Did 9/11 Justify The War In
Afghanistan?
By Prof. David Ray Griffin
26 June, 2010
Global
Research
Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden
Question
There are many questions
to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is
whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.” This question implies
another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like
Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread
agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as
corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to
prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.
Although there are many similarities between these
two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft.
If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back
home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations
against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and
daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes,
or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war
would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we
learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one:
If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft – hire
mercenaries!
There are many other questions that have been, and
should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one:
Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?
This question has thus far been considered
off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the
mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether
the war during the past several years has been justified by those
attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether
the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.
However, what can be designated the “McChrystal
Moment” – the probably brief period during which the media are again
focused on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Rolling Stone story
about General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces
in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation – provides the best
opportunity for some time to raise fundamental questions about this war.
Various commentators have already been asking some pretty basic
questions: about the effectiveness and affordability of the present
“counterinsurgency strategy” and even whether American fighting forces
should remain in Afghanistan at all. But I am interested in an even more
fundamental question: Whether this war was ever really justified by the
publicly given reason: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This question has two parts: First, did these
attacks provide a legal justification for the invasion of Afghanistan?
Second, if not, did they at least provide a moral justification?
I. Did 9/11 Provide Legal Justification for the War
in Afghanistan?
Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945,
international law with regard to war has been defined by the UN Charter.
Measured by this standard, the US-led war in Afghanistan has been
illegal from the outset.
Marjorie Cohn, a well-known professor of
international law, wrote in November 2001:
“[T]he bombings of Afghanistan by the United States
and the United Kingdom are illegal.”2
In 2008, Cohn repeated this argument in an article
entitled “Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War.” The point of the title
was that, although it was by then widely accepted that the war in Iraq
was illegal, the war in Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that many
Americans did not realize it, was equally illegal.3 Her argument was
based on the following facts:
First, according to international law as codified in
the UN Charter, disputes are to be brought to the UN Security Council,
which alone may authorize the use of force. Without this authorization,
any military activity against another country is illegal.
Second, there are two exceptions: One is that, if
your nation has been subjected to an armed attack by another nation, you
may respond militarily in self-defense. This condition was not
fulfilled by the 9/11 attacks, however, because they were not carried
out by another nation: Afghanistan did not attack the United States.
Indeed, the 19 men charged with the crime were not Afghans.
The other exception occurs when one nation has
certain knowledge that an armed attack by another nation is imminent –
too imminent to bring the matter to the Security Council. The need for
self-defense must be, in the generally accepted phrase, "instant,
overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for
deliberation.” Although the US government claimed that its military
operations in Afghanistan were justified by the need to prevent a second
attack, this need, even if real, was clearly not urgent, as shown by
the fact that the Pentagon did not launch its invasion until almost a
month later.
US political leaders have claimed, to be sure, that
the UN did authorize the US attack on Afghanistan. This claim,
originally made by the Bush-Cheney administration, was repeated by
President Obama in his West Point speech of December 1, 2009, in which
he said: “The United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all
necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks,” so US troops went to
Afghanistan “[u]nder the banner of . . . international legitimacy.”4
However, the language of “all necessary steps” is
from UN Security Council Resolution 1368, in which the Council, taking
note of its own “responsibilities under the Charter," expressed its own
readiness “to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist
attacks of 11 September 2001.”5
Of course, the UN Security Council might have
determined that one of these necessary steps was to authorize an attack
on Afghanistan by the United States. But it did not. Resolution 1373,
the only other Security Council resolution about this issue, laid out
various responses, but these included matters such as freezing assets,
criminalizing the support of terrorists, exchanging police information
about terrorists, and prosecuting terrorists. The use of military force
was not mentioned.6
The US war in Afghanistan was not authorized by the
UN Security Council in 2001 or at anytime since, so this war began as an
illegal war and remains an illegal war today. Our government’s claim to
the contrary is false.
This war has been illegal, moreover, not only under
international law, but also under US law. The UN Charter is a treaty,
which was ratified by the United States, and, according to Article VI of
the US Constitution, any treaty ratified by the United States is part
of the “supreme law of the land.”7 The war in Afghanistan, therefore,
has from the beginning been in violation of US as well as international
law. It could not be more illegal.
II. Did 9/11 Provide Moral Justification for the War
in Afghanistan?
The American public has for the most part probably
been unaware of the illegality of this war, because this is not
something our political leaders or our corporate media have been anxious
to point out.8 So most people simply do not know.
If they were informed, however, many Americans would
be inclined to argue that, even if technically illegal, the US military
effort in Afghanistan has been morally justified, or at least it was in
the beginning, by the attacks of 9/11. For a summary statement of this
argument, we can turn again to the West Point speech of President Obama,
who has taken over the Bush-Cheney account of 9/11. Answering the
question of “why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in
Afghanistan in the first place,” Obama said:
“We did not ask for this fight. On September 11,
2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder
nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve
centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children without
regard to their faith or race or station. . . . As we know, these men
belonged to al Qaeda – a group of extremists who have distorted and
defiled Islam. . . . [A]fter the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin
Laden - we sent our troops into Afghanistan.”9
This standard account can be summarized in terms of
three points:
1. The attacks were carried out by 19 Muslim members
of al-Qaeda.
2. The attacks had been authorized by the founder of
al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan.
3. The US invasion of Afghanistan was necessary
because the Taliban, which was in control of Afghanistan, refused to
turn bin Laden over to US authorities.
On the basis of these three points, our political
leaders have claimed that the United States had the moral right, arising
from the universal right of self-defense, to attempt to capture or kill
bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network to prevent them from launching
another attack on our country.
The only problem with this argument is that all
three points are false. I will show this by looking at these points in
reverse order.
1. Did the United States Attack Afghanistan because
the Taliban Refused to Turn Over Bin Laden?
The claim that the Taliban refused to turn over Bin
Laden has been repeatedly made by political leaders and our mainstream
media.10 Reports from the time, however, show the truth to be very
different.
A. Who Refused Whom?
Ten days after the 9/11 attacks, CNN reported:
“The Taliban . . . refus[ed] to hand over bin Laden
without proof or evidence that he was involved in last week's attacks on
the United States. . . . The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan . . . said
Friday that deporting him without proof would amount to an ‘insult to
Islam.’"
CNN also made clear that the Taliban’s demand for
proof was not made without reason, saying:
“Bin Laden himself has already denied he had
anything to do with the attacks, and Taliban officials repeatedly said
he could not have been involved in the attacks.”
Bush, however, “said the demands were not open to
negotiation or discussion.”11
With this refusal to provide any evidence of bin
Laden’s responsibility, the Bush administration made it impossible for
the Taliban to turn him over. As Afghan experts quoted by the Washington
Post pointed out, the Taliban, in order to turn over a fellow Muslim to
an “infidel” Western nation, needed a “face-saving formula.” Milton
Bearden, who had been the CIA station chief in Afghanistan in the 1980s,
put it this way: While the United States was demanding, “Give up bin
Laden,” the Taliban were saying, “Do something to help us give him
up.”12 But the Bush administration refused.
After the bombing began in October, moreover, the
Taliban tried again, offering to turn bin Laden over to a third country
if the United States would stop the bombing and provide evidence of his
guilt. But Bush replied: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt.
We know he's guilty." An article in London’s Guardian, which reported
this development, was entitled: “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand Bin
Laden Over.”13 So it was the Bush administration, not the Taliban, that
was responsible for the fact that bin Laden was not turned over.
In August of 2009, President Obama, who had
criticized the US invasion of Iraq as a war of choice, said of the US
involvement in Afghanistan: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war
of necessity.”14 But the evidence shows, as we have seen, that it, like
the one in Iraq, is a war of choice.
B. What Was the Motive for the Invasion?
This conclusion is reinforced by reports indicating
that the United States had made the decision to invade Afghanistan two
months before the 9/11 attacks. At least part of the background to this
decision was the United States’ long-time support for UNOCAL’s proposed
pipeline, which would transport oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea
region to the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan and Pakistan.15 This
project had been stymied through the 1990s because of the civil war that
had been going on in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
In the mid-1990s, the US government had supported
the Taliban with the hope that its military strength would enable it to
unify the country and provide a stable government, which could protect
the pipeline. By the late 1990s, however, the Clinton administration had
given up on the Taliban.16
When the Bush administration came to power, it
decided to give the Taliban one last chance. During a four-day meeting
in Berlin in July 2001, representatives of the Bush administration
insisted that the Taliban must create a government of “national unity”
by sharing power with factions friendly to the United States. The US
representatives reportedly said: “Either you accept our offer of a
carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”17
After the Taliban refused this offer, US officials
told a former Pakistani foreign secretary that “military action against
Afghanistan would go ahead . . . before the snows started falling in
Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”18 And, indeed,
given the fact that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon occurred when they did, the US military was able to mobilize to
begin its attack on Afghanistan by October 7.
It appears, therefore, that the United States
invaded Afghanistan for reasons far different from the official
rationale, according to which we were there to capture or kill Osama bin
Laden.
2. Has Good Evidence of Bin Laden’s Responsibility
Been Provided?
I turn now to the second point: the claim that Osama
bin Laden had authorized the attacks. Even if it refused to give the
Taliban evidence for this claim, the Bush administration surely – most
Americans probably assume – had such evidence and provided it to those
who needed it. Again, however, reports from the time indicate otherwise.
A. The Bush Administration
Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin
Powell said that he expected “in the near future . . . to put out . . . a
document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have
linking [bin Laden] to this attack.”19 But at a joint press conference
with President Bush the next morning, Powell withdrew this pledge,
saying that “most of [the evidence] is classified.”20 Seymour Hersh,
citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, said
the real reason why Powell withdrew the pledge was a “lack of solid
information.”21
B. The British Government
The following week, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair issued a document to show that “Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the
terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities
on 11 September 2001.” Blair’s report, however, began by saying: “This
document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama
Bin Laden in a court of law.”22 So, the case was good enough to go to
war, but not good enough to take to court. The next day, the BBC
emphasized this weakness, saying: “There is no direct evidence in the
public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks.”23
C. The FBI
What about our own FBI? Its “Most Wanted Terrorist”
webpage on “Usama bin Laden” does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist
acts for which he is wanted.24 When asked why not, the FBI’s chief of
investigative publicity replied: “because the FBI has no hard evidence
connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”25
D. The 9/11 Commission
What about the 9/11 Commission? Its entire report is
based on the assumption that bin Laden was behind the attacks. However,
the report’s evidence to support this premise has been disowned by the
Commission’s own co-chairs, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton.
This evidence consisted of testimony that had
reportedly been elicited by the CIA from al-Qaeda operatives. The most
important of these operatives was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – generally
known simply as “KSM” – who has been called the “mastermind” of the 9/11
attacks. If you read the 9/11 Commission’s account of how bin Laden
planned the attacks, and then check the notes, you will find that almost
every note says that the information came from KSM.26
In 2006, Kean and Hamilton wrote a book giving “the
inside story of the 9/11 Commission,” in which they called this
information untrustworthy. They had no success, they reported, in
“obtaining access to star witnesses in custody . . . , most notably
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”27 Besides not being allowed by the CIA to
interview KSM, they were not permitted to observe his interrogation
through one-way glass. They were not even allowed to talk to the
interrogators.28 Therefore, Kean and Hamilton complained:
“We . . . had no way of evaluating the credibility
of detainee information. How could we tell if someone such as Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed . . . was telling us the truth?”29
They could not.
Accordingly, neither the Bush administration, the
British government, the FBI, nor the 9/11 Commission ever provided good
evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for the attacks.
E. Did Bin Laden Confess?
Some people argue, to be sure, that such evidence
soon became unnecessary because bin Laden admitted his responsibility in
a videotape that was discovered by the US military in Jalalabad,
Afghanistan, in November 2001. But besides the fact that bin Laden had
previously denied his involvement many times,30 bin Laden experts have
called this later video a fake,31 and for good reasons. Many of the
physical features of the man in this video are different from those of
Osama bin Laden (as seen in undoubtedly authentic videos), and he said
many things that bin Laden himself would not have said.32
The FBI, in any case, evidently does not believe
that this video provides hard evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for
9/11, or it would have revised its “Most Wanted Terrorist” page on him
after this video surfaced.
So, to review the first two points: The Taliban said
it would turn over bin Laden if our government would give it good
evidence of his responsibility for 9/11, but our government refused. And
good evidence of this responsibility has never been given to the
public.
I turn now to the third claim: that, even if there
is no proof that Osama bin Laden authorized the attacks, we have
abundant evidence that the attacks were carried out by Muslims belonging
to his al-Qaeda organization. I will divide the discussion of this
third claim into two sections: Section 3a looks at the main support for
this claim: evidence that Muslim hijackers were on the airliners.
Section 3b looks at the strongest evidence against this claim: the
collapse of World Trade Center 7.
3a. Evidence Al-Qaeda Muslims Were on the Airliners
It is still widely thought to have been established
beyond question that the attacks were carried out by members of
al-Qaeda. The truth, however, is that the evidence entirely falls apart
upon examination, and this fact suggests that 9/11 was instead a
false-flag attack - an attack that people within our own government
orchestrated while planting evidence to implicate Muslims.
A. Devout Muslims?
Let us begin with the 9/11 Commission’s claim that
the men who (allegedly) took over the planes were devout Muslims, ready
to sacrifice their lives for their cause.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Atta and
other hijackers had made “at least six trips” to Las Vegas, where they
had “engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited
pleasures.” The Chronicle then quoted the head of the Islamic Foundation
of Nevada as saying: "True Muslims don't drink, don't gamble, don't go
to strip clubs.”33
The contradiction is especially strong with regard
to Mohamed Atta. On the one hand, according to the 9/11 Commission, he
was very religious, even “fanatically so.”34 This characterization was
supported by Professor Dittmar Machule, who was Atta’s thesis supervisor
at a technical university in Hamburg in the 1990s. Professor Machule
says he knew his student only as Mohamed Al-Emir – although his full
name was the same as his father’s: Mohamed Al-Emir Atta. In any case,
Machule says that this young man was “very religious,” prayed regularly,
and never touched alcohol.35
According to the American press, on the other hand,
Mohamed Atta drank heavily and, one night after downing five glasses of
Vodka, shouted an Arabic word that, Newsweek said, “roughly translates
as ‘F--k God.’”36 Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, who wrote a
book about Atta, stated that Atta regularly went to strip clubs, hired
prostitutes, drank heavily, and took cocaine. Atta even lived with a
stripper for several months and then, after she kicked him out, she
reported, he came back and disemboweled her cat and dismembered its
kittens.37
Could this be the same individual as Professor
Machule’s student Mohamed Al-Emir, who would not even shake hands with a
woman upon being introduced, and who never touched alcohol? “I would
put my hand in the fire,” said the professor, “that this Mohamed El-Amir
I know will never taste or touch alcohol.” Could the Atta described by
Hopsicker and the American press be the young man whom this professor
described as not a “bodyguard type” but “more a girl looking type”?38
Could the man who disemboweled a cat and dismembered its kittens be the
young man known to his father as a “gentle and tender boy,” who was
nicknamed “nightingale”?39
We are clearly talking about two different men. This
is confirmed by the differences in their appearance. The American Atta
was often described as having a hard, cruel face, and the standard FBI
photo of him bears this out. The face of the Hamburg student was quite
different, as photos available on the Internet show.40 Also, his
professor described him as “very small,” being “one meter sixty-two” in
height41 – which means slightly under 5’4” – whereas the American Atta
has been described as 5’8” and even 5’10” tall.42
One final reason to believe that these different
descriptions apply to different men: The father of Mohamed al-Emir Atta
reported that on September 12, before either of them had learned of the
attacks, his son called him and they “spoke for two minutes about this
and that.”43
There are also problems in relation to many of the
other alleged hijackers. For example, the BBC reported that Waleed
al-Shehri, who supposedly died along with Atta on American Flight 11,
spoke to journalists and American authorities in Casablanca the
following week.44 Moreover, there were clearly two men going by the name
Ziad Jarrah – the name of the alleged hijacker pilot of United Flight
93.45
Accordingly, besides the fact the men labeled “the
hijackers” were not devout Muslims, they may not have even been Muslims
of any type.
And if that were not bad enough for the official
story, there is no good evidence that these men were even on the planes -
all the evidence for this claim falls apart upon examination. I will
illustrate this point with a few examples.46
B. Passports at the Crash Sites
One of the purported proofs that the 19 men
identified as the hijackers were on the planes was the reported
discovery of some of their passports at crash sites. But the reports of
these discoveries are not believable.
For example, the FBI claimed that, while searching
the streets after the destruction of the World Trade Center, they
discovered the passport of Satam al-Suqami, one of the hijackers on
American Flight 11, which had crashed into the North Tower.47 But for
this to be true, the passport would have had to survive the collapse of
the North Tower, which evidently pulverized almost everything in the
building into fine particles of dust – except the steel and al-Suqami’s
passport.
But this claim was too absurd to pass the giggle
test: “[T]he idea that [this] passport had escaped from that inferno
unsinged,” remarked a British commentator, “would [test] the credulity
of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism.”48 By
2004, the claim had been modified to say that “a passer-by picked it up
and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center
towers collapsed.”49 So, rather than needing to survive the collapse of
the North Tower, the passport merely needed to escape from al-Suqami’s
pocket or luggage, then from the plane’s cabin, and then from the North
Tower without being destroyed or even singed by the giant fireball.
This version was no less ridiculous than the first
one, and the other stories about passports at crash sites are equally
absurd.
C. Reported Phone Calls from the Airliners
It is widely believed, of course, that we know that
there were hijackers on the airliners, thanks to numerous phone calls
from passengers and crew members, in which they reported the hijackings.
But we have good reasons to believe that these calls never occurred.
Reported Calls from Cell Phones: About 15 of the
reported calls from the airliners were said to have been made on cell
phones, with about 10 of those being from United Flight 93 – the one
that reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania. Three or four of those calls
were received by Deena Burnett, who knew that her husband, Tom Burnett,
had used his cell phone, she told the FBI, because she recognized his
cell phone number on her Caller ID.
However, given the cell phone technology available
in 2001, high-altitude cell phone calls from airliners were not
possible. They were generally not possible much above 1,000 feet, and
were certainly impossible above 35,000 or even 40,000 feet, which was
the altitude of the planes when most of the cell phone calls were
supposedly made. Articles describing the impossibility of the calls were
published in 2003 and 2004 by two well-known Canadians: A. K. Dewdney,
formerly a columnist for Scientific American, and economist Michel
Chossudovsky.50
Perhaps in response, the FBI changed the story. In
2006, it presented a report on the phone calls from the planes for the
trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. In its report
on United Flight 93, it said that cell phones were used for only two of
the calls, both of which were made the plane, shortly before it crashed,
had descended to a low altitude.51 These two calls were, in fact, the
only two cell phone calls made from any of the airliners, the FBI report
said.52 The FBI thereby avoided claiming that any high-altitude cell
phone calls had been made.
But if the FBI’s new account is true, how do we
explain that so many people reported receiving cell phone calls? Most of
these people said that they had been told by the caller that he or she
was using a cell phone, so we might suppose that their reports were
based on bad hearing or faulty memory. But what about Deena Burnett,
whose statement that she recognized her husband’s cell phone number on
her Caller ID was made to the FBI that very day?53 If Tom Burnett used a
seat-back phone, as the FBI’s 2006 report says, why did his cell phone
number show up on his wife’s Caller ID? The FBI has not answered this
question.
The only possible explanation seems to be that these
calls were faked. Perhaps someone used voice morphing technology, which
already existed at that time,54 in combination with a device for
providing a fake Caller ID, which can be ordered on the Internet. Or
perhaps someone used Tom’s cell phone to place fake calls from the
ground. In either case, Tom Burnett did not actually call his wife from
aboard United Flight 93. And if calls to Deena Burnett were faked, we
must assume that all of the calls were – because if there had really
been surprise hijackings, no one would have been prepared to make fake
phone calls to her.
The Reported Calls from Barbara Olson: This
conclusion is reinforced by the FBI’s report on phone calls from
American Flight 77 – the one that supposedly struck the Pentagon. Ted
Olson, the US Solicitor General, reported that his wife, Barbara Olson
(a well-known commentator on CNN), had called him twice from this
flight, with the first call lasting “about one (1) minute,”55 and the
second call lasting “two or three or four minutes.”56 In these calls, he
said, she reported that the plane had been taken over by hijackers
armed with knives and box-cutters.
But how could she have made these calls? The plane
was far too high for a cell phone to work. And American Flight 77 was a
Boeing 757, and the 757s made for American Airlines – the 9/11 Truth
Movement learned in 2005 – did not have onboard phones.57 Whether or not
for this reason, the FBI’s report to the Moussaoui trial did not
endorse Ted Olson’s story. Its report on telephone calls from American
Flight 77 did mention Barbara Olson, but it attributed only one call to
her, not two, and it said that this call was “unconnected,” so that it
lasted “0 seconds.”58
This FBI report allows only two possibilities:
Either Ted Olson engaged in deception, or he, like Deena Burnett, was
duped by faked calls. In either case, the story about Barbara Olson’s
calls, with their reports of hijackers taking over Flight 77, was based
on deception.
The alleged phone calls, therefore, do not provide
trustworthy evidence that there were hijackers on the planes.
D. Autopsy Reports and Flight Manifests
The public has widely assumed, due to misleading
claims,59 that the names of the alleged hijackers were on the flight
manifests for the four flights, and also that the autopsy report from
the Pentagon contained the names of the hijackers said to have been on
American Flight 77. However, the passenger manifests for the four
airliners did not contain the names of any of the alleged hijackers and,
moreover, they contained no Arab names whatsoever.60 Also, as a
psychiatrist who was able to obtain a copy of the Pentagon autopsy
report through a FOIA request discovered, it contained none of the names
of the hijackers for American Flight 77 and, in fact, no Arab names
whatsoever.61
E. Failure to Squawk the Hijack Code
Finally, the public has been led to believe that all
the evidence about what happened on board the four airliners supported
the claim that they were taken over by hijackers. This claim, however,
was contradicted by something that did not happen. If pilots have any
reason to believe that a hijacking may be in process, they are trained
to enter the standard hijack code (7500) into their transponders to
alert controllers on the ground. This is called “squawking” the hijack
code. None of the eight pilots did this on 9/11, even though there would
have been plenty of time: This act takes only two or three seconds and
it would have taken longer than this for hijackers to break into the
pilots’ cabins: According to official account of United Flight 93, for
example, it took over 30 seconds for the hijackers to break into the
cockpit.62
F. False-Flag Attack
It appears, therefore, that 9/11 was the most
elaborate example yet of a false-flag attack, which occurs when
countries, wanting to attack other countries, orchestrate attacks on
their own people while planting evidence to implicate those other
countries. Hitler did this when he was ready to attack Poland, which
started the European part of World War II; Japan did it when it was
ready to attack Manchuria, which started the Asian part of that war. In
1962, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed false-flag attacks
killing American citizens to provide a pretext for invading Cuba.63 This
proposal was not put into effect because it was vetoed by President
Kennedy. But in 2001, the White House was occupied by an administration
that wanted to attack Afghanistan, Iraq, and several other predominantly
Muslim countries,64 and so, it appears, evidence was planted to
implicate Muslims.
3b. How the Collapse of WTC 7 Disproves the
Al-Qaeda Theory
I turn now to the strongest evidence that the 9/11
attacks were orchestrated by insiders rather than foreign terrorists:
the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center, which is the
subject of my most recent book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade
Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and
False.65
A. Mysterious Collapse
I speak of the “mysterious collapse” because the
collapse of this building was, from the very beginning, seen as more
mysterious than that of the Twin Towers. Given the fact that those two
buildings were hit by planes, which started big fires, most people
evidently thought – if wrongly - that the fact that these buildings came
down was not problematic. But Building 7 was not hit by a plane, and
yet it came down at 5:21 that afternoon.
This would mean, assuming that neither incendiaries
nor explosives were used to demolish this building, that it had been
brought down by fire alone, and this would have been an unprecedented
occurrence. New York Times writer James Glanz wrote, “experts said no
building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever
collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” Glanz then quoted a
structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering
community, [Building 7] is considered to be much more important to
understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to
the question, “why did 7 come down?”66
Moreover, although Glanz spoke of an “uncontrolled
fire,” there were significant fires on only six of this building’s 47
floors, and these fires were visible at most for three to four hours,
and yet fires have burned in other steel-frame skyscrapers for 17 and 18
hours, turning them into towering infernos without causing collapse.67
So why did Building 7 come down? FEMA, which in 2002 put out the first
official report on this building, admitted that its “best hypothesis”
had “only a low probability of occurrence.”68
B. Reasons to Suspect Explosives
By its “best hypothesis,” FEMA meant the best
hypothesis it could suggest consistent with the fact that it, as a
government agency, could not posit the use of incendiaries and
explosives. Why might anyone think that incendiaries and explosives
brought this building down?
Precedent: One reason is simply that, prior to 9/11,
every collapse of a steel-frame high-rise building was brought about by
explosives, often in conjunction with incendiaries, in the procedure
known as “controlled demolition.” Collapse has never been produced by
fires, earthquakes, or any other cause other than controlled demolition.
Vertical Collapse: Another reason to posit
controlled demolition is that this building came straight down,
collapsing into its own footprint. For this to happen, all of this
building’s 82 steel columns had to fail simultaneously. This is what
happens in the type of controlled demolition known as “implosion.” It is
not something that can be caused by fires.
Simply seeing a video of the building coming down
makes it obvious to anyone with knowledge of these things that
explosives were used to bring it down. On 9/11 itself, CBS News anchor
Dan Rather said:
“[I]t’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen
. . . on television . . . , where a building was deliberately destroyed
by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.”69
In 2006, a filmmaker asked Danny Jowenko, the owner
of a controlled demolition company in the Netherlands, to comment on a
video of the collapse of Building 7 without telling him what it was.
(Jowenko had never heard that a third building had collapsed on 9/11.)
After viewing the video, Jowenko said: “They simply blew up columns, and
the rest caved in afterwards. . . . This is controlled demolition.”
When asked if he was certain, he replied: “Absolutely, it’s been
imploded. This was a hired job. A team of experts did this.”70
An organization called “Architects and Engineers for
9/11 Truth,” which was formed in 2007, now has over 1,200 members. Many
of them, as one can see by reading their statements, joined after they
saw a video of Building 7’s collapse.71
In light of all of these considerations, a truly
scientific investigation, which sought the truth about Building 7, would
have begun with the hypothesis that it had been deliberately
demolished.
C. NIST’s Report as Political, Not Scientific
However, this hypothesis did not provide the
starting point for NIST – the National Institute of Standards and
Technology – which took over from FEMA the responsibility for writing
the official report on the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Rather, NIST said:
“The challenge was to determine if a fire-induced
floor system failure could occur in WTC 7 under an ordinary building
contents fire.”72
So, although every other steel-frame building that
has collapsed did so because explosives (perhaps along with
incendiaries) were used to destroy its support columns, NIST said, in
effect: “We think fire brought down WTC 7.” To understand why NIST
started with this hypothesis, it helps to know that it is an agency of
the Commerce Department, which means that all the years it was working
on its World Trade Center reports, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney
administration.
Also, a scientist who had worked for NIST reported
that by 2001 it had been “fully hijacked from the scientific into the
political realm,” so that scientists working there had “lost [their]
scientific independence, and became little more than ‘hired guns.’”73
One manifestation of NIST’s political nature may be
the fact that it delayed its report on Building 7 year after year,
releasing it only late in 2008, when the Bush-Cheney administration was
preparing to leave office.
Be that as it may, NIST did in August of 2008
finally put out a report in the form of a draft for public comment.
Announcing this draft report at a press conference, Shyam Sunder, NIST’s
lead investigator, said:
“Our take-home message today is that the reason for
the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery. WTC 7
collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not
collapse from explosives.”74
Sunder added that “science is really behind what we
have said.”75
However, far from being supported by good science,
NIST’s report repeatedly makes its case by resorting to scientific
fraud. Two of the major types of scientific fraud, as defined by the
National Science Foundation, are fabrication, which is “making up
results,” and falsification, which means either “changing or omitting
data.”76 I will begin with falsification.
D. NIST’S Falsification of Testimonial Evidence
Pointing to Explosives
Claiming that it “found no evidence of a . . .
controlled demolition event,”77 NIST simply omitted or distorted all
such evidence, some of which was testimonial.
Two city officials, Barry Jennings of the Housing
Authority and Michael Hess, the city’s corporation counsel, reported
that they became trapped by a massive explosion in Building 7 shortly
after they arrived there at 9:00 AM. NIST, however, claimed that what
they called an explosion was really just the impact of debris from the
collapse of the North Tower, which did not occur until 10:28. But
Jennings explicitly said that they were trapped before either of the
Twin Towers came down, which means that the explosion that he and Hess
reported occurred before 9:59, when the South Tower came down. NIST
rather obviously, therefore, distorted these men’s testimonial evidence.
Other people reported that explosions went off in
the late afternoon, when the building started to come down. Reporter
Peter Demarco of the New York Daily News said:
“[T]here was a rumble. The building's top row of
windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth floor
popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you
heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray.”78
NIST dealt with such testimonies by simply ignoring
them.
E. NIST’s Omission of Physical Evidence for
Explosives
NIST also ignored a lot of physical evidence that
Building 7 was brought down by explosives.
Swiss-Cheese Steel: For example, three professors
from Worcester Polytechnic Institute discovered a piece of steel from
Building 7 that had melted so severely that it had holes in it, making
it look like Swiss cheese.79 The New York Times, pointing out that the
fires in the building could not have been hot enough to melt steel,
called this “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.”80 The
three professors, in a report included as an appendix to the 2002 FEMA
report, said: “A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon
is needed.”81
When NIST’s report on Building 7 appeared, however,
it did not mention this mysterious piece of steel. It even claimed that
no recovered steel from this building had been identified.82 And this
was just the beginning of NIST’s omission of physical evidence.
Particles of Metal in the Dust: The nearby Deutsche
Bank building was heavily contaminated by dust produced when the World
Trade Center was destroyed. But the bank’s insurance company refused to
pay for the clean-up, claiming that the dust in the bank was ordinary
building dust, not dust that resulted from the destruction of the WTC.
So Deutsche Bank hired the RJ Lee Group, a scientific research
organization, to do a study, which showed that the dust in this building
was WTC dust, with a unique chemical signature. Part of this signature
was “[s]pherical iron . . . particles,”83 and this meant, the RJ Lee
Group said, that iron had “melted during the WTC Event, producing
spherical metallic particles.”84
Iron does not melt until it reaches 2,800°F
(1,538°C), which is about 1,000 degrees F (540 degrees C) higher than
the fires could have been. The RJ Lee study also found that temperatures
had been reached “at which lead would have undergone vaporization”85 –
meaning 3,180°F (1,749°C).86
Another study was carried out by scientists at the
US Geological Survey. Besides also finding iron particles, these
scientists found that molybdenum had been melted87 – even though its
melting point is extremely high: 4,753°F (2,623°C).88
These two studies proved, therefore, that something
had produced temperatures many times higher than the fires could have
produced. NIST, however, made no mention of these studies. But even this
was not the end of the physical evidence omitted by NIST.
Nanothermite Residue: A report by several
scientists, including University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit,
showed that the WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite. Whereas
ordinary thermite is an incendiary, nanothermite is a high explosive.
This report by Harrit and his colleagues did not appear until 2009,89
several months after the publication of NIST’s final report in November
2008. But NIST should have, as a matter of routine, tested the WTC dust
for signs of incendiaries, such as ordinary thermite, and explosives,
such as nanothermite.
When asked whether it did, however, NIST said that
it did not. When a reporter asked Michael Newman, a NIST spokesman, why
not, Newman replied: “[B]ecause there was no evidence of that.” “But,”
asked the reporter, “how can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t
look for it first?” Newman replied: “If you’re looking for something
that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’
money.”90
F. NIST’s Fabrication of Evidence to Support Its Own
Theory
Besides omitting and distorting evidence to deny the
demolition theory of Building 7’s collapse, NIST also fabricated
evidence – simply made it up – to support its own theory.
No Girder Shear Studs: NIST’s explanation as to how
fire caused Building 7 to collapse starts with thermal expansion,
meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand.
An expanding steel beam on the 13th floor, NIST claimed, caused a steel
girder attached to a column to break loose. Having lost its support,
this column failed, starting a chain reaction in which the other 81
columns failed, causing a progressive collapse.91 Ignoring the question
of whether this is even remotely plausible, let us simply ask: Why did
that girder fail? Because, NIST claimed, it was not connected to the
floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote: In WTC 7, no studs were
installed on the girders.92 Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the
girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.93 This
was a fabrication, as we can see by looking at NIST’s Interim Report on
WTC 7, which it had published in 2004. That report, written before NIST
had developed its girder-failure theory, stated that girders as well as
the beams had been attached to the floor by means of shear studs.94
A Raging Fire on Floor 12 at 5:00 PM: Another case
of fabrication is a graphic in NIST’s report showing that at 5:00 PM,
there were very big fires covering much of the north face of Floor 12.95
This claim is essential to NIST’s explanation as to why the building
collapsed 21 minutes later. However, if you look back at NIST’s 2004
report, you will find this statement:
“Around 4:45 PM, a photograph showed fires on Floors
7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned
out by this time.”96
Other photographs even show that the 12th floor fire
had virtually burned out by 4:00. And yet NIST, in its final report,
claims that fires were still raging on this floor at 5:00 PM.
G. NIST’s Affirmation of a Miracle
In addition to omitting, falsifying, and fabricating
evidence, NIST affirms a miracle. You have perhaps seen the cartoon in
which a physics professor has written a proof on a chalkboard. Most of
the steps consist of mathematical equations, but one of them simply
says: “Then a miracle happens.” This is humorous because one thing you
absolutely cannot do in science is to appeal to a miracle, even
implicitly. And yet that is what NIST does. I will explain:
NIST’S Denial of Free Fall: Members of the 9/11
Truth Movement had long been pointing out that Building 7 came down at
the same rate as a free-falling object, at least virtually so.
In NIST’s Draft for Public Comment, put out in
August 2008, it denied this, saying that the time it took for the upper
floors – the only floors that are visible on the videos - to come down
“was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time
and was consistent with physical principles.”97
As this statement implies, any assertion that the
building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with
physical principles – meaning the laws of physics. Explaining why not,
Shyam Sunder said:
“[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an
object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . .
time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40
percent longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because
there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular
case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take
place. Everything was not instantaneous.”98
In saying this, Sunder was presupposing NIST’s
rejection of controlled demolition – which could have produced a
free-fall collapse by causing all 82 columns to fail simultaneously – in
favor of NIST’s fire theory, which necessitated a theory of progressive
collapse.
Chandler’s Challenge: In response, high-school
physics teacher David Chandler challenged Sunder’s denial of free fall,
pointing out that Sunder’s “40 percent longer” claim contradicted “a
publicly visible, easily measurable quantity.”99 Chandler then placed a
video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible
quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that “for about
two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is
indistinguishable from freefall.”100
NIST Admits Free Fall: Amazingly, in NIST’s final
report, which came out in November, it admitted free fall. Dividing the
building’s descent into three stages, NIST described the second phase as
“a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational
acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds].”101 (“Gravitational
acceleration” is a synonym for free fall acceleration.)
So, after presenting over 600 pages of descriptions,
graphs, testimonies, photographs, charts, analyses, explanations, and
mathematical formulae, NIST says, in effect: “Then a miracle happens.”
Why this would be a miracle was explained by
Chandler, who said: “Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero
resistance to the motion.”102 In other words, the upper portion of
Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had
suddenly removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the
building, which would have otherwise provided resistance. If everything
had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall
anyway, even for only a second or two, a miracle – meaning a violation
of the laws of physics - would have happened.
That was what Sunder himself had explained the
previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one “that
has no structural components below it” to offer resistance.
But then in November, while still defending the fire
theory of collapse, NIST admitted that, as an empirical fact, free fall
happened. For a period of 2.25 seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of
WTC 7 was characterized by “gravitational acceleration (free fall).”103
Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, NIST
no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the laws of
physics. In its August draft, in which it had said that the collapse
occurred 40 percent slower than free fall, NIST had said three times
that its analysis was “consistent with physical principles.”104 In the
final report, however, every instance of this phrase was removed. NIST
thereby almost explicitly admitted that its report on WTC 7, by
admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives were used,
is not consistent with the principles of physics.
Conclusion about WTC 7: The science of World Trade
Center 7 is, therefore, settled. This fact is reflected in the agreement
by many hundreds of professionals with various forms of expertise –
architects, engineers, firefighters, physicists, and chemists – that
this building was deliberately demolished.
This truth has also recently been recognized by a
symposium in one of our leading social science journals, which treats
9/11 as an example of what its authors call State Crimes Against
Democracy (SCADs).105 Criticizing the majority of the academic world for
its “blithe dismissal of more than one law of thermodynamics” that is
violated by the official theory of the World Trade Center collapses,
these authors also criticize the academy for its failure to protest when
“Professor Steven Jones found himself forced out of tenured position
for merely reminding the world that physical laws, about which there is
no dissent whatsoever, contradict the official theory.”106
And now the world can see, if it will only look,
that even NIST, in its final report, did not dissent: By admitting that
Building 7 came down in free fall for over two seconds, while
simultaneously removing its previous claim that its report was
consistent with physical principles, NIST implicitly admitted that the
laws of physics rule out its non-demolition theory of this building’s
collapse. NIST thereby implicitly admitted that explosives were used.
H. Implications for the Al-Qaeda Theory of 9/11
And with that implicit admission, NIST undermined
the al-Qaeda theory of 9/11. Why?
For one thing, the straight-down nature of the
collapse of WTC 7 means that it was subjected to the type of controlled
demolition known as “implosion,” which is, in the words of a controlled
demolition website, “by far the trickiest type of explosive project,”
which “only a handful of blasting companies in the world . . . possess
enough experience . . . to perform.”107 Al-Qaeda terrorists would not
have had this kind of expertise.
Second, the only reason to go to the trouble of
bringing a building straight down is to avoid damaging nearby buildings.
Had WTC 7 and the Twin Towers – which also came straight down, after
initial explosions at the top that ejected sections of steel outward
several hundred feet108 - instead toppled over sideways, they would have
caused massive destruction in Lower Manhattan, destroying dozens of
other buildings and killing tens of thousands of people. Does anyone
believe that, even if al-Qaeda operatives had had the expertise to make
the buildings come straight down, they would have had the courtesy?
A third problem is that foreign terrorists could not
have obtained access to the buildings for all the hours it would have
taken to plant explosives. Only insiders could have done this.109
The science of the collapse of World Trade Center 7,
accordingly, disproves the claim - which from the outset has been used
to justify the war in Afghanistan – that America was attacked on 9/11 by
al-Qaeda Muslims. It suggests, instead, that 9/11 was a false-flag
operation to provide a pretext to attack Muslim nations.
Conclusion
In any case, the official rationale for our presence
in Afghanistan is a lie. We are there for other reasons. Critics have
offered various suggestions as to the most important of those
reasons.110 Whatever be the answer to that question, however, we have
not been there to apprehend the terrorists responsible for the 9/11
attacks. Besides never being legally justified, therefore, the war in
Afghanistan has never been morally justified.
This war, moreover, is an abomination. In addition
to the thousands of US and other NATO troops who have been killed or
impaired for life, physically and/or mentally, the US-led
invasion/occupation of Afghanistan has resulted in a huge number of
Afghan casualties, with estimates running from several hundred thousand
to several million.111 But whatever the true number, the fact is that
the United States has produced a great amount of death and misery –
sometimes even bombing funerals and wedding parties - in this country
that had already suffered terribly and that, even if the official story
were true, had not attacked America. The fact that the official story is
a lie makes our war crimes even worse.112
But there is a way out. As I have shown in this
paper and even more completely elsewhere,113 the falsity of the official
account of WTC 7 has now been demonstrated, leaving no room for
reasonable doubt. In his inaugural address, President Obama said, “We
will restore science to its rightful place,”114 thereby pledging that in
his administration, unlike that of his predecessor, science would again
be allowed to play a determinative role in shaping public policy. By
changing his administration’s policy with regard to Afghanistan in light
of the science of WTC 7, the president would not only fulfill one of
his most important promises. He would also prevent the war in
Afghanistan from becoming known as “Obama’s Vietnam.”115
David Ray Griffin is the author of 36 books on
various topics, including philosophy, theology, philosophy of science,
and 9/11. His 2008 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the
Cover-Up, and the Exposé, was named a “Pick of the Week” by Publishers
Weekly. In September 2009, The New Statesman ranked him #41 among “The
50 People Who Matter Today.” His most recent book is The Mysterious
Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about
9/11 is Unscientific and False (2009). His next book will be Cognitive
Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy
Theory (September 2010). He wishes to thank Tod Fletcher, Jim Hoffman,
and Elizabeth Woodworth for help with this essay.
Notes
1 For a few of the many times this issue has been
raised, see Jeffrey T. Kuhner, “Obama's Vietnam?” Washington Times,
January 25, 2009
(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/25/obamas-vietnam); Juan
Cole, “Obama’s Vietnam?” Salon.com, January 26, 2009
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/26/obama/print.html); John
Barry and Evan Thomas, “Afghanistan: Obama’s Vietnam,” Newsweek,
January 31, 2009 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/182650).
2 Marjorie Cohn, “Bombing of Afghanistan Is Illegal
and Must Be Stopped,” Jurist, November 6, 2001
(http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew36.htm).
3 Marjorie Cohn, “Afghanistan: The Other Illegal
War,” AlterNet, August 1, 2008
(http://www.alternet.org/world/93473/afghanistan:_the_other_illegal_war).
4 President Barack Obama, “The Way Forward in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, ” Remarks at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, December 1, 2009 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34231058).
5 “Security Council Condemns, ‘In Strongest Terms,’
Terrorist Attacks on United States,” September 12, 2001
(http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/SC7143.doc.htm).
6 Brian J. Foley "Legal Analysis: U.S. Campaign
Against Afghanistan Not Self-Defense Under International Law," Lawyers
Against the War
(http://www.lawyersagainstthewar.org/legalarticles/foley3.html).
7 "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United
States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made,
or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall
be the supreme Law of the Land.” US Constitution, Article VI, par. 2.
8 See Richard Falk and Howard Friel, The Record of
the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy (London:
Verso, 2007).
9 Obama, “The Way Forward in Afghanistan and
Pakistan .”
10 For example, Robert H. Reid, writing for the
Associated Press (“August Deadliest Month for US in Afghanistan,”
Associated Press, August 29, 2009
[http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/august-deadliest-month-for-us-in-afghanistan]),
said the war “was launched by the Bush administration after the Taliban
government refused to hand over Osama bin Laden for his role in the
Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.”
11 “White House Warns Taliban: ‘We Will Defeat
You,’” CNN, September 21, 2001
(http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/21/ret.afghan.taliban).
12 David B. Ottaway and Joe Stephens, “Diplomats Met
with Taliban on Bin Laden,” Washington Post, October 29, 2001
(http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/US_met_taliban.htm).
13 “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand Bin Laden
Over,” Guardian, October 14, 2001
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5).
14 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Obama Defends Strategy in
Afghanistan,” New York Times, August 18, 2009
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/us/politics/18vets.html?_r=1&th&emc=th).
15 See the two chapters entitled “The New Great
Game” in Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), and Steve
Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin
Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York:
Penguin, 2004).
16 Rashid, Taliban, 75-79, 163, 175.
17 Quoted in Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume
Dasquié, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the
Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books,
2002), 43.
18 George Arney, “U.S. ‘Planned Attack on Taleban,’”
BBC News, September 18, 2001
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm).
19 “Meet the Press,” NBC, September 23, 2001
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/nbctext092301.html).
20 “Remarks by the President, Secretary of the
Treasury O'Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order,”
White House, September 24, 2001
(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/president_026.asp).
21 Seymour M. Hersh, “What Went Wrong: The C.I.A.
and the Failure of American Intelligence,” New Yorker, October 1, 2001
(http://web.archive.org/web/20020603150854/http://www.cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Hersch_OCT_01.htm).
22 Office of the Prime Minister, “Responsibility for
the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States,” BBC News, October 4,
2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1579043.stm).
23 “The Investigation and the Evidence,” BBC News,
October 5, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1581063.stm).
24 Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Most Wanted
Terrorists: Usama bin Laden”
(http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm).
25 Ed Haas, “FBI says, ‘No Hard Evidence Connecting
Bin Laden to 9/11’” Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006
(http://web.archive.org/web/20061107114035/http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html).
For more on this episode, see David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions:
An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch
[Interlink], 2008), Chap. 18.
26 See The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,
Authorized Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), Chap. 5, notes 16,
41, and 92.
27 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, with Benjamin
Rhodes, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 118.
28 Ibid., 122-24.
29 Ibid., 119.
30 David Ray Griffin, Osama bin Laden: Dead or
Alive? (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009), 27-29.
31 Professor Bruce Lawrence interviewed by Kevin
Barrett, February 16, 2007
(http://www.radiodujour.com/people/lawrence_bruce).
32 Griffin, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? 16,
29-33.
33 Kevin Fagan, “Agents of Terror Leave Their Mark
on Sin City,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 2001
(http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL).
34 The 9/11 Commission Report, 160.
35 “Professor Dittmar Machule,” Interviewed by Liz
Jackson, A Mission to Die For, Four Corners, October 18, 2001
(http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/interviews/machule.htm).
36 Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball, “Bush: ‘We’re at
War,” Newsweek, September 24, 2001 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/76065).
37 Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed
Atta and the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida (Eugene, OR: MadCow Press, 2004).
See also Hopsicker, “The Secret World of Mohamed Atta: An Interview With
Atta’s American Girlfriend,” InformationLiberation, August 20, 2006
(http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14738). Many of the details
are summarized in my 9/11 Contradictions, Chap. 15, “Were Mohamed Atta
and the Other Hijackers Devout Muslims?” As I explain in that chapter,
there were efforts to try to discredit Keller’s account by intimidating
her into recanting and by claiming that she lived with a different man
having the same first name, but these attempts failed.
38 “Professor Dittmar Machule.”
39 Kate Connolly, “Father Insists Alleged Leader Is
Still Alive,” Guardian, September 2, 2002
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/02/september11.usa).
40 “Photographs Taken of Mohamed Atta during His
University Years,” A Mission to Die For, Four Corners
(http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/resources/photos/university.htm).
Also, the differences between the (bearded) Atta in his passport photo,
which is in the FBI’s evidence for the Moussaoui trial, and the Atta of
the standard FBI photo, seem greater than can be accounted for by the
fact that only the former Atta is bearded. The two photos can be
compared at 911Review (http://911review.org/JohnDoe2/Atta.html).
41 “Professor Dittmar Machule.”
42 Thomas Tobin, “Florida: Terror’s Launching Pad,”
St. Petersburg Times, September 1, 2002
(http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/01/911/Florida__terror_s_lau.shtml);
Elaine Allen-Emrich, “Hurt for Terrorists Reaches North Port,” Charlotte
Sun-Herald, September 14, 2001 (available at
http://www.madcowprod.com/keller.htm).
43 Connolly, “Father Insists Alleged Leader Is Still
Alive.”
44 David Bamford, “Hijack ‘Suspect’ Alive in
Morocco,” BBC, September 22, 2001
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558669.stm). Although
some news organizations, including the BBC itself, later tried to debunk
this story, they failed, as I reported in The New Pearl Harbor
Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive
Branch, 2008), 151-53.
45 See Jay Kolar, “What We Now Know about the
Alleged 9-11 Hijackers,” in Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of
9-11 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), 3-44, at 22-26; and Paul
Thompson, “The Two Ziad Jarrahs,” History Commons
(http://www.historycommons.org/essay.jsp?article=essayjarrah).
46 For types of evidence not discussed here, see
Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, Chap. 8, “9/11 Commission
Falsehoods about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Pakistanis, and Saudis.”
47 “Ashcroft Says More Attacks May Be Planned,” CNN,
September 18, 2001
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/inv.investigation.terrorism/index.html);
“Terrorist Hunt,” ABC News, September 12, 2001
(http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/disinfo/deceptions/abc_hunt.html).
48 Anne Karpf, “Uncle Sam’s Lucky Finds,” Guardian,
March 19, 2002
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,669961,00.html).
Like some others, this article mistakenly said the passport belonged to
Mohamed Atta.
49 Statement by Susan Ginsburg, senior counsel to
the 9/11 Commission, at the 9/11 Commission Hearing, January 26, 2004
(http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing7/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-01-26.htm).
The Commission’s account reflected a CBS report that the passport had
been found “minutes after” the attack, which had been stated by the
Associated Press, January 27, 2003.
50 A. K. Dewdney, “The Cellphone and Airfone Calls
from Flight UA93,” Physics 911, June 9, 2003
(http://physics911.net/cellphoneflight93.htm); Michel Chossudovsky,
“More Holes in the Official Story: The 9/11 Cell Phone Calls,” Global
Research, August 10, 2004
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO408B.html). For discussion of
this issue, see Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 112-14.
51 Greg Gordon, “Prosecutors Play Flight 93 Cockpit
Recording,” McClatchy Newspapers, KnoxNews.com, April 12, 2006
(http://web.archive.org/web/20080129210016/http://www.knoxsingles.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=MOUSSAOUI-04-12-06&cat=WW).
52 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit
Number P200054
(http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/flights/P200054.html).
These documents can be viewed more easily in “Detailed Account of Phone
Calls from September 11th Flights”
(http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html).
53 “Interview with Deena Lynne Burnett (re: phone
call from hijacked flight),” 9/11 Commission, FBI Source Documents,
Chronological, September 11, 2001, Intelfiles.com, March 14, 2008
(http://intelfiles.egoplex.com:80/2008/03/911-commission-fbi-source-documents.html).
54 William M. Arkin, “When Seeing and Hearing Isn't
Believing,” Washington Post, February 1, 1999
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm).
For discussion, see Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 114-18.
55 FBI, “Interview with Theodore Olsen [sic],” 9/11
Commission, FBI Source Documents, Chronological, September 11,
2001Intelfiles.com, March 14, 2008,
(http://intelfiles.egoplex.com:80/2008/03/911-commission-fbi-source-documents.html).
56 “America’s New War: Recovering from Tragedy,”
Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001
(http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html).
57 See David Ray Griffin and Rob Balsamo, “Could
Barbara Olson Have Made Those Calls? An Analysis of New Evidence about
Onboard Phones,” Pilots for 9/11 Truth, June 26, 2007
(http://pilotsfor911truth.org/amrarticle.html).
58 See the graphic in Jim Hoffman’s “Detailed
Account of Telephone Calls from September 11th Flights,” Flight 77
(http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html).
59 For claims about hijackers’ names on the flight
manifests, see Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War
on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 13; George Tenet, At the Center
of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007),
167-69; and my discussion in Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,
174-75. On claims about hijacker names on the Pentagon autopsy report,
see Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the
Facts: An In-Depth Investigation by Popular Mechanics, ed. David Dunbar
and Brad Reagan (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), 63, and my discussion of
its claim in David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to
Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
(Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2007], 267-69.
60 See Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 163,
174-75.
61 Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D. “Still No Arabs on Flight
77,” Rense.com, June 23, 2003 (http://www.rense.com/general38/77.htm).
62 See The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 275-79.
63 See David Ray Griffin, Christian Faith and the
Truth behind 9/11 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), Chap. 1,
“9/11 and Prior False Flag Operations.”
64 General Wesley Clark, Winning Modern Wars: Iraq,
Terrorism, and the American Empire (New York: Public Affairs, 2003),
120, 130; “Gen. Wesley Clark Weights Presidential Bid: ‘I Think about It
Everyday,’” Democracy Now! March 2, 2007
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/1440234); Joe
Conason, “Seven Countries in Five Years,” Salon.com, October 12, 2007
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/10/12/wesley_clark); Gareth
Porter, “Yes, the Pentagon Did Want to Hit Iran,” Asia Times, May 7,
2008 (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE07Ak01.html).
65 David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of
World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is
Unscientific and False (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books],
2009).
66 James Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the
Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel,” New York Times,
November 29, 2001
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/nation-challenged-site-engineers-have-culprit-strange-collapse-7-world-trade.html).
67 See FEMA, “High-Rise Office Building Fire, One
Meridian Plaza, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania”
(http://www.interfire.org/res_file/pdf/Tr-049.pdf), and “Fire
Practically Destroys Venezuela’s Tallest Building,” Venezuela News,
Views, and Analysis, October 18, 2004
(http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/741).
68 See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance
Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf), Chap. 5, Sect.
6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence,” at p. 31.
69 Rather’s statement is available on YouTube
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o).
70 See “Danny Jowenko on WTC 7 Controlled
Demolition,” YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc), or,
for more of the interview, “Jowenko WTC 7 Demolition Interviews,” in
three parts
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&feature=related).
71 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
(http://www.ae911truth.org).
72 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and
Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November
2008, Vol. 1 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%201.pdf), 330.
73 “NIST Whistleblower,” October 1, 2007
(http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/former-nist-employee-blows-whistle.html).
74 Shyam Sunder, “Opening Statement,” NIST Press
Briefing, August 21, 2008
(http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).
75 Quoted in “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7
Building,” USA Today, August 21, 2008
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).
76 New Research Misconduct Policies, section headed
“What is Research Misconduct?” National Science Foundation, Office of
Inspector General (http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). This document is
undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was published in 2001.
77 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 1: 324.
78 Quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At
Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories (New
York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), 97.
79 Joan Killough-Miller, “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of
Melted Steel,” WPI Transformations, Spring 2002
(http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html).
80 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “A Search for Clues
in Towers’ Collapse,” New York Times, February 2, 2002
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/02/nyregion/search-for-clues-towers-collapse-engineers-volunteer-examine-steel-debris-taken.html).
81 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and
Richard D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” FEMA, World
Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C
(http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf), C-13.
82 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7
Investigation,” NIST, August 21, 2008, updated April 21, 2009). NIST has
removed both versions of this document from its website, but Jim
Hoffman’s website has preserved both the original (2008) version
(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html) and the
updated (2009) version
(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
83 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature,” Expert
Report, May 2004
(http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf),
11.
84 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature Study:
Composition and Morphology,” December 2003
(http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20
LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/
WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf),
17. This earlier (2003) version of the RJ Lee report contained much more
information about melted iron than the 2004 version. For discussion,
see Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 40-42.
85 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature Study” (2003),
21.
86 WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web
(http://www.webelements.com/lead/physics.html).
87 Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High
Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," Journal of 9/11
Studies, January 2008
(http://journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf), 4-5.
88 WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web
(http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html).
89 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones,
Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James
R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen, “Active Thermitic Material Observed
in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical
Physics Journal, 2009, 2: 7-31
(http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).
90 Jennifer Abel, “Theories of 9/11,” Hartford
Advocate, January 29, 2008 (http://www.ae911truth.org/press/23).
91 See The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.
92 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 1: 346.
93 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and
Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November
2008, Vol. 2
(http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%202.pdf), 462.
94 For documentation and discussion of NIST’s claim
about the lack of girder shear studs, see Griffin, The Mysterious
Collapse, 212-15.
95 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 384, Figure 9-11.
96 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST, June 2004
(http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf), L-26. This
contradiction is pointed out in a video, “NIST Report on WTC7 Debunked
and Exposed!” YouTube, December 28, 2008
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFpbZ-aLDLY), at 0:45 to 1:57.
97 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2
(http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_vol2_for_public_comment.pdf),
595.
98 “WTC 7 Technical Briefing” (video), NIST, August
26, 2008, at 1:03. NIST has removed this video and the accompanying
transcript from the Internet. However, Nate Flach has made the video
available at Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/11941571), and the transcript,
entitled “NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft Report on WTC 7 for
Public Comment,” is available at David Chandler’s website
(http://911speakout.org/NIST_Tech_Briefing_Transcript.pdf).
99 Ibid., at 1:01:45.
100 David Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall - No Longer
Controversial,” September 4, 2008
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCDpL4Ax7I), at 2:45.
101 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 607.
102 Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall – No Longer
Controversial,” at 3:27.
103 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7
Investigation.”
104 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol.
2: 595-96, 596, 610.
105 Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy,
American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-939
(http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6).
106 Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear,
Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs
Scholarship,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 921-39
(http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 935.
107 “The Myth of Implosion”
(http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk2.html).
108 See Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,
30-31.
109 As to how domestic terrorists could have gotten
access, an answer becomes possible if we are aware that Larry
Silverstein, who owned Building 7 and had recently taken out a lease on
the rest of the World Trade Center, stood to make several billion
dollars if it was destroyed in a terrorist attack, and that a brother
and cousin of George W. Bush were principals of a company that handled
security for the World Trade Center (Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking,
111).
110 Some have seen drug profits as central. Others
have focused on access to oil, natural gas, and minerals. For example,
economist Michel Chossudovsky, referring to the allegedly recent
discovery of huge reserves of minerals and natural gas in Afghanistan,
wrote: “The issue of ‘previously unknown deposits’ sustains a falsehood.
It excludes Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth as a justifiable casus
belli. It says that the Pentagon only recently became aware that
Afghanistan was among the World's most wealthy mineral economies . . .
[whereas in reality] all this information was known in minute detail”
(Michel Chossudovsky, “’The War is Worth Waging’: Afghanistan's Vast
Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas: The War on Afghanistan is a Profit
Driven ‘Resource War,’” Global Research, June 17, 2010
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19769).
111 Dr. Gideon Polya, author of Body Count: Global
Avoidable Mortality Since 1950, has estimated that there over four
million Afghanis have died since the 2001 than would have died without
the invasion; see “January 2010 – 4.5 Million Dead in Afghan Holocaust,
Afghan Genocide,” January 2, 2010, Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide
(http://afghangenocide.blogspot.com).
112 On US-NATO war crimes in Afghanistan, see Marc
W. Herold, “Media Distortion: Killing Innocent Afghan Civilians to ‘Save
our Troops’: Eight Years of Horror Perpetrated against the People of
Afghanistan,” Global Research, October 15, 2009
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15665).
113 See The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade
Center 7, and, more recently, “Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in
Plain Sight,” 911Truth.org, May 27, 2010
(http://911truth.org/article.php?story=20100527162010811).
114 “Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address,” New York
Times, January 20, 2009
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html).
115 I wish to thank Tod Fletcher and Elizabeth
Woodworth for considerable help with this essay.
© Copyright David Ray Griffin, Global Research, 2010
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