The 9/11 Commission
- Did you know that some 50 million dollars were spent on investigating the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in which seven people died but only 11 million dollars were authorized by the White House to be spent on the 9/11 Commission inquiry in which some 3,000 people died?
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- Did you know that some 40 million dollars were spent on the report produced by independent counsel Kenneth Starr concerning Whitewater and the Clinton sex scandal in which no one died, while, initially, President Bush wanted to spend only 3 million dollars on the 9/11 Commission investigation -- but to which, and only grudgingly, another 8 million dollars were added on later, despite the fact the death toll from the events on September 11, 2001 were approximately 3,000 people?
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- Did you know that the White House resisted instituting an investigation into the events surrounding 9/11 and only did so after being pressured by families of the victims of 9/11, as well as due to some questions about some of the issues which arose out of the Congressional Joint Inquiry concerning 9/11?
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- Did you know that even after the White House reluctantly agreed -- several years after the fact -- to a public inquiry into the events of 9/11, nevertheless, the White House actively resisted the activities of the 9/11 Commission by refusing to grant security clearances to certain Commission members as well as failing to co-operate in the release of documents requested by the Commission, and even when the White House did release such documents they insisted, in many cases, that only a few of the Commissioners would be able to see these documents and that such individuals would not be able to take notes while looking at those documents?
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- Did you know that the White House resisted having members of the White House being required to give testimony under oath – and, in fact, neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney did give testimony under oath – and, as well, the White House insisted that when members of the White House did give testimony such people should be accompanied by 'handlers' who would monitor what they said?
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- Did you know that the Executive Director of the Commission, Philip Zelikow had total control over seven of the Commission's eight investigative teams (the eighth team was under the control of John Farmer, a former attorney general for New Jersey who had close ties to Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, and also the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission), and who had near absolute control over what was (and was not) investigated, who investigated it, how it was investigated, as well as being responsible for the writing and editing of the Commission staff reports that would (or would not) make their way into the final report? Did you know that Philip Zelikow had a long, intimate past history with the White House , including the following: He had been on the National Security Council during the administration of George H. W. Bush; he had been a director of the Aspen Strategy Group whose active participants were, among others, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice; he co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice; he was part of the National Security Council's transition team when George W. Bush took over following President Clinton's departure, and that shortly after 9/11, he was appointed by the President Bush to be a part of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board?
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- Did you know that at one point, after encountering obstruction from the government with respect to turning over documentation, Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, said: "Any document which has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach", and, yet, by and large, the promise of these words was not fulfilled with any degree of completeness, thoroughness, or independence despite the fact that in the preface to The 9/11 Commission Report, it is maintained that the purpose of the Commission was "to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11" and that the "Commission sought to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan"?
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- Did you know that there was an open letter sent to the US Congress on September 13, 2004, following the release of The 9/11 Commission Report, which was signed by 25 individuals who had been interviewed by the 9/11 Commission and who were associated with such agencies as the FAA, CIA, FBI, and Customs and who, collectively, were very critical of the fact that none of their testimony was reflected in the final report of the Commission even though they testified about a variety of problems involving public safety, national security, and the intelligence community in relation to 9/11?
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- Did you know that Richard Labeviere, a seasoned journalist from Switzerland, reported that in July 2001 -- when Usama bin Laden was among America's ‘most wanted’ list and had a 5 million dollar bounty attached to his capture, dead or alive – Usama bin Laden stayed for two weeks in the American Hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he is alleged to have received treatment from a Dr. Terry Callaway and, in addition, was visited by a local agent of the CIA by the name of Larry Mitchell, and even though the hospital and the CIA denied there was any truth to the story and while Dr. Callaway had a 'no comment' concerning the report, nonetheless, The 9/11 Commission Report contains no discussion of this story to determine the truth of the matter?
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- Did you know that there is an account written by Gerald Posner dealing with the interrogation of Abu-Zubaydah, alleged to be a major al-Qaeda operative and who was captured in March 2002, in which the claim is made that Zubaydah said he had been working on behalf of certain officials from Saudi Arabia, that these officials knew there was going to be some kind of attack on America on September 11, 2001 (although they did not, apparently, know any further details of the attack) and, as a partial confirmation of his story, he gave the phone numbers of three Saudi officials: Prince Ahmad bin Salman (who is better known in America as the owner of War Emblem which won the Preakness and Kentucky Derby in 2002), Prince Fahd bin Turki, and Prince Sultan bin Faisal?
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- Did you know that all three of the aforementioned members of the Royal family who Zubaydah claimed had foreknowledge of the precise date of the 9/11 tragedy in the US died within an eight-day period in July of 2002 under questionable circumstances (Prince Ahmad died of a heart attack at age 41, Prince Sultan died in a car crash on his way to attend the funeral of Prince Ahmad, and Prince Turki, who was only 21 years old, died of thirst in the desert) and, yet, The 9/11 Commission Report contains no discussion of these issues although the Report does contain nearly 40 paragraphs detailing various kinds of information concerning Zubaydah?
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- Did you know that the aforementioned Prince Ahmad – one of the people whom Zubaydah, in his April 2002 interrogation, indicated had some foreknowledge of 9/11 -- was one of the estimated 150 to 300 Saudis, including many members of bin Laden's family, who were permitted by the Bush administration to leave the U.S. shortly after 9/11, but there is no indication in The 9/11 Commission Report of whether, or not, Prince Ahmad had been closely questioned or interrogated by the FBI or other government authorities with respect to any information or knowledge Prince Ahmad might have had concerning the events of 9/11 even though the theory being pushed at the time of the Saudi exodus from the US was that most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report provides absolutely no specific information about who among the departing Saudis were questioned by authorities, what they were asked, how rigorous the questioning was, or whether there were individuals – such as, perhaps, Prince Ahmad -- who may not have been questioned at all?
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- Did you know that according to Gerald Posner, Zubaydah also was reported to have disclosed during the foregoing interrogation that Mushaf Ali Mir, a high-ranking military officer in Pakistan who was said to have close ties with both the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) of Pakistan and al-Qaeda, was indicated to have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack, and approximately seven months following this disclosure by Zubaydah, a military airplane carrying Mir, his wife, and a number of close aides crashed in good weather, despite the fact the aircraft had been recently serviced and was, supposedly, in good running order, and, yet, this further strange 'accident' or related allegations by Zubaydah were not pursued by The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that General Mahmoud Ahmad, who was head of Pakistan's ISI in 2001, had been meeting with George Tenet, Director of the CIA, as well as Porter Goss, Bob Graham, and other members of various congressional intelligence committees, along with Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, in the days just before, during, and following 9/11, and that General Mahmoud has been implicated as the person who gave orders to Saeed Sheikh, an ISI agent, to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta on September 10, 2001, and, yet, none of this is explored in The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that the Times of India ran a story (also verified, discussed and quoted in a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled 'Our Friends the Pakistanis') about the retirement of General Ahmad on October 8, 2001 (less than two years after his appointment by General Musharraf as a reward for having helped Musharraf gain power in Pakistan), in which the article stated that the reason for the unexpected retirement was because Indian intelligence officials had provided the US government with compelling evidence that it had been General Mahmoud, director of Pakistan's ISI, who had ordered an ISI agent to transfer $100, 000 to Mohammed Atta, the alleged ring leader of the 9/11 plot, on September 10, 2001, and, yet, none of this is discussed in The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that immediately following 9/11, President Bush sought to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Pact which required other member nations in NATO to assist any member nation that had been attacked from outside the aggrieved member country (in this case, supposedly, the United States), and although the other member nations of NATO unanimously approved the resolution, nevertheless, according to a December 13, 2001 statement by Helmut Schmidt, former Defense Minister and Chancellor of Germany, he indicated that the resolution should not have been passed because Article 5 requires proof be given that such an attack had been committed by a force external to a given country, and, such proof was never given to the NATO members at the time of the 2001 resolution and, to date, such proof has not been given?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report failed to note that there were no Arabic names – and certainly none of the names of the alleged 19 hijackers -- appearing on any of the publicly-released passenger manifests for flights which were involved in the events of 9/11: namely, American Airlines 11, United Airlines 175, American Airlines 77 or United Airlines 93?
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- Did you know that sometimes there are changes to preliminary passenger flight manifests as people cancel a ticket or book a flight at the last minute, but these final passenger manifests have not been made public by American Airlines and United Airlines and that they, to date, have refused to release the details of these final passenger flight manifest lists?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission had subpoena power, but the Commission did not exercise this power in order to acquire the finalized versions of the passenger manifest lists from the two airlines?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report offers absolutely no evidence which indicates how the FBI was able to identify the 19 terrorists who supposedly were involved with the events of 9/11 when the names of these individuals were nowhere to be found on the flight manifests which have been released to the public?
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- Did you know that according to post-9/11 interviews conducted by David Harrison, a reporter for the Telegraph newspaper located in London, 6 of the alleged hijackers on 9/11 are still alive, but this information did not appear in The 9/11 Commission Report – these individuals include: Salem al-Hazmi, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Waleed al-Shehri, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Ahmed al-Nami, and Mohand al-Shehfi?
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- Did you know that at least four of the foregoing individuals who are still alive were involved in airline-related activities: Abdulaziz al-Omari was a pilot for Saudi Airlines; Waleed al-Shehri lived in Casablanca and was employed as a pilot by Royal Air Maroc; Ahmed al-Nami served as an administrative assistant for Saudi Arabian Airlines; and, Saeed al-Ghamdi had been in Tunis at the time of 9/11 learning how to fly an airbus?
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- Did you know that the coroner's report concerning the Pentagon attack on 9/11 indicated that none of the bodies carried genetic markers indicating Arab descent?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report depicts Mohammed Atta as being a fanatical sort of fundamentalist devout Muslim but that investigative journalism pursued by David Hopsicker, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsweek have uncovered evidence indicating that Atta consumed substantial amounts of alcohol, used cocaine, ate pork, frequented strip clubs, was the recipient of lap top dances, and lived with a prostitute – all at odds with what any devout Muslim would do?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report offers no plausible explanation for how the north and south towers of the World Trade Center could have collapsed so quickly?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report offers absolutely no explanation – reasonable or otherwise – of why, and how, Building 7 (in the World Trade Center complex) -- which was not hit by an airplane on 9/11 -- collapsed around 5:30 p.m. in nearly a free-fall manner?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report does not contain any account of, or inquiry into, the fact that Larry Silverstein, who had leased many of the buildings in the World Trade Center prior to 9/11 had stated in a September 2002 video documentary entitled "America Rebuilds", aired on PBS television, that he had a conversation with the fire department commander about 'pulling' Building 7 and that, according to Silverstein, the commander decided to go ahead and do some sort of ‘pulling’ process with respect to Building 7?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report offers no explanation of why Buildings 5 and 6 in the World Trade Center were, despite tremendous damage from fire, able to retain their structural integrity, and, yet, neither the North and South Towers nor Building 7 were able to do accomplish this despite having been constructed with numerous features of redundancy that were knowingly intended to permit those buildings to survive strikes by large commercial airliners and/or hurricane force winds?
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- Did you know that although The 9/11 Commission Report notes how the South Tower "collapsed in 10 seconds" it provides no reasonable explanation of the manner in which either a plane crash, or a fire, or some combination of the two, could have resulted in such a near free-fall collapse of the building?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report totally mis-characterizes the structural features of the north and south towers by: (1) claiming that the interior of these buildings consisted of a "hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped", and (2) that the exterior of the walls of the two buildings "bore most of the weight of" the two buildings – and, in doing so, fails to indicate that not only did the core of the building consist of 47 massive steel columns ( at their base these columns were 4 inch-thick, 14-by-36 inch steel shafts, and the thickness gradually tapered off to about ¼ of an inch thick, 14- by-36 inch shafts as one neared the top of the 110 story buildings) which were connected to each other and to the 236 exterior columns by a grid work of steel trusses, but that it is the core columns which anchor these buildings?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report offers no discussion or reasons why nowhere in the world prior to, or since, 9/11 did any steel-frame high-rise building collapse due to fire despite burning for many, many hours more than did the fires in the either of the twin towers or Building 7 (e.g., consider the fire at 1 Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia, or the high-rise fires in Madrid, Spain and Caracas, Venezuela)?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report contains no account of why evidence in a criminal act – for example, the killing of nearly 3000 people and the destruction of buildings worth tens of millions of dollars – were removed from a crime scene (such as the Twin Towers and Building 7) and not stored (with a proper chain of evidence maintained) for subsequent testing and analysis by scientists but, instead, were quickly sold and shipped overseas?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report did not investigate why authorities in New York (e.g., Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) would designate the World Trade Center disaster site as a crime scene when it came to prohibiting people from taking pictures of the World Trade Center complex while, simultaneously, authorizing the removal of evidence from such a crime scene with absolutely no regard for maintaining a proper chain of evidence for the material which was removed?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission failed to rigorously pursue the statement by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani which described how when he and others were working out of the Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 someone told them "that the World Trade Center was going to collapse, and it did collapse before we could get out of the building"?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission failed to determine, and report on, the identity of the person, or persons, who conveyed this information to Mayor Giuliani in the Emergency Command Center and that the Commission failed to establish just how this person, or persons, knew that the World Trade Center was going to collapse?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report contained no indication that the security company, Securacom (which has since changed its name to Stratesec), which was responsible for security not only at the World Trade Center, but, as well, at United Airlines (involved in the hijackings of 9/11), and Dulles Airport (from which Flight 77 departed), had a CEO by the name of Wirt Walker III, who, reportedly, is a cousin of President Bush and that this company had among its investors, KuwAm – a Kuwaiti/American investment firm with strong ties to the royal family in Kuwait … the same royal family that arranged for one of its members – a fifteen year old girl, Nayirah – to perjure herself before the US Congress in the lead up to Desert Storm when she claimed that she had been an eyewitness to the murder of babies in incubators being smashed on the floor of a hospital by Iraqi soldiers although the incident never occurred?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report failed to reflect the fact that Ed Plaugher, the fire chief for the Arlington County Fire Department, made totally contradictory statements concerning what he allegedly saw at the Pentagon on 9/11 in which, initially – on September 12, 2001 -- Plaugher indicated he reportedly saw some pieces of an aircraft, but he indicated there were no large pieces such as a fuselage and that sort of thing, and, yet, some six months later he said he had seen "pieces of the fuselage, the wings, the landing gear, pieces of the engine, seats … I can swear to you that it was a plane"?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report fails to report, discuss, or question the fact that there is a direct contradiction between, on the one hand, the statement of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who claimed to have been in his office in the east side of the Pentagon at the time of the explosions, and, then, stated that he went to the site of the crash on the west side of the Pentagon and was able to identify plane wreckage, and, on the other hand, the testimony of Richard Clarke, chief of counterterrorism at the White House, which stipulates that the Secretary was not in his office but in a special room where there was a teleconference hookup with Clarke and other top officials at the time former Secretary Rumsfeld claims to have been elsewhere?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report contained no discussion of why the missile defense system which is reportedly in place around the Pentagon was not activated despite the fact that the transponder for Flight 77, which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon, had been turned off and, therefore, should have been identified as an unidentified and, presumably, hostile craft by the missile system?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission failed to exercise its subpoena power to acquire all the videotapes which had been confiscated by the FBI shortly after the Pentagon event from the gas stations, businesses, and hotels on the west side of the Pentagon?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report contains no mention of the name, Bill McKelway who reported on the FBI confiscation of the videotapes, nor does the Report mention the name of Jose Velasquez who was the attendant at the gas station which had a clear line of sight with respect to the west wing of the Pentagon and from which videotape had been confiscated by the FBI?
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- Did you know that Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, stated categorically how it was "indisputable" that American Airlines Flight 77 had struck the Pentagon and, yet, when asked whether he was aware of any unreleased photographs of the Pentagon-event that would be able to convince skeptics, he indicated there were no such photographs
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report reflects none of the expert testimony -- such as Pierre-Henri Bunel, who was an artillery and explosives expert who served as an ally with General Schwartzkopf during Desert Storm -- which indicates that the five frames of publicly released video that allegedly depict the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon provide evidence not of a plane crash but of a high-yield explosion that could not possibly have come from a crash of a commercial jet in which jet fuel ignited?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report omitted testimony by Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta given to the Commission on May 23, 2003, (although this testimony did appear in one of the Commission staff reports) in which he indicated that he had been in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center with Vice President Cheney, and during this time, he observed an on-going exchange taking place between the Vice President and a young man who kept giving the Vice President revised closing distance figures (e.g., 50 miles, 40 miles, 30 miles, etc.) of an unidentified flying object in relation to Washington, and these updates were taking place at least 12-15 minutes earlier than the military's claim that it first came to know about Flight 77 heading for the Pentagon at 9:36 a.m., just a minute, or so, before something crashed into the Pentagon?
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- Did you know that on page 9 of The 9/11 Commission Report, a time of 9:34 a.m. was given as when the Secret Service became aware of the in-coming unidentified object heading for the Pentagon, but on pages 27 and 34 of the Report, a time of 9:36 a.m. is given for this event, whereas in the Commission Staff Report of June 17, 2004, a time of 9:32 a.m. was given for this same event?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report provides no detailed account to the public concerning the reason(s) as to why the Commission decided to fix 9:36 a.m. as the 'official' time of awareness about the existence of a UFO heading for the Pentagon?
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- Did you know that there is an article by William Scott in a 2002 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology which stipulates that after the south tower of the WTC had been hit (which was shortly after 9: 00 a.m.), calls from a variety of fighter unit groups in different parts of the US – especially in the northeast region of the US -- started pouring into NORAD and section headquarters in which offers of assistance were given by these fighter units, and, yet, NORAD left the capital of the United States completely unprotected because there was no air cover over Washington, D.C. until after the Pentagon had been hit despite having offers of assistance from fighter groups more than one half hour prior to the Pentagon event, and, yet, The 9/11 Commission Report makes no mention of any of this?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report fails to reflect a memorandum of May 22, 2003 by Laura Brown, the Deputy of Public Affairs at the FAA, which was sent to the Commission following the earlier testimony of Jane Garvey, the Director of the FAA, in which Ms. Brown specifically states that within minutes (approximately 8: 50 a.m.) after the north tower of the WTC having been struck by Flight 11, the FAA had established a phone bridge with, among other governmental agencies, the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the FAA command center, as well as FAA field offices, and, during this phone bridge real-time information was shared with all governmental agencies concerning the unfolding events of 9/11, yet, the Commission insists that the reason the military was not able to respond to the other three hijackings in a timely fashion was because the military had not been given appropriate notice or relevant information by the FAA and that the FAA did not contact the military until 9:20 a.m.?
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- Did you know that the sole piece of evidence cited by the Commission for fixing the time of the above-noted teleconference at 9:20 a.m., is a FAA record entitled: "Chronology ADA-30 September 11, 2001" which had to be turned over by the FAA to the FBI -- rather than to the National Transportation Safety Board which is normal procedure, and that there has been no official inquiry into the validity of the chain of custody of that document or why it is contradicted by other data available to the 9/11 Commission, or why it was in the possession of the FBI rather than the NTSB?
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- Did you know that the testimony of Richard Clarke also directly contradicts the aforementioned ADA-30 document since he indicates that Jane Garvey, Director of the FAA, was actively and fully participating in a teleconference, in which the Pentagon and Department of Defense were also participating, that had been established significantly in advance of the 9:20 a.m. time fixed by the Commission as to when the FAA first contacted authorities about the hijackings, and a teleconference in which, according to Richard Clarke, Jane Garvey had been an active participant for at least 30-35 minutes prior to the time of 9:40 a.m. which The 9/11 Commission Report claims Garvey joined that teleconference?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission could have subpoenaed the videotapes from the aforementioned conference in order to ascertain, once and for all, who did, and did not, participate in this video conference, as well as the times when such people participated in that conference, but the Commission failed to do this?
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- Did you know that even if the ADA-30 document were proven to be valid with respect to the chronology of FAA events on 9/11, the military and the Secret Service are both reported to have radar systems which are far superior to those of the FFA, and, consequently, either the military and/or the Secret Service should have been able -- entirely on their own and without assistance from the FAA -- to detect the fact that there were at least four flights in US airspace which were without proper transponder identification and, therefore, should have been identified as flying objects with possible hostile intent – and all of this should have taken place prior to the north tower of the WTC having been hit?
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- Did you know that David Schippers -- who was the Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee in 1998 and was also the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of President Clinton in 1999 -- has made public statements indicating that more than six weeks prior to 9/11 a number of FBI agents approached him and provided him with detailed, precise, and accurate information concerning the date, time, funding, and location of a terrorist attack to take place in lower Manhattan and that these same agents informed Schippers that their investigations were being obstructed by FBI headquarters and that David Schippers was further informed by the FBI agents that they had been threatened by headquarters with prosecution if they should go ahead and make the results of their investigation public, but nowhere does either the name of David Schippers or a description of this account appear in the pages of The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that David Schippers further indicates how some six weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks, he called the office of Attorney General John Ashcroft in order to inform him about the foregoing matter, but John Ashcroft never returned his calls?
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- Did you know that Attorney General John Ashcroft discontinued taking commercial flights in the weeks leading up to 9/11 due to threat assessments he had received from the FBI, and, yet, there is no mention made of this forewarning in The 9/11 Commission Report in relation to any of its entries concerning John Ashcroft, nor is there any discussion in the Report of why, if the FBI report was serious enough to alter the flying arrangements of the Attorney General, the public was not also notified about this potentially serious threat?
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- Did you know that the FBI headquarter officials being referred to by the aforementioned FBI field agents who talked with David Schippers included Acting Director Thomas Pickard and Counterterrorism Director Dale Watson, but, The 9/11 Commission Report makes no mention of any specific forewarnings about 9/11 in conjunction with the testimonies of Pickard and Watson, despite the fact that three FBI agents who spoke with the author of an article which appeared in The New American indicated the information which had been given to David Schippers by FBI field agents was both widely known within the FBI as was the information that the reports concerning the coming attack were being suppressed by FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report did explore, to some degree, the fact that there were some suspicious stock market activity in the week prior to 9/11 involving put options (which are, in effect, like bets that a given stock is going to plummet in value) for both United and American Airlines (which were involved in the 9/11 hijackings), as well as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (which occupied some 22 floors at the World Trade Center), but the Commission claimed that after considerable investigation there was absolutely no conceivable tie to al-Qaeda, but what the 9/11 Commission apparently failed to investigate is whether, or not, the individuals making the put-options could have foreknowledge of the forthcoming 9/11 attacks quite apart from al-Qaeda, nor did the Commission give any explanation of what the particulars of the investment strategy were which would have led someone to make put options on United, American, and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter at that particular time?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report does make references to an FBI briefing and a Securities Exchange Commission memo concerning the foregoing issue, as well as alludes to certain interviews concerning the suspicious stock market activity, but the Commission provides no specific evidence or data or documents which can be publicly examined, and, so, ultimately, all one has is a series of declarative sentences from the Commission that the suspicious put options of the week leading up to 9/11 are all entirely innocuous?
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- Did you know that an FBI agent in Phoenix by the name of Kenneth Williams issued a memorandum in July 2001 to FBI headquarters indicating there was evidence that individuals associated with Usama bin Laden had been taking flight lessons and, as a result, it might be a prudent measure to institute some kind of official tracking program to determine whether, or not, there might be other people associated with Usama bin Laden who were taking flight lessons in other parts of the US?
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- Did you know that according to The 9/11 Commission Report the reason why Agent Williams' suggestion was never acted upon was because no one at FBI headquarters read his memorandum until after September 11, 2001, but the Report fails to provide any evidence to corroborate its claim that no one at FBI headquarters read the Williams memorandum, nor does the Report explore, even if its 'no-one-knew explanation' were true, why authorities at the FBI headquarters would not have read the Williams memorandum prior to 9/11?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission never interviewed FBI agent Kenneth Williams?
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- Did you know that The 9/11 Commission Report fails to explore the fact that Colleen Rowley, an FBI legal officer working out of the Minneapolis office, had written a thirteen page letter to both the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as to FBI Director Robert Mueller, in which Agent Rowley asserts, among other things, that David Frasca, manager of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit at FBI headquarters, was 'privy' to the Williams memorandum prior to 9/11 -- contrary to the claims of FBI headquarters that it had no knowledge of this memo before 9/11 -- and, yet, according to Agent Rowley, Frasca had never bothered to inform the FBI agents in Minneapolis about the Pheonix memorandum as part and parcel of his apparent attempt to obstruct and interfere with the FBI's Minneapolis investigation into Zacarius Moussaoui's attempt to obtain flying lessons in Minnesota?
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- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission did not interview Colleen Rowley and that the only reference to her in the Report is in relation to an interview of her by the Department of Justice's Inspector General during July 2002 – a reference which makes no mention of Rowley's differences with FBI headquarters relation to the Moussaoui issue?
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- Did you know that the name of David Frasca does not appear in The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that in 1998 Robert Wright, an FBI agent in Chicago, had begun to investigate possible terror connections in that city because he had come across evidence indicating that a Saudi multimillionaire might have been involved in funding the terror attacks against US embassies in 1998, and despite his contention that the evidence for building his case had become more compelling by January 2001, his investigation was closed down by FBI headquarters, and in May 2002 Wright proclaimed that he was going to sue the FBI for refusing to give him permission to write a book about his investigation, and, yet, apparently, the 9/11 Commission did not even bother to interview Robert Wright, nor does one discover Wright's name in the contents of The 9/11 Commission Report?
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- Did you know that following the release of The 9/11 Commission Report, Sibel Edmonds, an American citizen of Turkish descent who had been hired by the FBI to do translation work during the aftermath of 9/11, wrote an open letter to Thomas Kean, Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, in which she complained that the final Report contained nothing of the eight points she had made to the Commission staff members during her interview including charges that Mike Feghali, a supervisor in the translation division in the Middle Eastern Division, had, in conjunction with another translator (Melek Can Dickerson), taken hundreds of pages of top-secret intelligence documents outside of the FBI offices, and that Mr. Feghali had, in conjunction with the same translator (Melek Can Dickerson), forged signatures on top-secret reports concerning various detainees in relation to 9/11, and that Mr. Feghali had lied to another FBI agent about the accuracy of a translation which Ms. Edmonds had sent to the Washington Field Office of the FBI for re-translation because she believed the original translation had made some critical mistakes and following the re-translation, Mr. Feghali failed to send this document to the Special Agent who originally had requested the translation in relation to an investigation that agent was conducting?
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- Did you know that the aforementioned Sibel Edmonds also informed Thomas Kean that her testimony before Commission staff members revealed there was evidence that a long-time FBI informant, who had been a high-ranking intelligence officer from Iran dealing with Afghanistan, gave testimony to two FBI agents and a translator more than four months prior to 9/11 stipulating that Usama bin Laden was going to conduct a strike against the United States sometime during the next several months, and this attack would involve airplanes, and, yet, when the FBI agents who had been interviewing the informant passed on this information to their superior, Thomas Frields, who was the Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, the latter agent not only sat on the information but instructed the agents and translator to not discuss the information with anyone else?
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- Did you know that there is no mention of Thomas Frields or Mike Feghali in The 9/11 Commission Report, nor is there any indication that they were interviewed by Commission staffers?
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- Did you know that although there is evidence that Behrooz Sarshar, the translator in the aforementioned affair, testified before Commission staffers for some 2½ hours, there is no mention in the Report of the interview which had been passed on to Thomas Frields and about which Sibel Edmonds informed Thomas Kean?
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- Did you know that when Sibel Edmonds informed other officials in the FBI about the Mike Feghali and Thomas Frields incidents but failed to get any response, she sent a letter to the Department of Justice and was subsequently fired?
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- Did you know that then Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked a 'state secrets' rule in seeking, and obtaining, a gag order which precludes Edmonds from divulging any information she may have acquired while working for the FBI?
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- Did you know that despite having testified before 9/11 Commission staffers for more than 3½ hours the only mention of Sibel Edmonds in The 9/11 Commission Report is in the title of a footnoted-review conducted by the Department of Justice's Inspector General concerning Sibel Edmonds' unspecified allegations in relation to the FBI?
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- Did you know that despite The 9/11 Commission Report's statement that "the threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airlines within the United States – and using them as guided missiles – was not recognized by NORAD prior to 9/11" and despite the infamous statement of Condoleezza Rice before the Commission that prior to 9/11 no one could have imagined someone hijacking planes and flying them into buildings, the Report, itself, actually contains a great deal of information which suggests that both NORAD and Rice should have known better, and, yet, the Commission does not take exception with Rice or NORAD with respect to their 'failure of imagination'?
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For example, did you know that during the time of the millennium terrorist alert in 1999-2000, Richard Clarke held a meeting of the Counterterrorism Security Group and specifically explored scenarios involving airplane hijackings by al-Qaeda; even more concretely, Richard Clarke oversaw an exercise in conjunction with the 1996 Atlantic Olympics which had terrorists hijacking a Lear jet, loading it with explosives, and, then, flying the airplane into targets in Washington, D.C.; moreover, in July of 2001, the Italian government, in response to intelligence concerning a terrorist attack, had fighter planes flying over the city of Genoa, where the G-8 Summit (which President Bush attended) was being held and, in addition, had set up anti-aircraft batteries around the Genoa airport; and, in August of 1998, intelligence had been uncovered that a Libyan group was planning to hijack an airplane and fly it into the World Trade Center … nor is anything mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report about the emergency drill conducted by the Pentagon in October 2000 with respect to a hijacked airplane crashing into the Pentagon, or the July 2001 drill of NORAD in which airplanes hijacked in the US would be flown into various targets, including the World Trade Center?
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