9/11: The Unraveling
of the Official Story Continues
Mark H. Gaffney
February 22, 2008
Humpty-Dumpty sat on a
wall.
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Today in America we are witness to a great unraveling, the likes of
which we have never seen before. There are no historical precedents.
For many months now the official narrative about the September 11,
2001 terrorist attack on America has been coming apart, and I mean:
at the seams. The official story about that terrible day is
disintegrating. The trend shows no sign of abating and in recent
weeks it even appears to have accelerated. At the present rate, soon
there will be nothing left of the official version of events but a
discordant echo and a series of extremely rude after shocks.
Is our nation prepared to face those rude shocks?
The unraveling began within weeks of the release of the 9/11
Commission Report (in July 2004) with the shocking revelation
that members of the 9/11 commission were convinced that government
officials, including NORAD generals, had deceived them during the
investigation–––in essence, had lied to their faces during the
hearings.[1] According to the Washington Post the members of
the commission vented their frustrations at a special meeting in the
summer of 2004. The panel even considered referring the matter to
the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.
The unraveling continued in 2006 with the release of a follow-up
volume, Without Precedent, authored by the two men who had
co-chaired the commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. The
men had come under increasing fire ever since the release of their
final report for presiding over what many now believe was a failed
investigation. Stung by so much criticism, Kean and Hamilton felt
the need to explain (and defend) themselves. The gist of their 2006
book is easily summarized. They write: ”We were set up to fail.”
The bleeding continued in May 2007 with the stunning announcement
that former BYU physicist Steven Jones had found residues of
thermate, a high temperature explosive, in the dust of the collapsed
World Trade Center.[2] The discovery has the gravest implications
for our nation, and probably for this reason the announcement went
reported in the US media. In a later chapter I will discuss this
important evidence in detail.
Yet another startling revelation occurred in December 2007 when we
learned that the CIA destroyed evidence, in the form of audio-tapes,
deemed vital to the official investigation.[3]
The news prompted 9/11 Commission co-chairs Kean and Hamilton to
fire off an angry salvo in the New York Times in which they
charged that the CIA had obstructed their investigation.[4] Their
blunt accusation was explosive and should have caused every American
to sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, the average American
probably failed to connect the dots because, as usual, the US media
offered nothing in the way of helpful context or analysis. We were
fed the usual diet of tidbits and sound bytes: a wealth of minutiae.
The big picture remained elusive.
But back to the unraveling story.
Starting in 2002, the CIA conducted interrogations of captured Al
Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh, at
undisclosed CIA prisons outside the US. During these interrogations
the CIA resorted to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (the CIA’s
euphemism for torture) to extract information.[5] The methods
included “waterboarding,” which induces a sensation of drowning in
the unlucky individual. Evidently, the CIA decided for its own
internal reasons to video-tape these early interrogation sessions.
However, years later (in 2005), Jose A, Rodriquez, the CIA’s
Director of Operations, ordered the tapes destroyed. For what
reason? Well, according to current CIA Director Michael V. Hayden,
because the tapes posed “a serious security risk.”[6] Hayden went on
to clarify his rather cryptic remark, and explained to the press
that if the tapes had become public they would have exposed CIA
officials “and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its
sympathizers.” The excuse was flimflam, but the US media hung on
Hayden’s every word as if he were speaking gospel. The press
certainly did not throw him any hard balls. Nor did they press him
on the point.
Hayden also claimed that the CIA had notified the appropriate
committee heads in Congress in 2005 before destroying the evidence.
But according to the Times this was immediately denied by the
top two members of the House Intelligence Committee. A spokesman for
Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who at the time chaired the
oversight committee, said that he was “never briefed or advised”
that the tapes even existed, let alone “that they were going to be
destroyed.”[7]
Kean and Hamilton had a similar reaction–––outrage. In their article
they state categorically that the CIA never informed them about any
taped interrogations, despite their repeated requests for all
pertinent information about the captured Al Qaeda operatives, who
were then in CIA custody. In fact, as damaging as the news about the
CIA’s destruction of evidence surely was, the story exposed an even
more serious problem. One might naturally assume that the official
commission charged to investigate the events of 9/11 would have had
unfettered access to all of the evidence pertinent to the case,
including government documents and key witnesses. This goes without
saying. Access was vital to the success of the investigation. How
else could the commission do its work? Yet, it never happened.
CIA Stonewalled the
Official Panel
In their article Kean and Hamilton summarize their dealings with the
CIA.[8] They describe their private meeting with CIA Director George
Tenet and how he denied them access to the captured members of Al
Qaeda. Which means, of course, that the panel never had a chance to
conduct its own interviews. Tenet even denied them permission to
conduct second-hand interviews with the CIA interrogators, which
Kean and Hamilton felt were needed to “to better judge the
credibility of the witnesses and clarify ambiguities in the
reporting.”[9] Ultimately, the commission was forced to rely on
third-hand intelligence reports prepared by the CIA itself. Many of
these reports were poorly written and incomplete summaries[10]
which, according to the co-chairs “raised almost as many questions
as they answered.”
In order to resolve the many uncertainties the commission prepared a
list of questions, which they then submitted to the CIA. The
questions covered a range of topics, such as the translations from
the Arabic, inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories, the context
of the questioning, how the interrogators followed up certain lines
of questioning, and the assessments of the interrogators themselves.
But the CIA’s response was less than helpful. In their article Kean
and Hamilton state that “the [CIA] general counsel responded in
writing with non-specific replies.” This is a bland way of saying
that the agency stiffed the panel. Not satisfied, Kean and Hamilton
made another attempt to gain access to the captives, but were again
rebuffed during a head-to-head meeting with Tenet in December 2003.
For this reason the ambiguities and other questions went unresolved
and still flaw the commission’s final report. Yet, as I have
indicated, the more serious problem was the panel’s lack of access
to begin with, a problem that was by no means obvious until the
recent story broke in the mainstream press. As we now know, Kean and
Hamilton had inserted a caveat in their report (on page 146)
conceding that they were denied access to the witnesses. Most
readers, however, probably pass right over it without understanding
its awful significance. I know I did, the first time I read the
report.
The latest unraveling also came with a twist. Not even Porter J.
Goss, CIA Director at the the time, knew that the tapes had been
destroyed. That decision, as noted, was made by Jose A, Rodriquez,
the CIA’s Director of Operations–––as in covert operations.
According to the Times, Goss was angered to learn he had been
left out of the loop.[11] But Goss declined to make a public
statement. What are we to make of this? Why was the CIA chief
kept in the dark about the destruction of evidence deemed vital to
the 9/11 investigation? This is just as shocking as the destruction
of the tapes because it points to a disconnect in the chain of
command. Was the CIA’s covert branch, long notorious for staging
rogue operations, up to its old tricks? Are there loose cannons at
Langley still?
The 9/11 Commission Report was packaged and sold to the
American people like some trendy product. The US media has told us
countless times it is the definitive version of the events of
September 11, and in 2008 most Americans probably take this for
granted. When something is repeated enough times on television
people begin to believe it whether it is true or not. This is what
happens when mass marketing is made to serve a political agenda. We
witnessed a similar phenomenon during the run-up to the 2003 US
invasion of Iraq, when President G.W. Bush’s mantra about Saddam’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and his supposed links to Al Qaeda
were drummed into the brain of every American. Today, of course, we
know different. None of it was true. Yet, on the eve of that war a
Washington Post poll found that 70% of Americans believed
that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. The case is a sobering example
of the power of the corporate media to shape public opinion
with–––let us call it by its true name–––propaganda.
OK. It is now 2008. Is America prepared to face reality? The 9/11
Commission’s lack of direct access to the captured members of al
Qaeda can only mean that the official 9/11 investigation was
fundamentally compromised from the outset. No other conclusion is
possible, given the latest disclosures. In their recent article Kean
and Hamilton do not repudiate their own report, at least, not in so
many words. But they come close. They insinuate that the CIA’s
stonewalling now calls into question the veracity of key parts of
the official story, especially the plot against America supposedly
masterminded by Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and approved by Osama bin
Laden. Until now, the nation has assumed that all of this was
soundly based on the testimony of the captured al Qaeda operatives,
several of whom supposedly confessed. This is the story told in the
9/11 Commission Report. However, when you probe more deeply
you discover the devil lurking in the details. I personally believe
there was a plot by al Qaeda to attack America. Yet, without
independent confirmation about what the captives actually confessed
to, precisely what was said and by whom, indeed, whether they
confessed at all, there is absolutely no way for us to know how much
of the official story is true and how much was fabricated by the CIA
for reasons we can only guess.
For all that we know, the entire story is a pack of lies. It comes
down to whether the CIA is telling the truth. Should we believe
them? Another important question is: How did the miscarriage of a
lawful process of discovery happen, given that Congress invested the
9/11 Commission with the authority to subpoena evidence?
Philip Shenon’s New Book
Now, in February 2008, along comes a new “tell-all” book by Philip
Shenon with much to say about the above, and some answers.[12] His
book’s sub-title, The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission,
sounds very promising. Nor does the author fail to deliver. Shenon
covered the 9/11 Commission for the New York Times and over
the course of the investigation he personally interviewed many of
the commissioners and staff. His book is an overnight best-seller,
and for good reason. It is a well-written expose and affords our
best look yet at what went on behind-the-scenes. Instead of
burdening us with his personal opinions, Shenon plays the role of
reporter, and describes what happened through the eyes of the
commissioners and staff. The book provides valuable insights into
why the investigation failed.
Of course, we already knew large parts of the story. We knew about
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice’s incompetence, for
example, and about the serious conflicts of interest on the
commission, particularly in the case of Philip Zelikow, who served
as the panel’s executive director. In that capacity Zelikow
controlled many facets of the investigation, including the
scheduling of witnesses and the vital flow of information between
the staff and commissioners. Zelikow also edited (and, no doubt,
doctored) the final report. In addition to being a long-time
confidante of Rice, with whom he coauthored a book, Zelikow served
on Bush’s transition team and even drafted a national security
strategy paper that became the basis for the Bush administration’s
attempts in late 2002 to justify the coming war against Iraq. It is
hard to believe that Kean and Hamilton, who claim their goal was to
lead a nonpartisan investigation, would have knowingly hired such a
man–––a neocon–––to manage the day-to-day affairs of their panel.
According to Shenon, it only happened because Zelikow failed to
report the full extent of his ties to the Bush administration when
he submitted his resume for the job. If Zelikow had been more
forthcoming he would have been instantly eliminated from
consideration. But this hardly excuses Kean and Hamilton for failing
to properly vet the candidate.
Shenon’s most important revelation is sure to fuel the unraveling
process. Shenon names CIA Director George Tenet as one of the
government officials whom the commissioners and staff were certain
had lied during the hearings.[13] Tenet gave testimony on three
occasions (in addition to the private meetings with Kean and
Hamilton) and in each of these hearings the CIA Director suffered
from a faulty memory, frequently responding with “I can’t remember.”
Initially, the commissioners were inclined to be sympathetic and
gave the director the benefit of the doubt. (Tenet’s supporters at
the agency reportedly made excuses for their boss: George could not
remember because he was dead-tired, physically exhausted from
dealing with the war on terrorism, and suffering from sleep
deprivation–––not getting enough shuteye.[14] Poor old George.) But
gradually the tide turned. By Tenet’s third appearance it was
obvious to everyone he was perjuring himself.
Curiously, there no mention of this spectacle in the 9/11 Commission
Report. Why not? Kean gave the reason at the panel’s first public
hearing in New York City, when he said: “Our...purpose will not be
to point fingers.” The comment was not well received. According to
Shenon, it prompted a rumble in the audience, including sneers from
the families of the victims who wanted those officials responsible
to be held accountable.[15]
It is important to understand that when Tenet stiffed the commission
he was carrying on a time-honored Langley tradition. For the first
25 years of its existence the CIA functioned entirely outside our
constitutional framework of government. Like it or not, this is the
disturbing reality. The state of affairs prevailed until the
Watergate era when the Church hearings exposed a laundry list of
criminal activities by the CIA, such as domestic spying, the
assassination of foreign leaders, the overthrow of governments, plus
the nasty habit of deceiving Congress. The Church hearings shocked
the nation and led to the creation of House and Senate intelligence
committees to provide the democratic oversight that was sorely
lacking. At any rate, that was the intent. But as with so many good
ideas it never worked as expected. The CIA soon found ways around
the oversight process. This is not surprising when you consider that
the agency’s expertise is clandestine operations. Today, the
Intelligence Committees in both houses are widely viewed as a joke,
and despite a chorus of denials from the agency and its admirers the
perception is undoubtedly correct. To his credit, Shenon touches on
the problem. The author mentions that one of the commissioners,
former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), once served on the Senate
Intelligence Committee but quit in frustration because of the lack
of any serious business. Said Gorton: “I felt it was a useless
exercise–––I never felt I was being told anything that I hadn’t
learned in the Washington Post.”[16] Does such an agency deserve our
trust and respect?
As to why Kean and Hamilton did not make more aggressive use of
their authority to subpoena evidence, Shenon’s answer is not very
satisfying but rings true. The co-chairs were overcautious because
they wished to avoid a legal showdown that would drag out in the
courts.[17] A legal stalemate threatened to delay their
investigation beyond the mandated deadline, which in their view
would have been tantamount to a Bush victory. It was a huge mistake,
however. Had Kean and Hamilton stood tough and issued blanket
subpoenas early in the investigation as their legal counsel advised,
the inevitable showdown in the courts would have worked in their
favor. Bush and Tenet would have been perceived–––correctly–––as
obstructing the investigation and would have come under increasing
pressure and scrutiny. That sort of confrontation would have served
the discovery process and the cause of 9/11 truth. Unfortunately, it
didn’t happen. This helps to explain why the official investigation
failed in its stated objective: “to provide the fullest possible
account of the events surrounding 9/11.”[18]
Although Philip Shenon supports the official narrative, his research
was so narrowly focused that his rather casual discounting of
“conspiracy theorists” can do no harm to the 9/11 truth movement.
(Here, of course, “conspiracy theorist” means anyone who does not
agree with the official conspiracy theory.) Judging from his book,
Shenon appears to be genuinely unaware that in 2007 the evidence
shifted decisively in favor of the “conspiracy theorists.” It is
ironic that, whatever his personal views, his book is likely to
speed the unraveling process.
The showdown with the CIA, though long delayed, appears to be
developing as I write, and it portends–––I believe–––a coming shift
in the terms of the debate, away from the previous discussion about
the incompetence of officials and “security failures” to more grave
issues. But how this important drama will be played out remains
unclear. Obviously, a new legally empowered investigative body is
urgently needed, since the 9/11 Commission no longer exists. While
there are many reasons to worry about the future––––we have entered
the most dangerous time in our history––––the good news is that,
once begun, the unraveling process is irreversible. It moves in only
one direction: forward. As in the famous nursery rhyme, the official
reality is falling apart and the pieces will never be put back
together again.
Mark H. Gaffney's
forthcoming book,
The 911 Mystery Plane and
the Vanishing of America, will be released in September 2008.
Mark's latest, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, was a
finalist for the 2004 Narcissus Book Award. Mark can be reached
for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net Visit Mark's web site
at
www.gnosticsecrets.com
1 Dan
Eggen, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon,” The
Washington Post, August 2, 2006.
2 The Jones paper is posted at
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf
3 Mark Mazzetti, “CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations,”
New York Times, December 7, 2007.
4 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, “Stonewalled by the CIA,”
New York Times, January 2, 2008.
5 “CIA destroyed terrorism suspect videotapes. Director says
interrogation tapes were security risk. Critics call move illegal,”
NBC News, December 7, 2007.
6 Mark Mazzetti, “CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations,”
New York Times, December 7, 2007.
7 Ibid.
8 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, “Stonewalled by the CIA,”
New York Times, January 2, 2008.
9 The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, W.W.
Norton & Co., New York, p.146.
10 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the
9/11 Commission, Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2008,
p.391.
11 Mark Mazzetti, “CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations,”
New York Times, December 7, 2007.
12 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the
9/11 Commission, Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2008, p.
360.
13 Ibid., p. 360.
14 Ibid., pp. 258-260.
15 Ibid., p. 99.
16 Ibid., p. 229.
17 Ibid. pp. 94 and 201.
18 The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, W.W.
Norton & Co., New York, p. xvi.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=8096
|