Sourcebook on 9/11 and its Aftermath
9/11 Commission and Whistleblowers
19 September 2007
Table of Contents
Was the 9/11 Commission Fair and Unbiased?
Appointments to 9/11 Commission
Whistleblowers: 9/11 Commission Ignores Evidence
Calls for a New 9/11 Inquiry
Call to Whistleblowers
What do Potential Whistleblowers Fear?
Democrats Refuse to Push for a Re-opening of 9/11 Investigation
Bank Whistleblower Fired
Was the 9/11 Commission Fair and Unbiased?
Myth Number 4: The 9/11 Commission, which has endorsed the official account, was an independent, impartial commission and hence can be believed.
One needs only to look at the reviews of The 9/11 Commission Report on Amazon.com to see that this assumption is widely accepted. Perhaps this is partly because in the Preface, the Commission’s chairman and vice chairman tell us that the Commission sought “to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan.” But these terms do not describe the reality. The Commission’s lack of impartiality can be partly explained by the fact that Chairman Thomas Kean, most of the other commissioners, and at least half of the members of the staff had conflicts of interest.
The most serious problem, however, is that the executive director, Philip Zelikow, was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney administration. He had worked with Condoleezza Rice on the National Security Council in the administration of the first President Bush. When the Republicans were out of office during the Clinton administration, Zelikow and Rice wrote a book together. Rice then, as National Security Advisor for the second President Bush, had Zelikow help make the transition to the new National Security Council. After that, Zelikow was appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Zelikow was, therefore, the White House’s man inside the 9/11 Commission.
And yet, as executive director, he guided the staff, which did virtually all the work of the Commission. Zelikow was in position, therefore, to decide which topics would be investigated and which ones not. One disgruntled member reportedly said at the time, “Zelikow is calling the shots. He’s skewing the investigation and running it his own way.”
Accordingly, insofar as the Commission was supposed to be investigating the failure of the Bush administration to prevent the attacks, the Commission was no more independent and impartial than if Dick Cheney had been running it. (The only difference is that no one got shot.)
Zelikow’s ideological and personal closeness to the Bush administration is shown by one more fact that has until now not been widely known, even within the 9/11 truth movement. I mentioned earlier the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy statement of 2002, in which the new doctrine of preemptive warfare was articulated. The primary author of this document, reports James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans, was none other than Philip Zelikow. According to Mann, after Rice saw a first draft, which had been written by Richard Haass in the State Department, she, wanting “something bolder,” brought in Zelikow to completely rewrite it. The result was a very bellicose document that used 9/11 to justify the administration’s so-called war on terror. Max Boot described it as a “quintessentially neo-conservative document.”
We can understand, therefore, why the Commission, under Zelikow’s leadership, would have ignored all evidence that would point to the truth: that 9/11 was a false flag operation intended to authorize the doctrines and funds needed for a new level of imperial mobilization. (David Ray Griffin on https://www.911truth.dk/first/en/faq.htm, downloaded 19 Aug. 2007.)
I think the 9/11 Commission has taught me that we need to be extremely rigorous and extremely tenacious in pursuing that truth, because there is a corporate mentality in this country that is working against allowing the truth to surface, even in tragedies, such as the 9/11 tragedy. …
I want to talk about the [9/11] Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is extremely important to understand the failure of the Commission. (Melvin A. Goodman, Ph.D., Congressional briefing testimony, 22 July 2005, Patriots Question 9/11, downloaded from https://patriotsquestion911.com/, 21 Aug. 2007.)
Appointments to 9/11 Commission
Q: A lot of people say the 9/11 Commission, which has endorsed the official account, was an impartial commission and can be believed. It was independent, there were Republicans and Democrats, and they did a deep and thorough investigation. Who are we, without their resources, to question their conclusions?
David Ray Griffin: Who actually ran the Commission? People think it was kindly old chairman Thomas Kean, Gov. of New Jersey. These commissioners we saw on TV didn’t do the work.
The work was done by a staff of 75 people run by Philip Zelikow, Executive Director. He was essentially a member of the Bush/Cheney administration. He had been part of the National Security Council during the administration of the first president Bush. He and Condoleezza Rice were on that together.
Then when the Republicans were out of power during the Clinton years, they wrote a book together. And you have to be very close to somebody both personally and ideologically to write a book together. Then when Rice was named national security adviser for the second president Bush, she brought Zelikow on to help with the transition to the new National Security Council.
Then he was appointed by Pres. Bush to the president’s foreign intelligence advisory board. After that then, he became chairman of the 9/11 Commission. So it was no different than if Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney had been running the Commission. But the press didn’t tell us this about Zelikow. They would have a few mentions of it in the New York Times, about the families of the victims being unhappy with Philip Zelikow.
But I never saw a story spell out how closely allied he was to the Bush Administration.
Now here’s something I learned from the book Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann. I mentioned this, the new doctrine of pre-emption, which is really a doctrine of preventive warfare. But people don’t understand, prevention sounds like a good thing, sounds better than pre-emption. So I call it the doctrine of preventive pre-emption warfare, which means that we see that some country may cause us trouble somewhere down the line—maybe five or 10 years from now—but we decide it would be easier to get rid of their weapons now than later, so we’ll just go ahead and attack them now.
That was the new doctrine that was signed into existence in a document called ”National Security Strategy of United States of America 2002.” And in the cover letter to that document the president himself says, “We can no longer wait until our enemies have gotten ready to attack us, we’ve got to act offensively.”
And who wrote that document? Philip Zelikow. Condoleezza Rice was in charge of writing that — that’s her job as national security adviser. So she had evidently asked Philip Hoss, a subordinate to Colin Powell in the State Department, to write it. He wrote a first draft and she thought it wasn’t bold enough, so she ordered it completely rewritten and had Zelikow come in and do the writing. She and Zelikow and Stephen Hadley were the three who primarily wrote it.
So here you have a guy who [helps] write the document that on the basis of 9/11 says we can get this new doctrine of pre-emptive preventive warfare that neo-cons have been wanting—the guy who most turned 9/11 into the pretext for making this US official policy. And he is the one who is a year later brought on to be the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which is supposed to see if the White House was complicit somehow—maybe just through incompetence or for deliberately allowing it to happen or ordering a stand down operation or whatever it is, was the White House somehow involved.
It’s outrageous, and the press has never talked about it. That’s what we’re talking about, an unfree press that will not reveal even the most basic facts.
You wouldn’t have to argue any kind of complicity, you could say, “Isn’t this an interesting fact: The fellow who was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission was the one who wrote this document which contains this new doctrine which is so central to the Bush administration that it’s called the Bush Doctrine, this new doctrine of preventive warfare.” There’s always been a Nixon Doctrine, a Johnson Doctrine, a Carter Doctrine—this was the Bush Doctrine.
Zelikow decided which topics would be investigated, and which ones not. So they did not investigate any of the evidence about Bush administration complicity and show why they had motives for this. Our motives were much more powerful than Al Qaeda’s — what were the Al Qaeda motives? They hated Americans, they hated our freedoms. Our way of life. So they would do this. It’s comic book stuff.
What the American people don’t know is that basically Zelikow controlled the Commission, controlled what the reports were. And then when some things would leak through that he didn’t want in the final report, he controlled the final report, so he just deleted it. (“Interview with David Ray Griffin,” Whole Life Times, downloaded from https://wholelifetimes.com/2006/09/griffin0609.html, 7 August 2007.)
Mary Schiavo: All you have to look at are the two commissions the president appointed [following the September 11 hijackings] in the wake of the worst aviation tragedy in history. It is industry people. No one spoke for the dead on those committees. And it is really clear, the day after the tragedy (the airlines) were trolling the halls of Congress to get their airline stabilization bill, which basically gives them a pass on liability. (“ PART ONE: THE SYSTEM. Mary Schiavo: September 11 was failure of government,” CNN.com, 2003? Downloaded from https://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/flight.risk/stories/part1.schiavo.access.html, 31 July 2007.)
Q: Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 9/11 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?
A: Just like the Warren Commission which was assembled to “solve” the JFK assassination, Zelikow’s 9/11 Commission had no intentions of solving the many thousands of crimes that were committed prior, during and after 9/11. Their “mission” was to conceal and obfuscate as much of the evidence as possible, in order to sustain the obviously ridiculous explanation fabricated and stubbornly maintained by the White House. (9/11Truth.org, Answers to 9/11 Families’ Questions, posted 20 July 2007 at https://blogs.albawaba.com/post/2011/73057, downloaded August 6, 2007.)
J. Terrence “Terry” Brunner – Former prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department and a key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force. Former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Former Executive Director of the Better Government Association 1971 – 2000. Currently Director, Aviation Integrity Project.
Article CBS News 3/5/03:“Here we’ve got the most important event in America in the past 50 years, the most horrible thing that’s happened to Americans, and yet we pick a bunch of people who are connected to the very people who are at the center of the question of who’s at fault,” says Terry Brunner, a former federal prosecutor who now runs the Aviation Integrity Project in Chicago. “It’s ridiculous.”
Brunner checked out the commissioners and discovered that out of 10, at least six represent the very companies they’re now investigating.
He says they are: “Fred Fielding, Spirit Airlines, United Airlines; Slade Gordon represents Delta Airlines; Sen. Max Cleland – $300,000 from the airline industry; Jim Thompson represents American Airlines; Richard Ben-Veniste represents Boeing and United Airlines; and Rep. Tim Roemer – Boeing and Lockheed Martin.”
“They’re all up to here, with either being connected to the airlines or to the manufacturer of the airplane,” says Brunner.
One of the commissioners, former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, once represented United and still counsels American – the very airlines involved in the Sept. 11 attack.
“The issue of my firm’s representing American shouldn’t be taken too far,” says Thompson. “I don’t think the commission as a whole is conflicted.”
“When you’ve got six out of the ten people, a majority of the group, are connected in that way, how can they make an honest call?” asks Brunner.” (“J. Terrence ‘Terry’ Brunner,” Patriots Question 9/11, downloaded from https://patriotsquestion911.com/#Brunner, 31 July 2007.)
Whistleblowers: 9/11 Commission Ignores Evidence
On the Fifth anniversary of the September Eleven Terror Attacks, we, the National Security Whistleblowers, want to go on record one more time to reiterate the significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the 9/11 commission by those of us from the Intelligence, Aviation, and Law Enforcement communities, but ended up being censored and omitted. The failure to address such serious and relevant issues, witnesses, and information renders the report flawed and the commissioners parties to a fraud on the nation.
The following Veteran National Security experts were turned away, ignored, or censored by the 9/11 Commission, even though they had direct and relevant information related to the Commission’s investigation:
John M. Cole, Former Veteran Intelligence Operations Specialist; FBI – Mr. Cole worked for 18 years in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division as an Intelligence Operations specialist, and was in charge of FBI’s foreign intelligence investigations covering India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr. Cole had knowledge of certain activities that directly related to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. He notified the 9/11 Commission during its investigation, but never received a response. His name and contact information was provided to the Commission as a key witness by other witnesses, but he was never contacted or interviewed.
John Vincent, Retired Special Agent, Counterterrorism; FBI – Mr. Vincent worked for the FBI for 27 1/2 years before retiring in 2002. He worked his last 8 years in counterterrorism in the FBI’s Chicago Field Office. Mr. Vincent, along with Robert Wright, exposed inefficiencies within the FBI in working counterterrorism cases, and certain warnings they had tried to pursue prior to the 9/11 attack that were directly related to Al-Qaeda’s financial network and money laundering activities. Although he was granted an interview, the commissioners’ investigators refused to let him provide them with information related to his case and the 9/11 terrorists network; they insisted on limiting the interview to only administrative and irrelevant questions and issues.
Robert Wright, Veteran Special Agent, Counterterrorism; FBI – Mr. Wright is a veteran special agent in the FBI Chicago Field Office Counterterrorism Unit. He had been investigating a suspected terrorist cell for three years, when he was informed in January 2001 that the case was being closed. Agent Wright, along with Mr. Vincent, exposed inefficiencies within the FBI in working counterterrorism cases and certain warnings they’d tried to pursue prior to the 9/11 attack that were directly related to Al-Qaeda’s financial network and money laundering activities. Three months before September 11, Wright wrote a stinging internal memo charging that the FBI was not interested in thwarting a terrorist attack, but rather “was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.” The FBI refused to allow Wright to testify before the 9/11 Commission, however, the Commission did not insist or attempt to subpoena Wright; despite the fact that it had subpoena power.
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist; FBI – Ms. Edmonds worked for the FBI’s Washington Field Office as a language specialist with Top Secret Clearance performing translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations dealing with Turkey, Iran, and Turkic speaking Central Asian countries. She contacted the 9/11 Commission in May 2003 and requested a meeting to provide them with information directly related to the terrorist attack. The Commission investigators refused to meet with Edmonds and informed her that due to their limited resources and time they were not going to interview all witnesses. She was able to provide the commission with information and documents only after certain 9/11 family members intervened directly. Ms. Edmonds’ testimony was completely censored by the Commission.
Behrooz Sarshar, Former Language Specialist; FBI – Mr. Sarshar worked for the FBI’s Washington Field Office as a language specialist with Top Secret Clearance performing Farsi translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations dealing with Iran and Afghanistan. He had first-hand information of prior specific warning obtained from a reliable informant in April 2001 on the terrorist attacks of September 11. Mr. Sarshar contacted the Commission directly but was refused. He was given an interview with the Commission investigators only after 9/11 family members intervened directly. Mr. Sarshar’s documented testimony was completely omitted from the commission’s final report, despite his case being publicly confirmed by Director Mueller’s Office.
Mike German, Special Agent, Counterterrorism; FBI – Mr. German served sixteen years as an FBI Special Agent and is one of the rare agents credited with actually having prevented acts of terrorism before it became the FBI’s number one priority. He contacted the Commission in the spring of 2004, but did not receive a response. In 2002 he reported gross mismanagement in a post 9/11-counterterrorism investigation, which included serious violations of FBI policy and federal law. Mr. German contacted the 9/11 Commission during its investigation and requested that he be given an interview session in order to provide them with certain domestic counterterrorism investigations that he’d pursued. According to Mr. German there were links between certain domestic and international counterterrorism related to the September 11 attacks. The 9/11 Commissioners refused to acknowledge his request and never interviewed him.
Gilbert Graham, Retired Special Agent, Counterintelligence; FBI – Mr. Graham worked for the FBI’s Washington Field Office Counterintelligence Division until 2002. In February 2004 his name and contact information were provided to the Commission as a key witness with information pertinent to the Commission’s investigation. The 9/11 Commission refused to follow up and never contacted Mr. Graham.
Coleen Rowley, Retired Division Counsel; FBI – In May 2002, Coleen Rowley, as the Division Counsel at the FBI Minneapolis Office, blew the whistle on the FBI’s failure to pursue Zacarias Moussaoui’s case prior to 9/11, despite all attempts made by the Minneapolis division counterterrorism agents. She reported that FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C., had mishandled and neglected to take action on information provided by her division. Despite her high-profile case the commission chose not to interview Ms. Rowley. According to Ms. Rowley, no one from the FBI Minneapolis Office (several Agents had direct information) was ever asked to provide testimony, information, to the 9/11 Commission.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, DIA – Colonel Shaffer provided the Commission with detailed information on intelligence and pre-warning information obtained by his unit’s data mining project, Able Danger. The 9/11 commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from Mr. Shaffer and his former team members, yet did not pursue the case, did not follow up on this documented report and refused to subpoena the relevant files. Mr. Shaffer’s testimony, together with other witnesses who corroborated his testimony and information, were censored by the 9/11 Commissioners and never made it to its final report.
Dick Stoltz, Retired Special Agent; ATF – Mr. Stoltz, a veteran undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, had played an important role in Operation Diamondback between 1998 and 2001. The sting operation involved a group of Middle Eastern men living in New Jersey who were caught on tape in an ATF weapons sting conspiring to buy millions of dollars of weapons including components for nuclear bombs. The case came to a screeching halt with the arrest of only a handful of suspects in June of 2001 even though there was ample evidence that some of the people who were attempting to buy these weapons had connections with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden himself. The 9/11 Commission refused to contact Agent Stoltz despite all attempts made by several witnesses from the intelligence & Law Enforcement Communities, and the 9/11 Family group, Jersey Moms.
Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Red Team Leader; FAA – Mr. Dzakovic had worked for the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration since 1987 as a Special Agent, as a Team Leader in the Federal Air Marshals, and from 1995 until September 11, 2001 was a Team Leader of the Red Team (terrorist team). Mr. Dzakovic had tried for several years prior to the 9-11 attacks to improve aviation security in the face of the ever-increasing terrorist threat. He provided the 9/11 Commission with his testimony and documented reports. His testimony and report to the Commission was completely omitted from the final report.
Linda Lewis, Retired Emergency Programs Specialist; USDA – Ms. Lewis worked for 13 years evaluating and coordinating federal, state and local preparedness for nuclear, radiological and chemical weapons emergencies. Prior to September 11, 2001, she had reported numerous inadequacies and dysfunctions in emergency preparedness, including a culture of intimidation that discouraged federal evaluators from reporting inadequacies in state and local plans and preparedness. USDA officials had thwarted her efforts to bring in terrorism experts to help the agency prepare for attacks on federal buildings, including bio-weapons attacks such as the anthrax attacks of 2001. In vain, she had urged FEMA officials to develop a national emergency communications plan and require interoperability of federally funded emergency communications equipment. In the absence of these preparations, New York City firefighters and police officers were unable to communicate critical information on September 11 at the World Trade Center. Ms. Lewis contacted the Commission and offered to provide information regarding dysfunctional government preparedness, but the Commission never responded.
Mark Burton, Senior Analyst; NSA – Mr. Burton served as an all-source threat analyst in NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) for most of his 16-year career. He was the editor of IAD’s premier threat document; the 300+ page ISSO Global Threat Summary, and was an adjunct faculty member at NSA’s National Cryptologic School. He provided dozens of pages of relevant information to the 9/11 Commission, but was completely ignored and never asked to testify.
The above list does not include many others from the intelligence and law enforcement communities who had similarly contacted or reported to the commission but had been either turned away or censored, and of course many others’ who are still working within these agencies and are fearful of making their identities known, due to the relentless pursuit of and retaliation against whistleblowers by government agencies. (Sibel Edmonds and Bill Weaver, “The 9/11 Commission: A Play on Nothing in Three Acts, 911Truth.Org, 5 Sept. 2006, downloaded from https://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2006090610003242, 6 August 2007.)
[William Rodriguez] was the last guy pulled out. He was on sublevel two and he heard a bomb. And he was omitted from the 9-11 report. Why? (Fox News report in 9/11: The Ripple Effect.)
Q: Why did the 9/11 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?
A: Again, addressing most of the questions posed by those families would implicate numerous principals and accessories in a premeditated conspiracy to commit treason, murder and murder-for-hire. These crimes are punishable by death or very long prison terms. (9/11Truth.org, Answers to 9/11 Families’ Questions, posted 20 July 2007 at https://blogs.albawaba.com/post/2011/73057, downloaded August 6, 2007.)
Basic law enforcement investigative techniques, with 21st Century data mining and analytical tools … resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection – and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorists as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks. …
After contact by two separate members of the ABLE DANGER team, … the 9-11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a “preconceived” conclusion to the 9-11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9-11 staff – a failure that the 9-11 Commissioners themselves were victimized by – and continue to have perpetrated on them by the staff as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that ABLE DANGER’s findings were “urban legend”. (Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve, Commander of Special Troops Battalion, 9th Theater Support Command. Former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program, overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command’s global controlled HUMINT efforts. A former member of the Able Danger data mining program that targeted Al Qaeda’s global structure. Awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Fellow, Center for Advanced Defense Studies. 23-year military intelligence career on Patriots Question 9/11, downloaded from https://www.patriotsquestion911.com/, 14 Aug. 2007.)
Calls for a New 9/11 Inquiry
Sept. 5, 2007 – In an online editorial yesterday, Joel S. Hirschhorn, PhD, former Senior Staff Member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), called for a new investigation of 9/11. “First, let the technical truth emerge. Then, if necessary, cope with the inevitable political, conspiracy and other questions. But let us not allow a possible painful truth block the primary task of determining once and for all what caused the collapse of the WTC towers and building no. 7.”
Dr. Hirschhorn is a nationally recognized engineer who has testified before Congress more than 50 times on technology, science, and environmental issues. In addition to his work for the OTA, Dr. Hirschhorn also served as Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources for the National Governors Association.
Dr. Hirschhorn admitted to his own personal “growing skepticism about the official WTC story”. He wrote “analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of the three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the twin towers.” He noted “the general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition.”
Dr. Hirschhorn endorsed the efforts of a new group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to launch a new, honest and comprehensive investigation that considers all the evidence and which examines the possibility of controlled demolition.
Dr. Hirschhorn issued a challenge to supporters of the official account of 9/11, “If those that believe the official 9/11 story – especially elected officials – trust their views, then let them support a serious effort to test the validity of the controlled demolition hypothesis. If they fear and reject doing so, then let us see that as suspicious and unacceptable.”
He concluded, “Horrific possible answers can cause us to shun a question. But clearing our minds of the fear of painful truths is essential to clearing our nation of destructive lies. Otherwise, we stay stuck in a delusional democracy.” (Alan Miller, Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11,” OpEdNews.com, 6 September 2007, downloaded from https://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070905_former_congressional.htm, 7 Sept. 2007.)
NEW YORK CITY, NY (Oct. 26, 2004) – An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur. The Statement supports an August 31st Zogby poll that found nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe the government had foreknowledge and “consciously failed to act,” with 66% wanting a new 9/11 investigation.
Focusing on twelve questions, the Statement highlights areas of incriminating evidence that were either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission, ranging from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings and inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asks for four actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry.
The Statement’s list of signatories includes notables spanning the political spectrum, from Presidential candidates Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik, and David Cobb to Catherine Austin Fitts, a member of the first Bush administration, as well as Washington veterans like Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signers range from peace activists like Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans and Global Exchange’s Kevin Danaher to former US Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq, Edward L. Peck; from environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins to business leaders such as Paul Hawken and Karl Schwarz, CEO of Patmos Nanotechnologies; from populist journalist Ronnie Dugger to renowned investigative reporter Kelly Patricia O’Meara.
The Statement also includes 43 noted authors, including New York Times #1 bestseller John Gray, as well as 18 eminent professors, historians, and theologians. Other notables include five-term Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, singers Michelle Shocked and Michael Franti, and actors Ed Asner and Mimi Kennedy.
The Statement was facilitated by 911truth.org, a leading coalition. The organization has also announced a press conference outside of Eliot Spitzer’s Manhattan office (corner of Cedar and Nassau) at 2:00PM on Thursday, Oct. 28th where 9/11 family members and victim group representatives will file a formal complaint demanding the first criminal investigation of 9/11 events by the New York Attorney General.
The Statement
We Want Real Answers About 9/11
On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and “consciously failed” to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attorney General.
In connection with this news, we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.
We want truthful answers to questions such as:
- Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?
- Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?
- Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?
- Why hasn’t a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?
- Why haven’t authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?
- Why has Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who claims to have knowledge of advance warnings, been publicly silenced with a gag order requested by Attorney General Ashcroft and granted by a Bush-appointed judge?
- How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA’s radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?
- How were the FBI and CIA able to release the names and photos of the alleged hijackers within hours, as well as to visit houses, restaurants, and flight schools they were known to frequent?
- What happened to the over 20 documented warnings given our government by 14 foreign intelligence agencies or heads of state?
- Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?
- Why did the 911 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?
- Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 911 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?
Those who are demanding deeper inquiry now number in the hundreds of thousands, including a former member of the first Bush administration, a retired Air Force colonel, a European parliamentarian, families of the victims, highly respected authors, investigative journalists, peace and justice leaders, former Pentagon staff, and the National Green Party.
As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
- An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
- Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
- Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
- The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry.
Given the importance of the coming election, we feel it is imperative that these questions be addressed publicly, honestly, and rigorously so that Americans may exercise their democratic rights with full awareness.
In closing, we pray and hope for the strength to approach this subject with wisdom and compassion so that we may heal from the wounds inflicted on that terrible day. (“Respected Leaders and Families Launch 9/11 Truth Statement Demanding Deeper Investigation into the Events of 9/11,” 911Truth.org, 26 Oct. 2004, downloaded from https://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633, 21 Aug. 2007.)
Call to Whistleblowers
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties… Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now. (Truth-Telling Coalition, 9 September 2004, cited in Ray McGovern, “Proof Bush Fixed the Facts,” TomPaine.commonsense, 4 May 2005, downloaded from https://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/05/04/proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php, 7 August 2007.)
TO: Current Government Officials
FROM: Concerned Alumni
SUBJECT: Truth
It is time for unauthorized truth-telling.
Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts—for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public.
Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.
Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that—if brought to light—would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.
Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system. Only very rarely would it be appropriate to reveal information of the three types whose disclosure has been expressly criminalized by Congress: communications intelligence, nuclear data, and the identity of US intelligence operatives. However, this administration has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.
There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistleblowing, dissemination and relations with the media.
Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as thesource, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs.
This is precisely what happened at this comparable stage in the Vietnam War. Some of us live with profound regret that we did not at that point expose the administration’s dishonesty and perhaps prevent the needless slaughter of 50,000 more American troops and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese over the next ten years. We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties.
A hundred forty thousand young Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose. Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
SIGNATORIES
Call to Patriotic Truth Telling
Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State
John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism
Lt. Col Karen Kwiatowski, USAF (ret.), who served in the Pentagon’s Office of Near East Planning
John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State
David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency
Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: “The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy” — CENSORED)
Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer
(Ray McGovern, “Appeal for Truth Telling,” TomPaine.commonsense, 13 September 2004, downloaded from https://www.tompaine.com/articles/appeal_for_truth_telling.php, 7 August 2007.)
There have been a few courageous people who have stood on principle at some personal cost. Ironically, we intelligence professionals, we, unfairly, we tend to dismiss foreign service officers as knee-jerk mouthpieces for the administration. Well, three such foreign service officers have stood on principle and have quit, some of them before the war ever started, and they have issued eloquent statements as to how their conscience would not permit them to have to tell these lies to folks, to try to rally support for an unjust US policy. There is Andrew Wilke in Australia, an incredible person whom Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity had to this country. We all chipped in and paid for his fare. He spoke in Congress at one of the congressional hearings. Andrew quit the Office of National Assessments in Australia, which is the CIA counterpart, eight days before the war, because he could no longer countenance his country going into a war on the basis of intelligence that he saw to be bogus. And he spoke out immediately, and over the last few weeks, although you won’t see it in the US press, he and Prime Minister Howard in Australia have been having a personal argument in the press as to how the intelligence was over-egged as the British say, exaggerated, sexed-up, as some of the other British and Australians say. So there is precedent for people speaking out.
I guess the most prominent American example of that is Daniel Ellsberg. And the interesting thing there is, you know, I asked Daniel Ellsberg, do you have any regrets about outing the Pentagon Papers, which he gave to the NY Times and the Washington Post about Vietnam which showed all the lies and deceit about that policy. He said yes, Ray, I do have one major regret. I said, what’s that? He said I did it in 1971, and I should have done it in 1964 or ‘65 where it could have prevented this war or at least retarded it. And I said Dan, why didn’t you do it? And he said, Ray, it’s hard to believe but it never occurred to me. You know how it is when you get immeshed in this culture and your loyalties get a little perverted, and they become the loyalty to the little group, and it’s beyond the pale to rise above that and to release information that you know the public should have. Well, that was my mind frame, so it never occurred to me.
And so our latest appeal to intelligence professionals still working on the inside is, well let it occur to you now. There are more important things. And we are not suggesting that they release classified information. All they have to do is tell what happened in months before this war. Tell how bogus information was used, like forgeries, to deceive Congress. This is a constitutional crisis to deceive the other branch of government. . (Ray McGovern quoted in “The Crazies Are Back”: Bush Sr.’s CIA Briefer Discusses How Wolfowitz & Allies Falsely Led the U.S. To War,” Democracy Now! 17 September 2003, downloaded from https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215, 7 August 2007.)
What do Potential Whistleblowers Fear?
David Ray Griffin: I have heard of people in the Pentagon. I know a guy who knows a guy who’s still working in the Pentagon, who says, this guy tells me, it was no Boeing 757. So I ask the guy, can you get this guy to say this in public, and he says, absolutely not.
He fears he will be killed if he said that. So there are people who fear for their lives, but I doubt it’s newspaper reporters, it’s more that they fear for their jobs or their reputation or whatever.
Q: We always hear about people being “disappeared” in other countries. Do you believe it happens here as well? Are journalists at risk?
DRG: We had over 100 people who died mysteriously and just sometimes just before they were going to testify [regarding the Pres. Kennedy assassination]. Whether to the New Orleans jury or to the House select committee. But these were always people who had some particular inside information. Nobody who wrote a book about it was ever killed. They were speculating and they can be dismissed as conspiracy theorists. And they don’t really have a firsthand knowledge.
The only kind of news people who might be threatened are people who actually went out and interviewed somebody and got some of that direct inside information and were about to report.
One or two people have died who were thought by some to have been related to 9/11. (“Interview with David Ray Griffin,” Whole Life Times, downloaded from https://wholelifetimes.com/2006/09/griffin0609.html, 7 August 2007.)
Myth Number 3: Such a big operation, involving so many people, could not have been kept a secret, because someone involved in it would have talked by now.
This claim is based on a more general myth, which is that is impossible for secret government operations to be kept secret very long, because someone always talks. But how could we know this? If some big operations have remained secret until now, we by definition do not know about them.
Moreover, we do know of big some operations that were kept secret as long as necessary, such as the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb, and the war in Indonesia in 1957, which the United States government provoked, participated in, and was able to keep secret from its own people until a book about it appeared in 1995. Many more examples could be given.
We can understand, moreover, why those with inside knowledge of 9/11 would not talk. At least most of them would have been people with the proven ability to keep secrets. Those who were directly complicit would also be highly motivated to avoid public disgrace and the gas chamber. Those people who had knowledge without being complicit could be induced to keep quiet by means of more or less subtle threats—such as: “Joe, if you go forward with your plans to talk to the press about this, I don’t know who is going to protect your wife and kids from some nutcase angered by your statement.” Still another fact is that neither the government nor the mainstream press has, to say the least, shown any signs of wanting anyone to come forward. (David Ray Griffin, “Myth Number 3: Such a big operation, involving so many people, could not have been kept a secret, because someone involved in it would have talked by now,” downloaded from https://www.911truth.dk/first/en/faq.htm, 19 Aug. 2007.)
Q: What about the people in the press who got the military grade anthrax right after 9/11?
David Ray Griffin: Yes, it did look like a warning shot. The president and the vice president asked Tom Daschle to have this innocuous investigation carried out only by the Joint Intelligence Commission. Daschle went along with it. Daschle was one of the ones who got anthraxed. Brokaw was another one. So it was a message to news reporters: don’t do anything. (“Interview with David Ray Griffin,” Whole Life Times, downloaded from https://wholelifetimes.com/2006/09/griffin0609.html, 7 August 2007.)
Q: Do you ever have concerns for your safety?
David Ray Griffin: I don’t worry about that because there are two choices—they can either leave me alone or they can take me out.
If they leave me alone I get to enjoy my old age and write my systematic theology.
If they take me out, my 9/11 books rise to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So it’s a win/win situation. (“Interview with David Ray Griffin,” Whole Life Times, downloaded from https://wholelifetimes.com/2006/09/griffin0609.html, 7 August 2007.)
Democrats Refuse to Push for a Re-opening of 9/11 Investigation
Newport, Rhode Island – Reporters affiliated with WeAreChange.org and Infowars.com confronted Speaker Nancy Pelosi about a new 9/11 investigation just after the passage of the 9/11 Bill, which only increases already strict security measures, particularly in airports.
Pelosi rattled off a quick, “No, no, no” to the idea of a new 9/11 investigation before changing the subject to claim that she “worked closely with the victims’ families” and that they supposedly wanted the recent legislation.
Not only were many families of 9/11 victims disappointed with the 9/11 Commission’s findings, many 9/11 survivors were outraged that their testimony had been omitted or distorted in the final report. Recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, which were the basis of this legislation, only obscured the lingering questions that families wanted answered in the first place.
Furthermore, nearly all of the victims’ families want a new investigation and a large number of families believe 9/11 was an inside job, including Bill Doyle, the head of the largest 9/11 victim’s families group. (Aaron Dykes, “Pelosi Says “No” to a New 9/11 Investigation, Claims Close Collaboration with Victim’s Families on 9/11 Bill Passage . 9/11 Investigation Also Off the Table For Speaker Who Refuses to Impeach Bush,” Jones Report, 31 July 2007, downloaded from https://www.jonesreport.com/articles/310707_pelosi_911.html, 1 August 2007.)
Bank Whistleblower Fired
March 22, 2007 – William Bergman worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from July 1990 until early 2004. He served as an economist for eight years, and then moved to a senior analyst position in a new department researching financial market and payment system risk policy issues. In late 2003, he was asked to consider an assignment in the money laundering area. Bergman accepted the assignment, underwent a background check, received credentials affording access to confidential banking information, and began working in the area. He was told that he was “part of the fight against terrorism” and that he “had been asking good questions.”
One aspect of the assignment to the money laundering area was for Bergman to develop a paper that, if accepted, could serve as a reference source for the Federal Reserve System.
Bergman decided to begin his new assignment by developing a 40 question Q&A in order to introduce himself and anyone else new to the money laundering area to the topic. He thought that the Q&A could serve as a primer that dealt with the fundamentals, including some history on money laundering, recent legal developments in the area, and the role of banking regulators.
After submitting his draft to a supervisor, Bergman received approval of his work and was told that it could be considered as a reference. However, in his Q&A, Bergman left one question without an answer. That is to say that Bergman submitted his 40 question Q&A with 40 questions, but only 39 answers. The supervisor that reviewed the draft told Bergman that he should continue his work by answering the only remaining unanswered question in the draft.
What prompted the unanswered question that Bergman incorporated into his draft? Bergman had noted that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve had issued supervisory letters to the 12 Reserve Banks in the weeks after September 11, 2001 urging scrutiny of suspicious activity reports in tracking terrorism activity and financing. However, Bergman also noticed that the Board of Governors had issued a similar letter, albeit one that did not refer explicitly to terrorism, on August 2, 2001[1]. According to Bergman, terrorism and terrorist financing were known to be part of ‘suspicious activity’ however, and the August 2, 2001 supervisory letter clearly called for scrutiny of suspicious activity, which implies and includes the tracking of terrorism activity and financing. The unanswered question on Bergman’s 40 question Q&A asked why the Board had issued the August 2, 2001 letter – a very fair, logical, and important question that has yet to be answered to this day.
Given the fact that the supervisor gave him the green light and directed him to find the answer regarding the August 2, 2001 supervisory letter, Bergman decided that the best method to discover the answer was to contact the staff of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve directly. In December 2003 he called the Board and inquired about the meaning and motivation behind the August 2, 2001 letter. Within two weeks his assignment was abruptly terminated and his credentials canceled.
Bergman explains:
At the time I was also looking into and asking questions about currency flows. I thought these questions were worth pursuing, and was planning to raise them when I made the above-noted phone call to the Board of Governors. The currency component of M1 (Federal Reserve Notes circulating outside of banks) rose especially rapidly in July and August 2001. In fact, up to and including August 2001, that month (August 2001) was one of the three fastest growing months for the currency component of M1 since 1947, on a seasonally adjusted basis, even on the heels of significantly above-average growth in July 2001. Much of the July-August surge (over $5 billion above-average) seems to have been in the $100 denomination. Among other explanations, persons aware of any imminent terrorist attacks and concerned about possible asset seizures such as those that arose after the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and the 1998 embassy bombings could have been trying to liquidate their bank accounts in July and August 2001. The money trail could provide important clues about people aware of, if not responsible for, the attacks. I looked at some internal data bearing on this issue that was available to anyone within the Federal Reserve’s internal computer network; after going back to look at this important data again a week or two later, it was no longer freely available, but password protected.
Approximately one month after his money laundering work was terminated for what was described at the time as an egregious breach of protocol attributed to his contacting the staff of the Board of Governors, Bergman’s department was absorbed into another department, and his 14-year employment with the Federal Reserve ended. Bergman was told that the elimination of his position at the Federal Reserve had nothing to do with him personally – that it was an organizational matter. He was offered and accepted a severance package, and left the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank in March 2004.
Whether inquiring about the unusually high put options placed prior to 9/11 on airline companies such as American and United, or the World Trade Center Complex insurance companies such as Axa, Allianz, along with other insurance companies of interests, put options that then most likely made the insiders billions of dollars as a result of these companies’ stock values plummeting after 9/11, or about an unusual spike in the currency component of the M1 in July / August 2001 that appears to be $5 billion denoted in $100 bills – and what the reader is left with is more evidence that prior knowledge of 9/11 was rampant in the United States and that the event could have been prevented but was instead, enabled and exploited.
And what about the August 2, 2001 supervisory letter? What prompted it? Sadly, Americans are once again left with trying to determine for themselves – because nobody entrusted to uphold the rule of law free from passion or prejudice is willing to launch a thorough and purposeful criminal investigation – who knew what, and when.
Prior knowledge of 9/11 without action and / or effort to prevent the events from unfolding is at minimum – criminally negligent homicide – a felony. For many within the U.S. government and foreign intelligence community, as well as the banking cartel, for the entire wide-ranging set of un-indicted co-conspirators, justice waits, but must prevail.
(Ed Haas, “Former Fed analyst questions M1 currency component spike prior to 9/11,” Muckraker Report, 22 March 2007, downloaded from https://visibility911.com/blog/?p=124#more-124, 31 August 2007.)
[1] Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, SR 01-18 (SUP), Suspicious Activity Report Database, August 2, 2001, https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/srletters/2001/sr0118.htm, [Accessed March 21, 2007]