The Pentagon today chargedKhalid Sheikh
Mohammed with masterminding the events of September 11, 2001 even though
the Pentagon's News Transcript of September 12, 2001 contradicts the 9/11
Commission Report's claim that the Pentagon was struck by a Boeing 757 on
September 11, 2001.
At the September 12, 2001, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) briefing, Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher when asked: "Is
there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "there are some small
pieces of aircraft ... there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."
Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs -
"presenter" of the DoD briefing to the world press, did not contradict Chief
Plaugher, and CNN video of
September 11, 2001 corroborates Ed Plauger's remarks at the DoD briefing.
Standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre,
CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported: "From my
close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere
near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small
enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail
sections, wing sections, fuselage - nothing like that anywhere around which
would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.
. . . It wasn't till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors
collapsed."
"American Airlines," "Flight 77," "Boeing," "Dulles," and "passengers" are
not mentioned in the News Transcript.
I just returned from a 3-week lecture tour of South Africa where, using establishement
news sources, I showed to large audiences in about a dozen cities that the
primary conclusions of "The 9/11 Commission Report" are false. A television interview broadcast to Sub-Saharan Africa summarizes this
evidence.
In his new book, "The
Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," New York
Times investigative journalist Philip Shenon writes that Philip
Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission's executive director attempted to
intimidate staff to avoid findings that would be damaging to President
George W Bush, who was running for re-election, and Condoleezza Rice, his
then National Security Adviser. (Shenon apparently accepts the major
conclusions of "The 9/11 Commission Report" - we do not.)
Shenon writes (p389):
By March 2003, with the commission's staff barely in place, the two men
[Philip Zelikow, Executive Director, The 9/11 Commission, and Ernest R.
May, a Harvard historian] had prepared a detailed outline, complete with
"chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings" of the final
report.
Tom Leonard of the British Telegraph wrote, "When Bob Kerrey, a Democrat member of the
commission, learned the extent of Mr Zelikow's ties to the administration,
he confronted Tom Kean, its Republican chairman. . . . Mr. Kerrey reportedly
threatened to resign unless Mr Zelikow was sacked, but was persuaded to
stay."
Sen. Max Cleland, resigned from the commission in November 2003 saying,
"Bush is scamming America."
"The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean
and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were
'set up to fail'
and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation", reported the Guardian.
The others charged by the Pentagon are: Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh,
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, and Mohammed al-Qahtani.
[Enver Masud is an award winning author, and
has consulted for the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International
Development. He managed research programs and national studies for the U.S.
Department of Energy.]
[There are several indicators that the KSM confession is not
credible.--Christopher Bollyn , "The Absence of Justice for
9/11 Victims," bollyn.com, March 20, 2007]
[The only information the commission was permitted to have about what was
learned from interrogations of alleged plot ringleaders, such as Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, came from "thirdhand" sources. The commission was not
permitted to question the alleged plotters in custody or even to meet with
those who interrogated the alleged plotters.--Paul Craig Roberts, "9/11: Why Were The Tapes Destroyed?,"
The Wisdom Fund, February 2, 2008]
[Chief military defense attorney Colonel Steven David slammed what he said
was the judge's rush to hold the hearing without giving the lawyers time to
win their clients' trust.
[The five defendants wanted to plead guilty, but only if it brought them
their desired outcome. "If we plead guilty, can we still be sentenced to
death?" Mohammed asked U.S. Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military
commission judge responsible for trying the men.
[The documents showed waterboarding was used 183 times on Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, who admitted planning the 9/11 attacks, the New
York Times reported today.--Matthew Weaver, "CIA waterboarded al-Qaida suspects 266
times," Guardian, April 20, 2009]
[When you waterboard someone 183 times, I can guarantee you he's brain dead--
Robert Baer, "Hardball with Chris Matthews," MSNBC, April 22, 2009]
[The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the government's
difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to terrorism but whose
cases present challenges.
. . . American military justice law, which is the model for the military
commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing capital
charges from pleading guilty.--William Glaberson, "U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases,"
nytimes.com, June 6, 2009]
[The government has released new versions of transcripts of hearings held at
the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which show Khalid Sheik Mohammed and
other accused high-ranking terror detainees saying harsh interrogation
methods led them to offer false stories.--"US reveals new pieces of
Gitmo hearings," Associated Press, June 15, 2009]
[At each stage of the appellate process, a higher court will countenance the
cowardly decisions made by the trial judge, ennobling them with the
unfortunate force of precedent. The judicial refusal to consider KSM's years
of quasi-legal military detention as a violation of his right to a speedy
trial will erode that already crippled constitutional concept. The denial of
the venue motion will raise the bar even higher for defendants looking to
escape from damning pretrial publicity. Ever deferential to the trial court,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will affirm dozens of
decisions that redact and restrict the disclosure of secret documents,
prompting the government to be ever more expansive in invoking claims of
national security and emboldening other judges to withhold critical evidence
from future defendants. Finally, the twisted logic required to disentangle
KSM's initial torture from his subsequent "clean team" statements will
provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they've been
after all this time - a legal way both to torture and to prosecute.--David
Feige, "The Real Price of
Trying KSM," Nation, November 19, 2009]