Chapter 2: Anomalies in the 9/11 Commission Report

In this chapter, I speak of “anomalies in the 9/11 Commission Report.” By anomalies, I mean features about and in this Report that would not be expected on the assumption that the official account of 9/11 is true and the Commission was a truth-seeking body. In the first part of this chapter, I discuss the background to, and some facts about, the 9/11 Commission. In the second part, I refer to some anomalous omissions in The 9/11 Commission Report.

I. Background to, and Facts about, the 9/11 Commission

After the 9/11 attacks, one might have expected the US Senate to have conducted an investigation, or hearings analogous to the Senate’s Watergate Hearings, to determine who was responsible for the attacks. But Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle acquiesced to an appeal by President Bush and Vice President Cheney “that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed.” Bush and Cheney made this request, they said, because a broader inquiry would take resources and personnel “away from the war on terrorism.”¹ So the resulting Joint Inquiry, authorized in February 2002, did not inquire as to who was responsible for the attacks, but simply presupposed the truth of the claims made by the Bush-Cheney administration.

Even with its limited scope, the Joint Inquiry was impeded by the Administration, which refused to give it access to many types of information.² But the Joint Inquiry was not in vain. It provided enough damaging revelations to leave President Bush little choice but to support the proposed creation of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, which came to be called The 9/11 Commission. Nevertheless, there were continuing signs that the Bush administration did not want the truth about 9/11 to be discovered. I will cite five pieces of evidence.

1. Bush appointed Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission, leading the New York Times to ask whether this was not “a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed.”³
2. When Kissinger had to resign, because he refused to name his clients, Bush appointed former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, who had no experience with Washington and national issues, and Representative Lee Hamilton, who had previously served as a Democrat covering up a Republican crime⁴ and who had become friends with Cheney.⁵ The Bush White House also managed to get Philip Zelikow, a close friend of Condoleezza Rice, appointed as the executive director.
3. Bush promised only $3 million for the Commission (whereas Ken Starr’s investigation of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky had cost almost $30 million).⁶
4. In March of 2003, the Commission asked for an additional $11 million, but the Bush administration turned the request down.⁷ (Eventually, the Commission was given $15 million.)
5. Having declared that the Commission must finish its work by May 2004, the Bush administration delayed authority clearances for some of the Commissioners — Commissioner Max Cleland said, “The White House wants to run out the clock here”⁸ — with the result that the Commission could not begin work until the middle of 2003, leaving it with less than a year to finish its work. (The Bush administration later did allow for a few more months.)

The most fateful of these impediments to a truth-seeking investigation proved to be the appointment of Philip Zelikow as executive director. Here are seven reasons.

First, Zelikow was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney administration: He had worked with Condoleezza Rice on the National Security Council in the administration of George H. W. Bush; when the Republicans were out of office during the Clinton administration, Zelikow and Rice coauthored a book; then, after Rice was named National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush, she brought on Zelikow to help make the transition to the new National Security Council; and after that, Bush named him to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, on which he served until he in 2003 became the 9/11 Commission’s executive director.⁹

Second, when Rice needed to prepare the 2002 version of the National Security Strategy of the United States (generally known as NSS 2002) and wanted something “bolder” than the first draft, written by the State Department’s Richard Haass, she turned to Zelikow.¹⁰ The resulting document used 9/11 to justify a new doctrine of preemptive (technically, “preventive”) warfare that had long been desired by Cheney and other neoconservatives for imperial purposes.¹¹ Whereas international law as articulated in the UN charter said that a country cannot launch a preemptive attack on another country unless it knows that an attack from that country is imminent — too imminent for the case to be taken to the UN Security Council — NSS 2002 stated: “[T]he United States can no longer rely on a reactive posture. . . . [We must take] anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent . . . hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”¹² This became known as the “Bush doctrine.”¹³ NSS 2002 was used, as then-New York Times writer Philip Shenon stated in his 2008 book entitled The Commission, to “justify a preemptive strike on Iraq.”¹⁴

Third, from watching the Commission’s public hearings, one might have assumed that the Commission was under the guidance of the Commissioners, especially Kean and Hamilton. But none of the Commissioners, including Kean and Hamilton, were given offices in the K Street office building used by the Commission’s staff. As a result, Shenon says, “most of the commissioners rarely visited K Street. Zelikow was in charge.”¹⁵ “Zelikow more than anyone else,” Shenon says, “controlled what the final report of the 9/11 Commission would say.”¹⁶ He could exert this control because, although the first draft of each chapter was written by one of the investigative teams, Zelikow headed up a team in the front office that revised these drafts.¹⁷ Indeed, Shenon says, “Zelikow rewrote virtually everything that was handed to him — usually top to bottom.”¹⁸ The 9/11 Commission’s report could, therefore, be called “The Zelikow Report.”

Fourth, insofar as the Commission was investigating the White House, the Commission was the White House investigating itself. Under Zelikow’s guidance, the Commission simply assumed the truth of the Bush administration’s account of 9/11, according to which the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists. For example, when Zelikow divided the 80-some staff members into teams, “the subject of ‘al Qaeda’ [was assigned] to staff team 1” — explained Kean and Hamilton in their 2006 book giving the “inside story” of the Commission — and team 1A was told to “tell the story of al Qaeda’s most successful operation — the 9/11 attacks.”¹⁹

Fifth, before the staff even had its first meeting, Zelikow had written — along with his former professor, Ernest May — a detailed outline of the Commission’s report, complete, as Shenon put it, with “chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings.” When Kean and Hamilton were later shown this outline, they worried that it would be seen as evidence that the report’s outcome had been predetermined, so the three of them decided to keep it a secret from the rest of the staff.²⁰ When the staff did finally learn about this outline a year later, they were alarmed, Shenon reported, and some of them circulated a parody entitled: “The Warren Commission Report — Preemptive Outline.” One of its chapter headings read: “Single Bullet: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence Yet. But Really. We’re Sure.”²¹ The implication was that the crucial chapter of the Zelikow-May outline could have been headed: “Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda: We Haven’t Seen the Evidence yet. But Really. We’re Sure.”

Sixth, the Family Steering Committee, composed of 9/11 widows who had pressed for the creation of the 9/11 Commission, had by March 2004 learned many of the facts about Zelikow, and declared: “It is apparent that Dr. Zelikow should never have been permitted to be Executive Staff Director of the Commission. . . . The Family Steering Committee is calling for . . . Dr. Zelikow’s immediate resignation. . . [and for] [t]he Commission to apologize to the 9/11 families and America for this massive appearance of impropriety.”²² But Kean and Hamilton, as they had earlier, refused to dismiss Zelikow.

Seventh, Shenon revealed one more reason why Zelikow would not have been chosen for a 9/11 Commission seeking the truth: Although Zelikow promised that he would put his relationships with senior Bush administration officials on hold until the 9/11 Commission’s report was completed, he continued, secretly, to have conversations not only with his good friend Rice but also with Karl Rove, who had been central to the appointments of Kissinger and Kean and who was, in general, the White House’s “quarterback for dealing with the Commission.”²³

As the Commission’s hearings were ending in May of 2004, an Associated Press story reported that “victims’ families are now furious at the Sept. 11 commission for what they say is a failure to thoroughly investigate the disaster.”²⁴

In October of that year, a story in Harper’s magazine was entitled “Whitewash as Public Service: How The 9/11 Commission Report Defrauds the Nation.” The author, Benjamin Demott, called the 9/11 Commission “a cheat and a fraud,” adding that the Commission “stands as a series of evasive maneuvers that infantilize the audience, transform candor into iniquity, and conceal realities that demand immediate inspection and confrontation.”²⁵

A 2006 documentary film, 9/11: Press for Truth, dealt with 9/11 family members who had worked with the Commission. One of them, Monica Gabrielle, said: “What we’re left with after our journey are no answers. . . . I’ve wasted four years of my life.” Another family member, Bob McIlvaine, said: “I’m so pissed off at this government, because of this cover-up.”²⁶

II. Anomalous Omissions in The 9/11 Commission Report

In 2004, an open letter, signed by 25 individuals “who have worked within various government agencies (FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA, Customs) responsible for national security and public safety,” was sent to the US Congress. This letter said: “Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission’s report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention. Serious problems and shortcomings within government agencies likewise were reported to the Commission but were not included in the report.”²⁷

As that letter by professionals said, “Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission’s report.” Indeed, in my 2005 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I identified over a hundred significant omissions in the Report, and in the meantime I have become aware of dozens more. Below I will discuss, for illustrative purposes, a few of the anomalous omissions in The 9/11 Commission Report — omissions that would not have been present in a report headed by a truth-seeking executive director.

In their Preface to The 9/11 Commission Report, Kean and Hamilton said that the Commission sought “to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11.”²⁸ In truth, what the Report provided was a fairly complete report of all the “events surrounding 9/11” that could be used to support the official account of the 9/11 attacks. The Report simply ignored all the “events surrounding 9/11” that have been cited as evidence for the alternative account of 9/11, according to which the attacks of 9/11 were able to succeed only because they were facilitated by the Bush administration and its agencies, especially the Pentagon.

I will now mention twelve facts that were omitted by the Zelikow Report:

1. The Alleged Hijackers: There is evidence that some of the alleged hijackers, including Waleed al-Shehri — said to have been on American Flight 11, which supposedly struck the WTC’s North Tower — were still alive after 9/11. The Associated Press reported that al-Shehri spoke on September 22 to the U.S. embassy in Morocco, explaining that he lived in Casablanca, working as a pilot for Royal Air Maroc.²⁹ Defenders of the official account would later claim that this was a case of mistaken identity.³⁰ But a 2001 BBC article, entitled “Hijack ‘Suspect’ Alive in Morocco,” made clear that the man of that name identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers was still alive:

His photograph was released by the FBI, and has been shown in newspapers and on television around the world. That same Mr. Al-Shehri has turned up in Morocco, proving clearly that he was not a member of the suicide attack. He told Saudi journalists in Casablanca that . . . he has now been interviewed by the American authorities, who apologized for the misunderstanding.³¹

Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission, writing as if none of this discussion occurred, endorsed the FBI’s inclusion of al-Shehri, with his photograph, on the list of hijackers. The Commission even said that al-Shehri was probably responsible for stabbing one of the flight attendants on American 11.³²

2. The Atta-to-Portland Story: The first page of The 9/11 Commission Report says: “Among the [air] travelers [on September 11] were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine. . . . Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 AM flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport.”³³

This story raises puzzling questions. Why was Atta in Portland (Maine) the morning of the attacks? He was not only purportedly the “ringleader” of the hijackers but also the one who was supposed to pilot American 11 after it was taken over. If the commuter flight had been delayed for an hour, he would have been too late to make the connection to American 11. Why would he have taken such a risk? Both the 9/11 Commission and the FBI admitted that they had no answer to this question.³⁴

According to the official story, in any case, Atta was already in Boston on September 10, but then took a rental car — a Nissan Altima — to South Portland, stayed overnight at the Comfort Inn, and then got to the Jetport in time to catch the 6:00 AM flight to Boston.³⁵ However, although Atta successfully made the transfer to American 11, his luggage did not. And after the attack on the North Tower, his luggage at the Boston airport was opened, and it contained much evidence, including Atta’s will, that seemed to prove that the attacks had been carried out by al-Qaeda — at least if one did not ask why Atta would have taken his will on a plane that he had planned to crash into the World Trade Center.

The 9/11 Commission, in any case, reported this Atta-to-Portland story as if it had been told about Atta from the beginning. Actually, however, the original story was that two other alleged hijackers, Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari, drove the rented Nissan to Portland, stayed overnight, and then flew back to Boston the next morning in time to board American 11.36 Mohamed Atta, like a sensible fellow, stayed in Boston, and left a rented Mitsubishi at Boston’s Logan airport. According to this original story, the authorities had found the materials that incriminated Atta and hence al-Qaeda in this Mitsubishi, not inside Logan Airport.³⁷

But on September 13, CNN reported that neither of the Bukharis could have died on 9/11: Ameer Bukhari had died the previous year, and Adnan Bukhari was still alive.³⁸ As a result, authorities, with the help of the press, started changing the story. The full transition to what is now told as the official story did not emerge until September 16.³⁹ But The 9/11 Commission Report did not contain any hint that the story about Atta flying from Portland to Boston, which is on the first page, was a story that had undergone major alterations during the week after September 11.

3. What Mohamed Atta Was Like: Stories in the mainstream press, including Newsweek and the San Francisco Chronicle, had reported that Mohamed Atta had engaged in behavior that undermined the portrayal of him as a devout Muslim — behavior such as gambling, drinking alcohol, and enjoying lap dances.⁴⁰ These reports were even pointed out in a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled “Terrorist Stag Parties,” which said: “[S]everal of the hijackers — including reputed ringleader Mohamed Atta — spent $200 to $300 each on lap dances in the Pink Pony strip club.”⁴¹ Moreover, investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker reported that while Atta was in Florida, he used cocaine and lived with a stripper.⁴² The 9/11 Commission Report, however, does not mention any of these reports. It instead portrays Atta as not only religious but even “fanatically so.”⁴³

According to Professor Dittmar Machule of Hamburg, who had been Atta’s thesis supervisor in the 1990s, Atta’s full name — like his father’s — was Mohamed Al-Emir Atta, and this young man was actually very religious, so much so that he prayed regularly, never touched alcohol, and would not even shake hands with a woman upon being introduced. Professor Machule, said: “I would put my hand in the fire that this Mohamed El-Amir I know will never taste or touch alcohol.”⁴⁴ The Mohamed El-Amir Atta that the professor knew was also described by him as “very small,” being “one meter sixty-two” in height⁴⁵— which means slightly under 5’4” — whereas the American Atta has been described as 5’8” and even 5’10” tall.⁴⁶ The 9/11 Commission never raised the possibility that the alcohol-drinking, cocaine-taking, lap-dancer-paying man going as “Mohamed Atta” was a different man than the devout Muslim student in Hamburg.

4. World Trade Center 7: With regard to the official account of the Twin Towers, the Commission ignored all of the problems, such as how fire could have caused steel-framed buildings to have collapsed, especially straight down, totally, and in virtual free fall, and also how ordinary building fires, even if ignited by jet fuel, could have caused steel to melt. But the most anomalous omission about the World Trade Center was the fact that the Commission did not even mention the fact that World Trade Center 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed, completely destroying itself. Amazingly — at least for anyone who assumed that Kean and Hamilton, rather than Zelikow, was responsible for The 9/11 Commission Report — Hamilton evidently did not even know that “his” report did not mention WTC 7. This fact was revealed in an interview of Hamilton by Evan Solomon of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which went like this:

Solomon: [W]hy didn’t the Commission deal with the collapse of Building 7, which some call the smoking gun? . . .

Hamilton: Well, of course, we did deal with it. . . .

Solomon: [after the conversation had shifted to other topics]: I just want to clarify something that you said earlier. You said that the Commission Report did mention World Trade Center Building 7 in it . . . . It did mention it or it didn’t?

Hamilton: The Commission reviewed the question of the Building 7 collapse. I don’t know specifically if it’s in the Report, I can’t recall that it is, but it, uh. . . .

Solomon: I don’t think it was in the report.

Hamilton: OK, then I’ll accept your word for that.

Solomon: There was a decision not to put it in the report? Hamilton: I do not recall that was a specific discussion in the Commission and we rejected the idea of putting Building 7 in, I don’t recall that. So I presume that the report was written without reference to Building 7 at all, because all of the attention . . . was on the Trade tower buildings.⁴⁷

5. Mineta’s Testimony and Cheney’s Descent to the Bunker: Solomon, asking when “Vice President Dick Cheney . . . went down to the protective bunker,” said: “[T]here was some suggestion that the Secretary of Transport[ation], [Norman] Mineta, testified in front of the Commission that he in fact talked to Dick Cheney at 9:20 a.m. . . . That was eventually omitted from the final report. Can you tell us a bit about what Secretary of Transport[ation] Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 a.m.?” Hamilton replied: “I do not recall.” When Solomon started to ask a follow-up question, Hamilton said: “Well, we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock.” In saying this, Hamilton was, of course, endorsing what The 9/11 Commission Report had said.⁴⁸

Later in the interview, Hamilton said, “I do not know at this point of any factual error in our report.” Yet he had here been confronted with what is one of the most obvious and important falsehoods in The 9/11 Commission Report: The claim that Cheney, having not entered the bunker until almost 10:00, did not have the conversation with the young man reported by Mineta. In my book-length critique of this report, I filled four pages with evidence, highlighted by Mineta’s testimony, that the Commission’s claim that Cheney did not reach the bunker until shortly before 10 a.m. was a lie. And yet Hamilton could “not recall” Mineta’s testimony — even though Hamilton had been the one questioning Mineta and had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: “You were there [in the bunker] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President.”⁴⁹ But Hamilton did not want to deal with that question. He wanted simply to repeat the official account, in which there is no room for Mineta’s memory about Cheney’s presence from about 9:20 on.

6. The Importance of the Omission of Mineta’s Testimony: The omission of Norman Mineta’s testimony about Cheney and the young man is important because it revealed that Cheney and others in the underground shelter — known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center — were aware by 9:26 that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon.⁵⁰

7. The Conflict between Cheney and Clarke on the Shoot-Down Authorization: Richard Clarke states that he received authority for fighters to shoot down any unknown non-military planes by 9:50,⁵¹ whereas The 9/11 Commission Report claims that Vice President Cheney did not give the shoot-down authorization until after 10:10 (several minutes after Flight 93 had crashed).⁵²

8. Omitting PNAC on the Helpfulness of “a new Pearl Harbor”: The 9/11 Commission also omitted the fact that The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), many members of which had become key figures in the Bush administration, published a document in late 2000 saying that “a new Pearl Harbor” would aid PNAC’s goal of obtaining funding for a rapid technological transformation of the US military.⁵³

9. Omitting Bases for Attacking the Taliban: The Commission also omitted the fact that Unocal had declared that the Taliban could not provide adequate security for it to go ahead with its oil-and-gas pipeline from the Caspian region through Afghanistan and Pakistan.⁵⁴ It also omitted a report that at a meeting in July 2001, US representatives said that because the Taliban refused to agree to a US proposal that would allow the pipeline project to go forward, a war against them would begin by October.⁵⁵

10. Omitting Rumsfeld’s Intentions to Attack Iraq: The report headed by Zelikow, who had written NSS 2002 providing justification for attacking Iraq, omitted the fact that some key members of the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, had been agitating for a war with Iraq for many years.⁵⁶ It also omitted the notes of Rumsfeld’s conversations on 9/11 showing that he was determined to use the attacks as a pretext for a war with Iraq.⁵⁷

11. The Conflict between Clarke and Rumsfeld about Rumsfeld’s Location: The Commission endorsed the claim of Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, that he was in his office talking with a CIA briefer during the 9/11 attacks until the Pentagon was hit,⁵⁸ but the Commission failed to point out the contradictory account of counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, who said that Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon’s videoconferencing center, participating in Clarke’s videoconference.⁵⁹

12. The Conflict between Clarke and Myers about Myers’ Location: The Commission also endorsed the claim of General Richard Myers, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he was on Capitol Hill during the attacks.⁶⁰ But it failed to point out the contradictory account by counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, according to whom Myers was in the Pentagon participating in Clarke’s videoconference.⁶¹

Conclusion: The points in the first part of this paper provide reasons to suspect The 9/11 Commission Report to be untrustworthy. The points in the second part provide illustrations of the fact that this Zelikow Report is indeed untrustworthy.

Endnotes

1. “Bush asks Daschle to Limit Sept. 11 Probes,” CNN, January 29, 2002 (http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-29/politics/inv.terror.probe_1_daschle-house-and-senate-intelligence-intelligence-committee?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS).
2. John Haag, “Access Denied” to Joint Inquiry on 9-11 by Bush Administration,” BuzzFlash, July 29, 2003 (ash.com/contributors/03/07/29_denied.html).
3. “The Kissinger Commission,” New York Times, November 29, 2002 (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/29/opinion/the-kissinger-commission.html).
4. See Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley, University of California: 2007), 101, 106-07).
5. Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (Twelve, 2008), 33.
6. John King, “Starr Investigation Costs Just Shy of $30 Million,” April 1, 1998 (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/01/starr.costs/).
7. Timothy J. Burger, “9-11 Commission Funding Woes,” Time, March 26, 2003 (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,437267,00.html).
8. Philip Shenon, “9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files,” New York Times, October 26, 2003 (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/national/26KEAN.html).
9. 277/1 (July 7, 2003): 14-18, at 16; Paul Sperry, “Is Fix in at 9/11 Commission?” AntiWar.com, 31 March 2004 (http://antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=2209); Emad Mekay, “Iraq Was Invaded ‘to Protect Israel’—US Official,” Asia Times, March 31, 2004.
10. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 316.
11. David Ray Griffin, “Neocon Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq,” Information Clearing House, February 27, 2007 (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17194.htm).
12. National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS 2002), 6, 15.
13. In America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke wrote: “Never before had any president set out a formal national strategy doctrine that included preemption” (142).
14. Shenon, The Commission, 170.
15. Shenon, The Commission, 69-70, 86.
16. Ibid., 390.
17. Ernest May, “When Government Writes History: A Memoir of the 9/11 Commission,” New Republic, May 23, 2005; cited in Bryan Sacks, ”Making History: The Compromised 9-11 Commission,” in Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11, 223-60, at 258n10.
18. Shenon, The Commission, 321.
19. Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, with Benjamin Rhodes, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 116. Kean and Hamilton evidently did not realize that this report undermined their claim that the 9/11 Commission, unlike conspiracy theorists, started with the relevant facts, not with a conclusion, so the Commissioners “were not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another” (ibid., 269-70).
20. Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), 388-89.
21. Ibid.
22. Statement of the Family Steering Committee for The 9/11 Independent Commission, March 20, 2004 (www.911independentcommission.org/mar202004.html).
23. Shenon, The Commission, 106-07, 171-76.
24. Sara Kugler, “Families: 9/11 Panel Failing at Mission,” Associated Press, May 19, 2004 (http://911citizenswatch.org/?s=testifying&paged=3).
25. Benjamin Demott, “Whitewash as Public Service: How The 9/11 Commission Report Defrauds the Nation,” Harper’s, October 2004.
26. “9/11: Press for Truth,” 2006 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5589099104255077250).
27. “Open Letter: National Security Experts Speak Out: 9/11 Commission Falls Short,” 9/11 Citizens Watch, September 16, 2004 (http://911citizenswatch.org/?p=401).
28. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Authorized Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), xvi.
29. Nicolas Marmie, “Saudi Man Alive in Morocco,” Associated Press, September 22, 2001.
30. “Panoply of the Absurd,” Der Spiegel, September 8, 2003 (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160,00.html). That it was Der Spiegel’s story that was absurd is shown in Jay Kolar’s “Afterword” to “What We Now Know about the Alleged 9-11 Hijackers,” which is in the paperback edition of Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (New York: Seven Stories, 2008). As Kolar also shows, the BBC later adopted the same view as Der Spiegel.
31. David Bamford, “Hijack ‘Suspect’ Alive in Morocco,” BBC, September 22, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558669.stm).
32. The 9/11 Commission Report, 5 (henceforth cited as 9/11CR).
33. 9/11CR 1.
34. 9/11CR 451n1; FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, “Statement for the Record,” Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry, September 26, 2002 (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092602mueller.html).
35. Mueller, “Statement for the Record”; “Portland Police Eye Local Ties,” Associated Press, Portsmouth Herald, September 14, 2001 (http://archive.seacoastonline.com/2001news/9_14maine2.htm).
36. “America Under Attack: How Could It Happen?” CNN, September 12, 2001, 8:00 PM (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/12/se.60.html); “Two Brothers among Hijackers,” CNN, September 13, 2001 (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200109/13/eng20010913_80131.html). This second story is no longer present on the CNN website.
37. “Two Brothers”; “Hijack Suspect Detained, Cooperating with FBI,” CNN, September 13, 2001(http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/13/ltm.01.html).
38. “Feds Think They’ve Identified Some Hijackers,” CNN, September 13, 2001 (http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/investigation.terrorism).
39. I have told this story in “Where Did Authorities Find Atta’s Treasure Trove of Information?” which is Chapter 16 of my 9/11 Contradictions.
40. Kevin Fagan, “Agents of Terror Leave Their Mark on Sin City,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 2001 (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL); David Wedge, “Terrorists Partied with Hooker at Hub-Area Hotel,” Boston Herald, October 10, 2001 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/bostonherald101001.html).
41. “Terrorist Stag Parties,” Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2001 (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001298).
42. See Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-up in Florida (Eugene: MacCowPress, 2004). These details from Hopsicker’s book are summarized in his “Top Ten things You Never Knew about Mohamed Atta,” Mad Cow Morning News, June 7, 2004 (https://www.madcowprod.com/2004/06/07/top-10-things-you-never-knew-about-mohamed-atta/), and in an interview in the Guerrilla News Forum, June 17, 2004, summarized in The New Pearl Harbor, 2nd ed., 243n1.
43. 9/11CR 160. The text says: “When Atta arrived in Germany, he appeared religious, but not fanatically so. This would change.”
44. “Professor Dittmar Machule,” interviewed by Liz Jackson, A Mission to Die For, Four Corners, October 18, 2001 (http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/interviews/machule.htm).
45. Ibid.
46. Thomas Tobin, “Florida: Terror’s Launching Pad,” St. Petersburg Times, September 1, 2002 (http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/01/911/Florida__terror_s_lau.shtml); Elaine Allen-Emrich, “Hurt for Terrorists Reaches North Port,” Charlotte Sun-Herald, September 14, 2001 (available at http://www.madcowprod.com/keller.htm).
47. “9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton,” CBC News, August 21, 2006, interview by Evan Solomon (http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html).
48. 9/11CR 40.
49. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, May 23, 2003, Panel 1.
50. See Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 220. The Mineta testimony is available on video at 911Truth.org (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050724164122860).
51. Clarke, Against All Enemies, 7-8.
52. 9/11CR 41.
53. The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000 (www.newamericancentury.org), 51.
54. See Griffin, The 9/11 Commission: Omissions and Distortions, 122-25.
55. Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, Forbidden Truth: U.S.–Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Nation Books/Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), and NPH 91; George Arney, “U.S. ‘Planned Attack on Taleban’,” BBC News, September 18, 2001.
56. Griffin, The 9/11 Commission: Omissions and Distortions, 129-31.
57. Ibid., 131-32.
58. 9/11 Commission Hearing, March 23, 2004 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17798-2004Mar23.html).
59. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 3, 7-9.
60. “Interview: General Richard B. Myers,” Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, October 17, 2001 (http://web.archive.org/web/20011118060728/http://www.dtic.mil/jcs/chairman/AFRTS_Interview.htm); 9/11CR 463n199; and 9/11CR 38.
61. Clarke, Against All Enemies, 3-9, 12.