Despite the 9-11 Commission’s mandate to provide a “full and complete accounting” of the attacks of September 11, many key points were omitted from the final report. One of these important omissions attempted to cover up the role of Pakistan and whether or not Pakistani intelligence helped to fund the 9-11 attacks.

Ties between Washington DC and the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI have been documented in media reports before and after the September 11th attacks. In March 2001, Pakistani regional expert and member of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Selig Harrisson, said “the CIA still has close links with the Pakistani intelligence service ISI.” Just one day before the attacks, a Pakistani newspaper in Islamabad reported that the head of the ISI was meeting with unspecified members of the Pentagon, National Security Council, and CIA Director George Tenet.

On May 18th, 2002 the Washington Post reported that:

“On the morning of Sept. 11, Porter Goss and Bob Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed — the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.”

Specific details of that meeting have still not been released and may never have been recorded.

In 2001, various media outlets (CNN, Fox News, ABC, and AP) reported that $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to Mohammed Atta, the 9-11 lead hijacker. A “senior law enforcement source” told CNN that the paymaster was believed to be Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was working for the Pakistani ISI at the time.

Several media outlets reported in 2002 that the US government believed Saeed Sheikh to be an asset of the ISI, and that senior ISI officers knew him well.  Also reported was the allegation by Indian intelligence that General Mahmud Ahmed ordered the wire transfer and that Indian intelligence claimed they had assisted the FBI during the investigation. Various mainstream Indian papers reported this in 2001 along with a mainstream Pakistani newspaper.  In the West – the Wall Street Journal and Agence France Press picked up on the story in October.

On October 7th 2001, Mahmud Ahmed was fired from his role at the ISI. The official explanation was because he was too close to the Taliban. This claim has been met with criticism by some analysts given the fact that there were several pro-Taliban officers that kept their jobs.

During the 9/11 Commission hearings, the Family Steering Committee asked the Commissioners to investigate the ISI connection. However, the commission did little to “follow the money” and the 9/11 Commission Report made no mention of these allegations. Furthermore, the commission made the absurd statement that the question of who financed the terrorist attacks was “of little practical significance” [and that it had] “seen no evidence that any foreign government–or foreign government official–supplied any funding.”

To listen to this 9-11 Red Flag, click Play in the embedded player below. Click download if you would like to download the file for your media player or iPod.

Red Flag - 9/11 Commission Ignores Pakistan's Money Connection Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

At Visibility 9-11, we are dedicated to educating people about the September 11th attacks, which unfortunately includes the dirty topic of COINTELPRO style disruption of all sorts. In 2007, we did our Special Report on what COINTELPRO is and some of the clues to look for when looking at the behavior of others in the 9-11 movement. We are pleased to say that since then, awareness of intentional disruption of the movement has increased greatly and these episodes of the show have been some of our most popular.

We caution anyone from directly accusing anyone of being an agent of the government as this is nearly impossible to prove. It is not our job to ascertain a persons intentions when their behavior is suspect; it doesn’t really matter what their intentions are. The end result is always the same and we must learn to distance ourselves, our websites, and our activism from disruptive and reckless individuals. The work of our movement is too valuable and too serious to not take the COINTELPRO threat seriously; this we must do. The first step is to learn about it and how to spot the behavior that is hurting our activism.

Please watch the video above as a first step. Our COINTELPRO Special Report page will also provide a good starting point in your education.

Interview by John Bursill.

343 brave New York City Firefighters died on 9/11, this episode of Visibility 9/11 is dedicated to them!

If you have not heard the name Erik Lawyer it is one to remember. Erik is a full time Firefighter and is a new shinning light in the 9/11 Truth Movement. He has been impressing all he meets with his simple message demanding a thorough criminal forensic investigation of the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe. He and his fire-fighting comrades want the authorities to do their job and carry out an investigation in accordance with fire scene investigation protocols, that he and all US fire fighters adhere to religiously.

On 9/11 so many things happened for the first time and the one that is of greatest concern to Erik and his group, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth is the near complete destruction of evidence at this fire crime scene and the subsequent monumental cover up and obfuscation of the little remaining evidence.  Independently gathered evidence clearly demonstrates that incendiaries and explosives were used to facilitate the three WTC buildings destruction.  For more information, see the Visibility 9-11 Special Report, Thermite Fingerprint- The Loaded Gun of 9-11.

In this latest interview John and Erik talk about the future plans for Firefighters for 9/11 Truth and their achievements so far and we also talk about the strong bond being formed between ”Firefighters for 9/11 Truth” and the highly successful ”Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth”. Soon an exciting new video is to be produced by both groups providing an even better and broader video resource for public education than the current “9/11 – Blue Print for Truth”; while still sticking to a careful non-conspiratorial fact based approach.

Visibility 9/11 congratulates Erik and Firefighters for 9/11 Truth for their commitment to truth and justice in the face of personal attack and ridicule. As Erik has demonstrated in his Seattle Fire Station, ignorance is no match for hard evidence. It is a simple truth that all who dare to look at that evidence will concede there is a clear and present danger to the American public and the world if we do not find the real reasons for the three building collapses on 9/11. It is also very reassuring to see another group of professional 9/11 Truth Advocates being careful with what they say and do in the name of 9/11 Truth. Firefighters for 9/11 Truth will always put the victims and the first responders concerns and welfare first!

To assist the suffering first responders a ”Firefighters for 9/11 Truth” T’shirt can be bought here: http://firefightersfor911truth.org/?p=530

Related – Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Erik Lawyer, Fire Fighters for 9-11 Truth,  August 2008.

To listen to this program, click Play in the embedded player below. Click download if you would like to download the file for your media player or iPod.

Visibility 9-11 welcomes back Erik Lawyer the founder of Firefighters for 9-11 Truth Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

via: Facebook

FEAL GOOD FOUNDATION RESPONSE TO NEWS THAT THE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DOES NOT SUPPORT H.R. 847

Dear Fellow First Responder:

As you may already know, today we have learned that President Barack Obama no longer supports H.R. 847, the Congressional bill that would guarantee funding for health care and research. While this news is stunning, and a complete reversal of his position on this bill during his 2008 presidential campaign, please be assured that the Feal Good Foundation alongside its friends in labor and the N.Y. Congressional Delegation will continue to fight for this bill and to advocate for full Presidential support. Our fight is not over.

Nearly eight and one half years ago we, the First Responder Community, demonstrated our strength, resilience and determination of spirit following September 11th. We must do so again. While the President’s current stance on H.R. 847 represents an obstacle, we have surmounted such obstacles before and will continue to overcome them now. “Never Forget” is more than a campaign slogan or bumper sticker to the men and women who bravely immersed themselves into the toxic Ground Zero air to save the lives of strangers and rebuild New York City and this country. We will “Never Forget” and today I tell all those opposed to H.R. 847 “We Will Never Give Up.”

H.R. 847 is about guaranteed health care treatment, monitoring and research; nothing more, nothing less. We have witnessed First Responder after First Responder fall victim to 9/11 illnesses over the past several years. Just this week another firefighter and friend perished as a result of his heroic actions. While the White House and detractors of H.R. 847 are quick to point out that treatment for First Responders currently exists at the Centers of Excellence, such arguments are missing the central mandate of the bill – guarantees!
The reluctance of the White House to support this bill merely 8 ½ years after the worst terrorist attack on United States soil merely solidifies the need for guaranteed care now. Shall we rely on “discretionary budgetary spending” twenty years from now when the World Trade Center attack is a distant memory to new administrations?
Are we to trust that presidents in the years to come will allocate sufficient funding for treatment and research when we are already being told that current administrations “don’t have the money to make us healthy? We cannot and will not give up hope that this government will recognize its moral imperative to care for the World Trade Center First Responders.

The Feal Good Foundation will not give up its efforts on behalf of the First Responders. It is our sincere hope that you will continue to join us in our quest for justice.

Sincerely,

John Feal

source: New York Daily News

by Michael McAuliff

Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups
By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The Raw Story

In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated “cognitive infiltration” of groups that advocate “conspiracy theories” like the ones surrounding 9/11.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups.

As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs,” according to the White House Web site.

Sunstein’s article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that “our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a ‘crippled epistemology,’ in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources.”

By “crippled epistemology” Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust.  Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public — the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories.  It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves.  There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however.  The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts.”

Download a PDF of the article here.

Sunstein argued that “government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories.” He suggested that “government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”

“We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI,” Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that “a high-level presidential advisor” would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of “extremist” groups so that it undermines the groups’ confidence to the extent that “new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides.”

Sunstein has been the target of numerous “conspiracy theories” himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting “a second Bill of Rights” that would do away with the Second Amendment.  Sunstein’s recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as “a blueprint for online censorship.”

Sunstein “wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading ‘rumors,’” wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

Original article here.

In an effort that has stretched nearly a decade, some families of 9/11 victims have fought to have the remains of their relatives identified and put to rest.

In 2002, they organized as the WTC Families for Proper Burial Inc. They sued the city in 2005, then appealed after they lost in 2008.

On Wednesday, in a spirited hearing interrupted occasionally by gasps, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit listened to arguments on behalf of the 17 plaintiffs in what is quite likely their final legal chance. The families seek to have nearly one million tons of material from Fresh Kills on Staten Island, where debris from the World Trade Center collapse was taken, moved to a nearby site so it can be sifted and put in a cemetery.

“It comes down to this: Are we prepared to leave hundreds of body parts and human remains on top of a garbage dump?” said Norman Siegel, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, arguing that to do less would deprive relatives of their constitutional rights.

The group of plaintiffs, which says it has support from 1,000 other relatives, was challenging a July 2008 decision by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court, who found that city workers had done everything in their power to find remains.

But as it did last year, the city argues that the plaintiffs have no claims to the remains because they cannot prove they belong to their relatives, which also makes them ineligible to bring a complaint on behalf of non-family members. The removal would also be too costly, the city says.

In the hearing’s sharpest exchange, when Judge Anthony O. Calabrese Jr. asked what it would take to prove someone’s identity, James E. Tyrrell, a lawyer representing the city, said, “You have to be able to particularize and say it’s your body part.”

“All that’s left here is a bunch of undifferentiated dust,” Mr. Tyrrell added, eliciting gasps and muttered “no’s” from a crowd whose members wore laminated photos of deceased relatives around their necks.

But Diane Horning of Scotch Plains, N.J., whose son Matthew worked on the 95th floor of the north tower, said she found many trade center-related items at the landfill on dozens of trips there. She produced some of them outside the courtroom.

A corroded key, marked with the words “World Trade Center,” came from a gulley formed after a rainstorm, she said. In a plastic bag, there were two sizeable bone fragments that Ms. Horning said came from Fresh Kills, though she had never had them tested for DNA to see if they belonged to victims of 9/11.

With methane gas bubbling up from the soil there, “it’s a disrespectful, dishonorable place,” said Ms. Horning, the president of the group.

During the hearing, which was also presided over by Judge José A. Cabranes and Judge Barrington D. Parker, Mr. Siegel accused the city of reneging on its promise to set aside victims’ remains, a change in policy that he said happened in July 2002.

“They commingled it, and then they dumped it,” Mr. Siegel said of the remains’ being mixed with household trash, adding that a Fresh Kills worker had witnessed city employees use that mixture to fill potholes.

The reference brought a shake of the head from Valerie Speller, who was there to honor her brother John Candela, who worked in the north tower.

“I think the whole thing’s pretty deplorable,” Ms. Speller said after the hearing. “I don’t think there was any human compassion from the city.”

Original article here.

Boiling Frogs Post is an online news, editorial, analysis, and Podcast interview site covering select but significant blacked out stories and issues, while defying blinded partisanship. Each one of our partner investigative journalists brings 20+ years of investigative journalism experience in reporting controversial and daring topics. Our weekly Podcast interview series, the Boiling Frogs Show, features in depth original interviews with well-respected and controversial guests.

This site has been set up to bring together members of the irate minority club: Those who have gotten tired of the very-dependent mainstream media & and the agenda-driven and partisan pseudo alternative fluff sites. We may be the irate minority out there, but over here we are the majority, so we rule. Together we hope to increase our numbers and take back our hijacked nation.

Sibel Edmonds is the founder and president of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding national security whistleblowers. She has appeared on national radio and TV as a commentator on matters related to whistleblowers, national security, and excessive secrecy & classification, and has been featured on CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC,  NPR, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The American Conservative, and others. Her book, ‘Shooting the Messenger’, co-authored with Professor William Weaver, is forthcoming from Kansas University Press in the fall of 2010.

PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy”. She is also the recipient of the 2004 Sam Adams Foundation Award.

Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI’s Washington Field Office. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her issues have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secrets Privilege”, and the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification issued by the Department of Justice.

Ms. Edmonds began her career in 1993 as Project Director for the Rostropovich Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organization providing medical and food aid to children of the former Soviet Union. She re-located to St. Petersburg, Russia and managed correspondence, shipments, inventory and security precautions in the largest children’s hospital in St. Petersburg. Later, she worked as the Executive Director & Co-Founder of Edmonds Industries, a Consulting and Holding Company, investing in international business and residential real estate development. Ms. Edmonds also worked as a volunteer for the Alexandria CASA program (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for abused children, and as an instructor for the Alexandria Office on Women’s Domestic Violence Program.

Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University, and AA degree in Science from NVCC. She is certified as a Court Appointed Special Advocate and as an instructor for the Women’s Domestic Violence Program. She is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani.

Ex-FBI Translator Claims Spying at DoD
by Bryant Jordan
October 21, 2009
Military.com

After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11.

In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option.

And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon:  Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board.

“They were 100 percent directly involved,” Edmonds told Military.com. “They were not in the Pentagon [in the late 1990s] but they had their people inside the Pentagon.” One of those people, she said, was Larry Franklin, an Air Force officer assigned to the Office of Special Plans who, in 2003, passed classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Office, or AIPAC. By then Feith was leading the OSP.

Edmonds cautioned that she does not know if these practices are continuing, since she was fired by the FBI in April 2002 after pressing for an investigation into an attempt by a colleague to recruit her for an organization that was itself a target of FBI surveillance.

Perle, today a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and board member for or adviser to other think tanks, including the National Institute for Neareast Affairs and the Center for Security Policy, emphatically denied Edmonds’ claims in an interview with Military.com.

“This woman is a nutcase. Certifiable,” Perle said. “She makes wild accusations. She was fired from her job, and has been on a vendetta against … imagined demons ever since.”

Feith, in an email to Military.com, said: “What I’ve read on the Internet about Ms. Edmonds’s claims about me is wildly false and bizarre.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?
The gagged whistleblower goes on the record.

By Sibel Edmonds and Philip Giraldi

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.” Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. “60 Minutes” launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

John Ashcroft’s Justice Department confirmed Edmonds’s veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. The ACLU has called her “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.”

But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony. What follows is her own account of what some consider the most incredible tale of corruption and influence peddling in recent times. As Sibel herself puts it, “If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it.”

* * *

PHILIP GIRALDI: We were very interested to learn of your four-hour deposition in the case involving allegations that Congresswoman Jean Schmidt accepted money from the Turkish government in return for political favors. You provided many names and details for the first time on the record and swore an oath confirming that the deposition was true.

Basically, you map out a corruption scheme involving U.S. government employees and members of Congress and agents of foreign governments. These agents were able to obtain information that was either used directly by those foreign governments or sold to third parties, with the proceeds often used as bribes to breed further corruption. Let’s start with the first government official you identified, Marc Grossman, then the third highest-ranking official at the State Department.

SIBEL EDMONDS: During my work with the FBI, one of the major operational files that I was transcribing and translating started in late 1996 and continued until 2002, when I left the Bureau. Because the FBI had had no Turkish translators, these files were archived, but were considered to be very important operations. As part of the background, I was briefed about why these operations had been initiated and who the targets were.

Grossman became a person of interest early on in the investigative file while he was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey [1994-97], when he became personally involved with operatives both from the Turkish government and from suspected criminal groups. He also had suspicious contact with a number of official and non-official Israelis. Grossman was removed from Turkey short of tour during a scandal referred to as “Susurluk” by the media. It involved a number of high-level criminals as well as senior army and intelligence officers with whom he had been in contact.

Another individual who was working for Grossman, Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, was also removed from Turkey and sent to Germany. After he and his Turkish wife Can returned to the U.S., he went to work for Douglas Feith and she was hired as an FBI Turkish translator. My complaints about her connection to Turkish lobbying groups led to my eventual firing.

Grossman and Dickerson had to leave the country because a big investigation had started in Turkey. Special prosecutors were appointed, and the case was headlined in England, Germany, Italy, and in some of the Balkan countries because the criminal groups were found to be active in all those places. A leading figure in the scandal, Mehmet Eymür, led a major paramilitary group for the Turkish intelligence service. To keep him from testifying, Eymür was sent by the Turkish government to the United States, where he worked for eight months as head of intelligence at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. He later became a U.S. citizen and now lives in McLean, Virginia. The central figure in this scandal was Abdullah Catli. In 1989, while “most wanted” by Interpol, he came to the U.S., was granted residency, and settled in Chicago, where he continued to conduct his operations until 1996.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, an apology from the National Geographic Channel
by Kevin Ryan
August 22, 2009

Six days after September 11th, National Geographic Today (NGT) published one of the very first descriptions of the official myth for what happened to the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.[1] This article exaggerated the little known facts about the fires in the towers, equated gas temperatures with steel temperatures, and detailed the long-surviving but incorrect Pancake Theory of “collapse.” Since that time, millions of people have been killed or injured in the 9/11 Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that originated from the official myth about 9/11.[2,3] Fortunately, this week it was announced that the NGT’s parent, the National Geographic Channel (NG Channel), is scheduled to broadcast a new television special covering the science behind the events of 9/11. We can only assume that this new show is meant to correct the record and apologize for the company’s false statements that contributed to the ongoing wars.

Some of the false statements made in that NGT article had to do with an early version of the Pancake Theory for destruction of the buildings. One claim was : “As the steel columns at the core of the Twin Towers collapsed, the floors they supported fell on each other like two stacks of pancakes.” Another statement was more authoritative, saying: “Once the structural support of the upper floors is removed, a few falling floors can bring down an entire building.” The Pancake Theory did not make sense to many people but was tested by my former employer, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), in August 2004. The tests showed that the floors in the WTC buildings could not have pancaked, even when exposed to higher temperatures for longer periods of time than was actually the case. Two years later, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally made clear that its “findings do not support the ‘pancake theory’ of collapse.”[4]

To date, there have been no apologies from any of the media sources that, oftentimes arrogantly, promoted the Pancake Theory as a means to prevent further questioning of the WTC events. But we all know that “National Geographic” is different, right? Actually, some people are unaware that the NG Channel is majority controlled (67%) by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.[5] The National Geographic Society, publisher of the well-known magazine, was a minority partner in creation of the NG Channel, but does not have editorial control over what is produced there. Instead, the News Corporation controls the programming much like it controls Fox News.

In the early article promoting the WTC myth, NGT described how “Jet fuel fires burn unusually hot, and engineers believe the fire may have led to temperatures as high as 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,900 degrees Fahrenheit).” But the truth is that the jet fuel fires at the WTC, which lasted a total of 79 seconds by one expert estimate, and lasted only a few minutes according to NIST, would have been cooler than the later fires fed by office furnishings alone.[6] It has since been admitted by NIST that gas temperatures reached only “as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius.”[7]

Read the rest of this entry »

Exclusive Interview with FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
August 21, 2009

On April 23, 2007, I sat down in Washington, D.C. with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds for an extensive interview, which was published in the Armenian Weekly and on ZNet and widely circulated. On Aug. 18, 2009, I conducted a follow-up phone interview with Edmonds, who was visiting New Zealand. The interview is an overview of what has transpired in her case since 2007, with emphasis on her deposition in the Schmidt vs. Krikorian case in Ohio earlier this month.

Edmonds, an FBI language specialist, was fired from her job with the FBI’s Washington Field Office in March 2002. Her crime was reporting security breaches, cover-ups, blocking of intelligence, and the bribery of U.S. individuals including high-ranking officials. The “state secrets privilege” has often been invoked to block court proceedings on her case, and the U.S. Congress has even been gagged to prevent further discussion.Edmonds uncovered, for example, a covert relationship between Turkish groups and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars in bribes in return for withdrawing the Armenian Genocide Resolution from the House floor in 2000.

Born in Iran in 1970, Edmonds received her BA in criminal justice and psychology from George Washington University, and her MA in public policy and international commerce from George Mason University. She is the founder and director of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) and in 2006 received the PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award. She speaks Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani.

Below is the full transcript of the follow-up interview.

***

Khatchig Mouradian—I asked you in 2007 what had changed during the five years since 2002, when you first contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee to reveal the story on Turkish bribery of high-level U.S. officials. You said, “There has been no hearing and nobody has been held accountable. We are basically where we started…” Two more years have passed, we have a new president, and I have to ask the same question again. Has there been any change?

Sibel Edmonds—Nothing has changed. As far as the Congress is concerned, the Democrats have been the majority since November 2006 and I have had zero interest from Congress on having hearings—any hearings—on this issue, whether it’s the states secrets privilege portion of it or the involved corruption cases. The current majority has been at least as bad as the previous one. At least the Republicans were gutsy enough to come and say, We’re not going to touch this. But the new majority is not saying anything!

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Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformation
by H. Michael Sweeney
copyright (c) 1997, 2000, 2001 All rights reserved (Edited June 2001)

Permission to reprint/distribute hereby granted for any non commercial use provided information reproduced in its entirety and with author information in tact. For more Intel/Shadow government related info, visit the Author’s Web site.

Built upon Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression by David Martin, the following may be useful to the initiate in the world of dealing with veiled and half-truth, lies, and suppression of truth when serious crimes are studied in public forums. This, sadly, includes every day news media, one of the worst offenders with respect to being a source of disinformation. Where the crime involves a conspiracy, or a conspiracy to cover up the crime, there will invariably be a disinformation campaign launched against those seeking to uncover and expose the truth and/or the conspiracy. There are specific tactics which disinfo artists tend to apply, as revealed here. Also included with this material are seven common traits of the disinfo artist which may also prove useful in identifying players and motives. The more a particular party fits the traits and is guilty of following the rules, the more likely they are a professional disinfo artist with a vested motive. People can be bought, threatened, or blackmailed into providing disinformation, so even “good guys” can be suspect in many cases.

A rational person participating as one interested in the truth will evaluate that chain of evidence and conclude either that the links are solid and conclusive, that one or more links are weak and need further development before conclusion can be arrived at, or that one or more links can be broken, usually invalidating (but not necessarily so, if parallel links already exist or can be found, or if a particular link was merely supportive, but not in itself key) the argument. The game is played by raising issues which either strengthen or weaken (preferably to the point of breaking) these links. It is the job of a disinfo artist to interfere with these evaluation… to at least make people think the links are weak or broken when, in truth, they are not… or to propose alternative solutions leading away from the truth. Often, by simply impeding and slowing down the process through disinformation tactics, a level of victory is assured because apathy increases with time and rhetoric.

It would seem true in almost every instance, that if one cannot break the chain of evidence for a given solution, revelation of truth has won out. If the chain is broken either a new link must be forged, or a whole new chain developed, or the solution is invalid an a new one must be found… but truth still wins out. There is no shame in being the creator or supporter of a failed solution, chain, or link, if done with honesty in search of the truth. This is the rational approach. While it is understandable that a person can become emotionally involved with a particular side of a given issue, it is really unimportant who wins, as long as truth wins. But the disinfo artist will seek to emotionalize and chastise any failure (real or false claims thereof), and will seek by means of intimidation to prevent discussion in general.

It is the disinfo artist and those who may pull their strings (those who stand to suffer should the crime be solved) MUST seek to prevent rational and complete examination of any chain of evidence which would hang them. Since fact and truth seldom fall on their own, they must be overcome with lies and deceit. Those who are professional in the art of lies and deceit, such as the intelligence community and the professional criminal (often the same people or at least working together), tend to apply fairly well defined and observable tools in this process. However, the public at large is not well armed against such weapons, and is often easily led astray by these time-proven tactics. Remarkably, not even media and law enforcement have NOT BEEN TRAINED to deal with these issues. For the most part, only the players themselves understand the rules of the game.

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Author: Fitzgerald libel threat aimed at censoring key 9/11 tale
by Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
June 12, 2009

Powerful prosecutor’s efforts to suppress book virtually guarantees elevated sales

Peter Lance should be thanking Patrick Fitzgerald right now, even as the attorney’s checks are being signed.

If it were not for the U.S. Attorney who famously prosecuted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former Vice President’s Chief of Staff, the re-release of Lance’s stunning tale of mishandled espionage leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, might be overlooked.

The former ABC News investigative reporter’s book Triple Cross hit relatively few shelves in 2006 as a hardcover and left retail quietly, almost completely ignored. Now, with its paperback release looming, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is threatening to sue over material which he calls “defamatory” and “easily proven to be objectively false,” some of which touches on little known information relating to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Because of the threat, the reissue of Triple Cross received attention from The Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, among others.

“That’s the lesson of censorship,” chided Lance, speaking to RAW STORY.

The dark plots of Ali Mohamed

Ali Mohamed, according to Lance, was something of an al Qaeda super-spy who managed to work with terrorists, the Green Berets, the CIA and become an FBI informant, even while ensuring Osama bin Laden’s safe passage around the middle east. For years, Triple Cross alleges, the FBI and specifically Fitzgerald, knew about him but allowed Mohamed’s activities to continue unchecked.

Mohamed, Lance wrote, was actually responsible for writing portions of the terror network’s training manual and played a key role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa which left over 200 dead.

“While some contend that Mohamed’s intimate relations with the FBI and CIA are proof of government involvement in a 9/11 plot, Lance says that it was instead embarrassment and ass-covering on the part of Justice and Pentagon officials over the mishandling of Ali Mohammed that led first to a conspiracy of silence and then to a conspiracy to cover up their incompetence and deception,” noted author Rory O’Connor in November, 2006. “He believes that chagrin over the fact that bin Laden’s spy stole top-secret intelligence (including, for example, the positions of all Green Beret and SEAL units worldwide) led to a decision on high to bury the entire Able Danger intelligence program, which identified the Al Qaeda cell active in Brooklyn months before the 9/11 attacks, and also identified Ali Mohamed as a member of bin Laden’s inner circle as early as March 2000.”

“In 1996, Fitzgerald and other top officials discredited a treasure trove of al Qaeda-related evidence, including evidence of an active al Qaeda cell operating in NYC five years before 9/11 and of a bin Laden plot to hijack a plane to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman—intelligence considered so important that it was later cited in the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing given to George W. Bush just weeks before 9/11,” noted HarperCollins in a press release.

Mohamed is allegedly still alive today, though his whereabouts is unknown.

Article continues here.

Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information
by Mickey S. Huff and Paul W. Rea
March 5, 2009

From 911truth.org

They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
and the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
and it’s hard to say if they’re happy
but they don’t seem much to mind.

–Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castles

For the past eight years, American culture has seen an outburst of media-driven mythmaking. Corporate mainstream media organizations, the pundits they sponsor, and politicians from both major parties have formed a new contextual chorus singing the same refrain: “On September 11th, 2001, everything changed.” From cable TV to AM radio, from the blogosphere to the town-hall meeting, Americans repeatedly hear that “this is a post-9/11 world.”

Although there is some truth to this platitude of pivotal change, independently minded citizens may also wonder whether such mass media messages have become self-fulfilling prophecies. This provides an interesting point of debate about what has or has not changed in America since 9/11.

This chapter concerns itself with the ongoing phenomena of media mythmaking and how, like many Americans surmised just after 9/11, everything has not changed.¹ Corporate mainstream media have resurrected powerful myths from America’s past to shape public perception in the present. Through the prism of 9/11, one can see how the corporate mass media are in fact doing more mythmaking than news reporting. Here, the authors will examine central historic American myths the corporate media and even much of the alternative independent media have extended into the post-9/11 era. This analysis looks at how media mythmaking surrounding the events of 9/11, exploiting the strong emotions these events aroused, has prevented a dispassionate inquiry of its causes or of those responsible.

Telling Only the Official Story: An Act of Censorship

Both the corporate and independent media have typically not approached the events of 9/11 with open inquiry. With very few exceptions, the corporate mainstream media and their independent alternatives have dismissed critical 9/11 questions as “conspiratorial” or “unpatriotic.” Even the left press, including The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones, and The Progressive, among others, have repeatedly demonstrated resistance, even hostility, to full and free inquiry into the attacks. Perhaps some muckraking progressives have forgotten the words of one of their own icons, American anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman, who aptly remarked, “The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.” Like their mainstream corporate counterparts, journalists in the independent press have often highlighted eccentric personalities and extreme statements rather than focus on the troubling evidence skeptics have brought forth. This practice institutionalizes acts of self-censorship based upon America’s historical mythology, which will be discussed later in this article.²

Article continues here.