Former NSA director and soon-to-be CIA director Michael Hayden says that a program in which the NSA listens in on calls between the US and other countries without obtaining warrants would have prevented 9/11, had it been in place then. Hayden tells a Senate hearing discussing his confirmation as CIA director, “Had this been in place prior to the attacks, the two hijackers who were in San Diego, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, almost certainly would have been identified as who they were, what they were, and most importantly, where they were.” Hayden also says, “I can demonstrate in closed session how the physics and the math would work.” [US Congress, 5/18/2006 
] However, the NSA actually intercepted the calls between Alhazmi and Almihdhar in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen (see Early 2000-Summer 2001), which it knew had been in contact with Osama bin Laden (see November 1996-Late August 1998) and was also involved in the East African embassy bombings (see August 4-25, 1998) and the attack on the USS Cole (see Mid-August 1998-October 2000). Before 9/11, the NSA was entitled to pass on information about the calls to the FBI, but did not do so, even though the FBI had specifically asked for information about calls between the communications hub in Yemen and the US (see Late 1998 and (Spring 2000)). Various explanations for this failure are offered after 9/11 (see Summer 2002-Summer 2004 and March 15, 2004 and After).
May 23, 2006: Bin Laden Possibly Releases New Tape, Says Moussaoui and Guantanamo Prisoners Have Nothing to Do with 9/11
A new 5-minute audiotape is released by a person said to be Osama bin Laden. The voice on the tape says that Zacarias Moussaoui and the vast majority of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay had nothing to do with 9/11. The speaker says that Moussaoui “has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11th” and “his confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession which no intelligent person doubts is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years.” The voice also says that, as Moussaoui has not named a support team, he cannot have been slated to pilot a hijacked airliner, and that, as he was learning to fly, he cannot have been intended to be the 20th hijacker. Further, if Moussaoui had known the 9/11 group, he would have called lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and told him to flee the country (note: jail house calls can be recorded, so this may not have been wise (see August 17, 2001)). There are various theories about Moussaoui’s closeness to the 9/11 plot, but he was supported by some of the people who supported the hijackers (see January 30, 2003). The speaker also says that the detainees in Guantanamo Bay “have no connection whatsoever to the events of September 11th, and even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al-Qaeda in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al-Qaeda’s methodology of calling for war with America.” The apparent reason so many detainees are being held: ”(I)t is necessary to create justifications for the massive spending of hundreds of billions on the Defense Department and other agencies in their war against the Mujaheddin.” [MSNBC, 5/23/2006] One Guantanamo detainee, Mohamed al-Khatani, was allegedly supposed to meet lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the US, but was refused entry to the country, indicating that he was scheduled to be involved in 9/11 (see August 4, 2001 and July 2002).
June 6, 2006: FBI Spokesman Says ‘No Hard Evidence’ Connects Bin Laden to 9/11
When asked why Osama bin Laden’s wanted poster only mentions his alleged involvement in the East African embassy bombings, but not 9/11, Rex Tomb of the FBI’s public affairs unit says, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” [Milli Gazette, 6/11/2006] The Washington Post will later pick up this story and say that bin Laden’s alleged involvement in the 9/11 operation is not mentioned on the poster because he has not been indicted for it (see August 28, 2006).
June 29-July 2006: Politicians Want Lecturer Fired for Controversial 9/11 Views
State lawmakers call for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor after he voices his opinion that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. Part-time lecturer Kevin Barrett appeared on a local radio show and claimed the alleged hijackers were “a bunch of losers who couldn’t even fly planes,” and that evidence indicated the WTC was destroyed by controlled demolition. Subsequently, State Representative Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater) issues a statement saying Barrett “needs to be fired” for using his position at the university to advance the idea “that September 11 was a creation of the government.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/29/2006; Wisconsin State Journal, 6/30/2006] Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green also demands that Barrett be fired, and Governor Jim Doyle (a Democrat) questions whether Barrett is competent to teach. [Associated Press, 7/6/2006; Associated Press, 7/10/2006] Yet Barrett says that, for the Introduction to Islam course he is scheduled to teach, 14 of the 16 weeks will have nothing to do with politics. Only one week will cover different viewpoints on 9/11, including the theory that it was an “American operation.” Following a 10-day review, UW-Madison announces it will keep Barrett on and let him teach the controversial theory about 9/11. [WKOW, 7/10/2006; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7/10/2006] Sixty-one of the state legislature’s 133 members sign a letter to the university, urging it to fire Barrett. Stephen Nass states: “The leadership of the UW System operates at its own peril if it continues to ignore views of the taxpayers.” [Associated Press, 7/20/2006; Los Angeles Times, 7/25/2006] Barrett tells the Associated Press he is pleased about the attention the controversy has brought to his cause. He says, “If these idiots had just kept their mouths shut, nobody would have ever heard of me. I’ve been trying to get publicity for years.” [Associated Press, 7/6/2006]
July 6-24, 2006: Survey Finds One Third of Americans Suspect Government Complicity in 9/11
A poll by Ohio University and Scripps Howard News Service finds that a significant minority of Americans believe there was US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Thirty-six percent of the 1,010 respondents say they believe that US government officials “either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.” Sixteen percent believe that secretly planted explosives brought down the Twin Towers, and 12 percent believe a military cruise missile, rather than a hijacked aircraft, hit the Pentagon. [Scripps Howard News Service, 8/3/2006; San Francisco Chronicle, 9/3/2006] An earlier poll had found that half of New York City residents believed government officials knew in advance of the attacks and consciously failed to act (see August 30, 2004).
August 2006: Book Challenges Image of Giuliani as 9/11 Hero
A book is released that questions the conventional heroic image of then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on 9/11. Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 is by investigative reporters Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins. Barrett is a senior writer at the Village Voice, and Collins is a senior producer at CBSNews.com. [Los Angeles Times, 8/22/2006] For their book, they had exclusive access to never before seen 9/11 Commission interviews, and managed to get frank statements from some central figures, though Giuliani himself refused to be interviewed. [Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 363; Newsday, 8/23/2006] The New York Daily News calls the book an “exhaustively researched and unsentimental peek behind the mythology [that] strongly suggests that Giuliani and his top deputies committed many errors that did grave, even fatal, harm to citizens, emergency responders and recovery teams before, on and after that terrible day.” [New York Daily News, 8/22/2006] The book criticizes Giuliani’s claim that, after becoming mayor in 1994, he made preparing New York’s response to a future terrorist attack a priority. According to Barrett and Collins’ research, in the aftermath of the 1993 WTC bombing, he in fact failed to understand the importance of preparing the city for another attack. They write, “The facts—depressing but unavoidable—were that Giuliani had allowed the city to meet the disaster of September 11 unprepared in a myriad of ways.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/22/2006; Newsday, 8/23/2006] The book criticizes Giuliani’s decision to locate New York’s emergency command center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7—across the street from an obvious terrorist target—despite the objections of senior fire and police officials. [New York Daily News, 8/22/2006; Newsweek, 9/11/2006; New York Times, 11/12/2006] The inadequacy of fire department radios on 9/11 is examined in detail. These same radios had failed when used at the 1993 WTC bombing. New radios were only provided in March 2001, but these failed in their first week of use and were withdrawn. Also, the fact that the police and fire departments were equipped with incompatible radios meant that many firefighters did not get the mayday call to evacuate the North Tower before it collapsed on 9/11. [Los Angeles Times, 8/22/2006; Newsweek, 9/11/2006; Democracy Now!, 1/3/2007] The book also criticizes the fact that, after 9/11, construction workers and firefighters were permitted to work at Ground Zero without protective respiratory gear. Subsequently, thousands of them became afflicted with upper respiratory illnesses. [New York Daily News, 8/22/2006] Grand Illusion receives much praise, though the New York Times criticizes its “relentlessly hostile tone,” which, it claims, “undermines the authors’ case.” [New York Times, 11/12/2006]
August 1, 2006: Newly Released Military Tapes from 9/11 Reveal Contradictions in NORAD Accounts
Vanity Fair magazine publishes for the first time transcripts of audiotapes from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which captured the activities at its Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) during the course of the 9/11 attacks. NEADS had four multi-channel tape recorders in a corner of its operations floor, recording every radio channel along with time stamps. Nearly 30 hours of audio, covering six-and-a-half hours of real time, have been released by the Pentagon to journalist Michael Bronner, who’d been a producer on the recent movie United 93. Previously, the tapes had been provided under subpoena to the 9/11 Commission, but only a few short clips were played during its public hearings. Bronner, who describes the recordings in detail in his Vanity Fair article, calls them “the authentic military history of 9/11.” They reveal “in stark detail” that parts of the testimony given by NORAD officials to the 9/11 Commission “were misleading, and others simply false.” For example, they show that at 9:16 a.m. on 9/11, when NORAD originally claimed it had begun tracking Flight 93, “the plane had not yet been hijacked. In fact, NEADS wouldn’t get word about United 93 for another 51 minutes.” The New York Times says, “The tapes demonstrate that for most of the morning of Sept. 11, the airspace over New York and Washington was essentially undefended, and that jet fighters scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruitless chase for planes that had already crashed.” [Vanity Fair, 8/1/2006; New York Times, 8/3/2006]
August 15, 2006: Former Heads of 9/11 Commission Release Book; Claim Their Commission was ‘Set Up to Fail’ by Bush Administration
Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the former chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, release a book giving a behind-the-scenes look at their 20-month investigation of the September 11 attacks. [Associated Press, 8/4/2006] They begin their book, titled Without Precedent, saying that, because their investigation started late, had a very short time frame, and had inadequate funding, they both felt, from the beginning, that they “were set up to fail.” [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/21/2006; Rocky Mountain News, 8/25/2006] They explain the difficulties they faced in obtaining certain government documents and describe how the commission almost splintered over whether to investigate the Bush administration’s use of 9/11 as a reason for going to war. It says that if original member Max Cleland—a strong proponent of this line of inquiry—had not resigned (see December 9, 2003), the commission probably would not have reached unanimity. It also calls their gentle questioning of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani during his May 2004 testimony, “a low point” in the commission’s handling of witnesses at its public hearings (see May 19, 2004). [Associated Press, 8/4/2006; New York Daily News, 8/5/2006; New York Times, 8/6/2006] Despite the problems it faced, when discussing his book with the CBC, Hamilton says he thinks the commission has “been reasonably successful in telling the story” of 9/11. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/21/2006] Without Precedent, however, contains little new information about the events of 9/11. Intelligence expert James Bamford says there is “an overabundance of self-censorship by the authors.” [New York Times, 8/20/2006]
August 21, 2006: Former 9/11 Co-Chairman Addresses Various ‘Conspiracy Theories’ About 9/11 Attacks
Lee Hamilton, the former co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, gives a wide-ranging interview to the CBC about Without Precedent, a book he recently co-authored about his time on the 9/11 Commission (see August 15, 2006). In the interview he discusses the various “conspiracy theories” surrounding the events of 9/11. The interviewer, Evan Solomon, mentions to him a recent Zogby poll (see May 17, 2006) that found that 42% of Americans agreed that “the US government, and its 9/11 Commission, concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts the official explanation of September 11th.” Hamilton calls this lack of trust in the Commission’s report “dispiriting,” but attacks the “conspiracy theory people,” saying, “when they make an assertion they do it often on very flimsy evidence.” He addresses some of the various “conspiracy theories” that have been put forward about 9/11: 
In order to contradict the allegation that the Twin Towers were brought down deliberately with pre-planted explosives, Hamilton says the WTC collapsed (see 8:57 a.m. September 11, 2001) because “the super-heated jet fuel melted the steel super-structure of these buildings and caused their collapse.” He adds, “There’s a powerful lot of evidence to sustain that point of view, including the pictures of the airplanes flying into the building.” With regard to the collapse of WTC Building 7 (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001), which some people claim was also caused by explosives, he argues, “[W]e believe that it was the aftershocks of these two huge buildings in the very near vicinity collapsing. And in the Building 7 case, we think that it was a case of flames setting off a fuel container, which started the fire in Building 7, and that was our theory on Building 7.” However, the interviewer points out that the 9/11 Commission’s final report does not actually mention the collapse of Building 7, and Hamilton says he does not recall whether the Commission made a specific decision to leave it out. In reply to a question about why the debris of Building 7 were moved quickly from the scene without a thorough investigation, even though nobody died in Building 7 and there was no need for rescue operations there, Hamilton responds, “You can’t answer every question when you conduct an investigation.” When asked whether Saeed Sheikh sent Mohamed Atta $100,000 for the 9/11 plot (see Early August 2001 and Summer 2001 and before), Hamilton replies, “I don’t know anything about it.” When the interviewer presses him about whether the Commission investigated a possible Pakistani Secret Service (ISI) connection to the attacks, Hamilton replies, “They may have; I do not recall us writing anything about it in the report. We may have but I don’t recall it.” Asked about Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s claim that Vice President Dick Cheney was in the presidential bunker beneath the White House at 9:20 a.m. on 9/11 (see (Between 9:20 a.m. and 9:27 a.m.) September 11, 2001), almost 40 minutes earlier than the Commission claimed he had arrived there, Hamilton replies, “I do not recall.” When pressed, he expands, “Well, we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock. And there is a gap of several minutes there, where we do not really know what the Vice President really did. There is the famous phone call between the President and the Vice President. We could find no documentary evidence of that phone call.” When the interviewer points out that Richard Clarke’s account conflicts with the Commission’s over what time authorization was received from Dick Cheney to shoot down Flight 93 (see (Between 9:45 a.m. and 9:56 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (Between 10:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Hamilton retorts, “Look, you’ve obviously gone through the report with a fine-toothed comb, you’re raising a lot of questions—I can do the same thing.”
The interviewer also asks Hamilton whether he has any unanswered questions of his own about 9/11. Hamilton’s response is: “I could never figure out why these 19 fellas did what they did. We looked into their backgrounds. In one or two cases, they were apparently happy, well-adjusted, not particularly religious – in one case quite well-to-do, had a girlfriend. We just couldn’t figure out why he did it. I still don’t know.” [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/21/2006]
August 28, 2006: Bin Laden Still Not Indicted for 9/11
The Washington Post notes that Osama bin Laden has still not been indicted for his alleged role in 9/11 and that his entry in the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list only mentions his involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings. The FBI says the reason bin Laden is not officially wanted for 9/11 or the bombing of the USS Cole is that he has not yet been charged with involvement in the operations by the US. Bin Laden’s entry on a separate list, of the 25 most wanted terrorists, also fails to mention his alleged involvement in 9/11. According to the Post, “The curious omission underscores the Justice Department’s decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden” for 9/11. [Washington Post, 8/28/2006]
