News Of Great Impact

     Page 30

 

       Indonesian President Accuses Western Intel Of Being Behind Bali Bombings

       US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax - Breaking News Scientist  24 September 2005

               Scott Ritter: Neocons as Parasites

              FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tape

             Theologian Says Controlled Demolition is Now a Fact, Not a Theory!!!

 

 

 

              Theologian Says Controlled Demolition is Now a Fact, Not a Theory!!!

                Kevin Barrett – Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance For 911 Oct 22, 2005

In two speeches to overflow crowds in New York last weekend, notable theologian David Ray Griffin argued that recently revealed evidence seals the case that the Twin Towers and WTC-7 were destroyed by controlled demolition with explosives. Despite the many enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Griffin concluded, "It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government."

On Oct. 15th and 16th, New Yorkers filled two venues to hear the prominent theologian and author of two books on 9/11 give a presentation entitled "The Destruction of the Trade Towers: A Christian Theologian Speaks Out." Dr. Griffin has continued to blaze a trail of courage, leading where most media and elected officials have feared to tread. His presentation went straight to the core of one of the most powerful indictments of the official story, the collapse of the towers and WTC 7.

Dr. Griffin included excerpts from the firemen’s tapes which were recently released as a result of a prolonged court battle led by victim’s families represented by attorney Norman Siegel and reported in the NY Times. He also included statements by many witnesses. These sources gave ample testimony giving evidence of explosions going off in the buildings. A 12 minute film was shown for the audiences, who saw for themselves the undeniable evidence for controlled demolition.

Dr. Griffin listed ten characteristics of the collapses which all indicate that the buildings did not fall due to being struck by planes or the ensuing fires. He explained the buildings fell suddenly without any indication of collapse. They fell straight into their own footprint at free-fall speed, meeting virtually no resistance as they fell--a physical impossibility unless all vertical support was being progressively removed by explosives severing the core columns.

The towers were built to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 and 160 mile per hour winds, and nothing about the plane crashes or ensuing fires gave any indication of causing the kind of damage that would be necessary to trigger even a partial or progressive collapse, much less the shredding of the buildings into dust and fragments that could drop at free-fall speed.

The massive core columns--the most significant structural feature of the buildings, whose very existence is denied in the official 9/11 Commission Report--were severed into uniform 30 foot sections, just right for the 30-foot trucks used to remove them quickly before a real investigation could transpire.

There was a volcanic-like dust cloud from the concrete being pulverized, and no physical mechanism other than explosives can begin to explain how so much of the buildings' concrete was rendered into extremely fine dust. The debris was ejected horizontally several hundred feet in huge fan shaped plumes stretching in all directions, with telltale "squibs" following the path of the explosives downward.

These are all facts that have been avoided by mainstream and even most of the alternative media. Again, these are characteristics of the kind of controlled demolitions that news people and firefighters were describing on the morning of 9/11. Those multiple first-person descriptions of controlled demolition were hidden away for almost four years by the City of New York until a lawsuit finally forced the city to release them. Dr. Griffin's study of these accounts has led him beyond his earlier questioning of the official story of the collapses, to his above-quoted conclusion: The destruction of the three WTC buildings with explosives by US government terrorists is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact that has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s important to note that Dr. Griffin is one of many prominent intellectuals--including the likes of Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Peter Dale Scott, Richard Falk, Paul Craig Roberts, Morgan Reynolds and Peter Phillips--who have seen through the major discrepancies of the official explanation of 9/11 and have risen to challenge it. These brave individuals represent the tip of an ever-growing iceberg of discreet 9/11 skeptics. Indeed, 9/11 skepticism appears to be almost universal among intellectuals who have examined the evidence, since there has not yet been a single serious attempt to refute the case developed by Dr. Griffin and such like-minded thinkers as Nafeez Ahmed and Mike Ruppert. As for the general public, polls have shown that a strong majority of Canadians (63%, Toronto Star, May '04) and half of New Yorkers (Zogby, August 2004) agree that top US leaders conspired to murder nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11/01.

How, then, can the mainstream US media continue to ignore the story of the century? Perhaps the best answer was given by Dr. Griffin himself in the conclusion of his talk, and is worth quoting at length:

"The evidence for this conclusion (that 9/11 was an inside job) has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream press, perhaps under the guise of obeying President Bush’s advice not to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories." We have seen, however, that it is the Bush administration’s conspiracy theory that is the outrageous one, because it is violently contradicted by numerous facts, including some basic laws of physics.

"There is, of course, another reason why the mainstream press has not pointed out these contradictions. As a recent letter to the Los Angeles Times said:

"'The number of contradictions in the official version of . . . 9/11 is so overwhelming that . . . it simply cannot be believed. Yet . . . the official version cannot be abandoned because the implication of rejecting it is far too disturbing: that we are subject to a government conspiracy of "X-Files" proportions and insidiousness.'

"The implications are indeed disturbing. Many people who know or at least suspect the truth about 9/11 probably believe that revealing it would be so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability that it is better to pretend to believe the official version. I would suggest, however, that any merit this argument may have had earlier has been overcome by more recent events and realizations. Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11, because the values reflected in that horrendous event have been reflected in the Bush administration’s lies to justify the attack on Iraq, its disregard for environmental science and the Bill of Rights, its criminal negligence both before and after Katrina, and now its apparent plan not only to weaponize space but also to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

"In light of this situation and the facts discussed in this lecture---as well as dozens of more problems in the official account of 9/11 discussed elsewhere---I call on the New York Times to take the lead in finally exposing to the American people and the world the truth about 9/11. Taking the lead on such a story will, of course, involve enormous risks. But if there is any news organization with the power, the prestige, and the credibility to break this story, it is the Times. It performed yeoman service in getting the 9/11 oral histories released. But now the welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed. I am calling on the Times to rise to the occasion.

Dr. Griffin’s speech given at the University of Wisconsin earlier this year, entitled "9/11 and the American Empire," was broadcast twice on C-SPAN. In late September Dr. Griffin was asked to give expert testimony at hearings sponsored by Cynthia McKinney and the Congressional Black Caucus investigating the 9/11 Commission Report. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Claremont College in California.

 
This weekend's events were sponsored by www.NY911truth.org , WBAI and the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth: http://mujca.com .

Kevin Barrett
Coordinator, MUJCA-NET
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1932.htm
 

Last updated 27/10/2005

 

 

Indonesian President Accuses Western Intel Of Being Behind Bali Bombings

Free Market News | October 17 2005

An extraordinary documentary produced by Australian public television, "Inside Indonesia's War on Terrorism," will be rebroadcast again on Monday, October 17 at 1PM.

In the program which first aired on October 12, the blind, former President of Indonesia – reportedly more trusted than any other official in the country - told SBS-TV Date-Line, Australia’s state-run public TV, that the horrendous Bali bombing, which killed more than 200 in Indonesia, was planned and carried out by Indonesian police or military personnel at the behest of Western powers.

The transcript has already reportedly been removed from the archives of the SBS, Australia's Special Broadcasting Services, but certain alternative Internet sites, apparently anticipating this, claim to have downloaded the transcript and have reproduced it in its entirety. One of them is GlobalResearch.ca, and the excerpt that follows is taking from its site. It features Abdurrahman Wahid, the former Indonesian president who has achieved an almost iconic status in that ordinarily peaceful but impoverished country.

---------------------------- Begin transcript cite ----------------------------

Today is the third anniversary of the first Bali attack that saw 202 people killed, including 88 Australians. Abdurrahman Wahid now has questions about that attack as well. While some regard him as an eccentric, he is the former president and is often described as the conscience of the nation, revered by tens of millions of moderate Muslims. As such, he's one of only a few people publicly prepared to canvass the unthinkable - that Indonesian authorities may have had a hand in the Bali atrocity. He believes that the plan for the second, massive at the Sari Club, which caused the majority of casualties, was hatched way above the head of uneducated villagers like Amrozi.

ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Amrozi was involved in the lighter bomb. That's a problem always. Even though I agree that he should be given a stiff punishment, but it doesn't mean that he is involved. No, no, no.

REPORTER: So you believe that the Bali bombers had no idea that there was a second bomb?

ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Yeah, precisely.

REPORTER: And who would you suggest planted the second bomb?

ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Well, it looks like the police.

REPORTER: The police?

ABDURRAHMAN WAHID: Or the armed forces, I don't know.

Wahid's speculation is chilling and again there's no evidence to support it. But there's no doubt that he's a barometer of how many Indonesians view the whole terror campaign.

---------------------------- End transcript cite ----------------------------

The news about the program's upcoming second broadcast was carried early Sunday morning eastern standard time by Rense.com, the powerful, alternative Internet news site denounced by the State Dept., along with some others, as unreliable and symptomatic of Net disinformation.

But the State Dept. will have to work hard to explain what may become the most momentous J’accuse since France’s Dreyfus Affair.

Rense.Com described the program as follows, “In this documentary, which is described as the world's most explosive expose of International Intelligence Agencies ops and cover-ups, the former president of Indonesia (who Australians describe as the only honest high-level Indonesian politician), disclosed that the Indonesian police or military are behind the Bali bombings. Also in this program, Indonesian journalists and researchers state, unequivocally, that 'Moslem terrorists organizations' DO NOT EXIST as portrayed by the government - that they are created and coordinated to act by military-connected provocateurs. … They further claim that the Indonesian military is totally corrupt and that Generals and politicians are pocketing vast hordes of money they receive to 'fight terrorism' - 'terrorism' which, in fact, they are creating themselves."

The Australian ( www.Australian.news.com ) carried an analysis of the program from which the following is excerpted:

“The program … claims a key figure behind the formation of terror group Jemaah Islamiah was an Indonesian spy. Former terrorist Umar Abduh, who is now a researcher and writer, told Dateline Indonesian authorities had a hand in many terror groups. 'There is not a single Islamic group either in the movement or the political groups that is not controlled by (Indonesian) intelligence,' he said. Abduh has written a book on Teungku Fauzi Hasbi, a key figure in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) who had close contact with JI operations chief Hambali and lived next door to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir. He says Hasbi was a secret agent for Indonesia's military intelligence while at the same time a key player in creating JI. Security analyst John Mempi told SBS that Hasbi, who was also known as Abu Jihad, had played a key role in JI in its early years. … Another terrorism expert, George Aditjondro, said a bombing in May this year that killed 23 people in the Christian village of Tentena, in central Sulawesi, had been organised by senior military and police officers. 'This is a strategy of depopulating an area and when an area has been depopulated both becoming refugees or becoming paramilitary fighters then that is the time when they can invest their money in major resource exploitation there,' he said."

 

 

 

US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax - Breaking News Scientist  

24 September 2005


David Hambling


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8044 

THE US military wants to buy large quantities of anthrax, in a
controversial
move that is likely to raise questions over its commitment to treaties
designed to limit the spread of biological weapons.
A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's
Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the
production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and
for
equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents.
Issued earlier this year, the contracts were discovered by Edward
Hammond,
director of the Sunshine Project, a US-German organisation that
campaigns
against the use of biological and chemical weapons.
One "biological services" contract specifies: "The company must have the
ability and be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at
1500-litre quantities." Other contracts are for fermentation equipment
for
producing 3000-litre batches of an unspecified biological agent, and
sheep
carcasses to test the efficiency of an incinerator for the disposal of
infected livestock.
Major concern
Although the Sterne strain is not thought to be harmful to humans and is
used for vaccination, the contracts have caused major concern.
"It raises a serious question over how the US is going to demonstrate
its
compliance with obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention if
it
brings these tanks online," says Alan Pearson, programme director for
biological and chemical weapons at the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation in Washington DC. "If one can grow the Sterne strain
in
these units, one could also grow the Ames strain, which is quite
lethal."
The US renounced biological weapons in 1969, but small quantities of
lethal
anthrax were still being produced at Dugway as recently as 1998.
It is not known what use the biological agents will be put to. They
could be
used to test procedures to decontaminate vehicles or buildings, or to
test
an "agent defeat" warhead designed to destroy stores of chemical and
biological weapons.
Highly provocative
There are even fears that they could be used to determine how
effectively
anthrax is dispersed when released from bombs or crop-spraying
aircraft. "I
can definitely see them testing biological weapons delivery systems for
threat assessment," says Hammond.
Whatever use it is put to, however, the move could be seen as highly
provocative by other nations, he says. "What would happen to the
Biological
Weapons Convention if other countries followed suit and built large
biological production facilities at secretive military bases known for
weapons testing?"
A spokesperson for Dugway said the anthrax contract is still at the
pre-solicitation stage, and the base has not yet acquired the agent.
They
refused to say what it will be used for.

 

 

Scott Ritter: Neocons as Parasites


By Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story.


Posted March 30, 2005.

http://www.alternet.org/story/21631

Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter says neocons are parasites "that
latch onto democracy until it is no longer convenient."  
 
This is the third of Raw Story's series of conversations with former U.N.
weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In the first installment, Ritter spoke about the
situations as regards weapons in Iraq, Iran and Russia. In the second, Ritter
enumerated what he saw as the failings of the U.S. intelligence operation,
calling the CIA 'terminally ill.'

In this final part of the three-part series, the former weapons inspector
details his beliefs about the neoconservative movement, the American legislative
process and his hopes for the future.

Congressional Catch-22

Larisa Alexandrovna: Paul Wolfowitz stated prior to the Iraq invasion that
Iraqi reconstruction would pay for itself. It seems that Mr. Wolfowitz, now
charged with handling the World Bank, miscalculated. What is going on with the oil
in Iraq?

Scott Ritter: Paul Wolfowitz was a salesman; his job was to sell a war. He
acknowledged this in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, in which he
acknowledged that WMDs and the threat they posed, was nothing more than a vehicle to
sell this war to America. Now you [get] to the war itself and selling it to
Congress and [the] questions: How long will this take? Or how much will this
cost?

Paul Wolfowitz lied to Congress about the costs of war. There is not a
responsible member of government who thought this would be quick and cheap. There
was nobody who believed that Iraq oil would pay for itself, no one in the oil
business thought so.

What about oil companies, were they for the war or against it?

No oil professional in their right mind would support what is happening in
Iraq. This isn't part of a grand 'oil' strategy; it is simply pure unadulterated
incompetence.

So they are concerned about their bottom lines, and chaos doesn't forward
that goal.

Right. Oil company executives are businessmen and they are in a business that
requires long-term stability. They love dictators because they bring with
them long-term stability. They don't like new democracies because they are messy
and unstable. I have not run into a major oil company that is willing to
refurbish the Iraq oil fields and invest in oil field exploration and development.
These are multi-billion dollar investments that, in order to be profitable,
must be played out over decades. And in Iraq today you cannot speak out to
projecting any stability in the near to mid-future.

OK, so now to Congress. They approved the war. I know we have discussed the
post-9/11 reality and the pressure of not seeming unpatriotic.

Yes, but they also approved the war because Congress had been locked into a
corner by the neocons in 1998. Our policy in Iraq since 1991 has been regime
change.

How many times did G. H. W. Bush have to say 'we will not remove sanctions
until Saddam is removed from power?' Bill Clinton inherited this policy of
regime change, but the Bush policy was not an active policy, it was a passive
policy to strangle, as it were, Saddam. It was not our policy to take him out
through military strength. Saddam, however, was able to out-maneuver this policy,
he did not get weaker he got stronger. The neocons played on the political
implications of this, to box the Clinton administration and Congress into a corner.

When you declare Saddam to be a threat with WMDs and then do nothing, you
have a political problem. The neocons played on this. In 1998, the Heritage
Foundation, Paul Wolfowitz and the American Enterprise Institute basically drafted
legislation [that] became the Iraq Liberation Act. This is public law. So when
people ask why did Congress vote for the current war in Iraq, it is simply
that they had already voted for it in 1998, they were trapped by their own vote.

So your implication is that in our current foreign policy the neocons have
set the tone via thinktanks or supposed think-tanks?

Yes. Look at who funds the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage
Foundation, and I think you'll have your answer.

The American Heritage Leninist

What do you think these institutions are trying to achieve? I know the public
claim is conservative values, but there is a some speculation regarding what
appears more like Leninist, even Trotskyite values, especially given the
current domestic government involvement and control or attempt at control of almost
every facet of society, economy, family, etc. Even the term 'Leninist' was
used by the Heritage Foundation to describe their approach to Social Security
during the 1980s (read it here – PDF).

A high-level source, a neocon at that, within the system has said to me
directly that 'John Bolton's job is to destroy the U.N., Rice's job is to destroy
the State Department and replace it with a vehicle of facilitation for making
the Pentagon's national security policy.'

And what of Karen Hughes' appointment?

Hughes – she is a salesperson; she will sell the policy. She is irrelevant.
She is nothing. Her appointment means nothing. Rice has already capitulated to
the Pentagon and the White House, and Hughes' appointment is but a
manifestation of that larger reality.

The neocons are parasites. They build nothing. They bring nothing. They don't
have a foundation. They don't stand for business. They don't stand for
ideology. They use a host to facilitate and grow their own power. They are parasites
that latch onto oil until it is no longer convenient. They latch on to
democracy until it is no longer convenient.

Rice's appointment to the State Department is simply to reshape it into a
neocon vehicle.

Why the State Department? Why Rice?

The State Department still has free thinkers in it. Rice is a dilettante.
Anyone who was there during the Reagan era and her advising on Soviet policy
knows how inept she is. She is not there because she is a brilliant secretary of
state.

The media has bought into this, because the neocons cleverly put a woman, an
African-American woman at that, into this position. So when Rice goes abroad,
people do not look at the stupid things she says, they look at what she was
wearing and such.

'Godless people who want power, nothing more'

So you believe the neocons are elitist parasites?

Yes, elitism is the perfect term.

Do you consider it localized or global elitism?

The neocons believe in what they think is a noble truth, power of the few,
the select few. These are godless people who want power, nothing more. They do
not have a country or an allegiance, they have an agenda. These people might
hold American passports, but they are not Americans because they do not believe
in the Constitution. They believe in the power of the few, not a government
for or by the people. They are a few and their agenda is global.

You suggest the Republican Party is simply an organizational host. Is there
any vestige left of the host or has the entire party been devoured?

The Republicans have been neutered by the neocons.

Your concept of neocons seems confusing because, using your host/parasite
paradigm, they cannot tell between the host and the parasite which invades it.

I know people who have worked for George H. W. Bush, both when he was vice
president and president. Bush Sr. called the neocons the 'crazies in the
basement.' I think it is dangerous to confuse the two, because there are Americans
who love their country and are conservatives who do not support what is going
on. Until the host rejects the parasite, it is difficult to separate the two.
Brent Scowcroft for example is not a neocon, yet people call him one. Scowcroft
worked hard to reign in the 'crazies in the basement,' as did Reagan.

Many have defined the neocon movement based on the highly intellectual,
albeit warped, musings of Strauss and Bloom. Yet one could hardly call the current
leadership intellectual or even capable of digesting this philosophy. Even
neocon thinkers are jumping off the ship. Do you believe this is simply
trickle-down Machiavellianism in much the same way that Communism trickled down as an
aberration of its original intent?

No plan survives initial contact with the enemy. The neocon ideology was
always hypothetical in its pure application until now. What we are seeing today is
what happens when theory (bad theory at that) makes contact with reality. You
get chaos, through which the neocons are now trying to navigate.

Is Karl Rove a neocon?

Karl Rove is not part of the neo-conservative master group; he is a host.

Then who is steering the ship?

An oligarchy of 'public servant' classes who are drawn from business, and
serve naked economic interests. This is true whether you are Democrat or
Republican.

Patriot Enactment

Several insiders have expressed concern over possible oil shortage riots.
Would the Patriot Act be put to use, in your opinion, to address such riots?

[The Patriot Act] is simply the neocons putting their judicial agenda in
place by other means. It was a compilation of all of the conservative initiatives,
not neocon initiatives, which the conservative Republicans have been pushing
for, including a more conservative law enforcement element.

This is not unhealthy as long is it is done properly, through legislation,
proper channels of debate and discourse. A lot of this had been submitted in the
past, but was rejected. After 9/11 all of these initiatives were lumped
together.

There are some things in the Patriot Act I agree with, but the Patriot Act
requires a responsible society. The neocons have no interest in a responsible
society; they simply used the conservatives as a vehicle to push an agenda to
assault individual civil liberties.

As the Patriot Act is now, how it came about, is entirely un-American. It is
extreme legislation that does nothing to address the issues it professes to,
but moreover, it is, as an existing law, un-American. What makes it un-American
is that no one read it before they voted for it. So the process was
un-American, and the motivation behind it was un-American. We cannot have a nation that
is governed by fear. The Patriot Act is un-American simply because it exists.

So how do citizens address this situation since the very means of addressing
it via Congress seem to have been closed off?

Congress has ceased to function as a viable tool of government. What is
needed is for leaders of honor to resign in protest.

I have had this conversation with some in Congress and have asked about their
thoughts on shutting down Congress and cleaning house. Their counter is that
they are afraid to 'leave the crazies in control.'

They are already in control. If the people want to heal this country, the
people have to purge the failing of this country. Vote them out. It might take
two or three cycles, but it will happen and it will take time.

Everyone who voted for the war in Iraq should be voted out of office because
it violated article six of the Constitution. Everyone who voted for the
Patriot Act needs to go because they did not represent the people by voting on
legislation they did not read. They have to go, regardless of party. They have
through their actions decided who stays and who goes.

Hope, and worries, for the future

You suggest Americans vote out all who voted for these measures. If New
Yorkers voted out Hillary, who voted for both the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq,
and who is also leading the pack of the Democratic Party for the 2008
nomination, what then?

Hillary is the manifestation of all that ails the Democratic Party. She
stands for nothing. She has been compromised by her voting record ... how can she
stand for anything worth supporting? And yet she will be the Democratic nominee
in 2008, thus guaranteeing another neocon/Republican victory. 'Dump Hillary
Now' would be the smartest move Dean could make as the new Democratic National
Committee Chair. ... Like I said, it might take two or three cycles, but it
will happen.

What about Dean?

Dean has to be part of the process of rebuilding and that will take time.
Dean cannot run for president, because Dean cannot run as a Democrat – the party
is not set up to sustain someone like him. He is one of the exceptions in a
corrupt party. He is also not corrupted by his voting record. He is someone who
represents something, he did not vote for the war in Iraq, for example.

We talked about this current social crisis as a closed loop during the second
installment. Have you ever seen a loop like this throughout the history of
the U.S.? What does this mean?

The American experiment is much too complex to be destroyed by the neocons.
In the end, the neocons will lose. It may take ten to twelve more years, and
the costs will be horrific, but America will survive. There will be one hell of
a mess to clean up, though, after the fall of the neocons.

Where do you see America, should things continue as is, five years from now?

At war, bankrupt morally and fiscally, and in great pain ... and only
half-way through the nightmare. Ten to twelve years is what we will have to get
through, but we will get through it.

 

 

 

washingtonpost.com

 
FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tape
Recording Contained Accounts of Communications With Hijacked Planes

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 2004; 6:16 PM

Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration managers, according to a government investigative report issued today.

It is unclear what information was on the tape because no one ever listened to, transcribed or duplicated it, the report by the Department of Transportation inspector general said.

The report concluded that the FAA generally cooperated with the independent panel investigating the terrorist attacks by providing documents about its activities on Sept. 11, but the actions of two FAA managers "did not, in our view, serve the interests of the FAA, the Department [of Transportation] or the public."

The report was conducted at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, complained that the FAA had been less than forthcoming in turning over documents and issued a subpoena to the agency for more information.

The FAA said it was cooperating fully with the 9/11 panel. The agency said it took disciplinary action against the employee who destroyed the tape but declined to elaborate on what kind of action they took. [Earlier, an FAA official incorrectly stated that the agency took action against two employees in the case.]

"We believe the audiotape in question appears to be consistent with written statements and other materials provided to FBI investigators and would not have added in any significant way to the information contained in what has already been provided to investigators and members of the 9/11 commission," said FAA spokesman Greg Martin.

Hours after the hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, an FAA manager at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center gathered six controllers who communicated or tracked two of the hijacked planes and recorded in a one-hour interview their personal accounts of what occurred, the report stated.

The manager, who is not named in the report, said that his intentions were to provide quick information to federal officials investigating the attack before the air traffic controllers involved took sick leave for the stress of their experiences, as is common practice.

According to the report, a second manager at the New York center promised a union official representing the controllers that he would "get rid of" the tape after controllers used it to provide written statements to federal officials about the events of the day.

Instead, the second manager said he destroyed the tape between December 2001 and January 2002 by crushing the tape with his hand, cutting it into small pieces and depositing the pieces into trash cans around the building, the report said.

The tape's existence was never made known to federal officials investigating the attack, nor to FAA officials in Washington. Staff members of the 9/11 panel found out about the tape during interviews with some controllers who participated in the recording.

One controller said she asked to listen to the tape in order to prepare her written account of her experience, but one of the managers denied her request.

The New York managers acknowledged that they received an e-mail from FAA officials instructing them to retain all materials related to the Sept. 11 attacks. "If a question arises whether or not you should retain the data, RETAIN IT," the report quoted the e-mail as saying.

But the managers decided not to include the tape in a November 2001 "Formal Accident Package" report the office prepared because one manager said he did not want to break his word to the union official and he did not think the tape should ever have been made.

The inspector general concluded today that the managers' actions resulted in the loss of potential evidence that would allow the 9/11 commission to compare controllers' recollection of the events immediately after the attacks with the written statements prepared three weeks later.

"The destruction of evidence in the Government's possession, in this case an audiotape -- particularly during times of national crisis -- has the effect of fostering an appearance that information is being withheld from the public."

 

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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