Osama's Re-Appearance -- a Blow to the 9/11 Truth Movement?

The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden yesterday has fueled a lot of speculation about what it means for the presidential election.

My guess is that it's basically a wash.

For people leaning away from Bush, the mere appearance of bin Laden will only re-inforce the idea that Bush has failed to get him in the past three years. So seeing Osama now just reminds them of Bush's failure.

For people leaning towards Bush, seeing bin Laden will make them think of 9/11 and terrorism and the idea that Bush is the best at protecting them. But these people are already freaked out by terrorism enough. I don't think they need Osama to remind them of the threat.

The bottom line is that I can't see this tape really changing anyone's vote, even an undecided voter. If it does sway an undecided, it seems just as likely that it could go either way.

BUT MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT BIN LADEN MEANS TO THE ELECTION IS THE POTENTIAL FOR BIN LADEN TO DISRUPT THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT.

The video was very odd because for the first time, bin Laden completely admits to the attacks and moreover, talks about the attacks in a detailed way that he hadn't before.

It is strange, between the remarks about Bush reading the goat story and the remarks about the slow response of the Americans to Mohamed Atta-- it is almost as if bin Laden had been recently reading the criticisms of the 9/11 skeptics.

And this made me think-- why would bin Laden just NOW be talking about this stuff?

Is it possible that bin Laden is being controlled by the CIA-- and the CIA has lately become very worried about the 9/11 truth movement?

This recent appearance of bin Laden was never meant to shake MY thoughts about what happened on 9/11. However I think it is possible that bin Laden's new video talking about his role in 9/11 was meant to shake doubts into people who are just starting hear a lot of 9/11 skepticism, particularly people in the media. Remind them, reinforce in them that, yes, this is the guy behind 9/11. Yes, just ignore all those nagging questions about 9/11-- this is the bad guy who masterminded that horrible deed.

I really have to wonder if the video was some sort of subtle psy-ops campaign against the 9/11 skeptics movement. Because the movement has been gaining a lot of steam, and the CIA clearly has a lot to lose by any further investigation into the attacks. The timing was key here, because bin Laden hadn't so explicitly noted his involvment in the attacks before, and he comes out with this story JUST as 9/11 truth is getting some real traction.

I certainly won't be surprised if this video halts some of the progress of the 9/11 truth movement.

Lastly-- the bin Laden video still leaves quite a bit of wiggle room for 9/11 skepticism; there is even the cryptic statement he makes that Bush has been concealing the truth aboout 9/11 from Americans. My point is that at first glance, this video will reinforce the idea that bin Laden was the organizer of 9/11 and that this will take momentum away from the 9/11 truth movement.

John Kerry for President

Yes, John Kerry gets the official Humint Events Online endorsement.

Not that it is worth much. I imagine it's only worth one vote (mine), and in Indiana, my vote has very little chance of swaying the election. Moreover, my county has one of the electronic touch-screen voting systems, so I have no idea if they are even counting it propoerly.

In any case, I believe John Kerry has the makings of a great president. He has rock-solid character, he is a true American hero, he is tough and he has guts. He is a good, well-rounded and thoughtful man.

Although this country is facing serious challenges for whoever takes office in January 2005, I think America could blossom under Kerry.

And it only helps Kerry that he is running against the man who is easily the most disturbing president of my lifetime, and possibly in the whole history of this country.

Please vote November 2nd, and vote wisely.

Spitzer to Take on 9/11 Truth Case

NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer may be the gutsiest man in America-- and if he truly takes this case and prosecutes it like he is capable of-- then we will know for sure he has got serious guts.

This should be interesting.

On 9/11, Three Commercial Airliners Flying Over the Atlantic Were Sending Out Distress Signals

From USA Today, Dec. 8, 2002.

(snip)
Officials at Cleveland Center rush word to Washington: Hijackers have another flight.

At the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va., Delta Flight 1989 joins a growing list of suspicious jets. Some of their flight numbers will be scrawled on a white dry-erase board throughout the morning. Eventually, the list will grow to 11.

One, a TWA flight, refuses to land in Pittsburgh and wants to fly on toward Washington. Another, a Midwest Express flight, disappears from radar over West Virginia. And three jets over the Atlantic Ocean are sending out distress signals, the Coast Guard reports.

Top managers at the FAA's command center fear the worst: Jets all over the country — including some over the oceans — are being hijacked. One after another. (snip)

(Italics and bold added)

So what the hell ever happened to these jets? Were they real hijacked planes? Did they go down over the Atlantic?

Very bizarre.

The whole article is worth a read, but this section I snipped out really sets off alarm bells.

Bringing Down the WTC Towers

David McGowan makes the case for controlled demolition.

Shorter version-- 9/11 would not have had the same emotional resonance without the towers coming down, the pancake collapse model just doesn't make much sense, and people on the morning of 9/11 were talking about explosions from the towers.

Even the heroes of 9/11-- the firemen-- were talking about explosions. How come the media ignores these people now?

Can you say "cover-up"?

I knew you could.

The Re-emergence of Osama bin Laden

Boy-- he looked none the worse for the wear. Nice clothes, nice room. Has he really been on the run?

The timing is cute too. Karl Rove said they had a few more tricks up their sleeves, but is this one of them? Are we supposed to be freaked out by a well-rested and reasonable-sounding Osama bin Laden who mocks Bush's response on 9/11?

Things that raised MY suspicions:

1) OBL talking about destroying the towers-- if he really wanted to destroy the towers as he claims, was his best bet really crashing airplanes into them?

2) OBL referring to "the 19" hijackers. The FBI came up with the count 19 hijackers, and that number is questionable according to many 9/11 researchers. The full flight manifests have never been released and the FBI has NEVER described how they found out who the hijackers were. So it is odd that OBL would refer to the 19 hijackers-- it's as if he was using a the US media for his info on 9/11.

3) OBL referring to the delayed response of Bush and (by inference) the US military to the airplane hijackings. It seems odd to think that OBL took US air defenses into account in the hijacking plan in the first place. If Al Qaeda HAD been worried about US air defenses, they would probably have done things differently-- like take off from airports closer to the targets, and in the case of flight 11, not meander around for 15 minutes. In the case of flight 93, you would think they would have started the hijacking a little earlier, rather than 45 minutes after take-off-- especially considering flight 93 was already delayed in taking off, and authorities were already alerted to at least two other hijackings. But as we know, OBL had very little to do with how 9/11 was carried out. So this little dig by Osama is probably part of his game where he wants to fool people into believing that he planned the attacks.

All in all, this video makes me think that Osama is being handled by some intelligence service-- since he is healthy and protected and in touch with what's going on in the world and the US. I think it is quite likely Osama is being protected by some intelligence service, most likely the Pakistani ISI.

This video also suggests to me that Osama had little personally to do with 9/11. I think the only way Osama was really involved with 9/11 was by running a terrorist/drug smuggling organization that provided some of the hijacker "patsies". I seriously doubt Osama really engineered the attacks in any way, since the 9/11 attacks were really a NORAD hijacking exercise that utilized Al Qaeda operatives as the hijackers. I don't mean to imply Osama is harmless -- he IS a terrorist that has a beef with the US. I just don't think he was the driving force behind 9/11.

Black Boxes Were Recovered from the WTC

Apparently --and in contradiction to the 9/11 Commission report.

The firefighter who found them is not talking, suggesting there is an ongoing cover-up.

What a surprise.

White House of Horrors

Maureen Dowd wrote a column today in which she describes Dick Cheney as a Halloween monster of some sort.

I wrote her the following letter in response:

Dear. Ms. Dowd--

You wrote: " It's often seen in scary movies: you play God to create something in your own image, and the monster you make ends up coming after you. "

This quote is VERY appropriate, since Dick Cheney was in charge of the multiple military wargames that were run on the morning of 9/11/01. One of these exercises was a live-fly hijacking drill.

The government is covering it up, but it is clear these wargames were a central part of how the 9/11 attacks occurred.

On 9/11/01, Cheney was playing terrorist attack by hijacked airplane, and his creation became a monster.

I think it is extremely important that the media investigate this story thoroughly.

Sincerely,
XXX

My new campaign is to spread this 9/11 live-fly hijacking exercise meme as far as I can. I've sent it to only a few journalists so far, but I'll keep sending it.

We need to plant the seed and fertilize the ground for the 9/11 truth tree to grow and flourish.

Another Military Exercise Relevant to 9/11 is "Amalgam Virgo"

In June 2001, the Amalgam Virgo exercise was run which tested the idea of a cruise missile being fired from off the coast of the US onto the mainland, as a possible type of terrorist attack.

If such an exercise were run on 9/11, it might explain how a cruise missile or some sort of small drone could have hit the Pentoagon.

Here is an article about the exercise from GlobalSecurity.org

Here
is a good thread at the Let's Roll site about Amalgam Virgo.

Here is a post I initally found on Google but seems to be from a Let's Roll thread I can't locate right now:

9-11 'Drills': Amalgam Virgo Briefing Paper Origins & Other Information

Herb Briggs was very perceptive in his analysis that the Amalgam Virgo briefing document (PDF format) did not appear to be a military FX (Field eXercise) document. He is correct.
Quote:

I believe this is disinformation to cover the potential that Amalgam Virgo was the actual 9/11 FTX involving the cruise missile that hit the pentagon.

That entire description, the .pdf, all of that is disinformation. All total lies.
That .pdf is the lamest phony I've ever seen. Are you serious? LOOK at that thing - you expect me to believe that's an actual document used to describe a real FTX? PHONY!!!!!!
The Amalgam Virgo 35 page briefing document was June 2001 SLAAD committee powerpoint slide presentation made to the military, defense contractors, federal agencies and others. This is why it does not look like a military FX briefing.

National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)
The Strike, Land Attack and Air Defense Division (SLAAD)
Amalgam Virgo PDF document is Volume 2: Emerging Cruise Missle Threat
http://tinyurl.com/6jko7

Background Information from NDIA Mission Statement
http://tinyurl.com/5raoa

Quote:

The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) was founded March 1, 1997. It began on that date as a result of a merger between the former American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA), which was founded in 1919, and the National Security Industrial Association (NSIA), which was founded in 1944. The new NDIA is a non-partisan, non-profit international association with offices in Arlington, VA.

The association’s membership base consists of over 1,100 corporate members and more than 29,000 individuals from the entire spectrum of the defense and national industrial bases, from government and from foreign nations with whom the United States, through DoD, has a Memorandum of Understanding.
From National Defense Magazine
http://tinyurl.com/6g6tj

Quote:

Lack of ‘Single Integrated Picture’Hinders Commanders, Study Says
November 2001 by Sandra I. Erwin

If a cruise missile—fired from a ship or a submarine offshore—entered U.S. airspace, national authorities would detect it, but would not know where it came from.

Such a scenario was presented at a summer 2001 counter-terrorism exercise conducted by the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). One of the situations in the exercise, called Amalgam Virgo ‘01, was the firing of a cruise missile from a nondescript merchant ship in the Gulf of Mexico, into the U.S. mainland. Because cruise missiles fly at low altitudes, NORAD would not be able to see them from beyond the horizon.

The cruise-missile threat is just one example of the types of vulnerabilities that could be solved if the Defense Department and the military services had a real-time “single integrated picture” of any given battle zone, concluded a study titled “Roadmap to the Single Integrated Picture.”

The conclusion of the NORAD exercise was that “we are naked,” said Stephen R. Woodall, the director of the study. “We have no capability to deal with that kind of problem.”

A single integrated picture, or SIP, would give U.S. military forces access to reliable information about ground, air, space or undersea threats in any given theater of operations, including the continental United States, said Woodall.

A SIP, he added, would improve homeland defense. “You need a SIP around the United States.” NORAD can see every airplane in the sky and every satellite in space, but that is “not good enough for cruise missile defense.”

Thirty-five companies and 27 defense agencies participated in the study, which was sponsored by the Strike, Land Attack and Air Defense Committee of the National Defense Industrial Association.

See linked article for more.
From the Tampa Tribune

Exercise Simulates Terrorist Missile Attack
June 3, 2001
Section: FLORIDA/METRO
Page: 5
by George Coryell
Memo: MILITARY DISPATCHES

George Coryell covers military issues and can be reached at (813) 259-7966.

The Florida Panhandle was the site of a simulated terrorist attack against the United States using a cruise missile.

The 1st Air Force, the Air National Guard organization responsible for defending the airspace of the continental United States under the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is testing its abilities to find and shoot down drones this weekend. The exercise, using elements of the Air Force, Navy, Army and Coast Guard, began Friday and will continue until Monday.

There are an estimated 75,000 cruise missiles in the world, and at least 75 countries have them in their arsenals. A missile capable of flying 900 miles and carrying 40 pounds of explosives or weapons of mass destruction such as biological agents can be purchased on the international black market for $80,000, unit spokesman Maj. Don Arias said.

"We're quite vulnerable to cruise missiles," Arias said.

The Amalgam Virgo exercise at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City tested a radar system that utilizes feeds from traditional radar, Airborne Warning and Control System planes, naval Aegis radar and ground mobile radar to give a clearer picture of the sky. Arias said current defense capabilities work well at 10,000 feet and above, but not well below that. Cruise missiles typically hug the Earth.

Drones simulating cruise missiles will be launched from Tyndall, head out to sea, circle a ship as if it were launched from there, and head back to land. Air Force F-16s, Navy gunners and Army missile defense units will attempt to find and track the drones. The Coast Guard will attempt to catch the ship serving as the dummy launch site.

"A rogue nation or terrorist could launch from sea and get real close before we even saw it," Arias said.

The new radar system is mobile and could be used at events such as the
Olympics that might be susceptible to terrorist attacks, Arias said.
From 911 Commission Testimony

Quote:

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: Well, obviously, it would be hard to imagine posturing for the exact scenario but isn’t it a fact, Sir, that prior to September 11th, 2001, NORAD had already in the works, plans to simulate in an exercise, a simultaneous hijacking of two planes in the United States.

Maj. Gen. Craig McKinle: Col. Scott, do you have any data on that? I’m not aware of that, Sir. I was not present at the time.

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: That was operation Amalgam Virgo.

Col. Alan Scott: Yes, Sir. Specifically, operation Amalgam Virgo, which I was involved in before I retired, was a scenario using a Third-World United, not United, uninhabited aerial vehicle launched off a rogue freighter in the Gulf of Mexico. General Arnold can back me up, at the time, one of our greatest concerns was the proliferation of cruise missile technology and the ability for terrorists groups to get that technology and get it close enough to our shores to launch it. In fact, this exercise, in this exercise we used actual drone, MQM 107 drones, which are about the size of a cruise missile to exercise our fighters and our radars in a Gulf of Mexico scenario.

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: You are referring to Amalgam ’01, are you not?

Col. Alan Scott: Yes, Sir.

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: I’m referring to Amalgam ’02, which was in the planning stages prior to September 11th, 2001, Sir. Is that correct?

Col. Alan Scott: That was after I retired and I was not involved in ’02.

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: Will you accept that the exercise involved a simultaneous hijacking scenario?

Col. Alan Scott: I was not involved in ’02.

Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley: Sir, I do have some information on ’02, if you would allow me to read it for the record?

Richard Ben-Veniste, Commissioner: Please.

Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley: Amalgam Virgo, in general, ’02, was an exercise created to focus on peacetime and contingency NORAD missions. One of the peacetime scenarios that is and has been a NORAD mission for years is support to other government departments. Within this mission falls hijackings. Creativity of the designer aside, prior to 9/11, hijack motivations were based on political objectives, ie: asylum or release of captured prisoners or political figures. Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response for players.
The Raytheon (Beech) MQM-107 Streaker Drones
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-107.html
Quote:

The MQM-107 Streaker is a high-subsonic subscale aerial target used by the U.S. Army and Air Force.

The MQM-107A is powered by a turbojet in a nacelle under the fuselage, and is launched from a zero-length launcher with the help of a single solid-propellant rocket booster. The target can fly preprogrammed missions, but can also be controlled from the ground through a radio command guidance system. The Streaker's flight envelope includes speeds from about 370 km/h (200 kts) to 926 km/h (500 kts), constant high-g turns, and flight at very low altitudes. The target is recovered by a two-stage parachute system, which is initiated either automatically by loss of critical systems, or by ground command. The MQM-107A can use the usual variety of payloads for aerial targets, including radar, IR, and visual augmentation devices, scoring devices, and countermeasures. One of its main tasks is towing various sub-targets for radar- and IR-guided missile and gunnery training.
SMART-1 (Small Manned Aerial Radar Target – Model 1) Drone
http://www.freedomjet.com/missions.htm
The SMART-1 drones used in Amalgram Virgo 2001 (AV-01) exercixe are manned micro-jets manufactured by Aerial Productions International, Inc. of Arizona.
Quote:

The FREEDOM JET goes Military!

Now known as the Small Manned Aerial Radar Target, Model 1 (SMART-1), the tiny jet aircraft that have een performing air shows for the last quarter century have been "drafted" by the military.

The low radar cross section (RCS), manned feature, dependability and economy make the aircraft a natural threat representative and support system for:

• New system research, design and development
• Early system testing
• Unit training
• Major exercise threat display activities
• Homeland defense development, testing and training efforts

Military organizations that have employed the SMART-1 include:

• Joint Cruise Missile Defense (JCMD), Eglin Air Force Base
• Joint Combat Identification and Evaluation Team (JCIET), Eglin AFB
• Reconnaissance, Strike and Combat ID Branch, (RSCIB),
Air Force Labs, WPAFB
• CDT & E LSST 2001, White Sands Missile Range
• Area Cruise Milssile Defense/Advanced Concept Technology
Demonstration (ACMD/ACTD), Tyndall AFB
• Amalgam Virgo 01 (AV-01), Tyndall AFB
• Naval Weapons Center (NWC), China Lake, CA

Extra Passenger on Flight 93-- Extra Passengers on All the 9/11 Flights?

While googling flight 93 and the 9:16 am time for the suspected hijacking, I came across this strange site: http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/warrant21.htm

The site is a little out of date, and seems to be a random collection of various articles and observations, some of which deal with 9/11.

In any case, in the middle of the page was this interesting tidbit:

An acquaintance of mine, with top classified clearance, runs a training program for special forces for the military and police professionals worldwide. On flight 93, one of their highly trained judo instructors died. He was a professional special forces warrior, yet his name is nowhere to be found on news releases. It is highly unlikely that he was there for a pleasure ride.

I will assume this is legit for two reasons. First, there is no strange conspiracy attached to it, it is merely a random observation on the page. Second of all, it makes a lot of sense.

Undoubtedly, there were a set of such people on each flight, as part of the back-up plan for Operation Vigilant Warrior/Vigilant Guardian. In other words, these guys were part of the hijacking drill. Such a person was known to be on flight 11, as well-- Daniel Lewin:who once belonged to the Israel Defense Force, Sayeret Matkal, a top-secret counter-terrorist unit.

Moreover, these special forces agents could be why the number of people who were reported to have died on each plane was greater than the number of names of the passengers reported by the media, even when the hijackers are taken into account*. This fact has been analyzed by several 9/11 sites. And now it makes sense-- the airlines didn't report the names of the special forces agents on each flight, because that would be a dead give-away for what was happening on 9/11.

Thus, this little 9/11 mystery of the numbers of passengers is a mystery no more.

*
for instance, from 911timeline.net--

7:59 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 a Boeing 767-223ER with a maximum capacity of 181 passengers and 23,980 gallons of fuel, lifts off from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, bound for Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California. Take-off was scheduled for 7:45. There are supposed to be 92 victims on board American Airlines Flight 11, yet when you add up the official death manifest list that was published on CNN.com, there are only 86 victims.

The same goes for the other three flights of September 11th. Add up the passenger and crew lists from all 4 flights of 911 and you have officially 266 people on board. Yet when one adds up the 4 official death manifest lists published on CNN.com, there are only 229 names. Somehow 37 people are missing from the 4 CNN.com official death manifest lists, including all 19 of the hijackers. There is not even one Arabic name there. Why?
http://911Timeline.net/36or37missingand70percentempty.htm

One other thing; CNN.com says there are 45 fatalities on United Airlines Flight 93, others say there are 44. This would make 36 missing, and 265 deaths for all 4 airliners.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/2001/010911-2.htm

More 9/11 Sites

I've added a few new 9/11 links to the side panel.

This Danish "Terrorize" site has a very impressive collection of 9/11 videos.

Let's Roll 911 is infamous for being the promoters of the POD theory on flight 175. Thus I have tended to avoid this site. However, looking at it today, I realized it has a very active user forum with some really interesting threads. For instance this one.

I also added the Portland Indy Media 9/11 site and the Community Currency 9/11 site for the sake of completeness.

And of course 9/11 Skeptics Unite! is a great place to find new sites as well as keep up with 9/11 community news.

Is the Original 9:16 am Suspected Highjacking of Flight 93 a Smoking Gun?

The original NORAD timeline (CNN article in the post below) said that flight 93 was a SUSPECTED highjacking at 9:16 am. This time point for a suspected highjacking of flight 93 at 9:16 am was revised later by NORAD and this point was almost completely ignored by the 9/11 commission. almost completely ignored by the 9/11 commission. (It was addressed briefly towards the end of Chapter 1 of the report and written off without explanation as a mistake).

Clearly, as pointed out below, and as referenced by multiple sources, strange things didn't happen with flight 93 until around 9:30 am.

WHY WAS FLIGHT 93 A SUSPECTED HIGHJACKING MUCH EARLIER THEN?

The only thing I can figure is that NORAD KNEW there were highjackers aboard as part of their highjacking exercise, Vigilant Warrior/Vigilant Guardian.

Could this be a smoking gun for 9/11 being an INSIDE JOB?

Why Did the Hijackers on Flight 93 Wait So Long to Hijack the Plane?

Flight 93 left Newark 45 minutes late, around 8:45am.

Oddly, the hijacking didn't start until another 45 minutes later, around 9:30am.

See Paul Thompson's time-line.

The flight 11 highjacking took place about 20 minutes after take-off.

The flight 175 highjacking took place about 30 minutes after take-off.

The flight 77 highjacking took place about 35 minutes after take-off.

Yet the flight 93 highjacking took place about 45 minutes after take-off? The plane that was running extremely late already?

Weren't the highjackings supposed to be coordinated so as to result in near simultaneous hits on their targets?

Wouldn't the flight 93 highjackers try to catch up with the others, by starting the highjacking a little earlier? At least you think the highjackers had to start worrying (should have started worrying) about air defenses by 9:30am.

Or was flight 93 SUPPOSED to be different? Could it have been a "show" highjacking?

This is the flight with all the cell phone calls. This is the flight everybody was watching by this time.

Another thing to consider-- by the time flight 93 was highjacked, it must have been at maximal altitude. Cell-phones don't work very well that high up.

These things all make me very suspicious.

UPDATE: This CNN article says that flight 93 was a SUSPECTED highjacking at 9:16 am, only 30 minutes after take-off. This timing is much more in line with the other highjackings. I can't find any info about why flight 93 was "suspected" to be highjacked at this time, unless there were suspicious voices heard over the radio at this point. Very odd, because this the "real" highjacking apparently starts clearly about 9:28am, as "documented" by the pilots saying over the radio "get out of here" with sounds of a struggle. The transponder went off at 9:40 am.

Not surprisingly, the 9/11 commission report fails to mention the 9:16 am suspected highjacking of flight 93.

One source that I cannot locate right now claimed that "mayday, mayday!" was said over the radio from the flight 93 cockpit around 9:28 am.

Weird Thought: Could the Pentagon have been Hit by a Cruise Missile fired by the Russians as Part of their Military Exercise on 9/11?

From Paul Thompson's Timeline.

The 9/11 Commission later concludes that had Flight 93 not crashed, it would probably reach Washington around this time. The commission notes that there are only three fighters over Washington at this time, all from Langley, Virginia. But the pilots of these fighters were never briefed about why they were scrambled. As the lead pilot explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat … I'm thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us …. [Y]ou couldn't see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.”

Could the Pentagon have been Hit by a Cruise Missile fired by the Russians as Part of their Military Exercise on 9/11?

I really have no idea how likely this idea is, but it might explain the extreme cooperativity between the US and Russia since 9/11.

This theory certainly does provide a more plausible explanation for how a cruise missile could have hit the Pentagon than the idea that a US missile was launched to target the Pentagon.

This Story Gives Me a Lot of Hope

A true 9/11 hero sues Bush.

"Welcome to Terrorland"

I finally finished reading Daniel Hopsicker's "Welcome to Terrorland".

Part of the reason it took me so long is I don't have enough time to read books-- between my job, the family, keeping up with the news and the blogs, and my blog here.

The other part of the reason is the book has some real rough patches that make it hard to get through.

However, the book IS DEFINITELY worth the read, because it has some truly excellent and invaluable material in it.

Some chapters are really good-- interesting and well-written, while other sections meander quite a bit. Also Hopsicker is overly reptitious with some material--- for instance, how many times does he have to point out that Mohamed Atta wasn't what you would expect for an Islamic fundamentalist? In terms of style, Hopsicker is also overly sarcastic at times, and the flow of the book is a little off.

The flaws in the book are especially annoying given the importance of the material. This book could be a killer for the 9/11 investigation if it were written a little more crisply. A good editor would do wonders for it.

Here are my ratings (1= lowest, 5= highest):

Overall content and importance = 5
Readability = 3


The bottom line is that Hopsicker has found evidence, as clear as you are ever going to get, that the 9/11 hijackers trained at flight schools in Florida which were connected to the CIA. Also, it is highly likely Mohamed Atta was a highly trained intelligence operative, who was likely involved in drug smuggling. In Germany, Atta was supported by a US-funded international scholars program. Atta may have trained as well at a US army base. Atta had compatriots who were German nationals, and this has been completely ignored by the media. Overall, Atta did not fit the picture of a Muslim fundamentalist jihadist. The owners of the flight school were clearly involved in drug smuggling. One of the owners, Wally Hilliard, is a CIA agent or operative. Hilliard has ties to both major Republican and Democratic Party figures, including Bill Clinton, which is probably why this angle to the 9/11 story has been suppressed.

Of course, all these findings radically challenge the conventional 9/11 narrative.

Apart from the writing style and lack of editing, there are two problems I had with the content:

1) Hopsicker says over and over that Atta and Al-Shehhi did not fit the profile of Islamic fundamentalists. And Hopsicker clearly has evidence that the hijackers had CIA ties. Atta and Al-Shehhi, according to the official 9/11 story, were the pilots of flights 11 and 175, respectively, that slammed into the WTC. Yet Hopsicker persists in the belief that Atta and Al-Shehi really were piloting the planes on 9/11. If there WEREN'T Islamic fundamentalists (and I believe they weren't), why would they engage in such a horrible act of suicide bombing? Hopsicker never tries to explain this contradiction.

2) Amanda Keller, who apparently was Atta's American girlfriend, is a little hard to believe as a completely reliable witness. A lot of what she says about Atta seems to be over-the-top, for instance that his penis was smaller than her pinky finger, or the fact that Atta got mad at her and cut up her baby kittens and left them all around the apartment. Her information about Atta is not COMPLETELY unbelievable, but you have to wonder about the validity of her whole story.

Fortunately, these two problems aren't crucial to the main findings of the book: that the Florida flight training school where the hijackers trained had government and CIA connections and were involved in drug smuggling.

In my mind, this book strongly supports the idea that the 9/11 hijackers were CIA assets, and thus that 9/11 was an inside job.

Intriguingly, at one point Hopsicker makes a reference to robot-controlled planes being used at the Florida airport where the hijackers "trained", but he never follows it up with any explanation.

Josh Marshall Weighs In on the Tora Bora Issue

Here.

On Tuesday Gen. Tommy Franks -- the former CENTCOM CINC who, remember, is now working as a Bush surrogate -- wrote a column in the Times in which he said ...

"We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp."

As for 'outsourcing' Franks says that that's not true either. We were relying on locals because they knew the terrain so well and they worked in tandem with US special forces and precision air strikes.

Then on Tuesday afternoon Dick Cheney picked up the baton and said Kerry's claims were "absolute garbage. It's just not true." There was "speculation about where Osama bin Laden might have been" there. But no more.

So what's the story exactly?

I was pretty skeptical of the Bush team's revisionism on this count since the outlines of the Kerry critique have been a commonplace in national security and counter-terrorism circles for literally years.

Now al Qaida expert Peter Bergen has a new piece up on his site which makes it pretty clear that this new claim is about as factual as most things the Vice President says.

Bergen is CNN's terrorism analyst, one of the few western reporters ever to interview bin Laden in person, and he goes back to Afghanistan pretty frequently and has interviewed many of the folks who were there.

Bergen notes that at the time -- not now that the presidency is on the line, but at the time -- a Pentagon official gave a widely-quoted background briefing in which he said that there was a "reasonable certainty" that bin Laden was in fact there, a judgment based on contemporaneous radio intercepts. Bergen also discusses interviews with other witnesses and al Qaida associates that point strongly to the conclusion that he was there. "In short," says Bergen, "there is plenty of evidence that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, and no evidence indicating that he was anywhere else at the time."

Bergen also addresses the 'outsourcing' issue.

On the basic question of whether the US missed a key opportunity to bag bin Laden in Tora Bora, Bergen says Kerry's claim is not 'garbage' but "an accurate reflection of the historical record."

It's always going to be difficult to prove definitively that bin Laden was there at the time in question. But then that's part of the price of not having caught him. Most evidence points pretty clearly to the conclusion that he was there. And the consensus of experts seems to be that he was. But it's politically damaging. So the Bush campaign just says it's not true.

So whether or not bin Laden really WAS there at the time is not really the point. The point is that at the time of the Tora Bora battle, everybody including the Pentagon, was saying that bin Laden was there. And now the administration is clearly lying about it to cover their asses.

Evidence of Mass 9/11 Trauma-Induced Brainwashing

From Salon:

The blind leading the blind

Even if they don't like to say it out loud, lots of Democrats think that George Bush's supporters are a horde of ignoramuses. Now comes evidence that they're right! A remarkable new report, titled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," from PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, suggests that rank and file Republicans are more benighted than even the most supercilious coastal elitist would imagine.

Analyzing data from a series of nationwide polls, the report finds that a majority of Bush supporters believe things about the world that are objectively untrue, while the majority of Kerry supporters dwell in the reality-based community. For example, Bush backers largely think that the president and his policies are popular internationally. Seventy-five percent believe that Iraq was providing "substantial" aid to al-Qaida, and 63 percent say clear evidence of this has been found. That, of course, would be news even to Donald Rumsfeld, who earlier this month told the Council on Foreign Relations, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Though its language is dispassionate, the report lays responsibility for this epidemic of ignorance at the White House's door. "So why are Bush supporters clinging so tightly to these beliefs in the face of repeated disconfirmations?" it asks. "Apparently one key reason is that they continue to hear the Bush administration confirming these beliefs."

Indeed, it says, "an overwhelming 82% [of Bush supporters] perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or a major WMD program (19%). Only 16% of Bush supporters perceive the administration as saying that Iraq had some limited activities, but not an active program (15%) or had nothing (1%). The pattern on al Qaeda is similar. Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters think the Bush administration is currently saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda (56%) or even that it was directly involved in 9/11 (19%). Further, 55% of Bush supporters say it is their impression the Bush administration is currently saying the US has found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda (not saying clear evidence found: 37%)."

These people aren't going to be swayed by the argument that Bush has alienated America's allies and left the country isolated in the world, because they don't believe this to be the case. "Despite a steady flow of official statements, public demonstrations, and public opinion polls showing that the US war against Iraq is quite unpopular, only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq," the study says. Bush supporters also think that world public opinion favors Bush's reelection. In a poll taken from Sept. 3-7, the study says, "57% of Bush supporters assumed that the majority of people in the world would prefer to see Bush reelected, 33% assumed that views are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred."

In fact, a PIPA study released in early September found that a majority or plurality of people from 32 countries preferred Kerry to Bush. PIPA surveyed 34,330 people, ages 15 and above, from regions all over the world. A Pew poll released this spring similarly found that "large majorities in every country, except for the U.S., hold an unfavorable opinion of Bush."

Bush supporters are also mistaken about the president's own positions (a pattern of misapprehension that an earlier PIPA report also documented). "Majorities incorrectly assumed that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various international issues -- the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the treaty banning land mines (72%); 51% incorrectly assumed he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty -- the principal international accord on global warming ... Only 13% of supporters are aware that he opposes labor and environmental standards in trade agreements -- 74% incorrectly believe that he favors including labor and environmental standards in agreements on trade. In all these cases, there is a recurring theme: majorities of Bush supporters favor these positions, and they infer that Bush favors them as well."

According to the report, this reality gap is something new in American life. "So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance to accepting dissonant information?" it asks. "While it is normal for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports about prewar Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of newspapers and prompted extensive, high-profile and agonizing reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are unaware that the original reasons that the US took military action -- and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis -- are not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple failure to pay attention to the news."

The analysis says that the roots of this denial could lie in the trauma of 9/11 and people's desire to hold on to their image of Bush as a "capable protector." It offers no guidance, though, on how ordinary Republicans might be coaxed back to reality.

And while "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters" may be perversely satisfying to Democrats in its confirmation of blue-state prejudices, it carries a pretty disturbing question for all rational Americans: How can arguments based on fact prevail in a nation where so many people know so little?

-- Michelle Goldberg

(italics added)

I Am Still Having Problems with the Pentagon Hit

The non-contentious part of the Pentagon hit is where the plane hit. The "plane" went out of its way to impact a recently reinforced and relatively unpopulated part of the Pentagon-- this strongly suggests some government control of where the plane hit.

The contentious part of the Pentagon hit is WHAT exactly hit the Pentagon.

My thought very simply is this:

either a plane hit the reinforced wall and then partially blew up upon impact, or,
something else hit the wall, such as a smaller plane or a missile.

The reason for thinking this is the penetration hole only corresponds to the dimensions of a fuselage of a Boeing jet. From tests that have been done, when a plane crashes into a hardened wall, it basically disintegrates, without affecting the wall very much. With the Pentagon hit, we are supposed to believe that the wings and tail of a Boeing 757 simply folded up alongside the fuselage and the plane penetrated the Pentagon that way. I find this VERY hard to believe. What is much more likely is that the wings of a Boeing 757 would explode upon impacting the hardened wall, since the wings contain the engines and are filled with fuel. And if the wings exploded, they would explode OUTSIDE the wall-- right?

The problem then, is that there is simply no debris field outside where the Pentagon was hit that would correspond to the wings of a Boeing 757.

Thus, it still is hard to believe that flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

But I am not going to dwell on this issue, since it is impossible to prove with the data we have currently. And it is contentious!

Boston Red Sox

Tonight, Boston truly made baseball history by winning a seven game play-off series after being down 3-0. First. Time. Ever. On top of that, they beat the Yankees. Wow.

Is this an omen for Kerry or what?

9/11 Blimp

Yet another 9/11 site I found today. I just added it to the blogroll at the right.

They have some videos of the WTC collapse and of firemen saying there were secondary explosions before the collapse.

New NIST Report on the WTC Collapses

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has put out a new report on the collpase of the WTC towers on 9/11.

I looked at a couple of the reports, and there are a lot of fancy diagrams. There are also some interesting pictures of the collapse I hadn't seen before. They also claim they have several thousand pieces of the WTC steel that they have examined, interestingly.

Their new story seems to be that the towers collapsed due to:
1) the aircraft damaging the steel supports of the building, and
2) the fires from the planes weakening the steel beams and causing the supporting structure to lose integrity, and that
3) this was no fault of the design of the building or the fireproofing.

Certainly, this seems to make more sense than simply the old theory that the plane fuel caused extreme fires that weakened the floor trusses causing a catastrophic and cascading collapse of the floors. And this may well explain why the top thirty floors of the south tower eventually started to buckle on one side, and this large piece of building actually broke off and started to fall.

NIST has fancy diagrams showing the temperatures on the impacted floors of the towers, and some spots show heating over 800 degrees. It is not clear how they got this data. I can only assume they modeled it somehow, and clearly this analysis can be taken with a grain of salt.

What NIST fails to explain, and really nobody can explain either, in the absence of controlled demolition, the complete disintegration of each tower into fine dust each in the time frame of in 10-15 seconds. Most peculiarly (I have posted on this before) is how on the south tower, the upper section of thirty floors simply disintegrates after it breaks off. You would think that there wouldn't be any great gravitational pull causing this section to collapse on itself, since it was in freefall! And it has always been strange how both towers collapse at an almost freefall rate, when you might expect the lower, non-fire damaged floors to give at least SOME resistance.

It is nice, I guess, to see the government change its story to a more reasonable model.

Now I wonder if they've tested any of those pieces of steel for traces of explosives....

Tommy Franks Weighs In on Tora Bora

As a follow-up to this post, on Bush, Kerry, Tora Bora and bin Laden, I should note that the Bush campaign brought out General Tommy Franks to rebut Kerry's charges in the NY Times.

This is pretty much all I have seen in the media about this issue.

So what does Franks say?

First he says that they were never sure bin Laden was there.

Well sure, but there were plenty of reports suggesting he WAS there, and therefore wouldn't you try hard to get him if you thought he might be there?

Second, he basically admits that much of the work was done by local Afghani fighters, as charged by Kerry.

Then he says they had help from the Pakistanis in sealing off the border and closing passes.

Well-- we ALL know exactly how useful the Pakistanis have been in getting bin Laden, don't we? And surely back even then, they had to know the Pakistanis weren't necessarily trustworthy in terms of getting bin Laden.

Basically, Franks gives a non-denial denial. And not an especially vigorous one at that. And I suppose this is what the Bush administration passes off as their defense for letting bin Laden get away--- "well, we tried".

Clearly, the effort to get at the time the most wanted man in the world was lackluster. And we can be fairly certain that the Bush administration liked to talk tough about bin Laden, but didn't REALLY want to capture or kill him.

It's funny, at the time of the Tora Bora battle, I thought the US was holding back because they were afraid of taking casualties--- and this was actually the line put out by some commentators. And it made some sense-- the US had up to that point, a 25 year history of being casualty shy (since Vietnam).

I actually thought that this reluctance to take casualties on the part of the US meant that Bush was bluffing Saddam about invading Iraq if they found UN violations. Naively, I thought Bush really wouldn't do it, because invading Iraq would obviously be very costly in terms of casualties.

Boy, was I wrong!

Instead, in the most perverted way possible, the invasion of Iraq turned out to be vengeance for 9/11, when this vengeance should have the Afghanistan operation and getting bin Laden at Tora Bora. I was horrified to hear US soldiers, juiced up on 9/11 and war, talk about getting back at the Iraqis for 9/11.

This is the "leadership" that the Bush administration gave us. They brain-washed those soldiers into thinking they were fighting the terrorists behind 9/11. And it was simply a horrible and evil thing they did to those kids.

And then out came the news of abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. These acts were also due to 9/11 brain-washing, and it resulted in true depravity. This was the worst thing I have seen from my country since the horrors of Vietnam.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Franks, and others in the administration I'm sure, need to be indicted for war-crimes.

Government Screw-Ups versus Government Conspiracies

One common argument that people make against the idea that the US government engineered 9/11 is that the US government could never be organized enough to plan such a conspiracy, and if they DID plan and run the attacks, how could they have kept all the people involved quiet?

This is the great utility of this argument.

The idea basically is that the events of 9/11 were part of a highjacking drill/military exercise that went horribly wrong.

How exactly they went wrong is not clear, but what is clear is that this exercise occurred on 9/11.

The concept that a military exercise went wrong is probably much more likely for people to get their minds around than larger more pro-active conspiracies. To wit: the government didn't plan 9/11, they merely screwed up and allowed "bad people" to take tragic advantage of the military operation. (I will leave "bad people" undefined for now.)

The fact that the government apparently made a bad mistake in the highjacking exercise will be digestible to people who can't see the government planning and carrying out such an enterprise. And the military sure as hell aren't going to admit they screwed up so badly, so this solves the problem of cover-up.

This is why the concept of 9/11 being a "military highjacking exercise gone wrong" may be a very useful foothold for introducing the idea of government complicity in 9/11 to the general public.

Moreover, this "meme" has the virtue of being based on the truth AND being able to explain many if not all of the anomalies of 9/11.

Kerry, Bush, bin Laden and Tora Bora

From the point of view of 9/11 conspiracists, excuse me, 9/11 skeptics, the most interesting thing that has happened in the presidential campaign is Kerry pressing Bush about bin Laden and especially about letting bin Laden get away at Tora Bora.

First there is the interesting spectacle of the media completely ignoring the fact that Bush blatantly lied when he denied that he ever said he didn't worry or think much about bin Laden anymore.

Of course, to the media, the storyline is Bush: Strong on Terror!, and nothing, NOTHING!, will sway them from this point of view.

But even more interesting is seeing Kerry mention that Bush clearly let bin Laden get away in Tora Bora by not committing enough troops.

Well gosh-- this is borderline conspiracyism! Why on earth WOULDN'T Bush go after bin Laden? There must be something wrong with Kerry to even dare to ask such a thing!

Such must be the logic of Bush supporters, who probably simply did not even hear this bit of cognitive dissonance being presented to them, since it was coming from Kerry. And heaven forbid any reporter dare ask Bush about this subject, or even ask one of his supporters. Heaven forbid this fairly important matter be presented to the American public by the media. No. This subject must be avoided at all cost.


It almost goes without saying that to 9/11 skeptics, it is perfectly OBVIOUS why Bush is ignoring bin Laden and why he let him get away at Tora Bora.

Four words sum it up pretty well: "CIA asset" and "drug smuggling".

(For details, see Michael Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon" and Daniel Hopsicker's "Welcome to Terrorland", among other good references.)

Moral Exhaustion

This is how I feel after reading Michael Ruppert, Daniel Hopsicker, or even Greg Palast.

How much can one small person like me take when it comes to the sick and corrupt inbreeding that occurs between the Bushes, the Saudis, the bin Ladens, the CIA, the mob, and drug smuggling? Or more generally, the tangled and dirty alliances that occur in the upper echelons of power.

On the one hand, I'm glad I know about these things, so I have a better understanding of the world.

On the other hand, I often feel that ignorance must be bliss, because the dirty dealings that go on in this country are a heavy and depressing load on my conscience.

The one thing that gives me hope is the internet, because previously, the vast majority of this corruption would normally be sheltered from most people by the corrupt major media. Sure some people would write books about these things, but these books never get publicized well and never sell very much. The internet however, lets all of this shit out into the public sphere. For the first time, people can easily access this information, and hopefully process it and start doing something about it.

Sometimes, the problems in this country seem so deep, that it seems like the only way we can deal with it is via some sort of popular uprising, where we throw all the bums out of office.

ROLLING STONES!

Fireball in the North Tower

Via the Reopen 911 site, for the first time I watched the complete clip (from the Naudet brothers I assume) of the plane hitting the North tower.

What I never realized before is that there is actually a HUGE firebaall right after when "flight 11" hits the North tower.

Like the fireball from the South tower hit, this North tower fireball must have consumed a large portion of the fuel that was in the plane.

The North tower fireball is interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, a lot of people have been saying that the South tower hit was very different in that the massive fireball from that hit consumed most of the plane's fuel, and therefore not so much fuel could be burned to soften the steel beams holding up the tower. Well, these people are wrong that there was a large difference in the amount of fuel expended in the fireballs from both hits. On the other hand, it seems you can make similar arguments about the amount of fuel that was around in both the North and South tower that was able to heat the steel beams.

At this point, I am strongly inclined to think the fuel from the planes had little to do with the collapses of the two Towers.

Looking at article #4 at this study done by MIT of the damage done by the planes to the two towers, I noticed something that I hadn't really heard before.

The authors of this piece, Tomasz Wierzbicki, Liang Xue and Meg Hendry-Brogan, do a lot of calculations to figure out how much damage was done to the towers JUST from the impact of the planes. What they conclude is interesting, and significant, I think. And intuitively this makes sense as well: the mass and great momentum of the planes penetrated not only the exterior wall of the WTC, a couple of floors but also very likely the planes damaged some of the INNER columns that are key structural elements of the WTC. This analysis therefore changes how we should think about the collapses of the WTC towers. For if the inner columns were damaged by the planes, this would seem to me to be more significant in terms of destabilizing the towers than fires from the plane fuel. Loss of integrity of this central core could be an important aspect to the collapses of these towers.

Nonetheless, we still cannot completely rule out some sort of planned controlled demolition of the towers as a "pre-emptive" strike to minimize problems associated with the towers toppling in unpredictable ways.

New 9/11 Sites

via the valuable 9/11 Skeptics Unite! site, I see there are some new 9/11 sites. I'm adding these to my list of links on the lower right.

www.911truthla.us
www.911truthla.org
proposition911.org
reopen911.org
www.119-questions.com

I've only looked briefly at these sites, but most of them have some worthwhile things.

119-questions isn't really a good source for 911 info, but has a cute poll you can take to test your 911 knowledge.

Learning Aboout 9/11 and My Goals Here

I must say one purpose of this blog was to help me learn as much about 9/11 as I could and to help me think critically about it.

And I think from my point of view that this effort has been successful.

I have learned a lot since I started this blog about three months back, and I have modified my views on various aspects of 9/11 as well.

Right now, my goal is try to come up with the most coherent explanation possible for 9/11. When I am confident of my facts, and I have a tight summary of my concept, I plan to start pestering my congressional representatives and members of the media.

Particularly if Bush gets put back into the presidency again, this effort will be extremely important. If this happens, I and other 9/11 skeptics will push 9/11 as hard as we can to make the Bush administration pay. At this point in our country's history, getting Bush and Cheney out of office is incredibly urgent, and I will be ecstatic if any way this happens-- whether by impeachment or by a Kerry-Edwards victory.

I do not mean to imply that everything will be right again with the US if Bush/Cheney are removed. But this is a major first step.

The Honey Pot

Going back over some of my older posts, I see comments have been left that I didn't observe before. There are some very informative comments and I sincerely thank people who took the time to leave something.

On my post "Where Did Flight 77 Really Go?" (Saturday September 18th), an extremely long comment was left. I am going to post a particularly interesting section.

Anonymous said...

"A honey pot, in intelligence jargon, is a tempting source of information or 'dangle' that is set out to lure intended victims into a trap. Ultimately the honey pot is violently and maliciously discredited so as to destroy the credibility of anything stuck to it by association." (Michael Ruppert, "Crossing the Rubicon," p. 184)


It is probably not a coincidence that the defenders of the offical "surprise attack" claim focus mostly on the "no plane at the Pentagon" story in their quest to discredit 9/11 skeptics.

In early September 2004, Parade magazine ran a short article that dismissed 9/11 skepticism based on the Pentagon "no plane" claims. Parade reaches tens of millions of people. This is strong evidence that the whole "no plane" story is a set up to discredit.


http://www.parade.com/aol/current/columns/intelligence.html
Looking for more Intelligence Report from PARADE magazine? Browse our FREE archive.
In this week's "Intelligence Report," Lyric Wallwork Winik writes that 9/11 conspiracy theories are growing and that people from all walks of life believe them. How do these theories get started?
Investigator Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, says that time is a significant factor in the development of conspiracy theories. "As you get farther away from the real history, the stories get looser with the facts and more outlandish," he says. This was certainly the case with the Kennedy assassination, and Posner says he wonders if we're only in the early stages of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The Internet, too, is a potent tool for spreading conspiracy theories. PARADE found this out after Lyric Wallwork Winik interviewed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Oct. 2001. In a transcript of Winik's interview with Rumsfeld, which was published on the Department of Defense's Web site, Rumsfeld seemed to indicate that the Pentagon was hit by a missile on 9/11 instead of a plane. It turns out that a transcription error led to the confusion, but conspiracy theorists latched onto Rumsfeld's supposed admission and spread it over the Internet.


Other sites that debunk the "no plane" claims make the issue of complicity dependent on whether the "no plane" claim is true or false. This is a false dichotomy -- that evidence for a large jet at the Pentagon therefore exonerates the government of complicity (it totally avoids the issues of the NORAD, et al wargames, the failure to respond / defend DC, the way the plane targeted the nearly empty part of the building).


http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/911_pentagon_757_plane_evidence.html
Here is the hole in the building - it's been reported by at least a dozen different sources (including conspiracy theory sites) to be a 16 to 20 foot hole. That is really interesting when you take into account the fact that the 757 body is 12 ft 4in wide and 13 ft 6in high. (Here is where I was mistaken in the past, like so very many others I was led astray by the HEIGHT of the aircraft, which is actually the measurement from the wheels-down to the tip of the tail. That measurement is for aircraft hangar clearance, not the SIZE of the aircraft.) The 757 is basically a cylinder that is 13 feet across. It then should not be surprising that it would create something around a thirteen foot hole in the side of the building.

[this page has good photos of plane debris in the wreckage of the Pentagon, which should, but won't, put the "no plane" theories to bed]



The KEY issue with the Pentagon crash -- to prove US complicity -- is not WHAT hit the Pentagon, but WHERE the Pentagon was hit (in the nearly empty, recently reconstructed and strengthened sector).

The fact that the Pentagon was hit in the one method that minimized casualties is not disputed by anyone - it is proven 100%. This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for official complicity in 9/11, since a flight school drop out would not have chosen (nor been able) to fly a plane into the mostly empty sector of the Pentagon. If the plane had hit any other part, thousands would probably have been killed instead of a little over 100 on the ground.

The "five photos" released by the military have the wrong date stamp on them (a clue that they're tampered with, a subtle statement from the military) and don't show anything conclusive. It is probable they were a deliberate effort to throw people into an endless debate, getting various factions arguing for one theory versus another

The real issue is WHERE it hit.

My sentiments EXACTLY!

I strongly believe the Pentagon surveillance video has been altered and is disinfo; the government is almost certainly intentionally fanning the flames of this "controversy" in order to take people's minds off the REAL sign of an inside job: WHERE the Pentagon was hit.

ID'ing the Hijackers

One of the first obvious curiosities of 9/11 was the fact that the FBI was able to identify all the hijackers so quickly AND have nice pictures of all of them.

The question of course is how exactly did they know which of the passengers were hijackers and how did they get those nice pictures of them?

This is a question I would love to see the FBI answer, and sometimes I dream of calling someone at the FBI and demanding some answers. But then I get intimidated and worry that they will investigate me and find something to harrass me over.

In any case, I think in the context of my current 9/11 working model, it is fairly clear how the FBI knew who the hijackers were and where they got pictures of them. The hijackers were recruited by either the CIA or military intelligence to pose as hijackers in the highjacking drill they ran on 9/11, Operation Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Warrior. Thus, the military and the CIA knew exactly who the hijackers were on the planes, because they put them there. And they probably had pictures of the hijackers from when they were trained. Of course this scenario fits perfectly with reports that some of the hijackers received training at US military bases.

As far as the fact that some of the 9/11 "hijackers" have turned up alive, this is simply explained by the fact that many of the men the US recruited to pose as hijackers were using fake ID's. Whether the US or another organization gave the men fake ID's is not clear.

The fact that many of the hijackers were Saudis or used Saudi names is most likely a function of the fact that Saudis received preferential treatment in the US, as documented by Dan Hopsicker.

Oh..... MY...................... GOD

The Faith-Based Presidency


Excerpt:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Hmmmm. I wonder if the official 9/11 story is an example of them creating their own reality.

I gotta think so.

Psychic Trauma

Apart from the almost 3000 deaths that occured on 9/11, another major aspect of the attack which must be accounted for is the mental trauma incurred on over two hundred million Americans.

Unfortunately and tragically, 9/11 left such a huge scar on the American psyche that Americans (as a whole) will put up with almost anything from the government, and they will happily attack any country and torture any foreigners that get in their way.

I have to think this was one of the intents of the perpetrators of 9/11. And I 'm not talking about Al Qaeda here.

Warping the American psyche in this way is a crime of the highest order, and should be punished to the greatest extent possible.

Allowing this crime to stand unpunished will truly mark the irreversible decline of this country.

Bush's Behaviour on the Morning of 9/11

What is more consistent with Bush's behaviour on the morning of 9/11 at the Booker elementary school in Florida:

a) an unexpected and horrible terrorist attack of unknown dimensions,

or

b) an expected NORAD highjacking exercise of known dimensions that has somehow gone horribly wrong?


Granted, Bush's behaviour doesn't prove anything, but as far as I can see, Bush and his people clearly weren't as surprised or worried about the attack as one would expect if it was a huge unknown entity.

What Good Were the NORAD Hijacking Exercises?

As my last post shows, NORAD was clearly used to dealing with hijackings, and had planned for situations incredibly similar to 9/11/01.

So why WAS NORAD so unprepared for 9/11?

There are basically two possible explanations.

1) The NORAD wargames (Operations Northern Vigilance, Northern Guardian, Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Warrior) completely interfered with the detection of the "real" hijacked craft. In particular, the fake targets that were "injected" into NORAD radar could be very misleading and confusing. Also, these games may have drawn key interceptor planes away from the critical northeast sector (in particular the "Northern" exercises).

2) The NORAD hijacking exercises actually showed the perpetrators of 9/11 how to AVOID NORAD detection. In support of this, the 9/11 hijacked planes acted strangely-- the only sign of hijacking was the transponder going off, loss of communication and alteration of the plane's course. This undoubtedly also confused NORAD.

In theory, once the first plane hit the WTC, the war-games should have been immediately cancelled. However, there may have been too much precious time lost and too few planes to respond. Both theories may therefore be true.

The question then, is who were the perpetrators of 9/11? Surely Al Qaeda wouldn't know about NORAD exercises would they?

Hijacking Drills Before 9/11/01

A remarkable article appeared in USA Today April 18th 2004. It was promptly ignored by the rest of the media.

Below are key excerpts from it:

In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon -- but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continentwide exercises.

"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.

(snip)

The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.

Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.

But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.

NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.

"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission.

(snip)

CNN ran a similar article the next day. It too was promptly ignored by the rest of the media.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of training exercise scenario, a NORAD spokesman said Monday.

The exercise was solely to test procedures and was no indication that NORAD had any reason to believe the scenario would happen in the real world, according to a spokesman.

It is unclear whether the simulated scenario was that of a hijacked plane being "used as missile" -- intentionally crashing into a building -- or that of an out-of-control hijacked plane.

Military officials said the exercise involved simulating a crash into a building that would be recognizable if identified, but was not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

They emphasize it involved an airliner being hijacked as it flew into U.S. airspace from abroad, a slightly different scenario from what happened on September 11, 2001.
The identity of the building named in the exercise is classified.

The exercise was conducted at one regional sector, and was not conducted at the headquarters, as are major exercises. This sector exercise involved some flying of military aircraft as well as a command post exercise in which communications procedures were practiced in an office environment.

NORAD officials emphasized that if it had been a real event, NORAD would have instituted standard procedures to try to contact the aircraft and keep it from crashing.

(snip)

NORAD has the ongoing mission of defense of U.S. airspace.

According to a statement from NORAD, "Before September 11th, 01, NORAD regularly conducted a variety of exercises that included hijack scenarios. These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

All of those tasks are the responsibility of NORAD.

The statement continues:
"NORAD did not plan and execute these types of exercises because we thought the scenarios were probable. These exercises were artificial simulations that provided us the opportunity to test and validate our processes and rules of engagement with the appropriate coordination between NORAD's command headquarters, its subordinate regions and sectors and National Command authorities in Canada and the United States.

"Since 9/11 we have continued our exercise program having conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which have included mock hijacks. NORAD has flown 35,000 sorties and scrambled or diverted fighters from air patrols nearly 1,800 times.

"Additionally, NORAD fighters out of Florida have intercepted two hijacked aircraft since 9/11; both originating from Cuba and escorted to Key West in spring 2003. NORAD remains vigilant and its tolerance for any anomaly in the sky remains very low. The 9/11 commission has been informed about our exercises that include hijack scenarios.

"At the NORAD headquarters' level we normally conducted four major exercises a year, most of which included a hijack scenario. Since 9/11 however we have conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which included at least one hijack scenario."

Both articles have been archived here.

These articles have amazing implications for 9/11.

In follow up posts, I will compare these known hijacking exercises to the 9/11 hijackings in order to try to understand what exactly happened on 9/11/01.

Operation Vigilant Warrior

Operation Vigilant Warrior was likely the hijack component of the 9/11 wargame. Operation Vigilant Guardian was likely the defense component of the same 9/11 wargame.

Vigilant Warrior was only mentioned briefly in Richard Clarke's book as a NORAD exercise, and the sentence where he mentions the exercise has clearly been edited (probably by the White House).

The key question is: were the 9/11 hijackers put into the planes as part of Vigilant Warrior?

What was the composition of Vigilant Warrior? Real hijacked planes or remote-controlled drones?

My Debate Analysis

Kerry kicked ass.

Bye bye George.

Was the Vigilant Guardian Highjacking Exercise Highjacked by Al Qaeda?

See this post on the significance of the Vigilant Guardian wargame.

As Mike Ruppert says, once the 9/11 wargames come to light in the media (eventually they will-- but no doubt much later than what we would like), the fallback position of the government will be that Al Qaeda still committed the attacks by either co-opting the Operation Vigilan Guardian highjacking drill or by taking advantage of the confusion from this exercise to do their own highjacking and commit the attacks.

First of all, the way all four planes were taken over without the pilots alerting ATC of a highjacking, indicates that the highjackers were in on the exercise. The pilots had to let them take over. So, it can't be that the highjackers actually took over a different set of planes than were used in the exercise.

Second, as I have mentioned before, it is possible the pilots were double-crossed by the highjackers, and the highjackers took over the plane and did the suicide crashes. This is possible, but highly unlikey, since if these highjackers were on the flights in the first place, they had to have been pre-screened by someone, likely the CIA. Is it at all possible that trained CIA assets would do such a thing?

It is possible of course, but it depends on what the highjacker patsies were told would happen to them after the exercise. If they were supposed to go free, then there is clearly no reason for them to go berzerk. If they knew they were going to prison or worse killed at the end of the exercise, then clearly, they might decide to take others down with them in a dramatic way.

But would the organization (let's call it the CIA) that put the highjackers on the plane really be this stupid-- take such chances that these men would do something so unpredictable? I don't believe it. Moreover, why would the CIA put known Al Qaeda members in these exercises? They had to have known who they were.

Clearly the highjackers were being set-up in some way. But what did they think they were doing?

Of course, on the other hand, there is no solid proof that the 19 famous highjackers were really on the planes. The problem is that we simply don't know how the highjacking exercise was run. Were there real men pretending to be terrorists on board and all the phone calls were therefore real? Or were there no terrorists on board at all, and the cell phones calls were faked?

Apparently some real highjackers were on board flight 93, since their voices show on the cockpit recorder (assuming we can trust this). And supposedly we hear Mohamed Atta talk over the PA system on flight 11. So there were likely some real highjackers.

An important quesiton is why would a highjacking exercise just have the plane go off course and the transponder go off and not have the pilots alert ATC? This clearly wasn't mimicking a normal highjacking. The only thing I can think is that either:

1) they turned the transponders off in order to switch planes,
or
2) they didn't want ATC to know there was a highjacking (but why have the cell phone calls then?).

I've written this before, but the only thing that makes sense is that some device was able to highjack the plane by taking over its controls and blocking all transmissions from the plane. And this device was used to remotely pilot the planes into the targets.

Either this OR there is very incriminating evidence about how 9/11 was carried out on the cockpit recorders, and the government simply won't reveal it. For instance, do the cockpit recorders show the pilots struggling to take control of their suddenly non-responsive airplanes?

Needs more thinking.

Clearly the highjacking exercise is key. But there are some blanks to fill in.

Make of this What You Will

The FBI told told German officials that the Pentagon was hit by a missile.

US Sponsored Terror in the Phillipines?

Jeff Wells has the scoop.

Remember: ROLLING STONES!

Reject Our Lying Leaders IN Government, Slam The Official Nine Eleven Story!

INN World Report Links

I found that if you register at the INN World Report (see my link at side), and log in, you get taken to a page just chock full of 9/11 links. More 9/11 links than I ever thought existed. Since they don't have this site, I'm sure there are sites they have missed too.

Some 9/11 Humor

This is really very amusing.

(ignore the atrocious spelling at the linked site)

By the Way-- Dodgers Out

Knocked out by the Cardinals 3 games to 1.

Let us never speak of this again.

Planned Demolition of the WTC Towers

Now that we know that the military was clearly thinking about highjacked airplanes striking the WTC, and was even running a live-fly exercise to mimic such a situation, it is time to think once again about the apparent controlled demolition of the twin towers.

I can very well imagine that the planners of these live-fly exercises had to worry-- what if the exercise went wrong and a plane did hit the WTC? What would happen?

Conceivably, there could be catastrophic damage (worse than 9/11) if a tower hit by an airplane caused all or part of the tower to topple over in an uncontrolled manner, and it landed on many surrounding buildings. Thus, I can imagine that the planners (possibly FEMA) thought they should have the towers pre-packed with demolitions as a "safety back-up". Thus, if it looked like one of the towers was starting to break apart because of a plane attack, they would blow the whole tower up in a controlled manner.

And indeed-- this is what seemed to happen. The first thing that happened is that the top thirty stories or so of the south tower started to break off at a tilted angle. It looked as though this huge chunk of building would crash down a thousand feet and be horribly destructive to the surroundings of the towers. Thus, as soon as the top of the tower started to break off, the tower was demolished into a fine powder in a matter of seconds. What therefore seems likely is that the controlled demolition was triggered by the top breaking off. Once they demolished the south tower, that left too many questions, so they had to demolish the north tower as well. Waiting too long to destroy the north tower would have raised suspicions as well, which is why they decided to "pull" the north tower even though hundreds of people were still inside. Possibly they would use the excuse that they thought the north tower was about to break apart as well.

In any case, I won't be surprised if an eventual fall-back position for the 9/11 planners is that demolitions were planted in the WTC as a safety valve in case of an unpredictable break up of the buildings.

9/11 was the Result of a Highjacking Exercise Run by the Military Gone Wrong

THIS IS NOT A "CONSPIRACY THEORY"-- THIS IS FACT.

It's been in front of our faces for a long-time, published in the mainstream media. The problem is that the media just never wanted to put the pieces together. Thankfully Mike Ruppert did. (I'm sure others have put it together as well, but Ruppert is my source for the purposes of this post)

This information is in "Crossing the Rubicon" by Mike Ruppert-- he has uncovered the truth about 9/11. The key is in Chapter 19, which has been released in PDF form, you can download at: http://www.newsociety.com/News/rub_war.pdf.

I had to read chapter 19 twice before it finally sunk in completely.

On 9/11, there was a LIVE-FLY HIJACKING EXERCISE known as "Vigilant Guardian" run by NORAD.

This exercise used CIVILIAN AIRCRAFT posing as hijacked airplanes. Additionally, the exercise involved "injecting" electronic blips representing other hijacked aircraft into air traffic control and NORAD radar. Thus, the real hijacked aircraft were HARD TO FIND.

The American and United pilots were most likely involved in the drill. The pilots of the 9/11 planes were all Vietnam veterans, and we know that the pilot of flight 77 used to work at the Pentagon had previously participated in such exercises.


HERE'S THE CLINCHER:

On April 18th, 2004, USA Today ran a story titled "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons". In the story, it explains that BEFORE 9/11/2001, NORAD conducted exercises simulating hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Center as well as the Pentagon. CNN reported a similar story right after this one broke.

What happened on 9/11/2001 is now clear. Our government was running a wargame simulating highjacked planes crashing into buildings. The mock hijacked planes in the exercise were piloted by remote control, and had pre-set targets of the WTC towers and the Pentagon, and probably another target in Washington DC (flight 93 was shot down before it could reach its target). Someone, possibly maliciously, injected too many false targets into the radar, therefore completely confusing the FAA and NORAD. This is why Jane Garvey of the FAA said that she thought there were as many as 11 highjacked aircraft on 9/11.



A military "screw-up" explains many of the strange things about 9/11:

1) the confused and conflicted explanations provided by the administration. Condi Rice was lying blatantly when she said no-one could imagine hijackers using airplanes as missiles and crashing them into buildings. It was a giant lie concocted as part of a massive cover-up.

2) the fact that the administration clearly didn't want 9/11 investigated.

3) that four commercial airplanes were taken over by knife- and boxcutter-wielding hijackers without the pilots ever alerting air traffic control of hijackings (This is a hard fact and has always raised my suspicions).

4) the obvious cover-up by the FBI and the too-convenient planting of evidence such as Korans and flight manuals in the hijackers' cars and hijackers passports found on the street near the WTC.

What does this all mean?

The Al Qaeda-linked hijackers were merely patsies supplied by the CIA.

The "war on terror" is completely bogus.

Someone in the government may have facilitated the fatal errors on 9/11 as part of a giant scheme to mobilize the US into a war-footing, and to provide a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.

This is the greatest crime our country has ever witnessed, and we can't let the government get away with it.

Please disseminate this information as widely as you can!!!

POSTSCRIPT-- I didn't explicitly spell this out, but I think the highjacking exercise VIGILANT GUARDIAN was the operational cover for malicious people (Ruppert believes it was Cheney, and this seems possible along with some of the neocons) who had planned for 9/11 to be a major "terror attack". They likely had this planned for some time, if for no other reason then it took a few years to set up the highjacker legend. No doubt, on 9/11, some people in the goverment KNEW the exercise would go wrong.

Collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7

Plague Puppy has a nice piece going over the collapses of the WTC 1 and 2 towers.

Basically, there are strong indications that the collapse was triggered by explosives. Look at the video of the south tower after the top part starts breaking off. The whole piece just blows apart into a cloud of dust. As I've said previously, I don't see how the pancake collapse model can explain that.

As I see it, the center core of the WTC was extremely strong, and even if the floors started collapsing, I think that they would break off from the inner core before the inner core completely gives in. The videos show a complete and violent disintegration of the towers that shows NO clear indication of floors collapsing on each other. What is actually seen is the tower disintegrating into dust. I could see this happening at the bottom if there was a floor-to-floor collapse. But at the top? How could there be enough energy to disintegrate the structure into fine dust at the top of the building?

I also have to think that the engineers of the WTC twin towers purposely engineered the building very strongly. At the time they were built, they were the largest skyscrapers in the world. You have to think they would have double or even triple engineered the buildings so they would withstand almost anything. Surely they didn't want to take any chances on the design or on the construction-- they built those towers to last.

For all these reasons, I am as convinced as ever that the WTC twin towers were blown up by a mechanism independent of the plane crashes.

As far as WTC7, Eric Hufschmid in his book "Painful Questions" reminds us that WTC7 was unusual in that there were several large fuel storage tanks on in the building AND that the building was built over a power generator and power substation. I had read this a long time back, and forgot about it. It's not clear how this fits into the collapse of WTC7, but it may be part of the story.

However, the WTC7 collpase is so amazingly even and smooth, it's hard to see how it occurred in the ABSENCE of controlled demolition.

If I Were A Pundit---

I might be tempted to say Bush isn't comfortable in his own skin.

Debate one-- he's amazingly grouchy and testy.

Debate two-- he acts like a drunken oaf.

Why does his demeanor keep changing?

Either he's not sure of himself-- or maybe that can't seem to get his medication just right.

I must say, that by the end of both debates, Bush had calmed down and was a little more coherent.

Is this all hormones? Or are they giving him some sort of uppers?

Class

What John Kerry showed last night.

Relative to Bush, of course.

Disregard the Pictures

My new rule of thumb for analyzing 9/11 is to not spend any time on arguments that involve pictures of planes or the holes they made in buildings.

There is plenty of other data to work with that draws skepticism to the official 9/11 story. Wondering about what sort of planes hit the WTC or what hit the Pentagon is a waste of time.

The only exceptions to my new "no pictures" rule are:

1) data that suggest flight 93 was shot down, and

2) pictures of the WTC buildings collapsing.

I'm strongly starting to think all arguments that involve pictures of planes or the holes they made in buildings are disinformation.

And of course, the "no plane" theory is complete nonsense, and strongly smacks of a COINTELPRO-type operation.

ROLLING STONES!
(Reject Our Lying Leaders, Slam The Official Nine Eleven Story!)

Subverting the 9/11 Truth Movement via a CIA-run COINTELPRO-type Operation

COINTELPRO (COunterINTELligence PROgram) is the term for FBI counterintelligence programs that were supposed to neutralize political dissidents as well as discredit people promoting government conspiracies. For background on COINTELPRO, go here and here.(Note, I do not know much about these sites, but they seem to have good information)

There is no surprise the US government would do a COINTELPRO-type job on the 9/11 Truth Movement, but nonetheless, Dan Hopsicker has the first fairly clear evidence of this type of operation. Details are here.

Basically, the CIA, through operatives such as John Gray and assets such as Adnan Kashoggi, is apparently trying to link the Heaven's Gate Wacko Cult group with legitimate 9/11 skeptics.

I guess it will be very interesting to see how quickly the first mainstream news article comes out describing the 9/11 truth movement that also refers to the Heaven's Gate cult. Probably they are keeping this linkage in check until the public opinion tide seems to be moving significantly towards a 9/11 government conspiracy. Perhaps this will be when a number of the 9/11 skeptic books start reaching a critical mass of people.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the Washington Post published an article talking about the various conspiracies involving the Pentagon hit, and they immediately link the theories to a "wacko":


The Pentagon video could be a case study. Williams created a Web site for the video, www.pentagonstrike.co.uk. Then he e-mailed a copy to Laura Knight-Jadczyk, an American author living in France whose books include one on alien abduction. Williams, 31, a systems analyst, belongs to an online group hosted by Knight-Jadczyk that blends discussions of science, politics and the paranormal.


See? It's all a bunch of wacko fringe people that are pushing these conspiracies. It's already started.

Note, the author (Carol Morello) really goes out of her way to link the Pentagon theory to some sort of nut-job. Laura Knight-Jadczyk merely received an e-mail with the flash video, but somehow she is representative of the whole Pentagon skeptic movement. They devote a lot of space to her, even though I have never heard of her or her site before. But I'm sure she seemed to be a good "weirdo" to pick on.

To be fair, the Washington Post article has some balance and doesn't blatantly link 9/11 conspiracies and cult-groups, but I suppose they know how to do counter-intelligence at the WaPo in a very subtle and effective way. I would love to know what sort of editorial pressures Morello faced, and who in the government she talked to for the article (besides Phil Zelikow).

Note: The INN World Report has articles on both of these stories.

Update: Brian Salter has some background on the John Gray - Adnan Khashoggi connection.