Crimes of the State Blog

I'll cut to the chase: the cover up of 9/11 was all about hiding incompetence; that is the opinion of Philip Shenon (NY Times) and the gaggle of book reviewers who promote his tome over at Big Media.

Let's make the crucial distinction up front:

It's not "incompetence"
if done intentionally.

This unthinkable concept has never made it up to the editors and reporters of America's well-paid professional journalism class. There can only be unintentional incompetence, and never purposeful malfeasance: never agency of treason.

Such myths would be comforting if there weren't a long and despicable history of such government crimes to draw upon -- something professional journalists are supposed to be aware of, yet never seem to write about.

"SHENON: It does appear that above Richard Clarke there wasn't much interest in the subject. The new President saw terrorism as sort of a Clinton Administration issue that they weren't interested in. Bush Administration was interested in missile defense, American relationship with Russia and China, rogue states like Korea and Iraq; they just couldn't [get] their arms around this concept of terrorism. And, many people would argue, we all paid a price
for that." -Philip Shenon Interview, February 23, 2008

To accept this official "incompetence theory" of 9/11 requires a suspension of disbelief that boggles the mind.

Several important developments:

September 2000: The Project for a New American Century writes favorably
about a "catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor." This is signed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Elliott Abrams and other Bushies.

May 8, 2001: Dick Cheney placed in charge of counterterrorism training. He has never been called to account for his actions in that role, specifically the numerous rescheduled war games running simultaneously during the actual 9/11 attacks.

June 1st 2001: "Air Piracy" regulations rewritten, evidently contributing to the slowdown of fighter response on 9/11, where Secretary of Defense "approval" is never granted to launch interceptors to defend New York or the Pentagon from air attack.

July 20, 2001: Bush and entourage moved out of high rise hotel because of alleged threat of suicide skyjacking in Genoa Italy. Presidential party sent to secure undisclosed location in response to assassination threat.

August 6, 2001: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."

So many additional warnings made it to the top of the government that there is a farcical quality, a level of absurdity to the statements of white house officials that alleged serious journalists accept at face value. One cannot look at such a mountain of evidence of guilt, of complicity, and just pretend that conclusion does not exist. The Bush team have been notoriously suspicious, and they should be removed and investigated for complicity in the attacks. Inthe real world, the suspected perps aren't allowed to investigate themselves,or to control the release of incriminating evidence! The 9/11 farce has such a surreal quality, removed from the real world, that it's difficult to explain the gullibility of people like Shenon.

The book's reviews focus on Zelikow and Rice, two insiders that really should have waited through the 9/11 Commission proceedings in seperate cells, and not as spinmeisters for the official theory of the attacks. Much hay is made by Shenon that Zelikow and Rice are both liars, and not to be believed -- but this as presented as inconsequential. You see, the only thing they were hiding was incompetence. It's a very neat little package, and it has no bearing on the truth whatsoever.

Other fine writers have critiqued the "omissions and distortions" of the 9/11 Commission Report since the moment it was released in 2004. Let's recap some of what got nowhere near that report:

1) Sec. Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony contradicted Dick Cheney's
claim about the Vice President's actions that day. Clearly, the PEOC was monitoring "the plane coming into the pentagon" yet no orders to scramble interceptors, or to fire surface to air missiles in defense of the Pentagon are seen.

2) NORAD and FAA headquarters apparently obstructed fighter response, and did not directly issue scramble orders as threats were known.

3) Sec. Defense Rumsfeld was missiing in action during the entire crucial period of the 9/11 attacks. As the June 1st "Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction" concerning "Air Piracy" required Secretary of Defense "approval" before launching any interceptors at all, this conspicuous lack of "approval"apparently aided and abetted the attacking aircraft, making Rumsfeld and his enablers a party to treason.

4) The head of Pakistani intelligence was linked in the press to wire transfers to alleged "lead hijacker" Mohammad Atta. Not one word explains these press reports.

5) Approximately 200 Israeli agents were detained before and after the 9/11 attacks including several who were filming the first plane impact the first tower, and who then celebrated this event with such zeal that police were notified.

6) The claimed main source for the 9/11 Commission Report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was reported killed in a gun battle in Pakistan before his alleged capture. No positive identification has ever proven that the US government holds the actual suspects it claims.

7) The crucial steel evidence from the World Trade Center buildings was illegally and feloniously shipped off to Asia as "scrap" when the forensic analysis is crucial to any understanding of what happened. Other anomalies like "vaporized steel", observed "pools of molten steel,"and "warping" which required excessivley high temperatures are unexplainable in the official "fire collapse" narrative.

8) The Venice Florida flight school (which allegedly "trained" Atta and others to fly) "Huffman Aviation" was linked to heroin trafficking from South America -- and no legal prosecutions ensued after the "largest drug bust in Central Florida history." Other aircraft have
since been caught trafficking tons of cocaine with links to both CIA front
companies and to the same Venice Florida airport.

Yeah, I could make these lists all day long. The top dog "investigative journalists" like Philip Shenon aren't interested. They are conspicuously uninterested in some of the most damning facts about 9/11. This leads me to distrust them, and to keep seeking information elsewhere.