From July 05 Mel Goodman explains the failure of the 9/11 commission

Tim Russert, Dick Cheney, and 9/11
During an informal interview in 2007, incidentally, Mineta reaffirmed that Cheney was already there when he arrived in the PEOC, saying “absolutely.”  When he was told that the Commission had said that Cheney did not arrive
until 9:58, Mineta expressed surprise and said: “Oh no, no, no; I don’t know how that came about.” Although Mineta said he “might have been mistaken on the 9:25,” he said that Cheney was definitely there before the Pentagon was
struck, and “so was Mrs. Cheney.”

While we are remembering Tim Russert and his years as moderator of “Meet the Press,” we would do well to recall his interview with Vice President Dick Cheney at Camp David on September 16, 2001, just five days after the 9/11 attacks.1 In fact, Cheney himself, during an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer the morning after Russert died, reminded us of that Camp David interview, saying: “I always, when I think of Tim and think of ‘Meet the Press,’ that’s the show that always comes to mind. . . . It was a remarkable moment in American history.”2  

Commenting that he himself “remember[ed] that interview vividly,” Lauer asked: “Anything stand out from that interview?” In his reply, Cheney said: “We went back and reminisced to some extent about what had actually happened on the morning of 9/11. So it was—it was a remarkable moment in my career.”3 

It was indeed. In reminiscing about his movements that morning, Cheney contradicted what was to become a crucial element of the account that the 9/11 Commission would give of those movements.  

In praising Russert’s tenure on “Meet the Press,” Cheney said: “He would ask you tough questions, he would remind you of quotes you made previously in other settings or on earlier shows, so you never got away with anything going up vis-à-vis Tim.”4 

Given Cheney’s appraisal of his interview with Russert as a “remarkable moment” in both American history and Cheney’s own career, we should apply Russert’s method to this interview, reminding ourselves of exactly what Cheney said, then comparing it with what was said about Cheney by the 9/11 Commission.  

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“…in particular, I would like to introduce to you a very courageous man named Blair Gadsby. I’m going to ask the folks with Blair to help him stand, as I tell you just a little bit about him. Blair is very weak, because he has been fasting for more than two weeks to try to bring attention to the cause of 9/11 Truth. This is the 16th day that Blair has gone without food, and spent his day outside the office of U.S. Senator John McCain, pleading with the Senator to take a look at new evidence of the 9/11 crimes.

We have one man here, who is sacrificing his own personal needs and desires, to stand boldly, pleading for the world to take notice, to question, to research, and not place their lives in the hands of media sound bites. To think for themselves, consciously and critically.

Blair is an educator, and to me this is what great educators do. Thousands of people all over the country, and actually, around the world have been watching on the internet as this hunger strike progresses here in Phoenix. I want Blair to know that I am one of his biggest fans, and that good people everywhere admire him for his courage and determination.

Please give a warm welcome to Blair Gadsby and the 9/11 Truth movement.”

- Senator Karen Johnson, June 10, 2008.

Peter Barber | FinancialTimes.com

When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King’s cadence. “A time comes,” declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, “when silence is betrayal.” The congregation answers with whoops and calls of “That’s right!” King was talking about America’s war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government’s war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.

According to a show of hands that February afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. Some came in T-shirts bearing the words “9/11 was an inside job”. One wore a badge demanding that you “Examine your assumptions”. Quite a few bought the DVDs on sale in the foyer, most of which bore photographs of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. They had all come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens of groups across the US which campaign to persuade us that everything we think we know about 9/11 is wrong.

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Blair Gadsby went to the doctor on this day of his hunger strike for 911 Truth. 11 days with out food and the doctor gave him a clean bill of health! Blair is committed to seeing this thing through and will not compromise his request of two hours of McCains time. Good weather permitting a plane is scheduled to toe a 35 foot banner on friday between 5pm and 7pm, a rally of the movement here in Phoenix has been set for that time in front of McCain’s office. The banner will read “Google Hunger Strike for 911 Truth” the plane will be over McCains office around 5pm for 15 to 20 minutes and then fly all over the valley. With the plane in the air now would be a good time to call local Radio and TV stations! Are you as hungry as we are?

Posted on WhatReallyHappened.com
By Elie Peter - Sept 15, 2006, BLICK newspaper, Zurich, Switzerland
(translated from German into English, but not yet published online in English)

2,973 humans died with the attacks of 9/11. “Bin Laden” and “Al Qaeda”, the Bush clan cried. The world believed themm. In the meantime even scientists doubt the Bush version. Now, Swiss university professors Albert A. Stahel and Daniele Ganser raise new questions.

“Something is not correct”, says strategy expert Stahel in “World Week”, and here he refers to the “incomplete” official US Government 9/11 Report of 2004.

The university professor confirms his criticism in BLICK: “Osama Bin Laden cannot be ‘the large godfather’ behind the attacks. He did not have enough means of communication”.

Dr. Stahel doubts that a passenger airliner crashed into the Pentagon: “For trainee pilots it is actually impossible to crash into the building so exactly. Seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, the World Trade Center Building 7 next to it also collapsed. The official version: It burned for a long time. Nothing at all is clear.”

Raising questions along with Stahel is historian Dr. Daniele Ganser, his colleague at the University of Zurich. Dr. Ganser also calls the official US version “a conspiracy theory”.
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Former Governor lectures disbelieving Howard Stern on impossible collapse of buildings.

Paul Joseph Watson | PrisonPlanet.com

CLICK HERE for MP3 of Ventura on Howard Stern.

EMAIL the Howard Stern Show and ask for more Truth Movement guests.

SternShow@HowardStern.com

Former Governor Jesse Ventura went further in his 9/11 skepticism than ever before today when he told the Howard Stern Show of his fear that elements of the U.S. government carried out the attack, stating, “I hate to fear….that we possibly did it to ourselves.”

“There’s a lot of very difficult questions that have not been answered and no one seems to want to provide any answers,” Ventura told Stern, adding that the most prescient was, “That a third building could fall into its own footprint five hours later having not been struck by much of anything….the 9/11 Commission didn’t even address the issue.

Pressed by Stern as to what he thought had happened, Ventura stated, “I hate to fear what could have happened that possibly we did it to ourselves,” to which Stern responded “you’re kidding me”.

Ventura explained that he worked in demolitions when he was in the Navy and questioned how the buildings could fall at the rate of gravity.

The former Governor countered skepticism on behalf of Stern and his co-hosts by pointing out that the WTC towers were built to withstand a jetliner impact.

Stern said it was “unthinkable” that our own government could have perpetrated the attack, to which Ventura reasoned, “Nothing is unthinkable - you’re talking about power, you’re talking about foreign policy changing over this event, you’re talking about getting control over the middle eastern oil.”

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sst911.org 

Here is the video. First, I’d like to thank Jon Gold for his help in creating this video, as his guidance has proved to be invaluable. The sources appear long enough for viewers to see the headline and source so that they can verify it if so inclined. Below the video are my comments to Perino:

Dana,

Thank you for the suggestion of checking my sources. If you take the time to read those articles, you will see that both sides of the aisle had issues with the way the Bush Administration dealt with the investigations of 9/11. Also, the people that were most affected by that day also had several issues with their conduct as well. With regard to your predecessors Ari Fleischer, Scott McClellan, and Tony Snow, if you could set up interviews for me with each of them, I would be more than happy to discuss this information. However, with regard to the last article cited in this video clip entitled, “9/11 - the big cover-up?“, it is from September 2007, so I would also like to request another interview with you when you have the time. The recent news concerning Philip Zelikow from NYTimes Reporter Phil Shenon, to quote the September 11th Advocates, brings into question “the veracity of the entire Commission’s report.” It also resulted in them calling for an entirely new investigation. In fact, that is the only article cited in this video that is not considered “mainstream”. The reason for this is because what is considered “mainstream”, did not bother to cover their request. This is not spin. This is a request by those most affected by that day to finally learn the who, how, and why of 9/11 so they can have some much deserved justice and solace.

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CBS anchor Katie Couric told members of We Are Change that she would support a new 9/11 investigation “if there’s enough public support,” after first commenting that she’d “have to think about it.”

Gary Talis, of We Are Change, also cited the Jersey Girls, who first pressed for the inquiries that became the 9/11 Commission. Couric said she knew them, seeming concerned at the idea their questions had been largely ignored.

“The commission definitely had some issues,” Couric admitted.

Couric added that she herself had done a 60 Minutes piece about the respiratory illness that 9/11 rescue workers from the pile now face and was certainly concerned about that aspect of 9/11 truth issues.

Talis also spoke briefly with Jeff Greenfield, also a CBS correspondent, who was dismissive of a new 9/11 investigation and quickly walked away after commenting:

“A lot of people have views like that who are very strange,” Greenfield said.

Jon Gold | 911blogger.com

As we all know, Norman Mineta’s testimony was never investigated or mentioned in the 9/11 Report. You would think that the “young man” that was involved in such an important moment during the 9/11 attacks would be named, and brought before the 9/11 Commission. He was not.

This clip is from C-SPAN’s 5/26/2005 taping of the “Washington Journal”. The caller clearly states that at the time the Pentagon was hit, Cheney was aware of the incoming plane according to Norman Mineta’s testimony. At the end of this segment, Lee Hamilton says that Cheney was “in the key position at the time”. Prior to that, he said that “the Vice President was in the operation room”, and “when the impact did occur.” To me, this sounds like Lee Hamilton just confirmed Norman Mineta’s testimony.

Paul Joseph Watson | PrisonPlanet.com

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura vehemently savaged the official 9/11 story on a syndicated national radio show today, saying the WTC collapsed like a controlled demolition and was pulverized to dust as he also highlighted the impossible 10 second free fall speed of the towers.

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, Ventura said that his initial reaction to 9/11 was much like most people at the time, and he accepted the official story outright, a response he now regrets because he was in a position of power and could have used it to raise a lot of pointed questions.

“I kicked myself when it initially happened that the light didn’t go off but I was so shocked that this thing had even taken place that I apologize for not being more aware,” said Ventura, adding that watching Loose Change at the insistence of his son was part of the catalyst for his wake up call.

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Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was in town on Wednesday, and Garko and I from WeAreChangeLA got a chance to listen to an interesting conversation and ask him about 9-11. Ian Masters, the moderator, defensively jumped the gun on my question about 9-11. Wilkerson dodged the question on whether he supports a genuine investigation of 911. What he did give was an insightful perspective on the “totally useless” intelligence community. I still think that he is harboring serious anger at Cheney and serious resentment at the intelligence community. I want to know what he knows and thinks about 9-11.

He started out, after saying that it was total news to him that all these CIA vets had questioned the 9-11 Commission, by stating that “the 9-11 Commission’s findings have a number of imperfections…” He then went on to describe the uselessness of the hi-tech intelligence apparatus. I agree with him on much of his statement, but he spun away from answering the yes or no new investigation question fairly skillfully.

I think I should have gone a bit more forcefully at the facts of 9-11 rather than bringing up CIA vets to get a clearer response from Wilkerson. What do you think? What are the most effective ways to ask different people questions? What are we after?

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A clip from “Loose Change: Final Cut“, following the official 9/11 Commission from its inception to its demise.

Gary, Luke and Jay from WeAreCHANGE introduce the congress man to 9/11 truth and make sure real issues are focused upon at his event

Larisa Alexandrovna | rawstory.com

Hijacker had post-9/11 flights scheduled, files say

 Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA request filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.Though referenced repeatedly in the footnotes of the final 9/11 Commission report, the timeline has not previously been made available to the public.The FBI timeline is dated Nov. 14, 2003 but appears to have been put together earlier (since the last date mentioned in the document is Oct. 22, 2001) and was provided to the 9/11 Commission during its 2003 investigation. The final Commission report cites the FBI timeline 52 times. Read the rest of this entry »

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

A new book by a New York Times reporter shines a light on the disturbing behind-the-scenes workings of the 9/11 Commission’s report. If bulletproof, the book prompts us to add one more thing to our to-do list for the next administration: Pressure it to charge a panel of independent experts to write a real, nonpartisan report on the attacks.

Philip Shenon’s “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission” focuses on the relationship between the commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, and the White House. To start with, Shenon writes that Zelikow sought to limit the Bush administration’s responsibility in failing to assess threats leading up to the attacks. In 2003, with George W. Bush seeking re-election, a commission investigator found materials confirming that the White House (specifically, Condoleezza Rice, with whom Zelikow had written a book) had ignored warnings of an impending al-Qaida strike. Belittling the investigator, Zelikow dismissed the evidence.

Zelikow had written a 2002 report for the administration, which seemed to provide justification for a pre-emptive war, and tried in 2004 to create a connection between Osama bin Laden and Iraq in the 9/11 Commission report. Despite saying he wouldn’t do so, he also had several conversations with Rice and Karl Rove, which explains why he’d asked his assistant to stop keeping track of his calls to and from the White House.

Someone with an apparent deference for the White House should not have been trusted with such a valued task.

Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS |CounterPunch.org

Many Americans are content with the 9/11 Commission Report, but the two chairmen of the commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are not. Neither was commission member Max Cleland, a US Senator who resigned from the 9/11 Commission, telling the Boston Globe (November 13, 2003): “This investigation is now compromised.” Even former FBI director Louis Freeh wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 17, 2005) that there are inaccuracies in the commission’s report and “questions that need answers.”

Both Kean and Hamilton have twice stated publicly, once in their 2006 book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, and again in the January 2, 2008, New York Times, that there are inaccuracies in their report and unanswered–or mis-answered–questions.

On the second day of this new year, Kean and Hamilton accused the CIA of obstructing their investigation: “What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the President, to investigate one of the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.”

In their book, Kean and Hamilton wrote that they were unable to obtain “access to star witnesses in custody who were the only possible source for inside information about the 9/11 plot.”

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. Consequently, write Kean and Hamilton, “We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information” that was fed to them by third party hands. “How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was telling us the truth?”

The fact that video tapes of the interrogations existed was kept secret from the 9/11 Commission.

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By HOPE YEN | ap.google.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Sept. 11 commission’s executive director had closer ties with the White House than publicly disclosed and tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility, a new book says.

Philip Zelikow, a friend of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke with her several times during the 20-month investigation that closely examined her role in assessing the al-Qaida threat. He also exchanged frequent calls with the White House, including at least four from Bush’s chief political adviser at the time, Karl Rove.
Zelikow once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the commission staff’s viewpoint, according to Philip Shenon’s “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.”

Shenon, a New York Times reporter, says Zelikow sought to intimidate staff to avoid damaging findings for President Bush, who at the time was running for re-election, and Rice. Zelikow and Rice had written a book together in 1995 and he would later work for her after the commission finished its job and she became secretary of state in 2005.
The Associated Press obtained an audio version of Shenon’s book, which is to go on sale Tuesday.

Reached by the AP, Zelikow provided a 131-page statement with information he said was provided for the book. In it, Zelikow acknowledges talking to Rove and Rice during the course of the commission’s work despite a general pledge he made not to. But he said the conversations never dealt with politics.
The White House had no immediate comment Sunday.
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By Ryan Singel | wired.com 

The Bush administration has failed to nominate any candidates to a newly empowered privacy and civil-liberties commission. This leaves the board without any members, even as Congress prepares to give the Bush administration extraordinary powers to wiretap without warrants inside the United States.

The failure rankles Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), respectively chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.

“I urge the president to move swiftly to nominate members to the new board to preserve the public’s faith in our promise to protect their privacy and civil liberties as we work to protect the country against terrorism,” Lieberman said.

“The White House’s failure to move forward with appointing the new board is unacceptable, and I call on the administration to do so as quickly as possible to prevent a gap in this vital mission,” Collins said.

In a 2007 measure implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations, Congress reconfigured the oversight committee, known as the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board. The intent was to make the board more independent of the White House, require it to be bipartisan and make it more accountable to the public.

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