Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Freedom Came Today

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Freedom came today for Iraqis
in a measured display of shock and
awe that bestowed gratuitous wounds
on thankful souls who’ll line the streets and
greet us as compassionate heroes.

Freedom came today to six hundred
Thousand innocents which, of course, we
Deny as being far too high a
figure based on data from programs
that do not keep track of dead Iraqis.

Freedom came today for poor Sami,
Who was looking for safety but
Found some kindness which blew him away,
So let us play taps to mark when he
Became part of America’s Dream?

Freedom came today for journalist
‘Ali … thrown in jail for possibly
Thirty years since he didn’t have the
Sense to write lies rather than truth
About ruthlessly earned liberty.

Freedom came today for Ayesha
Who was raped by those who set her free.
This sort of special gallantry is
Of course, an anomaly, since they
Normally stick with search and destroy.

Freedom came today for unlucky
Hasan who was trying to see his
Family but ended up naked
In Abu Ghraib with dogs growling,
Devoid of shame, at his dignity.

Freedom came today for Ra’bia
Who was caressed by white phosphorus
Which made her feel all warm and fuzzy
Inside, right down to her small, little
Bones … surely her cup runneth over.

Freedom came today for the masses
Who can, whenever they like, turn on
Faucets empty of water or switch
on lights with no electricity
to illumine tyranny’s just end.

Freedom came today in such neatly
Wrapped packages of hypocrisy
And lies … democracy at its best
Sold as a capital idea to
Peoples hungry for sovereignty.

Freedom came today to greedy ones
Who, out of duty, lobbied their way
to no-bid, cost-plus contracts made in
the secrecy of self-serving ‘facts’
that enriched only non-Iraqis.

Freedom came today in uncivil
Ways, one brother against another,
Locked in malignant enmity set
Loose by U. S. magnanimity …
Oh beautiful, with rapacious eyes.

Freedom came today through plans where bands
of hired guns are inspired to
kill sand-dwellers so wars will not wash
up on homeland shores and mangled lives
can be sanitized through illusions.

Freedom came today when night vision
Goggles found opportunity in
Their sight and those who never saw it
Coming were liberated – strange how
We see their bodies but not their hearts.

Freedom might come today if the good
old USA – despite a touch of
Delusion about its assumed place
In God’s space – would attend to the Ten
Commandments and leave Iraq alone.

Freedom might come today if knowledge
took hold in citizen souls about
Democracy’s decay through abuse
Of power which shackles conscience to
mindless fears of created demons.

----------------

If you would like to listen to the foregoing poem,
accompanied by music, then, please go to: Spiritual-Health.org


Saturday, November 25, 2006

The 9-11 Commission Report - A Sufi Perspective






The Essence of September 11th has now been released in ebook form. For further information, click on the following link:

BOOK INFORMATION

The book is now at the printer's and will be available for purchase around the middle of June 2007.



318 pages, Bilquees Press




________________________________________________________



Did you know that some 50 million dollars were spent on investigating the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in which 7 people died but only 11 million dollars were authorized by the White House to be spent on the 9-11 Commission inquiry in which some 3,000 people died?
















- Did you know that some 40 million dollars were spent on the report produced by independent counsel Kenneth Starr concerning Whitewater and the Clinton sex scandal in which no one died, while, initially, President Bush wanted to spend only 3 million dollars on the 9-11 Commission investigation -- but to which, and only grudgingly, another 8 million dollars were added on later, despite the fact the death toll from the events on September 11, 2001 were approximately 3, 000 people?
















- Did you know that the White House resisted instituting an investigation into the events surrounding 9-11 and only did so after being pressured by families of the victims of 9-11, as well as due to some questions about some of the issues which arose out of the Congressional Joint Inquiry concerning 9-11?
















- Did you know that even after the White House reluctantly agreed -- several years after the fact -- to a public inquiry into the events of 9-11, nevertheless, the White House actively resisted the activities of the 9-11 Commission by refusing to grant security clearances to certain Commission members as well as failing to co-operate in the release of documents requested by the Commission, and even when White House did release such documents they insisted, in many cases, that only a few of the Commissions would be able to see these documents and that such individuals would not be able to take notes while looking at those documents?
















- Did you know that the White House resisted having members of the White House being required to give testimony under oath – and, in fact, neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney did give testimony under oath – and, as well, the White House insisted that when members of the White House did give testimony such people should be accompanied by 'handlers' who would monitor what they said?
















- Did you know that the Executive Director of the Commission, Phillip Zelikow -- who had total control over seven of the Commission's eight investigative teams (the eighth team was under the control of John Farmer, a former attorney general for New Jersey who had close ties to Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, and also the Chairman of the 9-11 Commission), and who had near absolute control over what was (and was not) investigated, who investigated it, how it was investigated, as well as being responsible for the writing and editing of the Commission staff reports that would (or would not) make their way into the final report – Philip Zelikow had a long, intimate past history with the White House … including the following: he had been on the National Security Council during the administration of George H. W. Bush; he had been a director of the Aspen Strategy Group whose active participants were, among others, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice; he co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice, he was part of the National Security Council's transition team when George W. Bush took over following President Clinton's departure, and that shortly after 9-11, he was appointed by the President Bush to be a part of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board?
















- Did you know that at one point, after encountering obstruction from the government with respect to turning over documentation, Commission Chairman, Thomas Kean, said: “Any document which has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach”, and, yet, by and large, the promise of these words was not fulfilled with any degree of completeness, thoroughness, or independence despite the fact that in the preface to the 9-11 Commission Report, it is maintained that the purpose of the Commission was “to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11” and that the “Commission sought to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan”?
















- Did you know that there was an open letter sent to the US Congress on September 13, 2004, following the release of the 9-11 Commission Report, which was signed by 25 individuals who had been interviewed by the 9-11 Commission and who were associated with such agencies as the FAA, CIA, FBI, and Customs and who, collectively, were very critical of the fact that none of their testimony was reflected in the final report of the Commission even though they testified about a variety of problems involving public safety, national security, and the intelligence community in relation to 9-11?
















- Did you know that Richard Labeviere, a seasoned and talented journalist from Switzerland, reported that in July 2001 -- when Osama bin Laden was among America's most wanted list and had a 5 million dollar bounty attached to his capture, dead or alive – Osama bin Laden stayed for two weeks in the American Hospital in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where he received treatment from a Dr. Terry Callaway and, in addition, was visited by a local agent of the CIA by the name of Larry Mitchell, and even though the hospital and the CIA denied there was any truth to the story and while Dr. Callaway had a 'no comment' concerning the report, nonetheless, the 9-11 Commission Report contains no discussion of this story to determine the truth of the matter?
















- Did you know that there is an account written by Gerald Posner dealing with the interrogation of Abu-Zubaydah, alleged to be a major al-Qaeda operative and who was captured in March 2002, in which the claim is made that Zubaydah said he had been working on behalf of certain officials from Saudi Arabia, that these officials knew there was going to be some kind of attack on America on September 11, 2001 (although they did not, apparently, know any further details of the attack) and, as a partial confirmation of his story, he gave the phone numbers of three Saudi officials: Prince Ahmad bin Salman (who is better known in America as the owner of War Emblem which won the Preakness and Kentucky Derby in 2002), Prince Fahd bin Turki, and Prince Sultan bin Faisal?
















- Did you know that all three of the aforementioned members of the Royal family -- who Zubaydah claimed had foreknowledge of the precise date of the 9-11 tragedy in the US -- died within an eight day period in July of 2002 under questionable circumstances (Prince Ahmad died of a heart attack at age 41, Prince Sultan died in a car crash on his way to attend the funeral of Prince Ahmad, and Prince Turki, who was only 21 years old, died of thirst in the desert) and, yet, the 9-11 Commission Report contains no discussion of these issues although the Report does contain nearly 40 paragraphs detailing various kinds of information concerning Zubaydah?
















- Did you know that the aforementioned Prince Ahmad – one of the people whom Zubaydah, in his April 2002 interrogation, indicated had some foreknowledge of 9-11 -- was one of the estimated 150 to 300 Saudis, including many members of bin Laden's family, who were permitted by the Bush administration to leave the US shortly after 9-11, but there is no indication in the 9-11 Commission Report of whether, or not, Prince Ahmad had been closely questioned or interrogated by the FBI or other government authorities with respect to any information or knowledge Prince Ahmad might have had concerning the events of 9-11 … even though the theory being pushed at the time of the Saudi exodus from the US was that most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report provides absolutely no specific information about who among the departing Saudis were questioned by authorities, what they were asked, how rigorous the questioning was, or whether there were individuals – such as, perhaps, Prince Ahmad -- who may not have been questioned at all?
















- Did you know that according to Gerald Posner, Zubaydah also was reported to have disclosed during this interrogation that Mushaf Ali Mir, a high-ranking military officer in Pakistan who was said to have close ties with both the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) of Pakistan and al-Qaeda, was indicated to have had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attack, and approximately 7 months following this disclosure by Zubaydah, a military airplane carrying Mir, his wife, and a number of close aides crashed in good weather, despite the fact the aircraft had been recently serviced and was, supposedly, in good running order, and, yet, this further strange 'accident' or related allegations by Zubaydah were not pursued by the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that General Mahmoud Ahmad, who was head of Pakistan's ISI in 2001 had been meeting with George Tenet, Director of the CIA, as well as Porter Goss, Bob Graham, and other members of various congressional intelligence committees, along with Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, in the days just before, during, and following 9-11, and that General Mahmoud has been implicated as the person who gave orders to Saeed Sheikh, an ISI agent, to wire $100,000 to Muhammad Atta on September 10, 2001, and, yet, none of this is explored in the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that the Times of India ran a story (also verified, discussed and quoted in a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled 'Our Friends the Pakistanis') about the retirement of General Ahmad on October 8, 2001 (less than two years after his appointment by General Musharraf as a reward for having helped Musharraf gain power in Pakistan), in which the article stated that the reason for the unexpected retirement was because Indian intelligence officials had provided the US government with compelling evidence that it had been General Mahmoud, director of Pakistan's ISI, who had ordered an ISI agent to transfer $100, 000 to Muhammad Atta, the alleged ring leader of the 9-11 plot, on September 10, 2001, and, yet, none of this is discussed in the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that immediately following 9-11, President Bush sought to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Pact which required other member nations in NATO to assist any member nation that had been attacked from outside the aggrieved member country (in this case, supposedly, the United States), and although the other member nations of NATO unanimously approved the resolution, nevertheless, according to a December 13, 2001 statement by Helmut Schmidt, former Defense Minister and Chancellor of Germany, he indicated that the resolution should not have been passed because Article 5 requires proof be given that such an attack had been committed by a force external to a given country, and, such proof was never given to the NATO members at the time of the 2001 resolution and, to date, such proof has not been given?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report failed to note that there were no Arabic names – and certainly none of the names of the alleged 19 hijackers -- appearing on any of the publicly released passenger manifests for flights which were involved in the events of 9-11: namely, American Airlines 11, United Airlines 175, American Airlines 77 or United Airlines 93?
















- Did you know that sometimes there are changes to preliminary passenger flight manifests as people cancel a ticket or book a flight at the last minute, but these final passenger manifests have not been made public by American Airlines and United Airlines and that they refuse to release the details of these final passenger flight manifest lists?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission had subpoena power, but the Commission did not exercise this power in order to acquire the finalized versions of the passenger manifest lists from the two airlines?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report offers absolutely no evidence which indicates how the FBI was able to identify the nineteen terrorists who supposedly were involved with the events of 9-11 when the names of these individuals were nowhere to be found on the flight manifests which have been released to the public?
















- Did you know that according to post-9-11 interviews conducted by David Harrison, a reporter for the Telegraph newspaper located in London, 6 of the alleged hijackers on 9-11 are still alive, but this information did not appear in the 9-11 Commission Report – these individuals include: Salem al-Hazmi, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Waleed al-Shehri, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Ahmed al-Nami, and Mohand al-Shehfi?
















- Did you know that at least four of the foregoing individuals who are still alive were involved in airline-related activities: Abdulaziz al-Omari was a pilot for Saudi Airlines; Waleed al-Shehri lived in Casablanca and was employed as a pilot by Royal Air Maroc; Ahmed al-Nami served as an administrative assistant for Saudi Arabian Airlines; and, Saeed al-Ghamdi had been in Tunis at the time of 9-11 learning how to fly an airbus?
















- Did you know that the coroner's report concerning the Pentagon attack on 9-11 indicated that none of the bodies carried genetic markers indicating Arab descent?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report depicts Muhammad Atta as being a fanatical sort of fundamentalist devout Muslim but that investigative journalism pursued by David Hopsicker, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsweek have uncovered evidence indicating that Atta consumed substantial amounts of alcohol , used cocaine, ate pork, frequented strip clubs, was the recipient of lap top dances, and lived with a prostitute – all at odds with what any devout Muslim would do?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report offers no plausible explanation for how the north and south towers of the World Trade Center could have collapsed so quickly?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report offers absolutely no explanation – reasonable or otherwise – of why, and how, Building 7 (in the World Trade Center complex) -- which was not hit by an airplane on 9-11 -- collapsed around 5: 30 p.m. in nearly a free-fall manner?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report does not contain any account of, or inquiry into, the fact that Larry Silverstein, who had leased many of the buildings in the World Trade Center prior to 9-11 had stated in a September 2002 video documentary entitled “ America Rebuilds”, aired on PBS television, that he had had a conversation with the fire department commander about 'pulling' Building 7 and that, according to Silverstein, the commander decided to go ahead and pull Building 7 and that 'pulling' is an industry term for a controlled demolition of a building?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report did not inquire into how it was possible for Building 7 to be rigged for 'pulling' in a matter of hours when, normally speaking, this is a very exacting task which requires many weeks to set up?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report contains no discussion or analysis of why and who, precisely, made the decision to 'pull' Building 7 rather than merely allow it to burn itself out since everyone had been evacuated from the building many hours prior to its being pulled?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report offers no explanation of why Buildings 5 and 6 in the World Trade Center were, despite tremendous damage from fire, able to retain their structural integrity, and, yet, neither the North and South Towers nor Building 7 were able to do accomplish this despite having been constructed with numerous features of redundancy that were knowingly intended to permit those buildings to survive strikes by large commercial airliners and/or hurricane force winds?
















- Did you know that although the 9-11 Commission Report notes how the South Tower “collapsed in 10 seconds” it provides no reasonable explanation of the manner in which either a plane crash, or a fire, or some combination of the two, could have resulted in such a near free-fall collapse of the building?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report totally mischaracterizes the structural features of the north and south towers by: (1) claiming that the interior of these buildings consisted of a “hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped”, and (2) that the exterior of the walls of the two buildings “bore most of the weight of” the two buildings – and, in doing so, fails to indicate that not only did the core of the building consist of 47 massive steel columns ( at their base these columns were 4 inch-thick, 14 by 36 inch steel shafts, and the thickness gradually tapered off to about ¼ of an inch thick, 14 by 36 inch shafts as one neared the top of the 110 story buildings) which were connected to each other and to the 236 exterior columns by a grid work of steel trusses, but that it is the core columns which anchor these buildings?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report offers no discussion or reasons why nowhere in the world prior to, or since, 9-11 has any steel frame high-rise building collapsed due to fire despite burning for many, many hours more than did the fires in the either of the twin towers or Building 7 (e.g., consider the fire at 1 Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia, or the high-rise fires in Madrid, Spain and Caracas, Venezuela)?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report contains no account of why evidence in a criminal act – for example, the killing of nearly 3000 people and the destruction of buildings worth tens of millions of dollars – were removed from a crime scene (such as the Twin Towers and Building 7) and not stored (with a proper chain of evidence maintained) for subsequent testing and analysis by scientists but, instead, were quickly sold and shipped overseas?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report did not investigate why authorities in New York (e.g., Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) would designate the World Trade Center disaster site as a crime scene when it came to prohibiting people from taking pictures of the World Trade Center Complex while, simultaneously, authorizing the removal of evidence from such a crime scene with absolutely no regard for maintaining a proper chain of evidence for the material which was removed?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission failed to rigorously pursue the statement by Mayor Rudoph Giuliani which described how when he and others were working out of the Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex on 9-11 someone told them “that the World Trade Center was going to collapse, and it did collapse before we could get out of the building”?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission failed to determine, and report on, the identity of the person, or persons, who conveyed this information to Giuliani in the Emergency Command Center and that the Commission failed to establish just how this person, or persons, knew that the World Trade Center was going to collapse?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report contained no indication that the security company, Securacom (which has since changed its name to Stratesec), which was responsible for security not only at the World Trade Center, but, as well, at United Airlines (involved in the hijackings of 9-11), and Dulles Airport (from which Flight 77 departed), had a CEO by the name of Wirt Walker III who is a cousin of President Bush and that this company had among its investors, KuwAm – a Kuwaiti/American investment firm with strong ties to the royal family in Kuwait … the same royal family that arranged for one of its members – a fifteen year old girl, Nayirah – to perjure herself before the US Congress in the lead up to Desert Storm when she claimed that she had been an eyewitness to the murder of babies in incubators being smashed on the floor of a hospital by Iraqi soldiers although the incident never occurred?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report failed to reflect the fact that Ed Plaugher, the fire chief for the Arlington County Fire Department, made totally contradictory statements concerning what he allegedly saw at the Pentagon on 9-11 in which, initially – on September 12, 2001 -- Plaugher indicated he reportedly saw some pieces of an aircraft, but he indicated there were no large pieces such as a fuselage and that sort of thing, and, yet, some six months later he said that he had seen “pieces of the fuselage, the wings, the landing gear, pieces of the engine, seats … I can swear to you that it was a plane”?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report fails to report, discuss, or question the fact that there is a direct contradiction between, on the one hand, the statement of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who claimed to have been in his office in the east side of the Pentagon at the time of the explosions, and, then, stated that he went to the site of the crash on the west side of the Pentagon and was able to identify plane wreckage, and, on the other hand, the testimony of Richard Clarke, chief of counterterrorism at the White House, which stipulates that the Secretary was not in his office but in a special room where there was a teleconference hook up with Clarke and other top officials at the time Secretary Rumsfeld claims to have been elsewhere?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report contained no discussion of why the missile defense system which is in place around the Pentagon was not activated despite the fact that the transponder for Flight 77, which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon, had been turned off and, therefore, should have been identified as an unidentified and, presumably, hostile craft by the missile system?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission failed to exercise its subpoena power to acquire all the videotapes which had been confiscated by the FBI, shortly after the Pentagon event, from the gas stations, businesses, and hotels on the west side of the Pentagon?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report contains no mention of the name, Bill McKelway who reported on the FBI confiscation of the videotapes, nor does the Report mention the name of Jose Velasquez who was the attendant at the gas station directly across from the west wing of the Pentagon from which videotape was confiscated by the FBI?
















- Did you know that Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9-11 Commission, stated categorically how it was “indisputable” that American Airlines Flight 77 had struck the Pentagon and, yet, when asked whether he was aware of any unreleased photographs of the Pentagon event which would be able to convince skeptics, he indicated there were no such photographs?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report reflects none of the expert testimony -- such as Pierre-Henri Bunel, who was an artillery and explosives expert who served as an ally with General Schwartzkopf during Desert Storm -- which indicates that the five frames of publicly released video that allegedly depict the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon, provide evidence not of a plane crash but of a high-yield explosion that could not possibly have come from a crash of a commercial jet in which jet fuel ignited?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report omitted testimony by Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, given to the Commission on May 23, 2003, (although this testimony did appear in one of the Commission staff reports) in which he indicated that he had been in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center with Vice President Cheney, and during this time, he observed an on-going exchange taking place between the Vice President and a young man who kept giving the Vice President revised closing distance figures (e.g., 50 miles, 40 miles, 30 miles, etc) of an unidentified flying object in relation to Washington, and these updates were taking place at least 12-15 minutes earlier than the military's claim that it first came to know about Flight 77 heading for the Pentagon at 9: 36 a.m., just a minute, or so, before something crashed into the Pentagon?
















- Did you know that on page 9 of the 9-11 Commission Report, a time of 9: 34 a.m. was given as to when Vice President Cheney's Secret Service detail became aware of the in-coming unidentified object heading for the Pentagon, but on pages 27 and 34 of the Report, a time of 9: 36 a.m. is given for this event, whereas in the Commission Staff Report of June 17, 2004, a time of 9: 32 a.m. was given for this same event?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report gives absolutely no reason(s) as to why it decided to fix 9: 36 a.m. as the 'official' time of awareness about the existence of a UFO heading for the Pentagon?
















- Did you know that there is an article by William Scott in a 2002 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology which stipulates that after the south tower of the WTC had been hit (which was shortly after 9: 00 a.m.), calls from a variety of fighter unit groups in different parts of the US – especially in the northeast region of the US -- started pouring into NORAD and section headquarters in which offers of assistance were given by these fighter units, and, yet, NORAD left the capital of the United States completely unprotected because there was no air cover over Washington, D.C. until after the Pentagon has been hit despite having offers of assistance from fighter groups more than one half hour prior to the Pentagon event, and, yet, the 9-11 Commission Report makes no mention of any of this?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report fails to reflect a memorandum of May 22, 2003 by Laura Brown, the Deputy of Public Affairs at the FAA, which was sent to the Commission following the earlier testimony of Jane Garvey, the Director of the FAA, in which Ms. Brown specifically states that within minutes (approximately 8: 50 a.m.) after the north tower of the WTC having been struck by Flight 11, the FAA had established a phone bridge with, among other governmental agencies, the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the FAA command center, as well as FAA field offices, and, during this phone bridge real time information was shared with all governmental agencies concerning the unfolding events of 9-11, yet, the Commission insists that the reason the military was not able to respond to the other three hijackings in a timely fashion was because the military had not been given appropriate notice or relevant information by the FAA and that the FAA did not contact the military until 9: 20 a.m..?
















- Did you know that the sole piece of evidence cited by the Commission for fixing the time of the above noted teleconference at 9: 20 a.m., is a FAA record entitled: “Chronology ADA-30 September 11, 2001” which had to be turned over by the FAA to the FBI -- rather than to the National Transportation Safety Board which is normal procedure, and that there has been no official inquiry into the validity of the chain of custody of that document or why it is contradicted by other data available to the 9-11 Commission, or why it was in the possession of the FBI rather than the NTSB?
















- Did you know that the testimony of Richard Clarke also directly contradicts the aforementioned ADA-30 document since he indicates that Jane Garvey, Director of the FAA, was actively and fully participating in a teleconference, in which the Pentagon and Department of Defense were also participating, which had been established significantly in advance of the 9: 20 a.m. time fixed by the Commission as to when the FAA first contacted authorities about the hijackings, and a teleconference in which, according to Richard Clarke, Jane Garvey had been an active participant for at least 30-35 minutes prior to the time of 9: 40 a.m. which the 9-11 Commission Report claims Garvey joined that teleconference?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission could have subpoenaed the videotapes from the aforementioned conference in order to ascertain, once and for all, who did, and did not, participate in this video conference, as well as the times when such people participated in that conference, but the Commission failed to do this?
















- Did you know that even if the ADA-30 document were proven to be valid with respect to the chronology of FAA events on 9-11, the military and the Secret Service both have radar systems which are far superior to those of the FFA, and, consequently, either the military and/or the Secret Service should have been able -- entirely on their own and without assistance from the FAA -- to detect the fact that there were at least four flights in US airspace which were without proper transponder identification and, therefore, should have been identified as flying objects with possible hostile intent – and all of this should have taken place prior to the north tower of the WTC having been hit?
















- Did you know that David Schippers -- who was the Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee in 1998 and was also the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of President Clinton in 1999 -- has made public statements indicating that more than six weeks prior to 9-11 a number of FBI agents approached him and provided him with detailed, precise, and accurate information concerning the date, time, funding, and location of a terrorist attack to take place in lower Manhattan and that these same agents informed Schippers that their investigations were being obstructed by FBI headquarters and that David Schippers was further informed by the FBI agents that they had been threatened by headquarters with prosecution if they should go ahead and make the results of their investigation public, but nowhere does either the name of David Schippers or a description of this account appear in the pages of the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that David Schippers further indicates how some six weeks prior to the 9-11 attacks, he called the office of Attorney General John Ashcroft in order to inform him about the foregoing matter, but John Ashcroft never returned his calls?
















- Did you know that Attorney General John Ashcroft discontinued taking commercial flights in the weeks leading up to 9-11 due to threat assessments he had received from the FBI, and, yet, there is no mention made of this forewarning in the 9-11 Commission Report in relation to any of its entries concerning John Ashcroft, nor is there any discussion in the Report of why, if the FBI report was serious enough to alter the flying arrangements of the Attorney General, the public was not also notified about this potentially serious threat?
















- Did you know that the FBI headquarter officials being referred to by the aforementioned FBI field agents who talked with David Schippers included Acting Director Thomas Pickard and Counterterrorism Director, Dale Watson, but, the 9-11 Commission Report makes no mention of any specific forewarnings about 9-11 in conjunction with the testimonies of Pickard and Watson, despite the fact that three FBI agents who spoke with the author of an article which appeared in The New American indicated that the information which had been given to David Schippers by FBI field agents was both widely known within the FBI as was the information that the reports concerning the coming attack were being suppressed by FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report did explore, to some degree, the fact that there were some suspicious stock market activity in the week prior to 9-11 involving put options (which are, in effect, like bets that a given stock is going to plummet in value) for both United and American Airlines (which were involved in the 9-11 hijackings), as well as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (which occupied some 22 floors at the World Trade Center), but the Commission claimed that after considerable investigation there was absolutely no conceivable tie to al-Qaeda, but what the 9-11 Commission apparently failed to investigate is whether, or not, the individuals making the put-options could have foreknowledge of the forthcoming 9-11 attacks quite apart from al-Qaeda, nor did the Commission give any explanation of what the particulars of the investment strategy were which would have led someone to make put options on United, American, and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter at that particular time?
















- Did you know that the9-11 Commission Report does make references to an FBI briefing and a Securities Exchange Commission memo concerning the foregoing issue, as well as alludes to certain interviews concerning the suspicious stock market activity, but the Commission provides no specific evidence or data or documents which can be publicly examined, and, so, ultimately, all one has is a series of declarative sentences from the Commission that the suspicious put options of the week leading up to 9-11 are all entirely innocuous?
















- Did you know that an FBI agent in Phoenix by the name of Kenneth Williams issued a memorandum in July 2001 to FBI headquarters indicating there was evidence that individuals associated with Osama bin Laden had been taking flight lessons and, as a result, it might be a prudent measure to institute some kind of official tracking program to determine whether, or not, there might be other people associated with Osama bin Laden who were taking flight lessons in other parts of the US?
















- Did you know that according to the 9-11 Commission Report the reason why Agent Williams' suggestion was never acted upon was because no one at FBI headquarters read his memorandum until after September 11, 2001, but the Report fails to provide any evidence to corroborate its claim that no one at FBI headquarters read the Williams memorandum, nor does the Report explore, even if its 'no-one-knew explanation' were true, why authorities at the FBI headquarters would not have read the Williams memorandum prior to 9-11?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission never interviewed FBI agent Kenneth Williams?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission Report fails to explore the fact that Coleen Rowley, an FBI legal officer working out of the Minneapolis office, had written a thirteen page letter to both the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as to FBI Director Robert Mueller, in which Agent Rowley asserts, among other things, that David Frasca, manager of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit at FBI headquarters, was 'privy' to the Williams memorandum prior to 9-11 -- contrary to the claims of FBI headquarters that it had no knowledge of this memo before 9-11 -- and, yet, according to Agent Rowley, Frasca had never bothered to inform the FBI agents in Minneapolis about the Pheonix memorandum as part and parcel of his apparent attempt to obstruct and interfere with the FBI's Minneapolis investigation into Zacarius Moussaoui's attempt to obtain flying lessons in Minnesota?
















- Did you know that the 9-11 Commission did not interview Coleen Rowley and that the only reference to her in the Report is in relation to an interview of her by the Department of Justice's Inspector General during July 2002 – a reference which makes no mention of Rowley's differences with FBI headquarters relation to the Moussaoui issue?
















- Did you know that the name of David Frasca does not appear in the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that in 1998 Robert Wright, an FBI agent in Chicago, had begun to investigate possible terror connections in that city because he had come across evidence indicating that a Saudi multimillionaire might have been involved in funding the terror attacks against US embassies in 1998, and despite his contention that the evidence for building his case had become more compelling by January 2001, his investigation was closed down by FBI headquarters, and in May 2002 Wright proclaimed that he was going to sue the FBI for refusing to give him permission to write a book about his investigation, and, yet, apparently, the 9-11 Commission did not even bother to interview Robert Wright, nor does one discover Wright's name in the contents of the 9-11 Commission Report?
















- Did you know that following the release of the 9-11 Commission Report, Sibel Edmonds, an American citizen of Turkish descent who had been hired by the FBI to do translation work during the aftermath of 9-11, wrote an open letter to Thomas Kean, Chairman of the 9-11 Commission, in which she complained that the final Report contained nothing of the eight points she had made to the Commission staff members during her interview – including charges that Mike Feghali, a supervisor in the translation division in the Middle Eastern Division, had, in conjunction with another translator (Melek Can Dickerson), taken hundreds of pages of top-secret intelligence documents outside of the FBI offices, and that Mr. Feghali had, in conjunction with the same translator (Melek Can Dickerson) forged signatures on top-secret reports concerning various detainees in relation to 9-11, and that Mr. Feghali had lied to another FBI agent about the accuracy of a translation which Ms. Edmonds had sent to the Washington Field Office of the FBI for re-translation because she believed the original translation had made some critical mistakes and following the re-translation, Mr. Feghali failed to send this document to the Special Agent who originally had requested the translation in relation to an investigation that agent was conducting?
















- Did you know that the aforementioned Sibel Edmonds also informed Thomas Kean that her testimony before Commission staff members revealed there was evidence that a long-time FBI informant, who had been a high-ranking intelligence officer from Iran dealing with Afghanistan, gave testimony to two FBI agents and a translator more than four months prior to 9-11 stipulating that Osama bin Laden was going to conduct a strike against the United States sometime during the next several months, and this attack would involve airplanes, and, yet, when the FBI agents who had been interviewing the informant passed on this information to their superior, Thomas Fields, who was the Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, the latter agent not only sat on the information but instructed the agents and translator to not discuss the information with anyone else?
















- Did you know that there is no mention of Thomas Fields or Mike Feghali in the 9-11 Commission Report, nor is there any indication that they were interviewed by Commission staffers?
















- Did you know that although there is evidence that Behrooz Sarshar, the translator in the aforementioned affair, testified before Commission staffers for some 2 ½ hours, there is no mention in the Report of the interview which had been passed on to Thomas Fields and about which Sibel Edmonds informed Thomas Kean?
















- Did you know that when Sibel Edmonds informed other officials in the FBI about the Mike Feghali and Thomas Fields incidents but failed to get any response, she sent a letter to the Department of Justice, and was subsequently fired?
















- Did you know that, then, Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked a 'state secrets' rule in seeking, and obtaining, a gag order which precludes Edmonds from divulging any information she may have acquired while working for the FBI?
















- Did you know that despite having testified before 9-11 Commission staffers for more than 3½ hours the only mention of Sibel Edmonds in the 9-11 Commission Report is in the title of a review conducted by the Department of Justice's Inspector General concerning Sibel Edmonds' unspecified allegations in relation to the FBI?
















- Did you know that despite the 9-11 Commission Report's statement that “the threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airlines within the United States – and using them as guided missiles – was not recognized by NORAD prior to 9-11” and despite the infamous statement of Condoleezza Rice before the Commission that prior to 9-11 no one could have imagined someone hijacking planes and flying them into buildings, the Report, itself, actually contains a great deal of information which suggests that both NORAD and Rice should have known better, and, yet, the Commission does not take exception with either Rice or NORAD with respect to their 'failure of imagination' – for example, during the time of the millennium terrorist alert in 1999-2000, Richard Clarke held a meeting of the Counterterrorism Security Group and specifically explored scenarios involving airplane hijackings by al-Qaeda; even more concretely, Richard Clarke oversaw an exercise in conjunction with the 1996 Atlantic Olympics which had terrorists hijacking a Lear jet, loading it with explosives, and, then, flying the airplane into targets in Washington, D.C.; moreover, in July of 2001, the Italian government, in response to intelligence concerning a terrorist attack, had fighter planes flying over the city of Genoa, where the G-8 Summit (which President Bush attended) was being held and, in addition, had set up anti-aircraft batteries around the Genoa airport; and, in August of 1998, intelligence had been uncovered that a Libyan group was planning to hijack an airplane and fly it into the World Trade Center … nor is anything mentioned in the 9-11 Commission Report about the emergency drill conducted by the Pentagon in October 2000 with respect to a hijacked airplane crashing into the Pentagon, or the July 2001 drill of NORAD in which airplanes hijacked in the US would be flown into various targets, including the World Trade Center?

















If you wish to read further on these matters, then, there are a number of books and web sites which not only corroborate the material covered in the foregoing "Did you know" queries, but, as well, these books and websites critically analyze many more issues surrounding the events of 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Even if one wishes to adopt a skeptical stance concerning the implications of the foregoing queries (or the following books/websites), there are a vast array of crucial questions which are left that still require answers -- too many questions of substantial, abiding importance to just let slip away.















Crossing the Rubicon - Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers


The New Pearl Harbor - David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press


Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 David Ray Griffin, John Knox Press


The 9-11 Commission Report David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2005.


The War On Freedom - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, Tree of Life Publications


The War on Truth - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, Olive Branch Press


Behind the War On Terror - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, New Society Publishers


9-11 Synthetic Terror: Made In the USA, Webster Griffin Tarpley, Progressive Press, 2006.


Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9-11, Barrie Zwicker, New Society Publishers, 2006.


Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, Eric Hufschmid, 2002.


The Terror Conspiracy, Jim Marrs, The Disinformation Company Inc., 2006.


Pentagate, Thierry Meyssan, Carnot Publishing LImited, 2002.

In addition to the foregoing, you may want to visit the following web sites:


9-11 Video - Raises a lot of important questions


From The Wilderness


911 Truth


Global Outlook - The Magazine of 9-11 Truth Movement


9-11 Research


9-11 Citizen's Watch















Tuesday, November 21, 2006

The Pentagon and 9-11 -- Did you know? A Sufi Perspective

- Did you know that, initially, the military listed the time of impact of Flight 77 at the Pentagon as around 9: 43 a.m. on September 11, 2001, and although this initial time of impact has been pushed back to 9: 37 a.m. (the 9-11 Commission Report), the actual time of the Pentagon event may actually be 9: 32 a.m. because that is when a number of battery-operated wall clocks in the west wing of the Pentagon, as well one at the heliport, near the west wing, stopped due to a violent event of some kind?







- Did you know that the official government account of what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 is that the west side of the building was struck by Flight 77, a hijacked American Airlines 757 Boeing airplane?







- Did you know that the US military maintains that Flight 77 hit the ground floor of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that although a number of lamp standards near the Pentagon were knocked down because they were allegedly in the flight path of the Boeing 757, there were other objects (for example, a construction site surrounded by a high chain link fence, a large generator, and tall spools of wire) in the same projected flight path of the Boeing 757 that were untouched?







- Did you know that there are photographs of the Pentagon showing that the rear portion of the first and second floor are still intact while the upper three floors were demolished?







- Did you know that the Pentagon is a concrete -- not steel-framed -- building which is 5 stories or 77 feet tall at the highest point of the roof?







- Did you know that a Boeing 757-200, the American Airlines version which supposedly hit the Pentagon, is 155 feet long, has a wingspan of 125 feet, and measures 18 feet from the bottom of the engine to the top of the fuselage, with a fuselage that is 13 feet in diameter, engines which are nine feet in diameter, and there is a distance of 45 feet from the bottom of the engine to the top of the tail?







- Did you know according to the US military and press reports, the object which struck the Pentagon hit at an oblique, 45 degree angle, which, if true, means that the surface area of the Pentagon that allegedly was impacted by a Boeing 757 would have increased to about 177 feet?







- Did you know that even if the engines of a Boeing 757-200 were dragging along the grass, the plane is tall enough that it would have impacted at least two floors of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that there is absolutely no evidence of a Boeing 757 having made contact with any portion of the grass which is in front of the Pentagon, and this means, depending on how high off the ground the Boeing was when it allegedly hit the building, more than two stories of the Pentagon should have been impacted by the plane?







- Did you know that the impact hole in the front exterior of the Pentagon building was estimated to be between 15 and 18 feet wide – that is, not even as wide as the collective diameter of two jet engines, and, more importantly, not as wide as the collective width of such engines plus the portions of the wings and the fuselage that separate the engines from each other?







- Did you know that even after a portion of the Pentagon collapsed from the collective forces of fire and firefighting techniques, the collapsed section, which is broader than the original impact hole, only measures half of the wing width of a Boeing 757?







- Did you know that there are photographs of the Pentagon which were taken just after the collision showing an intact wall, approximately 25 feet above the ground which is just over the point of impact on the west side of the Pentagon, and this intact wall shows no evidence of having been struck by the tail of a commercial jet (and the distance from the bottom of the engine to the tip of the tail is 45 feet) traveling at some 3- 400 miles an hour?







- Did you know that Francois Grangier, who is an expert on air crashes, and who examined photographs of the Pentagon crash site, has stated that no Boeing 757 airplane caused the observable damage to the façade of the west wing of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that a Boeing 757 weighs some 60 tons when empty and that luggage and human beings add many more tonnage to the weight of the plane?







- Did you know that there was, with one exception, no evidence of any debris resembling engines, wings, fuselage, luggage, or body parts to be found outside of the Pentagon near the point of impact?







- Did you know that an engine, a portion of the fuselage, as well as landing gear survived at the World Trade Center collisions?







- Did you know that one piece of skin, bearing some of the colors of an American Airlines vehicle, was supposedly recovered on the lawn outside the Pentagon but the manner in which this coloring is configured cannot be made to match any portion of the exterior of an actual American Airlines Boeing 757?







- Did you know that the aforementioned piece of debris shows none of the black coating, soot, or fire damage which would have been characteristic of an object that had been exposed to a jet fuel fire?







- Did you know that while the official government account of the Pentagon event maintains that the Boeing 757 completely disintegrated on impact, there is absolutely no plausible or technical explanation which is provided that would account for how the above mentioned piece of debris would have been able to escape the disintegrating fate which befell the rest of the 60 ton Boeing plane and, thereby, been available to be found all by itself on the lawn of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that a photograph was published in conjunction with the Pentagon event on 9-11which purportedly depicted the turbofan of a 757 but, subsequently, a team of researchers, led by Karl Schwartz, identified the photographed item as a front-hub assembly of a front compressor from an IT8D turbojet A3 Skywarrior jet fighter which is much smaller than a 757?







- Did you know that prior to 9-11, A3 Skywarriors, although normally a piloted plane, were retrofitted at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport in Colorado to serve as remote controlled, missile-carrying aircraft?







- Did you know that there is a photograph of a nearly round exit hole along the ground, which measures about seven feet in width, that appears in an interior ring of the Pentagon – a hole which the US military claims marks the point of innermost penetration of Flight 77?







- Did you know that the nature of the exit hole seems to indicate it was pierced not smashed?







- Did you know that there is no identifiable debris of an airplane to be found near this exit hole?







- Did you know that there are no scorch marks around the hole as one might anticipate from a jet fuel fire?







- Did you know that the size of this hole is too small to be caused by a jet engine (9 feet in diameter), or the fuselage (13 feet in diameter)?







- Did you know that the nose of a Boeing, referred to as the radome, contains electronic navigation gear, and it is made of carbon fiber so that it can permit passage of electronic waves?







- Did you know that the radome is far too fragile and lacks the sort of density which could have penetrated a succession of concrete ring-walls at the Pentagon to have caused the above mentioned exit hole in the interior C-ring of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that following the Pentagon collision, there were a group of about 20 uniformed men, none of whom were from the National Transportation Safety Board, who were photographed scouring the grass in front of the west wing of the Pentagon and, eventually, taking away a large, but relatively light, tarpaulin-covered object?







- Did you know that in the case of all air crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board has primary jurisdiction and that removing evidence from a crash site constitutes a prosecutable felony?







- Did you know that despite being a crime scene in which hundreds of people were murdered and millions of dollars of damage inflicted, all forensic evidence was removed from the scene of the crime, in and around the Pentagon, within a matter of days?







- Did you know that because the Pentagon is situated in Arlington County, Virginia, jurisdiction for fighting the fire should have belonged to the Arlington County Fire Department, but their fire fighters were not permitted to get near to the primary impact site and, instead, had to fight the fire from a distance?







- Did you know that the Arlington County firefighters were kept away from the location where the airliner was supposed to have been by the Urban Search and Rescue Team of FEMA?







- Did you know that within minutes of the Pentagon event on 9-11, all external surveillance videos covering the west façade of the building were confiscated by the FBI?







- Did you know that surveillance video was confiscated from most, if not all, of the area businesses on the west side of the Pentagon, including the Sheraton Washington Hotel, a gas station directly beneath the flight path of the object which struck the Pentagon and, as well, another gas station some hundred yards to the west of the previously noted gas station?







- Did you know that with the exception of five frames of a video released by the military on March 7, 2002, purportedly showing the Pentagon crash event of 9-11, none of the confiscated video has been released to the public by the FBI?







- Did you know that the five released frames show an incorrect date stamp of September 12, 2001 and, as well, the time stamp for the released frames indicates a time of 17: 37 rather than 9: 38 a.m. or thereabouts when the actual event took place?







- Did you know that Pierre-Henri Bunel, an artillery and explosives expert who served as an ally with General Schwartzkopf during Desert Storm, has examined the foregoing video footage as well as other photographic evidence concerning the Pentagon event and has concluded that the Pentagon event gave evidence (such as the color – indicating temperature -- of the fireball, its manner of expansion, the kind of fire equipment used in combating the fire) of a high-yield explosive denotation at the Pentagon and not the sort of deflagration which would have arisen from a jet fuel fire caused by the impact of a large commercial airliner?







- Did you know that during the press conferences held at the Pentagon between September 12 and 15, 2001, no one reported seeing any large pieces of evidence (such as fuselage, engines, or the like) indicating that the Pentagon had been struck by a Boeing 757?







- Did you know that the voice and flight data recorders which were purportedly from Flight 77 were found on September 14, 2001, along with a light beacon, but that, allegedly, the two recorders were too severely damaged by the fires to yield recoverable data?







- Did you know that Ed Plaugher, the fire chief for the Arlington County Fire Department, who originally reported (between September 12 and 14, 2001) seeing no large portions of a 757 Boeing in the fire debris at the Pentagon, subsequently (some 6 months after September 11, 2001), changed his account to say that he recollects having seen portions of wings, fuselage, engine, landing gear, seats, and one of the two black boxes from the airplane?







- Did you know that according to the official government account of the Pentagon strike on 9-11, the impact was of such intensity that not only did the plane disintegrate but the aluminum portions of the plane melted when, reportedly, the temperature of the fire reached more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit?







- Did you know that there has been no technical explanation forthcoming of how the foregoing disintegration would have occurred and still produced a small exit hole in the interior, third ring of the Pentagon?







- Did you know that when 60-plus tons of melted plane were not found at the Pentagon event, the story began to circulate that at 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, aluminum turns into a gas, and, so, one would not find much aluminum tonnage remaining?







- Did you know that no one has come up with a plausible explanation of how temperatures of 5,400 degrees were reached, let alone sustained for a sufficiently long period of time, to gasify the aluminum from the alleged Boeing plane?







- Did you know that even if someone were to come up with a plausible explanation for the generation of such sustained temperatures, there is no concomitant explanation for why this sort of extensive temperatures and heat did not do more damage to the rest of the building surrounding the hole of impact or why the grass outside of the west side of the Pentagon remained un-singed?







- Did you know that there is photographs of office equipment which is visible near the point of impact and which should have been incinerated if there were temperatures in the building that were high enough to gasify all, or large portions, of the 60 tons of aluminum and metal portions of the plane as some have tried to argue?







- Did you know that even if someone were to come up with a plausible explanation for the generation of sustained heat capable of liquefying and gasifying 60 tons of aluminum, nevertheless, they have not been able to account for how – given the presence of such heat – that authorities were able to identify some of the people who died in the wreckage from their fingerprints?







- Did you know that despite the accounts of disintegration, liquefying, and gasifying of the Boeing 747, the FBI claims that it was able to recover a large portion of the 757 debris and that this all has been marked with the serial number of Flight 77 and has been stored in a warehouse – although pictures of this catalog of debris have never been released to the public?







- Did you know that there were witnesses to the Pentagon event who claim that there were identifiable pieces of debris some hundred yards, or so, from the Pentagon which were supposedly photographed, but till this day, few of these alleged photographs have been made public – one exception being a photograph by Mark Faram which was of the aforementioned piece of American Airline-like colored portion of airplane skin – a piece of debris that has problems surrounding it concerning its authenticity?







- Did you know that one of the first people to claim that a plane had hit the Pentagon was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who claimed that the walked the 2000 feet from the east side to the west side of the Pentagon to examine the damage and who, supposedly, saw thousands of pieces of debris which were identifiable as from an airplane?







- Did you know evidence presented by Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies, as well as during his testimony before the 9-11 Commission, directly contradicts the foregoing account given by Secretary Rumsfeld, because according to Clarke, Rumsfeld was participating in a teleconference with him during this time?







- Did you know that on the day before 9-11, Secretary Rumsfeld reported that 2.3 trillion dollars was missing from the Pentagon accounts?







- Did you know that the west wing contained the financial management sections, accountants, financial data which were to be used in trying to track down the missing 2.3 trillion dollars?







- Did you know that April Gallop, who had Top Secret security clearance and who was employed by the Army in the administrative section situated in the west part of the Pentagon, testified that she heard and felt a bomb go off, smelled no jet fuel, and saw no debris from an air crash inside the Pentagon?







- Did you know that when April Gallop was recovering in the hospital, she was visited by men who never identified themselves but who strongly suggested that she take the package from the Victim Compensation Fund, keep her mouth shut, and who emphasized again and again that a plane had hit the Pentagon?







- Did you know that an Army employee, who was on temporary assignment in accounting at the Pentagon and who was just returning to a south wing office that was adjacent to the west wing, stated that a number of people came running by yelling “bombs” and a “bomb went off”?







- Did you know that a number of Pentagon witnesses indicated that they heard two explosions on the morning of 9-11?







- Did you know that a number of witnesses at the Pentagon indicated that they smelled cordite, not jet fuel, following the initial explosion?







- Did you know that it is possible that an initial explosion could have produced a heat signature which could have served as a homing device for a subsequent heat-seeking guided missile?







- Did you know that on 9-11 there was a taxi driver who was one of the last people to be let on to I-395 which overlooks the west face of the Pentagon before the highway was closed by police, and this taxi driver said that he saw no evidence of either an airplane crash that had impacted the Pentagon or visible plane debris on the grounds in front of that building?







- Did you know that there are conflicting eyewitness accounts of whether what was seen and/or heard near the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001, was an American Airlines Boeing 757, a small 10-seater jet plane – possibly with American Airlines-like coloring, or a missile?







- Did you know that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld referred to the object which hit the Pentagon as a “missile” during an interview with Parade magazine?







- Did you know that Major General Larry Arnold, commander of NORAD had ordered a fighter jet which was in the vicinity to fly over the west face of the Pentagon shortly after the explosion on September 11, 2001, and the pilot indicated there was no evidence that a plane had struck the Pentagon?







- Did you know that some people may have confused the aforementioned fly-by of a fighter jet with Flight 77, and this could be why the 9-11 Commission Report cites 9: 37 a.m. as the time of impact rather than the time of 9: 32 a.m. which is indicated by the battery-operated wall-clocks in the west wing of the Pentagon that stopped at 9: 32 due to a violent event?







- Did you know that no one seems to have asked Major General Arnold the following question: namely, if there was a jet-fighter close enough to inspect damage just shortly after 9: 32 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, then, why was this plane not able to shoot the Boeing 757 down prior to hitting the Pentagon?







- Did you know that according to the 9-11 Commission Report the Pentagon did not know it was under attack until 9: 36 a.m., and, therefore, just a minute or two before impact?







- Did you know that according to military officials since they only had one or two minutes of prior notification before the Pentagon event at 9: 37 a.m., and, since, apparently, the only asset in the vicinity at the time was an unarmed C-130H cargo airplane, it was ordered to locate, identify, and track the suspicious object appearing on the radar screens?







- Did you know that the pilot of the C-130H was able to accomplish all of the foregoing plus watch the plane crash into the west wing of the Pentagon, and, then, report all of this to the Pentagon?







- Did you know that, apparently, none of the military officials specified where in the air, precisely, this cargo plane was in relation to the Pentagon or Washington DC, or, how, all within a minute or so, the pilot of the cargo plane was able to locate, identify, follow, and watch the crash of a plane that was doing a 270 degree downward spiral through 7,000 feet?







- Did you know that, apparently, none of the military officials have been able to reconcile the reports of this C130H cargo plane pilot watching a plane crash into the Pentagon at 9: 37 a.m. with the report of the Major-General-Arnold-ordered-fly-by of a jet fighter over the west wing of the Pentagon shortly after 9: 32 a.m., and why the jet fighter rather than the cargo plane was not ordered to pursue the approaching object, or why nothing was said by either the C130H cargo plane pilot or the jet fighter pilot about the existence of one another since they would have been flying near the west wing of the Pentagon at about the same time?







- Did you know that American Airlines Flight 77 originally went off course and displayed other characteristics of a possible hijacking as early as 8: 46 a.m.?







- Did you know that, supposedly, all civilian contact with Flight 77 was lost around 9: 09 a.m.?







- Did you know that the US military is not dependent on the FAA to know the whereabouts of planes within US air space?







- Did you know that the Pentagon was reportedly hit at 9: 43 a.m. (and later 'fixed' at 9: 37 a.m. by the 9-11 Commission Report), and this is nearly an hour after Flight 77 displayed characteristics of an airplane which required investigation from both the FAA and NMCC (National Military Command Center)?







- Did you know that the transponder for Flight 77 was cut off more than 40 minutes prior to the Pentagon event, and that by cutting off the transponder this accomplished two things: (1) it drew attention to Flight 77 as a very likely hijacking that needed to be intercepted by jet fighters; (2) when a flying object is missing a transponder signal, it becomes an automatic object of interest to the military?







- Did you know that no one has been able to explain why the transponder was shut off because this would not have prevented either the military or the Secret Service from being aware of the plane's location via radar systems which are far superior to those of the FAA?







- Did you know that radar logs indicate that the object which was reported to be Flight 77 performed a downward spiral, of roughly 270 degrees, that dropped approximately 7000 feet in two and a half minutes before skimming along the top of the grass prior to allegedly striking the Pentagon on the first floor?







- Did you know that this sort of aerial maneuver would have been a challenge to even the most experienced of pilots?







- Did you know that well-experienced air controllers who were watching the Pentagon-related object on radar said that the pivot of the object was so tight that it reminded them of a maneuver that might be made by a jet fighter?







- Did you know that Hani Hanjour, the purported hijacking pilot of Flight 77, was by all accounts a terrible pilot who, after several lessons at the Sorbi Flying Club in San Diego, was advised by the instructors to quit because he had no understanding of what he was doing in a cockpit, was subject to panic attacks while in the cockpit, and couldn't even properly draw a picture of the plane … configuring the wings in a backward position?







- Did you know that according to reports filed by The Prince George's Journal in Maryland Hani Hanjour had visited the Bowie Maryland Freeway Airport in mid-August of 2001 in order to be permitted to rent an airplane but on three different occasions he was judged by those at the airport who checked him out to be too clumsy and inept a pilot even in relation to a Cessna 172, which is miniscule compared to a Boeing 757 and far easier to operate, to be given rental privileges at the Bowie Maryland Freeway airfield?







- Did you know that Flight 77 was reported to have flown for 35 minutes through US air space on a heading for Washington, D.C. without being detected?







- Did you know that despite the fact that the transponder for Flight 77 was not turned off until the plane had made a U-turn from west to east, nonetheless, air traffic controllers continued to hunt for Flight 77 on the radar screens in a westerly direction rather than in an easterly direction?







- Did you know that whatever problems the FAA may have been having with their secondary radar systems -- which cannot track planes whose transponders have been turned off -- nevertheless, the FAA also has primary radar systems distributed around the country that are able to track aircraft irrespective of whether their transponders are on or off, and, as well, NORAD and the Secret Service radar systems also can track air traffic quite independently of transponder identification?







- Did you know that Norman Mineta, the Secretary of Transportation, testified that he witnessed reports being given to Vice President Cheney as early as 9: 25 or 9: 26 a.m. in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House in relation to an approaching aircraft headed for Washington, and, that, therefore, rather than a mere moment or two of prior notification, officials in the government had some twelve minutes, or so, of advanced warning concerning the in-coming flight even if one were to accept the rather implausible account that previous to its detection near Washington, D.C., Flight 77 was able to fly across the United States for 35 minutes undetected by the military?







- Did you know that Secretary Mineta's testimony was not included in the final 9-11 Commission Report?







- Did you know that the autopsy reports for the body remains found in the Pentagon show no evidence of there being any individuals who were among the dead and found amidst the ruins of the Pentagon who displayed genetic markers indicating Arab descent?







- Did you know that there are batteries of anti-aircraft missiles deployed around the Pentagon?







- Did you know that these missiles were not triggered by an in-coming aircraft despite the fact that this plane's transponder was supposedly turned off and, therefore, could not be identified as a friendly craft by the electronic identification program of the missile system?








If you wish to read further on these matters, then, there are a number of books and web sites which not only corroborate the material covered in the foregoing "Did you know" queries, but, as well, these books and websites critically analyze many more issues surrounding the events of 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Even if one wishes to adopt a skeptical stance concerning the implications of the foregoing queries (or the following books/websites), there are a vast array of crucial questions which are left that still require answers -- too many questions of substantial, abiding importance to just let slip away.







Crossing the Rubicon - Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers


The New Pearl Harbor - David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press


Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 David Ray Griffin, John Knox Press


The 9-11 Commission Report David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2005.


The War On Freedom - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, Tree of Life Publications


The War on Truth - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, Olive Branch Press


Behind the War On Terror - Nafeez Mosaddaeq Ahmed, New Society Publishers


9-11 Synthetic Terror: Made In the USA, Webster Griffin Tarpley, Progressive Press, 2006.


Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9-11, Barrie Zwicker, New Society Publishers, 2006.


Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, Eric Hufschmid, 2002.


The Terror Conspiracy, Jim Marrs, The Disinformation Company Inc., 2006



In addition to the foregoing, you may want to visit the following web sites:


9-11 Video - Raises a lot of important questions


From The Wilderness


911 Truth


Global Outlook - The Magazine of 9-11 Truth Movement


9-11 Research


9-11 Citizen's Watch