S. flight schools and in the potential use of aircraft as weapons, for example, it had declared in December 2000 in a joint report with the FAA that its 'investigations' did not suggest any 'evidence' of terrorist plans to target U.S.domestic civil aviation.... By the summer of 2001, the FBI knew from the Phoenix EC about UBL-associated individuals training at U.S. flight schools, that UBL’s organization also used the Norman flight school Moussaoui attended, about past Libyan efforts to send terrorists through aviation training in the U.S., and that Murad had planned to attack the CIA with an aircraft. As a result, the FBI was the U.S. Government agency probably best positioned in the late summer of 2001 to 'connect the dots' with an analytical assessment warning of terrorist interest in using U.S.-trained pilots to crash aircraft into symbolic American buildings."
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

"Loftus recently received an FBI translation of a highly classified and encrypted Al Qaida document, circa 1997-1998, which was retrieved and decrypted from a computer laptop following the Embassy bombing in Africa. The document was written by Osama Bin Laden’s military commander, Mohammed Atef, under his nom de guerre, Abu Haf, and reveals extensive knowledge of the supposedly secret pipeline negotiations [in Afghanistan], and their potential economic worth to the Taliban, Pakistan and the U.S.... 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 FBI is currently investigating Loftus’ links to John O’Neill, and is also refusing FBI agent Robert Wright permission to publish his own findings about the Enron block. Loftus asserts that the Enron block, which remained in force from January 2001 until August 2001 when the pipeline deal collapsed, is the reason that none of FBI agent Rowley’s requests for investigations were ever approved. As numerous British and French authors have concluded, the information provided by European intelligence sources prior to 9/11 was so extensive, that it is no longer possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence. It is time for Congress to face the truth: In order to give Enron one last desperate chance to complete the Taliban pipeline and save itself from bankruptcy, senior levels of US intelligence were ordered to keep their eyes shut and their subordinates ignorant. 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

"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
London Guardian, 7 Nov 2001

"President Bush and his top advisers were informed by the CIA early last August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking airplanes.... White House spokesman Ari Fleischer confirmed that Bush had been told about the possibility of hijackings but he declined to say what had been revealed during his intelligence briefings...'There was . . . an awareness by the government, including the president, of Osama bin Laden and the threat he posed in the United States and around the world,' Fleischer said. 'That included long-standing speculation about hijacking in the traditional sense, but not involving suicide bombers using airplanes as missiles.'"
Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers
Washington Post, 16 May, 2002

"In March 2001, an intelligence source reported that a group of bin Laden operatives was planning to conduct an unspecified attack in the United States. In April, the intelligence community obtained information that terrorist operatives in California and New York State were planning terrorist attacks..... the report said: 'From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the intelligence community received information indicating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons.....'"
9/11 report describes test runs
Boston Globe, 25 July 2003

"Eleanor Hill, staff director for the joint House-Senate inquiry into alleged intelligence failures ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, released a 30-page statement Wednesday that found information on possible terrorist strikes continued to filter through the nation's intelligence system in the months directly before the attacks... Hill's report details a July 2001 briefing for senior government officials that said a review of five months of intelligence information indicated 'that [Bin Laden] will launch a significant attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks... The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made.... Attack will occur with little or no warning.'... Such intelligence information dated back as far as 1998, Hill's report said, citing intelligence information in the fall of 1998 saying bin Laden's 'next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it' and a separate dispatch warned of a bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas."
U.S. HAD 'STEADY STREAM' OF PRE-9/11 WARNINGS
PBS News, 18 September 2002

"Investigators working for the Senate and House intelligence committees found numerous reports in the archives of the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy organizations suggesting that the bin Laden network was eager to mount attacks within the United States. There were also warnings that terrorists were considering using airplanes.... one August 1998 report [indicated] that terrorists might fly a plane into the World Trade Center".
While America slept
New York Times, 19 Sept 2002

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters....Yousef was planning simultaneous bombings of 11 U.S. airliners prior to his capture. Whatever form an attack may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way for the cruise missile attack against his Afghan camp in August 1998."
'Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism'
US National Intelligence Council Report, Sept 1999

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."
Richard Clarke, White House Terrorist Adviser, Informing Multiple Security Agencies, 5 July 2001
Washington Post, 17 May 2002

"On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room. 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon,' the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack. That intensity -- defensive in nature -- did not last. 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

"The documents we’ve provided show some 12 reports spread over seven years which pertain to possible use of aircraft as terrorist weapons. We disseminated those reports to the appropriate agencies, such as the FAA, the Department of Transportation and the FBI as they came in."
Evidence given by the Director of the CIA, George Tenet
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

"In 1993, a $150,000 study was commissioned by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of an airplane being used to bomb national landmarks. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)."
Nine hundred and Eleven Missing Pieces
New York Press, Volume 16, Issue 53, 2004

"The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas. Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the 'plane crash' was a simulated one. The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 [2000] in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room. On Oct. 24 [2000], there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents....'We go over scenarios that are germane to the Pentagon,' Jake Burrell of the Pentagon Emergency Management Team said.... In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims. "
Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies
Military District of Washington News Service, 3 Nov 2000

"Despite intelligence reporting from 1998 through the summer of 2001 indicating that Usama Bin Ladin’s terrorist network intended to strike inside the United States, the United States Government did not undertake a comprehensive effort to implement defensive measures in the United States. ..... As noted earlier, the Joint Inquiry has established that the Intelligence Community acquired and disseminated from 1998 through the summer of 2001 intelligence reports indicating in broad terms that Usama Bin Ladin’s network intended to carry out terrorist attacks inside the United States. This information encompassed, for example, indications of plots for attacks within the United States that would include...attacks on civil aviation....attacks on Washington, D.C., [and] New York City, ....crashing aircraft into buildings as weapons..."
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

"American intelligence services had been warned that Osama Bin Laden was considering attacking US targets with aircraft three years before the 11 September attacks, a congressional investigator said.... Ms Hill's report says that despite all of this information, the US 'intelligence community did not produce any specific assessments of the likelihood that terrorists would use airplanes as weapons'. The US Government has always said it could never have predicted the 11 September attacks. But the BBC's Rob Watson in Washington says the [latest] report casts serious and dramatic doubts on those claims."
US had 'many terror warnings'
BBC Online, 18 September 2002

"...numerous classified intelligence reports were produced and disseminated by the Intelligence Community prior to September 11, based upon information obtained from a variety of sources, about possible terrorist attacks being planned by Usama Bin Ladin’s terrorist network. Some of this information was summarized and released, in declassified form, in the Joint Inquiry’s September 18, 2002 hearing, including:

"U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July that Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations, officials said Wednesday.... Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing antiaircraft guns at the city's airport..... the reports suggest that Western governments were aware that terrorists might one day use a hijacked airplane as a suicide weapon--as they did Sept. 11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.......The Genoa warning was disclosed last week by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini..... In any case, the possibility of suicide hijackings has been known to U.S. counter-terrorism officials for several years...... In 1996, a terrorist captured in Manila told Philippine police that Al Qaeda planned to hijack 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously and to fly a plane into CIA headquarters near Washington."
Los Angeles Times, 27 September 2001

"But by the summer, policy reviews were hardly what was needed. Intelligence services were picking up enough chatter about a terrorist attack to scare the pants off top officials..... In mid-July, Tenet sat down for a special meeting with [Condoleeza] Rice and aides. 'George briefed Condi that there was going to be a major attack,' says an official ..... Tenet couldn't rule out a domestic attack..... One date already worrying the Secret Service was July 20, when Bush would arrive in Genoa for the G-8 summit; Tenet had intelligence that al-Qaeda was planning to attack Bush there. The Italians ..... closed airspace around the town and ringed it with antiaircraft guns. "
Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?
Time Magazine Online, 4 Aug 2002

".... 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. The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested... All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft. It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.... 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.... 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'
Guardian, 6 September 2003

"...everything that the Japanese were planning to do [at Pearl Harbor] was known to the United States..."
ARMY BOARD, 1944

"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

"The [911] commission has rescheduled a hearing to delve into air defense questions, from mid-January to early March, so investigators can have more time to go through records and other information recently received from NORAD and the Federal Aviation Administration in special subpoenas."
Atlantic City F-16 Fighters Were Eight Minutes Away From 9/11 Hijacked Planes
North Jersey Media Group, 5 December 2003

"About 8:50, however, Burlingame and Charlebois [the pilots of Flight 77 which hit the Pentagon] stopped responding to radio calls..."
Probe reconstructs horror, calculated attacks on planes
Boston Globe, 23 Nov 2001

"There's a huge Air Force Base 10 miles from the Pentagon, Andrews Air Force Base, that has two combat-ready fighter wings. The Air National Guard Fighter Wing describes itself as being maintained in the highest possible state of combat readiness. None of those planes went in the air [in time on Sept 11]. But then, a few minutes after the Pentagon was hit, they did go in the air, because we have news reports about that. Why would that happen?.... At 9:06 the FAA, according to their account, closed the air corridor between Cleveland [Ohio] and Washington, DC. If they closed this air corridor, which is one of the most extreme actions the FAA has ever taken, why wouldn't they put planes in the air over Washington? .... How could it be possible for Flight 77 to go to Ohio and turn around under those circumstances and fly 50 minutes back to the Pentagon and nothing be done? How could no planes be put in the air over Washington, DC during the entire period that that plane was coming from Ohio back to Washington, DC, given all that they knew and given that they knew enough to close the air corridor?.... There were articles in the New York Times of September 13th and September 15th which stated that the Pentagon knew that that plane was coming from Ohio. The Pentagon was in touch with the FAA immediately about it. Now, under those circumstances why wouldn't they scramble planes into the air from Andrews Air Force Base? Just think about it. The President's plane flies into and departs from Andrews Air Force Base. You mean to tell me they have no fighter escorts there? If the President is in trouble they have to call from Langley Air Force Base [126 miles away] to please come help? They have 10,000 people working there and they can't put a plane in the air? Please. .. Before 9-11, the D.C. Air National Guard Website had a statement that they maintained planes in the highest possible state of combat readiness. Now if that doesn't mean they're ready to fly what does it mean? What's the highest possible state of combat readiness? ... We're not talking about ordinary incompetence. Two planes had hit buildings in New York. They knew those planes had been highjacked. They knew a hijacked plane was coming towards Washington, D.C. They didn't know it for just five minutes. They knew it for almost an hour."
Jared Israel Interviewed by Mark Haim
WKOPN 89.5 FM (Missouri) Evening Edition 2 April 2002

"Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven seconds."
America's Chaotic Road to War
Washington Post, 27 January 2002

".....in no case was there apparently enough time after the FAA's warning for fighter planes to reach the hijacked airliners. More puzzling, there were 45 minutes between air traffic controllers losing contact with the third airliner, which took off from Dulles airport just outside Washington, and its crash on to the Pentagon."
Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of large-scale terror attacks
London, Daily Telegraph, 16 September 2001

"The two F-16s that deployed to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 did not get off the ground until just 2 minutes before the plane crashed into the Pentagon. They were about 130 miles from their target. The District of Columbia National Guard maintained fighter planes at Andrews Air Force Base, only about 15 miles from the Pentagon, but those planes were not on alert and not deployed."
Shoot-down order issued on morning of chaos
USA Today, 16 September 2001

"McKinley and retired NORAD commander Larry Arnold, who was at the helm on 9/11, said it would have been possible to scramble fighter jets over the capital before hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon if the Federal Aviation Administration had notified NORAD earlier of that particular hijacking. FAA officials say they were in early informal contact with NORAD, even though the official notification came later."
On 9/11, U.S. radar was facing wrong way 'Cold War vestige' guided air defenses
Star-Ledger, 23 May 2003

"Air defense around Washington is provided mainly by fighter planes from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland near the District of Columbia border. The D.C. Air National Guard is also based there and equipped with F-16 fighter planes, a National Guard spokesman said. But the fighters took to the skies over Washington only after the devastating attack on the Pentagon, which is alongside a flight path to Ronald Reagan National Airport."
SECURITY CRACKS EXPOSED
The San Diego Union - Tribune, Sep 12, 2001

"There remains one question to ask about Sept. 11. What happened? We know the story. Terrorists hijacked four passenger jets. At 8:45 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston smashes into the World Trade Center’s north tower. At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston smashes into the south tower. At 9:40 a.m., AA Flight 77 from Dulles hits the Pentagon. At 10:10 a.m., United Flight 93 from Newark crashes in Shanksville, PA. Yet the most amazing feature of the U.S. government’s response to these events was the almost complete absence of it. Jared Israel on his website www.tenc.net has blazed a trail with fascinating and meticulous research. Initial reports suggested that no aircraft were scrambled to intercept or shoot down the hijacked jets. Two days later Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee: 'When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACs, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked... That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.' Marine Corps Maj. Mike Snyder, a spokesman for NORAD, echoed Myers in a Sept. 15 Boston Globe story, which stated: '[T]he command did not immediately scramble any fighters even though it was alerted to a hijacking 10 minutes before the first plane…slammed into the first World Trade Center tower... The spokesman said the fighters remained on the ground until after the Pentagon was hit...' U.S. inaction was all the more astonishing because the same story had Snyder admitting that 'fighters routinely intercept aircraft.' So why were no fighters dispatched to intercept planes on an extraordinary day like Sept. 11? Within days the story changed and it turned out that two F-15 fighters had in fact been scrambled from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, MA. Whether this took place before or after the first tower was struck is not clear. In any case it was too late to make a difference. When the second tower was hit the fighters were still 70 miles from Manhattan. We also learned that two F-16 fighters had been scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to try to intercept Flight 77, but they also arrived too late. In fact, they only took off from Langley two minutes before the Boeing 757 smashed into the Pentagon. There are a number of problems with this story. In the first place, 45 minutes had elapsed from the time the air traffic controllers lost contact with Flight 77 and its crash into the Pentagon. On Sept. 15 The New York Times reported: 'Flight 77…would have been visible on the F.A.A.’s radar system as it reversed course in the Midwest…to fly back to Washington. The radars would have observed it even though its tracking beacon had been turned off.' There is an even more troubling question. Why were the fighters dispatched from Langley, more than 130 miles from the Pentagon, rather than Andrews Air Force Base–a mere 10 miles away? Early media reports suggested that there were no available aircraft at Andrews that day. This is bizarre to say the least. First, if there were no fighter aircraft available that day at Andrews, how did they miraculously make their appearance over the DC sky after the Pentagon was struck? Yet this is what NBC reported on Sept. 11, as did other news outlets. Moreover, Andrews AFB is responsible for air defense around Washington. The DC Air National Guard is based there, which is equipped with F-16s. The 113th Wing is based there. According to the Andrews website: 'Training for air combat and operational airlift for national defense is the 113th’s primary mission. However, as part of its dual mission, the 113th provides capable and ready response forces for the District of Columbia in the event of a natural disaster or civil emergency.' You can’t get more emergency than Sept. 11! "
Scrambled Messages
New York Press, 12 Dec 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. O'Neill talks to CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.... Suskind says O'Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall -- including post-war contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil. 'There are memos,' Suskind tells Stahl, 'One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.' A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled 'Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,' outlines areas of oil exploration. 'It talks about contractors around the world from... 30, 40 countries, and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq,' Suskind says.... 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 2003

"Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has revealed he saw no evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed a chemical and biological arsenal. George Bush was planning the invasion of Iraq from the moment he became US President, Mr O’Neill said. His claims have been dismissed as the bitter attack of a sacked man by President Bush’s supporters. But they were backed today by Greg Thielmann, director of the Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the US State Department until his retirement last year."
New Blow to Blair over Iraq
Press Association, 13 January 2004

" Mr O'Neill said invading Iraq was 'topic A' at the very first meeting of President George Bush's National Security Council, 10 days after his inauguration on 20 January 2001, and continued to be an abiding theme in follow-up meetings....The disclosure will provide further ammunition for to Bush critics who believe the administration cynically exploited the 11 September terror attacks to launch an aggressive policy of global military interventionism that neo-conservative hawks such as Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had been advocating for years. It makes clear that hints of a link between Saddam and the 11 September attacks, repeatedly made by administration officials in the run-up to the war but never substantiated, were a political convenience, not the driving motivation behind the invasion. And it also poses a considerable challenge to the official version of history, which has sought to portray Mr Bush as undergoing a near-religious conversion after 11 September from a meek peacetime leader to a man with a global mission to stamp out evil...."
Bush was demanding excuse to invade Iraq in January 2001, says ex-treasury secretary
The Independent, 12 January 2004

"The American who led the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) for the past eight months resigned last night, saying he did not believe Saddam Hussein had possessed such an arsenal for a decade. 'I don’t think they existed,' said David Kay 'What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last 1991 Gulf War and I don’t think there was a large-scale production programme in the Nineties.... Just two days ago Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, repeated his conviction that the weapons existed..."
Saddam's large WMD stockpiles did not exist, admits American who led hunt
London Times, 24 January 2004

"A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. ..... "
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
Sunday Herald, 15 Sept 2002

"This has been the year that the neo-cons grabbed the world by the nose and kicked it in the balls. At least that’s how one cynical wag in the intelligence community put it recently, paraphrasing General Patton’s infamous military dictum on how to deal with the enemy, when I asked him what the last 365 days had meant to the men now controlling the White House. This has been the year during which their plans – long-harboured and truly revolutionary – finally crept out into the light and came to fruition. The public unravelling of the grand scheme that the neo-conservatives have been privately hatching behind closed doors for years began when the Sunday Herald started to investigate the activities of an almost unknown think-tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) just over a year ago.... PNAC is a veritable who’s who of the leading lights in George 'Dubya' Bush’s administration. It was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney’s chief-of-staff and Bush’s brother, Jeb, governor of the hanging-chad state of Florida. At first sight it may seem nothing more than a gentlemen’s club and talking shop for a lot of very rich and very powerful right-wingers. But that’s until you read what is, in effect, the PNAC’s mission statement – titled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century. It is no exaggeration to refer to this as a chilling piece of work. It was – very importantly – written months before Bush took power. The document shows that the Bush neo-cons were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq and the 'regime change' of Saddam Hussein even before they took office. The plan shows that Bush’s Cabinet wanted to take military control of the Gulf whether or not Saddam was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. 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.' One of the most cynical comments in the document regarding the expansion of US military power is as follows: 'The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.' The document was written, remember, before September 11."
Rise of the Neo Cons
Sunday Herald, 23 December 2003

"...everything that the Japanese were planning to do [at Pearl Harbor] was known to the United States..."
ARMY BOARD, 1944

Get copy of document by Rumsfeld et al here - 93 page pdf document - CLICK HERE

"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

"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11".
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld claiming that the invasion of Iraq was due to 911
Rumsfeld brushes aside WMD fears
BBC Online, 9 July 2003

'Operation Mass Appeal' - How Britain's MI6 participated in this plot - click here

"But now his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has given a round of interviews in which she acknowledges possible flaws in pre-war intelligence. The central argument used by the United States for invading Iraq was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. But more than nine months after Baghdad fell to US forces, no such weapons have been found. Ms Rice's comments follow calls from the former senior US weapons inspector, David Kay, for an independent inquiry. Mr Kay - who resigned last week - has said that in his view there were no significant stockpiles in Iraq before the war."
US admits Iraq intelligence flaws
BBC Online, 30 January 2004

'Operation Mass Appeal' - How Britain's MI6 participated in this plot - click here

"At a NATO conference in Prague last November, [former CIA Director James] Woolsey declared 'Iraq can be seen as the first battle of the fourth world war,' in rhetoric that he has practiced and honed virtually since the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. 'After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were centered in Europe,' he said, 'the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East.' ....."
Woolsey's Role Crucial to Impact of Occupation
'Foreign Policy in Focus', 8 April 2003

"I was seated in this very room, and my executive assistant came in and said one of the towers in New York had been hit by an aircraft. I ran in there, immediately picked up the phone and called to the assistant secretary forcounter-terrorism. Even before the second airplane went in, I thought it was impossible to have this happen actually on a clear day and said, 'We've got a problem.' About that moment, the second aircraft went into the tower, which I watched on television. Immediately after that, I was told to go to the operations center here to get on call to the vice-president, and I spent the rest of the day in the ops center with the vice-president."
Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State
'With Us or Against US', Programme 1, BBC Radio 4, 20 August 2002
(pdf file transcript - click here)

"Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power... The group was never secret about its aims. In its 1998 open letter to Clinton, the group openly advocated unilateral U.S. action against Iraq.... Of the 18 people who signed the letter, 10 are now in the Bush administration. As well as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they include Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ... "
Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
ABC News, 10 March 2003

"On March 23, after being recommended in a unanimous 18-0 vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former Vietnam-era covert operative and Contra-era figure Richard Armitage was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of State in a voice vote on the Senate Floor.... The total lack of opposition to Armitage's appointment indicates an apparent inability of the US Congress to muster any critical examination of appointments... Armitage, who was denied a 1989 appointment as Assistant Secretary of State because of links to Iran-Contra and other scandals, served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan years. U.S. Government stipulations in the Oliver North trial specifically named Armitage as one of the DoD officials responsible for illegal transfers of weapons to Iran and the Contras.... A Vietnam veteran and graduate of Annapolis, Armitage's roots have been thoroughly intertwined with the likes of CIA veteran Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, Heine Aderholt, Elliot Abrams, Dewey Clarridge, Edwin Wilson and Tom Clines. All of these men have been directly linked to CIA covert operations.... "
Richard Armitage Quietly Confirmed As Deputy Secretary of State
'From The Wilderness', March 2001

"A proposal drafted by Elliott Abrams, a special assistant to President George W. Bush on the National Security Council(NSC), arguing for the United States to assert de facto control of Iraqi oil fields has stunned State Department officials. It doesn't help that Abrams (right) was convicted of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, only to receive a presidential pardon from the current president's father.... Pentagon sources say Abrams has the backing of Paul Wolfowitz, the conservative deputy defense secretary, and the support of the office of conservative Vice President Dick Cheney. "
Iraqi oil strategy divides state, White House
Insight Magazine, 24 December 2002

"[Head of the US] Air Force Gen. Richard Myers .....said he was on Capitol Hill that morning [Sept 11] in the offices of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland .... While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. 'They thought it was a small plane or something like that,' Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call. Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet. 'Nobody informed us of that,' Myers said. 'But when we came out [i.e nearly an hour later], that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit.' [The country's most senior military officer] Army Gen. Henry Shelton, was 'somewhere over the Atlantic' en route to Europe when the attacks occurred, so it was critical for Myers to get back to the Pentagon."
Myers and Sept. 11: 'We Hadn't Thought About This'
American Forces Press Service, 23 October 2001

"SENATOR LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?
GENERAL MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question.... "
US Air Force General Myers, the most senior military officer in the US on 911,
and former Commander in Chief North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),
answering questions in the Senate, 13 September 2001

"....'The goal has never been to get bin Laden,' Myers said Friday in an interview with CNN's 'Novak, Hunt & Shields' program to be aired Saturday."
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
No large anti-Taliban operations in