Contact:
Kyle F. Hence, 401-935-7715
kylehence@earthlink.net

Ray Nowosielski, 317-698-4642
ray@bandedartists.com

9/11 Expose’ Led by 9/11 Families Drives National Campaign for New Investigation

Since it’s release a year ago, the documentary 9/11 Press for Truth, an independent expose of an under-reported 9/11 cover-up as revealed by leading 9/11 families and author Paul Thompson, has become an underground hit that continues to garner support and positive recognition as time passes and word spreads. The film has received near universally excellent critical reviews while being officially selected and screened at three international film festivals including in Brazil and Mexico. Here in the US several hundred home, library and theatrical screenings rallied tens of thousands to support a new investigation while US satellite networks, FreeSpeech TV and LINKTV, beamed the film to millions of households across the country. Overseas, the film has reached tens of millions via television networks in Spain, Poland, Norway, Sweden and throughout the Middle East via Al-Jazeera. On the net, the complete film has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

In the run-up to September 11th this year there is continued interest.  In Australia and New Zealand on the 11th, Foxtel owned History Channel will broadcast the television premiere of the film in both countries.  FreespeechTV will broadcast the documentary 5 times on Tuesday while LinkTV will broadcast the film on both Monday and Tuesday.

In Minneapolis former FBI agent Colleen Rowley has recorded public service announcements for the Air America affiliate to promote a screening of 9/11: Press for Truth in a 700 seat theater.  Rowley, who blew the whistle on her superiors’ spiking of an investigation into Zacarias Moussoui, will speak at the Minnesota screening. In Wisconsin, a victim family member will host a home screening while in Oakland, 9/11 Press for Truth is part of a 9/11 focused film festival hosted by one of the City’s largest cinemas.  Details about these screenings and a dozen in other states are available at filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s website BraveNewTheaters.com.

On the political front, 9/11 Press for Truth is central to ongoing national and local lobbying campaigns to have 9/11 re-investigated.  DownsizeDC, a libertarian group, and a number of liberal organizations including Democrats.com and Progressive Democrats of America have supported the call for nationwide screenings and house parties as part of an effort to compel Congress to re-open inquiries into the unresolved, covered-up or outstanding issues surrounding the attacks.

The Accountability project organized by DownsizeDC allows Americans supportive of a new investigation to sponsor the mailing of a DVD and letter to their representative in Congress.  They have been joined by a group in Canada that has sponsored a DVD mailing to each of the Presidential primary candidates, as well as other prominent leaders including former President Carter. The film’s Executive Producer and co-writer, Kyle F. Hence has personally presented a copy of the documentary to Rep. Kucinich and to Senators Clinton and Obama, each a current Presidential candidate.  Only Rep. Kucinich has responded by pledging to hold hearings in the Oversight subcommittee on domestic policy that he Chairs.  9/11 Commissioners Kean, Hamilton, Roemer, Gorelick and Ben-Veniste have each personally been given a copy.

In the coming week, screenings across the country together with rallies and other activities will bring focus to the failure of Congress to fully exercise their oversight responsibilities.  Since the release of the 9/11 Report in July of 2004, Congress has not held a single hearing to review the flawed, deceptive and incomplete “findings of fact” presented by the 9/11 Commission.  “No one has been held accountable and we do not yet know the whole truth about what happened,” insists co-writer Kyle F. Hence, “so it’s immensely gratifying knowing that public screenings across the country this coming week and national satellite broadcasts Monday and Tuesday as well as television broadcasts in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand will bring added pressure for a full accounting and a new investigation either by Congress, by ballot initiative in New York City or a duly constituted legal body.”

Members of the press interested in interviewing any of those involved with production of the film or any of the above outreach activities are encouraged to contact the Director Ray Nowosielski and the Executive Producer, Kyle F. Hence.  While 9/11 family member availability is limited at this time, the producers are pleased to respond to any inquiries or requests for interviews.

###

From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Dear Friends and Supporters:

Recently, I’ve received feedback from some of you that the use of bullet points is causing formatting errors in the Weekly Update, making it difficult to read. Hopefully this new format will do the trick.

Here are this week’s headlines…

[snip]

JW Files Two New Lawsuits

As usual, our legal department has been very busy this week. Here is a brief summary of two lawsuits filed over the past few days:

Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense for withholding a video(s) that allegedly shows United Flight 77 striking the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The Pentagon claims it cannot release the video because it is “part of an ongoing investigation involving Zacarias Moussaoui,” but this is a specious argument. Moussaoui already pled guilty in April 2005 for conspiring with al Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings.

[snip]

The death penalty phase of his trial is underway with jury selection nearly complete. What’s left to investigate? Moreover, while the Freedom of Information Act does allow an exemption for ongoing law enforcement investigations, the Defense Department does not even have law enforcement authority over Moussaoui. That belongs to the Department of Justice or the FBI. One reason we’re seeking the information to help put to rest conspiracy theories that a government drone or missile hit the Pentagon rather than the hijacked United airplane. Stay tuned…

Judicial Watch also filed a lawsuit against the Secret Service for failing to release White House visitor logs that reflect the entries and exits of lobbyist Jack Abramoff from the White House. President Bush, of course, has distanced himself from Abramoff saying, when questioned by the press, “I don’t know him.” He has refused, however, to release photographs and other documents that could end the speculation with respect to the nature of their relationship. The White House logs that are the subject of JW’s lawsuit may show 30 visits or they may show 3 visits. We don’t know. The point is we need to get all of the facts on the table about this admitted felon’s contacts with White House officials.

FEC Completes Investigation of Kerry’s 2004 Presidential Campaign

Earlier this week, Judicial Watch got an answer from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) regarding its request for an investigation of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. In March 2004, Judicial Watch asked the FEC to investigate a contribution to the Kerry campaign that appeared to be in excess of legal limits. (To see JW’s original letter of complaint, click here.) The FEC responded to JW’s request and announced earlier this week that the contribution was, in fact, within the bounds of campaign finance law.

What did Judicial Watch find suspicious about John Kerry’s fundraising operation? In 2003, with his poll numbers languishing, Kerry provided his cash-starved campaign with $6.4 million of his “own money.” A large portion of these funds – about $5.5 million – came from a bank loan secured by the value of the Kerry family home, then valued at about $6.6 million. Given that Kerry shares ownership of the home with his wife, Theresa Heinz, at best, Kerry had an undivided interest of $3.3 million with which to secure the loan. That means Theresa Heinz, in effect, provided Kerry with an illegal $2.2 million contribution, well beyond the $2,000 individual contribution limit allowed by law. (A loan guarantor is considered a contributor to a campaign and is subject to campaign contribution limits until the loan is paid.)

The FEC, though suspicious at first, said it found no reason to believe laws were violated. The FEC’s analysis reveals the labyrinth of maneuvers Kerry used to finance his campaign. (To read the FEC analysis, click here.) We’re still reviewing the FEC’s decision to see if it can be challenged. In the meantime, however, we are gratified that the FEC took our complaint seriously, initiated an investigation, and held John Kerry to account.

JW Participates in Washington Times Educational Panel on Immigration

Yesterday morning I participated in lively citizens’ forum hosted by The Washington Times, entitled, “The Burden and Benefit of Illegal Immigration in the Washington, DC, Area: What should municipalities be doing to cope with the issue?” The purpose of the event was to “discuss the growing issue of illegal immigration in the Washington area,” paying special attention to day labor sites, school overcrowding, employment, and residential zoning. I pointed out that state and local governments are beginning to be held to account for their complicity in aiding and abetting illegal immigration. The failures of the federal government are bad enough, but when state and local governments provide services to illegal aliens, the problem is worsened. A key step in this accountability process is our lawsuit against a county (Fairfax) and town (Herndon) government in Virginia that are using taxpayer money to promote the illegal hiring of illegal workers. A representative for the Washington, DC’s mayor participated in the event as well and he excitedly promoted how DC police are banned from even asking if a witness or suspect is in our country legally. I suggested it was that this disrespect and disregard for the law by local officials encourages more illegal immigration. The crowd was full of JW supporters and our efforts to promote enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

Until next week…

Tom Fitton

President

Judicial Watch is a non-partisan, educational foundation organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code. Judicial Watch is dedicated to fighting government and judicial corruption and promoting a return to ethics and morality in our nation’s public life. To make a tax-deductible contribution in support of our efforts, click here.

This 2 hour DVD, edited by the UVSC Media Engineering and Production Department, is the same high quality production offered by UVSC. (This includes the powerpoint presentation). A portion of the sales from this DVD go to UVSC

CONTACT:

John Gannon

johngannon@mac.com

Connect The Dots LLC

Steven E. Jones gave a presentation at Brigham Young University on Thursday about his theory that World Trade Center Building 7 was destroyed by controlled demolition rather than a terrorist attack. Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which Jones co-founded, is putting together a list of questions and will ask for a special prosecutor like the one used to probe the Watergate scandal, he said.

“Remember, I’m not alone anymore. I’ve got over 100 plus,” he said, referring to the jump in membership in the Scholars group from about 40 to more than 140 since he spoke at Utah Valley State College on Feb. 1.

The presentation, made at the Marion K. Smith Science Fiction Symposium, relied more on faith than his speech at UVSC. He quoted biblical and Mormon scriptures that he said warn against pre-emptive wars, and at one point read from the Book of Mormon.

Among Jones’s tenets — fueled by research from engineers, scientists and government reports — is that the Osama bin Laden “smoking gun” confession tape is a fake and that slag from the WTC7 building will prove it was felled by thermite, an explosive combination of aluminum powder and a metal oxide. He also contends that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were contrived to gain access to oil there. Jones said he will soon receive a sample of the slag, and he believes analysis of the sample using an electron microscope will prove his thermite theory.

As part of his presentation, Jones briefly displayed a slide with a statement from BYU’s Fulton College of Engineering, saying the department does not back his hypotheses.

When Jones presented information about the maximum temperature at which jet fuel can burn — 1,000 degrees centigrade, he said — an audience member shouted out, “It’s 3,500. You’re lying!” That data is crucial to government contentions that intense fires fed by jet fuel caused the buildings to fall.

During a question-and-answer period, one audience member asked why Jones gave “such a one-sided presentation” and did not expose his political leanings. Jones replied, “These are the facts,” and said he does not identify himself as a Democrat or Republican but does support the Constitution.

Another audience member wanted to know what additional evidence is needed to prove Jones’s theories. The slag analysis is key, Jones said. “With aluminum oxide entrained with iron, then that is the true smoking gun for thermite. That would prove the demolition hypothesis.”

Dan Peterson, a senior economics major at BYU, said he would like to know what church leaders think. He brought along copies of speeches by LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley to compare with Jones’s talk. “He’s a man of faith, but he’s also a man of science. Some of the statements President Hinckley’s made are about how we need to ferret out terrorist organizations. Well, what does he mean? What does Dr. Jones as a man of science looking at scientific data, and also a religious person, what does he think about that?”

Dave Doering, a symposium organizer and Jones supporter, explained the presentation’s fit at the event. “I laughed because I said, ‘Someone is telling a science fiction story. It’s either that man right there or it’s some people in Washington.’ ” He sides with Jones but wants others to decide for themselves. “I leave it up to the audience to make this judgment.”

Anna Chang-Yen can be reached at 344-2549 or annac@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.

NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has “evolved into something I can no longer support”. He says it should be discarded on to history’s pile of discredited ideologies.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=266122006

PNAC letter to President Clinton…

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

The events of September 11, 2001 evoke painful memories, tinged with a powerful nostalgia for the way of life before it happened. The immediate tragedy caused a disorientation sufficient to distort the critical faculties in the direction of retrospectively predictable responses: bureaucratic adaptation, opportunism, profiteering, kitsch sentiment, and mindless sloganeering.

As 9/11, and the report of the commission charged to investigate it, fade into history like the Warren Commission that preceded it, the questions, gaps, and anomalies raised by the report have created an entire cottage industry of amateur speculation–as did the omissions and distortions of the Warren Report four decades ago. How could it not?

While initially received as definitive by a rapturous official press, the 9/11 Report has been overtaken by reality, not only because of unsatisfying content–like all “independent” government reports, it is fundamentally an apology and a coverup masquerading as an exposé–but because we now know more: more about the feckless invasion of Iraq, more about the occupation of Afghanistan and the purported hunt for Osama bin Laden, more about the post-9/11 stampede to repeal elements of the Bill of Rights, more about the rush to create the Department of Homeland Security, an agency to “prevent another 9/11,” which, in retrospect, is plainly about cronyism, contracts, and Congressional boodle.

Many of the amateur sleuths of the 9/11 mystery have based their investigations on microscopic forensics regarding the publicly released video footage, or speculations into the physics of impacting aircraft or collapsing buildings. But staring too closely at the recorded traces of subatomic phenomena involved in a one-time event can deceive us into finding the answer we are looking for, as Professor Heisenberg once postulated. Over 40 years on, the Magic Bullet is still the Magic Bullet: improbable, yes, but not outside the realm of the possible.

But there is surprisingly little discussion of the basic higher-order political factors surrounding 9/11, factors that do not require knowledge of the melting point of girder steel or the unknowable piloting abilities of the presumed perpetrators. Let us proceed, then, in a spirit of detached scientific inquiry, to ask questions the 9/11 Commission was unprepared to ask.

1. Who is Osama bin Laden, and where did he come from?

On this point, the report retreats into obfuscation. While acknowledging that he had something to do with resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the report suggests, without explicitly so stating, that the links between Osama and the United States were practically nonexistent. This will not parse: until the present Global War on Terrorism, the CIA’s operation against the Red Army in Afghanistan was the biggest and most expensive covert operation in the agency’s history. The 9/11 Report provides no convincing documented refutation of Osama’s links with the CIA, given that the agency was running a major war in which he was a participant. Similarly, the report’s authors did not plumb the informal U.S. government connections with the same Saudi government whose links with the bin Laden family could have provided a cut-out for any CIA-Osama relationship. [1]

2. When were Osama’s last non-hostile links with the U.S. government?

Consistent with its view of Osama’s relationship with the CIA during the anti-Soviet enterprise, the 9/11 Report ignores the possibility that he may have had a continuing relationship with the U.S. government, particularly with its intelligence services. The report brushes this hypothesis aside with a footnote to the effect that both the CIA and purported second-ranking al Qaeda figure Ayman al Zawahiri deny a relationship. [2]

One may doubt the veracity of Langley’s denials of a relationship with Osama bin Laden and his associates, given the lack of truthfulness of its earlier statement to the Warren Commission about not having had a relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald. Or in alleging that an employee named “Mr. George Bush” whom the agency cited in its reporting of the events of 22 November 1963 was a completely different person from the George Bush who subsequently became the 41st U.S. president, after serving as Director of Central Intelligence.

Likewise, Mr. Zawahiri’s assertion of not having received a penny of CIA funds deserves the searchlight of skeptical scrutiny. What the report describes as Zawahiri’s “memoir” is actually a broadside published in a London-based newspaper in December 2001, i.e., after the events of 9/11. It was obviously intended as a call to the Muslim faithful for a holy war against the infidel desecrator of the holy places; would such a person, conscious of the need to gain recruits in a war of pure faith against the Great Satan, have confirmed having been on the payroll of his principal enemy? It is no more likely than for the current President of the United States, in drawing parallels between the war in Iraq and World War II, to advert to the fact that his grandfather’s bank was seized by the U.S. government in 1942 for illicit trading with the Third Reich.

Indeed, U.S. intelligence agencies have had, purely as a function of their charters, relationships with most of the world’s scoundrels, con-men, and psychopaths of the last 70 years: from Lucky Luciano and the Gambino Mob, to Reinhard Gehlen and Timothy Leary, to the perpetrators of the massacre of 500,000 people in Indonesia in 1965, to the Cuban exiles who blew up an airliner in 1976 [3], to such shady characters as Ahmed Chalabi and his friend “Curveball.” Among such a gallery of murderous kooks, bin Laden and his cohorts do not especially stand out.

More dispositive than these speculations, however, are the very real connections between Washington and Islamic jihadists in the Balkans throughout the 1990s. The report hints at this relationship by mentioning the presence of charity fronts of bin Laden’s “network” in Zagreb and Sarajevo. In fact, the U.S. government engaged in a massive covert operation to infiltrate Islamic fighters, many of them veterans of the Afghan war, into the Balkans for the purpose of undermining the Milosevic government. The “arms embargo,” enforced by the U.S. military, was a cover for this activity (i.e., using military force to keep prying eyes from seeing what was going on).

A key Washington fixer for the Muslim government of Bosnia was the law firm of Feith and Zell. Yes, Douglas Feith, one of the principal conspirators involved in launching the Iraq war under the banner of opposing Islamic terrorism, was a proponent of introducing Islamic terrorists into South Eastern Europe. Do the “Islamofascists” of pseudo-conservative demonology accordingly seem less like satanic enemies and more like puppets dangling from an unseen hand? Or perhaps the analogy is incorrect: more like a Frankenstein’s Monster that has slipped the control of its creator.

3. How did the President of United States React to the August 6 2001 President’s Daily Brief?

Although the August 6 PDB had been mentioned in the foreign press since 2002, it did not come to the attention of official Washington until then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice impaled herself upon the hook of 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben Veniste’s artful line of questioning in mid-2004. Blurting out the title of the PDB, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” she let the cat out of the bag–or perhaps not. Having opened Pandora’s Box, the commissioners displayed no troublesome curiosity about its contents.

What concrete measures did the president take after receiving perhaps the most significant strategic warning that any head of state could have hoped to receive about an impending attack on his country? Did he alert the intelligence agencies, law enforcement, the Border patrol, the Federal Aviation Administration, to comb through their current information and increase their alert rates? Did the threat warning of the PDB (granted that it did not reveal the tail numbers of the aircraft to be hijacked), in combination with the numerous threat warnings from other sources [4] elicit feverish activity to “protect the American people?” Not that we can observe.

So what was the actual response of the U.S. government? Here the 9/11 Report exhibits autism. As nearly as we can determine from contemporaneous bulletins, the president massacred whole hecatombs of mesquite bushes and large-mouthed bass, perfected his golf swing, and hosted various captains of industry in the rustic repose of Crawford, Texas. In other words, he presided over the most egregious example of Constitutional nonfeasance since the administration of James Buchanan allowed Southern secessionists to take possession of the arms in several federal arsenals. The 9/11 Commission’s silence on this point is an abundant demonstration of its role as an apologist, rather than a dispassionate truth-teller.

The testimony of federal officials about what they did up to and during the attacks is telling, in so far as the false and misleading statements of witnesses provide clues. Ms. Rice, her tremulous voice betraying nervousness, averred, against the plain evidence of the public record and common sense, that a PDB stating that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within the borders of the United States was too ambiguous to take any action.

Likewise, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft may have perjured himself when he denied under oath that acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard came to him on July 5, 2001 with information of terrorist plots–information that the Attorney General “did not want to hear about anymore,” as NBC News reported on June 22, 2004. It might be considered a matter of Ashcroft’s word against Pickering’s, except for the fact that Pickering had a corroborating witness.

4. Who wrote the script for the rhetorical response to 9/11?

The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center complex and the Pentagon when the unanimous and universal cry erupted in government circles, and was relentlessly amplified by the media, that this was “war,” not a criminal act of terrorism. How very convenient that this war, declared against a diffuse and stateless entity, would trigger long-sought legal authorities and constitutional loopholes which would not apply in the case of a criminal act. [5] Torture, domestic spying, selective suspension of habeas corpus, all the unconstitutional monsters whose implications are only clear four years after the event, all slipped into immediate usage with the rhetorical invocation of war.

This was not merely war, it was unlimited war, both in the sense of total war meant by General Ludendorff (civilian rights being trivial), and in the sense of lacking a comprehensible time span. “A war that will not end in our lifetimes,” said Vice President Cheney on Meet the Press on the very Sunday following the attacks. How could he be so sure during the fog of uncertainty following the strike?

If bin Laden and his followers were merely a limited number of fanatics living in Afghan caves, as we were assured at the time, why did the Bush administration relentlessly advance the meme that a decades-long war was inevitable? Could not a concerted intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic campaign, embracing all sovereign countries, have effectively shut down “al Qaeda” within a reasonable period of time–say, within the period it took to fight World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender?

Four years on, Vice President Cheney, doing a plausible imitation of the radio voice of The Shadow, continues to publicly mutter, in menacing tones of the lower octaves, that the war on terrorism [6] is a conflict that will last for decades. [7] This at the same time as the junior partner of the ruling dyarchy, the sitting president, is giving upbeat speeches promising victory in the war on terrorism (i.e., Iraq, the Central Front on the War on Terrorism) against a papier maché backdrop containing the printed slogan “Strategy for Victory.”

It is curious that no one–not the watchdogs of the supposedly adversary media, nor the nominal opposition party in Washington, nor otherwise intelligent observers–has remarked on this seeming contradiction: victory is just around the corner, yet the war will last for decades. Quite in the manner of the war between Eastasia and Oceania in 1984.

In earlier times, this contradiction would have seemed newsworthy, if not scandalous. Suppose President Roosevelt had opined at the Teheran Conference that the Axis would be defeated in two years. Then suppose his vice president had at the same time traveled about the United States telling his audiences that the Axis would not be defeated for decades. An American public not yet conditioned by television would at least have noticed, and demanded some explanation.

So question number 4 concludes with a question: why does the U.S. government hive so firmly to the notion of a long, drawn-out, indeterminate war, when Occam’s Razor would suggest the desirability of presenting a clear-cut victory within the span of imagination of the average impatient American–a couple of years at most? Or is endless war the point?

5. Why did the mysterious anthrax attacks come and go like a wraith?

For those in immediate proximity to the events, the September 11attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were frightening in the extreme, but they had not the slow accumulation of dread that the anthrax scare of October 2001 presented. Far more than any anomaly concerning 9/11 itself, the anthrax mystery is the undecoded Rosetta Stone of recent years.

The anthrax attacks were the most anomalous terrorist attacks in history: clever, successful, unpunished, causing five deaths and a billion dollars’ damage. Yet never repeated. This alone makes them remarkable in the annals of criminal activity, but there is more–the intended victims (at least those with an official position) were warned in writing of their peril in sufficient detail that they could take steps to administer an antidote. Is this characteristic of terrorist attacks by “al Qaeda,” or by any known Middle Eastern terrorist group?

Except for the ambiguous first attack (which killed a National Enquirer photo editor), all the deaths resulting from the anthrax plot were incidental–mail handlers and innocent recipients of mail which had been contaminated by proximity to the threat letters. Evidently the West Jefferson anthrax strain was more powerful and had greater accidental effects than the plotters had intended.

But what did the plotters intend, if they did not will the deaths of the addressees of their anthrax letters? It was pure coincidence, perhaps, that the anthrax scare was at its height, producing psychosomatic illness symptoms among members of Congress and staffers, just as the USA PATRIOT Act was wending its way through the legislative process. This measure, which originated among the same Justice Department lawyers who legally opined that torture was wholesome, was rammed through the Congress after enactment of the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan. Why is this sequence significant?

The then-majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, wrote a curious op-ed in the Washington Post four years after the events just described. [8]. In attempting to refute the administration’s allegation that it had been granted plenary wiretap powers in the Afghanistan authorization, he stated that he and his Senatorial confreres explicitly rejected an administration proposal to authorize an effective state of war within the borders of the United States itself.

Given the administration’s repeatedly demonstrated refusal to accept any limitation on its powers, it is logical that the rebuff on the war powers authorization was followed by the prompt submittal of the Justice Department’s draft of the PATRIOT Act, containing many of the domestic authorities the Bush White House had sought in the use of force legislation. How doubly coincidental that two of the limited number of addressees of the threat letters should have been the offices of Daschle himself, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, then-chairman of the committee of jurisdiction over the PATRIOT Act.

Needless to say, the measure was passed by an even more comfortable margin than that enjoyed by the 1933 Enabling Law in the Reichstag. [9] Notwithstanding buyer’s remorse exhibited by many members of Congress, and current efforts to amend its more onerous provisions, it appears we are saddled with the main burdens of its edicts in perpetuity.

How the government placed this perpetual burden on its citizens is bound up with the mysterious anthrax scare of October 2001, an outrage that, unlike 9/11, does not even merit an official explanation. No one has been charged.

6. Why did Osama bin Laden escape?

“Wanted, dead or alive!” “We’ll smoke ‘em out of their caves!” All Americans know the feeling of righteous retribution that attended the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the autumn and winter of 2001. Yet, suddenly, it fizzled out and became subsumed in attacking Iraq and its oilfields.

We know the explanation. Somehow, bin Laden escaped in the battle of Tora Bora, because “the back door was open.” Only after the invasion of Iraq, more than a year later, was there general acknowledgement that resources intended for Afghanistan had been diverted to the buildup for Iraq. The public was lead to believe that supplemental appropriations for Afghanistan were siphoned into the Iraq project beginning about mid-2002.

But the strange apathy about Osama’s whereabouts began sooner than that. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham states the following:

“I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office [this presumably means the CENTCOM Commander, GEN Tommy Franks. Underlings do not summon senior Senators into their offices]. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, ‘Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.’ This is February of 2002 [emphasis added]. ‘Senator, what we are engaged in now is a manhunt not a war, and we are not trained to conduct a manhunt.’”

Senator Graham elaborates on this matter in his book, Intelligence Matters , on page 125:

“At that point, General Franks asked for an additional word with me in his office. When I walked in, he closed the door. Looking troubled, he said, ‘Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.’

“‘Excuse me?” I asked.

“‘Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,’ he continued. ‘The Predators are being relocated. What we are doing is a manhunt. We have wrapped ourselves too much in trailing Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. We’re better at being a meat axe than finding a needle in a haystack. That’s not our mission, and that’s not what we are trained or prepared to do.’”

In the first excerpt, the military officer might be ambivalent about the change in mission, merely saying that the U.S. military is supposedly not trained for conducting manhunts. The second excerpt provides more substance, suggesting that Franks himself agrees that looking for Osama bin Laden is a mug’s game (“We have wrapped ourselves too much in trailing Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.”)

There we have it: as early as February 2002, the U.S. government was pulling the plug. Or was it even earlier? Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer, says in his book Jawbreaker that his paramilitary team tracked bin Laden to the Tora Bora region late in 2001 and could have killed or captured him if his superiors had agreed to his request for an additional force of about 800 U.S. troops. But the administration was already gearing up for war with Iraq and troops were never sent, allowing bin Laden to escape.

Now, Berntsen is a typical Langley boy scout who buys into most of the flummery about the war on terrorism; but it is precisely for that reason that his testimony is worthwhile. Here is no ideological critic of the Bush administration and its foreign policies–on the contrary, he shares many of its assumptions. Like fellow Agency alumnus Michael Scheuer, he has experienced the cognitive dissonance of dealing with the administration’s policies at first hand, and wishes to report on his findings.

Is it plausible that the United States Military, disposing of 1.4 million active duty troops and a million reservists, could not scare up 800 additional troops to capture what was then characterized as a fiend in human form? Perhaps the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, explained it best in a CNN interview on 6 April 2002, well after the hunt for bin Laden had apparently been concluded:

“Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden.” [10]

What can one conclude from this series of questions? If the 9/11 mystery is like other great, mysterious events–such as the Kennedy assassination–the course is probable. For a year or two, raw emotion over the event forecloses inquiry; for the next several years after that, the public’s attention wanes, and the desire to forget the painful memory predominates.

In a decade or so, though, some debunker will bring new facts into the public arena for the edification of those Americans, then in late middle age, who will view 9/11 as an intellectual puzzle: far from the urgent concerns of their daily lives.

Many people may, by that time, accept that the official explanation is bunk, and suspect that the government had once again tricked the American public, those ever-willing foils in the eternal Punch-and-Judy show. But the majority will neither know nor care about obscure international relationships during a bygone era.

In 1939, the English author Eric Ambler wrote a brilliant and now-disregarded novel whose theme was that the political events culminating in World War II were indistinguishable from the squalid doings of ordinary criminals. Let us quote from that novel, The Mask of Dimitrios:

“A writer of plays said that there are some situations that one cannot use on the stage; situations in which the audience can feel neither approval, sympathy, nor antipathy; situations out of which there is no possible way that is not humiliating or distressing and from which there is no truth, however bitter, to be extracted. . . . All I know is that while might is right, while chaos and anarchy masquerade as order and enlightenment, these conditions will obtain.”

Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst. Werther can be reached at: werther@counterpunch.org

[1] Bob Woodward’s 1987 book Veil describes the informal connections between personages in the U.S. government and the Saudi government, including the ubiquitous Prince Bandar. A tête á tête between CIA director William Casey and the Prince supposedly resulted in a false-flag “terrorist” bombing in Beirut to retaliate against the bombing of the Marine barracks there in 1983. Regrettably, the dead were mainly civilians.

[2] 9/11 Commission Report, 23rd footnote to chapter two, page 467.

[3] This is the case of Cuban “freedom fighter” Luis Posada Carriles, who is suspected of sending the jet-borne Cuban Olympic fencing team to Valhalla in order to express his opposition to Fidel Castro. The incumbent administration, otherwise so steadfastly opposed to international terrorism, has been resistant to extraditing Mr. Posada –no doubt the administration is casting an eye on Florida’s electoral votes.

[4] To include the Phoenix Memo, FBI agent Colleen Rowley’s urgent bulletins from Minnesota, tips from foreign intelligence agencies, warnings from the Federal government to its high-ranking government placemen not to fly by commercial airliner, the contemporaneously noted presence of art students-cum-Mossad agents within two blocks of 9/11 operative Mohammed Atta, and other indicators.

[5] Long sought by Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld, whose formative and traumatic experiences in the executive branch were shaped by their revulsion against attempts by Congress, the federal bench, and the American people, to restrain Richard M. Nixon’s assertion that the Constitution does not apply to a sitting president.

[6] The phrase “war on terrorism” is, as many people have commented, a somewhat hazy conception, being a war on a tactic, much as if FDR had declared war on naval aviation after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Significantly, the popular mind has contracted this phrase into “the war on terror,” an even more illogical coinage. If the U.S. government is truly at war against a mental state that gives rise to ill-defined dread, it should disestablish itself forthwith, to the benefit of our rights, our bank balances, and our physical safety.

[7] “Cheney Warns of Decades of War, ” BBC, 6 October 2005.

[8] “Power We Didn’t Grant, ” by Sen. Tom Daschle, Washington Post, 23 December 2005.

[9] The Enabling Law passed the Reichstag by a vote of 444-94, whereas the PATRIOT Act passed the House by a margin of 357-66, and the Senate by a vote of 98-1. Curiously, the Enabling Law was supposed to sunset in four years: on April Fool’s Day, 1937, precisely paralleling the four-year expiration of many of the PATRIOT Act’s provisions. Perhaps the eerie similarity reflects the influence of Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt on neoconservative lawyers of the Bush administration like David S. Addington, John Yoo, and Viet Dinh.

[10] News transcript: Gen. Myers Interview with CNN TV, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t04082002_t407genm.html

Thursday, February 23rd

Grand Lake Theater in Oakland

Sponsored by the Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance

Hosted by: Janette MacKinlay, 9/11 survivor, Speaking on “Art to Activism”

Door Open at 6:00 p.m.

Program begins at 7:00 p.m.

Reception & distribution of activist kits 9:00 p.m.

The Evening’s Hostess- Janette MacKinlay, 9-11 Survivor

(click on photo to read Janette’s letter to the Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance)

Films to be shown:

World Premiere:

‘Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93: The 9/ll Commission’s Incredible Tales’ Featuring Dr. David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor- Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 and The 9-11 Commission Report- Omissions and Distortions.

Produced/Edited by Ken Jenkins

“9/11: Attack or Godsend?”

A Dutch Television documentary (dubbed in English)

Activists Kit – A Call To Action

Presentation by Ken Jenkins

Citizen’s Counter-Coup

An on-line campaign

Presentations by Carol Brouillet- Co Founder of Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance,

David Kubiak- 911truth.org International Campaign Advisor,

and Gabriel Day- 9-11truth.org National Outreach and Networking Director

Tickets are $10 and available at-

The Grand Lake Theater

3200 Grand Avenue, Oakland, California

At co-sponsoring bookstores-

Black Oak Books,

1491 Shattuck, Berkeley,

Walden Pond Bookstore,

3316 Grand Ave., Oakland,

Pegasus/Pendragon Books

5580 College Ave. Oakland,

This link-rich post focus on Lt. Col Shaffer’s testimony before two sub-committees of the House Armed Services, the corruption of the 9/11 Commission, and questions still unanswered concerning the attacks of 9/11.

END

Mainstream US Newspaper Publishes Call to 9/11 Truth Insurrection

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/guest/index.php?ntid=72574

If you like this column let them know at:

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letter/letter_form.php

Tomorrow 2/20/06: Presidents’ Day March For Truth in N.Y.C.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/332307.shtml

Things You Can Do NOW:

1) Call talk radio and raise holy hell about 9/11. Vow to make at least one call a day, or at the very least one call a week, and hold yourself to it. Be sure to phone in to conservative radio hosts and making general (not specific) comments when answering to initial screening questioning.

2) Order yourself a big bankroll of Deception Dollars from http://www.deceptiondollar.com/ Get them in quantity for only five cents each! Carry them everywhere, give them away and watch people do a double-take, then crack up. Put them in the driver’s door crack of cars with appropriate bumperstickers. Hand them out at rallies and concerts.

3) Organize a showing of one or more 9/11 truth videos in your church, library or living room.

4) Send the video links below to everyone you know:

9/11 Videos Available Online

Its never been easier to spread the truth, every bulletin board, blog, and email address on the web can be cheaply and easily infected with 9/11 truth. No better time than now, let it rip:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3498980438587461603&q=eyewitness

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5137581991288263801&q=loose+change

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9124194186333362123&q=9%2F11+reopen

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1336167662031629480&q=painful+deceptions

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8797525979024486145&q=9%2F11+ruppert

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6529813972926262623&q=the+great+conspiracy

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=alex+jones&so=0

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” — Aldous Huxley

MONDO TERROR ALERTS:

Terrifying New Terror Campaign by Terrorists Terrorizing Terrified Tourists at Camp Timidford, Texas

http://www.mytown.ca/sanityclaws/

The Missing Portion of the Fatty Bin Laden “Confession Video”

http://www.dcdave.com/article4/011216.html

Kevin Barrett

Coordinator, MUJCA-NET: http://mujca.com

February 17, 2006

Dear Mr. Spitzer,

I learned during a Congressional hearing before two sub-committees of the Armed Service Committee this past Wednesday (hear audio at http://www.abledangerblog.com) that you had acted in such a way as to allow the #2 at the your office, your Deputy Dietrich Snell, a former 9/11 Commission counsel, to avoid having to answer questions as to his role in the 9/11 Commission’s failure and/or refusal to disclose details about the Able Danger counter-terrorist program either to the 9/11 Commissioners or in the 9/11 Report itself.

According to Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, who gave testimony before the Armed Services sub-committeess, there were five witnesses who said the program had identified Mohamed Atta by name and/or photo over a year before the attacks. According to Rep. Weldon an Able Danger chart created over a year before 9/11 showing a photo of Atta was presented by Representatives Weldon, Burton and Shays to Stephen Hadley, then Deputy to National Security Advisor Condi Rice, on September 25, 2001. On July 12, 2004 Dieter Snell met one of the Able Danger team members and witnesses, the actual hands-on head of the operation, Capt. Scott Phillpott, who told him that Able Danger had identified and planned offensive operations against four of the eventual 19 hijackers as part of what they called the “Brooklyn Cell.” According to Lt. Col Shaffer Dietrich Snell said, “What do you want me to do with this information, we go to print in 10 days?”

I have called your office for a statement on this issue and Mari Arce of the Communications Dept. is not aware of any statement being been issued. I have two simple questions I believe all Americans and all the victim family members deserve straight-forward answers to:

What business of yours is it to stand in the way of a Congressional effort led by the Armed Services Committee to learn the truth about why it was a military operation targeting Al-Qaeda and ID future hijackers (Able Danger) was killed by as yet identified DoD officials?

What right do you have to prevent Congressional oversight and an attempt to learn why it was the 9/11 Commission staff, including your employee Dietrich Snell, failed to brief the 9/11 Commissioners about a program a Navy Commander told Snell had ID Atta over a year before 9/11?

In 2004 and 2005, following a formal complaint filing with your office and your chief investigator William Casey, you effectively ignored leading 9/11 family members, 9/11 survivors and first responders who had signed on to the complaint requesting you investigate any number of areas where the Commission fell short. (see full complaint and appendices at http://www.justicefor911.org) And you promised me, their spokesperson at the time, in person at the your opening fund-raiser luncheon that you would meet with the complainants which included Bill Doyle. You broke your promise despite persistent follow-ups.

I believe you have a lot of explaining to do. I intend to talk extensively with Bill Doyle and other leading family members about your latest attempt to stand in the way of getting at the truth about what happened on 9/11.

I believe they are owed an explanation as to why you took no action or even a courtesy of a response following the filing of our complaint with your office (see http://www.justicefor911.org) . I believe all Americans are now owed an explanation as to why you would stand in the way of Congress who had some simple questions for your Deputy, Dietrich Snell. Given your previous responses and what appears to be your covering for Dieter Snell would I be foolish to expect the courtesy of a response?

You know Mr. Spitzer I’d admired you and the strong stand you’ve taken against the abuses and corruption of big business and I took you at your word when you told me you’d meet with the “Justice for 9/11″ complainants. However, I’m afraid you are near to losing that respect with this latest obstruction on your part that appears to have let Mr. Snell off the hook.

What kind of coward, what kind of an American won’t answer to Congress on such a question as the 9/11 attacks that led to the death of nearly 3000 people and hundreds of police and firemen from NYC; and to answer questions as to what the government knew before the attacks and why it was the Commission covered up the existence of Able Danger and how it was killed and buried by DoD officials? I truly hope you give me reason to reconsider my judgment about you and Mr. Snell. I hope you prove my doubts wrongly placed and you, and Mr. Snell, are willing to stand up for your record on the investigative questions regarding the crimes of 9/11 for which neither truth or justice have been served and for which it appears you both have covered up by your inaction and/or obstruction.

Most sincerely,

Kyle F. Hence

9/11 CitizensWatch

cc. Dietrich Snell, Justice for 9/11 complainants, Office of Rep. McKinney via John Judge and Office of Rep. Curt Weldon.