9/11 News Articles Excerpts of Key 9/11 News Articles in Major Media
Below are many highly revealing excerpts of important 9/11 articles from the mainstream media. Links are provided to the full articles on major media websites. If any link should fail to function, click here. These 9/11 news articles are listed by order of importance. For the same articles by date posted to this list, click here. For the list by date of news article click here. By choosing to educate ourselves on these important issues and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
Note: For an index to revealing excerpts of media articles on several dozen engaging topics, click here.
The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll 2006-03-27, New York Magazine http://www.nymetro.com/news/features/16464 Why, if the impact destroyed the planes’ supposedly crash-proof flight-recorder black boxes, was the FBI able to find, in perfect condition, the passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the...Flight 11 hijackers? How could they, an hour after the first World Trade Center crash, allow an obviously hostile airplane to smash into the Pentagon, headquarters of the entire military-industrial complex? A story in Newsweek...said these generals were told earlier that week not to fly. [On 9/11 a] fireman indicated the building in front of us. “That building is coming down,” he said. At 47 stories, it would be a skyscraper in most cities. Five minutes later, at 5:20, the building, 7 World Trade Center, crumbled. What happened at 7 WTC might be the key to the entire mystery. The $500 million insurance profit made by Larry Silverstein [and] the list of 7 WTC tenants sets conspiracy heads spinning: The IRS, the Department of Defense, and the CIA kept offices on the 25th floor. The Secret Service occupied the ninth and tenth. The Securities and Exchange Commission (home to vast records of bank transactions) was on floors 11 through 13. The 23rd floor was home to Rudy Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, his crisis center. Central to the scenario is a comment made by Silverstein in a 2002 PBS documentary. “We’ve had such a terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” “Pull it”...is the term usually used for controlled demolition. 7 WTC is not even mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report.
More than half of the U.S. House of Representatives wants open hearings on Able Danger 2005-11-18, US House of Representatives Website of Curt Weldon (R-Pa) http://curtweldon.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=37076 U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, has sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed by over half of the House of Representatives requesting that he allow "former participants in the intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER to testify in an open hearing before the United States Congress." The letter has 246 signatures (144 Republicans, 101 Democrats, and one Independent), including senior members and leadership on both sides of the isle. "The full story of ABLE DANGER deserves to be heard by the American people," said Weldon. "Secretary Rumsfeld must understand that the will of Congress is behind allowing members of the ABLE DANGER effort to testify in an open hearing about the work they were doing prior to 9-11 to track the linkages and relationships of al-Qaeda worldwide. Congressional efforts to investigate ABLE DANGER have been obstructed by Department of Defense insistence that certain individuals with knowledge of ABLE DANGER be prevented from freely and frankly testifying in an open hearing. Note: Why did no media found this key story worth covering? The request was never granted, while the investigation was eventually declared closed by the military without any significant outside investigation.
Congressman Curt Weldon's Speech to Congress 2005-10-19, Official Website of Congressman Weldon (R-Pa) http://curtweldon.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=35792 "I have
been in this institution 19 years. I am the vice chairman of [the Committee
on Armed Services] and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the purchase
of our weapons systems. I am a strong supporter of our military. I am a strong
supporter of President Bush. I campaigned for him. I am a strong supporter
of Secretary Rumsfeld. I say all of that, Mr. Speaker, because...there
is something desperately wrong here. There is a bureaucracy in the Defense
Intelligence Agency that is out of control. They want to destroy the reputation
of a 23-year military officer, Bronze Star recipient, hero of our country,
with two kids because people in defense intelligence are embarrassed at what
is going to come out. I have met with at least 10 people who fully corroborate
what Tony Shaffer says. This is not [about] Republicans or Democrats. It is
about what is fundamental to this country. I would ask our constituents across
America [who] we represent to join us, to express their outrage, to e-mail,
make phone calls, write letters to the Secretary of Defense, the President
of the United States, to Members of Congress to...let the Able Danger story
finally come out to the American people. Let them understand what really
happened. Let Scott Philpott talk. Let Tony Shaffer talk. Let the others who
have been silenced have a chance to tell their story to Congress and openly
to the American people. In the end, the country will be stronger.
Note:
For lots more reliable, verifiable information specifically on Able Danger:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=ableDanger
Britain now faces its own blowback 2005-09-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1566919,00.html Omar Sheikh...at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI [Pakistan's secret service], wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: "To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance" - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness. All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west.
9/11 Revealed: Challenging the Facts behind the War on Terror 2005-09-04, The Sunday Times (Book review in England's leading newspaper) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-1757744,00.html By allowing the attacks to happen -- or in the case of the most extreme theories, by organising them under a “false flag” -- the military-industrial complex in America, headed by Dick Cheney and his neocon supporters in the Project for a New American Century, guaranteed that America would stay at war and that profits would stay high. The authors of Revealed, both radical journalists, have subjected the official version of what happened to intense scrutiny and found huge gaps. Recalling that most of what we know about what happened on the planes comes from alleged calls made by passengers on mobile phones, they point out that most experts say that, for technical reasons, this contact would have been impossible to make. They highlight the absence of Mayday distress signals, the failure to find the black-box flight recorders for the WTC aircraft...the failure to carry out a full engineering investigation into why the towers collapsed so fast and the failure to scramble military aircraft to intercept the hijacked aircraft. Even more intriguing is the role of Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon. Anyone who examines the route taken by Hanjour will see that it required a complex maneuver by an experienced pilot. Yet in 2001, when Hanjour tried to fly down the Hudson air corridor in a light aircraft, his trainer was so unnerved that he denied him a second run. You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to see that the official account published by the 9/11 Commission is full of gaps.
Note: England's popular Daily Mail also had a long, detailed article on 9/11 Revealed, which you can read here. The US State Department decided that this book was dangerous enough to post a webpage dedicated to disproving its theories: read here. The authors' rebuttal to the State Department's claims is available here.
UPI Hears... 2005-06-13, Washington Times/United Press International http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050613-102755-6408r.htm A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why wasn't this widely reported? For 50 other senior government officials who have seriously questioned the 9/11 Commission Report, click here.
Controllers' tale of Flight 11 2005-05-11, Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0913/p1s2-usju.html Flight 11's transponder had stopped working. It was no longer sending a radar pulse. The plane's altitude also became a matter of guesswork for controllers, though the Boeing 767 was still visible on radar. Two F-15 jets were reportedly dispatched from Otis Air Force Base. Just before or after the military planes got off the ground, however, the controllers report they lost site of Flight 11's radar signal over Manhattan. The controller who had handled the plane from the beginning of the ordeal was stunned. A few minutes later, the Nashua controllers heard reports that a plane had crashed into a building.
Note: According to the official story, once the transponders were turned off in the four 9/11 airplanes, they could no longer be tracked. As the above article and air traffic controllers will tell you, though the altitude is no longer reported, planes are still visible on radar once the transponder is off. The plane that flew into the Pentagon was known to be hijacked for over half an hour before it struck. Military radar also can rapidly track incoming missiles that obviously don't send out transponder signals. So how is it possible that the military headquarters of the entire United States was hit, when radar must have tracked this plane on it's way there?
Congressional Testimony Reveals Four Wargames on 9/11 2005-03-11, WantToKnow.info/C-SPAN http://www.wanttoknow.info/050317wargames911 CMK [Congresswoman Cythia McKinney]: Mr. Secretary, after the last Hearing, I thought that my office was promised a written response to my question regarding the four wargames on September 11th. I have not yet received that response. The question was ... whether or not the activities of the four wargames going on on September 11th actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks. RM [Top Pentagon Chief, General Richard Myers]: The answer to the question is no, it did not impair our response, in fact General Eberhart who was in the command of the North American Aerospace Defense Command as he testified in front of the 9/11 Commission I believe - I believe he told them that it enhanced our ability to respond, given that NORAD didn't have the overall responsibility for responding to the attacks that day. That was an FAA responsibility. But they were two CPXs; there was one Department of Justice exercise that didn't have anything to do with the other three; and there was an actual operation ongoing because there was some Russian bomber activity up near Alaska. CMK: Who was in charge of managing those wargames? RM: The important thing to realize is that North American Aerospace Defense Command was responsible. These are command post exercises; what that means is that all the battle positions that are normally not filled are indeed filled; so it was an easy transition from an exercise into a real world situation. It actually enhanced the response; otherwise, it would take somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours to fill those positions, those battle stations, with the right staff officers.
Note: For the full transcript of this testimony and more, click here. Why to this day have all media (other than C-SPAN) and the 9/11 Commission Report failed to inform the public that there were four wargames happening at the time of the 9/11 attacks? For possible answers, click here.
Dayton: FAA, NORAD hid 9/11 failures 2004-07-31, Minneapolis Star Tribune (leading newspaper of Minneapolis) http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/4904237.html Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., charged Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) have covered up "catastrophic failures" that left the nation vulnerable during the Sept. 11 hijackings. "For almost three years now, NORAD officials and FAA officials have been able to hide their critical failures that left this country defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history," Dayton declared during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. Dayton told leaders of the Sept. 11 commission, that, based on the commission's report, a NORAD chronology ... said the FAA notified the military's emergency air command of three of the hijackings while those jetliners were still airborne. Dayton cited commission findings that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about three of the planes until after they had crashed. Dayton said NORAD officials "lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission to create a false impression of competence, communication and protection of the American people." He [said] if the commission's report is correct, President Bush "should fire whoever at FAA, at NORAD ... betrayed their public trust by not telling us the truth." Dayton argued that if the FAA had promptly sent a systemwide message about the hijackings, the pilot of the fourth plane seized, United Airlines Flight 93, might have been able to secure the cockpit doors and land the plane. Dayton said NORAD also falsely claimed that during the hijackings, it had F-16 Combat Air Patrol planes in place at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and an AWAC command ship in the air to protect the nation's capital.
Note: Click here to visit the Internet archive, where you will see this article was removed not long after it was published. No other major media reported this vital news. To see the original, click here or here.
Ex-minister attacks US over war 2003-09-06, BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3085656.stm Former minister Michael Meacher has blamed the Iraq war on the US desire for world domination. Mr Meacher also suggested the Americans might have failed to prevent 11 September as it gave a pretext for military action. Mr Meacher was environment minister until three months ago and has already spoken out in opposition to the war. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Mr Meacher said the 11 September attacks gave an invaluable excuse for attacking Afghanistan. And he said the US Government intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power because of its need for further secure oil supplies. In his piece Mr Meacher wrote: "It seems that the so-called war on terrorism is being used largely as a bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 11 September. The global war on terrorism has all the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said this agenda had been outlined by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) - a thinktank associated with leading neoconservative hawks within the US administration. In his article, Mr Meacher also said the US had passed up opportunities to catch Osama Bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda figures.
Note: Mr. Meacher's comments were actually much stronger than the BBC reports. He stated publicy on the front page of the Guardian his belief that the U.S. government was very possibly behind the 9/11 attacks. To verify this, see the Guardian article mentioned in the BBC article above available here.
Unanswered questions: The mystery of Flight 93 2002-08-13, Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article173206.ece The shortage of available facts [about the crash of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001] did not prevent the creation of an instant legend ... that the US government and the US media were pleased to propagate, and that the American public have been eager, for the most part, to accept as fact. The absence of official information has led to lively and often well-informed debate [on] the internet (see www.flight93crash.com.) There are ... a number of important unanswered questions ... based on evidence, as well as on a manifest absence of candour on the part of the authorities – which the national US media, typically so sceptical and inquisitive, have shown a curious reluctance to ask. The alternative theories, both of which have been denied by the US military and the FBI, are a) that Flight 93 was brought down by a US government plane; and b) that a bomb went off aboard. If doubts remain despite the denials, if conspiracy theories flourish, it is in large part because of the authorities' failure to address head-on questions, [including:] 1. The wide displacement of the plane's debris, one explanation for which might be an explosion of some sort aboard prior to the crash. Letters ... and other papers from the plane were found eight miles (13km) away from the scene of the crash. A sector of one engine weighing one ton was found [more than a mile] away . Other remains of the plane were found two miles away near a town called Indian Lake. 2. A federal flight controller [was quoted] a few days later in a newspaper [stating] that an F-16 had been "in hot pursuit" of the hijacked United jet and "must have seen the whole thing". Everything is speculation – that is the problem with the story of Flight 93. Note: For a treasure trove of revealing articles from major media sources that raise numerous questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.
Jesse Ventura searches for coverups 2009-11-29, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-conversation29-2009nov29,0,17... Jesse Ventura is back. The former pro wrestler, who served as Minnesota governor from 1999 to 2003, is the host of "Conspiracy Theory," an investigative series ... on truTV. [Q:] On "Conspiracy Theory," you investigate secret societies and supposed government coverups. Such theories are everywhere, but really, what big conspiracy has ever been proven? [Ventura:] How can you prove it? That's the point. The better part would be to ask, "How many of the government's points have ever been proven?" I find what's most interesting about doing this show is how the government will not participate or allow you in or answer any questions. We're not allowed to question our government. [Q:] One of the alleged coverups you investigate involves 9/11. Do you believe the terrorist attacks were an inside job? [Ventura:] I believe that the government has not been truthful with us about it. Yes, absolutely. That there's massive holes in the story they've told. That none of these questions have ever been adequately addressed. All evidence has been destroyed, pretty much. [Q:] Why would the government want to do such things? {Ventura:} Well, what changed after 9/11? We're in two wars, passage of Patriot Act and all that. Our entire society changed that day. We've become paranoid. We think there's a terrorist behind every tree. I live in Mexico half the year. And when I'm down there, for six months, I never hear the word "terrorism." When I'm up here, I can't go a day without hearing it.
Note: Many government officials, like Jesse Ventura, have questioned the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks. To read their questions, click here.
Website Wikileaks publishes '9/11 messages' 2009-11-26, BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8379960.stm A website has published what it says are 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 attacks in the United States. WikiLeaks says it will not reveal who gave it the messages - some of which are from federal agencies as well as ordinary citizens.
Internet analysts say they believe the messages are genuine but federal authorities have refused to comment. The messages are not all about the attacks. Some are mundane questions about what people are having for lunch. However, many are about the deadly plane attacks and range from people trying to find out if their loved ones are safe to government messages. They include messages such as * This is Myrna, I will not rest until you get home, the second tower is down, I don't want to have to keep calling you after every event. Pls just go home * Bomb detonated in World Trade Ctr. Pls get back to Mike Brady w/ a quick assessment of your areas and contact us if anything is needed. New York's fire and police departments said they could not comment on whether messages purportedly sent from them were genuine while the US Secret Service refused to comment. WikiLeaks allows people to anonymously post documents on the web, saying its aim is to promote transparency. It was created in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.
Note: For questions raised by hundreds of highly respected and credible officials, academics and professionals about what really happened on 9/11, click here and here.
9/11's delayed legacy: cancer for many of the rescue workers 2009-11-11, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/11/cancer-new-york-rescuers A spate of recent deaths of New York police and fire officers who took part in the emergency operation at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks has heightened fears that it could be the start of a delayed epidemic of cancer-related illness. Five firefighters and police officers, all of whom were involved in the rescue and clear-up at the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, have died of cancer in the past three months, the oldest being 44. Three died last month within a four-day period. Up to 70,000 people took part in the massive operation at Ground Zero, including police, firefighters and construction workers who came to New York voluntarily from all over the US. Many worked for months amid a toxic soup of dust and chemicals. Amid the pollutants within the giant pile of 1.8m tons of debris and the surrounding air were ... about 1,000 tons of asbestos that was used in the construction of the Twin Towers, pulverised lead from computers, mercury and highly carcinogenic by-products from the burning of plastics and chlorinated chemicals. No official tally is available for the number of those who have died as a result of the 9/11 clear-up. The New York state health department has recorded 817 deaths of emergency workers. Claire Calladine, a campaigner who runs the organisation 9/11 Health Now, said the fear was that the recent rise in cancer cases was just the start.
"We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. How bad will it get – that is the big question."
Note: To read important questions raised by hundreds of government officials, academics and professionals about what really happened on 9/11, click here and here.
A Window Into C.I.A.'s Embrace of Secret Jails 2009-08-13, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/13foggo.html In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency's main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world's most threatening terrorists. Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, ... agreed to the assignment. With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees. The existence of the network of prisons to detain and interrogate [captives] has long been known, but details about them have been a closely guarded secret. In recent interviews, though, several former intelligence officials have provided a fuller account. Mr. Foggo acknowledged a role, which has never been previously reported. He pleaded guilty last year to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided other supplies to the agency, and he is now serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison. Eventually, the agency's network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100. Mr. Foggo's success in Frankfurt, including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.'s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief. "It was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment," said A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.'s executive director from 2001 to 2004. "It popped people's eyes."
Note: Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's case is highly unusual. Very few high-level CIA officers have ever been imprisoned for corruption. His predecessor as Executive Director of the CIA, quoted in the article above, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, who held the office on 9/11, had been the chief executive of a branch of the investment company which placed the still unexplained "put options" on American and United Airlines stocks the week before the attacks, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profits to "unknown" parties.
The Alarming Record of the F.B.I.'s Informant in the Bronx Bomb Plot 2009-07-07, Village Voice (A progressive New York City street newspaper) http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-08/news/the-alarming-record-of-the-f-b-i-... Last month, police and the FBI arrested four Newburgh men on charges that they had plotted to bomb synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and fire a missile at a military jet. As more details emerged, however, the less the four defendants sounded like men with the skills to plan a sophisticated terror plot. They were small-time crooks, felons with long criminal records. What the indictment didn't say, and what the initial news reports didn't fill in, was the extent to which the fifth man in the plot, an unnamed FBI informant, had provided the glue to hold the Newburgh 4 together. That informant was a Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain, code-named "Malik," who agreed to work for the FBI to obtain leniency after he was arrested in 2002 for fraud. Over a period of about a year, Malik met with [the] defendants ... while under FBI surveillance. The Newburgh bomb plot isn't the first of Malik's operations for the government. He played a similar role four years ago in an Albany case, in which he helped the FBI arrest a man named Mohammed Hossain, a cash-poor pizzeria owner, and his imam, Yassin Aref, after persuading them to launder $50,000 in a made-up plot to bring a missile to the U.S. and assassinate the Pakistani prime minister. In both cases, Malik did not stumble upon active terror cells plotting to bring destruction on American soil. Instead, in both Newburgh and Albany, he needed long periods of time to recruit his Muslim contacts, spin elaborate tales about his terror contacts, and develop solid plans of action, all the while providing the defendants with large amounts of resources and cash incentives. In each case, the question remains: Would either set of defendants have done anything remotely like plant bombs or launder money for terrorists if not for the prodding and plotting and encouragement of Malik and the FBI?
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the hidden realities behind the never-ending "war on terror", click here.
Architects and Engineers Seek 9/11 Truth 2009-06-03, KGO Radio (San Francisco's top talk-radio station) http://www.kgoam810.com/Article.asp?id=1353865&spid=20399 "Architects know that you can't have 400 structural steel connections failing per second in a fire-induced gravitational collapse," says architect Richard Gage about the collapse of World Trade Center 7, a building not struck by a plane, on September 11, 2001. Richard is with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group of professionals who have factual reservations about conclusions reached in the 9/11 Report.
Note: To listen to this path-breaking 7-minute broadcast, click on the link above. For lots more reliable information showing the official story of 9/11 cannot be true, see our 9/11 Information Center.
Fire, Not Explosives, Felled 3rd Tower on 9/11, Report Says 2008-08-21, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22wtccnd.html?partner=rssuserland&... Fires in the 47-story office tower at the edge of the World Trade Center site undermined floor beams and a critical structural column, federal investigators [from the National Institute of Standards and Technology] concluded on Thursday, as they attempted to curb still-rampant speculation that explosives caused the building’s collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The collapse of 7 World Trade Center ... is cited in hundreds of Web sites and books as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower. [Critics] have pointed to the fact that the building fell straight down, instead of tumbling, as proof that explosives were used to topple it, as well as to bring down the twin towers. Sixteen percent of the respondents in a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said it was very likely or somewhat likely that explosives were planted. Other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems. But 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane, is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that in the rush to clean up the site, almost all of the steel remains of the tower were disposed of, leaving investigators in later years with little forensic evidence. Skeptics ... have long argued that an incendiary material called thermite, made of aluminum powder and a metal oxide, was used to take down the trade center towers. They also have argued that a sulfur residue found at the World Trade Center site is evidence of an inside job.
Gov't says FBI agents can't testify about 9/11 2008-06-19, International Herald Tribune/Associated Press http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/19/america/Sept-11-Lawsuits.php Government lawyers say the ongoing investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks could be compromised if the airline industry is allowed to seek more information from the FBI to defend itself against lawsuits brought by terrorism victims. The government urged a judge to block aviation companies from interviewing five FBI employees who the companies say will help them prove the government withheld key information before the 2001 attacks. The lawyers said it would be impossible to interview the employees without disclosing classified or privileged material that could "cause serious damage to national security and interfere with pending law enforcement proceedings." The largest investigation in FBI history has resulted in 167,000 interviews and more than 155,000 pieces of evidence and involved the pursuit of 500,000 investigative leads, the lawyers wrote. The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The companies filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, lawyers for the victims of the attacks ... recounted in court papers numerous hijackings and attacks aboard planes before Sept. 11 that they said should have put the airline industry on notice that a disastrous attack could occur.
Note: For a two-page overview of many unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.
Bush Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Talks 2008-04-11, ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175 President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News. "Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people," Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved." As first reported by ABC News, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA. The president had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before [ABC's original] report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans -- down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner -- had never been disclosed. Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. In the interview with ABC News, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM. "We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And no, I didn't have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew." The president said, "I think it's very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack -- I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
Note: For a transcript of the interview with President Bush on the Washington Post website, click here. For a powerful two-page summary of many unanswered questions about who really ordered the 9/11 attacks, click here.
Key 9/11 News Articles in Major Media
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