AN EVOLVING RESOURCE
Gathering the best evidence developed by the September 11th research community
— Laying bare the fraud of the Kean Commission and its “9/11 Commission Report,” providing questions that anyone can pose to the Kean Commissioners on their national tour.
— Drawing up a blueprint for a criminal investigation that does not exclude valid bodies of evidence as unthinkable, simply because they point to a circle of complicity within the U.S. and allied governments or among U.S. elites. DRAFT of Aug. 31, 2004
This online 9/11 Omissions Dossier aims to unite research with activism. We are in the process of adding links to the best articles or corroborating items for each of the items listed below. We will also be publishing new articles and dossiers on individual topics. This collection is being presented to the members of The Citizens’ Commission on 9/11: A panel of citizens who are convening for “The Omissions Hearings” at the Symphony Theater in New York City on Sept. 9, 2004, to be chaired by the once and future congresswoman Hon. Cynthia McKinney. At the end of the day’s hearings, the citizens’ commissioners will be asked to recommend the most suitable venue or venues for future action from among the possible options (i.e., torts, court cases, articles of impeachment, petitions to international bodies, a truth commission, more informal or spontaneous types of political action, etc.). –911Truth.org and supporters
The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 172: “To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance…” from this we derive… Kean Commission, Rule 1: Don’t Follow the Money!
Starter question for the authors of “The 9/11 Commission Report”:
1: What About the ISI? Why does “The 9/11 Commission Report” fail to pursue the well-known terror connections of the CIA’s client agency, the Pakistani ISI? Why does it ignore reports that the alleged 9/11 plotters received funds from the ISI? Why does it claim that the financing of the 9/11 attacks is of “no practical significance”?
2: Why did the chain of command do nothing when it mattered? Why does the report fail to ask why the key men in the U.S. military chain of command – Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers, Winfield – by their own accounts and by the public record appear to have done nothing to exercise their decision-making authorities during the actual 9/11 attacks, i.e. in the time from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001? Why doesn’t it account for the discrepancies relating to Gen. Myers’s whereabouts and activities (conflict between Clarke and Myers)?
3: Foreign warnings. Why does the report entirely omit to mention the advance warnings of attacks on the United States received from foreign intelligence agencies in the weeks prior to Sept. 11?
4: Obstruction of field investigations. Why does the report ignore the FBI whistleblowers who decried high-level obstruction of field investigations into potential terrorists in the months before 9/11?
5: Discrepancies in the air defense timeline. Why do the report and its authors fail to demand accountability from officials who for more than two years publicized false and/or contradictory accounts of U.S. air defense response on Sept. 11?
6: WTC 7. Why doesn’t the report even mention the mysterious collapse of a third skyscraper, 7 WTC, on the afternoon of Sept. 11?7: Accountability for spreading falsehoods. Why don’t the report or its authors demand accountability from high officials like Rumsfeld and Rice for their repeated statements that “no one could have imagined planes used as weapons,” a demonstrable falsehood?Did the Commissioners pursue any of the above lines of questioning in the confidential parts of their 18-month investigation? Did they have access to relevant information not included in their report, and not covered in the public hearings? There is no way to tell: the report lacks visible redactions to show the censoring of classified material.
THE CASE AGAINST THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE SEPT. 11 ATTACKS :
ON SEPT. 11: ANOMALIES
BEFORE SEPT. 11: PREPARATION AND PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
AFTER SEPT. 11: THE COVERUP
HISTORY (I): CONNECTIONS
HISTORY (II): PRECEDENTS
PRECEDENTS
(coming) ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
PHILOSOPHICAL POINTS
“…9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests ‘over there’ should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America ‘over here.’ In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet.” (p. 362)
Note of Aug. 17, 2004 This dossier is hereby declared presentable. We have entered on strange days. After years of denial about the evidence available already on Sept. 11 itself, people are suddenly debating the significance of Bush and “The Pet Goat.” The Kean Commission is on a national tour to promote its findings and recommendations. Porter Goss faces confirmation hearings. We have a chance to break the big and obvious stories that three years of limited investigations obscured.
Imagine seeing headlines in the papers: “Commissioners met with protests… Demands CIA nominee Goss explain 9/11/01 meeting with alleged terror paymaster… Myers, Winfield on spot to explain whereabouts on 9/11.” Imagine reporters asking why Pakistani ISI chief Mahmud Ahmed’s Capitol breakfast with Porter Goss and Bob Graham was left out of the Kean Commission’s “exhaustive and authoritative” report. Imagine a crack that gets wider, a crack that lets more and more of the evidence through.
Before you say it’s impossible, think instead about what you can do to make it happen.We call on 9/11 truth activists to start by scoring the easy points. If you get a chance to make a speech, make it. If not, know what you want to say and make sure it’s loud, clear and accurate. That is the point of the list of recommended questions to the Commissioners above, and the compact review of the evidence below. We are grateful to The Institute for Cooperative Research at cooperativeresearch.org, both for pioneering the model of research used here, and, of course for having used it so ably in creating the largest and most reliable public archive of 9/11-related stories on the Web (of which we will make ample use in the following).
–911Truth.org and supporters
THE CASE AGAINST THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE SEPT. 11 ATTACKS: The following are bodies of evidence that are either a) entirely left out of the Kean Commission’s final report, or b) deemphasized by way of poor logic and/or omission of key details; and which c) point to a circle of complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks among elements within U.S. and allied governments and elites. KEY TO RATINGS -00- Pure omissions: evidence that goes completely unmentioned in the Kean Commission report, not even for purposes of refutation. -%- Evidence that is deemphasized, lacking salient details, misinterpreted, or obscured by the report in a fashion that directs away from its true significance. -!!- Evidence presented in the report that takes on a different significance when combined with other evidence that has been omitted. -C- Evidence that conflicts or is opposite to accounts of the same subject in the report. 😉 Evidence largely corroborated by the report.
Ratings are not yet final.
-00- NEGOTIATIONS WITH AFGHANISTAN The Bush administration delivered $125 million in aid to Afghanistan through May 2001, the last payment of $43 million in May allegedly meant to encourage a reduction in the poppy crop. The Bush administration entered back-channel negotiations with the Taliban aimed at achieving a unity government with the Northern Alliance and a pipeline deal for Afghanistan. These were backed with an explicit threat of war. The Taliban prevented the spring planting of the poppy crop. They broke off the negotiations in June.
WAR PLANNING -C- The Bush administration planned and prepared the invasion of Afghanistan for October 2001. 😉 The administration began planning the invasion of Iraq before Sept. 11.
-00- OBSTRUCTION OF FIELD INVESTIGATIONS The Bush administration issued an order to suspend investigations into the Binladin family and alleged Saudi financing of terror networks in January 2001. Several FBI agents and employees have testified to high-level obstruction of field investigations that might have led to the alleged hijackers or their possible financiers, or otherwise exposed networks of potential terrorists in the months prior to Sept. 11. The FBI’s former top investigator of al-Qaeda claimed that investigations were not pursued, in order to accommodate oil interests and the Saudi alliance. He died on Sept. 11. (See below.) -00- ODDITIES REGARDING THE ALLEGED HIJACKERS Reports of the alleged hijackers’ movements and behavior from official accounts and eyewitnesses differ radically, both within and among accounts. The alleged hijackers were repeatedly waved through at border controls. The two Florida flight schools at which three of the alleged hijackers trained to fly are linked to drug dealing and possible intelligence operations. A military spokesperson stated that the alleged hijackers received training at U.S. military bases. NOTE: The dean of students at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, USAF Col. Steve Butler, was forced into early retirement after writing a letter to the editor in which he claimed that George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. U.S. authorities uncovered and rounded up, both prior to and after Sept. 11, up to 120 members of an Israeli spy ring operating in the United States, some of whom may, in turn, have been observing the alleged 9/11 plotters.
-00- FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS. Specific warnings of an aerial attack plot involving hijackings and possibly even naming the alleged hijackers are reported to have been delivered to the administration in the weeks prior to Sept. 11 by one dozen foreign intelligence agencies and U.S. and foreign individuals.
-00- FOREKNOWLEDGE I: INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS Prominent persons admitted receiving credible warnings not to fly on or around Sept. 11, including the then mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown (as he told the San Francisco Chronicle) and unknown generals at the Pentagon (as told to Newsweek). One man who claims to have received specific warnings that he attempted in vain to relay to John Ashcroft is David Schippers, former House impeachment attorney. The report gives no evidence to indicate whether the Commission pursued any of the many other stories (of extremely variable prima-facie credibility) by individuals claiming to have received advance word of the attacks. There are also reports of warnings of an imminent attack delivered by instant messaging to people in and around the WTC complex early on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
-%- FOREKNOWLEDGE II: FINANCIAL TRADING Suspicious trading indicating advance knowledge of attack specifics was transacted on both international and U.S. exchanges, according to reports from investigators in multiple financial centers in the days after Sept. 11. In the United States, trading based on foreknowledge was also said to have targeted WTC tenants; in Europe, the reinsurance companies that ultimately footed the bill for the disaster. -%- The Kean Commission report, in attempting to dismiss these stories via its classic device of a footnote, concentrates solely on the spikes in put options on United Airlines and American Airlines in the week before the attacks. It states that the spike in sales of puts on one airline is attributable to the hedging strategy of an “institutional” trader with no visible connections to al-Qaeda; whereas the other spike resulted from a recommendation to sell short on airlines in a subscription-only fax newsletter. The report declines to wonder whether the writers of this unidentified newsletter may have received tips or information ultimately based on prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and so the investigation apparently died there. The reasoning also seems to suggest that only al-Qaeda members could have advance knowledge of the attacks. The traders have no “conceivable connection al-Qaeda, hence it is impossible they had advance knowledge. (Of course, this rhetorical maneuver is much easier to pull off if the report simply ignores all of the other evidence of prior knowledge beyond the members of the network it identifies as al-Qaeda.) -0- There is no indication the Commission pursued reports that in the case of one trade, the buyer of put options left a $2.5 million profit uncollected for many weeks, with no report at this time as to whether it was ever collected.
-%- IMAGINATION Many people “imagined” and publicized the exact mode of attack, contrary to later statements by high officials such as Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. -00- In Oct. 2000 the Pentagon rehearsed emergency procedures for the scenario of an airliner crashing into the Pentagon. -!!- In Apr. 2001 the Pentagon considered staging wargames for the possibility of kamikaze attacks using hijacked aircraft in the United States. -%- In July 2001 the U.S. and Italy took specific precautions to protect George W. Bush at the Genoa Summit of G-8 nations after warnings were received from several countries that Osama Binladin planned to crash a plane into Bush’s hotel. -!!- Other air defense wargames similar to the actual attack scenario were carried out before Sept. 11. -00- Air defense wargames similar to the actual attack scenario were planned for the morning of Sept. 11 itself.
-00- THE ISI CONNECTION The alleged financier of Sept. 11, Pakistani ISI Chief Mahmud Ahmed, was in Washington DC meeting officials from Sept. 4-14, among them his counterpart in the U.S. government George Tenet. This was never the subject of a known investigation, although Ahmed met for breakfast on the morning of 9/11 with the chairmen of the Congressional intelligence committees, Porter Goss and Bob Graham, who later headed the Congressional joint inquiry into the attacks.
-%- CHAIN OF COMMAND The key officials in the U.S. military chain of command were derelict in their duties in a consistent and suspicious fashion during the actual time of the attacks on the morning of Sept. 11, according to their own accounts and the public record. This is admitted but effectively obscured in The 9/11 Commission Report. -00- Richard Clarke’s book on Richard Myers’s whereabouts on Sept. 11th differs from Gen. Myers’s own account of his activities on the day. -%- AIR DEFENSE RIDDLES The U.S. air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for intercepting errant planes, such as were executed routinely in years past. Evidence points to a standdown order or obstruction, or else to confusion created intentionally through the device of planning and staging air defense wargames that mimicked the actual means of attack. Timelines and statements on U.S. air defense response released at various times by North American Aerospace Command, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Kean Commission differ radically. If the account in The 9/11 Commission Report is correct, officials of NORAD and FAA disseminated false accounts of air defense response repeatedly in the two years following Sept. 11. The report contains no suggestion that officials in government should be held accountable for this. NOTE: “NORAD lied”: Senator Mark Dayton brought up the discrepancy at Congressional hearings on the 9/11 report. -00- Gen. Myers testified to Congress on Sept. 13, 2001 that no fighters were scrambled to intercept any of the Sept. 11th flights until after the Pentagon was hit. -00- The wargames planned for the morning of Sept. 11th included the scenario of an errant plane crashing into the building of the National Reconnaissance Office in Washington, DC. -00- Richard Clarke’s book mentions an as-yet undetailed wargame held on the morning of Sept. 11th and known as “Vigilant Warrior.” -00- NORAD issued scramble orders to intercept off-course planes within domestic airspace on 67 occasions in the year prior to June 1, 2001. -00- A Pentagon administrative order of June 1, 2001 for the first time includes the Secretary of Defense in the command chain under standard operating procedures for ordering interception of errant IFR (passenger) flights.
-00- PHYSICAL EVIDENCE I: UA 93 There is evidence that United Airlines Flight 93 broke up while still in the air, consistent with a possible shootdown.
-00- PHYSICAL EVIDENCE II: DEMOLITION OF 7 WTC A third skyscraper of steel-cage design, 7 WTC, collapsed into its footprint at 5:21 p.m. on 9/11/04, although it was not hit by an airliner and did not show significant damage from falling debris. The Kean Commission report mentions 7 WTC and that it was the ill-chosen location of the New York Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, and further that OEM was evacuated at 9:30 a.m. The report curiously fails to mention the collapse of 7 WTC and the resulting destruction of the offices, located therein, of the CIA, Department of Defense, Secret Service and Securities and Exchange Commission. (The loss of the last destroyed paper files on 200 open investigations into securities fraud.) On video, the collapse appears like a perfect controlled demolition. The owner of WTC 7 made a statement in a PBS documentary that seems to corroborate an intentional demolition. It is not possible to arrange the controlled demolition of a skyscraper in 7 hours, i.e. the time between 9:30 a.m. and 5:21 p.m. on Sept. 11. Reports by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute for Standards and Testing have ruled out fuel-tank explosions as a possible cause, and fail to come to definitive conclusions about the mechanics of collapse, forwarding only hypotheses. If 7 WTC was intentionally “pulled,” what questions does this raise about other events at the World Trade Center? wtc7.net
-00- ARGUMENT FOR CONTROLLED DEMOLITION OF TWIN TOWERS (from Eric Hufschmid): “No steel building has ever been destroyed by fire.” Fire Engineering Magazine The South Tower fell after only 1 hour. The North Tower fell one hour later. After the initial fireball, neither building burned significantly. The Meridian One Building in Philadelphia burned fiercely for 19 hours and never collapsed. Building 7 at the WTC, steel and constructed differently from the twin towers, fell at 5:30. It was not hit by an airplane and had no apparent significant fire. Jet fuel burns at too low a temperature to harm steel. (the black smoke indicates that the jet fuel was not even burning at maximum temperature.) The fires did not burn long enough to harm steel. Days later, there were still “hot spots” in the building that exceeded the maximum temperature possible from burning jet fuel, but just the right temperature if explosives had been used. The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions. The buildings collapsed at the speed of gravity. That is almost impossible without explosives. The impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires were way off center. More than 2 sides of the towers and the main center columns were untouched. Why did all three buildings collapse?
FAILURE TO RESOLVE ALLEGED HIJACKER IDENTITIES -!!- The report admits by way of a footnote that as many as 13 of the passports may have been doctored (Ch. 12 FN 32, p. 563) “in a manner that has subsequently been associated with al Qaeda.” Only two of these passports are actually in evidence, the rest presumably lost or destroyed in the attacks. -00- One of these is the “magic passport” of an alleged Flight 11 hijacker identified as Satam al-Suqami, which was reportedly found by police or FBI at the World Trade Center during the period after the first plane crash but before the collapse of the Twin Towers. -00- The FBI made a number of other lucky finds, including documents reportedly left by alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi in a Florida motel room two weeks before Sept. 11 that were not found or thrown away by hotel staff. -00- The report reveals no evidence that the Commission looked into the stories, as reported in the Arab press in the weeks after Sept. 11, that up to seven men had come forward in Morocco, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia with claims that they were still-living persons shown in the FBI’s pictures of the alleged suicide hijackers. -00- Robert Mueller III said in April 2002 that no paper trail connected the alleged hijackers to any aspect of the 9/11 plot. (FBI version of a hermetic cell operating all on its own and leaving no trail, going so far as to suggest that the “muscle hijackers” did not know the ringleaders were planning a suicide mission, conflicts radically with numerous reports of advance warnings from foreign governments.) -00- Reports by eyewitnesses and press that Mohamed Atta was in the United States before his arrival according to the official timeline on June 2, 2000. -00- German authorities reported that Mohamed Atta and the Hamburg cell were under surveillance by the CIA while in Germany until their departure for the United States. -00-The government has said it is still holding in storage the bodies or parts of bodies of five claimed to be the hijackers of AA77 (as well as of the four alleged hijackers of UA93). While the FBI claims all hijacker identity questions are resolved, these bodies are still identified as “John Doe.” -00- Reports of Mohamed Atta’s behavior while in the United States are inconsistent with the Commission’s characterization of Atta as a strict Islamist. -%- Alleged ringleader Atta’s calls with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) under surveillance by National Security Agency for several months in 2001.
ESTABLISHING THE GUILT OF OSAMA BIN LADIN AND ASSOCIATES -00- Secretary of State Colin Powell promised in Sept. 2001 to deliver to foreign governments a State Department White Paper establishing the provenance of the attacks and the guilt of Osama Binladin. No reports since indicate that this was done, no White Paper has ever been published. -00- The White Paper published by the Blair government in Oct. 2001 to establish the guilt of al-Qaeda and Osama Binladin, apparently as a replacement for Powell’s omission, makes a mostly irrelevant, weak circumstantial case. -00- The various Osama Binladin interviews, testimonies and videos presented by various media and agencies since the attacks are of dubious provenance and show a wealth of anomalies and contradictions. Which statements by “Binladin” or his lieutenants are considered reliable seems on its face to be determined by the advantage in each case of the agency assessing the alleged statement. -00- In the past, Osama has claimed responsibility for actions that his group did not directly commit and could not have committed, such as the downing of U.S. Black Hawk military helicopters by Somali fighters during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. -00- There is no evidence in the final report that the Kean Commission pursued, even to refute, CBS reports that Osama Binladin on Sept. 10, 2001 was staying overnight in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney treatments. -00- There is no evidence in the final report that the Kean Commission pursued, even to refute, the Oct. 2001 reports in the French press and radio that Osama Binladin traveled to Dubai for kidney treatments for ten days in July 2001, during which time a CIA station chief allegedly visited him in his hospital room. -00- Reports that alleged captured top al-Qaeda operative and 9/11 co-plotter Abu Zubaydah while in U.S. custody produced in his defense to interrogators the private telephone number of Saudi Prince Turki, head of the Saudi intelligence agency for 22 years until his sudden resignation on Sept. 6, 2001. -00- Mainstream French press reports that Prince Turki met with Osama Binladin while on a visit to Pakistan and (reportedly) Afghanistan in early Sept. 2001. -00- Alleged 9/11 plot mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, whom U.S. authorities say is being held at an undisclosed situation, and who is cited often as a source in The 9/11 Commission Report, was reported killed during his attempted capture by Pakistani forces in 2002.
ANTHRAX -00- The anthrax attacks of Oct. 2001 used U.S. army stocks and would have required sophisticated processing in a large laboratory by a staff of more than one person, according to leading bioweapons scientists. The attacks were targeted and timed in a fashion that prima facie seemed intentionally designed to suppress opposition to the administration’s post-Sept. 11 policies and push the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress. The last round of letters contained weaponized anthrax and was addressed to the leadership of the Democratic Party majority in the Senate. The anthrax attacks resulted in a massive hindrance of the FBI’s 9/11 investigation as hundreds of agents working on PENTTBOM (the 9/11 investigation) were redirected to the anthrax case. (Although these attacks came under the Kean Commission’s investigative purview, the word anthrax occurs only once.