9-11 Revealed: Challenging the facts behind the War on Terror by Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan (Robinson, 2005)

My current analysis of the collapse sequence [suggest that] damage caused to the outside would not have triggered collapse. -- Prof Wilem Frischmann, City University and Pell Frischmann Group

My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices in the buildings that caused the towers to collapse. -- Van Romero, vice president for research New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

The collapse of the WTC towers looked like a classic controlled demolition. -- Michael Taylor, demolition contractor

Respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. -- Bill Manning, editor Fire Engineering magazine

There is no room for doubters. Questioning the official story has been equated with holocaust denial or – in a throwback to the Stalinist era – even with insanity. -- Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan

Official investigations have been stymied by secrecy, cronyism, and a refusal - even built into their terms of reference – to think the unthinkable. -- Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan

The process of [ military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. -- Project for New American Century

11 September 2001, a group of hijackers, members of Al-Qaeda, hijacked four aircraft. Two of the hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, causing those towers to collapse, a third tower WTC 7 then collapsed in sympathy, one hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth hijacked plane crashed in a field, the hijackers apparently having been overpowered.

That is the official version, a version given credence by the official 9/11 investigation.

Plane crashes into building, building collapses. All sounds plausible enough, until it is looked into in more detail. The buildings in question were designed to withstand an air crash, no other-steel framed building has collapsed, there has been no proper investigation into why the buildings collapsed, no air crash investigation, no black boxes recovered, and so the list goes on.

In 9-11 Revealed Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan document in some detail what the official 9/11 investigation failed to look at.

9-11 Revealed is divided into two main sections: what happened on the day (or appeared to happen) and the people involved (or allegedly involved).

Why did the US attack Afghanistan? The Taliban had offered to hand over Osama bin Laden, provided the US produced evidence of his involvement in 911. The usual procedure for a criminal act, is to try the accused before a court. Or was the US more interested in securing oil pipeline routes?

Why did the US attack Iraq? There were no Iraqi links with terrorism, and certainly no links with Al-Qaeda. Or was the US more interested in looting Iraq of all its resources and controlling Middle East oil?

When we see something with our own eyes, and it does not tally with our view of how the world must be, we are unable to accept the evidence we see, our minds will not let us go down that route.

Many people looking at the collapse of the Twin Towers, saw what appeared to be a controlled demolition.

Many experts were of this view, but then retracted because of where it was leading. They themselves decided they must be wrong.

Until the collapse of the Twin Towers, no steel-framed structure had collapsed in this manner.

Until the collapse of the Twin Towers, no-one believed a steel-framed structure could collapse in this manner.

Around the world, steel-framed structures had survived far worse fires. Fires that had spread to most of the building, fires that had burnt for several days, fires that had burnt far hotter.

In 1975, an intense fire broke out on the 11th floor of the World Trade Center. It spread down to the 9th floor and up to the 19th.

The Twin Towers had been hit by aircraft, but the Twin Towers had been designed, according to their architects, to survive a hit by a Boeing 707.

Witnesses reported hearing several explosions from within the Towers.

Why did Building 7 collapse? Building 7 was not hit by an aircraft.

No proper investigation took place into why the buildings collapsed. Important forensic evidence was removed from the site and destroyed.

What investigation that did take place was woefully underfunded, and only took place after the site had been cleared.

This was a crime scene. Why was it not sealed off?

If buildings collapse that were so over-engineered that they should not have collapsed, does this not merit some investigation so that lessons can be learnt, an attempt at reconstruction to try and establish what happened? The answer has to be yes, but unfortunately not possible as the material from the site has been taken away and destroyed.

Would the New York Fire Department have sent its fireman up the Twin Towers if anyone thought there to be any chance of the towers collapsing?

If the collapse of the Twin Towers raises lots of questions, these pale into insignificance when we look at the Pentagon crash.

A gaping hole, that possibly can accommodate the fuselage of a Boeing 757, but where is the rest of the plane, where is the wreckage? Where is the video footage, why was CCTV footage seized, how was reinforced concrete so easily penetrated?

The plane that was hijacked disappeared from the radar screens, then assumed to be the same plane, swoops in on the Pentagon, flies in an amazing arc around the Pentagon, and flying only a few feet above the ground, flies straight into the only unoccupied part of the Pentagon.

An amazing feat, especially for a rookie pilot. So amazing, that no one yet has been able to figure how it could have been achieved.

Equally amazing how a Boeing 757 can penetrate a part of the Pentagon reinforced to withstand a missile attack. And of course avoid being shot down by the Pentagon missile defence systems once it had penetrated excluded airspace.

Why fly all the way around the Pentagon and crash into the one part of the building which was unoccupied due to renovation work, when it would have been easier to have crashed into the Pentagon on approach and in doing so, taken out Donald Rumsfeld together with the Pentagon top brass?

Four planes hijacked. Why was no alarm raised, why did no one notice, why were they not intercepted, why did they disappear from radar screens?

Four planes crash. Why no air crash investigation? Where are the black boxes?

One of the hijackers had been detained. Why was a warrant denied to search his computer, apparently out of respect for his human rights?

Why were some of the hijackers allowed into the US, when they were known?

Why was the flying school under surveillance?

Who benefited from 911?

The Project for the New American Century was hoping for a new Pearl Harbour. The alumni of PNAC are the neocon nutters who surround Bush. They wanted to launch the century long war. 911 gave them that opportunity.

Before the dust had even settled from the collapse of the Twin Towers, the neocons were dusting down their plans to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush was told of the attack on the Twin Towers. From the released video footage, there was only a few words in his ear. He looked dumbstruck. A few minutes later he was able to emerge from his meeting with schoolchildren and give a press conference telling what was going on. How did he know? Why was he not, as head of state and chief of staff, immediately whisked away by the Secret Service? After all, the country was seemingly under attack.

It is a truism that the world changed after 911, but in whose interests did it change, who benefited? The Bush administration talked of opportunities, not bringing the criminals to justice. Was this the 'new Pearl Harbor' that the alumni of the Project for he New American Century were hoping for, so they could launch their 100 year war? All that has happened since, the attacks and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the re-election of Bush, the massive military expenditure, the clampdown on civil liberties, all have happened as a direct consequence of 911. And let's not forget, that in the immediate aftermath of 911, Bush got, as Bob Woodward put it, a free ride on voter fraud in Florida and the collapse of Enron.

Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen to enable the US to be pulled into World War Two. The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, but gave the US justification to wage war on North Vietnam. Did 911 happen to enable all that followed?

Is the US willing to engage in the slaughter of innocent civilians to achieve its own ends? The answer has to be yes: the Phoenix programme in Vietnam, Death Squads in Central America, the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq. The only question that remains to be answered: would it permit the same slaughter on its own soil of its own citizens?

The Patriot Act was pushed through in record time, riding on the back of 911.

Use Google to search on 911, the Patriot Act gives the US Administration the right to go to Google and ask what it was you were searching for, and you will never know.

As the wars for the world's resources hot up, we will see more and more civil unrest, and vicious counterattack by the state. When a Bolivian friend showed film footage of the riots at the Seattle WTO meeting, the Bolivians to whom she showed it were amazed. They were used to such brutal clampdowns to suppress dissent, but to see it on the streets of a major western city!

It is not only civil dissent, we will see sponsored coups, as we saw with the crude attempt by the US to topple the legitimate government of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The crimes of Chavez was to oppose the neo-liberal agenda of globalisation and to be president of a country that was the world's fourth largest supplier of oil, a country on which the US is totally dependent for its oil.

Looking to the near future, we risk war with China, as the two remaining superpowers fight for control of the world's dwindling resources.

There is a solution. We have to drastically cut our use of energy. We need a mixed energy supply, primarily renewables, but renewables will not be enough, we have to cut our total energy demand.

Every driver of a gas guzzling SUV or people carrier should be seen as dangerous as a Muslim suicide bomber.

George Tenet, former director of the CIA, drives a hybrid gasoline/electric car. He does so as an act of patriotism.

In the immediate aftermath of 911, apart from a handful of Muslim fanatics, the US had the sympathy of the world. In a very short period, Bush and Blair squandered that sympathy. Both nations are now hated the world over and at far more risk of terrorism than they ever were before 911.

The 9/11 Commission was set up to look into 911, but it was hampered from the start. It took as read the official line on 911, its role was to look at 'intelligence' failures, not what actually happened. They specifically did not look into the financing as this was not seen as relevant!

Originally Henry Kissinger was to be its chair, but there was such an outcry, that he was forced to step down even before he was appointed. Not that it mattered a lot, as what was to be an independent commission, was staffed with Washington insiders. The executive director, for example, Philip D Zelikow, probably had better access to evidence as a Bush insider than he did in his official capacity as executive director. It also meant he could tip off the White House if the commission happened to be straying too close to the truth.

The Commission chose not to look into the establishment and funding of Al-Qaeda by CIA, MI6 and the Pakistani ISI and not forgetting funding coming from the Saudis. Nor did they choose to mention the former links between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Husein.

The official 9/11 Commission did not look into the funding of 911. They could not see a need. Or maybe they feared where it would lead?

They did though mention that the Taliban were not happy with 911, and had said so as the time, as some of us were saying, but were drowned out by the reflex desire to bomb Afghanistan. We were also saying the Taliban were happy to see Osama bin Laden extradited provided evidence of his involvement was produced. Something else that was drowned out by the siren cry to go to war.

The mainstream media has been remarkably silent in questioning, let alone challenging, the official story, although occasionally little snippets slip out.

Like, for example, almost a throw away comment at the end of a Time magazine article that noted that senior Pentagon generals canceled their flights the day before 911. Or the fact the the Wall Street Journal was investigating links between Al-Qaeda funding and the Pakistani ISI. At least they were until their journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and brutally killed.

9-11 Revealed is well researched, well written. Its authors do not take a particular stance, instead they put forward what took place and show there to be gaping holes in the official explanation.

These holes are, as the authors say, so large that there is a need for a widespread new investigation into what actually happened on 11 September 2001.

We know we went to war with Iraq on a lie. The dodgy dossier, alleged links with terrorists. There were no weapons of mass destruction.

Was 9-11 also a lie?

Bush and Blair lied about the weapons of mass destruction, lied about 'yellowcake' from Niger (and exposed a CIA agent because her husband exposed their lies), lied about the links Iraq had with terrorists.

Prior to the war with Iraq, the CIA warned that an attack on Iraq would heighten the risk of terrorism.

Did they also lie about 911?

When people looked into the assassination of JFK they saw the official explanation was a lie. But it was often long after the event, evidence had long gone, key witnesses had died in mysterious circumstances or been killed, investigators were separated by time and space.

Now it is different. We are not long after the event, the trail is not yet cold, we have the Internet.

We can use viral messaging. You learn something, you pass it on to your friends and colleagues, they do the same.

A poll in 2004, found that half of the residents of New York felt their leaders knew of the attacks but failed to act. Following the report of the 9/11 Commission 66% called for a new inquiry to answer the unanswered questions.

At first it seemed reasonable, planes crash into towers, towers collapse. But when you look into it further, it no longer looks reasonable, questions remain unanswered.

As the authors Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan ask in the introduction to 9-11 Revealed

If Bush and Cheney were prepared to lie about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and lie about Iraq's non-existent links to 9/11, were these same leaders prepared to lie about 9/11 itself.

At the very least, we have the sin of omission, that Bush and Cheney knew the planes were to be hijacked, knew what the targets would be and let it happen, let it happen for their own nefarious purpose of world domination, at worst ..... well who knows, and that is why more and more people are now calling for a re-opening of the 911 investigation.

How deep does this rabbit hole go?

Highly recommended.

Also worth reading:

William Blum, The CIA: A forgotten history, Zed Books, 1986

William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press

William Blum, Rogue State, Common Courage Press, 2000

Noam Chomsky, 9-11, Open Media/Seven Stories Press, 2001

Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Hamish Hamilton, 2003

David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, Arris, 2004

David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Interlink, 2004

Larry Klayman, Fatal Neglect, Judicial Watch, 2002

Annie Machon, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair, Book Guild, 2005

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, School of Assassins, Orbis, 1997

John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2003 {updated edition}

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception, Robinson, 2003

Robert B Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, Touchstone, 2001

worth watching

websites

Keith Mothersson <keithmothersson@phonecoop.coop> has produced a pamphlet on 911 for copying and distribution.

Also see

Keith Parkins, 911 – a route to war or an excuse for war?, Indymedia UK, 8 December 2005
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/12/329483.html


Books Worth Reading ~ The New Pearl Harbor
(c) Keith Parkins 2005-2006 -- January 2006 rev 2