Letter to US Sec. of Transportation re. omissions from 911 report

[JohnyCanuck]

Since this is an "open" letter and the evident wish of the author is that it should be broadcast far and wide, I am taking the liberty of reproducing in full. Received via email from www.septembereleventh.org

Subject: Important 9/11 News - An Open Letter to US Secretary of Transportation
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:33:57 -0800 (PST)

Dear 9/11 truth activists and concerned citizens,

Below is an open letter to US Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta,
written by Los Angeles resident Gregor Holland, regarding the omission of
Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission in their final report. That
testimony included eye witness accounting of events that occurred in the
Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) the morning of 9/11/01.
Additionally, it appears that an effort has been made to conceal Secretary
Mineta's testimony from the public by editing it from video archives of
the 5/23/03 hearing on the 9/11 Commission website (the testimony is not
deleted from the .pdf and .html archive).

This is very important information, and could serve as key evidence in an
international tribunal. Therefore, please forward this email to the
international press, foreign governments, UN, etc.

For the full html version, please visit:
http://www.911truthmovement.org/dear_secretary_mineta.html

An Open Letter to US Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta

March 23, 2005

Dear Secretary Mineta,

On May 23, 2003 you testified before the 9/11 Commission in public hearing
as to your experience on the morning of 9/11/01. During your testimony you
stated that you arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center
(PEOC) underneath the East Wing of the White House "at about 9:20 a.m.",
at which time Vice President Richard Cheney and other staff was already
present in the center, with Mr. Cheney clearly in command. You also state
in your testimony that you had believed based on a conversation that took
place between Mr. Cheney and an unnamed "young man" that a shoot down
order had been given by the Vice President prior to your arrival, because,
in your words...

"There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president,
"The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got
down to, "The plane is 10 miles out, "the young man also said to the vice
president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and
whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have
you heard anything to the contrary?"

You made it clear during your testimony to the Commission that you had
arrived at the PEOC prior to the Pentagon attack and that the plane the
young man was referring to was Flight 77 that reportedly hit the Pentagon
at 9:37. Your testimony made it clear that you were not confusing flight
77 and flight 93, which crashed at 10:10 a.m. in Shanksville,
Pennsylvania. Considering the timeframe and that Shanksville is 170 miles
from Washington D.C., the distances announced by the young man could not
have had any meaningful relevance to Flight 93. Also, when asked by
Commission Co-Chair Hamilton if you knew beforehand (before it crashed)
about Flight 93 you said "I did not". You were clearly lucid about the
timeframe of the conversation and the strange response by the vice
president, which occurred in your words "about five or six minutes" after
your arrival at the PEOC, or around 9:25 or 9:26.

Your testimony was consistent with statements made by Mr. Cheney during an
interview September 16, 2001 with Tim Russert of "Meet the Press";

Cheney: "...when I arrived there (PEOC), within short order, we had word
the Pentagon's been hit."

It was also consistent with the report of that morning according to
Richard A. Clarke in his book "Against All Enemies". Furthermore, your
testimony is in synch with the published timing of the approach of flight
77 according to the recently released Staff Report 3 by the 9/11
Commission. In this report the Commission states that Flight 77 was 60
miles out at 9:25, and 38 miles out at 9:29. This trajectory fits with
your description of events and persuasively matches your account with the
approach of the aircraft that struck the Pentagon.

What is strange and unexplained is that despite your testimony and the
numerous public reports and statements which support it including Mr.
Cheney's, in its final report the 9/11 Commission gives the time for the
arrival of the Vice President to the PEOC as 9:58, an almost 38 minute
difference from your public testimony, and at the least 20 minutes later
than the Vice President himself claimed on national television. While the
Commission report states that there "is conflicting evidence about when
the vice president arrived in the shelter conference room", it does not
resolve nor make any comment as to the fact that your testimony is
discarded in its entirety.

According to David Ray Griffin, who has analyzed this topic and many
others in detail in his important recent book "The 9/11 Commission Report:
Omissions and Distortions":

"In constructing its revisionary timeline, the Kean-Zelikow Commission
implies that either Mineta was lying or else his memory of his experiences
that morning had become very confused. But it is hard to imagine what
motive Mineta would have for lying about his time of arrival at the PEOC
and about what he observed there."

There is another disturbing aspect to the discarding of your testimony by
the 9/11 Commission. It appears that the Commission has attempted to
conceal your testimony by editing out that part of your public testimony
in which you describe your experience in the PEOC from the video archive
on the 9/11 Commission website (Day 2: Panel 1 - Windows Media).

The PEOC chronology is not the only significant timeline revision made by
the 9/11 Commission in its report. During the final 9/11 Commission
hearing, the longstanding timeline for FAA and NORAD response was
drastically rewritten to conflict with previous official testimony and
records disseminated to the public by NORAD and the FAA. The new timeline
appeared to absolve the military of responsibility for failure to execute
standing protocols on 9/11.

The omission of your testimony from the Final Report and editing of the
video is not the only case of the 9/11 Commission tampering with public
testimony records on its own web archive. As of this writing and for quite
some time, General Major Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott have been
omitted from the archived agenda of the Commission hearing of the same day
(5/23/03) as your testimony. Both individuals gave substantial testimony
on that day, and like your own, that sworn testimony conflicted
prolifically with revisions applied much later to the timeline by Phillip
Zelikow and the 9/11 Commission. And so we now see that not only did the
commission revise history on the last day of Commission hearings and in
their report, but they also have attempted to conceal that public
testimony which conflicts with their revision. These two circumstances
alone lend credence to the conclusion arrived at by David Ray Griffin.
According to Griffin...

"The purpose of the 9/11 Commission...was not to provide 'the fullest
possible account of the events surrounding 9/11'. The purpose was to argue
that the US Government was not itself complicit in the attacks."

A thorough review of the 9/11 Commission hearings makes it quite evident
that Griffin's hypothesis can be narrowed even further as it applies to
the FAA and NORAD failures on 9/11. The strategy of the 9/11 Commission
was to pin the failures on the morning of 9/11 on the FAA, while
deflecting attention away from the military and the executive branches of
the government. This is abundantly evidenced by the aggressive questioning
given to FAA officials on the last day of hearings, while the Commission
treated in particular Admiral Charles Leidig, who reportedly manned the
NMCC National Military Command Center ­ nerve center of the military
communications structure - with kid gloves. This is despite the fact that
Leidig makes the claim that the NMCC staff first learned about the second
World Trade Center attack by seeing it on TV, a full 30 minutes after the
FAA Boston Center had contacted NEADS, the Northeast Air Defense Sector
branch of NORAD. The Commission implies that the FAA didn't use common
sense and pick up the phone to call the NMCC. But the testimony of FAA
Officials Monty Belger, Acting Deputy FAA Administrator on 9/11, and Ben
Sliney, Operations Manager of the Air Traffic Control System Command
Center in Herndon, VA on 9/11, reveal that there was in fact no excuse for
the military to not have situational awareness throughout the events that
morning. According to Belger...

"There were military people on duty at the FAA Command Center. They were
participating in what was going on. There were military people in the
FAA's Air Traffic Organization in the situation room. They were
participating in what was going on."

And according to Sliney...

"...available to us at the (FAA) Command Center, of course, is the
military cell, which was our liaison with the military services. They were
present at all of the events that occurred on 9/11."

Clearly the Commission made a deliberate choice to avoid pursuing the
possibility of any military accountability for failed response on the
morning of 9/11. Because the mainstream media has scarcely cast a critical
eye on the proceedings and report of the 9/11 Commission, the majority of
the American public is still doing their homework on these critical issues
despite overt attempts by some to brand any 9/11 questioner as a
conspiracy nut or extremist. Fortunately, the discarding of your testimony
is amongst the most graspable of issues for a budding 9/11 questioner to
verify by simply comparing the 9/11 Commission Report (see p. 40) with the
written transcript of your testimony archived on the 9/11 Commission
website archive (see see Transcript for Fri, May 23, 2003), then comparing
that with the edited video (see Panel 1 Windows Media for Fri, May 23,
2003).

In 19 days and over 100 hours of public testimony, there was scarce
illumination into the events of the crucial 2 hours between 8:00 and 10:10
a.m. the morning of 9/11. Your testimony and the testimony of Major
General Larry Arnold, as well as that of Colonel Alan Scott on 5/23/03,
are amongst the few glimpses we have seen. The record clearly reveals that
that important original testimony has been revised, discarded, and
concealed by the 9/11 Commission. And as has been well reported by Mike
Ruppert and Michael Kane of From The Wilderness and others, there is
scarcely a mention of the multiple live-fly drills being conducted the
morning of 9/11. There is clear indication via recorded conversation that
the actual hijackings were initially thought to be a part of these drills
as exemplified by the response of NEADS to the first contact from FAA
(NEADS: "Is this real-world or exercise?"). A full understanding of the
drills is crucial and the fact that the Commission did not explore this
topic is disturbing and must be corrected.

Secretary Mineta, your testimony serves to provide an important point of
reference for evaluation and revelation of the 9/11 Commission and the
veracity of its report. Given the facts in this matter, it is perhaps a
rhetorical request to ask you to comment on your testimony to the 9/11
Commission and the Commissions actions to discard and attempt to conceal
it from the public. Nonetheless the request is hereby made with great
respect to your office and your service to this nation.

Very Sincerely,

Gregor Holland, US Citizen
Los Angeles, CA


NOTE TO READERS:
Concerned individuals are encouraged to take "The Mineta Test". Here's how:

1. Read the 9/11 Commission testimony of Secretary Mineta from May 23,
2003 (see day 2: full transcript,p. 11-13).
2. Compare it to the 9/11 Commission Report PEOC timeline (see Chapter 1:
"We Have Some Planes" p.40).
3. Verify that the 9/11 Commission Archive has edited the Mineta testimony
from the video. (see Day Two: Panel 1, Windows Media ).
4. Get your friends and family to take the test.
5. Call your Congressional Representative and get them to take the test.
Then ask them if they are confident in the 9/11 Commission Report given
the preceding information as well as the many additional serious
unanswered questions that still exist over 6 months after the adjourning
of the Commission.
6. Contact your local media and get them to take the test. Make them
accountable if they are not writing about the many remaining unanswered
questions, including the War Games taking place on 9/11.
7. Be encouraged by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (link).
8. Refer also to the open letter to Richard A. Clarke written by Kyle Hence available at http://www.911truth.org.[br />9. Be encouraged by this.



















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