THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Naik, the Americans said that if the Taliban failed to agree, "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead. before the snows started falling in Afghanistan."7 The 9/11 Commission gave a much less bellicose account of the Bush administration's attitude, saying that it was "moving toward agreement that some last effout should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position and then, if that failed, ... the United States would try covert action to topple the Taliban's leadership from within."8 The needed "shift,” according to the Commission, seemed to involve simply tuming over bin Laden (not also forming a unity government), and the Commission gave no hint that the US representatives had threatened military force (not merely covert action). The Commission also failed to mention that President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the new prime minister after the fall of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, had both previously been on Unocal's payroll-a fact 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 4/19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION TAT : hen I wrote NPH, I did not always have firmly in mind the distinction between orchestrating the attacks and merely allowing them to happen. Much of the book's evidence, however, pointed toward orchestration. I should not, therefore, have suggested in the title of that book's seventh chapter that the attacks had merely been allowed. In any case, The 9/11 Commission Report contains not even a hint that the Bush administration might have had motives for orchestrating, or at least allowing, the 9/11 attacks. Accordingly, every issue discussed in Chapter 7 of NPH was ignored or greatly played down. 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 1 / 19 - THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Bolton, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. The Commission could have mentioned that in 1997, Wolfowitz and Khalilzad published an article entitled “Saddam Must Go."20 It could also have mentioned that in 1998, PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton, urging him to adopt a strategy, including “military action," aimed at "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."21 The Commission, moreover, could have pointed out that in the fall of 2000, shortly before the Bush administration took office, PNAC published Rebuilding America's Defenses, which stated: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."22 By not referring to this or any similar passage, the Commission obscured the fact, as it did with regard to Afghanistan, that the Bush administration and the C 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 10 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Pentagon planned to build several permanent military bases in Iraq. This was known before the Commission wrote its report, as shown by a Chicago Tribune story published in March 2004 entitled "14 'Enduring Bases' Set in Iraq; Long- Teim Military Presence Planned."23 One more thing ignored by the 9/11 Commission was the fact that the administration's claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a lie, not simply a mistake. Although the absolute proof that this was a lie—the Downing Street memo revealing that the intelligence about WMD was being "fixed around the policy"—was not published until May 2005, 24 the fact that it was a lie had, to people willing to question the administration's claims, become evident long before the Commission completed its report 25 In sum, the 9/11 Commission's simplistic and noncontextual account of the Bush administration's reasons for attacking Iraq falsely implied that it would not ( 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 11 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED have had any plans for Iraq that could have provided a motive for fabricating a false-flag terrorist attack. How a New PEARL HARBOR WOULD HELP Besides not referring to the Iraq statement in Rebuilding America's Defenses, the 9/11 Commission also did not mention this document's most notorious statement the one indicating that PNAC's plans would be helped by "a new Pearl Harbor." This omission fuither illustrated how, although Kean and Hamilton said that their 9/11 Commission had sought "to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11," its account was in reality very selective. While discussing bin Laden's 1998 fatwa—which said that Muslims should kill Americans- so as so as to show that al-Qaeda had had a motive for planning the attacks,26 the Commission ignored the much clearer statement of possible motives by an organization whose members included men who became 12 / 19 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Naik, the Americans said that if the Taliban failed to agree, "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead. before the snows started falling in Afghanistan."7 The 9/11 Commission gave a much less bellicose account of the Bush administration's attitude, saying that it was "moving toward agreement that some last effout should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position and then, if that failed, ... the United States would try covert action to topple the Taliban's leadership from within."8 The needed "shift,” according to the Commission, seemed to involve simply tuming over bin Laden (not also forming a unity government), and the Commission gave no hint that the US representatives had threatened military force (not merely covert action). The Commission also failed to mention that President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the new prime minister after the fall of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, had both previously been on Unocal's payroll-a fact 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 4/19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION TAT : hen I wrote NPH, I did not always have firmly in mind the distinction between orchestrating the attacks and merely allowing them to happen. Much of the book's evidence, however, pointed toward orchestration. I should not, therefore, have suggested in the title of that book's seventh chapter that the attacks had merely been allowed. In any case, The 9/11 Commission Report contains not even a hint that the Bush administration might have had motives for orchestrating, or at least allowing, the 9/11 attacks. Accordingly, every issue discussed in Chapter 7 of NPH was ignored or greatly played down. 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 1 / 19 - THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED PRE-9/11 PLANS TO ATTACK AFGHANISTAN The Commission did acknowledge that the US war in Afghanistan was aimed at producing "regime change."1 According to the Commission, however, the United States only wanted to change the regime because the Taliban, besides being incapable of providing peace by ending the civil war, was perpetrating human rights abuses and providing a "safe haven" for al-Qaeda.2 The Commission ignored, in other words, all evidence that the United States wanted to get control of the oil of Central Asia, as Zbigniew Brzezinski had counseled in The Grand Chessboard, in order to maintain "American primacy.' The centrality of oil had been emphasized in Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, a widely read book by Ahmed Rashid, who dubbed the pipeline project “The New Great Game."4 In the 1990s, the United States had hoped the Taliban would be able to provide the stability needed for 13 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 2/ 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Unocal to build the pipeline an effort discussed in two chapters by Rashid with the same title, “Romancing the Taliban: The Battle for Pipelines." 5 However, although the 9/11 Commission cited Rashid's book several times, it made no reference to his discussion of the centrality of the pipelines to Washington's intentions. It mentioned the pipeline project in general and Unocal in particular only in one paragraph, and this paragraph suggested that the US State Department was interested in Unocal's pipeline project merely insofar as "the prospect of shared pipeline profits might lure faction leaders to a conference table."6 The Commission also failed to mention that, at a Berlin meeting in July 2001, the Bush administration, giving the Taliban one last chance, demanded that it create stability by forming a "unity govemment" with its opponents. It did not mention, therefore, that according to former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 3 / 19 - THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED that led Chalmers Johnson to write: "The continued collaboration of Khalilzad and Karzai in post-9/11 Afghanistan strongly suggests that the Bush administration was and remains as interested in oil as in terrorism in that region.”9 The Commission, furthermore, did not mention that by October 10, three days after the US attack on Afghanistan began, the US Department of State had informed the Pakistani minister of oil that, “in view of recent geopolitical developments," Unocal was again ready to go ahead with the pipeline project 10 Another significant factor in the Bush administration's plans for Afghanistan and the surrounding countries, which was implicit in Brzezinski's call to take control of Central Asia, was the intention to build permanent military bases in the region. Chalmers Johnson, seeing the desire "to establish an American presence in Central Asia" as the central concem (even more important than helping an American company build the pipeline), pointed out in 2004 that the 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 5 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Naik, the Americans said that if the Taliban failed to agree, "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead. before the snows started falling in Afghanistan."7 The 9/11 Commission gave a much less bellicose account of the Bush administration's attitude, saying that it was "moving toward agreement that some last effout should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position and then, if that failed, ... the United States would try covert action to topple the Taliban's leadership from within."8 The needed "shift,” according to the Commission, seemed to involve simply tuming over bin Laden (not also forming a unity government), and the Commission gave no hint that the US representatives had threatened military force (not merely covert action). The Commission also failed to mention that President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the new prime minister after the fall of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, had both previously been on Unocal's payroll-a fact 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 4/19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED that led Chalmers Johnson to write: "The continued collaboration of Khalilzad and Karzai in post-9/11 Afghanistan strongly suggests that the Bush administration was and remains as interested in oil as in terrorism in that region.”9 The Commission, furthermore, did not mention that by October 10, three days after the US attack on Afghanistan began, the US Department of State had informed the Pakistani minister of oil that, “in view of recent geopolitical developments," Unocal was again ready to go ahead with the pipeline project 10 Another significant factor in the Bush administration's plans for Afghanistan and the surrounding countries, which was implicit in Brzezinski's call to take control of Central Asia, was the intention to build permanent military bases in the region. Chalmers Johnson, seeing the desire "to establish an American presence in Central Asia" as the central concem (even more important than helping an American company build the pipeline), pointed out in 2004 that the 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 5 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Bush administration, besides establishing long-term bases in Afghanistan, also quickly arranged for long-term bases in Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.11 With its very selective presentation, therefore, the Commission presented a picture of the United States as having had no imperialistic or crass material interests in the area, the kind of interests that might lead a government to devise a pretext for going to war. The United States simply wanted to capture Osama bin Laden, bring an end to the Taliban's human rights abuses, and prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. PRE-9/11 PLANS TO ATTACK IRAQ In relation to the attack on Iraq, the 9/11 Commission gave the appearance of being independent and critical of the Bush administration. It pointed out that certain members of the Bush administration, especially Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, pushed for attacking Iraq immediately after 9/11.12 The Commission also said 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 6/19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED P! that it found no evidence of any "collaborative operational relationship" between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and hence no evidence that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.” 13 This statement, released in a staff report about a month before the publication of The 9/11 Commission Report, created much discussion in the press, especially after Vice President Cheney labeled "outrageous" a New York Times front-page story entitled "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie." 14 William Safire criticized Kean and Hamilton for letting themselves be “jerked around by a manipulative staff," while Joe Conason wrote an article entitled “9/11 Panel Becomes Cheney's Nightmare."15 The 9/11 Commission was thereby portrayed as truly independent The press failed to point out, however, that the Commission had shielded its readers from the evidence, cited in NPH, showing how deep and longstanding C 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 7 / 19 - THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED the desire to attack Iraq had been among some members of the Bush administration. For example, the Commission said: "President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against US interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields." 16 The Commission thereby ignored evidence that the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq in any case, not only if it “acted against US interests," and that its first action would be to take control of the oil fields, so that this was not something that it might only "possibly" do. The Commission, moreover, did not mention that Paul O'Neill, who had been treasury secretary and thereby a member of the National Security Council, had said—in a highly publicized interview on CBS's 60 Minutes in January 2004- that as soon as the Bush administration took office, the main topic was going after Saddam, with the question being not “Why Saddam?" or "Why Now?" but 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 8 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED merely "finding a way to do it."17 The Commission did not mention O'Neill's claim even though it was backed up by Richard Clarke, who said: “[H]e is right. The administration of the second George Bush did begin with Iraq on its agenda." 18 Nor did the Commission mention O'Neill's report that the Defense Intelligence Agency, which worked for Rumsfeld, had begun mapping Iraq's oil fields right after the Bush administration took office and had, by March 2001, prepared a document, entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which suggested how Iraq's huge reserves might be divided up following an invasion.19 The Commission failed, furthermore, to point out that the idea that the United States should attack Iraq had been articulated in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative organization with which many members of the Bush administration were affiliated, including John 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 9 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Bolton, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. The Commission could have mentioned that in 1997, Wolfowitz and Khalilzad published an article entitled “Saddam Must Go."20 It could also have mentioned that in 1998, PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton, urging him to adopt a strategy, including “military action," aimed at "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."21 The Commission, moreover, could have pointed out that in the fall of 2000, shortly before the Bush administration took office, PNAC published Rebuilding America's Defenses, which stated: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."22 By not referring to this or any similar passage, the Commission obscured the fact, as it did with regard to Afghanistan, that the Bush administration and the C 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 10 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Pentagon planned to build several permanent military bases in Iraq. This was known before the Commission wrote its report, as shown by a Chicago Tribune story published in March 2004 entitled "14 'Enduring Bases' Set in Iraq; Long- Teim Military Presence Planned."23 One more thing ignored by the 9/11 Commission was the fact that the administration's claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a lie, not simply a mistake. Although the absolute proof that this was a lie—the Downing Street memo revealing that the intelligence about WMD was being "fixed around the policy"—was not published until May 2005, 24 the fact that it was a lie had, to people willing to question the administration's claims, become evident long before the Commission completed its report 25 In sum, the 9/11 Commission's simplistic and noncontextual account of the Bush administration's reasons for attacking Iraq falsely implied that it would not ( 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 11 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED have had any plans for Iraq that could have provided a motive for fabricating a false-flag terrorist attack. How a New PEARL HARBOR WOULD HELP Besides not referring to the Iraq statement in Rebuilding America's Defenses, the 9/11 Commission also did not mention this document's most notorious statement the one indicating that PNAC's plans would be helped by "a new Pearl Harbor." This omission fuither illustrated how, although Kean and Hamilton said that their 9/11 Commission had sought "to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11," its account was in reality very selective. While discussing bin Laden's 1998 fatwa—which said that Muslims should kill Americans- so as so as to show that al-Qaeda had had a motive for planning the attacks,26 the Commission ignored the much clearer statement of possible motives by an organization whose members included men who became 12 / 19 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary of defense, and the vice president of the militarily most powerful nation on earth. The Commission's selectivity was also illustrated by its failure to mention that 9/11 was described as an "opportunity" by several members of the Bush administration, with Bush himself saying that the attacks provided “a great opportunity" and Rumsfeld saying that they created "the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world."27 The great extent to which the Bush administration had planned to refashion the world was indicated, at least paitly, by the Newsweek article cited in NPH, which stated that some of Bush's advisors wanted to attack not only Iraq but also Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, and Burma. 28 This same intention was reported, in slightly different form, by General Wesley Clark, who said that a three-star general in the Pentagon told him late in 2001 that the Pentagon was 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 13 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED "going to take out seven countries in five years," starting with Iraq and ending with Iran—with the other countries being Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.29 The truth of Clark's report was confirmed in 2008 by Douglas Feith, who had been undersecretary of defense for policy at the time. Feith revealed that on September 30, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld sent a letter to President Bush saying that the United States should seek to establish "new regimes" in those seven countries. 30 The list mentioned by Clark and advocated by Rumsfeld did not, unlike the list in the Newsweek story, include Saudi Arabia. But this country was on the hit list of at least some of the neocons. In 2002, a speaker invited to address the Defense Policy Board by its chairman, arch-neocon Richard Perle, said that unless Saudi Arabia does as we wish, we should seize its oil fields and confiscate its other financial assets.31 The following year, another neocon, 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 14 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Michael Ledeen, wrote that "we must bring down the terror regimes," after which he named Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and “even Saudi Arabia."32 Although this talk about attacking Saudi Arabia was largely covered up, it is relevant to a question sometimes asked about the idea of 9/11 as a false flag operation: If one of the goals was to have a pretext to attack Iraq, why were the alleged hijackers mainly Saudis, rather than Iraqis? Pait of the answer is that their nationalities did not really matter as long as they were Muslims from the Middle East. But perhaps part of the answer is that those who planned this part of the operation were looking down the road to the biggest prize of all in terms of oil reserves, Saudi Arabia, 33 The 9/11 Commission, however, cited none of these reports or the fact that Bush and some members of his administration had described 9/11 as an "opportunity." This is serious selectivity. 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 15 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Missile DEFENSE AND A SPACE PEARL HARBOR When writing NPH, I misunderstood what was meant by a “Space Pearl Harbor." In my next book, 9/11 CROD, I corrected this error, writing: “In speaking of a 'Space Pearl Harbor,' the [Rumsfeld Commission's) report meant an attack on its military satellites in space. The 9/11 attacks were obviously not of this nature." Nevertheless, I added, it was interesting that "only a few months after PNAC had issued its statement about 'a new Pearl Harbor,' the Rumsfeld Commission also pointed out that a Pearl Harbor type of attack might be needed to 'galvanize the nation.""34 As I mentioned in NPH, the three men who had most publicly advocated developing the capability to wage war from space— Rumsfeld, Myers, and Eberhart-were also the three men who would have been most directly involved in overseeing a military stand-down order on 9/11, if such was given. In light of 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 16 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED the otherwise inexplicable failure of our defenses, the 9/11 Commission should have viewed these three men as suspects, whose actions that morning needed to be rigorously investigated. But the Commission instead treated their testimonies as unquestionable sources of truth as to what really happened.35 A PRECEDENT: OPERATION NORTHWOODS If the 9/11 Commission had been seriously investigating who was responsible for 9/11, it would have considered relevant the fact that the US goverment had in previous times deceived the public in order to create pretexts for war. I alluded to one such event in NPH: the sinking of the US battleship Maine, exploited as a pretext to take control of Cuba in 1898. I also described a plan called Operation Northwoods, which was developed by the Pentagon in 1962 as a pretext for a war to regain control of Cuba from Fidel Castro, who had defeated the US-backed dictator Batista in 1959. Although that plan did not become - 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION - 17 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED operational, many other deceitful plans drawn up by the US government have been carried out-such as the pretexts for the wars against Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and also the terrorist attacks in Western Europe generally known as Operation Gladio, which were mentioned in the introduction, above, and which I have discussed at length elsewhere.36 A serious investigation into 9/11, pointing out that Rumsfeld, Myers, and Eberhart belonged to an institution that had made false claims to start wars many times in the past, would have explored the hypothesis that the attacks of 9/11 might have been the latest in a series of pretexts for war created by the US government But neither Operation Northwoods nor any of the other deceptions were mentioned. In sum, the 9/11 Commission systematically omitted any information that would have provided reason to believe that the Bush administration might have 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 18 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED arranged or allowed the attacks as a pretext for carrying out its pre-established agenda - 7. MOTIVES OF US OFFICIALS: THE SILENCE OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION 19 / 19 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIL LADEI, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AIID SAUDIS I n this chapter, I deal with new developments related to reports discussed in Chapter 8 of NPH, especially the 9/11 Commission's response to these reports. The items discussed in this chapter illustrate especially clearly the extent to which the production of The 9/11 Commission Report was a cover-up operation. CONTINUING THE ANTI-HUNT FOR OSAMA BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA Bin Laden's Escape from Tora Bora: The idea that the battle for Tora Bora was, as the Guardian put it, a "grand charade," meaning that bin Laden was deliberately 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 1/ 53 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED allowed to escape, was supported, albeit unintentionally, in a 2005 book called Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. It was written by Gary Beintsen, who was the CIA's field commander in the joint CIA-US Armed Forces hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan. According to Berntsen, this US-led operation was in a position to capture or kill bin Laden and all his followers, except for one thing: they needed to put 800 US Army Rangers behind bin Laden to block all of the possible escape routes to Pakistan.1 However, although Berntsen repeatedly and insistently requested these Rangers, the US generals refused, saying that they were deferring to the Afghanis, who wanted to be the ones to capture bin Laden.2 Bemtsen had already told the generals, however, that the Afghan military leaders did not share his passion to get bin Laden. He believed, in fact, that at least some of them wanted bin Laden to escape.3 "So why," he asked, "was the US military 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 2/53 THE NEW PEARL HERBOR REVISITED looking for excuses not to act decisively? Why would they want to leave something that was so important to an unreliable Afghan aimy?"4 Berntsen was even more perplexed when he learned that, just when it was time to make the final push, he was to be replaced. His replacement, moreover, was to be a man who had previously served on George Tenet's staff and did not inspire enthusiasm in Berntsen's men. (When they leamed who the replacement was to be, the men "slapped their hands over their heads and groaned.") Bemtsen said: "I couldn't believe they were doing this in the middle of the most important battle of the war."5 Berntsen was merely perplexed, not suspicious: He described George Bush as a great commander-in-chief and The 9/11 Commission Report as a great book. But his account and his questions show that, if the US military leaders had really been instructed to go all out to capture Osama bin Laden “dead or alive," their 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS 3/53 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED subsequent decisions were irrational. If, however, the plan was to let him escape, then their decisions made perfect sense. Against his own intentions, accordingly, Berntsen has lent support to the suspicion that bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora was due to something other than incompetence. Hard Evidence of Bin Laden's Guilt? Given the Bush administration's supposed certainty that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, its apparent lack of interest in capturing or killing him, not only in 2001 but also in the following years, has been a great source of puzzlement. Ever since 2003, pundits have regularly excoriated the Bush-Cheney administration for focusing primarily on Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and thereby diverting resources away from the search for bin Laden, who they assume) was responsible for 9/11. However, given a different assumption that the Bush administration knew that bin Laden was not responsible for 9/11, its behavior would be much less perplexing. This 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 4 / 53 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED possibility brings us to one of the most important revelations about 9/11 made by government employees. No current government employee has, to be sure, said that the Bush administration knew that bin Laden was not responsible for 9/11. A spokesman for the FBI has, however, admitted that the bureau has no hard evidence that bin Laden was responsible. This development occurred after it was noticed that the FBI's “Usama bin Laden" page on its "Most Wanted Terrorists" website did not mention 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which bin Laden was wanted.7 Puzzled by this omission, Muckraker Report editor Ed Haas contacted FBI headquarters to ask why. Rex Tomb, who was then the FBI's chief of investigative publicity, reportedly replied: "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."8 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 5 / 53 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Learning from Tomb that the FBI's pages could mention only crimes for which people had been formally indicated, Haas repeatedly contacted the Department of Justice to ask why bin Laden had never been indicted for 9/11. But, he repoited, he received no reply. Rex Tomb's revelation highlighted the fact that no real evidence of bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 had ever been provided. Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Meet the Press that he would soon put out a document describing the evidence linking bin Laden to the attack.10 But the next day, while appearing before the press with President Bush, Powell said that the document would not be forthcoming, because most of the relevant information was classified. 11 Seymour Hersh, citing a Justice Department official, reported that the administration really withdrew the pledge "for lack of hard facts."12 Shortly thereafter, British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to come to the 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 6 / 53 THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED rescue, presenting a document entitled “Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States." Listing clear conclusions reached by the government," it stated: "Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities on 11 September 2001."13 This document begins by admitting, however, that it does not pupoit to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a couit of law." Although its evidence might have been good enough to go to war, in other words, it was not good enough to 10 go to court The issue also came up in discussions between the US govemment and the Taliban. A CNN report on September 21 said: President Bush demanded Thursday night that the Taliban surrender all leaders of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. ... The Taliban have defied the US demand, refusing to hand over bin Laden without proof or evidence that he was involved in last week's attacks on the United States. 14 - 7/ 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED But the Bush administration rejected the request, saying that no proof about bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 was necessary, because he had already been indicted for other crimes: ? "There is already an indictment for Osama bin Laden," [White House press secretary Ari] Fleischer said. "There's an indictment in the case of Tanzania, Kenya, the bombings in East Africa. ... The president said there would be no discussions and no negotiations." »15 Several weeks later, a Taliban spokesman said: "We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement [in the September 11 attacks], but they have refused. Why?"16 Accordingly, when Rex Tomb admitted in 2006 that the FBI had no hard evidence of bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11, he was simply stating explicitly what the Bush and Blair govemments had been saying implicitly all along. The fact that an FBI spokesman did explicitly state this should, of course, have resulted in screaming headlines and extensive coverage on television news and 8 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS THE NE'A PEARL HERBOR REVISITED talk shows. Instead, however, it was included in Project Censored's list of the 25 most censored stories of the year:17 Readers might assume that, once the absence of 9/11 on bin Laden's Most Wanted page became publicized—it was, for example, discussed in a Washington Post story in 200618—the page would have been changed. However, when the FBI updated its "Top Ten Most Wanted" list early in 2008,19 it did not add 9/11 to the list of terrorist attacks for which bin Laden was wanted. The Osama bin Laden "Confession Video" of 2001: It has been widely claimed, to be sure, that the missing proof was provided by a video, released by the US govemment in December 2001, in which bin Laden apparently admitted responsibility for the attacks. The tape, which was evidently made on November 9, 2001, was reportedly found by US intelligence officers in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. A BBC report said: “The tape is being seen by America's 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 9/ 53 DER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED allies as vindicating the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan. ... The White House hopes the video will bolster international support for the war on terrorism." 20 President Bush declared: "For those who see this tape, they'll realize that not only is he [Osama bin Laden) guilty of incredible murder, he has no conscience and no soul." 21 Rudy Giuliani called the tape "one of the most detailed descriptions of a premeditated mass murder that I had ever heard."22 Serious questions, however, have been raised about the authenticity of this tape, partly because the man in the video has darker skin, fuller cheeks, and a broader nose than the Osama bin Laden of other videos. He also seems much healthier than bin Laden did in a video made just six days earlier.23 Arabist Kevin Barrett said: “[T]he big guy (in the video] clearly was not bin Laden. He was at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier, and his facial features were obviously different:"24 Also, pointed out the Guardian, the man in the video "appears to be 10 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 41°F ra (1») ENG 11:40 11/10 kobo מת DER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE N PEARL HARBOR REVISITED a wearing a ring on his right hand. In previous film of bin Laden. .. , he has wom no jeweliy apart from a watch."25 An additional reason for considering the video inauthentic is provided by some of the statements made by its “Osama bin Laden." In speaking of the hijackers, he said: The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.26 According to the govemment, however, records show that the hijackers purchased their plane tickets two weeks in advance.27 The man in the video also said: “Those who were trained to fly didn't know the others. One group of people did not know the other group." But that also is not true. The men said to be pilots and those said to be the "muscle hijackers" all mingled with each other.28 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 11 / 53 41°F la » ENG 11:40 11/10 kobo BI ND O DER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE PEARL HARBOR REVISITED He also said: [W]e calculated in advance the nlimber of casualties from the enemy who would be killed based on the position of the tower [D]ue to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the builling and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for 29 Given the real Osama bin Laden's experience as a contractor, he would have known the buildings were framed with steel, not iron, and he would have known that the fire, even while being fed by jet fuel, would not have melted any steel- or any iron, for that matter. For these reasons, many experts consider the video to be a fabrication. Professor Bruce Lawrence, who is widely regarded as America's leading academic bin Laden expert, bluntly declared: "It's bogus.” According to his informants within the US intelligence community's bin Laden units, Lawrence 12 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F la «» ENG 11:41 11/10 lle kobo Ghp DER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEN PEARL HARBOR RE: ISITED added, everyone in those units knows that the video is a fake.30 General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's ISI, said: "I think there is an Osama Bin Laden look-alike.31 This video, in which Osama bin Laden appears to boast about his role in planning 9/11, has been regarded as sufficient proof of his responsibility by some defenders of the official account (such as New York Times reporter Philip Shenon32). However, bin Laden had previously stated emphatically that he had nothing to do with 9/11. On September 16, 2001, he told Al Jazeera television: "I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seem to have been planned by people for personal reasons." 33 When asked during an interview twelve days later whether he was involved in 9/11, he replied: "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. . . . I had no knowledge of these attacks. ... [W]e are 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 13 / 53 11:41 N 41°F la » ENG kobo 11/10 gi lp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE'N PEARL HARBOR REVISITED against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed."34 If the question is what bin Laden himself said, what is the justification for allowing a video of dubious authenticity to overrule statements whose authenticity is indubitable? In any case, President Bush, in response to questions that were raised about the authenticity of the tape immediately after its release, said: “It is preposterous for anybody to think that this tape is doctored. That's just a feeble excuse to provide weak support for an incredibly evil man. Those who question the tape's authenticity, however, would seem to include the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI. People who tout this “Osama bin Laden confession video" as proof of his responsibility for 9/11 should recall that, even after this tape was released, the DOJ did not indict bin Laden for 9/11 and the FBI, therefore, did not list him as wanted for 9/11. The DOJ and the FBI, in "35 14 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS ))) 41°F 11:41 11/10 a ») ENG kobo D מת 2 ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE N PEARL HARBOR REVISITED other words, evidently did not regard this video as hard evidence of bin Laden's connection to 9/11.36 KSM and the 9/11 Commission: The 9/11 Commission wrote as if there were no question about Osama bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11. We can imagine ways in which this fact would be consistent with the FBI's admission that it has no hard evidence to support the claim of bin Laden's responsibility. Perhaps the 9/11 Commission had evidence of which the DOJ and FBI have remained unaware. Or perhaps the DOJ and FBI, while being aware of this evidence, refused to classify it as "hard" evidence only because they use an excessively rigorous standard for this classification. But, whatever be the case with the DOJ and FBI, it has been widely assumed that the 9/11 Commission had very good evidence that bin Laden was behind the attacks. That, however, tums out not to have been the case, by the admission of the Commission's own co-chaimmen, 15 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS 11:41 N 41°F lo ») ENG kobo 11/10, hp) ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE'N PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton. Whenever The 9/11 Commission Report spoke of evidence pointing to bin Laden's responsibility, the note in the back of the book always referred to information provided by the CIA that had (presumably) been elicited during their interrogations of al-Qaeda members. The most important of these al-Qaeda members was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), described as the “mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks. Here, for example, are some statements made by the Commission: KSM arranged a meeting with Bin Ladin in Tora Bora [and] presented the al Qaeda leader with a menu of ideas for terrorist operations. ... KSM also presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the Ir United States. This proposal eventually would become the 9/11 operation..... Bin Ladin Fond finally decided to give the green light for the 9/11 operation sometime in late 1998 or early to an als ont not to 1999. . . . KSM reasoned he could best influence US policy by targeting the country's economy.... New York, which KSM considered the economic capital of the United States, men, 16 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS 11:41 11/10/ 41°F ^ Ta «» ENG kobo hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE N PEARL HARBOR RE: ISITED therefore became the primuy target Bin Lalin slimmone. KSM t: Kan lahar in March or April 1999 to tell him that al Qaedla wouill slipport his proposal Bin Lalin want to Jestroy the White House and the Pentagon, KSM wanted to strike the World Trade Center Bin Ladin also soon selected four individuals to serve as sliicide operatives [Two of them) had already obtained US visas KSM had not met them. His only guidance from Bin Ladin was that the two should eventually go to the United States for pilot training Atta—whom Bin Ladin chose to lead the group—met with Bin Ladin several times to receive additional instructions, including a preliminary list of approved targets: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the US Capitol. It is clear ... that Bin Ladin and [Mohammed] Atef were very much in charge of the operation. 37 The note for each of these statements about al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden says "interrogation(s) of KSM."38 One problem with this evidence was explained by Kean and Hamilton in their 2006 book, Without Precedent, subtitled The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. The greatest difficulty they had, they admitted in giving one of their inside 17 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS = 41°F la 4») ENG 11:41 11/10/ kobo hp R SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... G THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED revelations, was "obtaining access to star witnesses in custody..., most notably Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the attacks, and [Ramzi] Binalshibh, who helped coordinate the attacks from Europe." 39 Why was such access so important? These and other detainees were the only possible source for inside information about the plot. If the commission was mandated to provide an authoritative account of the 9/11 attacks, it followed that our mandate afforded us the right to learn what these detainees had to say about 9/11.40 They were not, however, allowed by the CIA to interrogate any of these detainees. Even their request to observe the interrogations through one-way glass, so that they "could at least observe the detainee[s'] demeanor and evaluate [their] credibility," was turned down, although Kean and Hamilton believed that, without at least this much access, they "could not evaluate the credibility of the detainees' accounts." 41 The Commission, finally, “never even got to meet 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS 18 / 53 N kobo 41°F chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PERL HARBOR REVISITED ? with the people conducting the interrogations."42 The closest they came to the detainees was a CIA “project manager," to whom they were allowed to submit questions for the detainees, and through whom they would receive the answers. But this meant, Kean and Hamilton pointed out, that “they were receiving information thirdhand-passed from the detainee, to the interrogator, to the person who writes up the interrogation report, and finally to our staff in the form of reports, not even transcripts." 43 As a result, they admitted: “We... had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information. How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed .. was telling us the truth?"44 With that ihetorical question, Kean and Hamilton made clear that the 9/11 Commission provided no real evidence of the responsibility of Osama bin Laden for the attacks of 9/11. Given this admission, their book Without Precedent would 19/ 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N Mig kobo 41°F Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEN PEARL HARBOR REVISITED have more aptly been called "Without Evidence." Although Kean and Hamilton's admission, which I reported in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, went unmentioned in the mainstream press, a second major problem with the Commission's evidence did finally get exposed in an NBC News “deep background" report early in 2008. Referring to "an extensive NBC News analysis of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report," authors Robert Windrem and Victor Limjoco wrote: The analysis shows that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was derived from the interrogations of high-ranking al-Qaida operatives. Each had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." Some were even subjected to waterboarding.... > The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now- controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report's most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS 20 / 53 N RI A kobo 41°F hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED attacks 45 There is no doubt, moreover, that these operatives included KSM. In February 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted that both KSM and Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding. 46 Windrem and Limjoco focused primarily on the fact that the 9/11 Commission, while suspecting that KSM and the other detainees were tortured, did not ask the CIA whether this was the case. But Windrem and Limjoco did point out that, if toiture was in fact used, then the resulting statements could not be trusted: 9/11 Commission staffers say they... were concerned that the techniques had affected the operatives' credibility. At least four of the operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being “tortured." ... Specifically, the NBC News analysis shows 441 of the more than 1,700 footnotes in the 21 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo hp r ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEN PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Commission's Final Report refer to the CIA interrogations Moreover, most of the information in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the Report came from the interrogations Those chapters cover the initial planning for the attack, the assembling of terrorist cells, and the arrival of the hijackers in the US 47 Accordingly, it is now part of the public record, supported by NBC News as well as the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, that most and perhaps all of the evidence in the Commission's report supporting the responsibility of bin Laden and al-Qaeda for 9/11 must be judged untrustworthy. This point has been emphasized by Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has said: Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore their conclusions are suspect. [A]s a matter of law, evidence derived from torture is not reliable, in part because of the possibility of false confession. ... [A]t the very least, they [the authors of the Commission's report] should have added caveats to all those III 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 22 / 53 Bi N kobo 41°F Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED references 48 If the repoit's authors had indeed added these caveats, as they certainly should have, it would have meant that nearly a quarter of The 9/11 Commission Report's notes, including most of those for the chapters dealing with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, would have needed to point to a caveat such as: We are here simply passing on information that, according to the CIA, was derived from al- Qaeda prisoners. We do not know if the prisoners really made these statements or, if they did, whether they made them after being tortured, perhaps simply to stop the torture. But we have written our report on the assumption that this information is accurate, even though we had no evidence for this except the word of CIA officials. Had the authors of The 9/11 Commission Report qualified the statements in the 441 notes in question with such a caveat, the Commission's lack of reliable evidence for the responsibility of bin Laden and al-Qaeda would have been abundantly clear, at least to readers who checked the notes. In spite of 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 23 / 53 N பேபன lobo 41°F ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED appearances to the contrary, therefore, the 9/11 Commission did not provide any reliable evidence to support the Bush administration's conspiracy theory, according to which the 9/11 attacks were planned by Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda. KSM and the Guantánamo Trials: As this book was being readied for press, it appeared that the Bush administration was planning to bolster its claims about bin Laden and al-Qaeda, at least in the mind of the general public, by means of military trials and executions at Guantánamo Bay. In February 2008, the govemment announced its intention to convict KSM, along with Abu Zubaydah and other members of al-Qaeda accused of responsibility for 9/11, and to seek the death penalty, which a new law would allow to be carried out at Guantánamo.49 Very serious concems have been raised about these trials. These concems are - 24 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS uெts loobo T 41°F DI hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED due partly to the lax standards for the military commission trials at Guantánamo. Several problems in these standards have been laid out by Lieutenant Commander Charles D. Swift of the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Coips of the US Navy. One problem is the fact that the prosecution can use evidence obtained through toiture and other coercive methods. The way such evidence might be used can be seen by looking at how the puipoited evidence from KSM was used at the Moussaouitrial. In a document entitled "Substitution for the Testimony of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," a long list of crimes to which KSM had reportedly confessed was preceded by the following statement to the jury: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed... was a high-ranking member of al Qaeda, who served as the.. “mastermind” of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He was appointed to that role by Usama Bin Laden. ... Sheikh Mohammed was intimately involved in the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks. 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - - 25 / 53 N BA kobo 41°F ^ Olla (1) thp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED The document began, therefore, by presupposing the truth of KSM's alleged confessions, which should have been acknowledged to be dubious, given the possibility that they had resulted from toiture. The jurors were, in fact, next instructed to ignore the fact that the statements were merely hearsay and, if they were really made by KSM, might have been extracted by toiture: Sheikh Mohammed was captured in March 2005, and has been interrogated over the course of years on multiple occasions since his capture. None of the attorneys for either the prosecution or defense have been allowed access to Sheikh Mohammed, who is not available to testify either in person or by video for national security reasons. However, the lawyers have been given numerous written summaries of Sheikh Mohammed's oral statements made in response to extensive questioning, Listed below are some of the statements Sheikh Mohammed made in response to questioning. You should assume that if Sheikh Mohammed were available to testify in this courtroom under oath and subject to perjury he would have said what is contained in these statements. 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 26 / 53 N kobo 41°F ^ Ola (1) Bi (hp) ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Although you do not have the ability to see the witness's demeanor as he testifies, you must approach these statements with the understandling that they were made un.ler circumstances designed to elicit truthful statements from the witness 50 This was said even though KSM had reportedly confessed to an unbelievable number of acts, at least one of which could not possibly have been true- namely, his purported claim that he had been responsible for planning an attack on the Plaza Bank in the state of Washington. This bank was not built until 2006—three years after KSM had been incarcerated.51 There will likely be even less candor in the Guantánamo trials, which will involve, beyond the allowance of statements obtained by torture, the following violations of standard judicial procedures in the United States. First, prosecutors have no obligation to inform defense lawyers of exculpatory evidence. Second, the prosecution can obtain a conviction on the basis of hearsay evidence (which means that the alleged witnesses are not available for cross-examination by the 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 27 / 53 ji N kobo 41°F hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED defense). Third, the presiding officer and jurors are picked by the same official who approved the charges. Fourth, this same official has the power to overrule any motion for dismissal. Fifth, defense attorneys can call witnesses only with the permission of the (hand-picked) presiding officer. Sixth, defense attorneys are not allowed to share the prosecution's evidence with their defendants.52 The fairness of the trials has been further thrown into doubt by evidence that they have been rigged to guarantee convictions. Some of the erstwhile prosecutors have left the military commissions for this reason. Captain John Carr, for example, wrote that the chief prosecutor had told him "the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees." 53 Another prosecutor, Major Robert Preston (who had been nominated in 2005 for the Air Force's award for the outstanding judge advocate), left the military commissions after concluding that fair trails for the Guantánamo prisoners were impossible.54 ? 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 28 / 53 W RUMAH N Na kobo 41°F hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Preston, in fact, reported that he and other prosecutors had been "told by the chief prosecutor at the time [2004] that they didn't need evidence to get convictions."55 Most startlingly, a later chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, resigned after he leamed that Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes, a close associate of David Addington (Dick Cheney's chief of staff), had been put over him in the commissions' chain of command. This was a problem, Davis reported, because Haynes, in response to Davis's assertion that some acquittals would lend credibility to the process—had said: “We can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions." 56 Davis had also complained about interference by Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, the legal advisor to the convening authority, Susan J. Crawford (another close 29 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N loobo Bi 41°F ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED associate of David Addington). According to Davis, Hartmann's interference included pressing the lawyers to have closed-door proceedings, to use evidence obtained from toiture, and to allow political considerations to determine which cases to prosecute.57 Davis, it has been pointed out, could by no means be characterized as a "whining civil libertarian.” 58 He, in fact, had been known as the military commissions'"attack dog."59 But he felt he could not participate in rigged trials. He had fewer problems with the procedures of the military commissions themselves than with the fact that civilian political appointees with political agendas were directing the process. “They are looking for a political outcome, not justice," said Davis, who added that "top officials in the Pentagon had discussed the 'strategic political value of putting prominent detainees on trial before the 2008 presidential election." 60 Davis was here referring to Deputy - 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 30 / 53 kobo N 41°F BI hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Defense Secretary Gordon England's statement: "We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election."61 Davis, it would appear, was punished by the Pentagon for speaking out He was denied a medal for his two years of work building the cases against the suspects because, Pentagon officials told him, he did “not serve honorably." 62 The charge that political considerations have improperly influenced the legal process has, nevertheless, been made by other military lawyers. At the end of May, 2008, defense attomeys for KSM and four other 9/11 suspects asked a military appeals court to delay the arraignments scheduled for June 5 because several of the attomeys, having not yet received security clearances, would not be allowed to participate. "It is offensive to me," said Navy Lt. Commander Brian Mizer, "[that] the government would seek to proceed in a death penalty case 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 31 / 53 ji Q N 41°F lobo hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED without all detailed counsel present." Moreover, Mizer said, the government had not "provided the defense with the [time] attomeys, resources and facilities necessary. . . to prepare a defense in this death penalty case." Mizer and other defense attorneys, repoited CNN, "have accused prosecutors of rushing their clients to trial to influence the November presidential elections."63 It would appear, therefore, that the Bush, Cheney administration and its Pentagon devised a sure-fire plan to "prove" that KSM and other members of al- Qaeda were responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Besides arranging to have these men convicted in kangaroo courts, the administration hoped to have their lives terminated by execution—an act that would prevent the possibility of retrials. The complaints raised about some of the personnel had some effect. In February 2008, Williams Haynes resigned as general counsel for the Department of Defense, and in May 2008, a military judge disqualified General Hartmann 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 32 / 53 N kobo 41°F hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED from playing any role in the first case scheduled for trial (that of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver), saying that it appeared that Hartmann had not "retain[ed] the required independence from the prosecution" to carry out his role with neutrality. 64 Hartmann's response was that although he would not immediately resign his position as legal advisor to the tribunals, he might do so later if questions about his neutrality stalled the other cases. 65 However, even if that were to occur, so that both he and Haynes would no longer be involved, the absence of these two especially problematic individuals would do little to rectify the basic problems, which are structural and procedural. The mainstream press has thus far failed to face the fact that these structural and procedural defects might be based on the Bush administration's knowledge that fair trials, besides probably not resulting in convictions, might expose 9/11 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 33 / 53 N 41°F Ao la kobo ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED as an operation planned by key members of the Bush administration itself. The New York Times is typical. Complaining that the military trials will betray American ideals and outrage the conscience of the world, it argued that the Bush administration will be doing “unnecessary harm" (the title of its editorial). From the point of view of the Bush administration, however, this harm probably seems not at all unnecessary. Trying the men in "ordinary federal courts," as the Times proposes, probably seems far too risky. The Times can assume otherwise because it has accepted the validity of the evidence against al-Qaeda, saying: “There is good reason to believe that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the five others may have been responsible for horrific acts." 66 In light of the above statements by Kean and Hamilton, on the one hand, and Windrem, Limjoco, and Ratner, on the other, there is we have seen, no "good reason" to accept the official story about KSM and al-Qaeda. 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 34 / 53 N 41°F ^ Dla kobo hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Could bin Laden and al-Qaeda Have Orchestrated the Attacks? In addition to what we have seen here and in Chapter 6—that there is no good evidence that the attacks were planned by KSM and Osama bin Laden, then carried out by al- Qaeda hijackers, and there is even good evidence against the idea that hijackers took over the planes- there is a complementary point Several political and military leaders from other countries have stated that bin Laden and al-Qaeda simply could not have carried out the attacks. Andreas von Bülow, the former state secretary of West Germany's ministry of defense, said: The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry. a Horst Ehmke, former minister of research and technology of West Germany, wrote: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four 35 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N kobo 41°F ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED hijacked planes without the support of a secret service." General Leonid Ivashov, who on 9/11 was the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, wrote: Only secret services and their current chiefs or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda" cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the former foreign minister of Egypt, wrote: Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 36 / 53 Main N kobo 41°F } ^ Dla hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED General Mirza Aslam Beg, former chief of staff of Pakistan's army, said: Many of us in this region believe that Osama or his al-Qaeda were not responsible for [the] 11 September attacks. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda definitely do not have the know- how and the capability to launch such operations involving such high precision coordination, based on information and expertise. Even the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, said: I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up there in the mountains could do it. [T]hose who executed it were much more modern. They knew the US, they knew aviation. I don't think he has the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else, 67 This same point was also made by veteran CIA agent Milt Bearden. Speaking disparagingly of "the myth of Osama bin Laden" to Dan Rather on CBS News the day after 9/11, Bearden said: "I was there [in Afghanistan) at the same time bin Laden was there. He was not the great warrior.” With regard to the widespread 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 37 / 53 N an loobo 41°F ^ Dla 다. hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED view that bin Laden was behind the attacks, he said: “This was a tremendously sophisticated operation against the United States- more sophisticated that anybody would have ascribed to Osama bin Laden." Pointing out that a group capable of such a sophisticated attack would have had a way to cover their tracks, he added: “This group who was responsible for that, if they didn't have an Osama bin Laden out there, they'd invent one, because he's a terrific diversion for the rest of the world."68 Needless to say, the 9/11 Commission did not report any of these statements. CONCEALING THE ROLE OF PAKISTAN'S ISI One of the recommendations of The 9/11 Commission Report was that the United States should sustain "the current scale of aid to Pakistan." 69 Seeing this statement, readers might assume that the Commission would not have mentioned any of the evidence summarized in NPH pointing to Pakistani complicity in 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 38 / 53 Male loobo 41°F TE ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 9/11. They would be right. The 9/11 Commission did not mention that ISI chief General Mahmoud Ahmad had been in Washington since September 4, meeting with CIA chief Tenet and also (as a response to a 2008 FOIA request revealed) with the National Security Council (in spite of Condoleezza Rice's denial, reported in NPH, that she met with him). The Commission, therefore, had no reason to mention that, immediately after this week of meetings, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Masood, was assassinated by the ISI, according to the Northem Alliance.70 The Commission also did not mention Ahmad's "most important meeting" — as a Pakistani newspaper put it-with . Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman (who was central to Sibel Edmond's allegations discussed in Chapter 6). It mentioned only that Ahmad met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on September 13,71 thereby 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 39 / 53 N 41°F ^ D j kabo chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED suggesting that Ahmad had come to Washington only after 9/11. The Commission also did not mention the report that General Ahmad had ordered an ISI agent to send $100,000 to Mohamed Atta. The Commission, in fact, lied, saying that it had “seen no evidence that any foreign govemment-or foreign government official-supplied any funding" for the 9/11 plot.72 (We can confidently call this a lie because the Los Angeles Times story by Josh Meyer, mentioned in Chapter 6, reported that the Commission, according to some of its members, had found extensive evidence of assistance by Pakistan as well as Saudi Arabia 73) The Commission, moreover, did not mention the “shocking" report that, after the money transfer ordered by Ahmad came to light, General Musharraf dismissed Ahmad, to whom he was politically indebted, at the insistence of US authorities,74 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 40 / 53 TD N kobo 41°F hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED The Commission also failed to point out the evidence that alleged 9/11 mastermind KSM was connected to the ISI, the statement by the Afghan interior minister that the ISI had helped bin Laden escape from Afghanistan, and the evidence that the ISI was involved in the death of Daniel Pearl.75 Also not mentioned by the Commission was Gerald Posner's claim that, several months prior to the suspicious death of Mushaf Ali Mir, Abu Zubaydah had claimed that Mir was connected to bin Laden and possessed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. The Commission, finally, did not mention the report that another Pakistani, Rajaa Gulum Abbas, seemed to know in 1999 that the Twin Towers were going to come down. Having failed to mention all these things, the 9/11 Commission could recommend, with a straight face, that "the current scale of aid to Pakistan" 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS - 41 / 53 8233 kobo N 41°F ji chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED should be sustained. 76 The Bush administration, incidentally, did not simply maintain the amount of aid that was given to Pakistan prior to 9/11. It increased it astronomically. Pakistan had been receiving only about $3 million per year in military aid (less than Estonia and Panama). But after 9/11, it started receiving over $1.5 billion per year (more than any other county except Israel and Egypt).77 And that was only military aid. The total US aid to Pakistan from 9/11 through 2007 was over $10 billion—perhaps even twice that amount if classified aid is included. 78 During this period, however, the insurgency of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had been growing, "as a consequence," the Washington Quarterly suggested, "of Pakistani weakness, if not outright complicity, with militants in the Pashtun border areas." Also, although most of the US aid was provided as Coalition Support Funds, intended to help Pakistan battle terrorism, “The vast » 42 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo iii hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED majority of this amount has been spent on [kinds of] weapons. .. [un]likely to provide much help in rooting out al Qaeda or the Taliban."79 The fact that this enormous amount of military aid was indeed not rooting them out was confirmed by a New York Times story, published just three days before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, which began by saying: "[T]he United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban." Far from being rooted out, "the Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas had reconstituted their command structure and become increasingly active."80 These developments would have been less surprising to the general public if the 9/11 Commission had not concealed the connections between the ISI, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. (Benazir Bhutto, incidentally, had singled out the ISI for special criticism shortly before her fateful retum to Pakistan, saying that it 43 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS W 41°F N loobo TĪT Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED would“ do anything to stop democracy."81) OMAR AL-BAYOUMI AND THE SAUDI CONNECTION The question of Saudi funding for al-Qaeda was extensively discussed in a 2004 book, Intelligence Matters, written by former Senator Bob Graham, who revealed details he learned as co-chair of the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks carried out by the intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives. Although the Inquiry's public (unclassified) report was published in July 2003,82 much of the material had been blacked out by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, with the blessing of the White House. Graham's book dealt with a 28-page section of this blacked-out material that, he said, treated "the Saudi govemment and the assistance that government gave to some and possibly all of the September 11 terrorists." 83 (An anonymous official who reportedly saw these pages said: "We're not talking about rogue elements. We're 2) 44 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N Aatute kobo 41°F A D ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government. "84) At the center of Graham's narrative was the relationship of Omar al-Bayoumi to two of the alleged hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, to which I had devoted merely a paragraph in NPH. Graham's book supplied many more details. Graham provided evidence that al-Bayoumi's meeting with the two men did not occur by chance and that, just before picking them up, al-Bayoumi met with Fahad al-Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles suspected of terrorist connections.85 Graham also revealed that al-Bayoumi had a "ghost job," meaning that he was paid for doing no work, and that his salary was more than doubled while al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were with him. 86 Furthermore, Graham reported, al-Bayoumi made an extraordinary number of calls to Saudi 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 45 / 53 N 41°F kobo TII hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED officials.87 Graham, finally, quoted a CIA memo from August 2002 that, referring to al-Bayoumi as a “terrorist," spoke of “incontroveitible evidence that there is support for [him] within the Saudi goveinment."88 Nevertheless, Graham reported, the FBI closed its case on al-Bayoumi, claiming that he had only "briefly lent money to two of the 19 hijackers" and that all his assistance to them was “in compliance with the Muslim custom of being kind to strangers (rather) than out of some relationship with Saudi Intelligence."89 Amazed by this conclusion, Graham requested an interview with the FBI agents who made this report, but FBI Director Robert Mueller refused to grant it 90 Graham's strongest criticism was directed not at the FBI, however, but at the administration from which it took its orders. During his investigations, Graham reported, he found that "the White House was directing the cover-up" and that it - 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 46 / 53 41°F N A kobo IDE (hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED was doing so "for reasons other than national security" — reasons that included protecting "America's relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."91 Such a cover-up appeared to be involved in the official treatment of a story involving al-Bayoumi and his wife, on the one hand, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan (the Saudi ambassador to the United States), and his wife, Princess Haifa, on the other. According to both Graham and Craig Unger (in his book House of Bush, House of Saud), over $100,000 was sent by Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa-most of it from her—to the wife of Osama Basnan, who was a friend of al-Bayoumi. The money was originally for her thyroid condition. But beginning in 2000, Basnan's wife began signing over her checks to al-Bayoumi's wife, who then tumed at least some of this money over to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The fact that Basnan knew what his wife was doing became clear when he later bragged to FBI agents that he had done more for the hijackers than al-Bayoumi 47 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo Ei hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED had.92 Unger concluded: "What had happened was undeniable: funds from Prince Bandar's wife had indirectly ended up in the hands of the hijackers."93 Although Unger considered this story "undeniable," the 9/11 Commission rose to the occasion, saying in a note: "We have found no evidence that Saudi Princess Haifa al Faisal provided any funds to the conspiracy, either directly or indirectly." 94 The Commission seemed thereby to deny the truth of the story summarized by Unger, although this story was based on articles by other reporters, including one in Newsweek by Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas.95 The Commission could hardly claim ignorance of this story, because it would have known about it from the final report of the Congressional Joint Inquiry. In light of Josh Meyer's aforementioned Los Angeles Times story, from which we can conclude that the Commission simply decided for political reasons not to include its evidence pointing to Saudi funding of al-Qaeda, we can suspect that 48 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F ^ o la kobo DI hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED political considerations again trumped the desire to provide the fullest possible account. . More has been revealed about Fahad al-Thumairy, the official that al-Bayoumi had visited at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon in his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. According to Shenon, the White House had refused to declassify the blacked-out section “because it contained evidence suggesting that Saudi govemment officials, including Fahad al-Thumairy ... were part of the support network.”96 He also reports that al-Thumairy was evidently the one who had arranged for al-Bayoumi, with whom he often talked by telephone, to provide assistance to Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but that al- Thumairy, when interviewed by members of the 9/11 Commission, denied knowing al-Bayoumi—until he was confronted by the telephone records proving 49 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo Ei hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED otherwise. Shenon reported, finally, that Zelikow and the leader of the team dealing with the al-Qaeda plot, Dietrich “Dieter" Snell, rewrote the team's report, “remov[ing] virtually all of the most serious allegations against the Saudis." Mike Jacobson (who had authored the section on the Saudis in the Joint Inquiry's report that got blacked out) and the other members of the plot team had to settle for a compromise, in which "much of their most damning material was moved to the repoit's footnotes."97 Still more evidence about the relation of al-Bayoumi to Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar became available with the release of the FBI's (redacted) "Hijackers Timeline" in February 2008. Graham had shown that al-Bayoumi's meeting with these two men was not accidental, but he had portrayed it as occurring in the last week of January 2001, which would mean that they had 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS – 50 / 53 N 41°F kobo hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED spent a week or more in Los Angeles, after their arrival in the United States on January 15, before moving into his place in San Diego. Graham's account on this point hence agreed with that of the 9/11 Commission, which said that al- Mihdhar and al-Hazmi “spent about two weeks [in Los Angeles] before moving to San Diego."98 But the FBI timeline indicates that the two men started staying at al-Bayoumi's place on January 15, meaning that they had gone there directly from the airport.99 This information indicates that al-Bayoumi was part of a support network for the two men that had been arranged prior to their arrival. LATER DEVELOPMENTS INVOLVING MOUSSAOUI After NPH appeared, many further developments occurred in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. In April 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to terrorism charges but "vehemently denied that he was planning to be one of the Sept. 11 hijackers," saying instead that he was to be part of a second wave of attacks.100 During his 51 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo Ei 0 hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED trial in 2006, however, he claimed that he was to fly a fifth plane on 9/11, which was to have hit the White House. 101 But after the trial was over, he called his guilty plea "a complete fabrication" and filed a motion to withdraw it, but was not allowed to do so.102 Another significant development occurred at the trial when Hany Samit, the Minneapolis FBI agent who had prepared the application for the FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings, testified that he had told the DOJ's inspector general that FBI headquarters, in its handling of the evidence about Moussaoui, was guilty of “obstructionism, criminal negligence, and careerism."103 But the most important development at the trial was one that has already been discussed: the FBI's report about phone calls from the flights, which contradicted not only the belief of many people that they had received cell phone calls from relatives on the airliners, especially United Flight 93, but also Ted Olson's claim 52 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo ii hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED that he had received two phone calls from his wife, Barbara Olson. It is puzzling, to be sure, that the FBI would have done this. But if the truth about 9/11 ever becomes part of the public record, the world may look back upon the Moussaoui trial as one of the key moments in the unraveling of the official story. 53 / 53 8. 9/11 COMMISSION FALSEHOODS ABOUT BIN LADEN, AL-QAEDA, PAKISTANIS, AND SAUDIS N 41°F kobo HI Chip ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE A s this book was ready to go to press in the summer of 2008, the most important question before the American people and their elected representatives remained the same as it was when NPH was published: whether the overall argument for the altemative account of 9/11, according to which officials in the US government were responsible for the attacks, is convincing enough "to undertake a thorough investigation of the various consider-ations used to support it." The only difference is that these "considerations" are now, as we have seen, even stronger than they were in 2004. 1 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F kobo hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED WHO BENEFITS? The question of who would have expected to benefit the most from 9/11 should have been central to the 9/11 Commission's discussion of motive. But the Commission, avoiding this question, simply told us that al-Qaeda had a motive. As Kean and Hamilton said in their 2006 book: “The starting point [of the Commission's story about how 9/11 came about] would be Usama Bin Ladin's February 1998 fatwa instructing his followers to kill Americans, military and civilian." 1 The Commission ended up writing: "Claiming that America had declared war against God and his messenger, [bin Laden) called for the murder of any American, anywhere on earth," as the duty of all Muslims. Calling this section of its report "A Declaration of War," the 9/11 Commission said that bin Laden saw himself as organizing "a new kind of war to destroy America and bring the world to Islam.”2 This was its account of the motives for 9/11. - - 2 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N வெக்க kobo 41°F chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED While telling us about "Bin Ladin's murderous ideology," 3 however, the Commission ignored evidence that members of the Bush-Cheney administration had, prior to 9/11, planned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, after which they hoped to attack five other countries. The Commission thereby shielded its readers from evidence that this administration included people with an even more murderous ideology. The benefits that 9/11 brought to the administration with regard to its planned attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were obvious. Indeed, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz even told the 9/11 Commission that, without 9/11, the president could not have convinced Congress that the United States needed to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban.4 Another member of PNAC, Kenneth Adelman, who predicted in 2002 that "liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,"5 said in 2003: "At the beginning of the administration people were talking about 3 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N ))) பார்க்க kobo 41°F jin chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Iraq but it wasn't doable. . . . That changed with September 11." 6 The 9/11 ... Commission, however, did not mention these potential benefits, which might have provided motives for the Bush administration to engineer 9/11 as a pretext to invade Muslim countries. The Commission also failed to bring up other benefits to the Bush administration that could have been anticipated. To take the most important example, the main point of PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses was that “the next president of the United States. . . must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership."7 The 9/11 attacks led to enormous increases, as even the 9/11 Commission pointed out, writing: The nation has committed enormous resources to national security and to countering terrorism. Between fiscal year 2001, the last budget adopted before 9/11, and the present fiscal year 2004, total federal spending on defense (including expenditures on both Iraq and Afghanistan), homeland security, and international affairs rose more than 50 percent, from - 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE – 4 / 17 N 41°F ^ kobo j ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED $345 billion to about $547 billion The United States has not experienced such a rapid surge in national security spendling since the Korean Wars Since the 9/11 Commission wrote those words in 2004, moreover, military- related spending has continued to expand. If the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, spending for them alone will soon be in the trillions of dollars, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Accordingly, if 9/11 was orchestrated partly for the purpose of escalating military spending, it has been a resounding success. However, although that point would have already been abundantly obvious when The 9/11 Commission Report was written, that book contains not the slightest hint that the goal of boosting military spending might have provided a motive. Only al-Qaeda had a a motive. THE EVIDENCE FOR OFFICIAL COMPLICITY: A SUMMARY 5 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F ^ 0 The kobo Ei hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED To bring the summary of evidence provided in NPH up to date requires adding many items—the numbering of which reflects the fact that they are added to the 24 items provided in Chapter 9 of NPH: 25. The fact that, after the military's stories about its response to Flights 175, 77, and 93 proved to be indefensible, the 9/11 Commission provided new stories- stories that, moreover, are inherently implausible as well as being in conflict with much prior testimony. 26. Evidence that the FAA notified the military about American Flight 11's troubles at least 10 minutes earlier than NORAD and the 9/11 Commission claim. 27. The fact that Richard Clarke's account in Against All Enemies contradicted the accounts by both Donald Rumsfeld and General Myers as to their locations that - 6 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N Baktan kobo 41°F ^ D jj hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED moining 28. The fact that NIST, in trying to show how the Twin Towers could have collapsed solely because of the airplane impacts and resulting fires, made many empirically groundless and highly implausible speculations about core columns being stripped, severed, and heated up to very high temperatures. 29. The fact that NIST, in seeking to make its theory appear plausible, ignored several features of the collapses, such as the explosions, the horizontal ejections, and the melting of steel. 30. The fact that NIST has refused to defend its conclusions in debate with scientists who have challenged those conclusions. 31. The fact that Rudy Giuliani reported knowing in advance that the Twin 7 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE 41°F AD N kobo Ei Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED Towers were going to collapse, even though, given the official account, there should have been no way for anyone to know this. 32. The fact that Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management spread the word many hours in advance that WTC 7 was going to collapse, even though, given the official account, there should have been no way for anyone to know this. 33. The fact that NIST's promised explanation of the collapse of WTC 7—which exemplified standard features of controlled implosions even more perfectly than did the collapses of the Twin Towers—was repeatedly delayed. 34. The fact that NIST distorted the testimony and rescue time of two NYC employees—Michael Hess and Barry Jennings—in order to make it appear that they had not testified to the existence of explosions in WTC 7. - 8 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F ^ De kobo ji hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 35. The fact that hundreds of people with relevant kinds of professional knowledge, including physicists, architects, and engineers, have publicly stated that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were brought down with explosives. 36. The fact that the 9/11 Commission's new story about Flight 77 is contradicted by NORAD's timeline of September 18, 2001, by testimony from several military officers, and by an FAA memo to the Commission that the Commission simply ignored when writing its final report. 37. The evidence that Andrews Air Force Base did, contrary to statements by military officials, have fighter jets that could have been deployed to protect the Pentagon. 38. The fact that Ted Olson's claim that his wife phoned him twice from Flight 77 has been contradicted by both American Airlines and the FBI, with American - 9 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N பாகக் kobo 41°F A o la Ei hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEN PEARL HERBOR RE: ISITED contradicting the final version of his claim, according to which she used an onboard phone, and the FBI saying that she did not complete even one call using either an onboard or a cell phone. 39. The lack of debris, damage, and a seismic signal consistent with the Pentagon's having been struck by a Boeing 757. 40. The fact that Donald Rumsfeld and Lee Evey testified that the hole in the C ring was made by Flight 77's nose, which would have been physically impossible—as perhaps acknowledged by the fact that this claim has not been supported by any official or semiofficial report 41. The failure of the goverment to supply evidence showing what actually damaged the Pentagon- evidence that could have easily been provided by releasing videos and/or serial numbers of the flight data recorder and time- 10 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F kobo ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NE'N PEARL HARBOR REISITED change paits. 42. The fact that the reported eyewitness testimony as to what damaged the Pentagon is too diverse and otherwise problematic to support, by itself, the claim that an AA Boeing 757 struck the Pentagon. 43. The fact that Wedge 1 would have been, for many reasons, the least likely part of the Pentagon for al-Qaeda terrorists to target. 44. Evidence that Hani Hanjour could not have flown the trajectory allegedly taken by Flight 77 in order to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon. a 45. The evidence that a 757, even with an excellent pilot, could not have flown the path allegedly taken by Flight 77 to hit the light posts and then level out to enter the first floor of Wedge 1. 11 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F kobo ij Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HERBOR REVISITED 46. The fact that, although the Pentagon claimed that it had no idea that an aircraft was headed its way, an E4-B, with state-of-the-art communication capacities, was flying over Washington at the time of the Pentagon strike. 47. The fact that Norman Mineta reported witnessing, prior to the Pentagon attack, a conversation in which Vice President Cheney appeared to have confirmed a stand-down order. a 48. The fact that the 9/11 Commission claimed that Cheney did not enter the bunker under the White House until about 9:58, in spite of abundant evidence from Mineta and others that he was there before 9:20. 49. The fact that the 9/11 Commission claimed that Cheney did not issue the shootdown authorization until after 10:10, even though Richard Clarke and several military figures said that they had received the authorization much 12 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 13) 41°F ^ O kobo j ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED earlier, prior to the crash of Flight 93. 50. The fact that the 9/11 Commission's main claim about Flight 93—that the military could not have shot it down because it did not know of its hijacking until after it had crashed is contradicted by abundant news reports and testimonies by the FAA, Richard Clarke, and various military officers. 51. The fact that, after it had long been part of the official story that several passengers on the flights, especially United Flight 93, had reported the hijacking of their planes on cell phone calls to relatives, the FBI reported in 2006 that no passengers made cell phone calls to relatives from any of the four flights. 52. Evidence that Mohamed Atta and the other alleged hijackers were not, as the official story claims, devout Muslims. 13 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N இக் kobo 41°F j hp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED 53. The fact that, after it was learned that some of the men on the FBI's first list of hijackers turned out not to have died on 9/11, the FBI simply replaced them with different men. 54. The fact that the FBI's story about the discovery of incriminating information at Boston's Logan Airport, according to which it was found in Atta's luggage inside the airport, contradicted an earlier FBI story, according to which it had been found out in the parking lot in a Mitsubishi. 55. The fact that not only this information but the other types of evidence supporting the existence of hijackers on the planes, such as photographs taken in airports and passports found near the crash sites, appear to have been planted. 56. The fact that none of the pilots on the four flights used the plane's transponder to squawk the hijack code. 14 / 17 9. COMPLICITY BY US OFFICIALS: A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE N 41°F kobo Bi Chp ER SETUP The New Pearl Harbor ... THE NEN PEARL HERBOR REVISITED 57. The fact that Osama bin Laden was never indicted for 9/11 because the FBI, as it has admitted, has no hard evidence of his responsibility. 58. The fact that the Bush admini...
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