Submit articles

The 7-11 Commission
A TON OF BALONEY!
Posted August 4, 2004 thepeoplesvoice.org

By: Ted Lang

First, an explanation of government reports: they follow the same format as Cato Institute Policy Analysis Reports. The report is first summarized briefly up front in a section entitled "executive summary" and then followed by the complete report.

One thing is clear and a bit surprising; as the report approaches the million mark in sales, indicating that Americans are becoming more dedicated to finding out what's going on within their government, this thickly-sliced baloney is going to give them all the wrong answers and send their struggling minds searching in all the wrong places.

Every voluminous report starts with an executive summary. Thankfully, I was able to download the executive summary of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, termed simply the "9-11 Commission," from The New York Times. It was jointly chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton [D-IN]

Now before we examine the summary, lets all remember how the Bush family had connections to relatives of Osama bin Laden through mutual oil and banking interests, and how also there were similar connections linking Amerada Hess and Chairman Tom Kean to Khalid bin Mahfouz, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law. Bin Mahfouz and his Delta Oil Ltd. and Hess had combined in a joint oil venture. And recall also how Bush had the FBI arrange for all 200 or so bin Laden family members to fly out of the country, the only ones accorded such special air travel access privileges during the air traffic shutdown immediately following 9-11.

A clear, concise, crisp identification of the motive for the terrorist attack continues to elude the commission's investigative curiosity, always the key to any criminal investigation. The best I could find is under the subtitle, "Who is the enemy?" Their puffball analysis, starting with an assessment of Osama bin Laden's perverted religious delusion, begins: "He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization." Modernity and globalization - maybe the commission means Israel and the NWO?

And, "Bin Laden also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which is the home of Islam's holiest sites, and against other U.S. policies [Israel?] in the Middle East." Sounds to me like Osama's got a solid case!

Acknowledging that there was more than ample intelligence available through the field efforts of both the CIA and the FBI, I offer that the headquarters ends of these operations NEVER developed and communicated ANY initiatives outward and downward to coordinate these warnings. And President Bush failed to discipline and fire those in charge, especially Robert Mueller of the FBI and George Tenet of the CIA. When a chief executive fails to demote or fire those under him who have failed so miserably, then the responsibility for failure rises to his level.

Acknowledging up front that no blame would be directed specifically, thereby invalidating the entire effort for the reasons explained in the preceding paragraph, the summary offers: "During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, 'something very, very, very big.' Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us, 'The system was blinking red.'" The "system?" Well, if the system was working and "blinking red," why didn't the Bush administration act on that warning and follow through? Why do we need to replace or expand upon a system that was working?

The summary continues: "Although Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States, as President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a Presidential Daily Brief article briefed to him in August 2001, the specific threat information pointed overseas. Numerous precautions were taken overseas. Domestic agencies were not effectively mobilized. [Why not?] The threat did not receive national media attention comparable to the millennium alert." Why not?

This paragraph of the 9-11 Commission's despicable whitewash of our contemptible, corrupt, inept and totally irresponsible government deserves a virtual word by word analysis to facilitate exposure of this "independent commission" for the outrageous scam and costly sham it was.

"Although Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States," and obviously did in terms of the 1993 WTC bombing, "the threat information pointed overseas?" What an outrageous lie! Didn't the commission just point out that both Bush and Clinton knew that there would be an attack on the United States? Why would that only be limited to overseas security measures, and totally eliminate any consideration of a terrorist act on our soil? Wasn't that information again briefed to Bush in August 2001, only little over a month before September 11th, which they were careful to mention? Yet the "threat information pointed overseas?" Right here, we see the greatest effort to misdirect the reader.

The commission tries to slip this in to establish a base from which they will continue to expand their misdirection of the reader's focus from stateside defense issues to a narrative on the activities of Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and issues regarding foreign policy and foreign security deployment. But ask yourself this question: What would you have done given all these detailed and specific threat analysis reports and warnings? The commission offers that the reports that the CIA and the FBI had were not specific. Nonsense!

If you or I had been president and received these reports, would we only have been concerned with incoming air traffic from overseas? Why wouldn't you or I assume every aspect of American aviation as posing a threat? Here' s what I would have done immediately:

1. Realizing that virtually all American commercial airline pilots were trained in the military and required to carry sidearms, I would have REINSTATED the policy employed during the Cuban crisis to arm all cockpit crews with handguns. If any pilot refused to carry a sidearm, that commercial pilot would not be allowed to pilot or co-pilot any aircraft over American soil unless the other was armed. Isn't it clear, that had this simple procedure been put in place, it is doubtful that ANY aircraft would have been vulnerable on September 11th?!

This is a result of the anti-gun mania perpetrated by Zionist-led federal legislators, supported by the Zionist-owned and operated media, which have created an anti-gun hysteria in America. This hysteria is accepted in neither mainstream America nor its heartland, but exists at epidemic levels in the highly populated states and cities of the northeastern United States and the West Coast. It is from these areas, specifically the airports in the Northeast, where the four airliners of 9-11 took to the air, heavily laden with fresh, maximum infusions of kerosene fuel. These "liberal" strongholds also serve as home base for airline, bank, and insurance corporate offices. And Representative Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Chuck Schumer acquired their elite, elected public offices based upon their successful campaigns to abolish the Second Amendment. Arming the private sector is anathema to these easily purchased politicians.

Even now, as a repeat terrorist threat looms and grows by the day, the government's newly-created Transportation Security Agency [TSA] continues to defy both the Congress and the people, and has seriously blocked, dragged its feet and slowed down this basic first step towards securing all commercial air traffic thereby rendering the threat today as viable as it was before 9-11. And the Bush administration continues to do nothing!

2. Along with requiring at least one of the cockpit crew to be armed, simple procedures could have been mandated through the FAA to the airlines and their pilots:
a) Armed pilots are NOT to engage terrorists or armed individuals; they are restricted to securing the cockpit and the aircraft's controls. Considering that most pilots were in the military, knew how to follow orders, and understood both rules of engagement as well as perimeter defense, securing the cockpit and preventing the commandeering and takeover of the aircraft's cockpit would have been the primary objective in defending passengers, crew, and aircraft. Offering that a pilot cannot defend a cockpit and fly the plane at the same time is the type of uninformed pap emanating from a toddler intellect.
b) A rapid training program administered by volunteer police, military, federal law enforcement and NRA firearms instructors, limited to no more than ten hours, would be all that would have been required of pilots and all that was necessary, unless pilots could have demonstrated experience and/or prove firearm competence beyond these bare minimums.
c) More extensive complementary training for later periods could have been scheduled.

3. Since closed circuit TV monitor systems were in place, and ample information was available as to the nationalities or ethnic make-ups of suspected potential terrorists, the small group of federal sky marshals available could have been concentrated in various airport "waiting rooms," waiting to respond to "suspicious passengers." If suspicious passengers were seen to be boarding an aircraft, sky marshals, one or more, could have been assigned to board the aircraft to take up strategic seating positions in the event of a required pre-emptive response. Passengers already assigned those seats could have been "bumped."

4. An immediate increase to the pool of sky marshals could have been facilitated utilizing members of other federal law enforcement agencies with firearms training.

5. A total review and quick overhaul and revamping of all military air defense system responses should immediately have been conducted, and should have been immediately tested via "dry runs" and simulations.

Clearly, you can see where this is going. It would have been easy for government officials and technocrats to come up with similar pre-emptive security measures far more advanced and far more effective than those quickly conjured up in this effort. The issue is: why weren't such simple pre-emptive methods undertaken?

As presented above, conditions of unpreparedness were admitted to, but explanations answering "why" are not provided. Here's another example: "These cases [field reports identifying foreign nationals requesting and taking "weird" flight training] did not prompt urgent action." WHY NOT???

And then there's my favorite indictment as concerns stupid government propped up by even stupider lawyering: the Moussaoui case. All the Bush apologists on Fox TV, yada-yada radio, and the slow boot-up neocons on the Internet that continue to attack Clinton and blame him for all problems today, offer that one of the "independent" commission members, Jamie Gorelick, created the "paper wall" preventing access to Moussaoui's computer. Question: How can a piece of paper block access to a computer? Yet this glaring stupidity is regurgitated over and over as precluding discovery of that vital information, information that could have prevented 9-11. Nonsense!

What was the objective of wanting to get into Moussaoui's computer, putting him on an installment of "Law & Order," or following up on a possible terrorist attack? See why in our overly litigious society, lawyers are so deliciously stupid Mr. Trebek? The objective should have been to prevent a great loss of American citizens' lives via the investigation, which became a trade-off between an investigative advantage culminating in a solid prosecutorial case, or in the successful prevention of a major act of terrorism. We would have lost prosecutorial advantage, but might have been able to save the lives of 3,000 Americans by pre-emptive intelligence in abandoning legalistic advantage.

Considering these facets of 9-11, the commission churns out more non-informative, non-analytical matter-of-fact narrative: "These cases did not prompt urgent action. No one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected them to the high level threat reporting."

And, "The day began with the 19 hijackers getting through a security checkpoint system that they had evidently analyzed and knew how to defeat. Their success rate in penetrating the system was 19 for 19. They took over the four flights, taking advantage of air crews and cockpits that were not prepared for the contingency of a suicide hijacking."

But if the 19 hijackers could figure out how to defeat the security checkpoint system, why didn't government do more up-front planning and reliability testing to ensure that it couldn't be defeated? And the only reason cockpit crews were unprepared, is because American government elected not to prepare them! As previously stated, the CIA, FBI, FAA, NSC, and the president of the United States knew of the possibilities, and were only "blind sided" by the specific day and the specific flight number(s). Cockpit crews could have been both prepared and armed!

The initial issue, other than the motive of the hijackers, was as regards what the government knew and when they knew it. Both the 9-11 Commission and I are convinced that the government had ample warning and refused to act. The only question that remains: Was the government's failure to act deliberate, or just management structural incompetence and gate keeping, tantamount to mere yet deadly ineptitude?

The "not sharing" of information is not a system failure - it's a people failure. People failures require firings, yet the Bush administration handed out bonuses and promotions to the bunglers, and fired no one. And FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft used every legal and security regulation possible to silence several whistleblowers who are prepared to offer that the ineptitude was deliberate! And key among these is Sibel Edmonds, who is still being silenced by Bush and his junkyard legal beagles.

But even ignoring the preventive measures so horribly botched by the Bush administration, what of the responsive nature of our government's ability and its operational methods of protecting our soil during enemy attack? Check out the embarrassing comments by this worse-than-useless non-independent kangaroo commission: "The civilian and military defenders of the nation's airspace, FAA and NORAD, were unprepared for the attacks launched against them. Given the lack of preparedness, they attempted and failed to improvise an effective homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge."

Huh?!

But isn't that what a United States Department of Defense is supposed to do? Isn't that precisely where the bulk of our tax money goes, for defense? What these clowns are saying, is that if the Nazi Germans of World War II had launched a blitzkrieg attack upon Manhattan, with Junker JU87 Stuka dive-bombers, and Heinkel 177's, and JU 86's, and Dorniers, the FAA and NORAD would be "unprepared?" They'd fail to "improvise" because no one would expect propeller-driven World War II German bombers to hit US? How about Japanese Mitsubishi G4's and Nakajima G8's? Unmitigated pap and nonsense!

"Unprecedented challenge?!" Isn't that what a sneak attack is? Those that have taken the time to inform themselves and aren't afraid of the truth because it is so much more important than loyalty to one party or another, know that Pearl Harbor was anything but a "sneak attack." FDR deliberately left the fleet unprotected by air cover, and when the commanding admiral made enough noise about that exposure, he was replaced by Admiral Husband Kimmel, who was eventually made the fall guy for the administration's dire need to get involved in World War II. FDR and Churchill first tried to provoke World War II with Hitler by firing first on German submarines, but Hitler wouldn't take the bait, and ordered his Navy to retreat and not to return fire. How many people in the United States know about this?

Once again, asking the American people to believe that both the FAA and NORAD, each with their own radar systems, couldn't respond, were unprepared, and on top of that, couldn't even improvise a defense for over an hour, is the pinnacle of toddler mentality! But don't blame government: "The events of that morning do not reflect discredit on operational personnel. NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector personnel reached out for information and made the best judgments they could based on the information received." Again, no one is responsible. No blame is assigned anyone. Everyone did a superb job with the little information they had. Marvelous!

Recommendations? Replace the radar systems with more modern and technologically advanced improvements? More radar emplacements and back-up fail-safe systems? Arming pilots and cockpit crews as requested by Congress? Nope! Commission answer: more and bigger government! More tax money. More power to the administration that can't handle it save for taking our freedoms away. And yet another defense minister.

I for one am totally fed up with the feds and their power grabs, their tax grabs, their land grabs, and their constant need to keep expanding already over-extended, bloated government. This commission is every bit a failure as is all the rest of American government. Three thousand of our fellow citizens lost their lives because of a bloated government that either can't protect US, or won't protect US! More planning went in to murdering 80 Americans at Waco and the burning deaths of 26 children there than went into either the planning for our defense culminating in 9-11, or to the honest, factual report of this stupid and unnecessary worse-than-useless commission!

-###-

© THEODORE E. LANG 8/01/04 All rights reserved. Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.