9/11 News Stories
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.
For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive 9/11 Information Center.
A helicopter was shot down today by Afghan insurgents as it was rushing to aid troops in a firefight, killing 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALs, most of whom belonged to Team 6, the unit whose members were involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said. It's unclear how far away the helicopter was from the initial firefight when it went down and unclear how the troops in the firefight got to the crash location, the official said. Although the Taliban have claimed to have shot the helicopter down, U.S. officials have only identified the attackers as insurgents. The last worst one-day U.S. casualty record in Afghanistan was on June 28, 2005 when 16 U.S. soldiers were killed in Kunar province after a helicopter was shot down by Taliban insurgents.
Note: Many scholars claim Osama bin Laden was already dead long before he was allegedly killed by the Navy Seal Team 6. Isn't it strange the his body was buried at sea, so that the identity of the dead body could never be certain, when those in charge knew about theories that bin Laden wasn't dead. And now, many members of the team that took part in the raid may be dead, so that they can't tell their side of the story. For more evidence that bin Laden died long before the raid, see BBC articles here and here, a Washington Post article, and an article in New Zealand's leading newspaper showing the published death photo was a fake.
At least 35,000 people worldwide have been convicted as terrorists in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. But while some bombed hotels or blew up buses, others were put behind bars for waving a political sign or blogging about a protest. In the first tally ever done of global anti-terror arrests and convictions, The Associated Press documented a surge in prosecutions under new or toughened anti-terror laws, often passed at the urging and with the funding of the West. Before 9/11, just a few hundred people were convicted of terrorism each year. The sheer volume of convictions, along with almost 120,000 arrests, shows ... that dozens of countries are using the fight against terrorism to curb political dissent. The AP used freedom of information queries, law enforcement data and hundreds of interviews to identify 119,044 anti-terror arrests and 35,117 convictions in 66 countries, accounting for 70 percent of the world's population. The actual numbers undoubtedly run higher because some countries refused to provide information. That included 2,934 arrests and 2,568 convictions in the United States, which led the war on terror eight times more than in the decade before. More than half the convictions came from two countries accused of using anti-terror laws to crack down on dissent, Turkey and China. Turkey alone accounted for a third of all convictions, with 12,897.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the "Global War on Terror", click here.
[The top counterterrorism adviser to President Clinton and Mr. Bush, Richard Clarke will] be featured in a documentary advancing [a] theory that the Central Intelligence Agency tried to turn two of the 9/11 hijackers into double agents while they resided in the United States in the years leading up to the attacks. During the 9/11 Commission's investigation of the attacks, the CIA said it didn't know the location of the hijackers Clarke refers to, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. In the documentary, Clarke ... concludes that the CIA director at the time, George Tenet, ordered the cover-up after the recruitment effort failed. In response to that accusation, Tenet released a written statement saying that Clarke has "suddenly invented baseless allegations which are belied by the record and unworthy of serious consideration."
Note: Richard Clarke is not the only highly-credible and respected former government official to question the official acount of 9/11. For the questions raised by many more, click here.
Two of them were American-trained Saudi fighter pilots. One graduated from America's foremost flight university. One drank Stoli and orange juice and one advertised for a Mexican bride. The 19 men identified by the FBI as suspects in the World Trade Center and Pentagon hijack attacks ... studied flying, lived in nondescript suburban apartments and seldom called attention to themselves. Most lived for a time in Florida. Others were scattered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona and Southern California. Then, in the last several weeks, they began disappearing from their neighborhoods. They reappeared Friday on a list of suspects in the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. The FBI said it did not know for certain where most of the men came from, exactly where they lived in the United States or how old they were. Several had names so common in the Middle East that tracking them down might never be possible. A defense official said two of the [9/11] hijackers were former Saudi fighter pilots who had studied in exchange programs at the Defense Language School at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas and the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
Note: Can you beleive that two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers trained at a US Air Force base? For other major media reports showing as many as seven of the hijackers trained at US military bases, click here.
A former German cabinet minister is drawing huge crowds ... with a book arguing that the US government mounted the September 11 attacks in a plot to win global domination. Mr von Bulow, 66, a former research minister in the German government, believes that September 11, when more than 3,000 people died, was staged to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His ideas are very popular in Germany, [where] polls show that a fifth of the population, and one in three of those under 30, believe the US government ordered the attacks. "If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars," Mr von Bulow told The Daily Telegraph. "They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence - that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda - in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation. What I saw on September 11 was a perfectly executed act that could have happened only with the support of intelligence services, and whoever controlled it must have known could only bring harm to the Muslim world," he said. "I'm convinced that the US apparatus must have played a role and my theory is backed up by the [Washington] government's refusal to present any proof whatsoever of what happened." Mr von Bulow's book, The CIA and September 11, has sold more than 100,000 copies, a vast print run for Germany.
Note: Although the tone of this report suggests that von Bulow is taking a fringe position on the events of 9/11, he has been joined by many highly-respected professionals around the world; to see questions raised by many top military and government officials, respected professors, and more, click here and here and here.
A decade after the events of September 11, 2001, which resulted in the immediate deaths of nearly 3,000 people on American soil, countless victims from toxic dust, and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, international hearings on this pivotal event will begin in Toronto in September. The events of September 11 provided a pretext for a War on Terror that has led to military invasions and occupations, and attacks upon civil and human rights throughout the world. The credibility of the official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, carried out by the U.S. Government between 2003 and 2005, has been questioned by millions of citizens in the United States and abroad, including victim family members, expert witnesses and international legal experts. A group of international citizens has therefore undertaken to privately fund and cause these independent hearings to take place. Because of the global ramifications of the events of 9/11, the initiators of this inquest have opted to select an international location outside of the United States for these hearings to proceed. The city of Toronto, Canada was chosen as an ideal "international" location because of its proximity to New York, Washington and Shanksville (the crime scenes).
Note: Sponsored by the International Center for 9/11 Studies, the first four days of these hearings will take place at Toronto's Ryerson University between September 8 and 11, 2011. The proceedings will be broadcast live via the Internet. For more information, click here.
The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago. Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. On July 15, however, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001. The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.
Note: For more doubts on the FBI's case against Ivins, click here. For a detailed analysis of the anthrax attacks by Prof. Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University, showing that it was an integral part, with the 9/11 attacks, of a larger operation to launch two wars, click here.
When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars. Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on [June 29]. The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan ... spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion. Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due. In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare, and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people -- equal to the combined population of Connecticut and Kentucky -- have been displaced. In one sense, the report measures the cost of 9/11. What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on September 11, another 73 have been killed since.
Note: To watch a video of WantToKnow team member Dr. David Ray Griffin's explanation that the war in Afghanistan was not justified by the 9/11 attacks, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on the US/NATO wars of aggression, click here.
Federal aviation authorities were alerted in early 2001 that an Arizona flight school believed one of the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers lacked the English and flying skills necessary for the commercial pilot's license he already held. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector even sat next to the hijacker, Hani Hanjour, in one of the Arizona classes, checked records to ensure Hanjour's 1999 pilot's license was legitimate but concluded no other action was warranted. Hanjour is believed to have piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The operations manager for the now-defunct JetTech flight school in Phoenix said she called the FAA inspector that oversaw her school three times in January and February 2001 to express her concerns about Hanjour. "I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had," said Peggy Chevrette, the JetTech manager. She also has been interviewed by the FBI. Marilyn Ladner, a vice president for the Pan Am International Flight Academy that owned JetTech before it closed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, said the flight school expressed its concerns and believes the FAA official observed Hanjour's weaknesses firsthand. The Arizona school's alert is the latest revelation about the extent of information the government possessed before Sept. 11
Note: This article fails to mention the key fact the Hanjour is officially listed as the hijacker pilot who executed an extremely sophisticated 330-degree diving turn to crash the plane into the Pentagon (see official report at this link). Yet this article claims his flight instructor said his skills were so poor she couldn't believe he had any pilot's license. How can that be? For more information suggesting Hanjour was assisted by U.S. authorities in obtaining his license, click here. For lots more reliable information questioning what really happened on 9/11, click here.
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today. The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier. But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building. The inspector general, Kenneth M. Mead, said that the officials' keeping the existence of the tape a secret and the decision by one to destroy it had not served "the interests of the F.A.A., the department or the public" and could foster suspicions among the public.
Note: The destruction of the tape described in this article has raised questions from critics of the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks, in which the lack of a response by air defences to the hijackings was implausibly explained by a failure of the well-established communication system between the FAA and NORAD. For many other questions raised by highly credible members of government and the professions, click here and here.
Dan Rather, the star news anchor for the US television network CBS, said last night that "patriotism run amok" was in danger of trampling the freedom of American journalists to ask tough questions. And he admitted that he had shrunk from taking on the Bush administration over the war on terrorism. In an interview with BBC's Newsnight, he graphically described the pressures to conform that built up after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. "There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck," he said. "Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions." Rather did not exempt himself from the criticism, and said the problem was self-censorship. "One finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'" Such a confession is astonishing, bearing in mind its source. He said his view of the patriotism differed from that of the administration. "It's unpatriotic not to stand up, look them in the eye, and ask the questions they don't want to hear - they being those who have the responsibility, the ultimate responsibility - of sending our sons and daughters, our husbands, wives, our blood, to face death."
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on media cover-ups, click here.
Investigators yesterday arrested a second person as a material witness in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As the investigation gathered strength yesterday, unusual leads began to surface, among them the possibility that some of the hijackers may have received training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida or other U.S. military facilities. Two of 19 suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals listed in public records as using the same address inside the base. In addition, a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, while men with the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.
Note: For more on this vitally important news, see the Newsweek article available here and the New York Times article here. Several of the alleged hijackers also contacted US media shortly after 9/11 to report that they were alive and were not on the hijacked planes. See the BBC News and Times of London articles on this. Yet the 9/11 Commission Report lists these men as the official hijackers at this link. So what's really going on here? For many other major media reports suggesting that rogue elements of government were involved in 9/11, click here. For our reliable 9/11 Information Center, click here.
President Bush said Sunday that an intelligence memo he read shortly before September 11, 2001, contained no "actionable intelligence" that would have helped him to try to prevent the 9/11 attacks. "The (August 6, 2001 memo) was no indication of a terrorist threat," Bush said. But a member of the independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks said ... the memo -- the president's daily briefing, or PDB -- should have alerted Bush to the strong possibility of such an attack. Richard Ben-Veniste [said] the memo and other reports and incidents made up a "substantial body of information" about Osama bin Laden's possible plans. The briefing was headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." "The CIA was reminding the president -- with the headline ... 'don't just look overseas for the possibility of this spectacular event that everyone was predicting,' " Ben-Veniste told reporters. Ben-Veniste also took issue with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the committee ... that the White House had no inkling al Qaeda would use planes as missiles. He said he would "be surprised if Dr. Rice didn't know" about a no-fly zone in place over Genoa, Italy, for the spring 2001 G8 meeting, spurred by fears terrorists could crash planes "into the buildings where the leaders were meeting."
Note: To see the daily presidential briefing which shows beyond any doubt that Bush was not telling the truth on this, click here. For excerpts from many major media articles suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
Osama bin Laden underwent treatment in July at the American Hospital in Dubai where he met a US Central Intelligence Agency official, French daily Le Figaro and Radio France International reported today. Quoting "a witness, a professional partner of the administrative management of the hospital," they said the man suspected by the United States of being behind the September 11 terrorist attacks had arrived in Dubai on July 4 by air from Quetta, Pakistan. He was immediately taken to the hospital for kidney treatment. He left the establishment on July 14, Le Figaro said. During his stay, the daily said, the local CIA representative was seen going into bin Laden's room and "a few days later, the CIA man boasted to some friends of having visited the Saudi-born millionaire." Quoting "an authoritative source," Le Figaro and the radio station said the CIA representative had been recalled to Washington on July 15. Bin Laden ... was admitted to the urology department of Dr Terry Callaway, who specialises in kidney stones and male infertility. Telephoned several times, the doctor declined to answer questions. Several sources had reported that bin Laden had a serious kidney infection. He had a mobile dialysis machine sent to his Kandahar hideout in Afghanistan in the first half of 2000, according to "authoritative sources" quoted by Le Figaro and RFI.
Note: This article has disappeared from the Herald website. To read the full original as we copied it, click here. For excerpts from many major media articles suggesting a 9/11 cover-up, click here.
Dear Director Mueller: I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons: ... 5) The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents ... continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant. In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes! Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval!
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For many more serious questions about the official account of 9/11 raised by former officials like Colleen Rowley, click here. For more solid information suggesting a major cover-up, click here.
Key congressional leaders say they didn't know President Bush had established a "shadow government," moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) [said] he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings. Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew. Mr. Bush acknowledged yesterday that the administration had taken extensive measures to guarantee "the continuity of government," adding, "This is serious business." Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks [and] is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here. For an abundance of solid information suggesting a major cover-up around 9/11, click here.
Here is a list of the world's greatest conspiracy theories. 1. September 11, 2001: The conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11 ... continue to grow in strength. A large group of people - collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement - cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. Many witnesses - including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time - claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves. As with the assassination of JFK, the official inquiry into the events - the 9/11 Commission Report - is widely derided by the conspiracy community and held up as further evidence that 9/11 was an "inside job". 2. The assassination of John F Kennedy: Doubts about the official explanation ... surfaced soon after the [Warren Commission] report. Footage of the motorcade taken by Abraham Zapruder on 8mm film supported the growing belief that at least four shots were fired - not the three that the Warren Commission claimed. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed.
Note: Other conspiracy theories listed in this survey include: 3. Roswell, 5. The Illuminati and the New World Order, 7. Who wrote Shakespeare's plays?, and 10. The Aids virus was created in a laboratory. Oddly for a UK newspaper, there is no mention of the 7/7 bombings in London or Princess Diana's mysterious death.
President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe ... to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11. Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees. Mr. Bush said the investigation should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. Mr. Bush's comments come after a two-day hearing on Capitol Hill with FBI director Robert Mueller and the agent who wrote the so-called "Phoenix memo" last summer warning about ... Arab students training at U.S. aviation schools. Current and former government officials, who are familiar with Williams' memo and debriefings, told the AP the counterterrorism agent from Phoenix had ascertained that several Arab students training at Arizona flight school held anti-American views. Williams identified several Arab students at Arizona aviation schools, including one school in Prescott, who were seeking training in aviation engineering, flight lessons and airport operations. He had ascertained that at least one of the students had also made inquiries about airport security operations, the officials said.
Note: For many questions raised by highly-respected former government officials about the investigation that was, after four years, finally authorized, click here.
President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle ... to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN. The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request. Although the president and vice president told Daschle they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could distract from the government's war on terrorism, privately Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability. "We will take a look at the allocation of resources. Ten thousand federal agents -- where were they? How many assets were used, and what signals were missed?" a Democratic senator told CNN.
Note: For many questions raised by highly-respected former government officials about the investigation that was, after four years, finally authorized, click here.
Attorney General John Ashcroft was urged in May 2001 by his top security experts not to fly aboard commercial aircraft because of personal threats on his life, not out of fears about terrorist hijackings, the Justice Department said. The department moved quickly to quell suggestions that Ashcroft, who routinely flies aboard a small jet operated by the FBI, took precautions for his own safety in the months before Sept. 11 based on warnings of any threats involving Usama bin Laden or the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Ashcroft declined to discuss the issue while visiting ... with Bulgarian justice officials in his office. Ashcroft walked from the room without comment when a reporter asked about it. An FBI security review after Ashcroft took office recommended that the attorney general eschew flying on commercial planes whenever possible, citing nonspecific threats against Ashcroft's life. Since July 2001, Ashcroft has typically flown aboard an FBI jet or aboard other jets leased by U.S. agencies, although he occasionally has traveled on commercial flights.
Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report available here. Did Ashcroft have access to information about an impending air disaster that others didn't? For many other major media reports suggesting that rogue elements of government were involved in 9/11, click here.
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