Nine hundred and Eleven Missing Pieces

[RBHam]

What don’t we know, and why don’t we know it?
by Alan Cabal, NY Press

http://www.nypress.com/16/53/news&columns/feature.cfm

Excerpt:
One of the more compelling passages in Breitweiser’s statement concerns a July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS wherein a top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke, stated that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon." Despite being put on heightened alert, intelligence agencies ignored–or at least dismissed–what is now widely known as the "Phoenix Memo."

On July 10, an FBI field agent in Phoenix, AZ, named Kenneth Williams reported suspicions of a hijacking plot. He recommended that the FBI investigate the possibility that al Qaeda operatives were training at U.S. flight schools, suggesting that Osama bin Laden’s followers may have been securing jobs as security guards, pilots and other personnel.

Too many questions remain, and Breitweiser is very thorough in outlining the possible failures of not only our government’s communication prior to the attack, but its response. She wonders why, for instance, the NY/NJ Port Authority didn’t evacuate the World Trade Center when they knew that a second plane was heading in? And why weren’t the F-16s and Stealth bombers that tracked on radar screens at approximately 8:05 a.m. used to prevent tragedy?

Concerning the attack on the Pentagon, Breitweiser notes that Washington Air Traffic Control Center was aware of the first plane before it hit the World Trade Center. And yet, the third plane–American Airlines Flight 77, soon to plunge into the Pentagon–made a few "loop de loops" over DC one hour and 45 minutes after Washington Center was made aware of the hijackings. Why, she asks, was our Air Force so late in its response?

[RBHam]

1. Um, mainstream press finally reporting in depth?

Is the NY Press considered mainstream?

[tom_paine]

2. Don't look for it to be picked up on Corporate TV Pravda

Imperial Amerika's state-manipulated media (some say controlled, but the beauty of the Imperial Media (for those who wish to control the Imperial Subjects) that censorship takes place "voluntarily".

Yes, I think the NY Press is somewhat mainstream, but the Busheviks operate on the fact that none of the Imperial Subjects red very much, so that if it can be kept off the TV, no one will know it happened anyway.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. It's a free alternative weekly

So perhaps still not fit for the US mainstream. (I do, however, recall a pretty good piece from a Philadelphia paper a few months ago about 9/11's unanswered - hell, unasked - questions.)

I like the cover illustration:

[xchrom]

3. the buck stops with george

it was his administration -- the fault lies with him. period.
and i will always want the answers to to those questions that 9-11 raises.
not that i think our corporate masters will ever let us know.

[RBHam]

5. Bush Knew

9-11 is the key to ousting Bush.

Nothing else will work.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. If Bush campaigns on the bones of the sacrificial victims

of his imperial triumph - because we know this wasn't an Intelligence "failure" - and is allowed to get away with it, it will be unbearable. And the judgement upon America will be awful.

[RBHam]

7. Two Words

by Will Pitt, truthout
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010504A.shtml
snippet:
According to a Time Magazine story that appeared on Friday, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is balking at requests to testify before Thomas Kean's September 11 commission under oath. She also wants her testimony to be taken behind closed doors, and not in public. The crux of her hesitation would appear on the surface to be her comments of May 16 2002, in which she used the above-referenced excuse that no one "could have predicted that they would try to use a hijacked airplane as a missile." If that excuse is reflective of reality, why does she fear to testify under oath?

Perhaps Ms. Rice fears testifying because too many facts are now in hand, thanks in no small part to the work of 9/11 widows like Kristen Breitweiser, which fly in the face of the administration's demurrals. For example, in 1993, a $150,000 study was commissioned by the Pentagon to investigate the possibility of an airplane being used to bomb national landmarks. A draft document of this was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee broke into the cockpit of a DC-10 with plans to crash it into a company building in Memphis.

That same year, a lone pilot crashed a small plane into a tree on the White House grounds, narrowly missing the residence. An Air France flight was hijacked by members of the Armed Islamic Group, which intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower. In September 1999, a report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism" was prepared for U.S. intelligence by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress. It stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."

Throughout the spring and early summer of 2001, intelligence agencies flooded the government with warnings of possible terrorist attacks against American targets, including commercial aircraft, by al Qaeda and other groups. A July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS had a top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke, state that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, who is a three-star general, was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush administration. When the Bush administration came in, he wrote a memo about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, "We will be struck again." As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings.

[worldgonekrazy]

8. A kick

Lets bring these bastards down.