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9/11 News Articles

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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The suppression of Able Danger
2006-02-18, Toledo Blade
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060218/COLUMNIST14/602180...

Mr. Kleinsmith and the two colleagues who testified with him in [a House Armed Services Committee] open session are convinced that had the information they developed been acted on, not only 9/11, but also the October 2000, attack on the destroyer USS Cole in which 17 sailors died could have been prevented. Through computer scanning of some 2.5 terabytes of classified and unclassified data, the Able Danger team identified five "nodes" of al-Qaeda activity. One was in Brooklyn. Another was in the port of Aden in Yemen, where the USS Cole was attacked. Able Danger linked Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers to the Brooklyn cell, said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who was the liaison between the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Able Danger team. Colonel Shaffer testified he tried three times to have Able Danger data on the Brooklyn cell presented to the FBI, but that on each occasion Pentagon lawyers forbade the meeting. In a commentary in the Wall [Street] Journal last November, Louis Freeh, who was FBI director at the time, said that if he had been told about what Able Danger had learned, 9/11 likely would have been prevented. In March, 2000, Mr. Kleinsmith was ordered to stop all work on Able Danger, and, later, to delete all the information collected. It is clear there is a cover-up. One would think a Washington press corps obsessing about a hunting accident in Texas would be more curious about it.

Note: Though Able Danger received wide media coverage when first reported six months ago, the amazing revelations of the recent hearings have received very little attention, which is why we include this article from the leading newspaper of Toledo, Ohio. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on Able Danger, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/abledanger911


Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
2005-10-26, San Francisco Chronicle/Congressional Quarterly
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNG62FDUGL1.DTL

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of dtente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power. Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B." CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it. Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House. "In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat." When Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.


Court Closes FBI Case Arguments to Public
2005-04-21, Los Angeles Times/Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-fbi-contractor-l...

A federal appeals court Thursday barred the public from arguments in the case of a fired FBI contractor who alleged security breaches and misconduct at the agency. Sibel Edmonds' lawsuit against the government was thrown out of a lower court when the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to withhold information to safeguard national security. The Justice Department's inspector general said Edmonds' allegations to her superiors about a co-worker "raised serious concerns that, if true, could potentially have extremely damaging consequences for the FBI." The inspector general concluded that the FBI did not adequately investigate the allegations and that Edmonds was retaliated against for speaking out.

Note: Ms. Edmonds has repeatedly claimed that top government officials had clear foreknowledge of 9/11, yet 9/11 is not even mentioned in the article.


Dangerous World Fuels Conspiracy Theorists
2007-01-30, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/29/national/main2411081.shtml

Five years later, it's the violent rattling of the ground moments before the World Trade Center's South Tower fell ... that keeps Gary Welz raising questions about just what he survived on Sept. 11, 2001. "I felt what was like an earthquake ... just before the South Tower fell," recalls Welz, an adjunct math lecturer at John Jay Criminal College and Fordham University. "The official explanation that I've heard doesn't make sense because it doesn't explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell." Welz is among the growing ranks of conspiracy theorists who question the official explanation of ... the Sept. 11 attacks. The actions of U.S. administrations in recent American history have done nothing to dissuade conspiracy theorists. The details of the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, after all, read like an implausible conspiracy theorist's dream. The Watergate scandal provides fodder too. The Bush administration, it can be argued, has encouraged a new generation of theorists after implying there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks ... and insisting Iraq was riddled with weapons of mass destruction. Although he is doubtful of the official 9/11 story, Welz ... does not consider himself a conspiracy theorist. Welz' own skepticism toward 9/11, while based on personal experience, has been reinforced by broadcast quality, highly-polished films on the Internet such as "9/11 Mysteries." There are hundreds of others out there. One such film is "Loose Change" ... a polished, albeit journalistically flawed, attempt to poke holes in the U.S. government's explanation and response to the Sept. 11 attacks. "Loose Change" has been downloaded over 30 million times in 50 countries.

Note: For free viewing of "Loose Change," click here. To view "9/11 Mysteries," click here. For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.


Suit airs Able Danger claims
2006-03-04, Sacramento Bee (Leading newspaper of California's capital city)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/14225641p-15049903c.html

Two operatives at the center of the Able Danger controversy have sued the Defense Department for denying them contact with their lawyers during closed congressional hearings. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and J.D. Smith were among a dozen intelligence officers and contractors who worked on the clandestine program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to track al-Qaida. They are accusing the Pentagon...of violating their First Amendment rights by blocking their access to legal counsel during the closed sessions. "Able Danger identified the Sept. 11, 2001, attack leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the 9/11 plot's 19 hijackers, as possible members of an al-Qaida cell linked to the 1993 World Trade Center attack or its participants," the suit said. Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient who fought undercover in Afghanistan, caused a stir in August when he stepped forward to say that he and other Able Danger operatives had identified Atta as long as 21 months before the Sept. 11 attacks. That claim - later supported by the Able Danger team's leader, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott - contradicted a central finding of the commission Congress had set up to probe the Sept. 11 attacks, which concluded that none of the hijackers had been known to U.S. authorities before the assault.

Note: Though the major media once gave Able Danger good coverage, only the Sacramento Bee has mentioned that the team's leader is one of the individuals who stepped forward. For lots more on the vitally important Able Danger program, click here.


Revisiting 9/11 Failures
2007-01-31, Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16907952/site/newsweek

Senators are renewing calls for the declassification of a CIA report documenting the agencys mistakes in preventing the 2001 attacks. The Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA may be headed for a new confrontation over an old issue: why an internal report documenting the agencys failures in the run up to the September 11 terror attacks is still being withheld from the public. The report, prepared by the CIAs inspector general, is the only major 9/11 government review that has still not been made publicly available. While Bush administration officials are hardly eager for a public rehash of the 9/11 intelligence failures, the issue is an especially sensitive one at CIA headquarters. The report provides the CIAs own internal account of what some believe was the most spectacular of the pre-9/11 failures: the agencys failure to alert the FBI and other U.S. government agencies to information showing that two of the hijackers had entered the United States as early as January 2000.


9/11's Las Vegas Connection
2006-09-10, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/10/eveningnews/main1992178.shtml

The title is "Loose Change." It may be the internet's first blockbuster movie. It says: "If the government has nothing to hide, why are they so afraid to answer a few questions?" Ten million have watched so far, and that's only a fraction of the 42 percent of Americans recently polled by Reuters who believe its message -- that our own government covered up critical evidence of 9/11. But it's more than conspiracy theories on the Internet at work here. Some of the very people who first investigated 9/11 admit there's still a lot they don't know about the plot. Dale Watson ran counterterrorism for the FBI and led the investigation into 9/11. And one of the things that still puzzles him most is the Las Vegas connection. All four of the 9/11 hijacker pilots flew Las Vegas in the months preceding the attack. Some came twice. But once here, the men essentially disappeared. On his first trip here hijacker Muhammad Atta rented a car, and drove it 110 miles in two days. But where did he go? Who did he visit with, if anyone? There's not a clue. Why did Muhammad Atta and his sidekick travel all the way to Portland, Maine, to connect with -- and almost miss -- the Boston flight they later hijacked? Why did Atta earlier travel all the way from Florida to Virginia Beach, Va., just to rent a mailbox? The FBI still doesn't know -- but hasn't stopped looking. Five years after the crime a dozen agents remain on the 9/11 case. And they still get 20 new leads a week.

Note: Is it possible that practically no one supported the alleged hijackers prior to 9/11? Why has only one man every been caught and tried? And FBI agents were stymied by top officials in their attempts to search his laptop before 9/11. Why haven't we heard that they are still investigating the Las Vegas connection?


Religious book points 9/11 finger at Bush
2006-09-01, Indianapolis Star/Associated Press
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060829/LIVING/608290305/...

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has tumbled into a new dispute over the Sept. 11 attacks of five years ago. Its Presbyterian Publishing Corp. has issued "Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11" (Westminster John Knox), containing perhaps the most incendiary accusations leveled by a writer for a mainline Protestant book house. Author David Ray Griffin tells of concluding that "the Bush-Cheney administration had orchestrated 9/11 in order to promote this (American) empire under the pretext of the so-called war on terror." Griffin has solid mainline credentials. He's an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and recently retired after a long teaching career at the United Methodists' Claremont (Calif.) School of Theology. Such a massive cover-up is possible, he explains, because people don't want to believe high officials would "launch an attack on their own citizens." Griffin also asserts claims about "abundant evidence" of Bush administration orchestration of 9/11 in a separate anthology from Westminster and also did so in two previous books for a small secular publisher. He also has spoken to campus and church groups. He's a member of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" along with Kevin Barrett, a Muslim instructor at the University of Wisconsin who is under fire for making similar accusations. The publisher's publicity contends that Griffin "applies Jesus' teachings to the current political administration" and puts forth "an abundance of evidence and disturbing questions that implicate the Bush administration."

Note: The article also tries to tear down Prof. Griffin. It is interesting to note that none of the top U.S. papers picked up this important Associated Press article.


Author, filmmakers fight over adaptation of 9/11 expose
2006-08-18, Miami Herald (Miami's leading newspaper)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/15308882.htm

What was already expected to be a controversial documentary that charges that Osama bin Laden's top spy infiltrated three different branches of U.S. national security has gotten even hotter. Veteran investigative reporter Peter Lance call[ed] the TV documentary based on his book a whitewash. The documentary, Triple Cross, is scheduled to air on the National Geographic Channel Aug. 28, with Lance's book of the same name set for publication a few weeks later. But their accounts of the way bin Laden's master spy Ali A. Mohamed outwitted the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. Army may be overshadowed by the acrimonious war of words. National Geographic's producers at one point held back transcripts of interviews they were supposed to share with Lance, and still won't let him see the final documentary unless he signs what they call a "non-disparagment agreement." Mohamed turned up in FBI surveillance photos as early as 1989, training radical Muslims who would go on to...detonate a truck bomb at the World Trade Center. He not only avoided arrest, but managed to become an FBI informant at the same time he was smuggling bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, writing most of the al Qaeda terrorist manual and helping plan attacks on American troops in Somalia and U.S. embassies in Africa. Finally arrested in 1998, Mohamed cut a deal with the Justice Department. His whereabouts remain shrouded in official secrecy. Lance, an Emmy winner who spent nine years as a producer-reporter at ABC, was one of the first journalists on the trail of the Mohamed story. "The FBI allowed the chief spy for al Qaeda to...plan the bombings of the embassies in Africa right under their noses.''


Bush Behind 9/11? Tucker Carlson with Professor David Ray Griffin
2006-08-09, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14285603/

CARLSON: My next guest is one of the leading voices in the increasingly noisy movement that claims our own government orchestrated the attacks of September 11th. David Ray Griffin is a theology professor and a member of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth. He's also the author of the book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action. That book is published by the Presbyterian Church's publishing arm. Mr. Griffin...you have no evidence that the government's behind 9/11. GRIFFIN: These things have to be determined in terms of evidence. If you read this book and...my two previous books, The New Pearl Harbor, and then The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, you will see there are literally dozens of reasons to disbelieve the official theory about 9/11. CARLSON: I'm merely saying it is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful for you to suggest, imply, or help other people come to the conclusion that the U.S. government killed 3,000 of its own citizens. GRIFFIN: I thought the same thing for the first year and a half. But then when I finally looked at the evidence, I saw that it was truly overwhelming. CARLSON: You say six of the hijackers may still be alive. What's the evidence? GRIFFIN: Both the BBC and the "Telegraph" put out stories -- let's take the one about Waleed al-Shehri. Several days after 9/11, he...announced to the world that he's still alive in Morocco where he's a pilot. We didn't get a word of that from the 9/11 Commission. [The 47-story WTC] Building 7 was not hit by an airplane. CARLSON: And it came down. GRIFFIN: The 9/11 Commission did not even mention in their 571-page report the fact that Building 7 collapsed.

Note: To see the video clip on the MSNBC website, click here. Though Carlson clearly is attacking Griffin, I am thrilled that this interview was aired. At this stage, I believe any publicity is good publicity.


Scholars for 9/11 Truth Under Attack
2006-07-04, July 4, 2006, PRWeb
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/7/prweb406904.htm

The author of an article about the attack on the World Trade Center has found himself under attack for having published it in a new on-line publication, Journal of 9/11 Studies. Entitled "The Third Elephant", the article discusses evidence that a third airplane was captured on video at the time of the WTC attack. He has now received a thinly-veiled threat against his children, who are cited by name, suggesting it would be a good idea if his article were to simply "go away". Scholars for 9/11 Truth is a non-partisan society of experts and scholars committed to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about the events of 9/11. The journal, which is archived at journalof911studies.com, is its latest attempt to create forums for discussion and debate about these important issues beyond its web site, which is archived at st911.org. The author, Reynolds Dixon, a writer and Professor of English, former lecturer and Fellow at Stanford University, has withdrawn from the society. Prominent experts and scholars who are members of S9/11T include Steven Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University; Morgan Reynolds, former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor in the George W. Bush administration; Bob Bowman, who directed research on the "Star Wars" program in both Republican and Democratic administrations; Andreas von Buelow, the former director of Science and Technology for Germany; and David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of theology at the Claremont Graduate School and author or editor of four books on the events of 9/11.

Note: We rarely use PRWeb as a source for articles, but as I helped with the formation of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and know key people there, and as no other major media are reporting on this alarming news, I'm including this here for those who want to know.


Panel Weighs Whistleblower Law Changes
2006-02-14, Washington Post/Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR20060214015...

Five government whistleblowers said Tuesday they had faced retaliation for calling attention to alleged government wrongs. They told their stories to the House Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, whose chairman, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., indicated an interest in altering the law to better protect national-security whistleblowers. Army Spc. Samuel Provance laid out what he considers to be a pattern of systemic abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He said his rank was reduced for disobeying orders not to speak about mistreatment he saw at the prison. Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, has called attention to possible constitutional abuses and security breaches at NSA. He said he was given psychological evaluations deeming him mentally unstable, and his clearance was revoked. He's now unemployed. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer says the Defense Intelligence Agency has made a series of allegations against him since he disclosed information about a program known as Able Danger. He says the program identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the attack. Richard Levernier, a retired Energy Department nuclear security specialist, said he lost his security clearance and effectively his job for giving the media an unclassified report about shortfalls in nuclear security.


F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said
2005-09-14, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html?ex=1284350400&en=de7...

American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses. Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem. The White House and many members of the commission...have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures. A footnote that was originally deleted from the report showed that a quarter of the security screeners used in 2001 by Argenbright Security for United Airlines flights at Dulles Airport had not completed required criminal background checks. Much of the material now restored in the public version of the commission's report centered on the warnings the F.A.A. received about the threat of hijackings, including 52 intelligence documents in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that mentioned Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. Richard Ben-Veniste, a former member of the Sept. 11 commission, said the release of the material more than a year after it was completed underscored the over-classification of federal material. "It's outrageous that it has taken the administration a year since this monograph was submitted for it to be released," he said.


Report on CIA before 9/11 slams Tenet
2005-08-26, San Francisco Chronicle/New York Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/26/MNG4PEDOTL1.DTL

New director must decide whether to discipline any of the dozen-plus criticized. A long-awaited CIA inspector-general's report on the agency's performance before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks includes detailed criticism of more than a dozen former and current agency officials, aiming its sharpest language at George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence. Tenet is censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on al Qaeda in the years before 2001, even after he wrote in a 1998 memo to the intelligence agencies that "we are at war" with the terrorist group. The findings place Goss in a delicate position. Now, as director of the CIA, he will have to decide whether to discipline any of those criticized, risking a further blow to the morale of an agency still charged with protecting the country against future terrorist attacks.

Note: Though various whistleblowers on the 9/11 cover-up have been fired or demoted, there has never been a report of a single government official being disciplined for failures which led to the 9/11 attacks. As pressure builds for accountability, Tenet, who resigned over a year ago, may be the chosen scapegoat.


Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance
2011-01-13, Foreign Policy Journal
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/13/interrogating-the-arizona-kill...

Governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalise those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars. The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that [WantToKnow team member] David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). This brings me to the Arizona shootings. The most insistent immediate responses have come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence. If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and obtain the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion of government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.

Note: The author of this article, Richard Falk, is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, and since March, 2008 has served as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories of Palestine. The publication of this article mentioning the questioning of the official account of 9/11 by highly-credible and respected individuals has been the pretext for a campaign calling for his dismissal from his UN post, brought by the organization UN Watch, a pro-Israel lobby group. Isn't such a demand an attempt at censorship of questioning of the official account of 9/11?


Cuba's Fidel Castro claims al-Qaida leader Osama bin laden is a US agent
2010-08-27, Minneapolis Star-Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.startribune.com/world/101653038.html?page=1&c=y

Fidel Castro says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent who always popped up when former President George W. Bush needed to scare the world, arguing that documents recently posted on the Internet prove it. "Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do," Castro told state media during a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known for advancing conspiracy theories about world domination. "Bush never lacked for bin Laden's support. He was a subordinate." Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org a website that recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war "effectively proved he was a CIA agent." Last week, he began highlighting the work of Daniel Estulin, who wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose prominent members meet once a year behind closed doors. During the meeting, Estulin told Castro that the real voice of bin Laden was last heard in late 2001, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the person heard making warnings about terror attacks after that was a "bad actor."

Note: WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin has analyzed the evidence for bin Laden's likely death in December 2001 in his important book Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?. For key reports from major media sources on secret societies such as the Bilderberg Club, click here.


Brothers, Bad Blood and the Blackwater Tangle
2007-11-17, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17brothers.html?ex=1352955600&en=1cb325e...

They were smart, scrappy brothers who rose from modest circumstances in Baltimore to become lacrosse stars at Princeton, succeed in business and land big government jobs. Now the Krongard brothers who have carried childhood nicknames, Buzzy and Cookie, through long careers are tied up in the tangled story of Blackwater, the security contractor accused in the deaths of at least 17 Iraqis while guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad. The shorthand version boils their involvement down to that Washington catchall conflict of interest. The full story appears more complicated. Alvin [Buzzy] Krongard, 71, ... left a $4 million-a-year job in investment banking to serve in top posts at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1998 to 2004. Buzzy Krongard spoke [to the New York Times] in his 15,000-square-foot Georgian mansion, Torch Hill, north of Baltimore. After rising to the helm of Alex. Brown & Sons, the venerable Baltimore investment banking firm, Buzzy Krongard oversaw its acquisition by Bankers Trust in 1997 and left the next year for the C.I.A., as a counselor to George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence. He became executive director, the No. 3 post, in 2001 and helped design the agencys secret detention program after the Sept. 11 attacks. Buzzy Krongard vigorously defends Blackwaters record in Iraq. Its very easy to second-guess them when youre sitting back in an air-conditioned office, he said.

Note: Buzzy Krongard took quite a cut in pay to move from Bankers Trust to the comparatively modest salary of even a high-ranking CIA position. Bankers Trust was purchased by the same company that placed the highly unusual and suspicious "put options" on United Airlines stock just days before 9/11. For a powerful summary of similarly strange, unexplained facts related to 9/11, click here.


Sandy Berger gives up law license
2007-06-08, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19106937/

Berger, now an international business consultant, said in a statement last month that he "decided to voluntarily relinquish my license" as a result of pleading guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, a misdemeanor. "I realized then that my law license would be affected," Berger said in the statement obtained Thursday. In April 2005, Berger admitted destroying some of the documents and then lying about it. He called his actions a lapse of judgment that came while he was preparing to testify before the Sept. 11 commission. The documents he took contained information on terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration. Berger had only copies of documents; all the originals remain in the government's possession. A report by the archives inspector general said that Berger acknowledged hiding some of them at a construction site near the archives building in Washington.

Note: For a more in-depth analysis of Berger's admitted crime, which tries to answer the question "What information was worth risking his reputation, his career, and his freedom to keep hidden?", click here.


Can the 20th hijacker of Sept. 11 stand trial?
2006-10-24, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Mohammed al-Qahtani, detainee No. 063, was forced to wear a bra. He had a thong placed on his head. He was massaged by a female interrogator who straddled him like a lap dancer. He was told that his mother and sisters were whores. He was told that other detainees knew he was gay. He was forced to dance with a male interrogator. He was strip-searched in front of women. He was led on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. That much is known. These details were among the findings of the U.S. Armys investigation of al-Qahtani's aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators. In interviews with MSNBC.com the first time they have spoken publicly former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used...after Guantanamo's prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques. And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial.


The enduring conspiracy factor
2006-09-10, Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl...

Five years after the most reported and recorded cataclysmic event in world history, one would expect the conspiracy theorists to have been pushed to society's margins. Think again. As time passes, more and more Americans are convinced the most bizarre theory is that 19 guys with box cutters, directed by a bearded man in a cave in Afghanistan, pulled off the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. An inside job? Those who believe that are not crackpots, says Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Fenster says the John F. Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks are huge events that have been officially explained by tiny scenarios, something people find unsatisfying. Kevin Ryan, a leading figure in the conspiracy movement, [will] tell you what started him down the conspiracy path. "I first began to be suspicious ... after it was clear the Bush administration had lied to us about the reasons for going to war in Iraq," says Ryan, who was lab director at an Underwriters Laboratory subsidiary in South Bend, Ind., until he was fired after questioning official reports on the collapse of the twin towers. "Since then, I've wondered when the lying began." In Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of philosophy and theology at California's Claremont School of Theology, accuses the Bush administration of orchestrating the attacks. Some of the leading conspiracy theorists are scientists, engineers, theologians and university professors, 75 of whom formed Scholars For 9/11 Truth.


Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.