Today
is the anniversary of 9/11
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On
9/11 Doubts Were Immediate
By Paul
Craig Roberts
11 September, 2012
On
September 11, 2001, a neighbor telephoned and said, “turn on the
TV.” I assumed that a hurricane, possibly a bad one from the sound
of the neighbor‟s voice, was headed our way, and turned on the TV
to determine whether we needed to shutter the house and leave.
What
I saw was black smoke from upper floors of one of the World Trade
Center towers. It didn‟t seem to be much of a fire, and the reports
were that the fire was under control. While I was trying to figure
out why every TV network had its main news anchor covering an office
fire, TV cameras showed an airplane hitting the other tower. It was
then that I learned that both towers had been hit by airliners.
Cameras
showed people standing at the hole in the side of the tower looking
out. This didn‟t surprise me. The airliner was minute compared to
the massive building. But what was going on? Two accidents, one on
top of the other?
The
towers—the three-fourths or four-fifths of the buildings beneath
the plane strikes–were standing, apparently largely undamaged.
There were no signs of fire except in the vicinity of where the
airliners had hit. Suddenly, one of the towers blew up,
disintegrated, and disappeared in fine dust. Before one could make
any sense of this, the same thing happened to the second tower, and
it too disappeared into fine dust.
The
TV news anchors compared the disintegration of the towers to
controlled demolition. There were numerous reports of explosions
throughout the towers from the base or sub-basements to the top.
(Once the government put out the story of terrorist attack,
references to controlled demolition and explosions disappeared from
the print and TV media.) This made sense to me. Someone had blown up
the buildings. It was completely obvious that the towers had not
fallen down from asymmetrical structural damage. They had blown up.
The
images of the airliners hitting the towers and the towers blowing up
were replayed time and again. Airliners hit the top portions of the
towers, and not long afterward the towers blew up. I turned off the
TV wondering how it was that cameras had been ready to catch such an
unusual phenomenon as an airplane flying into a skyscraper.
I
don’t remember the time line, but it wasn‟t long before the story
was in place that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda gang had attacked
the US. A passport had been found in the rubble. Another airliner had
flown into the Pentagon, and a fourth airliner had crashed or been
shot down. Four airliners had been hijacked, meaning airport security
had failed four times on the same morning. Terrorists had
successfully assaulted America.
When
I heard these reports, I wondered. How could a tiny undamaged
passport be found in the rubble of two skyscrapers, each more than
100 stories tall, when bodies, office furniture and computers could
not be found? How could airport security fail so totally that four
airliners could be hijacked within the same hour? How could
authorities know so conclusively and almost immediately the names of
the perpetrators who pulled off such a successful attack on the
world‟s only superpower, when the authorities had no idea that such
an attack was planned or even possible?
These
questions disturbed me, because as a former member of the
congressional staff and as a presidential appointee to high office, I
had high level security clearances. In addition to my duties as
Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I had FEMA responsibilities
in the event of nuclear attack. There was a mountain hideaway to
which I was supposed to report in the event of a nuclear attack and
from which I was supposed to take over the US government in the event
no higher official survived the attack.
The
more the story of 9/11 was presented in the media, the more wondrous
it became. It is not credible that not only the CIA and FBI failed to
detect the plot, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies, including
the National Security Agency, which spies on everyone on the planet,
and the Defense Intelligence Agency, Israel‟s Mossad, and the
intelligence agencies of Washington‟s NATO allies. There are simply
too many watchmen and too much infiltration of terrorist groups for
such a complex attack to be prepared undetected and carried out
undeterred.
Washington‟s
explanation of the attack implied a security failure too massive to
be credible. Such a catastrophic failure of national security would
mean that the US and Western Europe were never safe for one second
during the Cold War, that the Soviet Union could have destroyed the
entire West in one undetected fell swoop.
As
a person whose colleagues at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington were former secretaries of state,
former national security advisors, former CIA directors, former
chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I was troubled by the story
that a collection of individuals unsupported by a competent
intelligence service had pulled off the events of 9/11.
As
a person with high level government service, I knew that any such
successful operation as 9/11 would have resulted in immediate demands
from the White House, Congress, and the media for accountability.
There would have been an investigation of how every aspect of US
security could totally fail simultaneously in one morning. Such a
catastrophic and embarrassing failure of the national security state
would not be left unexamined.
NORAD
failed.
The US Air Force could not get jet fighters in the air. Air Traffic
Control lost sight of the hijacked airliners. Yet, instead of
launching an investigation, the White House resisted for one year the
demands of the 9/11 families for an investigation. Neither the
public, the media, nor Congress seemed to think an investigation was
necessary. The focus was on revenge, which the Bush neocon regime
said meant invading Afghanistan which was alleged to be sheltering
the perpetrator, Osama bin Laden.
Normally,
terrorists are proud of their success and announce their
responsibility. It is a way to build a movement. Often a number of
terrorist groups will compete in claiming credit for a successful
operation. But Osama bin Laden in the last video that is certified by
independent experts said that he had no responsibility for 9/11, that
he had nothing against the American people, that his opposition was
limited to the US government‟s colonial policies and control over
Muslim governments.
It
makes no sense that the “mastermind” of the most humiliating blow
in world history ever to have been delivered against a superpower
would not claim credit for his accomplishment. By September 11, 2001,
Osama bin Laden knew that he was deathly ill. According to news
reports he underwent kidney dialysis the following month. The most
reliable reports that we have are that he died in December 2001. It
is simply not credible that bin Laden denied responsibility because
he feared Washington.
But
Osama bin Laden was too useful a bogeyman, and Washington and the
presstitute media kept him alive for another decade until Obama
needed to kill the dead man in order to boost his sinking standings
in the polls so that Democrats would not back a challenger for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Numerous
bin Laden videos, every one pronounced a fake by experts, were
released whenever it was convenient for Washington. No one in the
Western media or in the US Congress or European or UK parliaments was
sufficiently intelligent to recognize that a bin Laden video always
showed up on cue when Washington needed it. “Why would the
„mastermind‟ be so accommodating for Washington?” was the
question that went through my mind every time one of the fake videos
was released.
The
9/11 “investigation” that finally took place was a political one
run from the White House. One member of the commission resigned,
declaring the investigation to be a farce, and both co-chairman and
the legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission distanced themselves from
their report with statements that the 9/11 Commission was “set up
to fail,” that resources were withheld from the commission, that
representatives of the US military lied to the commission and that
the commission considered referring the false testimony for criminal
prosecution.
One would think that these revelations would cause a
sensation, but the news media, Congress, the White House, and the
public were silent.
All
of this bothered me a great deal. The US had invaded two Muslim
countries based on unsubstantiated allegations linking the two
countries to 9/11, which itself remained uninvestigated. The
neoconservatives who staffed the George W. Bush regime were
advocating more invasions of more Muslim countries. Paul O‟Neill,
President Bush‟s first Treasury Secretary, stated publicly that the
Bush regime was planning to invade Iraq prior to 9/11. O‟Neill said
that no one at a National Security Council meeting even asked the
question, why invade Iraq? “It was all about finding a way to do
it.”
The
leaked top secret Downing Street Memo written by the head of British
intelligence (MI6) confirms Paul O‟Neill‟s testimony. The memo,
known as the “smoking gun memo” whose authenticity has been
confirmed, states that “President George W. Bush wants to remove
Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction
of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy.” In other words, the US invasion of Iraq was
based on nothing but a made up lie.
As
an engineering student I had witnessed a controlled demolition. When
films of the collapse of WTC building 7 emerged, it was obvious that
building 7 had been brought down by controlled demolition. When
physics instructor David Chandler measured the descent of the
building and established that it took place at free fall
acceleration, the case was closed. Buildings cannot enter free fall
unless controlled demolition has removed all resistance to the
collapsing floors.
If
airliners brought down two skyscrapers, why was controlled demolition
used to bring down a third building?
I
assumed that structural architects, structural engineers, and
physicists would blow the whistle on the obviously false story. If I
could see that something was amiss, certainly more highly trained
people would.
The
first physicist to make an effective and compelling argument was
Steven Jones at BYU. Jones said that explosives brought down the twin
towers. He made a good case. For his efforts, he was pressured to
resign his tenured position. I wondered whether the federal
government had threatened BYU‟s research grants or whether
patriotic trustees and alumni were the driving force behind Jones‟
expulsion. Regardless, the message was clear to other university
based experts: “Shut up or we‟ll get you.”
Steven Jones was
vindicated when chemist Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen
In Denmark reported unequivocally that the scientific team in which
he participated found nano-thermite in the residue of the twin
towers. This sensational finding was not mentioned in the US print
and TV media to my knowledge.
Several
years after 9/11 architect Richard Gage formed Architects and
Engineers for 9/11 truth, an organization that has grown to include
1,700 experts. The plans of the towers have been studied. They were
formidable structures. They were constructed to withstand airliner
hits and fires. There is no credible explanation of their failure
except intentional demolition.
I also found disturbing the
gullibility of the public, media, and Congress in the unquestioning
acceptance of the official stories of the shoe-bomber, shampoo and
bottled water bomber, and underwear bomber plots to blow up airliners
in transit. These schemes are farcical. How can we believe that al
Qaeda, capable of pulling off the most fantastic terrorist attack in
history and capable of devising improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
that kill and maim US troops and destroy US military vehicles would
rely on something that had to be lighted with a match?
The
shoe and underwear bombers would simply have pushed a button on their
cell phones or laptops, and the liquid bomb would not have required
extended time in a lavatory to be mixed (all to no effect).
None
of this makes any sense. Moreover, experts disputed many of the
government‟s claims, which were never backed by anything but the
government‟s story line. There is no independent evidence that
anything was involved other than firecracker powders.
The
case of the underwear bomber is especially difficult to accept.
According to witnesses, the underwear bomber was not allowed on the
airliner, because he had no passport. So an official appears who
walks him onto the airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas day. What
kind of official has the authority to override established rules, and
what did the official think would happen to the passenger when he
presented himself to US Customs without a passport? Any official with
the power to override standard operating practices would know that it
was pointless to send a passenger to a country where his entry would
be rejected.
The
circumstantial evidence is that these were orchestrated events
designed to keep fear alive, to create new intrusive powers for a new
over-arching federal policy agency, to accustom US citizens to
intrusive searches and a police force to conducting them, and to sell
expensive porno-scanners and now more advanced devices to the
Transportation Safety Administration. Apparently, this expensive
collection of high-tech gadgetry is insufficient to protect us from
terrorists, and in August 2012 the Department of Homeland Security
put in an order for 750 million rounds of ammunition, enough to shoot
every person in the US 2.5 times.
Naive
and gullible Americans claim that if some part of the US government
had been involved in 9/11, “someone would have talked by now.” A
comforting thought, perhaps, but nothing more. Consider, for example,
the cover-up by the US government of the 1967 Israeli attack on the
USS Liberty that killed or wounded most of the crew but failed to
sink the ship. As the survivors have testified, they were ordered in
a threatening way not to speak about the event. It was twelve years
later before one of the USS Liberty‟s officers, James Ennes, told
the story of the attack in his book, Assault on the Liberty. I
continue to wonder how the professionals at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology feel about being maneuvered by the federal
government into the unscientific position NIST took concerning the
destruction of the WTC towers.
What
will be the outcome of the doubts about the official story raised by
experts? I worry that most Americans are too mentally and emotionally
weak to be able to come to grips with the truth. They are far more
comfortable with the story that enemies attacked America successfully
despite the massive national security state in place. The American
public has proved itself to be so cowardly that it willingly, without
a peep, sacrificed its civil liberty and the protections of law
guaranteed by the Constitution in order to be “safe.”
Congress
is not about to expose itself for having squandered trillions of
dollars on pointless wars based on an orchestrated “new Pearl
Harbor.” When the neoconservatives said that a “new Pearl Harbor”
was a requirement for their wars for American/Israeli hegemony, they
set the stage for the 21st century wars that Washington has launched.
If Syria falls, there is only Iran, and then Washington stands in
direct confrontation with Russia and China.
Unless
Russia and China can be overthrown with “color revolutions,”
these two nuclear powers are unlikely to submit to Washington‟s
hegemony. The world as we know it might be drawing to a close.
If
enough Americans or even other peoples in the world had the
intelligence to realize that massive steel structures do not
disintegrate into fine dust because a flimsy airliner hits them and
limited short-lived fires burn on a few floors, Washington would be
faced with the suspicion it deserves.
If
9/11 was actually the result of the failure of the national security
state to deter an attack, the government‟s refusal to conduct a
real investigation is an even greater failure. It has fallen to
concerned and qualified individuals to perform the investigative role
abandoned by government. The presentations at the Toronto Hearings,
along with the evaluations of the Panel, are now available, as is the
documentary film, “Explosive Evidence–Experts Speak Out,”
provided by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
The
government‟s agents and apologists try to deflect attention from
disturbing facts by redefining factual evidence revealed by experts
as the product of “a conspiracy culture.” If people despite their
brainwashing and lack of scientific education are able to absorb the
information made available to them, perhaps both the US Constitution
and peace could be restored. Only informed people can restrain
Washington and avert the crazed hegemonic US government from
destroying the world in war.
Paul
Craig Roberts was
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business
Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had
many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a
worldwide following.
Posts
9/11:
Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out: 
