The Unanswered Questions of 9/11

Global Research
James Corbett

In his latest weekly address to the nation, President Obama asserts that America’s questions about 9/11 have been answered. If only it were so.

The questions of 9/11 have only continued to pile up higher since that fateful day, and despite official platitudes we are no closer to having those questions answered today then we were when they first arose. In fact, for some of the most important 9/11 questions, the government’s own documents and records that could conceivably answered them have been destroyed, meaning we may never have answers.

The unanswered questions of 9/11 are too numerous to enumerate, but they include:

-Why has NIST classified the data that they used to make their computer animation of the WTC7 collapse? Would knowledge of how NIST believes the building collapsed really “jeopardize public safety“?

-Why did the DIA destroy more than 2.5 terabytes of data on their Able Danger investigation that reportedly identified four of the alleged hijackers years in advance of the attack? Why did the Pentagon buy up and burn the entire first print run of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s book on the program?

-Why did the SEC destroy their records on the 9/11 insider trading question, presumably the most important investigation in the agency’s history?

-Why did the alleged “mastermind” of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confess not only to plotting 9/11 “from A to Z” but also confess to masterminding numerous crimes that he could not have committed?

-Why did Osama bin Laden repeatedly deny any involvement in the attacks until a series of mistranslated and otherwise manipulated videos came along appearing to portray him as taking credit for those attacks?

-Why was the report of US State Department official Frank Taylor supposedly proving the case for Al Qaeda’s role in 9/11, which NATO used to justify its invasion of Afghanistan, presented in a classified briefing? Why is that report still classified to this day?

-Why did the 9/11 commission rely so heavily on the confessions extracted through torture which even the Senate’s Armed Services committee points out is specifically used to extract false confessions?

-Why did the CIA destroy 92 videotapes of their illegal torture sessions after being specifically ordered by a court not to do so? Why did the courts eventually absolve the CIA of any culpability for this crime?

-Why did Donald Rumsfeld announce a new “war” on September 10, 2001? What was the reason for the 2.3 trillion missing dollars which the Pentagon had lost up until that point, what did Rumsfeld’s “war on bureaucracy” hope to achieve, how was that “war” hindered when the budget analyst office in the Pentagon was destroyed the following morning, and where are the public records into this accounting scandal?

-Why did Rumsfeld go into a regularly scheduled meeting with a CIA officer in his office on the morning of 9/11, after both of the Twin Towers had been struck by airplanes and it had been determined that “America was under attack.” Why did the highest ranking official in the US military remain in that meeting and unavailable for contact even by his highest staff members as the worst attack on US soil in history continued to unfold? Why did he suddenly come out for a photo op on the Pentalawn after the explosion instead of helping to coordinate the defense of the nation?

-Why is there such a massive discrepancy between the 9/11 commission’s official finding of the time of entry of Dick Cheney into the Presidential Emergency Operation Center on the morning of 9/11 and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta’s testimony of the timing of that arrival?

-Why did the US government contract with Ptech, an enterprise architecture software firm, to install its backdoor access software on some of the most sensitive databases in the US government? Why did they continue to use Ptech even after it was discovered that its sweetheart investor was a specially designated global terrorist on the Treasury’s own terror list? Why did they declare that there was nothing untoward in the software mere hours after raiding Ptech’s offices in 2002? And what was Ptech doing in the basement of the Pentagon on 9/11? What interoperability tests was it running on the link between FAA and NORAD systems on 9/11, and how did that interfere with the FAA and NORAD’s response?

-And, perhaps most tellingly of all, how did four highjacked aircraft fly so wildly off course for such lengthy periods of time without being confronted by a single fighter interceptor, and why did the Pentagon admittedly and on the record lie to the American public about the timing of its response that day?

These and many, many questions like them have been asked by the victims’ family members, the first responders, members of the US military, American congressmen and women, intelligence agents, foreign dignitaries and heads of state, and concerned members of the public across America and around the globe. And still, 11 years after the events themselves, the American president has the gall to suggest that all questions have been answered and it is time for Americans to move on.

See our GRTV Feature 9/11 Video



On the contrary, Mr. President. Those who are concerned with 9/11 truth and justice will continue to fight on, to answer the questions that your government cannot and will not answer, whether those answers come now, 11 years from now, or generations from now. Those who fight for 9/11 truth will not give up until these questions have been answered. Echoing the words of those brave souls in the wake of that other great American tragedy, the OKC bombing:

“We search for the truth. We seek justice. The courts require it. The victims cry for it. And God demands it.”

For more on the unanswered questions of 9/11 truth, please watch the latest episode of The Corbett Report podcast, “The Meaning of 9/11 Truth“:

Petraeus to CIA Completes Cheney’s Dream, Consolidates Intelligence Within Pentagon

Firedoglake
Jim White

Today is the day that my worst fears will be realized, and the propaganda machine that has been mercilessly promoting the career of David Petraeus will achieve his nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence.

Aside from the horrible nature of this move in putting a blatantly political operator into a highly visible position from which he can consolidate his credentials for an eventual presidential campaign (see Spencer Ackerman for a very different take on this aspect), this move can be seen as finally completing Dick Cheney’s dream of moving virtually all intelligence functions into the Pentagon. Back when Michael Hayden was nominated to head CIA, the ongoing Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-CIA turf war was noted:

What worries some experts, however, is a shift in the balance of power within the US intelligence infrastructure as the CIA is weakened and the Pentagon expands its role. For one thing, the Pentagon’s intelligence activities largely escape congressional scrutiny. ”Rumsfeld and Cambone claim that everything they do is a military operation,” says Richard Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, ”[and] that therefore nothing that they do should have oversight by the House and Senate intelligence committees. But they are doing things that are clearly intelligence.”

It is precisely this ability to “escape congressional scrutiny” that has driven the move to consolidate intelligence functions within the Pentagon. Here is more from Jeremy Scahill on how this was brought about:

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. “What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing,” said Colonel Wilkerson. “That’s dangerous, that’s very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don’t tell the theater commander what you’re doing.”

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. “I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good,” says Wilkerson. “I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.” He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld “built up initially because Rumsfeld didn’t get the responsiveness. He didn’t get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse’s mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch–read: Cheney and Rumsfeld–wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier.”

The key thing to note here is how Cheney bypassed McChrystal’s direct commander in SOCOM to dictate McChrystal’s actions. At least in regard to when those actions were in Iraq, it should be noted that McChrystal’s field commander there was none other than David Petraeus. I think Wilkerson is wrong here when he claims that McChrystal was acting without the knowledge of the field commander.

  For McChrystal to be carrying out “rogue” operations at the direct command of the Vice President and bypassing his SOCOM commander, it seems inconceivable that Petraeus could not have been aware of what was happening. It seems most likely that Petraeus was both aware of what was going on and approved of it, since he is often seen as crediting McChrystal and his night raids for their effects in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. This means that Petraeus had to be aware of, and approved, Cheney’s actions that were designed to bypass congressional scrutiny of actions that would have been subject to oversight had they taken place through the CIA.

In today’s New York Times article about Petraeus’ nomination, we see that the blurring of the lines between intelligence and military functions already is almost complete:

The result is that American military and intelligence operatives are at times virtually indistinguishable from each other as they carry out classified operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. Some members of Congress have complained that this new way of war allows for scant debate about the scope and scale of military operations. In fact, the American spy and military agencies operate in such secrecy now that it is often hard to come by specific information about the American role in major missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya and Yemen.

The operations have also created tension with important allies like Pakistan, while raising fresh questions about whether spies and soldiers deserve the same legal protections.
Officials acknowledge that the lines between soldiering and spying have blurred. “It’s really irrelevant whether you call it a covert action or a military special operation,” said Dennis C. Blair, a retired four-star admiral and a former director of national intelligence. “I don’t really think there is any distinction.”

I’m sure Dick Cheney approves of Obama’s move to put Petraeus in charge of the CIA, because it is clear that Petraeus fully subscribes to Cheney’s vision of a Pentagon in control of the most important intelligence functions, fully protected from congressional oversight.