A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals that, shortly before the World Trade Center was first hit on 9/11, Kirk Lippold--who had been the commanding officer of the USS Cole--made an ominous statement. While having breakfast at the CIA's headquarters, he reportedly complained that it would take a "seminal event" to awaken the American public to the threat posed by terrorism:

(8:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Navy Commander Describes Need for 'Seminal' Terrorist Event

During a recent Congressional hearing on the "friendly fire" death of football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004, Representative John Mica (R-Fla) gave new details about an 8 o'clock breakfast meeting held at the Pentagon the morning of 9/11 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mica told the hearing, which was attended by Rumsfeld:

I think on my dying day, I'll remember September 11th, when I was with Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon for breakfast that morning. He invited me and half-a-dozen members [of Congress], I think, over to the Pentagon. And the subject of the conversation Donald Rumsfeld was interested in was: the military had been downsized during the '90s since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And what we were going to do about [the] situation is we had another--the word you [i.e. Rumsfeld] used was "incident," I remember, in the conversation, sitting in the room right off of his office for coffee that morning. And he was trying to make certain that we were prepared for something that we might not expect. [1]

The morning of 9/11, CNN reported a mystery jet plane flying above Washington, DC. At 9:54 a.m., correspondent John King, who was standing near the White House, reported that about ten minutes earlier (hence, around 9:44 a.m.), there was "a white jet circling overhead." He added: "Now, you generally don't see planes in the area over the White House. That is restricted air space. No reason to believe that this jet was there for any nefarious purposes, but the Secret Service was very concerned, pointing up at the jet in the sky. It is out of sight now, best we can tell." [1] Shortly after, another CNN correspondent, Kate Snow, also reported having seen a plane, "circling over the Capitol" building at around the same time. She said: "Now whether that may have been an Air Force plane, it's unclear. But that seemed to be the reason, according to security guards that I talked with, towards the evacuation of the Capitol." [2]

Yet the identity of this "white jet" aircraft has been a mystery. Indeed, there has been virtually no discussion of its existence, even though it was flying above Washington at a time when America was under attack, and when the only aircraft in the area should have been fighter jets, there to protect against possible further attacks. The 9/11 Commission, which claimed that its aim had been to present "the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11" appears not to have investigated the identity of this plane, and made no mention of it in its final report.

As the following two new entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline show, early in 2001, the new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was regularly talking about the danger of surprise attacks, and was expressing particular interest in the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld "routinely handed out or recommended" Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

An article in the Washington Post reveals new details of Vice President Dick Cheney's immediate response to the 9/11 attacks:

In a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, Cheney locked his eyes on CNN, chin resting on interlaced fingers. He was about to watch, in real time, as thousands were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Previous accounts have described Cheney's adrenaline-charged evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center that morning, a Secret Service agent on each arm. They have not detailed his reaction, 22 minutes later, when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

"There was a groan in the room that I won't forget, ever," one witness said. "It seemed like one groan from everyone" -- among them Rice; her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey; counselor Matalin; Cheney's chief of staff, Libby; and the vice president's wife.

Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies.

It is well known that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein has tried to claim the 9/11 attacks against New York constituted two separate events, thus entitling him to a double insurance payout. But a new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals something less well known: Silverstein was already thinking about how to get this double payout on the evening of 9/11 itself:

September 12, 2001: WTC Leaseholder Already Wants to Claim Double Insurance for Attacks and Rebuild

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11

September 11, 2001 was an extraordinary day for many reasons. It was a day when hijackers who were amateur pilots and had never before flown jet planes suddenly gained remarkable flying skills. It was a day when scientific laws apparently changed, so that relatively small fires supposedly could cause three massive skyscrapers to disintegrate into dust, each in the space of just a few seconds. And it was also a day when two F-15s appear to have made possibly the slowest journey by military fighter jets in all history.

(Gleeson is the editor of the Winnipeg Sun, and this OpEd is also posted at his hometown paper. This is his second OpEd on "the War on Terror" in a week. Please write in support to the Winnipeg and Edmonton Sun. Also syndicated in the Toronto Sun. -r.)

Scholars debate 9/11 findings
By JOHN GLEESON
Edmonton Sun, April 18, 2007

Check out the following new entry from the Complete 9/11 Timeline, about a series of workshops held in the World Trade Center between 2000 and 2001 that, among other things, considered a terrorist strike on Wall Street:

Here's a rather bizarre coincidence. For anyone unaware of this fact, a 1994 bestselling novel by Tom Clancy--Debt of Honor--ended with a Japanese pilot deliberately crashing his Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol building during a joint session of Congress with the President attending, thus decapitating the political leadership.

This is odd in itself, in light of what happened seven years later on 9/11. But check out the following quote from the New York Times' review of Debt of Honor:

This clip is taken from a DVD called 24 Hours at Ground Zero. In it, some time before 3 p.m. on 9/11, a firefighter referred to only as "Miller" predicts that WTC 7 is going to collapse. He says: "See where the white smoke is? You see this thing leaning like this? It's definitely coming down. There's no way to stop it. 'Cause you have to go up in there to put it out and it's already, the structural integrity is not there in the building."

According to news reports, alleged al-Qaeda "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has now confessed to having planned the 9/11 attacks. Last Saturday (March 10), he supposedly told a tribunal panel of three military officers and a government-provided representative: "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation." This was not all. In fact, he supposedly confessed (though not under oath) to involvement in a total of 31 attacks or planned attacks, including the 1993 WTC bombing and the 2002 Bali bombing.

However, there is one rather large problem with this story: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reportedly killed on September 11, 2002, during an hours-long shootout with Pakistani security forces. Intelligence officials had supposedly tracked him down to an apartment in the southern part of Karachi. FBI and Pakistani ISI officials then surrounded the building, and were joined by hundreds of police vehicles and Pakistan Rangers.

Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11.

He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. It became like a giant funeral service." (Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground," Washington Post, 5/12/2002)

Since there were 44 people on board Flight 93, a crash site with "no bodies" makes no sense. Where were the victims? Something appears to have been seriously wrong.

"That building is never coming down, that didn't get hit by a plane, why isn't somebody in there putting the fire out?"

- Comment by a firefighter, September 11, 2001.

World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a modern, steel-framed high-rise, had ever collapsed because of fire before. In fact, photos indicate that the fires it did suffer were relatively minor, particularly when compared to other building fires that have not caused such a total collapse. If the official explanation is correct--that WTC 7's collapse was not due to pre-planted explosives--then this was the biggest scientific anomaly of all time. People must surely have been astonished when this massive building suddenly fell to the ground late in the afternoon of 9/11.

Yet this was not the case.

As the dozens of witness accounts below show, many people were warned in advance to evacuate the area surrounding WTC 7, because of the "imminent" collapse. Indeed, a specific "collapse zone" was set up and, consequently, there were no casualties when WTC 7 eventually fell. Furthermore, a small number of senior firefighters have claimed they could tell beforehand that this building was going to come down, even though such an event would have been totally unprecedented.

So how did they know Building 7 was going to collapse?