truthaction.org

[Diane]

Back in July, I had hoped to be able to spend lots of time researching 9/11 in time to write a well-researched pamphlet to distribute in the vicinity of this year’s major 9/11 anniversary events sponsored by local 9/11 Truth movement groups. Alas, I was then swamped with work and other things, so I did not have a chance to do the desired research. So, I’ll just have to write the pamphlet based on what I already know.

Here's my draft so far, posted on my blog. Comments appreciated.

My draft pamphlet's emphasis is on what I consider to be the strongest evidence of a coverup, e.g. statements by officials acknowledging a coverup.

I don't try to make the case for any scenario of what might have actually happened. Instead I just focus on why we need a new investigation.

(ETA: What I've posted so far is a draft of only the first half of the pamphlet. The second half will focus on the past history of U.S. government support for Islamist terrorism overseas.)
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist

[Diane]

I decided to take the time to re-post the text here (and do the needed re-formatting):

Why we need a new investigation of 9/11

After 9/11/2001, many people had questions about how and why the attacks were able to succeed. Were there things the U.S. government could have done, but didn’t do, to stop the attacks?

• Were there warnings that the Bush administration ignored?
  
  
• Why were none of the hijacked planes intercepted by fighter jets before they hit their targets?
  
  
• Why were some of the 9/11 hijackers, already known to be terrorists, even allowed into this country?
  

Bush opposed calls for an investigation into these questions. Eventually the 9/11 Families movement, led by four 9/11 widows known as the “Jersey Girls,” did succeed in pressuring Congress and Bush to create the 9/11 Commission.

But there is lots of evidence of coverups. For example:

• Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commisstion, have said they were “stonewalled by the C.I.A.” (New York Times, January 2, 2008). They have voiced this complaint despite their widely perceived go-easy attitude.
  
  
• Thomas H. Kean has said that NORAD (the North American Aerospace Command) made blatantly false statements “so far from the truth” that the 9/11 Commission considered criminal charges (Washington Post, August 2, 2006).
  
  
• Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that there is evidence of involvement by foreign governments - evidence that remains highly classified. Graham has alleged that the information remains classified not for any genuine national security reason, but merely to avoid embarrassing some people. (PBS interview, July 24, 2003)
  

Many people regard the 9/11 Commission itself as part of the coverup, for many reasons including the following:

• The 9/11 Commission Report dismisses the question of the financing of the 9/11 attacks as being “of little practical significance” (Chapter 5).
  
  
• Quite a few whistleblowers were not interviewed.
  
  
• The 9/11 Commission had subpoena power but rarely used it, preferring a gentler approach.
  
  
• The 9/11 Commission’s research staff was directed by Philip Zelikow, who had strong ties to the Bush administration (such as having co-authored a book with Condoleeza Rice). Thus the investigation was not truly independent of the Bush administration, as it should have been.
  

Chapters 5 and 7 of the 9/11 Commission Report, which deal with Al Qaeda and the hijackers, are based largely on CIA reports about interrogations of people who were tortured. Torture is not only a severe violation of human rights, but also results in notoriously unreliable confessions The commissioners were not allowed to interview the detainees themselves, nor were they even allowed to view direct transcripts of interrogations.

It is clear to many people that there have been coverups. But coverups of what? Among people who talk about 9/11, debate is now polarized between people who insist that “9/11 was an inside job” and people who insist that whatever might have been covered up, it couldn’t possibly be anything worse than incompetence. But there are many other possibilities between the extremes of “inside job” and “nothing worse than incompetence.” Other possibilities include criminal negligence, corruption, and treason. Due to the coverups, we simply don’t know all the facts.

Whatever the U.S. government did or didn’t do on or before 9/11, what’s important is that those responsible for its failures be held accountable -- even if no one in the U.S. government was guilty of anything worse than incompetence. And it is important to know what really went wrong in terms of counter-terrorism policy, so that we can know what's really needed to protect us from terrorism, without undue sacrifice of our privacy and civil liberties. (The "PATRIOT act" was probably overkill.) To that end, we need a new, more truly independent follow-up investigation, similar to what the 9/11 Commission was supposed to be.
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist

[Jon Gold]

I would point out how competent those people actually were in achieving their goals.

[Diane]

[Jon Gold]

[Diane]

[Diane]

[Jon Gold]

I don't know what happened on 9/11. For many things, Mineta, the ISI, etc... I have taken it as far as humanly possible with what little resources I have, and I still don't know. We need a real investigation. As you can see from this...

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080326132655798

I agree with what you're saying. However, I may not know what happened on 9/11, or who exactly was responsible (although I know who have earned the title of suspect for the crime of 9/11), I am EXTREMELY confident that whatever part elements within our Government had to play with 9/11, it was criminality, as opposed to incompetence.

So if it was my article, I would say something... since it's yours... etc... etc... etc...

[Diane]

I too am inclined to believe that there was some kind of criminality involved -- at the very least criminal negligence, and probably at least a little bit worse.

But I feel more comfortable arguing points for which I have an absolutely slam-dunk case. We do have an absolutely slam-dunk case for the existence of coverups and the need for an independent investigation, whereas most other issues are a lot iffier (at least if one has made a point of reading what the more studious people on both sides have had to say).
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist

[truebeleaguer]

Hi Diane,

That's a good start, and you raise important points. In some places you
could express them more emphatically in the form of statements instead
of questions.

I realize you're starting historically, with the questions that we later
became more confident about. That's a good opening for a draft,
because it gets you writing and the beginning is a good place to start.
But it's a weak opening for a leaflet you're passing out on the street to
people who'd rather not read it and are looking for an excuse to toss it in
the trash.

I don't think it's easy to interest people 8 years after 9/11 in the question
"Were there things the U.S. government could have done, but didn’t do,
to stop the attacks?" Everybody knows there were.

If you're not willing to say "Why did the U.S. government do nothing to
stop the attacks?" and "Why did the Bush administration ignore
warnings?" "Why was there no effective air defense?" maybe you should
find a new opening.

You should source your quotes in small-type footnotes, because they're
distracting in the text.

I'd also like to see you use the "set up to fail" characterization from Kean
and Hamilton.

And be harder on Zelikow! As a member of the transition team, he was
the architect of Clarke's demotion, and he wrote the pre-emptive war
doctrine. Also his status as an expert in "public myth" might be worth a
mention.

Can't you say "many" whistleblowers were not interviewed?

It's pretty easy after all this time to dismiss 9/11 Truth--who cares about
coverups when the Bush administration is out of office? You thus need to
do a real convincing job of explaining why we need new investigations.

I'd suggest you raise that issue in the lead--that accepting implausible
answers to important questions is toxic to an open society-- rather than
opening with a historical review of people's long-ago questions. And then
you should hammer it home at the end again.

I'd suggest you take a look at the Jersey widows' brilliant letter to Leahy
about why new investigations are needed for a model of how to express
in pithy language the vital nature of these issues.

http://www.infowars.com/from-911-widows-an-open-letter-to-senator-patrick-leahy/


Thanks for the work you do!

[Diane]

[Diane]

Below is my latest draft. I've followed most of truebeleaguer's suggestions. I haven't yet added as much about Zelikow as I probably should, but I'll wait with that until after I'm done with the second part of my pamphlet, which will be about the history of U.S. support for Islamist terrorism. It's going to be a tight squeeze as is.

Why we need a new investigation of 9/11


Why should anyone still care about 9/11, now that Bush is no longer President?

• Because Obama is continuing the wars that were justified by 9/11, and is letting the torturers get away with it.
  
  
• Because excessive secrecy and lack of accountability are toxic to democracy. Even if no one in the U.S. government was guilty of anything worse than incompetence, it is our right and duty, as citizens and as taxpayers, to hold them accountable.
  

After 9/11/2001, many people had questions about how and why the attacks were able to succeed.

• Why did the Bush administration ignore warnings?
  
• Why wasn’t there any effective air defense?
  
• Why were some of the 9/11 hijackers, already known to be terrorists, even allowed into this country?
  

Bush opposed calls for an investigation into these questions. Eventually the 9/11 Families movement, led by four 9/11 widows known as the “Jersey Girls,” did succeed in pressuring Congress and Bush to create the 9/11 Commission.

But there is lots of evidence of coverups. For example:

• Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commisstion, have said they were “stonewalled by the C.I.A.” (New York Times, January 2, 2008). In their book Without Precedent (2006), they charge that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.” They have voiced these complaints despite their own widely perceived go-easy attitude.
  
  
• Thomas H. Kean has said that NORAD (the North American Aerospace Command) made blatantly false statements “so far from the truth” that the 9/11 Commission considered criminal charges (Washington Post, August 2, 2006).
  
  
• Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that there is evidence of involvement by foreign governments - evidence that remains highly classified. Graham has alleged that the information remains classified not for any genuine national security reason, but merely to avoid embarrassing some people. (PBS interview, July 24, 2003)
  

Many people regard the 9/11 Commission itself as part of the coverup, for many reasons including the following:

• The 9/11 Commission Report, dismisses the question of the financing of the 9/11 attacks as being “of little practical significance” (Chapter 5).
  
  
• Many whistleblowers were not interviewed.
  
  
• The 9/11 Commission had subpoena power but rarely used it.
  
  
• The 9/11 Commission’s research staff was directed by Philip Zelikow, who had strong ties to the Bush administration. (He had been a member of Bush’s transition team, and he had cc-authored a book with Condoleeza Rice). Thus the investigation was not truly independent of the Bush administration, as it should have been.
  

It is clear to many people that there have been coverups. But coverups of what? Among people who talk about 9/11, debate is now polarized between people who insist that “9/11 was an inside job” and people who insist that whatever might have been covered up, it couldn’t possibly be anything worse than incompetence. But there are many other possibilities between the extremes of “inside job” and “nothing worse than incompetence.” Other possibilities include criminal negligence, corruption, and treason. Due to the coverups, we simply don’t know all the facts.

Chapters 5 and 7 of the 9/11 Commission Report, which deal with Al Qaeda and the hijackers, are based largely on CIA reports about interrogations of people who were tortured. Torture is not only a severe violation of human rights, but also results in notoriously unreliable confessions The commissioners were not allowed to interview the detainees themselves, nor were they even allowed to view direct transcripts of interrogations.

Whatever the U.S. government did or didn’t do on or before 9/11, what’s important is that those responsible for its failures be held accountable -- even if no one in the U.S. government was guilty of anything worse than incompetence. And it is important to know what really went wrong in terms of counter-terrorism policy, so that we can know what's really needed to protect us from terrorism, without undue sacrifice of our privacy and civil liberties. (The "PATRIOT act" was probably overkill.) To that end, we need a new, more truly independent follow-up investigation, similar to what the 9/11 Commission was supposed to be.
_________________
Diane

New York City Activist