Some of the people who question this aspect of the official account, say that there’s no way that terrorists would have chosen this particular area of the Pentagon.  But is there any reason to believe they would care which wall they hit? The Pentagon is a symbolic target, that’s the whole point. Supporters of these attacks couldn’t care less whether the plane flew into the east wall, west wall, roof, it doesn’t matter. The aim was simply to hit it, that’s all that mattered.

But then you might expect the pilot to take the easiest possible path, say the critics, and that didn’t happen on 9/11. Why is that a surprise, though?  If the official account is to be believed then this was a very inexperienced pilot. Would he know precisely when the Pentagon was coming up, when to begin reducing altitude, the speed he should be travelling, and the appropriate rate of descent? Maybe not. We do know he flew past the Pentagon at something like 7,000 feet, so it’s possible the pilot simply overshot.

There is another possibility, too. The hijackers would surely want to think about their flight plan in advance, choose a trajectory that followed landmarks easily visible from the ground, and could be flown at reasonably low altitude.  A pilot called Steve Koeppel produced an article speculating on exactly this.
The 270 degree right turn had me puzzled, until I realized that it would provide a simple set of landmarks for the pilot.  Just intercept the Potomac River north of town, follow it south until you see the Washington Monument or Capitol.   We used to use white country churches to navigate low-level over North and South Carolina, since they stand out clearly against the green or brown background.

Upon passing the Washington Monument, the plan may have been for the pilot to make a right turn and dive into the building.  A right turn at this point would have led the airplane to hit Pentagon on the Potomac River side where the Secretary of Defense has his office. http://www.armytimes.com/content/editorial...tagonimpact.jpg

But being unfamiliar with flying large airplanes at high speeds, the pilot wouldn't have taken into account the large radius required to make the turn.  This would explain the circuitous 270 degree turn that was made to the impact point.

When he rolled out, he'd simply point the nose of the airplane at the center courtyard of the Pentagon and dive toward his target. What he wouldn't know without experience is that when you dive, you accelerate the airplane and the lift increases.  This causes the nose to rise, which would cause him to overshoot the target. In a panic, he would push forward on the controls and overcompensate, which would account for eyewitness descriptions of the airplane striking the ground short of the Pentagon.

Of course, this is all speculation, not facts.
Steve Koeppel
http://www.thepowerhour.com/911_analysis/steves-analysis.htm

This analysis is flawed in that his approach trajectory doesn’t match that described by witnesses, but it remains an interesting idea. And it’s notable that a pilot describes the wide turn and eventual impact as a sign that the person flying Flight 77 was inexperienced, not that he must have been particularly skilled.

Further, if we look at what appears to be commonly accepted as the final approach, then we can see it does follow the Columbia Pike (dotted line is just an approximation, but you get the idea).

Navigation by landmarks remains a possible explanation for Flight 77’s final manoeuvres.

This has never struck us as an idea that made much sense, especially if you believe the US Government were behind 9/11. If you were constructing a fake terrorist attack because you wanted to attack Afghanistan, or Iraq, then wouldn’t you involve a few Afghans or Iraqis?  But no, we’re supposed to believe that they made them inconvenient Saudis, instead.

Worse still, the planners picked live Saudis almost at random, despite the fact that they’d be sure to come forward and spoil the whole thing. Why would anyone do that?

What’s more, all these stories occurred very soon after 9/11.  Once the FBI released their official list of hijackers, complete with photographs (on the 27th September), these stories disappeared. This suggests to us they were only ever a mixup over names, and once the photos appeared as well these individuals realised they weren’t wanted men after all.

And in fact if you look at the details, you’ll find this seems the most likely explanation. Read more in our analyses of the most common “still alive” stories: Abdulaziz Al Omari, Ahmed Al-Nami, Khalid Al Mihdhar, Mohammed Atta, Said al-Ghamdi, Salem Al-Hamzi, Wail Al-Shehri and Waleed Al-Shehri.

Name confusion persists elsewhere, too, in the suggestion that some of the hijackers trained at Pensacola Air Force Base.  Some people report this as absolute fact, but like so much of the 9/11 conspiracy story, it ain’t necessarily so.
One factor complicating the investigation is that the hijackers' Arabic names are remarkably common. For example, when investigators went to the Naval Air Base in Pensacola, the address listed on a Florida driver's license issued to a Saeed Alghamdi in 1997, they learned that several people by that name had attended flight school there over the past 10 years.

"What we have here is a situation of people with identical names", said Harry White, public affairs officer at the base. He said the school has had more than 1,600 people with the first name Saeed, spelled various ways, and more than 200 with the surname Alghamdi.

White maintains, however, that none of the Saeed Alghamdi students was involved with terrorist activity. "We have found no direct connection between any of the foreign students trained at NAS Pensacola and any of the terrorist suspects,? he said.
http://www.humanunderground.com/11septembe...-hijackers.html

More than 200 Saeed Alghamdis? This shows how unsurprising the “hijackers still alive” stories are. And how none of them yet provide proof that the person they’re referring to matches the claimed hijacker.

Another development makes this even less likely. Because if some of the named Saudis are still alive and innocent, then why has Saudi Arabia now accepted that they were involved?

Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens...

Previously, Saudi Arabia had said the citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers was in doubt despite U.S. insistence they were Saudis. But Interior Minister Prince Nayef told The Associated Press that Saudi leaders were shocked to learn 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

"The names that we got confirmed that," Nayef said in an interview. "Their families have been notified."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/02/06/saudi.htm

And subsequently a video called “the 19 Martyrs” was released and partly aired on al Jazeera, which reportedly featured photographs of hijackers, and included bin Ladin giving a brief description of each. You’ll find a detailed page on the video here, with some interesting new photos, and we’ve saved a copy locally for posterity.  We don’t know if the video is real, or this is an accurate account of it, but if true then it is another indication that the named hijackers were involved, and they’re now all dead.

Beached -




You mind if I link to this stuff from those topics in the Library? Excellent work btw.

Here you will see the Pentagon is straight ahead of Flight 77. It is also a very distinctive landmark, even from 8,000 feet! Since Hani was an inexperienced pilot, the most logical action for him would be to push the nose straight down into the Pentagon. It is also very clear from this animation that contrary to Mike's suggestion, Hani did not overshoot the building!

I have gone over this in the new film. You're gonna love what you see.. Lets just say.. 911myths doesnt have a clue.. and he wont be able to use the 'overshoot' excuse anymore..

This sounds impressive, but unfortunately it isn’t true. A quick look at the NTSB accident report reveals why. Here's the timeline.

"At 0933:38 EDT (6 minutes and 20 seconds after N47BA acknowledged the previous clearance), the controller instructed N47BA to change radio frequencies and contact another Jacksonville ARTCC controller. The controller received no response from N47BA. The controller called the flight five more times over the next 4 1/2 minutes but received no response.

About 0952 CDT,7 a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm of N47BA. About 0954 CDT, at a range of 2,000 feet from the accident airplane and an altitude of about 46,400 feet, the test pilot made two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response".
www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm

Looks good at first, but read it carefully and you'll notice a change of time zone, from Eastern to Central time. CDT is one hour on from EDT, so contact was regarded as lost at around 09:38, and the fighter didn't get to within 2000 feet of Stewart’s jet until 10:54. That's roughly 76 minutes to intercept.

Press reports from the time give more details.

The FAA said air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the plane at 9:44 a.m...

Pentagon officials said the military began its pursuit of the ghostly civilian aircraft at 10:08 a.m., when two Air Force F-16 fighters from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida that were on a routine training mission were asked by the FAA to intercept it. The F-16s did not reach the Learjet, but an Air Force F-15 fighter from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida that also was asked to locate it got within sight of the aircraft and stayed with it from 11:09 a.m. to 11:44 a.m., when the military fighter was diverted to St. Louis for fuel.

Fifteen minutes later, four Air National Guard F-16s and a KC-135 tanker from Tulsa were ordered to try to catch up with the Learjet but got only within 100 miles. But two other Air National Guard F-16s from Fargo, N.D., intercepted the Learjet at 12:54 p.m, reporting that the aircraft's windows were fogged with ice and that no flight control movement could be seen. At 1:14 p.m., the F-16s reported that the Learjet was beginning to spiral toward the ground.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/natio...t99/crash26.htm

Putting these together with the NTSB report suggests the following points.

First, it takes time before ATC consider they’ve lost contact with a plane. The absence of any radio response was first noted at 9:34, but the controller continued trying to make contact for another four minutes, and the press report suggests contact wasn’t considered lost until six minutes after that, ten minutes after the problem was noted.

And second, NORAD don’t always have the capability to respond in a few minutes. The intercept didn’t begin for another 24 minutes, actually a fast response because the plane was already in the air.

To be fair, if the first fighters had been closer (as they were on 9/11) then the response time would have been better. And 911Research do their best to make even 76 minutes seem an insignificant length of time:

83 minutes elapsed between the time that Flight 11 veered off course and the Pentagon was hit, and 112 minutes elapsed between the time that contact was lost with Flight 11 and Flight 93 crashed.
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/

This seems an odd way of accounting. Why does the time Flight 11 veer off course make a significant difference to the intercept time for Flight 77? Or Flight 93?

Surely a more reasonable approach is to extrapolate from the “likely takeover time” (the earliest time anyone would have known about the hijacking) until the point each plane reached its final target. Which gives us the following elapsed times: Flight 11 (8:14 to 8:47 - 33 minutes), Flight 175 (8:42 to 9:04 - 22 minutes), Flight 77 (8:51 to 9:38 - 47 minutes), Flight 93 (9:27 to 10:04 - 37 minutes). See http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm

(Note that some will disagree with these times, in part because we’ve taken them from the 9/11 Commission Report. 911Research, for instance, say that Flight 77 went off course at 8:46 and so it could be argued that we should start the clock then. Look at the full facts and we’re being generous, though: the time we’re using corresponds with the last reported contact with the Flight 77 pilots, and the first suspect action after that, an unauthorised turn south, wasn’t noted until 8:54. It could just as well be argued that this is the first notification of a problem, meaning our timings provide 3 minutes more intercept time than was actually available).

In the Stewart case, as we’ve seen, there was a 10 minute gap between the initial problem being observed (ATC getting no radio response) and a decision being made that contact was lost. An intercept didn’t begin for another 24 minutes, and if planes were scrambled from the ground then that could have taken longer: fighters are typically on 15 minute alert, but we’ll be generous and say it took 5.

If this were repeated on 9/11, then that’s 39 minutes, plus the time it takes the plane to reach the target, before an intercept can occur.  Which suggests there wasn’t enough time to reach Flight 11 and 175 before they hit the towers, and even intercepting Flight 77 would have been very difficult. The Stewart case simply doesn’t support the idea that the 9/11 flights should have been intercepted, then: in fact, quite the opposite.

We never actually thought to doubt this claim, simply believing it irrelevant. The piece needs to be judged on its contents, not the surname of one of those involved. But then we heard a suggestion that Benjamin Chertoff denied the story altogether, so decided to email him to hear what he had to say. Was he really related to Michael Chertoff? And if he wasn't, then how could he explain the quote from his mother?

This is what he had to say.

Here's the story, as best as I know: I'm not related to Michael Chertoff, at least in any way I can figure out. We might be distant relatives, 15 times removed, but then again, so might you and I. Bottom line is I've never met him, never communicated with him, and nobody I know in my family has ever met or communicated with him.

As for what my mom said: When Chertoff was nominated to be head of homeland security it was the first I'd heard of him, and the same for my family (and, FYI, we'd already sent the 9/11 issue to the press by then!). My dad and I thought there might be some distant relation. When Chris Bollyn called and asked my mom if there was a relation (introducing himself as only "Chris"), she said "they might be distant cousins." Like much in the conspiracy world, this was taken WAY out of context. (Another case in point: Bollyn called me earlier and asked "Were you the senior researcher on the story?" I said, "I guess so," -- that's not a title I have ever used, nor is it at all common in magazine journalism, but I was the research editor at the time, so it kinda made sense.) Nonetheless, I was one of 9 reporters on the story, not counting editors, photo researchers, photo editors, copy editors, layout designers, production managers, fact-checkers, etc., etc., etc. who worked on this story.

Chertoff paints a very different picture from the original story. Some will say he’s lying, of course, but in that case it shouldn’t be too difficult to prove: go to it. And in the meantime, this acts as a useful reminder to everyone, including us: don’t take any 9/11-related claims for granted, whether they come from someone on your “side” of the argument or not."

This story came about through a BBC Newsnight report with Greg Palast. Here’s one take on it, from the Times of India

America was itself to blame for the events of September 11 because the US administration was using "kid gloves" in tracking down Osama bin Laden and "other fanatics linked to Saudi Arabia", a special BBC investigation has alleged in a damning indictment of the two presidents Bush and American foreign policy.

The report, which the BBC claimed was based on a secret FBI document, numbered 199i wf213589 and emanating out of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, alleged that the cynicism of the American establishment and "connections between the CIA and Saudi Arabia and the Bush men and Bin Ladens" may have been the real cause of the deaths of thousands in the world trade centre attacks.

The investigation, which featured in the BBC’s leading current affairs programme, Newsnight , said the FBI was told to "back off" investigating one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers, Abdullah, who was linked to "the Saudi-funded World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organisation...
http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cm...t_id=1030259305

Impressive stuff, and this is just a part of it. We'd strongly recommend you read the full article above, and the transcript of the original Newsnight program at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm .

What you'll find in that transcript is The Big Palast Discovery...

Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the] Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th... for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

What you won't find is exactly what Palast means by "before 9/11", and when the agents were "pulled off the trail".  Presumably because the date was September 11th 1996 ( see http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a96wamy and a partial scan of one of the pages at http://www.gaianxaos.com/SpecialReports_files/199I-WF.htm ). Which means that Clinton took the FBI agents off this case, and not Bush. Or at least would have done, if there were any evidence of Presidential involvement at all (there isn't).

So what exactly is there to justify the "Bush took FBI agents off the bin Laden family trail" claim, then?  Just this, right at the end.

Palast:
I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

If you've been lead to believe that the FBI case mentioned earlier was closed down by Bush, then this seems like the final nail in the coffin. But once you know that happened under Clinton, then this is just a second-hand account of a comment from an unnamed source: it may be accurate, it may not.  There's no way to tell, and it's certainly not sufficient to prove the original claim.

[Not everyone feels this way, of course. In fact some people actually misinterpret this to the point of taking the 1996 FBI case number, then describing it as a “Bush Executive Order” telling the FBI to “back off bin Ladin”. Click here for a list].

Plenty of people share this interpretation of the quote. Here’s a few other takes on it.

The cabal of war fanatics advising the White House secretly planned a “transformation” of defense policy years ago, calling for war against Iraq and huge increases in military spending. A “catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”—was seen as necessary to bring this about.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/12_24_02/...l_harbored.html

The victims of the 9/11 attacks have been disaster for Muslims because 19 Arabs were named as hijackers of the planes, but they've been a dream come true for the PNAC 'think-tank' whose 2000 Statement of Principles stated a "catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" would advance their policies, i.e. justify wars and "regime changes".
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_reichstag.html

There is circumstantial evidence that some part of the US administration was involved in the attack. It is certain that there was a strong desire on the part of some members for a “catalyzing event”, like Pearl Harbor,3 in order to provide the impetus for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; however desire is not proof of complicity.
9/11 - Evidence Suggests Complicity: Inferences from Actions
Frank Legge, Journal of 9/11 Studies
http://worldtradecentertruth.com/Demol20Legge.pdf

Fetzer: Jim do you know the exact part of the New American Century where that shows up?

Marr: Well, it is in there. Basically, and I am paraphrasing. Maybe at the next break I’ll have a chance to find that. It’s thoroughly covered in my new book “The Terror Conspiracy”. What it is, is that the authors of this report for the New American Century called “Rebuilding America” state that we need to invade Afghanistan, have a regime change in Iraq and increase military presence in the Middle East. Exactly echoing Cheney’s words, but they were a little bit astute, they said that this is going to be kind of a tough sell unless there is a “catastrophic and catalyzing event like Pearl Harbor”.

Fetzer: Like a New Pearl Harbor, exactly.

James Fetzer radio interview with Jim Marr(hour 2)
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Fetzer06.html

So the first quote tells us it’s about war in Iraq and huge increases in military spending, the second says it’s about justifying war and regime changes, the third and fourth link the quote to war on Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems there’s broad agreement, so can they all be wrong? Let’s see.

First, the actual full quote is this.

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor".

The odd word here seems to be "transformation". What do they mean? Let's look back to the beginning of the same chapter.

"To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies, in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence".

So "transformation" refers to the process of introducing more information technologies into the military. What does 9/11 have to do with that? Nothing at all. In fact, the attacks demonstrated that one of the PNAC's pet schemes, a global missile shield, is entirely useless when planes can become bombs.

Now, it’s certainly true that Bush has continued to fund it, and with significant budget increases immediately post 9/11, but who says he wouldn’t have done so anyway? The reality is that the attacks themselves only give ammunition to his critics. And some of them had it immediately:

Some elected officials got the message. Sen. Carl Levin told Rumsfeld at a June 2001 hearing that we were lavishing money on missile defense and not "putting enough emphasis on countering the most likely threats to our national security ... like terrorist attacks."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...INGQ58FN831.DTL

So how did 9/11 make Levin look wrong, and the Bush administration right?

Back to the PNAC, where there's still the "Pearl Harbor" aspect. What did they mean by that? We can get an indication from the one other sentence in the document that uses the phrase.

"Absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age".

The use of Pearl Harbour here means "a form of attack which we don't have the technology to counter", which now lets us make more sense of the first quote. All they're saying is that "the process of updating the US military will take a long time, unless the problems are made apparent by an attack that reveals our technical failings". 9/11 undoubtedly revealed failings in intelligence and response on the day, but nothing that matches the PNAC’s agenda. There’s no military technology fix that would have prevented it.

What about the other claims? 911Truth say the document wants Hussein to be "toppled immediately". Other sites also claim the PNAC wanted war with Iraq, but what do they say in the document?

"After eight years of no-fly-zone operations, there is little reason to anticipate that the U.S. air presence in the region should diminish significantly as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power. Although Saudi domestic sensibilities demand that the forces based in the Kingdom nominally remain rotational forces, it has become apparent that this is now a semi-permanent mission. From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene."

Not much demand for his removal there. What about Syria, Iran, or other countries that aren’t so popular in the White House?:

"...according to the CIA, a number of regimes deeply hostile to America – North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria – “already have or are developing ballistic missiles” that could threaten U.S allies and forces abroad".

And did the neo-cons want these regimes to be destroyed? Wrong again, this sentence appeared in a chapter recommending that America develop a global missile shield. The shield is required because these countries exist.

Now, we’re not saying that the PNAC didn’t see 9/11 as presenting opportunities (in fact some of the members said publicly that it did). It did deliver increased military spending, of course, but that isn’t purely what the PNAC were after. They’re after targeted spending on new technologies, not simply more money. After the Pearl Harbor quote, for instance, the document reminds us it recommended a decision to “suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production”, and mentioned that the “Joint Strike Fighter... seems an unwise investment”. Yet as we write, 4 years on, neither issue is resolved:

Different versions of the Joint Strike Fighter are being developed for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines, and there have been discussions that one of the models could be eliminated. The Pentagon also could delay the development of the next generation aircraft carrier - the CVN 21 - which is scheduled to begin construction in 2007.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...cs/13079279.htm

Where we do think people really oversell this quote is in portaying it as some spookily accurate piece of foreknowledge, that the “New Pearl Harbour” was to justify regime change, war in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. That really is a step too far, as you’ll find out if you download "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and read if for yourself.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

The denial most commonly quoted comes from an interview by a Pakistani newspaper, the Daily Ummat.
The paper quoted bin Laden as saying: "Neither I nor my organisation Al-Qaida is involved in the attacks and the US has traced the attackers within America.

"The attackers could be anybody, people who are part of the American system yet rebel against it, or some group that wants to make this century a century of confrontation between Islam and Christianity," he said.

Referring to evidence obtained by American intelligence, bin laden said: "Ask this question to these intelligence agencies that get billions of dollars every year."

Ummat quotes bin Laden as saying: "We are against the American system but not the American people. Islam does not allow killing of innocent people, men, women and children even in the event of war."
http://web.archive.org/web/20010929010503/.../sm_410936.html

This is fairly unequivocal, and many people ask why would he deny responsibility for the attacks? Well, maybe because the Taliban were reportedly always against them, and understandably didn't want to be bombed into oblivion by the US. Perhaps they pressured him into issuing this statement. Perhaps they even made it themselves, after all no-one at the Daily Ummat actually met bin Ladin for the interview:

The newspaper says it submitted questions for bin Laden to Taliban officials and received written replies.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010929010503/.../sm_410936.html

What’s more, if bin Ladin admitted the attacks immediately then he instantly gave America a pretext for war. By denying them he ensures a degree of uncertainty, meaning the US will be criticised if they begin any attacks.

There may arguably have been similar reasoning behind a statement to CNN, where bin Ladin specifically defended “the current leader” of Afghanistan:

In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, "The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it.

"I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said.

"I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations," bin Laden said.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/

Hamid Mir, bin Laden’s Pakistani biographer, revealed a very different story in account given to Peter Bergen:

I was not ready to say that bin Laden is involved in the [9/11] attacks. You see, I was questioning the assumption that he is involved. When I visited Afghanistan, I spent some days there, I was totally changed because I saw the pictures of Atta [the lead hijacker] hanging in the [al Qaeda] hideouts. Privately they admitted everything. They said, they [who attacked on 9/11] are our brothers, but they said that “When the Americans kill Muslims in Sudan, they don’t admit that we are responsible for the attacks. When the Indians kill Kashmiris, they don’t admit that we have killed them. So now this is our turn. We have killed them and we are not going to admit that.

My tape recorder was on and one very important al Qaeda leader he turned off my tape recorder and said, “Yes, I did it. Okay. Now play your tape recorder.” I played the tape recorder and he said “No, I’m not responsible”.

Hamid Mir interview with Peter Bergen, Islamabad, May 11 2002 and March 2005
Chapter 10
The Fall of the Taliban and the Flight to Tora Bora
The Osama bin Laden I Know
Peter L Bergen

This approach didn’t last for long, though. Soon after the initial denial, both bin Ladin and other Al Qaeda members have made many admissions that variously accept that Muslims were involved, that they were those named by the US, or that Al Qaeda were directly responsible.

7th October 2001: bin Ladin

In this statement he appears to be saying that the attacks were committed by Muslims, and threatens the possibility of more

When Almighty God rendered successful a convoy of Muslims, the vanguards of Islam, He allowed them to destroy the United States...

I swear by Almighty God who raised the heavens without pillars that neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before we can see it as a reality in Palestine and before all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed, may God's peace and blessing be upon him.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/south_asia/1585636.stm

October 9th, 2001: Suleiman Abu-Ghaith

Just in case that’s not enough, another Al Qaeda spokesman makes the threat explicit:

"He issued a chilling warning to the U.S., saying there would be no peace until it stops supporting Israel and ends blockades against Iraq.

"The youths who did what they did and destroyed America, they have done a good deed," he said. "The storm of airplanes will not stop. There are thousands of young people who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living."
www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2001/10/09/alqaeda_warn011009.html

14th October: Suleiman Abu Ghaith

And the same message is repeated a few days later. Why would someone who knew nothing of, and disagreed with the attacks threaten more?

Finally, I address the US secretary of state, who cast doubt about my previous statement and downplayed what we said that there are thousands of Muslim youths who are eager to die and that the aircraft storm will not stop, God willing.

"Powell, and others in the US administration, know that if al-Qaeda organisation promises or threatens, it fulfils its promise or threat, God willing.

"Therefore, we tell him tomorrow is not far for he who waits for it. What will happen is what you are going to see and not what you hear.

"And the storms will not calm, especially the aircraft storm...

We also say and advise the Muslims in the United States and Britain, the children, and those who reject the unjust US policy not to travel by plane.

We also advise them not to live in high-rise buildings and towers...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/middle_east/1598146.stm

27th December 2001, bin Ladin:

"Those who carried out the act (September 11) were not 19 Arab countries... they were 19 secondary school students..." He then went on to say how they should all become martyrs, ie: "Another, Muhammed Atta came from Egypt. We beseech God to accept them all as martyrs".
www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ladin_122701.pdf

February 2002, bin Ladin:

Now he appears to be accepting that the attacks were carried out by the Muslims named by America, but claims he did no more than "incite" them:

"What many leaders have said so far is that America has an indication only, and not a tangible proof. They describe those brave guys who took the battle to the heart of America and destroyed its most famous economic and military landmarks.

They did this, as we understand it, and this is something we have agitated for before, as a matter of self-defense, in defense of our brothers and sons in Palestine, and to liberate our sacred religious sites/things. If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists".
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf...ript/index.html

April 4th, 2002: al Qaeda statement

The first charge of the heroes of the New York and Washington attacks was obedience to all of their orders, an obedience that was established before their departure to the enemy's land, beginning with the hero Ahmad al-Ghamdi, may Allah almighty have mercy on him...

We have put forth this directive in order to deliver a new blow to America and to expose to the world the fallacy of the American propaganda which claims it has irrefutable evidence regarding the warriors (mujahideen) who carried out the operation. It claims it has twenty-four thousand threads leading to knowledge of the agents of the operation. But what appears to it as evidence is weaker than a spider's web, and the American case cannot rely upon it to indict the suspects, let alone convince the world with it. In this directive we say to America that hiding all trace of the agents of the operation was not something we considered. Rather, some of the heroes were intent on leaving Islamic fingerprints on the operation. This is a new blow received by the American security agency that has looked here and there in confusion unlike anything ever seen before. On account of the hunt for a trace of the heroes who entered their country, noses have sniffed with honor and pride.

[there then follows a lengthy justification explaining why they claim the attacks were permissible under Islam]

These comments about the permissibility of the martyrdom operations in the attack of New York and Washington are taken from the book The Truth about the New Crusader War. Whoever wants further evidence and a detailed discussion of the matter should consult the entire book.
http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol...306_alqaeda.asp

Why are al Qaeda writing about and naming a “hero” of 9/11 if they don’t know anything about it? Doesn’t the statement “hiding all trace of the agents of the operation was not something we considered” indicate their involvement? Why are they bothering to justify the attacks (and write a book about them) if they had nothing to do with it?

No, this is clear acceptance of al Qaeda involvement. Read a detailed analysis of the statement here.

April 2002, Ahmed al-Haznawi:

"For the first time, one of the 19 suicide hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks has been shown explaining his motives, with the broadcast yesterday by an Arab television network of a videotape made last year by a man identified as a Saudi conspirator.
The Qatar-based al-Jazeera station named the man as Ahmed al-Haznawi - a hijacker on United Airlines flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11. He is shown angrily reciting a prepared statement, which al-Jazeera described as a last will and testament".
www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,685127,00.html

September 10th, 2002: bin Ladin and others

"Two days before the anniversary of the September attacks and at a time the U.S. is using its war on terror to launch an attack against Iraq, Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite channel on Monday, September 9, aired video-clips in which it says Osama bin Ladin claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on the United States"...

Apart from Atta, bin Ladin named Lebanese Ziyad al-Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi from the United Arab Emirates, “who destroyed the second tower” of the World Trade Center, and Hani Hanjour (from the Saudi city of Taef) “who destroyed the Pentagon.”

Al-Jazeera showed photographs of Hamza al-Ghamdi (alias Julailib al-Ghamdi), Saeed al-Ghamdi (alias Mutaz al-Ghamdi), Wael al-Shehri (alias Abu Suleiman) and Ahmad Naami (Abu Hisham), whose names, like those cited by bin Ladin, figure on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) list of hijackers.

Al-Jazeera also aired footage of one of the hijackers saying in his “will” that he was trained by Laden.

“May God reward all those who trained me and made possible this glorious act, notably the fighter and mujahid (Islamic warrior) Osama bin Ladin, God protect him,” said Saudi kamikaze Abdul Aziz al-Omari.

Al-Omari, who according to the FBI was one of five hijackers who slammed an American Airlines Boeing 767 into the north tower of the World Trade Center, was shown wearing a grey robe with his shoulder-length hair turbaned in a keffiyeh (chequered headdress).

The September 11 attacks were “a message to all infidels and to America to leave the Arabian peninsula and stop supporting the cowardly Jews in Palestine,” he said.

“Let it be known that we can bring you and other enemies down,” Al-Omari said, addressing the United States.
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2...article02.shtml

September 2002: Ayman Al Zawahiri

it is imperative that we acknowledge the victory achieved by the Muslims against the Crusader forces, in New York and Washington... This small group, in numbers and equipment, were able to inflict immense slaughter on the greatest idol worshipped today, despite its power and arrogance...
http://www.mediareviewnet.com/translation_...%20zawaahri.htm

October 2002: Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

In an interview by Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda, Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed admit responsibility for 9/11, and describe their planning. These interviews were audiotaped, and segments broadcast on Al Jazeera.

“Immediately, Khalid introduces himself as head of the military committee of Al Qaeda,” says Fouda. “That committee actually was the arm of Al Qaeda, which decided, first of all, according to Khalid, to strike America inside America and to eventually choose the targets, which were actually hit on Sept. 11.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/08/...ain524794.shtml

In the second part of a documentary aired by the Arabic television news network Al-Jazeera, two al Qaeda terrorists wanted by the United States give an account of their planning of the September 11 attacks and describe the actions of some of the main hijackers in their final days...

About three weeks before September 11, targets were assigned to four teams, with three of them bearing a code name: The U.S. Capitol was called "The Faculty of Law;" the Pentagon became "The Faculty of Fine Arts;" and the North Tower of the World Trade Center was code-named by Atta as "The Faculty of Town Planning."

One of the terrorists, Abu Abdul Rahman, pretended to send a love message via an Internet chat room to his German girlfriend, who was actually Binalshibh. It contained more code for the attacks:

"The first semester commences in three weeks. Two high schools and two universities. ... This summer will surely be hot ...19 [the eventual number of hijackers] certificates for private education and four exams. Regards to the professor. Goodbye."

Soon after, Fouda says, the hijackers began "moving fast," picking the flights to be hijacked, choosing ones involving large planes with "maximum volume of fuel and best punctuality."

Seats in business class were chosen for some to allow for "mobility and maneuverability," according to Binalshibh.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/0...laim/index.html

March 2003: bin Ladin

...because of the way they oppress us in the Muslim world, especially in Palestine and Iraq, and because of their occupation of the Land of the Two Holy Places... the Mujahideen... decided to act in secret and to move the battle right into his [the U.S. president's] country and his own territory.

They carried out the raid by means of enemy planes in a courageous and splendid operation the like of which mankind had never before witnessed. They smashed the American idols and damaged its very heart, the Pentagon. They struck the very heart of the American economy, rubbed America's nose in the dirt and dragged its pride through the mud. The towers of New York collapsed, and their collapse precipitated an even greater debacle: the collapse of the myth of America the great power and the collapse of the myth of democracy; people began to understand that American values could sink no lower. The myth of the land of freedom was destroyed, the myth of American National security was smashed and the myth of the CIA collapsed, all praise and thanks to Allah.
http://memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=SP47603
http://www.robert-fisk.com/englishtext_usa...e_14Feb2003.htm

May 2003: Ayman Al Zawahiri

Learn from your 19 brothers who attacked America in its planes in New York and Washington and caused it a tribulation that it never witnessed before and is still suffering from its injuries until today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3047903.stm

September 21, 2003: Abu Muhammad al-Ablaj

Abu Muhammad al-Ablaj, "the man in charge of training in al-Qa'ida", describes bin Ladin as "the one who destroyed its economic pride, sullied its military dignity and wrecked the impregnable Pentagon fortress". Also says of "The September Team": the soldiers of The Most Gracious who implemented are gone to their Lord in that regiment. The brains that plan still remain".
http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/09/21/alqaidas.html

August 2004: Abu-Jandal

The former personal bodyguard of bin Ladin and leading Al Quaeda member in Yemen says "among the elements that carried out the September incidents I knew Muhammed Atta..."
http://www.why-war.com/news/2004/08/03/binladin.html

October 30th 2004: bin Ladin

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind..."

"And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children"
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm

September 12th 2005:
American Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn:

Four years after the blessed raids on New York and Washington, we find the people of the West continuing to speculate about the causes and objectives which lie behind those historic events and subsequent developments. We find them in disagreement over the nature of the people who carry out operations like those on September 11th, March 11th, and July 7th, the nature of their motives, and the nature of the demands they harbor, if any. And most crucially, and as a result of their speculation and disagreement, we find them uncertain about which steps or actions they must take to achieve the restoration of the security they once enjoyed.

Allah is our witness that the numerous audio and videotapes issued by Sheikh Osama bin Ladin, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the other leaders of the jihad have... been released to explain and propound the nature and goals of the worldwide jihad against America and the Crusaders and convey our legitimate demands to friend and foe alike...

As Sheikh Osama has told you repeatedly, your security is dependent on our security. You can't have one without the other. If you ensure our security, you will have automatically ensured your own.
http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=850

Focus on important stuff. .stick to facts... my 2 cents..

Remote control of large planes isn’t in itself a new idea. Successful tests have been carried out long ago, for example this experiment in 1984. However, some go further and say the Boeing 757 and 767 come with this ability already.
"The Boeing 757 and 767 are equipped with fully autonomous flight capability, they are the only two Boeing commuter aircraft capable of fully autonomous flight. They can be programmed to take off, fly to a destination and land, completely without a pilot at the controls.

They are intelligent planes, and have software limits pre set so that pilot error cannot cause passenger injury... No matter what the pilot wants, he cannot override this feature.

The plane that hit the Pentagon approached or reached its actual physical limits, military personnel have calculated that the Pentagon plane pulled between five and seven g's in its final turn.

The same is true for the second aircraft to impact the WTC.

There is only one way this can happen.

As well as fully autonomous flight capability, the 767 and 757 are the ONLY COMMUTER PLANES MADE BY BOEING THAT CAN BE FLOWN VIA REMOTE CONTROL. It is a feature that is standard to all of them, all 757's and 767's can do it.”
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=Ne...le=print&sid=48

Unfortunately, it's mostly nonsense. The Boeing 757 and 767 do have autopilot, but turn it off and you can do what you like.  What's more, the 757 and 767 do not have "fly by wire" capabilities (their control systems are mechanical, not electronic, with cables and hydraulics to move the control surfaces).  The only plane that did at the time was the 777, and even this could be overridden by the pilot.

"On Boeing jets, the pilot can override onboard computers and their built-in soft limits.
"It's not a lack of trust in technology," said John Cashman, director of flight-crew operations for Boeing. "We certainly don't have the feeling that we do not want to rely on technology. But the pilot in control of the aircraft should have the ultimate authority.""
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/boe202.shtml

But okay, let’s take this further. Maybe the planes were modified to be remote controlled.  After all, America has remote controlled planes like the Predator and Global Hawk, so why couldn’t the technology be applied here?

Some people point to the planes final movements as indications of remote control.  They talk about last minute corrections as planes flew into the WTC, or the difficulty of flying low-level into the Pentagon, as being far beyond the capabilities of the inexperienced hijackers. So is this really plausible?

We say no. Problem  #1 is the major modifications that would be necessary to the plane, and the control system.  You’d need several cameras mounted on the plane to show the “remote controller” what was going on, too, and a transmission system to send images back, and receive commands.  All to be achieved without anyone noticing.

But that’s only the first issue. Consider this press conference reply from American General Ronald Keys:

Q: Referencing the E-10, if we can control a Predator from Nevada, why do we need to put a battle staff airborne in the E-10?

General Keys: Well, you can control them, but for example, we missed shooting down a MiG-25 during the war because of the latency in the system. We had the Hellfire-armed Predator up and the MiG-25 was coming in to intercept and we had him locked up, but by the time we had fired the missile, he had started his turn and so he broke lock. The reason was there's about a several second delay in the latency.
http://www.afa.org/Media/scripts/Keys_AWS05.asp

The “latency” the General refers to here is the delay any remote controlled plane faces. To take an example of flying into the Pentagon, what would happen if you appear to be coming in too low?  First, there would be a delay while the cameras on board the plane processed the image. There’s then a delay while the image is transmitted, and another while it’s displayed to the remote pilot. There’s a natural delay while he reacts to the situation, then another in transmitting his commands back to the plane, and another while it adjusts the control surfaces accordingly.

How long is this delay, in total?  The general says “several” seconds, and that’s based on current technology, not anything available in 2001. But let’s be generous, and say the latency adds just an extra two seconds to a pilots response time.  What does that mean for the 9/11 flights?

A little math begins to make it clear. At a flight speed of 500 mph, say, our planes would be covering 733.33 feet per second. In other words, even on our generously low estimate, they would fly 1466.33 feet, heading for a third of a mile, before they could possibly even begin react to anything the remote pilot has seen. Any sudden reactions in the final fraction of a second, as has been claimed at the WTC, just don’t look possible by remote control. In fact, they more than anything indicate the presence of a real, live pilot flying the aircraft.

This is a complex story, but the reality is a little different from the claims.

Although there were high volumes traded on these days, for instance, they weren’t as exceptionally high as some sites like to claim. Here’s one analysis.

There were very good reasons to sell American Airlines shares, too, as they’d just announced a string of bad news. Read more here.

United Airlines stocks were falling in price, too. If investors anticipated they were about to release bad results then their put options would also be worth buying (although keep in mind that the UAL put volumes weren’t the highest in the year anyway). Here’s our thoughts.

Some point to stories like the “unclaimed millions” from UAL puts as having a sinister explanation, but we disagree.  Here’s why.

There was plenty of talk about potential insider dealings in other stocks, too.  We haven’t researched these in any depth, but it’s worth pointing out that some people believe the claims were overblown.

What about most of the options being put through a CIA-linked bank?  We weren’t convinced.

The 9/11 Commission Report mentions this issue in its notes to Chapter 5:

"A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10...

Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10th was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades".

Some suggest they should have paid more attention to it, but we’re not entirely sure why.  As you can see from the other links here, the UAL trades weren’t exceptional, and there was news to justify the sale of American Airlines shares.  Foreknowledge of 9/11 isn’t required to explain these trades.

Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options--investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price--surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10--highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11. A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. These examples typify the evidence examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous. Joseph Cella interview (Sept. 16, 2003; May 7, 2004; May 10-11, 2004); FBI briefing (Aug. 15, 2003); SEC memo, Division of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners, "Pre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review," May 15, 2002; Ken Breen interview (Apr. 23, 2004); Ed G. interview (Feb. 3, 2004).

"When the option market activity in the days leading up to the terrorist attacks is compared to the benchmark distributions, the volume ratios and call volume indicators are seen to be at typical levels. The indicator of long put volume, however, appears to be unusually high, which is consistent with informed investors having traded in the option market in advance of the attacks."

„Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45.00 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6.“

„Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45.00 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in these options had been 252 contracts per day“

Morgan Stanley's stock dropped 13% and Merrill Lynch's stock dropped 11.5% when the market reopened.

Citigroup Inc., which has estimated that its Travelers insurance unit may pay $500 million in claims from the World Trade Center attack, had about 45 times the normal volume during three trading days before the attack for options that profit if the stock falls below $40. Citigroup shares fell $1.25 in late trading to $38.09.

„European regulators are examing trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster.... It is not clear if any trades in these stocks ring alarm bells.“

„There are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets that must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge“,

„almost irrefutable proof of insider trading“ [Miami Herald, 9/24/01]. „If you look at movements in markets before and after the attack, it makes your brow furrow. But it is extremely difficult to really verify it.“

„in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source.“ [Fox News, 9/22/01]

„fundamentally inexplicable rise“

A Raytheon option that makes money if shares are more than $25 each had 232 options contracts traded on the day before the attacks, almost six times the total number of trades that had occurred before that day. A contract represents options on 100 shares. Raytheon shares soared almost 37 percent to $34.04 during the first week of post-attack U.S. trading. Bloomberg News, 10/3/01

The Wall Street Journal reported on October 2 that the ongoing investigation by the SEC into suspicious stock trades had been joined by a Secret Service probe into an unusually high volume of five-year US Treasury note purchases prior to the attacks. The Treasury note transactions included a single $5 billion trade. As the Journal explained: "Five-year Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the US. The notes are prized for their safety and their backing by the US government, and usually rally when investors flee riskier investments, such as stocks." The value of these notes, the Journal pointed out, has risen sharply since the events of September 11.Suspicious trading points to advance knowledge by big investors of September 11 attacks, wsws.org, 10/5/01

I missed what a the govt loyalist site is.

What do you think happened on September 11th?

I think the attacks were carried out by al Qaeda, and involved the 19 named hijackers.

Why spend so much effort on this?

Why do you ask? Oh, I know. It’s the old one where anyone who spends a lot of time promoting a particular 9/11 theory is A Fearless Seeker After Truth (even if their site is packed with “Donate” buttons and invitations for you to “buy the book/ DVD/ video”), but anyone who spends the same amount of time on the other side of the argument is A Government Shill/ Paid Disinformation Agent, right?

Well, believe what you like, but I do this because I enjoy it. It’s an interesting exercise in collecting information online, and sharpens my research skills. Plus I didn’t see anyone else bothering to do the same thing (plenty of sites making these claims, not so many questioning them), so arguably the site is performing a useful function as well. Although that’s really just a side issue: I’m doing this for me, not for anyone else.

Who are you?

I'm Mike Williams, a software developer and freelance writer from the UK.

the govt loyalist site are the Randi cult I think it stands for James Randi Educational Foundation

Interestingly, I also noticed that he's updated his Hanjor "debunk" and now conceeds that it was a 330 degree turn. Hmmm.. I wonder if we've had a secret the govt loyalist site visit?......  But the rest of it is still the same crap about how he had to make the turn to be able to "find" the Pentagon!

Mike claims Hani made the turn away from the pentagon to FIND the pentagon?

I thought the 'official story' is that they had GPS units.

In which case, they wouldn't need to make any turns they didn't need to make.

So, either they had GPS units, or they didn't, or they couldn't figure out how to use them. (but could fly jets without ANY experience (a flight simulator is NOT experience))

curious thing how the FBI does NOT even imply any relation between OBL and 911 crimes... anyhow, i thought it was worth a mention.

FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

June 6, 2006 – This past weekend, a thought provoking e-mail circulated through Internet news groups, and was sent to the Muckraker Report by Mr. Paul V. Sheridan (Winner of the 2005 Civil Justice Foundation Award), bringing attention to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist web page for Usama Bin Laden.[1]  (See bottom of this web page for Most Wanted page)  In the e-mail, the question is asked, “Why doesn’t Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster make any direct connection with the events of September 11, 2001?”  The FBI says on its Bin Laden web page that Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.  According to the FBI, these attacks killed over 200 people.  The FBI concludes its reason for “wanting” Bin Laden by saying, “In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorists attacks throughout the world.” 

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11.  The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI.  When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” 

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?”  Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.”  I asked, “How does that work?”  Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence.  Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice.  The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury.  In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury.  He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”

It shouldn’t take long before the full meaning of these FBI statements start to prick your brain and raise your blood pressure.  If you think the way I think, in quick order you will be wrestling with a barrage of very powerful questions that must be answered.  First and foremost, if the U.S. government does not have enough hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, how is it possible that it had enough evidence to invade Afghanistan to “smoke him out of his cave?”  The federal government claims to have invaded Afghanistan to “root out” Bin Laden and the Taliban.  Through the talking heads in the mainstream media, the Bush Administration told the American people that Usama Bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One and responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on September 11, 2001.  Yet nearly five years later, the FBI says that it has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.