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

[William Kelly]

They also point out many records were destroyed - Able Danger - and some still being withheld, apparently not to embarrass our Saudi friends.

There are major holes in the Able Danger story, principally that they claimed to have been tracking Mohammed Atta in Brooklyn at a time when he went by the name Mohammed Amir and was living in Hamburg. Additionally they claimed that the tracking based publicly available info but no one has turned up public records or news reports that put Atta in the US at the time.

But Col. Shaffer is a Col. in US Army Reserves who was assigned to do that job - use computerized info to track terrorists, and they didn't say his name - they said they had a photo of his face that was on the chart they produced - a chart that has since disappeared - and the Congressman who had it - Curt Weldon - was forced out of office.

Have you read Shaffer's book? It's available over Kindle for $3. It's heavily redacted because after getting approval from the US Army Reserve Intelligence - who he worked for - the US DOD regular Army Intl decided they had to review it and they redacted a lot that the USAR had approved. This is significant in that it shows the differences between the two US Army intelligence units - and how they fail to work with each other even today.

It also is reflective on what happened at Dealey Plaza in that there was a US Army Reserve Col. Limpkin in the pilot car and he returns to Dealey Plaza to direct the investigation towards Oswald.

So you want to punch holes in Shaffer's story when in fact it was the head of the 9/11 Commission staff - Phillip Zelikow who took the info from Schaffer and failed to inform the rest of the Commission about what he had to say.

And by the way, Tony and Robbyn just lay out the Shaffer story in a few paragraphs and don't subscribe to it in any big way, though I believe that it tells us a lot about how the government and mil intel functions.

BK

[Len Colby]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_08/006942.php

[William Kelly]

http://www.washingto...5_08/006942.php

Yea, the Able Danger timeline is pretty fuzzy, and whose fault is that?

Why does the DOD keep destroying records?

[Len Colby]

http://www.washingto...5_08/006942.php

Yea, the Able Danger timeline is pretty fuzzy, and whose fault is that?

Why does the DOD keep destroying records?

Supposedly they were destroyed for being to Big Brotherish but that doesn't change the fact they claimed to have tracked Atta in NYC when he was in Hamburg and using the surname el-Amir.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Len Colby

[William Kelly]

http://www.washingto...5_08/006942.php

Yea, the Able Danger timeline is pretty fuzzy, and whose fault is that?

Why does the DOD keep destroying records?

Supposedly they were destroyed for being to Big Brotherish but that doesn't change the fact they claimed to have tracked Atta in NYC when he was in Hamburg and using the surname el-Amir.

It wasn't really a matter of personal privacy since they were using only open source information - data mining - but that is the excuse they always use for not releasing information or destroying it.

After the Freedom of Information Act was passed they also passed a Privacy Act. Congress refuses to include itself in the FOIA because they say they want to protect the rights of people to write and communicate with them in private.

Protecting the privacy of the guilty is a big priority.

[William Kelly]

A CIA 9/11 Cover-Up?

Did the CIA keep mum about two 9/11 hijackers because ittried and failed to recruit them? Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, authors of'The Eleventh Day,' on whether there's any truth behind ex-Bush officialRichard Clarke's claim.

http://www.thedailyb...ia-coverup.html

By Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan

Former White House counter terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke has reignited controversy by speculating, in an interview cited in Thursday's Daily Beast, that the CIA intentionally withheld advance knowledge of two of the 9/11 hijackers from the White House and the FBI, in an attempt tocover up the agency's failed effort to recruit the two men as assets.

Clarke's comments—and immediate, emphatic denials from former CIA director George Tenet and two senior CIA officials involved—go to the core of one of the enduring enigmas about 9/11.

Things began to unravel for the CIA on the day of theattacks, just four hours after the Qaeda strikes, according to research weconducted for our new book,The Eleventh Day. Soon after 1 p.m. that day, at agency headquarters in Langley, an aide handed Director Tenet the passenger manifests for the four downed airliners. "Two names," he said, placing a page on the table where the director could see it, "these two we know."

Tenet looked, then breathed, "There it is.Confirmation. Oh, Jesus ..."

There on the manifest for Flight 77, listed as traveling in first class, were the names of Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother, Salem. Also on the manifest, near the front of the coach section, was passenger Khalid al-Mihdhar.

The names Hazmi and Mihdhar were instantly familiar, Tenet has said, because his people had learned only weeks earlier that both men might be in the United States. According to the director's version of events, the CIA had known of Mihdhar since as early as 1999, identified him as a terrorist suspect by December that year, had him followed, learned he had a valid multiple-entry visa for theUnited States, and placed him and comrades—including Hazmi—under surveillance for a few days in Southeast Asia. Later, in the spring of 2000, the agency had learned that Hazmi, who also had a multiple-entry visa, had arrived in California.

The director said after 9/11, though, that—inspite of having gained such dynamite information—the CIA had done absolutely nothing about it. The agency had not asked the State Department to place the two terrorists on watch lists at border points, nor asked the FBI to track them down if they were in the United States—not until 19 days before 9/11. The omission, according to the CIA, was simply the result of multiple mistakes.

Historical puzzles are as often explained by screw-ups as by darker truths. What is known of the evidence on Hazmi and Mihdhar, however, makes the screw-up version hard to swallow. Not least because the CIA version of events suggests its officials blew chances to grab the two future hijackers time and time and time again.

At the heart of thesuggestion that the agency intentionally withheld information was the discoveryby the Justice Department's inspector-general of a draft cable—one that was prepared but never sent—by an FBI agent on attachment to the CIA's bin Laden unit.

In January 2000, having had sight of a CIA cable noting that Mihdhar possessed a U.S. visa, agent Doug Miller had swiftly drafted a memo onthe matter addressed to the bureau's own bin Laden unit and its New York field office. Had that memo been sent, the FBI would have learned right then of Mihdhar's entry visa. The report was blocked, however, on the order of then-deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, Tom Wilshire.

Why did he block it? Could it be that the CIA concealed what it knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi because officials feared that precipitate action by the FBI would blow a unique lead? Did the CIA want to monitor the pair's activity itself, even though its mandate does not allow it to run operations in the United States? Or did it, as some bureau agents suspected—and Clarke has surmised—even hope to turn the two terrorists, to recruit them as informants?

Clarke's speculation may not be idle. A heavily redacted congressional document shows that in early December 1999, before Mihdhar's U.S. visa came to light,top CIA officials had debated the lamentable fact that the agency had as yet not penetrated Al Qaeda:

Edited August 14, 2011 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

FYI Winnipeg Free Press - PRINTEDITION

http://www.winnipegf...-127648388.html

Conspiracies and catastrophe

British co-authors contendthat Bush administration incompetence and cover-ups, combined with America's illogical Middle East position, lit the fuse for9/11 attacks

Reviewedby: Michael Dudley

The Eleventh Day

The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden

By Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

Ballantine,624 pages, $34

Forthose readers who find it difficult to believe that Bush administration insiders could have engineered the 9/11 attacks -- and more important, for those who don't -- this ambitious book would have you consider what its authorsbelieve is a more plausible and politically charged set of 9/11 conspiracies.

Withthe 10th anniversary of 9/11 almost upon us, The Eleventh Day forges a coherent narrative out ofthis horrific, momentous yet poorly understood tragedy, and emerges as a cogent portrait of governmental incompetence, intransigence and deception.

British investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan are the husband and wife co-authors of previous books on Frank Sinatra and J. Edgar Hoover, while Summers previously wrote on the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, the murder of the Romanovs and the arrogant will to power of Richard Nixon.

Here they offer what they claim is the "full" account of 9/11, from the origins of Osama bin Laden's radicalism right up to his assassination by the Obama administration this past spring.

Inwhat must have been a painstaking effort over five years, the authors sifted through conflicting testimonies and competing versions of events (including tens of thousands of documents released by the 9/11 Commission) to piece together the catastrophe and the history that preceded it. The result ismeticulous, gripping journalism, told with moral conviction.

The book begins with a harrowing retelling of the attack, followed by the authors' assessment of efforts to understand it through popular speculation and official investigations. In the second half, Summers and Swan reconstruct their own thorough account of the plot led by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the misbegotten efforts to track bin Laden through the '90s and beyond.

They demonstrate convincingly that, even as preparations for the attack escalatedand warnings grew more frantic from both foreign intelligence agencies andGeorge W. Bush's own counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, the U.S.president's administration assiduously ignored the threat and, indeed, be cameimpatient with any attempt to raise it.

According to Summers and Swan, Bush and his administration not only covered up their own blinkered inattention to al-Qaida prior to the attacks -- and incompetence and dysfunction on the day itself -- but stonewalled investigations into the attackto downplay the hijackers' real motivations and protect the foreign governmentthat funded them.

In this effort Bush was aided in no small way by the phenomenally widespread but often science-fictional claims of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," which, in the authors' view, drew attention away from actualofficial omissions, distortions and malfeasance. Where Summers' earlier work on JFK articulated the case for conspiracy, here he and Swan find no merit in the arguments of the Truthers, which the authors methodically demolish.

In contrast with most mainstream efforts to debunk 9/11 skepticism (such as Toronto journalist Jonathan Kay's recentAmong theTruthers, which lumped 9/11 conspirators in with all manner of paranoid beliefs) Summers andSwan do not rely on ad hominem characterizations to debunk these ideas.

Instead they consider each major theory in light of the available evidence. They find that the unconventional collapses of the Twin Towers have been convincingly explained as the result of the laws of physics rather than ofplanted demolition charges, and the notion that no plane hit the Pentagon issimply offensive, given the personal and emotionally wrenching testimony they provide of those who had to sift through the wreckage there.

Thereal cover-up, they argue, concerned not just the actions of the government,the FBI and the CIA inadvance of the attacks, but more significantly the financial and materialsupport provided by the Saudi royal family for the 19 hijackers.

Steeped in fundamentalist Wahhabism -- a severely austere, rigid and conservative branch of Islam -- elite Saudi society including the royal family sympathized with bin Laden's ideology, particularly with regards to his desire to liberate Palestine fromIsraeli occupation and punish the U.S. for its support of the Jewish state.

Verylittle of this information would be revealed by the 9/11 Commission. Between misleading the commission, redacting key documents implicating Saudi Arabia and selling the Americanpublic on the completely fabricated role of Iraq inthe attacks, the Bush administration managed to divert public attention away from the political realities that underlay 9/11.

Ultimately, argue Summers and Swan, it was America's untenable position in the Middle East-- dependence on Saudi oil while incurring Saudi hostility over its unwavering support for Israel - that doomed nearly 2,800 people on that day, as well asmore than 100,000 Afghans and Iraqis killed in wars cynically justified by9/11.

CommittedTruthers and partisans of the former president alike will probably object to agreat deal of the authors' analysis, but open-minded readers will find TheEleventh Day a thoughtful and sobering reassessment of the most pivotal event of our times.

MichaelDudley is a research associate and library co-ordinator in the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Republishedfrom the Winnipeg FreePress print edition August 13, 2011 J5

Edited August 14, 2011 by William Kelly

[Len Colby]

Some truhers are touting the interview but it actually undermines their case it has been public knowledge since at least 2002 that the CIA was aware the men were in the US for over a year but only informed the FBI in late August 2001. Clarke provides a non sinister explanation which exempts Bush administration officials other than Tenant.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Len Colby

[Ron Ecker]

Is this the same Richard Clarke who fabricated participation by Rumsfeld and Myers in a teleconference he chaired on the morning of 9/11? It's described in detail in the first chapter of his book Against All Enemies. One might assume that Clarke concocted this fantasy about Rumsfeld and Myers to cover up what those two actually did (nothing at all) during the attacks. But unfortunately for Clarke, the two men have been quite open about the fact they did nothing. Who would hold them to account? Who would ask them a single question about their conduct? Nobody, and they knew it. Rumsfeld and Myers didn't need Clarke's help and and as far as I know they have never made any comment at all about his fictional account of them.

[Michael Hogan]

Is this the same Richard Clarke who fabricated participation by Rumsfeld and Myers in a teleconference he chaired on the morning of 9/11? It's described in detail in the first chapter of his book Against All Enemies. One might assume that Clarke concocted this fantasy about Rumsfeld and Myers to cover up what those two actually did (nothing at all) during the attacks. But unfortunately for Clarke, the two men have been quite open about the fact they did nothing. Who would hold them to account? Who would ask them a single question about their conduct? Nobody, and they knew it. Rumsfeld and Myers didn't need Clarke's help and and as far as I know they have never made any comment at all about his fictional account of them.

From thedailybeast.com:

"In a new documentary, former national-security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/11/september-11th-anniversary-richard-clarke-s-explosive-cia-cover-up-charge.html

[Ron Ecker]

Mike,

From your link:

Tenet says that Clarke... has “suddenly invented baseless allegations which are belied by the record and unworthy of serious consideration.”

The same thing could be said of Clarke's story about Rumsfeld and Myers on 9/11. The notion that Rumsfeld and Myers actually did their jobs on 9/11 was a "suddenly invented baseless allegation" by Clarke that is "unworthy of serious consideration." And all anyone has to do to prove Clarke has no credibility is to ask Rumsfeld and Myers.

My own theory about why the CIA withheld information on the two terrorists is that the CIA didn't need to try to recruit them, they were already CIA assets (knowingly or unknowingly, or LIHOP at a minimum). But that's the one thing, of course, that no one is supposed to consider.

Edited August 15, 2011 by Ron Ecker

[Douglas Caddy]

[William Kelly]

Key phone call between 9/11 plotters intercepted seven weeks before attacks

By JOHN STEVENS Daily Mail

9/11 facts: Phone call between terrorists intercepted 7 weeks before attacks | Mail Online

A phone call between the alleged masterminds of the September 11 attacks was intercepted by a western intelligence agency seven weeks before the terror act, it has been revealed.

Agents listened to a call between Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged ringleader, and Ramzi Binalshibh, another plotter, on July 20 2001.

There was a call between KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] and Binalshibh,' the document notes.

A newly released 9/11 commission document, which had previously been in part redacted, reveals details of a U.S. Department of Justice briefing on March 18 2004 when the call was discussed.

The plotters were worried that one of the plane hackers, Ziad Jarrah, might pull out of the attacks. Mohammed Atta was another of the hijackers.

'There is a discussion about Teresa being late, which refers to Jarrah and possible conflicts with Atta.'

The document was obtained by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan for their book 'The Eleventh Hour', about the attacks.

The questions are which intelligence agency intercepted this call and what was done with the information,' he told the Sunday Times.

Mr Summers said it is further evidence of significant warnings of the attacks.

Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh are awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay.

They face the death penalty if convicted.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.

Author Anthony Summers has also obtained the transcripts of conversations between flight crew, ground staff and the military during the attacks.

They include poignant calls for help from flight 11, the first plane to hit the twin towers in New York, and American Airlines ground crew monitoring the situation.

American Airlines employee Nydia Gonzalez said: 'The number five [a member of the air crew] has been stabbed. She seems to be breathing.

'The number one [another air crew member] has been stabbed pretty badly. She's lying down.'

Moments before the plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant, said: 'We are in a rapid descent. We are all over the place.

'I see the water. I see the buildings. We are flying way too low. Oh my God we are way too low.

Edited August 18, 2011 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

The Sunday Times Review

www.anthonysummers.com/article/The-Eleventh-Day_The-Sunday-Times-review.pdf

[Michael Hogan]

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 will be here soon. The Eleventh Day begins with Summers and Swan's graphic accounts of Lower Manhattan on that day.

This article from the Los Angeles Times is in the same vein. It's a reminder of the horror and the bravery that was New York City on September 11, 2001.

9/11: A DECADE AFTER

Day of terror in New York: Pages from a reporter's 9/11 journal

Los Angeles Times writer Geraldine Baum shares excerpts from her diary, scrawled in a leather-bound journal in the chaotic streets of Lower Manhattan the day the twin towers fell

August 21, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/september11/la-na-towers-journal-20110821,0,313814.story?track=lat-pick