Please spread to individual Occupy movement supporters, affiliated groups, websites, and forums.
This is a plea for the Occupy movement to drop any preconceived notions about, and take careful consideration of, forming an alliance with the 9/11 truth movement, specifically the OccupyBuilding7.org campaign, (an offshoot of the RememberBuilding7.org campaign) spearheaded by 9/11 family members. Please read the entire argument.
A 2006 post on GeorgeWashington.blogspot.com asked the same question still on many people’s minds in 2011, “How did we get into the economic downturn?,” as to the answer, GW writes:
Iraq
Let’s start with Iraq. Why are we in Iraq? WMDs, you say!
Actually, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph.
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001…
The economy is on everyone’s mind right now. What possible connection can there be between the economy and 9/11 — when 9/11 occurred years ago?
Well, many top economists – such as Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz – say that the high cost of war in Iraq is the cause of the current slowdown in the U.S. Therefore, if the false linkage of Iraq and 9/11 was the reason Congress “authorized” war, and if the war is the reason for the current economic downturn, then false statements about 9/11 are one of the reasons our country is currently in an economic slump.
President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News.
The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” one of the sources told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski.
The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he was mapping preparations to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as soon as he took office.
Bush’s comments came in response to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s contention in a new book that the chief executive was gunning for Saddam nine months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and two years before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The astounding coincidence of convenience offered by 9/11 for easily achieving goals (including the Patriot Act, written long before 9/11) which otherwise would have been hard going if not impossible, is certainly a motive worthy of further exploration. As lawyer and author Vincent Bugliosi has stated, “if there had been no 9/11 there would have been no war in Iraq, certainly not one the American people would have approved of.”
And as one of the original popular 9/11 truth protest signs reads, Expose the 9/11 Cover-up – Fiscal Ruin… Endless War… Only 9/11 Truth Will Set US Free.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is a much needed response to decades of growing inequality, financial deregulation, and zero accountability for the crimes that brought about our current economic crisis. Millions throughout the nation and across globe who feel they have no voice in our political system have come to embrace “Occupy” as an expression of their anger, frustration and hope.
September 11, 2001 – the day our country was hijacked and a permanent war was launched that will not end in our lifetime unless we the 99% stop it.
Ten years later the War on Terrorism has diverted trillions of dollars from more important uses and sunken our country into debt.
Building 7, which most people don’t know about, came crashing to the ground at 5:20pm on September 11th. Today, millions of citizens and 1,600 courageous architects and engineers are demanding an investigation into the suspect destruction of this skyscraper.
The government’s absurd story that “normal office fires” felled this 47-story skyscraper is only the tip of the iceberg of the anomalies and inconsistencies we’ve been given about 9/11.”
The Occupy Wall Street movement is a much needed response to decades of growing inequality, financial deregulation, and zero accountability for the crimes that brought about our current economic crisis. Millions throughout the nation and across globe who feel they have no voice in our political system have come to embrace “Occupy” as an expression of their anger, frustration and hope.
Wednesday, November 16 update from RememberBuilding7.org, formerly known as BuildingWhat.org: (Click here for a blog post demonstrating that responses from a prominent “debunker” to the evidence pages at RememberBuilding7 are very misleading and false.)
Stand with OWS Tomorrow, Occupy Building 7 This Weekend
Occupy Building 7 Will Go Ahead As Planned
Stand in Solidarity with OWS on Thursday, November 17
Stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street following their eviction from Liberty Plaza and join the explosion of Occupy energy this weekend by occupying Building 7 and demanding once and for all a real investigation into the events of 9/11.
Details:
Thursday, 7:00am (or anytime) until late: Show your support for Occupy Wall Street on the two-month anniversary of this historic movement’s beginning by marching from Liberty Plaza to the New York Stock Exchange. At 5pm assemble at Foley Square and march to the Brooklyn Bridge. Distribute Occupy Building 7 fliers to thousands of occupiers and other New Yorkers, and let them know we the 99% stand in solidarity with them. Click to download the Occupy Building 7 fliers.
11:00am Saturday: Begin assembling by the tall red sculpture at the southeast corner of Liberty Plaza (the corner of Broadway and Cedar St.). Hand out thousands of Occupy Building 7 fliers to occupiers and passers by, and invite them to occupy Building 7 with us.
Noon Saturday: Depart for the rebuilt World Trade Center Building 7, just four blocks away.
12:15-12:30pm Saturday: Occupy the park in front of Building 7 and remain there until nightfall.
2:00pm Saturday: Join the Occupy Building 7 General Assembly and be a part of shaping the future of Occupy Building 7.
Sunday: same schedule. Start assembling at the tall red sculpture at 11:00am. Depart for Building 7 at noon. Occupy until nightfall. General Assembly at 2:00pm.
If you are coming from out of town and looking for free lodging on Friday or Saturday night, email us at info@OccupyBuilding7.org.
This weekend will mark the beginning of something extraordinary. Inspired and in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, what we build will seriously threaten to bring the public’s full attention to the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 and put the official account of 9/11 on its last legs. And in so doing we will contribute immensely to the Occupy movement’s push for economic and social justice. Let’s go make history.
The One Percent – “This 80-minute documentary focuses on the growing ‘wealth gap’ in America, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune.” – Source
Why OWS needs Michael Bloomberg – Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV – In a Special Comment, Keith contextualizes Mayor Bloomberg’s actions against Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park and how they have – unintentionally – vaulted the movement from a local nuisance to a global platform for the disenfranchised.
During testimony given to the 9/11 Commission, then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta had the following exchange with 9/11 commissioner Lee Hamilton regarding the plane coming into the Pentagon:
MR. MINETA: …There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”…
MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –
MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.
Q: Has anyone ever found out who that “young man” was that Mineta was referring to?
This question was posed to David Ray Griffin in the following video at the 45:40 to 47:00 mark.
The basis for his answer, “CIA-veteran Ray McGovern speaks about a personal encounter with Norman Mineta, where Mineta should have said, the young man was a ‘scared civilian’. This would exclude [Douglas] Cochrane, because he was a ‘naval aide’ and must have been wearing an uniform.”
But the problem with that is, we people who “suspected” it was a military man in the room that day taking those orders did not just base our opinion on the logic that it is is not the job of a scared civilian or a Secret Service agent to be taking military orders, but on empirical evidence uncovered by 9/11 researcher James Dorman AKA jimd3100 indicating this is the case.
“March 2, 2004
New Requests:
(2)VP Military Aide (I believe his last name is Cochrane): The person at the Vice President’s side in the PEOC who should have been intimately involved in the military communications chain is his military aide.” http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-F
Furthermore, when researcher Jeff Hill spoke to Cochrane and posed his first question, “When you were in the PEOC with Cheney and you asked him, if the orders still stand?… What orders were you referring to?” Cohrane replied (Note: his testimony is sealed so he can’t say much) that he was “really not prepared to talk about this subject at all.” However, he could have easily said: I’m sorry you have me confused with somebody else. I never asked Vice President Cheney if any orders still stood.
If this were the truth it only makes sense that he would make such a statement, as opposed to offering numerous non-responses to Hill’s continued questioning, along with providing Hill the cryptic statement, “Like I said I appreciate your inquisitive nature, ah, I am somewhat of a history buff myself. I appreciate your quest for knowledge, but I don’t have anything else to add. And, and frankly this is kind of an imposition to call me on my government cell phone. I’m really not, I don’t think it’s appropriate, certainly not appreciated.”
Why go on approximately 7 minutes like that, when it could have ended with:
I’m sorry you have me confused with somebody else. I never asked Vice President Cheney if any orders still stood. You’d have to track that person down to get your answers, thank you.
At 4:00 in the video, Cochrane says ‘Oh, I DO remember Secretary Mineta,’ like his memory had just clicked and it surprised him. I would take this to mean Cochrane was almost certainly present at the events in question.
Then he goes back to refusing to make any meaningful comments. But he NEVER DENIES that he was the ‘young man’ in Mineta’s story. It sounds like he is very averse to lying, and so he just blocks out any real reply to that question. He never says “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
With him ‘remembering Mineta’, and then avoiding the real issue, I would guess he knows more than he is saying. He could easily be Mineta’s ‘young man.’
Now the million dollar question, were the orders for a stand-down or a shoot-down? As pointed out to me by James Dorman:
This past Sunday Jim Hoft of www.thegatewaypundit.com ran the headline “Classy… Truthers Chant “9-11 Was an Inside Job” Outside Ground Zero Memorial.” This makes it sound as if we were disrupting the memorial ceremonies taking place. I was there and this is not true. The truth is anyone wearing a 9/11 truth t-shirt or holding a sign who tried to enter the Ground Zero site were escorted to a barricaded area set up by the city away from the memorial site. It was in the vicinity, but not close enough to where we could be heard at the ceremonies.
As Michael J. Hampson of Rutgers School of Law has argued “…the practice of moving political protesters into free speech zones at presidential appearances is an unconstitutional restriction on free expression. Such a procedure violates the protesters’ First Amendment rights…”
That’s always been the rule of thumb among “truther” demonstrators at ground zero on Sept. 11, out of respect for relatives of victims of the terror attack, said Mike Skuthan, 32, a Web designer from Long Island who attends the demonstrations every year.
The demonstrations may be more subdued this year, said Luke Rudkowski, 25, a journalist from Brooklyn…
…When Mr. Rudkowski gathers with other activists at ground zero on Sunday morning near the official, private memorial service, he says, he will be in nonconfrontational mode.
Other activists agreed that Sunday calls for a subdued approach.
The early birds will start arriving around 7am, and at this time we usually line up peacefully along the black fences of St. Paul’s Chapel on Vesey Street between Church St. & Broadway. The official MTA/Port Authority 9-11 memorial service usually lasts from 8am – 12pm with two moments of silence at 8:45am and 9:03am. During this time it is important to show the utmost respect for those who lost their lives that day and their grieving families so there is usually no bullhorns, shouting, screaming, yelling, etc…
Next we normally gather at the ‘Remembrance Fountain’ in front of Building 7. This is where we read aloud the names of our ‘Forgotten Heroes’. The First Responders who lost their lives after 9/11 and are not acknowledged during the “official” remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero. From here we usually line up and march to other important areas such as Police Plaza, City Hall, Union Square, Times Square, the CFR building, the Federal Reserve, etc.
Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit also noted that someone was holding a sign near Trinity Cathedral reading “Google: Jews control the USA!,” but this person was not with the 9/11 protesters.
Hoft may think we were being disrespectful just by being there and expressing our freedom of speech in any capacity that day, well here are some people who disagree, just to name a few.
Here is a related little incident that happened to members of a WeAreChange group I helped start back when I lived in Indianapolis.
Another event that took place that evening in NYC was the premiere of the film, 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out, (attended by truthers who came all the way from Denmark) which can now be viewed for free online.
Senator Mike Gravel, a native of Massachusetts, along with Massachusetts 9/11 Truth activists, launched its campaign for a 2012 ballot initiative which seeks the creation of a Citizens’ 9/11 Commission, by holding a press conference held on September 13, 2011 on the steps of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. The ballot question was submitted in August and was certified by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on September 7. According to the Massachusetts initiative law, supporters must collect a minimum of nearly 70,000 valid signatures from registered voters by early December of 2011.
Gravel will be working closely with the statewide alliance to create awareness of the initiative. The Senator will personally head the funding effort, which will be a worldwide campaign.
Senator Gravel will be supported in the state by a coalition of Massachusetts 9/11 advocacy groups and local concerned citizens led by Rich McCampbell, a Cambridge-based biotech engineer, and Rich Aucoin, former Libertarian candidate for lieutenant governor who has worked in senior positions in three previous initiative campaigns. The group’s slogan is “9/11–Never Forget.”
If the 9-11cc petition campaign succeeds in getting its measure on the Massachusetts ballot, and if it is approved by Massachusetts voters in November of 2012, the primary work of the “Citizens’ 9/11 Investigation Commission,” once it is funded and seated, will be to engage in a fair and impartial investigation of the circumstances of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Commission, supported by its staff, will call or subpoena witnesses and hold evidentiary hearings under oath. It will also be empowered to inquire into events leading up to 9/11, as well as those occurring in its aftermath, and will re-examine the findings of any previous investigations.
The Commission established by the initiative law will consist of at least 15 members. Commissioners will be selected by the Citizens’ 9/11 Commission Campaign steering committee from a screened list of nominations submitted by the public and also from among its own internally compiled list of distinguished citizens. The newly seated commissioners will then elect an executive director who will hire staff. The final report on the Commission’s findings, due no later than January 1, 2015, can be used by a state or federal prosecutor to issue indictments if and when appropriate.
“The previous 9/11 Commission report,” noted Aucoin, “did not hold any U.S. government officials responsible for possible negligence or for intended or unintended missteps that led to the events of 9/11. Well-established rules of evidence were never applied to the original Commission’s finding, which alleged that Osama bin Laden and a list of co-conspirators committed the crimes. The intent of our approach, by contrast, is to hold all parties to this tragedy accountable under the criminal laws of the State of Massachusetts or the laws of any other state that joins our effort.”
Notably, other states and even cities and towns may enter into a “joint-powers’ agreement with Massachusetts if the initiative law passes. The authorized powers of the new commission can be extended to any state, city or town that enters into this agreement for cooperation. “The Citizens’ 9/11 Investigation Commission created by the Massachusetts law may exercise all investigatory powers of each state that has entered into the joint powers agreement,” explained Gravel, “including but not limited to the power of subpoena in that state and the power to take testimony under oath.”
Using several different state initiative laws to create one citizens’ commission, thereby creating a de facto national effort, is without precedent, but has already been legally accepted in principle by the offices of legislative counsel of the states of California and Oregon. “The law now submitted to Massachusetts,” said Gravel, “was in fact drafted by me in cooperation with Oregon’s State Office of Legislative Counsel. I then slightly altered it for introduction in Massachusetts. We will file the Oregon document shortly. Our intent is to keep the Oregon and Massachusetts texts — and that of any other state initiative that we file — as similar as possible.”
Massachusetts Media Contact: Rich Aucoin, 781-956-6013, RichAucoin@comcast.net
Richard Clarke confirms what is the main point in Kevin Fenton’s new book Disconnecting the Dots where he makes the point that elements in the CIA deliberately withheld information from the FBI, among others, that two known Al Qaeda operatives were in the United States and were known associates of the USS Cole bombers that the FBI were actively investigating…
Rather than focusing on the fact that has been confirmed by Mr Clarke that the CIA protected Al Qaeda operatives while in the U.S., the Screw Loose Change blog, instead focus on his theory.
SLC:
“But there is plenty of reason to doubt it. For one thing, Clarke himself admits that it’s only a theory:”
Yes, and I also have my doubts about this theory. Because “this theory” is actually a “best case” scenario based on the belief that the head of CIA (George Tenet) didn’t tell the President about these operatives being in the country. An alternative theory is that Tenet was following orders and protecting these hijackers from the FBI…
CPT12 9/11: Press For Truth Commentary – 8/11/2011 The following are the “in-between” clips that were shown during CPT12‘s presentation of 9/11: Press For Truth. The filmmakers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy took questions on their new project concerning “Footnote 44″ of the 9/11 Report, and also debuted an explosive interview with former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke. Paul Thompson, the creator of the Complete 9/11 Timeline also took part in questions and answers.
Jeff Hill’s Pumpitout radio show featuring John-Michael Talboo detailing his research into the many pre 9/11 warnings of terrorist attacks using planes as weapons.
Also, the UNBELIEVABLE LACK of response from NORAD and other facilities equipped to defend our air space on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Note from John-Michael:
This is a mashup of two conversations I had with Jeff, so if there seems to be points where I am repeating myself this is why.
Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog has commented that, “The two paragraphs which do not appear historical in nature are also not very accurate in predicting 9-11; federal buildings in New York were not attacked and the attacks were not done with explosives.”
Condoleezza Rice’s bio on Wikipedia contains this tidbit:
Rice characterized the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily BriefBin Ladin Determined To Strike in US as historical information. Rice indicated “It was information based on old reporting.”[45] Sean Wilentz of Salon magazine suggested that the PDB contained current information based on continuing investigations, including that Bin Laden wanted to “bring the fighting to America.”[46]
One commenter by the name of Brian Good on Pat’s blog thanked him for his candor, “Thanks, Pat, for confirming that the ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US’ memo actually did warn of new attacks, though Condi claimed under oath in the presence of the 9/11 widows that it did not.”
Yes, there was a section that mentions “bin Laden supporters in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives,” which as Pat pointed out, “the attacks were not done with explosives,” meaning of course that it wasn’t a bombing attack akin to the 1993 WTC bombing, but the memo also mentioned “suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks…” It then mentions that this included “recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York,” to which Pat points out that the towers were not federal buildings, but the “recent surveillance” would be in addition to the “most attractive terrorist target” at the WTC as detailed by several reports dating back to the 1980s.
When we look at the PBD within a larger context we start to get a clearer picture of the situation.
In November 2007, Patty Casazza, one of the four New Jersey widows known as the “Jersey Girls” who helped instigate the formation of the 9/11 Commission, revealed that whistleblowers told her “the government knew the exact day, the type of attack, and the targets.” Let’s look further into this outrageous claim: Whom could she have meant by “the government?”
David Schippers the former Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee and head prosecutor responsible for conducting the impeachment against former president Bill Clinton. Schippers stated that at the behest of several FBI agents he had attempted multiple times to warn US Attorney John Ashcroft, along with other federal officials, of the impending attacks weeks before they occurred, only to be stalled and rebuffed in each attempt.
The FBI command, however, cut short their investigations threatening the agents with prosecution under the National Security Act if they publicized this information.
Ahmed has stated, “In The War on Freedom, I merely laid out facts and lines of inquiry for an official investigation. The book was the first read by the Jersey Girls, informing their work with the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, and is part of the 9/11 Commission Collection at the US National Archives (a collection of 99 books, copies of which were provided to each Commissioner).”
Despite this fact, the account of David Shippers is nowhere to be found in The 9/11 Commission Report.
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, in an open letter to the 9/11 Commission, reported that there was “specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden,” that mentioned major cities, airplanes, approximate timeframe, and operatives already in place in the US. This was reported by FBI agents to Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office, but was subsequently ignored.
A stand-down is defined as “a relaxation from a state of readiness or alert.” This certainly took place regarding air defenses on 9/11. One explanation offered was that the terrorists turned off the electronic device known as a transponder, which helps identify aircraft on radar.
As stated by the 9/11 Commission, “With its transponder off, it is possible, though more difficult, to track an aircraft by its primary radar returns. But unlike transponder data, primary radar returns do not show the aircraft’s identity and altitude.”
The commission failed to consider the fact that the US military has more than just ground radar at their disposal.
As defined by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, AWACS is “a sophisticated detection aircraft, fitted with powerful radar and a computer, capable of simultaneously tracking and plotting large numbers of low-flying aircraft at much greater distances than is possible with ground radar.”
In 2006 New Scientist magazine reported that “US military radar can track space debris as small as 10 centimetres across, and can sometimes see things as small as 5 cm wide if it is in just the right orbit.”
Commercial airliners do not need their transponders turned on in order to be tracked by the US military. If America was being attacked by aircraft belonging to a foreign power, it is ridiculous to think these enemy aircraft would have transponders installed to help the US Air Force shoot them down. It is equally ridiculous to believe the US military lack the technology to track aircraft without a transponder signal.
Another excuse given by defenders of the official story is that NORAD only looked outward for threats, not inward. There is much evidence that looking inward was also one of their responsibilities, but in any event, there is at least one incident which proves NORAD could be tasked to defend any part of the skies over the United States and Canada, as well as much evidence that it is not the only time this has happened, but rather, the only time we have been privy to.
The Popular Mechanics book Debunking 9/11 Myths cites an article in a 2002 edition of the Colorado Springs Gazette, which claims that, “Before September 11, the only time officials recall scrambling jets over the United States was when golfer Payne Stewart’s plane veered off course and crashed in South Dakota in 1999.”
Popular Mechanics adds, “Except for that lone, tragic anomaly, all NORAD interceptions from the end of the Cold war in 1989 until 9/11 took place in offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). . . . The planes intercepted in these zones were primarily being used for drug smuggling.”
But an October 13, 2001 Calgary Herald article reported that before 9/11 fighter jets “were scrambled to babysit suspect aircraft or ‘unknowns’ twice a week.”
As Professor David Ray Griffin pointed out in his book Debunking 9/11 Debunking, “Twice a week would be about 100 times per year, and ‘babysitting’ is not what planes would do with jets suspected of smuggling drugs into the country.”
Furthermore, a 1994 United States General Accounting Office report on continental air defense states, “Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD’s alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft (referred to as scrambled) 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.”
As the New York City Activist blog pointed out, “Admittedly this is the early 1990?s, not 2001, and the quote is from a report which recommended trimming down the force. But still it casts a lot of doubt on the Popular Mechanics claim that intercepts were a rare occurrence.”
And as Griffin points out in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, “In this account NORAD made 379 interceptions per year, 354 of which ‘involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft in distress,’ not intercepting planes suspected of smuggling drugs. Besides the fact that 1992 was part of ‘the decade before 9/11,’ it is doubtful that the pattern of interceptions would have changed radically after that.”
A Canadian government performance report on their arm of NORAD for 1999-2000, the same period as the Payne Stewart flight, relevant to military operations in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, backs up Griffin’s statements. The report states, “If required, ‘unknown aircraft’ are intercepted and identified by aircraft dedicated to NORAD. Over the past year, NORAD has intercepted 736 aircraft, 82 of which were suspected drug smugglers…”
While not addressing these reports, Mike Williams of the “debunking” website 911myths.com states, “The Popular Mechanics claim that there was one intercept of a ‘civilian plane over North America’ in the decade before 9/11 still seems quite absolute, but then that just means it wouldn’t take much to disprove it. Just find a media report of an intercept, an interview with a pilot who was intercepted when they accidentally flew too close to the White House, anything like that… How difficult can it be?”
Being that Williams only provides two examples of other intercepts for comparison on his webpage concerning the Payne Stewart incident, and that he could not find all the information needed to draw firm conclusions on these, he should know that finding any detailed statistics on such matters is difficult.
The aforementioned entry on the New York City Activist blog highlights the following from the 2004 Complaint & Petition to the NY Attorney General (Spitzer at the time) for a new criminal investigation into 9/11:
Also necessary would be data on cases of errant planes or unknowns in which no scramble orders were issued. Of special interest would be the prior performance within NORAD’s Northeastern Air Defense Sector (“NEADS”), which is headquartered at Rome, New York. Such a cumulative analysis–with special attention to cases when passenger planes deviated from course in the air-traffic control zones within which the 9/11 attacks occurred–would provide indispensable context for serious research into the subject of air defense response on September 11. This data is currently unavailable to the public, and there is no indication such an analysis was undertaken by the Kean Commission.
When 9/11 researcher and activist Aidan Monaghan sent a Freedom of Information Act Request to the FAA he was informed that, “…The FAA does not track or keep information about the request for support of NORAD for intercepting aircraft throughout the National Airspace System.”
When Monaghan tried obtaining FOIA information from NORAD he was advised that they are not subject to the FOIA because they are a bi-national organization between the U.S. and Canada.
Perhaps those in government are the ones worthy of the question, “How difficult can it be?”
When Williams was asked in an interview to give his “strongest argument” against a NORAD stand-down he stated that, “I would point out the Payne Stewart intercept time of over 70 minutes, and the pre-9/11 confirmation that NORAD only had 14 fighters on alert at one time, none of which were at Andrews Air Force Base.”
First off, as is pointed out in Paul Thompson’s article “The Failure to Defend the Skies on 9/11,” “We know details of a 1999 fighter scramble, because famous golfer Payne Stewart was aboard a runaway Learjet. With the pilot unconscious, NORAD used fighters from a number of bases outside NORAD’s official seven bases to follow the plane as it crossed over several states before finally crashing.”
Just as with Syracuse something could have been done much earlier. David Ray Griffin is quoted on William’s page as stating “Fighters loaded with bullets, but no missiles, could have provided considerable protection. Even fighter jets completely unloaded would be better than no fighters at all, given their ability to deter and, if all else failed, ram an airliner headed towards the Pentagon, the White House or the Capitol.” William’s doesn’t focus on this though, instead he rebuts Griffin’s other argument that the “arming never happened,” which it did, but not for another 33minutes after the first two planes took off.
Regarding Griffin’s former point, the article “IGNORAD – The military screw-up nobody talks about” by former U.S. Navy intelligence officer Scott Shuger also notes that there are other techniques fighters could have used with a hijacked plane, Shuger states:
It can first rock its wingtips to attract attention, or make a pass in front of the plane, or fire tracer rounds in its path. So even though on 9/11, the NORAD pilots working the first three airliners didn’t have shootdown authority (they got it only after the Pentagon was hit), they would or should have been ready to try these other techniques, which might well have spooked or forced the hijackers into turning, which might have given the fighters a chance to force them out to sea. And even if the hijackers decided instead to fly right into a fighter in their way, wouldn’t an airburst have killed fewer people than two collapsed flaming skyscrapers did?
As it turned out Shuger knew what he was talking about. Almost 8 months after his January 2002 article AviationWeek.com reported that:
Within minutes of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Air National Guard F-16s took off from here in response to a plea from the White House to ‘Get in the air now!’ Those fighters were flown by three pilots who had decided, on their own, to ram a hijacked airliner and force it to crash, if necessary. Such action almost certainly would have been fatal for them, but could have prevented another terrorism catastrophe in Washington.
These or other heroes like them could have and should have been in the air much sooner on 9/11, but don’t take my word for it.
On pg 2 of Note 13 it says, ‘Wherley had no properly armed planes at Andrews. His units were not air defense units.’ There’s a ‘summer of threat’, warnings of a planes as missiles attack, CIA and FBI knew operatives were in the country, nothing was done to disrupt the plot, and nothing was done to harden security, nothing was done to defend the nation’s capital. Rather, it appears some took action to leave the capital open to attack.
Back to the Payne Stewart incident, on Willams’ old webpage on the subject he states that, “To be fair, if the first fighters had been closer (as they were on 9/11) then the response time would have been better.”
The reaction of these officials should have been universal and hence the moment Flight 77 deviated from its course it should have become a target for interception. As noted on Wikipedia:
The Bojinka plot was a planned large-scale Islamist terrorist attack… to take place in January 1995…
A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995 stated, “What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters.”
Another plot the men were cooking up would have involved hijacking of more airplanes. The Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), The Pentagon (Arlington County, Virginia), the United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.), the White House (Washington, DC), the Transamerica Pyramid (San Francisco, California), and the World Trade Center (New York, New York) would be the likely targets. This plot eventually would be the base plot for the September 11, 2001 attacks, only hitting the World Trade Center (which was destroyed) and The Pentagon (which suffered partial damage).
To put it all another way, if the military can get to a Learjet in roughly 76 minutes when they are not being waged war on, then 44 or more minutes should be sufficient when they are. These points hold all the more true for the fourth plane to perish that day.
During testimony given to the 9/11 Commission, then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta had the following exchange with 9/11 commissioner Lee Hamilton regarding the plane coming into the Pentagon:
MR. MINETA: …There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”…
MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –
MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.
Even if the 9-11 Commission is correct, when they claim he arrived at 10:07 (according to the White House) Mineta makes it clear the order was given before he got there. There was no shoot down order given before 10:07. The 9-11 Commission seems to admit this.
…It seems very clear from the evidence that no shoot down order was given until 10:20 and none relayed to the military until 10:31. Which means if an order was given before 10:20 there is no reason to believe it was a shoot down order. Which would seem to indicate it was a stand down.
We need to be allowed to view Cohrane’s testimony, but even if he says the orders were shoot-down orders, the fact remains that after seeing the second tower struck at 9:03 AM the National Military Command Center realized there was “a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States,” but yet shoot-down orders were not relayed to the military until 10:31. (Update on these points)
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources… “We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. ‘It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
It is often claimed that 9/11 skeptics are quote mining the 9/11 Commissioners, as to suggest that they agree with our case, but this is the real logical fallacy. Kean admitted they were lied to and he did not know why. He can think that the 9/11 Commission’s story of astounding incompetance is correct all he wants, but the fact remains that his report failed to tie up “those loose ends” and prove that ineptitude is all that was at hand.
…Although this explanation has been widely accepted, is it really believable? If our military had been guilty only of confusion and incompetence on 9/11, it would have been strange for its officials, by saying that they had been notified by the FAA earlier than they really had, to open themselves not only to the charge of criminal fraud but also to the suspicion that they had deliberately not intercepted the hijacked airliners. We are being asked to believe, in other words, that Scott, Arnold, and the others, in telling the earlier story, acted in a completely irrational manner–that, while being guilty only of confusion and a little incompetence, they told a lie that could have exposed them with being charged with murder and treason.
911myths.com features outdated pages on the issues of live-fly exercises and false radar blips, proving once again that we don’t need “debunkers” to answer these questions, but rather a new investigative body willing to tie all “loose ends” so there is no need for Loose Change or their detractors.
“I knew within hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 that it was an inside job. Based on my 11-year experience as an FAA Air Traffic Controller in the busy Northeast corridor, including hundreds of hours of training, briefings, air refuelings, low altitude bombing drills, being part of huge military exercises, daily military training exercises, interacting on a routine basis directly with NORAD radar personnel, and based on my own direct experience dealing with in-flight emergency situations, including two instances of hijacked commercial airliners, I state unequivocally; There is absolutely no way that four large commercial airliners could have flown around off course for 30 to 60 minutes on 9/11 without being intercepted and shot completely out of the sky by our jet fighters unless very highly placed people in our government and our military wanted it to happen. – Robin Hordon, Former FAA Air Traffic Controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, located in Nashua, NH, 1970 – 1981. FAA certified commercial pilot. FAA certified Flight Instructor and certified Ground Instructor. After leaving the FAA, he had a 12-year career in the field of comedy ending up as artistic coordinator for “Catch A Rising Star” in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA.
It took Prof. Griscom 4 long years to become convinced of 9/11 truth. Science did it. And: Some “Debunkers” already claim he was chosen because he was a “truther”. That’s totally bogus. He did not play a vocal or any role in the 9/11 truth movement prior 2007/2008, Bentham surely did not find his rare blog entries on the issue for selecting him, but did search their database for valuable scientific referees in the field of research with good experience- no wonder they found Prof. Griscom.
Griscom notes that he is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has “refereed at least 600, and possibly as many as 1000, manuscripts” and was himself published twelve times in the American Institute of Physics’ Journal of Chemical Physics.
Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change states that “even the Troofers have their limits” and notes that 911 Blogger user “Loose Nuke,” whom I have great respect for, raises the question of whether Jones’ recommended Griscom as a reviewer. Pat ignores the fact that Loose Nuke later concurs that “Griscom’s credentials establish him as qualified to review” the paper and instead focuses on his perception that Jones intentionally dodged the question about recommendation. This seems unlikely being that authors are allowed to suggest referees as was demonstrated by a study cited by “Swing Dangler” in the comments. This study entitled “Differences in Review Quality and Recommendations for Publication Between Peer Reviewers Suggested by Authors or by Editors” concludes:
Author-and editor-suggested reviewers did not differ in the quality of their reviews, but author-suggested reviewers tended to make more favorable recommendations for publication. Editors can be confident that reviewers suggested by authors will complete adequate reviews of manuscripts, but should be cautious about relying on their recommendations for publication.
So, considering Griscom’s qualifications, the results of this study, and the fact we were informed by one of the paper’s author’s, Gregg Roberts, that, “The other reviewer was not a truther. And that reviewer provided a much less rigorous review then did Griscom – while also recommending publication if the review points were dealt with adequately,” it is clear that the review was legitimate and thus Jones would not need to hide if he recommended Griscom. Jones very well could have just fired back a response to Loose Nuke and in doing so failed to adequately address one question asked.
Further evidence that Jones was not dodging the question is demonstrated by the fact that Loose Nuke also asked “Why was David Griscom thanked in the Active Thermitic Acknowledgements?”. Jones did not answer this question in the comments, but did essentially answer it it on the Visibility 9/11 podcast at the time of publication:
Usually peer-review is done completely anonymously, but it is possible for a reviewer to identify himself. I’ve seen that done before. (Note: Jones, has authored or co-authored over forty peer reviewed publications, including three papers for which he was first author in the renowned journalNATURE) In this case one of the reviewers identified himself as a physics professor, a Fellow of the American Physical Society… well credentialed… I checked… like 80 peer-reviewed papers of his own.
So it is no secret or problem that Jones was made aware Griscom had been selected as a reviewer prior to publication.
Furthermore, Jones stated in the comments that “BYU scientists did a review of the paper” that led to changes in the report. Jones previously revealed in comments on another post that the paper was “peer-reviewed by the Physics dept. chair at BYU… because two of the authors are from this dept.” Elsewhere he revealed that he was told by the chairman that the paper “was sound scientific research and that he was now persuaded that explosives/pyrotechnics were involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11.”
Then we have chemical engineer Mark Basile, who was not involved in the paper, recently stating on video that he has unequivocally confirmed its findings and even obtained a completely independent sample of dust from a NYC museum.
Pat ignores all of that though, because Griscom is a “sack of fecal matter… Troofer moron… AAAS-hole… nut” who has theorized that the planes on 9/11 were swapped out for drones and that the passengers were in on it and are still alive.
Gregg Roberts responds:
Many scientists who have done good work in their field have strange beliefs that have nothing to do with the quality of their scientific work. Using Griscom’s analysis of what happened to the passengers and generalizing from that to whether he provided a tough, accurate, technical review of the red/gray chips paper, is an unjustified leap.
Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Steve Weathers had this to say:
Did Pat just imply that the individuals in the peer-review process favoured the article being published when there was some obvious flaw to the paper that should have prevented publication? Where is the error? Has he cited a peer reviewed response to the material presented? Do the existing peer-reviewers have less of an understanding about the science involved here than Mr Pat Curley? If the fault is so obvious, where is the peer reviewed criticism?
Here is how Pat’s peer-review of the paper would have gone.
First off, there is no kind of paint in existence capable of producing a high-temperature chemical reaction as evinced by the fact that the chips produce molten iron spheres. Secondly, paint from the WTC has a different chemical composition. Finally, we soaked the chips in a paint solvent for 55 hours and they remained intact.
In regard to your second point, we were saying that 400-450°C is the temperature that TRIGGERS the reaction. We have forwarded your stunning incomprehension of the material to the editor and expect them to promptly find a more qualified referee.
Joseph Nobles over at the “debunking” site ae911truth.info states, “And yet Griscom says that he couldn’t find anything to criticize about the ATM paper! 12 notes of suggestions he has that makes Harrit, et al. sweat and strain to meet (according to Jones), but none of these are criticisms?”
Nice reading comprehension there Joey. What Griscom actually said was that he “found absolutely nothing to criticize in the final version of the Harrit et al. paper!”
You know, the final version they produced after they made the changes based on his review
Nothing has changed since Steven Jones told “debunkers” to Put up or Shut up on April 7, 2009:
Here’s what you need to know (especially if you are not a scientist): UNLESS AN OBJECTOR ACTUALLY PUBLISHES HIS OR HER OBJECTION IN A PEER-REVIEWED ESTABLISHED JOURNAL (yes that would include Bentham Scientific journals), THEN THE OBJECTION IS NOT CONSIDERED SERIOUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT NON-PUBLISHED OBJECTIONS EITHER.
So how do you, as a non-scientist, discern whether the arguments are valid or not? You should first ask, “is the objection PUBLISHED in an ESTABLISHED PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL?” If not, you can and should say — “I will wait to see this formally published in a refereed scientific journal. Until then, the published peer-reviewed work by Harrit et al. stands…
IF it is so easy to publish in Bentham Scientific journals, or if these are “vanity publications” (note: there is no factual basis for these charges) — then why don’t the objectors write up their objections and get them peer-reviewed and published?? The fact is, it is not easy, as serious objectors will find out.
The website recommends the long since debunked reports published by demolition photographer Brent Blanchard and Popular Mechanics. Even more striking, it suggests that visitors watch the YouTube video “9/11 Debunked: Controlled Demolition Not Possible” posted September 02, 2007 by Ryan Owens (See http://www.america.gov/st/webchat-english/2009/May/20060828133846esnamfuaK0.2676355.html.)
When Owens was informed that his video was being used by the State Department, he had this to say:
“I can’t believe the State Department actually linked to one of my videos. LOL, that’s f****** insane, I can go brag to my buddies now. I never knew that, and am shocked that they would do that, but whatever, cool nonetheless.”
The fact that the State Department would use a YouTube video from a non-scientist when they have top scientists at their disposal is bad enough, but then there is the issue of the contents of the video.
After producing a series of videos dealing with the claims of Ryan Owens, Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Adam Taylor wrote Owens an open letter attempting to take him up on his promise of fixing any errors that could be pointed out in his videos.
Owens’ response, however, demonstrated an inability to understand valid refutations and thus an unwillingness to correct major errors.
In regard to the video used by the State Department, Owens either failed to watch, or grasp the points, of a video of mine provided to him, which demonstrates that the continuous and rapid explosions of the Twin Towers would make distinct explosions nearly impossible to hear. Based on his false premise that distinct explosions would be required, Owens claims that no explosions were heard even at the base of the Towers. He then proclaims that explosives would have been heard miles away. However, a news clip from FOX used in my video shows witnesses in midtown NYC saying that the explosive roar of the Towers’ demise sounded like “another large aircraft flying overhead.” These sound waves were certainly heard miles away.
Regarding the demolition “squibs”, or isolated explosive ejections, seen on videos bursting out from the Towers, Owens failed to address that:
1. Calculations done by Dr. Crockett Grabbe show that the horizontal ejection rate of the squibs is disproportional to the vertical collapse rates of the Towers.
2. David Chandler has shown that some of these ejections came from the steel corner columns, making it impossible that they were the result of air pressure.
Owens also asserted that since no squibs were seen until after the destruction had already began, that they must have been driven purely by gravitation. One argument against this is that the North Tower’s antenna dropped before any other building movement is seen, which is evidence that demolition devices were working on the core before any squibs were seen emerging out of the perimeter walls. This argument, however, is unnecessary. Thanks to the lawsuit filed against NIST we now have video showing that, contrary to Owens’ claim, some of these ejections occurred before the collapses. See “Visible Explosion at World Trade Center” and “WTC1 collapse initiation – visible signs.”
The one point that Owens’ video gets right concerns what were once believed by many to be demolition squibs emerging from the southwest corner of WTC 7, but in fact are just window blinds flapping through broken windows as the building descends. This point has been conceded by AE911Truth for quite some time.
This is just a small summary of the conversation that took place, but to paraphrase Popular Mechanics, “most of the other claims are just as easily refuted.”
In fairness to Owens, he has stated in YouTube comments that he is a current engineering student, which the State Department’s 9/11 debunking crew probably didn’t know when they posted his video. But even if they did, they shouldn’t be relying on a student to be the teacher. Even NIST officials rely on qualified teachers to provide corrections to basic errors in its work – such as the publicly humiliating WTC 7 free-fall lesson provided to Dr. Shyam Sunder by physics instructor David Chandler during its Draft Final Report in August 2008.
Kevin Bracken, Victorian branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and president of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, is calling for a “proper investigation into the events of September 11, 2001”.
We need to show that we support and defend the courageous people willing to risk ridicule to speak 9/11 truth. It’s men like Kevin Bracken that can bring real change in the world today.
