Larry Silverstein Was Already Thinking About Insurance Already On The Day of 9/11

It is well known that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein has tried to claim the 9/11 attacks against New York constituted two separate events, thus entitling him to a double insurance payout. But a new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals something less well known: Silverstein was already thinking about how to get this double payout on the evening of 9/11 itself:

September 12, 2001: WTC Leaseholder Already Wants to Claim Double Insurance for Attacks and Rebuild
Developer Larry Silverstein, who recently took over the lease of the World Trade Center (see July 24, 2001), later tells journalist Steven Brill that he’d been so sickened by the destruction on 9/11, and by the deaths of four of his employees in the WTC, that he did not focus on insurance or financial matters until “perhaps two weeks later.” But according to two people who call him this morning to offer their sympathy, Silverstein soon changes the subject: “He had talked to his lawyers… and he had a clear legal strategy mapped out. They were going to prove, Silverstein told one of the callers, that the way his insurance policies were written the two planes crashing into the two towers had been two different ‘occurrences,’ not part of the same event. That would give him more than $7 billion to rebuild, instead of the $3.55 billion that his insurance policy said was the maximum for one ‘occurrence.’ And rebuild was just what he was going to do, he vowed.” By mid-morning, he calls his architect David Childs, and instructs him to start sketching out a plan for a new building. He tells Childs to plan to build the exact same area of office space as has been destroyed. In fact, Silverstein’s lawyers claim the developer had been on the phone to them on the evening of 9/11, wondering “whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.” [Brill, 2003, pp. 18-19 and 39-40; Real Deal, 1/2004] Yet Jerome Hauer, the former director of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, had gone to Silverstein’s office on 9/11, and later claims that Silverstein’s primary concern that day had been his employees, and whether they had gotten out of the WTC. “Larry was absolutely devastated,” he says. [Weiss, 2003, pp. 374] Following a lengthy legal dispute, Silverstein will eventually receive $4.55 billion in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC (see May 23, 2007). [New York Post, 5/24/2007]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a091201doubleinsurance&scale=0

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Secret Government

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11
Throughout the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are key players in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan administration. Presently, Cheney is working as a Republican congressman, while Rumsfeld is head of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. At least once per year, they both leave their day jobs for periods of three or four days. They head to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, DC, and along with 40 to 60 federal officials and one member of the Reagan Cabinet are taken to a remote location within the US, such as an underground bunker. While they are gone, none of their work colleagues, or even their wives, knows where they are. They are participating in detailed planning exercises for keeping government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. This highly secret "continuity of government" (COG) program is known as Project 908. The idea is that if the US were under a nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to separate locations around the US to prepare to take leadership of the country. If somehow one team was located and hit with a nuclear weapon, the second or third team could take its place. Each of the three teams includes representatives from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and various domestic-policy agencies. The program is run by a new government agency called the National Program Office. Based in the Washington area, it has a budget of hundreds of million dollars a year, which grows to $1 billion per year by the end of Reagan's first term in office. Within the National Security Council, the "action officer" involved in the COG program is Oliver North, who is a key figure in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan's Vice President George H. W. Bush also supervises some of the program's efforts. As well as Cheney and Rumsfeld, other known figures involved in the COG exercises include Kenneth Duberstein, who serves for a time as President Reagan's chief of staff, and future CIA Director James Woolsey. The program, though, is extraconstitutional, as it establishes a process for designating a new US president that is nowhere authorized in the US Constitution or federal law. After George H. W. Bush is elected president in 1988 and the effective end of the Soviet Union in 1989, the exercises continue. They will go on after Bill Clinton is elected president, but will then be based around the threat posed by terrorists, rather than the Soviet Union (see (1992-2000)). According to journalist James Mann, the participation of Rumsfeld and Cheney in these exercises demonstrates a broader truth about them: "Over three decades, from the Ford administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never too far away; they stayed in touch with its defense, military, and intelligence officials and were regularly called upon by those officials. Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States." [Mann, 2004, pp. 138-145; Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 85] The plan they rehearse for in the COG exercises will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002] Mann subsequently comments, "The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a81cogexercises&scale=0

(1992-2000): Secret Continuity of Government Exercises Prepare for Terrorist Threat
During the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were regular participants in top-secret exercises, designed to test a program called continuity of government (COG) that would keep the federal government functioning during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (see 1981-1992). Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the COG exercises continue into the 1990s, being budgeted still at over $200 million per year. Now, terrorists replace the Soviet Union as the imagined threat. The terrorism envisaged is almost always state-sponsored, with the imagined terrorists acting on behalf of a government. According to journalist James Mann, the COG exercises are abandoned fairly early in the Clinton era, as the scenario is considered farfetched and outdated. However another journalist, Andrew Cockburn, suggests they continue for longer. He adds that, while the "shadow government" created in the exercises had previously been drawn from across the political spectrum, now the players are almost exclusively Republican hawks. A former Pentagon official with direct knowledge of the program will later say, "It was one way for these people to stay in touch. They'd meet, do the exercise, but also sit around and castigate the Clinton administration in the most extreme way. You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 88] The continuity of government plan will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a92cogcontinues&scale=0

The Assassination of JFK Junior - Murder by Manchurian Candidate

Overwhelming, jaw-dropping evidence of foul play in the death of John F Kennedy Jr. - all based on official government documents.

This is a must see video.

Where Were the F-15s on 9/11?

September 11, 2001 was an extraordinary day for many reasons. It was a day when hijackers who were amateur pilots and had never before flown jet planes suddenly gained remarkable flying skills. It was a day when scientific laws apparently changed, so that relatively small fires supposedly could cause three massive skyscrapers to disintegrate into dust, each in the space of just a few seconds. And it was also a day when two F-15s appear to have made possibly the slowest journey by military fighter jets in all history.

A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline summarizes the testimonies of numerous witnesses who were on the ground in Manhattan that morning, describing when they first heard fighter jets arriving overhead. Despite a few contradictory accounts, these witnesses generally agree that fighters did not arrive over New York until around the time of the second WTC collapse, so roughly about 10:20 a.m.-10:35 a.m.

In response to the first hijacking, of Flight 11, two F-15 fighter jets were launched from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which is about 153 miles away from New York City. The F-15s were ordered to scramble at 8:46 a.m. and were in the air by 8:53 a.m. But, according to the 9/11 Commission: "Lacking a target, they were vectored toward military controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. To avoid New York area air traffic and uncertain about what to do, the fighters were brought down to military air space to 'hold as needed.' From 9:08 to 9:13, the Otis fighters were in this holding pattern." [1] After leaving it at 9:13, they finally arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. [2]

This account itself is extraordinary. The first sign of a problem with Flight 11 was when it broke communication with air traffic control just before 8:14 a.m., refusing to respond to a request to climb to 35,000 feet. The emergency was compounded when Flight 11's transponder went off minutes later, at 8:21 a.m. [3]

As MSNBC reported: "If a plane deviates by 15 degrees, or two miles" from its pre-arranged course, "flight controllers will hit the panic button. ... It's considered a real emergency." In response, "F-16 interceptors can fly alongside a plane to see who's flying it. They can also try to force it off course. Once it is apparent that it is not following directions, it might be forced over the ocean or to a remote airport--or even shot down." [4]

Clearly then, a plane need not be hijacked for an emergency to exist. A plane that is off course or out of contact with air traffic control would be a potential danger to other aircraft in its area, regardless of whether or not it was hijacked. A speedy response by the military would be essential.

This point has been elucidated by Robin Hordon, an air traffic controller from 1970 to 1981, who in fact was responsible for the air traffic sector where Flight 11 first became an emergency on 9/11: "It is important for people to understand that scrambling jet fighters to intercept aircraft showing the signs of experiencing 'IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCIES' such as going off course without authorization, losing a transponder signal and/or losing radio contact, is a common and routine task executed jointly between the FAA and NORAD controllers. The entire 'national defense-first responder' intercept system has many highly trained civilian and military personnel who are committed and well trained to this task. FAA and NORAD continuously monitor our skies and fighter planes and pilots are on the ready 24/7 to handle these situations." [5]

Therefore, very soon after 8:14 a.m., Flight 11 should have been declared an emergency, and fighters should have been in the air to intercept it within minutes. According to Hordon: "The first fifteen minutes are the key. I have done the math. If we had scrambled some aircraft five or six minutes after we saw this huge deviation, the fighters from Otis would have intercepted American 11 over southwestern Connecticut or just south of Albany, NY." [6] As we know, this did not happen.

Even according to the 9/11 Commission's account, it was more than an hour after Flight 11 became an obvious emergency that the fighter jets launched in response to it finally arrived over New York. But if we believe the claims of the majority of witnesses quoted by the Complete 9/11 Timeline, it actually took more than two hours from when the emergency began for F-15s to arrive over the city. Yet the base from where they took off was just 153 miles away, and F-15s have a maximum speed of 915 mph at sea level, or 1,875 mph at high altitude. [7] So what slowed them down?

It could hardly be claimed that the mission the fighters were being called upon to perform was something out of the ordinary. A report published by the General Accounting Office in May 1994 stated: "Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD's alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites' total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress." In other words, over this four-year period, military scrambles averaged about one per day. After 9/11, it was reported that NORAD had scrambled fighters 67 times during the nine months from September 2000 to June 2001. [8] So clearly the launching of military jets to intercept suspicious aircraft was a routine operation.

Fighters were reportedly able to respond within minutes of being called upon to do so. In the days after 9/11, Otis Air Force Base was reported as keeping two fighters "on 24-hour alert," which, "if needed, must be in the air within five minutes." [9] An alert pilot at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida--another of NORAD's alert sites--said: "If needed, we could be killing things in five minutes or less." And a book published by the 1st Air Force in 1999 described the emergency scramble procedure at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, also one of NORAD's alert sites. Tech. Sgt. Don Roseen, who was responsible for keeping the fighters there ready for instant takeoff, was quoted as saying that the alert jets were "hot and cocked, they are ready. When that alarm goes off, everything else just stops." [10] According to Robin Hordon: "Jet fighters typically intercept any suspect plane over the United States within 10-15 minutes of notification of a problem." [11]

How then can we explain the failure of the military to stop Flight 11 and Flight 175 from hitting the World Trade Center? And why did fighter jets apparently not arrive over New York until around 10:30 a.m.?

It could hardly have been due to incompetence. In fact, in January 1999, the 1st Air Force air sovereignty team, which, as part of NORAD, is responsible for the air defense of the continental United States, scored an unprecedented "grand slam" in an evaluation of its effectiveness. The three air defense sectors responsible for protecting U.S. airspace had their command and control skills tested in the Air Combat Command Operational Readiness Inspections (ORI). All were rated "outstanding," which was the highest score possible on a five-tier scale. Brigadier General Kenneth Stromquist Jr., the 1st Air Force vice commander, commented: "There's never been a grand slam ... in the history of this outfit." [12]

How could this team's performance plummet so abysmally two-and-a-half years later, on 9/11? Adding to the suspicion is the fact that no one in the military has been punished for this disastrous performance. Retired Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, a former fighter pilot, has summed it up: "No one has been court-martialed. No one has been reprimanded. No one has been demoted. No one is to blame. That only tells me one thing. The ones to blame are too high up to play scapegoat." [13]


From the Complete 9/11 Timeline:

(9:45 a.m.-10:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses First Notice Military Jets over New York, Later Than Claimed by 9/11 Commission
According to the accounts of numerous witnesses on the ground near the World Trade Center, military fighter jets are first noticed flying over Manhattan either shortly before or soon after the second collapse, at 10:28 a.m. Some witnesses recall fighters arriving just before this collapse:
* Emergency medical technicians Dulce McCorvey and Michael D'Angelo hear fighters flying over Manhattan at unspecified times after the first tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/3/2001; City of New York, 10/24/2001]
* Fire Lieutenant Sean O'Malley and firefighters Pete Giudetti and Dan Potter notice jet fighters flying overhead soon before the second collapse. [City of New York, 10/12/2001; City of New York, 12/6/2001; Smith, 2002, pp. 49-50]
Other witnesses say the fighters arrive soon after this collapse:
* Deputy Fire Chief Robert Browne, police officer Peter Moog, and emergency medical technicians Richard Zarrillo and Jason Katz notice fighters overhead immediately after, or fairly soon after, the second tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/24/2001; City of New York, 10/25/2001; City of New York, 12/20/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 79-80]
* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and Office of Emergency Management Director Richard Sheirer are heading north together after leaving their temporary command post on Barclay Street (see (9:50 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). In some accounts, all three of them recollect hearing the first military jets overhead soon after the second tower's collapse. [Kerik, 2001, pp. 339-340; Giuliani, 2002, pp. 14; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] However, according to another account, Giuliani hears the first jet slightly earlier, at around 10:20 a.m. And, in his private testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Kerik claims to have heard a fighter jet coming when he was heading to the temporary command post on Barclay Street, i.e. shortly before 9:50 a.m. [Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 348-349]
A few witnesses claim the fighters arrive earlier on, before the first collapse at 9:59 a.m.:
* Emergency medical technician Frank Puma and Port Authority Freedom of Information Administrator Cathy Pavelec say they see fighter jets overhead at unspecified times before the first collapse. [City of New York, 12/12/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 68]
The fighter(s) are presumably the F-15s launched from Otis Air Force Base at 8:46 a.m. (see (8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001). However, the 9/11 Commission will claim that these arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. (see 9:25 a.m. September 11, 2001), which is significantly earlier than most of the witnesses on the ground recall.

(Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a945fightersnoticed&scale=0)

ENDNOTES
[1] "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 24.
[3] "Transcript American Airlines Flight 11." New York Times, 10/16/2001; "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[4] Dr. Bob Arnot, "What Was Needed to Halt the Attacks?" MSNBC, 9/12/2001.
[5] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[6] Jeremy Baker, "The First Fifteen Minutes of September 11th." CommunityCurrency.org, 3/2007.
[7] Joseph F. Baugher, "McDonnell F-15A Eagle." 2/20/2000; "F-15 Eagle." United States Air Force, 6/2006.
[8] "Continental Air Defense: A Dedicated Force Is No Longer Needed." United States General Accounting Office, 5/3/1994; Leslie Miller, "FAA, Military Now Work Closely: NORAD Notified Immediately of Any Problems." Associated Press, 8/13/2002.
[9] Kevin Dennehy, "Local Reservists Await the Call." Cape Cod Times, 9/15/2001; Kevin Dennehy, "Otis Force Activated; Home Duty Seen Likely." Cape Cod Times, 9/21/2001.
[10] Pat McKenna, "FANGs Bared." Airman, 12/1999; Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies: Air National Guard Takes Command of 1st Air Force. Panama City, FL: First Air Force, 1999, p. 97.
[11] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[12] Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies, pp. 115 and 184; Don Arias, "Outstanding: CONR Sectors Receive Highest Inspection Ratings." American Defender, 3/1999.
[13] Dr Robert Bowman "A Fighter Pilot Looks Back at 9/11 and Forward to a Resurrected America." Speech at the International Citizens Inquiry Into 9/11 in Toronto, Canada, 5/30/2004.

Future 9/11 Commissioner Fantasized About Crashing Plane Into Building

Here's a rather bizarre coincidence. For anyone unaware of this fact, a 1994 bestselling novel by Tom Clancy--Debt of Honor--ended with a Japanese pilot deliberately crashing his Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol building during a joint session of Congress with the President attending, thus decapitating the political leadership.

This is odd in itself, in light of what happened seven years later on 9/11. But check out the following quote from the New York Times' review of Debt of Honor:

[T]he President and the entire Congress must be eliminated in an inadvertently comic deus ex machina piloted by a sullen Japanese airman who miraculously does not grunt "Banzai!" as he plows his Boeing 747 into the Capitol. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman has recently had the arguable taste to remark, apropos this episode in "Debt of Honor," that this particular fantasy has long been his own. I don't like Congress either, but Abraham Lincoln, Lehman's fellow Republican and mine, did go to some pains to keep the Capitol's construction going during the Civil War as a symbol of the Union's continuity.

As is well known, John Lehman went on to become one of the members of the 9/11 Commission.

Now isn't that odd? A man who would later be one of the official investigators of 9/11 revealed that he fantasized about using a commercial jet as a weapon, and crashing it into a landmark building in the U.S.

Paul Craig Roberts Reviews New David Ray Griffin Book

9/11 and the Evidence

By Paul Craig Roberts
March 26, 2007

Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Griffin destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than the defenders of the official story.

Griffin’s book is 385 pages divided into four chapters and containing 1,209 footnotes. Without question, the book is the most thorough presentation and examination of all known facts about the 9/11 attacks. Griffin is a person who is sensitive to evidence, logic, and scientific reasoning. There is no counterpart on the official side of the story who is as fully informed on all aspects of the attacks as Griffin.

At the outset, Griffin points out that the reader’s choice is between two conspiracy theories: One is that Muslim fanatics, who were not qualified to fly airplanes, defeated the security apparatus of the US and succeeded in three out of four attacks using passenger jets as weapons. The other is that security failed across the board, not merely partially but totally, because of complicity of some part of the US government.

Griffin points out that there has been no independent investigation of 9/11. What we have are a report by a political commission headed by Bush administration factotum Philip Zelikow, a NIST report produced by the Bush administration’s Department of Commerce, and a journalistic account produced by Popular Mechanics. Various scientists who work for the federal government or are dependent on government grants have issued speculative statements in behalf of the official conspiracy theory, but have not produced meaningful evidence in its behalf.

The relevant skeptics of the official story are approximately 100 independent researchers consisting of experts and professors whose careers have required them to deal with evidence and its analysis. Their individual contributions to 9/11 analysis can be found online.

Griffin has undertaken to absorb the arguments and evidence for the official account and the arguments and evidence against it. In his latest book, which has just been released, he presents the case for the official account and its evidential failure.

Polls show that 36% of Americans do not believe the official story. Setting aside the 25% of the public that is so uninformed or uninvolved as to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack, leaves 39% of the public who believe the official story. However, this 39% is essentially relying on the mainstream media’s endorsement of the official story. Griffin believes, perhaps naively, that truth can prevail, and it is his commitment to truth that has motivated him to shoulder the enormous task.

Everyone who believes in the integrity of the US government or the Bush administration will find Griffin’s book to be disturbing. Readers will have to confront such issues as why US authorities seized the forensic evidence resulting from the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, the attack on the Pentagon and the crashed airliner in Pennsylvania and prevented any forensic examination of any part of the 9/11 attacks.

Despite widespread belief that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attack, the evidence we have is a suspect video declared to be "bogus" by Bruce Lawrence, perhaps the leading American expert on bin Laden. The US government has never produced the promised report on bin Laden’s responsibility. When the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden on presentation of evidence, the US government had no evidence to deliver; thus the invasion of Afghanistan.

The fragility of the NIST report is astonishing. The report succeeded because people accepted its assurances without examination.

Griffin shows that the Popular Mechanics report consists of special pleading, circular reasoning, appeals to the authority of the NIST report, straw men, and internal contradictions in the report itself.

There is not space in a review to present the evidence Griffin has mustered. A few highlights should suffice to alert readers to the possibility that the Bush administration has lied about more than Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The two WTC towers did not collapse. They blew up and disintegrated, as did WTC 7. There is an enormous energy deficit in every account that rules out the use of explosives. Gravitational energy is insufficient to explain the pulverization of the buildings and contents and the severing of the 47 massive center core steel columns in each of the towers into convenient lengths to be picked up and loaded onto trucks; much less can gravitational energy account for the pulverization of the top floors of the towers and ejection of steel beams hundreds of feet horizontally just prior to the disintegration of the floors below.

Damage caused by airliners and short-lived limited fires cannot explain the disintegration of the buildings. The massive steel skeletons of the towers comprised a gigantic heat sink that wicked away whatever heat the limited fires produced.

NIST’s final report stated that of the steel available to it for examination, "only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250 degrees Celsius" (482 degrees Fahrenheit). The self-cleaning ovens in our home kitchens reach temperatures higher than this, and the ovens do not melt or deform.

Steel begins to melt at 1,500 degrees C or 2,800 degrees F. Temperatures of 250 degrees C would have no effect on the strength of steel. The explanation that the buildings collapsed because fire weakened the steel is speculative. Open air fires do not produce temperatures sufficient to deprive steel of its structural integrity. Steel framed buildings have burned 22 hours in raging infernos, and the steel skeletons remained standing. The WTC fires in the towers lasted about one hour and were limited to a few floors. Moreover, it is impossible for fire to account for the sudden, total and symmetrical disintegration of powerfully constructed buildings, much less at free fall speeds that are obtainable only with controlled demolition.

Griffin provides quotes from firefighters, police, and tenants, who heard and experienced a series of explosions prior to the disintegration of the towers. Such witness testimony is generally ignored by defenders of the official conspiracy theory.

Molten steel was found in underground levels of the WTC buildings weeks after the buildings’ destruction. As everyone agrees that the fires did not approach the melting point of steel, a possible explanation is high explosives used in demolitions that produce 5,000 degree temperatures. The possibility that explosives were used remains unexamined except by independent researchers.

Contradictions in the official conspiracy theory leap off the pages and hit the reader in the face. For example, the evidence that Flight 77, a Boeing 757, crashed into the Pentagon is the government’s claim to have obtained from the wreckage enough bodies and body parts to match the DNA for each person on the passenger list and flight crew. Simultaneously, the absence of passenger luggage, fuselage, wing and tail sections--indeed the absence of a 100,000 pound airliner--is attributed to the vaporization of the airplane due to the high speed crash and intense fire. The incompatibility of vaporized metal but recovered flesh and blood stood unnoticed until Griffin pointed it out.

Another striking inconsistency in the official conspiracy theory is the difference in the impact of airliners on the Pentagon and the WTC towers. In the case of the Pentagon, the emphasis is on why the airliner caused so little damage to the building. In the case of the WTC towers, the emphasis is why the airliners caused so much damage.

Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that just prior to 9/11 Cathleen P. Black, who has family connections to the CIA and Pentagon and is president of Hearst Magazines, the owner of Popular Mechanics, fired the magazine’s editor-in-chief and several senior veteran staff members and installed James B. Meigs and Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of Bush administration factotum Michael Chertoff. It was Meigs and Benjamin Chertoff who produced the Popular Mechanics report that Griffin has eviscerated.

In his conclusion Griffin reminds us that the 9/11 attack has been used to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to plan an attack on Iran, to curtail constitutional protections and civil liberties in the US, to radically expand US military budgets and the power of the executive, and to enrich entrenched vested interests. Griffin is definitely correct about this regardless of whether a believable case can ever be made for the government’s version of the 9/11 conspiracy.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Source: http://vdare.com/roberts/070326_evidence.htm

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Dead Man Confesses to Being 9/11 Mastermind

According to news reports, alleged al-Qaeda "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has now confessed to having planned the 9/11 attacks. Last Saturday (March 10), he supposedly told a tribunal panel of three military officers and a government-provided representative: "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation." This was not all. In fact, he supposedly confessed (though not under oath) to involvement in a total of 31 attacks or planned attacks, including the 1993 WTC bombing and the 2002 Bali bombing.

However, there is one rather large problem with this story: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reportedly killed on September 11, 2002, during an hours-long shootout with Pakistani security forces. Intelligence officials had supposedly tracked him down to an apartment in the southern part of Karachi. FBI and Pakistani ISI officials then surrounded the building, and were joined by hundreds of police vehicles and Pakistan Rangers.

The subsequent sequence of events that culminated in Mohammed's death has been reconstructed by the Asia Times Online, based upon reports from the Pakistani media, supplemented by information from intelligence sources.

Plain clothed officials had entered the building, and urged the people inside to evacuate. But a hand grenade was thrown, injuring two of them and forcing them to retreat. Troops then entered the building and a fierce gun battle ensued. Eleven suspected terrorists were captured and two were killed. After examining the two dead bodies, a female FBI official reportedly exclaimed: "You have killed Khalid Sheikh Mohammad." She then ordered that one of his fingers be cut off and taken away, presumably for DNA testing.

Mohammed's wife and child were taken away to an ISI safe house, where they identified one of the dead bodies as being that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. After being kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days, it was buried in a graveyard in Karachi, under the surveillance of the FBI. However, according to the Asia Times Online, "News of the death of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was intentionally suppressed so that officials could play on the power of his name to follow up leads and contacts."

Then, six months later, Mohammed apparently returned to life, and was reported as having been arrested in Rawalpindi. After spending time in secret CIA prisons, he was moved last year to Guantánamo Bay. He is understood to have been tortured while in U.S. custody, including undergoing "waterboarding."

So what is the truth? Has the "9/11 mastermind" really confessed to his crimes? Or does the U.S. simply have some unfortunate guy of unknown identity in its custody, and they have tortured him into confessing that he is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that he was the mastermind of 9/11?

Sources:
1) Ed Pilkington, "'I was responsible for 9/11, from A to Z' - a confession from Guantánamo Bay." The Guardian, March 15, 2007.
2) "Shock and scepticism greet alleged 9/11 confessions" The Guardian, March 15, 2007.
3) Syed Saleem Shahzad, "A chilling inheritance of terror." Asia Times Online, October 30, 2002.
4) Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Khalid: A test for US credibility." Asia Times Online, March 6, 2003.