THE ELEVENTH DAY: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden

[John Simkin]

Message from ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The 9/11 book on which we’ve been laboring for the past five years is about to be published – on the milestone tenth anniversary of the attacks.

The U.S. edition, entitled:

THE ELEVENTH DAY: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, comes from the Ballantine imprint of Random House next week - on July 19.

The U.K. edition, entitled:

THE ELEVENTH DAY: The Ultimate Account of 9/11 will come from Transworld on August 19.

We believe the book will stand as a record of what happened, correct wild – but widely credited – rumor, and reveal truths that officialdom has sought to conceal.

We shall be very grateful if our friends and colleagues would spread the word – or even buy a copy!

You can pre-order from Amazon now – as a hardback or on Kindle.

If you do, we promise not to be caught busking at Piccadilly Circus……

ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN

[William Kelly]

Message from ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The 9/11 book on which we've been laboring for the past five years is about to be published – on the milestone tenth anniversary of the attacks.

The U.S. edition, entitled:

THE ELEVENTH DAY: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, comes from the Ballantine imprint of Random House next week - on July 19.

The U.K. edition, entitled:

THE ELEVENTH DAY: The Ultimate Account of 9/11 will come from Transworld on August 19.

We believe the book will stand as a record of what happened, correct wild – but widely credited – rumor, and reveal truths that officialdom has sought to conceal.

We shall be very grateful if our friends and colleagues would spread the word – or even buy a copy!

You can pre-order from Amazon now – as a hardback or on Kindle.

If you do, we promise not to be caught busking at Piccadilly Circus……

ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN

Congrats to Tony and Robbyn for their years put in to this project, and I'm sure it will be more thorough and less politically motivated and controlled disinformed as the 9/11 Commission Final Report.

If I wanted a clear and concise independnet report on any subject,however complicated, I would trust Tony and Robbyn Summers to research,analyze, write a report that I would believe to be as complete and accurate asany that could be produced.

They are pretty much the most thoughtful and meticulousresearchers and writers I know. When that topic is bin Laden and 9/11, then Itruly look forward to what they have to say, as I know they will focus on theimportant issues, determine what happened as best they can, answer whatquestions they can and point to those questions they couldn't answer thatremain outstanding.

Of course there are going to be those who claim that noplanes hit the WTC or Pentagon, that missiles were fired instead, that itwasn't terrorists who hijacked those planes but they were remotely controlledby the White House, an inside job to bring about wars, a national securitystate and decades of repression.

And all those who disagree with this perspective aregovernment minions and disinformation agents, like me, Tony and Robbyn Summersand other reasonable people who actually have studied the events of 9/11 inmore than just an offhand manner.

Perhaps there is a forum where this book can be rationallydiscussed by those who get to sit down and read it, but I can see the storm acomin', and those who know that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush White House,MI6 and the Jews will make sure it doesn't get a fair hearing, as they alreadyknow what really happened.

Edited July 11, 2011 by William Kelly

[Michael Hogan]

Summers and Swan wrote an article adapted from The Eleventh Day for the August issue of Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/08/9-11-2011-201108?currentPage=1

[William Kelly]

Summers and Swan wrote an article adapted from The Eleventh Day for the August issue of Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfai...8?currentPage=1

Thanks for that link Michael,

The Kingdom and the Towers

Was there a foreign government behind the 9/11 attacks? A decade later, Americans still haven't been given the whole story, while a key 28-page section of Congress's Joint Inquiry report remains censored. Gathering years of leaks and leads, in an adaptation from their new book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan examine the connections between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi), the Bush White House's decision to ignore or bury evidence, and the frustration of lead investigators—including 9/11-commission staffers, counterterrorism officials, and senators on both sides of the aisle.By Anthony Summers Adapted from The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robynn Swan to be published this month by Ballantine Books; © 2011 by the authors.

For 10 years now, a major question about 9/11 has remained unresolved. It was, as 9/11-commission chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton recalled, "Had the hijackers received any support from foreign governments?" There was information that pointed to the answer, but the commissioners apparently deemed it too disquieting to share in full with the public.

The idea that al-Qaeda had not acted alone was there from the start. "The terrorists do not function in a vacuum," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters the week after 9/11. "I know a lot, and what I have said, as clearly as I know how, is that states are supporting these people." Pressed to elaborate, Rumsfeld was silent for a long moment. Then, saying it was a sensitive matter, he changed the subject.

Three years later, the commission would consider whether any of three foreign countries in particular might have had a role in the attacks. Two were avowed foes of the United States: Iraq and Iran. The third had long been billed as a close friend: Saudi Arabia.

In its report, the commission stated that it had seen no "evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

Iran, the commission found, had long had contacts with al-Qaeda and had allowed its operatives—including a number of the future hijackers—to travel freely through its airports. Though there was no evidence that Iran "was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack," the commissioners called on the government to investigate further.

This year, in late May, attorneys for bereaved 9/11 family members said there was revealing new testimony from three Iranian defectors. Former senior commission counsel Dietrich Snell was quoted as saying in an affidavit that there was now "convincing evidence the government of Iran provided material support to al-Qaeda in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attack." That evidence, however, has yet to surface.

As for Saudi Arabia, America's purported friend, you would have thought from the reaction of the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that the commission had found nothing dubious in his country's role. "The clear statements by this independent, bipartisan commission," he declared, "have debunked the myths that have cast fear and doubt over Saudi Arabia." Yet no finding in the report categorically exonerated Saudi Arabia.

The commission's decision as to what to say on the subject had been made amid discord and tension. Late one night in 2004, as last-minute changes to the report were being made, investigators who had worked on the Saudi angle received alarming news. Their team leader, Dietrich Snell, was at the office, closeted with executive director Philip Zelikow, making major changes to their material and removing key elements.

The investigators, Michael Jacobson and Rajesh De, hurried to the office to confront Snell. With lawyerly caution, he said he thought there was insufficient substance to their case against the Saudis. They considered the possibility of resigning, then settled for a compromise. Much of the telling information they had collected would survive in the report, but only in tiny print, hidden in the endnotes.

The commissioners did say in the body of the report that the long official friendship of the United States and Saudi Arabia could not be unconditional. The relationship had to be about more than oil, had to include—and this in bold type—"a commitment to fight the violent extremists who foment hatred."

It had been far from clear, and for the longest time, that the Saudis were thus committed. More than seven years before 9/11, the first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Khilewi, had defected to the United States, bringing with him thousands of pages of documents that, he said, showed the regime's corruption, abuse of human rights, and support for terrorism. At the same time, he addressed a letter to then crown prince Abdullah, calling for "a move towards democracy." The Saudi royals, Khilewi said, responded by threatening his life. The U.S. government, for its part, offered him little protection. F.B.I. officials, moreover, declined to accept the documents the defecting diplomat had brought with him.

In support of his claim that Saudi Arabia supported terrorism, Khilewi spoke of an episode relevant to the first, 1993, attempt to bring down the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. "A Saudi citizen carrying a Saudi diplomatic passport," he said, "gave money to Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing," when the al-Qaeda terrorist was in the Philippines. The Saudi relationship with Yousef, the defector claimed, "is secret and goes through Saudi intelligence."

The reference to a Saudi citizen having funded Yousef closely fit the part played by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law Jamal Khalifa. He was active in the Philippines, fronted as a charity organizer at the relevant time, and founded a charity that gave money to Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief al-Qaeda planner of 9/11, during the initial plotting to destroy U.S. airliners.

When Khalifa returned to Saudi Arabia, in 1995—following detention in the United States and subsequent acquittal on terrorism charges in Jordan—he was, according to C.I.A. bin Laden chief Michael Scheuer, met by a limousine and a welcome home from "a high-ranking official." A Philippine newspaper would suggest that the official had been Prince Sultan, then a deputy prime minister and minister of defense and aviation, today the heir to the Saudi throne.

In June 1996, according to published reports, while in Paris for the biennial international weapons bazaar, a group including a Saudi prince and Saudi financiers gathered at the Royal Monceau hotel, near the Saudi Embassy. The subject was bin Laden and what to do about him. After two recent bombings of American targets in Saudi Arabia, one of them just that month, the fear was that the Saudi elite itself would soon be targeted. At the meeting at the Monceau, French intelligence reportedly learned, it was decided that bin Laden was to be kept at bay by payment of huge sums in protection money.

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden's extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

The Kingdom and the Towers | Politics | Vanity Fair

Edited July 11, 2011 by William Kelly

[Ron Ecker]

those who know that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush White House,MI6 and the Jews will make sure it doesn't get a fair hearing, as they alreadyknow what really happened.

I don't know "what really happened," but all you need to do is look at the concerted behavior of the men at the top of the U.S. defense command during the attacks to see that they knew what was happening (with the exception, I'm sure, of the dolt Bush, who was simply controlled), and they made sure to sit on their butts till the attacks were over. Their behavior screams guilty knowledge. But I will look forward to the book's explanation of this behavior, since no one else who believes these men are innocent lambs has even tried to explain it (other than buying Bush's lame excuse about wanting to look calm and collected, when in fact one of his handlers held up a sign during the pet goat story telling him "Don't say anything yet").

[William Kelly]

those who know that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush White House,MI6 and the Jews will make sure it doesn't get a fair hearing, as they alreadyknow what really happened.

I don't know "what really happened," but all you need to do is look at the concerted behavior of the men at the top of the U.S. defense command during the attacks to see that they knew what was happening (with the exception, I'm sure, of the dolt Bush, who was simply controlled), and they made sure to sit on their butts till the attacks were over. Their behavior screams guilty knowledge. But I will look forward to the book's explanation of this behavior, since no one else who believes these men are innocent lambs has even tried to explain it (other than buying Bush's lame excuse about wanting to look calm and collected, when in fact one of his handlers held up a sign during the pet goat story telling him "Don't say anything yet").

"all you need to do is look at the concerted behavior of the men at the top of the US defense command during the attacks to see that they knew what was happening..." - Ron

I don't see that at all. What I see at the top of US Defense Command is a change in command.

While some were engaged in the exercises, the ones I am most interested in had just come on the job, some a few days before (John O'Neill as director of security at WTC), the head of the Herndon office of Dept. of Transportation who grounded all planes on his first day on the job, and the head of the Pentagon's Situation Room Gen. Mlontague left early in the morning and was replaced by a Navy Captain. So if these guys knew what was happening how come they were so perplexed?

Also, after reading Tony and Robbyn's excerpt in Vanity Fair it seems that they explore what the 9/11 Com was afraid to explore or were ordered not to - the Saudi and Pakistani money connections, and the government records that are still being withheld by the government today.

BK

[Ron Ecker]

I don't see that at all. What I see at the top of US Defense Command is a change in command.

Are you referring to Myers being Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? I'm referring to Bush, Myers, and the Secretary of Defense. You can also throw in the Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Montague who, as you mentioned, just happened to take that morning off, only to reappear in the war room after the attacks were over.

While some were engaged in the exercises, the ones I am most interested in had just come on the job, some a few days before (John O'Neill as director of security at WTC), the head of the Herndon office of Dept. of Transportation who grounded all planes on his first day on the job, and the head of the Pentagon's Situation Room Gen. Mlontague left early in the morning and was replaced by a Navy Captain. So if these guys knew what was happening how come they were so perplexed?

Myers, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz were not perplexed. They knew what they were doing about the attacks, which was nothing. Myers hid in Max Cleland's office on Capitol Hill, not to be disturbed by something like an attack on America; Rumsfeld hid in his own office, having a routine meeting with his daily CIA briefer, while subordinates did their jobs by getting informed on the attacks in the war room, and who were unable even to find Rumsfeld for consultation after the Pentagon itself was hit; and Wolfowitz went on with a routine meeting after watching the second tower get hit on TV. The only person in that sorry gang who did something (i.e. sit and track Flight 77 right into the Pentagon, while saying "the order stands," according to the Secretary of Transportation who was with him) was Cheney.

Also, after reading Tony and Robbyn's excerpt in Vanity Fair it seems that they explore what the 9/11 Com was afraid to explore or were ordered not to - the Saudi and Pakistani money connections, and the government records that are still being withheld by the government today.

The commission was also afraid to explore the inexplicable behavior of Myers and Rumsfeld (the dolt Bush understandably getting a pass), as these "leaders" were not asked one single tough question about their behavior, which in Myers' case included in-your-face lying at his confirmation hearing.

But this will all be covered in the book?

[Dan Dagen]

I'm really looking forward to reading this book. The Vanity Fair piece was great. I love how the 3 princes who were named by the Al Quaeda guy under waterboarding all died within a week after dude spilled the beans. I chUckled how one 'died of thirst'. Another in a car accident, another at 43 of heart attack. Smacks of JFK investgation on the day the official interviews were scheduled (Pawley, Ferrie, DeMorenschildt- forgive my probable mutilation of the spelling, etc.)

[Len Colby]

It is interesting to note that yet another prominent JFK assassination researcher has looked into 9/11 and seems to reject the truthers’ claims.

[Ron Ecker]

It is interesting to note that yet another prominent JFK assassination researcher has looked into 9/11 and seems to reject the truthers’ claims.

JFK assassination researchers have the advantage of knowing that the government would never do such a thing.

[Len Colby]

I assume you were being ironic but so far we have Summers, Tink Thompson Epstein (who seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) and Judge (who also seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) as well as Simkin, Barb Junkkarinen and Martin Shackelford among others.

[Ron Ecker]

I assume you were being ironic but so far we have Summers, Tink Thompson Epstein (who seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) and Judge (who also seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) as well as Simkin, Barb Junkkarinen and Martin Shackelford among others.

You wouldn't consider LIHOP to be government complicity?

[Len Colby]

I assume you were being ironic but so far we have Summers, Tink Thompson Epstein (who seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) and Judge (who also seems to be LIHOP rather than MIHOP) as well as Simkin, Barb Junkkarinen and Martin Shackelford among others.

You wouldn't consider LIHOP to be government complicity?

Of course I would but most of the researchers I mentioned reject LIHOP and even the ones who back it reject most of the “truth” movement’s claims.

[Ron Ecker]

most of the researchers I mentioned reject LIHOP and even the ones who back it reject most of the “truth” movement’s claims.

If you know of any who have effectively defended or explained the behavior of the "men at the top" on 9/11, please direct me to their work. I don't know what stronger evidence there could be for LIHOP.

[Michael Hogan]

Message from ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The 9/11 book on which we’ve been laboring for the past five years is about to be published – on the milestone tenth anniversary of the attacks.

....We believe the book will stand as a record of what happened, correct wild – but widely credited – rumor, and reveal truths that officialdom has sought to conceal.

As far as "standing as a record of what happened," I tend to suspect that may an overstatement.

Summers & Swan have written a book that is compelling to read, at times gripping and horrific, and extensively footnoted. The Notes And Sources section will probably

take more study than the text itself.

Some readers will find their account satisfying. Many won't. The subject of 9/11 and the government's responses is so complex, a single book cannot do it justice.

As Bill Kelly observed, those that believe in controlled demolitions, no planes, and the like will be quick to attack the chapter that deals with them. Jim Fetzer gets a brief mention in that chapter.

Summers and Swan are extremely critical of David Ray Griffin's works.

They also lay waste to any notion the 9/11 Commission Report was complete and thorough -- or even accurate and honest in some cases.

The acknowledgments section is long and varied. Some of the names that jumped out: Paul Thompson, Daniel Hopsicker, Peter Dale Scott, and John Judge.

There were many others with a less conspiratorial view.

One of the authors' conclusions is that elements of the Bush administration used 9/11 as a pretext for invading Iraq. They provide some new information, but their conclusion is hardly startling.

The last four chapters (Section VII) of The Eleventh Day are titled Unanswered Questions. Ultimately, Summers and Swan raise more questions than they answer.

Edited July 24, 2011 by Michael Hogan