WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANSWERS TO THESE 9/11 QUESTIONS?
Aozotorp
WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANSWERS TO THESE 9/11 QUESTIONS?
By WILLIAM BUNCH in the Philadelphia Inquirer
Sept.11, 2003
(Condensed)
Why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day?
No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of his
accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the 19
people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are really
the right guys.
Who put deadly anthrax in the mail? Where were the jet fighters that were
supposed to protect America's skies that morning? And what was the role of our
supposed allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
There are dozens of unanswered questions about the 2001 attacks. (Here are a
few. The complete list of 20 is on the webpage: TB)
1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush
about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on
Aug. 6, 2001?
Rice has suggested in vague terms that the president's brief - prepared daily
by the CIA - included information that morning about Osama bin Laden's methods
of operation - including hijacking. But when the congressional committee
probing Sept. 11 asked to see the report, Bush claimed executive privilege and
refused to release it.
2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel
commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?
On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that
Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because
of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to
travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later
reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly
canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security
concerns."
Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style
attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?
~~~~~
From Wednesday, September 12, 2001, Page A - 17
Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel
by Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
FOR Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late
Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security -- a
full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him
that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.
-----
ACCORDING to a report today Friday, May 17, 2002, on Pacifica Radio, the
warning to San Francisco's mayor came from squeaky-clean Condoleezza Rice.
I watched Ms. Rice, on C-Span a day or two ago, and she seemed genuinely
rattled by the disclosure of these facts; not by the facts themselves, just by
the disclosure.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/05/Bush_knew2.html
~~~~~
3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before
Sept. 11?
On Sept. 10, 2001, the trading ratio on United Airlines was 25 times greater
than normal at the Pacific Exchange, where traders could buy "puts," high-risk
bets that the price of a company's stock will fall sharply. The next day, two
hijacked United jetliners crashed, causing the company's shares to plummet and
ultimately leading the airline into bankruptcy. CBS News later reported that at
intelligence agencies, "alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the
U.S. stock options market" on the day before the attacks.
The unusual stock trading suggests that someone with a sophisticated knowledge
of finance also had advance information about the impending attack. But two
years later, no one has been charged in this matter, and officials have not
indicated even if the probe is still open.
4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the Sept.
11 attacks really the hijackers?
Probably not. Just 10 days after the attacks, a report by the British
Broadcasting Corp. said that some of the supposed hijackers identified by the
FBI appeared to be alive and well. The BBC story said Abdelaziz al-Omari, named
as the pilot who crashed the jet into the World Trade Center's North Tower, was
reported by Saudi authorities to be working as an electrical engineer. He
reported his passport had been stolen in Denver in 1995. Saudi officials said
it was possible that another three people whose names appear on the FBI list
also are alive.
The article, which can be read at Unanswered Questions, makes a persuasive case
that another man was posing as Ziad Jarrah, the alleged pilot of hijacked
Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa. So why did this story line vanish
into thin air?
6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked
jets?
During the depths of the Cold War, Americans went to bed with the somewhat
reassuring belief that jet fighters would intercept anyone launching a first
strike against the United States. That myth was shattered on 9/11, when four
hijacked-jetliners-turned-into-deadly-missiles cruised the American skies with
impunity for nearly two hours.
Why does NORAD claim it did not learn that Flight 11 - the first jet to strike
the World Trade Center about 8:45 a.m. - had been hijacked until 8:40 a.m.,
some 25 minutes after the transponder was shut off and an astounding 15 minutes
after flight controllers heard a hijacker say, "We have some planes..."?
Why didn't the fighters that were finally scrambled at Otis Air Force Base in
Massachusetts and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fly at top, supersonic
speeds? Why didn't fighters immediately take off from Andrews Air Force Base,
just outside Washington, D.C.? Why was nothing done to intercept American
Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon, when officials knew it had been
had been hijacked some 47 minutes earlier?
And why has no one been disciplined for the worst breakdown in national defense
since Pearl Harbor?
7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers
for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?
In the two years since the attacks, questions have only grown about the
president's bizarre behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota
classroom that America was under attack.
"I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there, listening to
second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building," World Trade Center
widow Lorie van Auken, a leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who have
raised questions about the attacks.
For a fascinating read on the subject, go to: www.unansweredquestions.org
/timeline/main/essayaninteresting day.html.
10. Where are the planes' "black boxes"?
Nothing is more critical to learning about air disasters than the so-called
"black boxes." They are the 30-minute audio recordings of cockpit chatter and
the fight-data inputs which show the speed, direction and operational condition
of the plane, and which are encased in material designed to withstand a
high-speed crash. Yet the government has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on
the black boxes from Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and from
Flight 93.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has said Flight 77's data recorder provided
altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder
contained nothing useful. Why not? Why not release the information to the
public? Why has a docile mainstream media not demanded this information?
And how come none of the four "indestructible" black boxes was recovered from
the World Trade Center, even as investigators said that a passport belonging to
one of the hijackers had been found in the rubble, undamaged, a week after the
towers' collapse?
11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam
Hussein to the attacks?
Rumsfeld and a number of other Bush administration officials have ties to a
once-obscure policy group called the Project for a New American Century. In a
2000 white paper, PNAC - which had long urged an American invasion of Iraq -
said that for the United States to assert itself properly as the world's lone
superpower, "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl
Harbor" - would be required.
That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today.
12.Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?
7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building, was not struck by an aircraft on
Sept. 11, yet the building mysteriously collapsed at 5:20 p.m. that afternoon.
Apparently debris from the jetliner attacks on the adjacent twin towers started
a fire at No. 7. But as the New York Times noted: "No building like it, a
modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an
uncontrolled fire." Investigators have speculated that excess diesel
fuel for emergency generators fanned the flames, but the full story may never
be known.
13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins
and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?
Some White House officials felt that the health of Wall Street was more
important than the health of New York City residents.
For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press release from the Environmental
Protection Agency said: "Recent samples of dust showed higher levels of
asbestos in EPA tests." That was deleted and replaced with this: "The new
samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards
and consequently is not a cause for public concern."
A key figure in the changes was the head of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, who is a lawyer who formerly represented the asbestos
industry.
17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?
Two years later, the list of potential suspects - al Qaeda terrorists, Saddam,
crackpot U.S. scientists - hasn't been narrowed down. Our government's utter
cluelessness about a reign of terror that rattled the nation and dominated the
headlines in fall 2001 is an investigative failure of epic proportions.
Former Army biomedical researcher named Steven J. Hatfill, has been labeled "a
person of interest" by the FBI, but nothing definitive has linked Hatfill to
the crime. And now Hatfill has sued the government for invading his privacy -
in a case that may never be solved.
19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report?
It's not a total mystery. Everyone has acknowledged that the pages contain
highly embarrassing information about links between the Sept. 11 hijackers and
the government of Saudi Arabia, America's supposed ally in the Middle East and
home to the world's largest oil reserves. The prince is so close to the Bush
family that he's known, incredibly, as "Bandar Bush."
This week, Time reports that just after the Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S.
commercial airspace was still closed to our citizens, Bush allowed a jet to
stop at 10 U.S. cities to pick up and fly home 140 prominent Saudis, including
relatives of bin Laden.
A new must-read book by investigative reporter Posner - "Why America Slept" -
takes the conspiracy to the highest of levels of the Saudi government. He says
a top bin Laden lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002,
fingered three top Saudis - Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the
Westernized owner of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem; Prince Turki
al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief, and Prince
Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir.
In an eight-day period in late July 2002, Prince Ahmed died at age 43 from a
heart attack, Prince Turki died in a car crash and Prince Fahd "died of
thirst." Coincidence? What do you think?
Jack
> WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANSWERS TO THESE 9/11 QUESTIONS?
>
> By WILLIAM BUNCH in the Philadelphia Inquirer
> Sept.11, 2003
> (Condensed)
>
>
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