911truth.org
NEW YORK CITY, May 16, 2004 – The Kean Commission was called to life
in Nov. 2002, when the White House dropped its objections to an
independent 9/11 investigation, after many months of persistent lobbying
by September 11th families. At the time, this was seen as a victory for
the relatives of those killed on September 11th, and for their allies
in the fight for open government and accountability. As the Kean
Commission nears the end of its work, it is informative to ask what
those families are saying today.
23 Questions to Bush
“Mr. Bush, who approved the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United States, when all commercial flights were grounded?“
That
is one of 23 explosive questions that George W. Bush and his
subordinates must face in public testimony, under oath and pain of
perjury–that is, if leaders of September 11 family groups get their way.
The question refers to
private flights
for Saudi royalty, cleared by the White House during the otherwise
total civilian flight ban in the days immediately after September 11.
Members of the Bin Laden clan, including two of Osama Bin Laden’s many
brothers, were allowed to leave the United
States before federal
investigators had a chance to question them.
1
Despite confirmed reports dating back to September 2001, the story of
the Bin Laden family airlift was denigrated as urban legend until
April, when former White House terror adviser Richard Clarke and
Secretary of State Colin Powell both confirmed it.
How many other confirmations of “urban legend” are still in store?
Accountability and the Theory of Luck
“Why has no one in any level of our government been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?”
The twenty-three questions are from the Family Steering Committee,
twelve September 11 relatives who represent many other 9/11 family
groups. Since November 2002, they have monitored the 9/11 Commission
headed by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean.
“To me
luck is something that happens once. When you have this repeated pattern
of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication, one cannot
still call it luck.” - Mindy Kleinberg
|
Members of the FSC were key lobbyists in gaining an independent
investigation of September 11. Mindy Kleinberg, known as one of the four
“Jersey Wives,” testified to the Kean Commission during its first
public proceedings in early 2003. She alerted the panel to disturbing
gaps and contradictions in the government’s story of what happened on
September 11.
Her comments challenged the idea that all anomalies in the
official story are due to incompetence or coincidence. She called that
“the theory of luck.”
“Is it luck that aberrant
stock trades
were not monitored?” Kleinberg asked. She was referring to the
widespread reports of possible insider trading in the week before
September 11 indicating specific prior knowledge of the attacks.
2
Kleinberg: “Is it luck when 15
visas are awarded based on incomplete forms? Is it luck when Airline
Security screenings allow hijackers to board planes with
box cutters and
pepper spray?
Is it luck when Emergency FAA and NORAD protocols are not followed? Is
it luck when a national emergency is not reported to top government
officials on a timely basis?
“To me luck is something that happens once. When you have this
repeated pattern of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication,
one cannot still call it luck. If at some point we don’t look to hold
the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how
can we ever expect for terrorists not to get lucky again?”
Since Kleinberg’s testimony the commission has avoided almost any public treatment of the issues she raised.
(
transcript of Kleinberg’s comments)
A Lesson in Reading
The families threw down their challenge to Bush last February,
following reports that the Kean Commission had asked Bush and Bill
Clinton to testify. Only in May did Bush finally appear before the
panel, in a closed session at the Oval Office. No transcript was taken.
Bush assented to the hearing on the condition that he testify together
with Dick Cheney, who apparently did most of the talking. Based on the
handful of public statements about their joint appearance, it seems
doubtful that the panel confronted Bush with this question:
“Please explain why you remained at the Sarasota,
Florida, Elementary School for a press conference after you had finished
listening to the children read, when as a terrorist target, your
presence potentially jeopardized the lives of the children?”
The
family leaders have released a series of strongly worded statements
blasting the Bush administration for stonewalling the 9/11
investigation. But they have been equally harsh in chastising the Kean
Commission for its refusal to examine key evidence.
|
Bush, his staff and his Secret Service entourage did indeed pay a
visit to the Booker Elementary School, as carried on live television
until 9:34 a.m. This was fifty minutes after the first plane hit the
World Trade Center and 29 minutes after 9:05, when Bush was informed of
the second plane crash and told, “America is under attack.” After the
well-known moment, when his chief of staff whispered into his ear, Bush
continued listening to the children read. He remained in the classroom
for about 13 minutes. He then prepared and delivered a brief speech to
the nation from the school, calling for a moment of silence for the WTC
victims at 9:31.
The Pentagon was hit at 9:38.
The White House has never explained this anomaly. Instead, Bush has
twice claimed, in speeches made available on the White House website,
that he thought the first plane crash (at 8:46 a.m.) was an accident. On
hearing news of the crash at 8:55, he says he thought, “That’s one
lousy pilot.” Yet the Federal Aviation Administration was aware, since
8:20 at the latest, that American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked.
The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) was also informed of the
hijacking.
And by 8:55 a.m. or shortly after, two additional hijackings were
known to be in progress. In the White House, Dick Cheney is known to
have by then been on an open line connecting FAA, NORAD and the Secret
Service. Yet as the attacks went on, the reaction times of U.S. air
defense apparently became worse.
Was no one telling the president all this? Who was acting as
commander-in-chief, while Bush listened to “A Girl and Her Pet Goat”?
Was there no concern that the school itself would be a target, since it
was public knowledge, days in advance, that the president would be
there?
Courage to Ask the Obvious
The family leaders have released a series of strongly worded
statements blasting the Bush administration for stonewalling the 9/11
investigation. But they have been equally harsh in chastising the Kean
Commission for its refusal to examine key evidence. They have called for
the immediate resignation of Philip Zelikow, executive director of the
commission, pointing to his various conflicts of interest. (See The
Rice/Zelikow Connection)
The relatives have shown no reluctance to pursue controversial lines
of inquiry in public. It is hard to imagine the commission asking if the
Bush administration tried to cut a deal with Osama Bin Laden in advance
of the 9/11 attacks, as reported in the European press back in the
autumn of 2001.
But the families want an answer:
“Did you or any agent of the
United States government carry out any negotiations or talks with UBL,
an agent of UBL, or al-Qaeda?” (“UBL” is government speak for Osama Bin Laden.)
The Commission has shown no inclination to follow the trail of the
Cheney “energy policy meetings” of early 2001, or the Bush
administration’s oil-pipeline talks with the Taliban up to July 2001.
These touchy subjects might arise if they ever considered this question:
“During that same period, did you or any agent of the
United States government carry out any negotiations or talks with any
foreign government, its agents, or officials regarding UBL?”
Would the Kean Commission ever wonder out loud if anyone other than
Al-Qaeda (or other foreigners) gained anything from the attacks? The
families are not afraid to confront this obvious concern:
“Which individuals, governments, agencies, institutions, or groups may have benefited from the attacks of 9/11?”
Although the Kean Commission accepted a deal strictly limiting its
access to White House documents concerning advance warnings of a
possible terror attack, Kean claimed repeatedly that there is “no
smoking gun” to indicate Bush had specific prior knowledge of the
attacks. At least, not in the “parts of the documents” Kean has actually
been allowed to see.
The families don’t buy that on faith, or on partial evidence. They want specifics:
“As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until
September 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any
intelligence agency official or agent that UBL was planning to attack
this nation on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New
York City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the
actual day of September 11, 2001?”
Carefully researched, the families’ questions reflect concerns that
have caused millions to doubt the official story–and to call for a truly
independent investigation: One with subpeona power, testimony under
oath, no self-imposed restrictions on allowable lines of inquiry, and a
published, uncensored final report.
“Even now we are dealing with the idea of how the [commission] report
is going to be, when it’s released,” says Beverly Eckert of the FSC.
“The classification process is done by the White House and the
intelligence agencies. They are the ones. They are a subject of this
report. How can they not have a conflict in classifying and editing it?
They can edit at will.”
Conspiracy Theory?
It is hard to dismiss these concerns as “conspiracy theory” when many
Bush administration officials used the most outrageous conspiracy
theory of all–the legend that Saddam backed the 9/11 attacks–as pretext
for invading Iraq. In that matter as well, the families want government
held accountable:
“Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was
linked to al-Qaeda? What proof do you have of any connection between al-
Qaeda and the Hussein regime?”
9/11 was
used as a lever to shift the globe. All Americans–and, given the global
impact, the people of the world–need to learn the answers that the
families demand.
|
Bush in the meantime has admitted there was no such connection. But Cheney and members of his circle still say there was.
The FSC questions show that, though their grief and tragedy is great,
the families have understood the stakes in the 9/11 disclosure issue
are even greater. Getting the truth of 9/11 means more than justice for
the victims and well-deserved closure for their relatives.
9/11 was used as a lever to shift the globe. All Americans, and,
given the global impact, the people of the world, need to learn the
answers that the families demand. – Nicholas Levis
The Sept. 11 family statements, and their lists of questions to a variety of administration members, have been published on the
FSC’s website.
1.
Shafig bin Laden, Osama’s older brother, had been in Washington on the
morning of September 11 for the annual meeting of the Carlyle Group, the
fund that until that October tied Bush family interests to the Bin
Laden family fortune.
2. In the days before 9/11, unknown traders bought unusually high
“put options” in the stock of United Airlines, American Airlines, and
the WTC tenants and reinsurers. This meant that the traders expected the
prices of these equities to plunge in the short term. The volumes of
the purchases may have activated a known CIA real-time tracing program
designed to discover suspicious trades (PROMIS). The FBI later claimed
it had determined the identities of the traders in the U.S., but says
they are in the clear and declines to name them. Many of the known
trades were transacted through A.B. Brown. The chairman of that bank,
Mayo Shattuck, resigned suddenly on September 12. In the case of one
trade, the buyer left $2.5 million uncollected for months after the
attacks. Financial authorities in Frankfurt and Tokyo and an
intelligence bureau in Israel also reported suspicious trades and
initially characterized these as smoking guns that would lead back to
the masterminds of 9/11. To our knowledge there has been no public
follow-up to these statements since. In London, authorities said they
traced the trades back to an unnamed “small airline” that was pursuing a
“hedging strategy” (IHT, 9/20/01).
Related:
We might be wrong about where we suspect this all leads, but the
"debunkers" are wrong when many essentially argue that it's acceptable
for
70% of 9/11 family members questions to have never been answered by the 9/11 Commission. So of course, most have no qualms about
promises made to 9/11 family members being broken by the Commission to investigate all whistleblower claims, which
a
substantial amount of the public find highly-suspicious at minimum with
many regarding the evidence as suggestive of complicity to varied
degrees.
[The below link proves that many thousands of family members want a new
investigation. Likely the amount of people killed that day is
outnumbered by these 9/11 victim's family members.
