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

[William Kelly]

Charlie Rose and Anthony Summers

Charlie Rose - Anthony Summers

Transcript:

Billsbooksblog

Edited August 7, 2011 by William Kelly

[Len Colby]

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.

Sounds like a good book. My views of Fetzer's work go without saying. Griffin is an idiot he kept pimping the lie that there were no Arab names on the manifests years after this was shown to be false.

[Len Colby]

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.

Sounds like a good book. My views of Fetzer's work go without saying. Griffin is an idiot he kept pimping the lie that there were no Arab names on the manifests years after this was shown to be false.

[Dan Dagen]

almost done with it. disturbing material. the Sandy Berger episode, all the redacted emails; I lose track of all the names, but top counterterrorist people in CIA, NSA and Justice Department were being warned. I think LIHOP has a stronger argument than I did before, seemed to be deliberately shutting down leads. Dizzying read. recommend highly.

[William Kelly]

almost done with it. disturbing material. the Sandy Berger episode, all the redacted emails; I lose track of all the names, but top counterterrorist people in CIA, NSA and Justice Department were being warned. I think LIHOP has a stronger argument than I did before, seemed to be deliberately shutting down leads. Dizzying read. recommend highly.

Thanks for your input Dan.

BK

[William Kelly]

Anthony Summers – Charlie Rose

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11800

Transcript: - Billsbooksblog

with Anthony Summers in Current Affairs, Books, History

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Charlie Rose: This fall marks the tenth anniversary of the9/11 attacks. The recent killing of Osama Bin Laden marked the defining momentin the fight against al Qaeda. Conspiracy theories still linger about theevents of September 11^th.

A new book by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan explores someof the questions. An excerpt exploring the connection between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers, appears inthis months Vanity Fair Magazine. The Kingdom and the Towers

Here’s the book’s co-author Anthony Summers. I’m pleased tohave you back. He’s an old friend from a long time ago, welcome. Robby is your coauthorand your wife.

AS: Both. For twenty years wife.

CR: And five years working together on this project. You beganto realize all these conspiracy theories had to do with 9/11, and so you wantedto what?

AS: When I came to see my publisher at Random House in NewYork, I found my own publisher, a very senior publisher herself, didn’t believeall the conspiracy theories but felt that in some way the public has been cheated,and there was some secret there.

CR: So your publisher put you on the trail as you say, “thereis a lingering sense the nation and the world had been let down.”

AS: And the other tenant of the conspiracy theories - the Skepticsas they prefer to be called, thought in some way the Bush administration had eitherhad some warning or knew something was coming but allowed it to happen tofurther their plans to invade the Middle East – as it turned out in Iraq. Or atthe extreme ends of conspiracy theories in which they actually provoked theattacks themselves. Here and now it seems daft, but there were enough straws inthe wind to say - go look at this.

CR: So now you have a book. So what is it you think happenedthat we don’t know?

AS: I hope to successfully dispatch, for a sane America,most of the conspiracy theory ideas.

CR: Send them away.

AS: Exactly, but I think what happened is those ideas andthe lingering thoughts about them have distorted the facts and blurred thethings that one should really be concerned about, and there are a lot of thingsone should still be concerned about this puzzle…

CR: And they are?

AS: The first of them I think is what US Intelligence actuallyknew and what it did about it in advance. The first two terrorists who arrivedon US soil hadbeen identified by the CIA, they knew that theywere al Qaeda, they knew their names, they knew they had US visas, and in oncecase they learned quite quickly one had arrived in the United States, and yet they did not tell the FBI.

CR: What do you believe was the relationship between theSaudi government or the leading figures in Saudi Arabia and the men who were on those planeson 9/11?

AS: There are two areas. The first of the areas, in theperiod - in the years leading up to 9/11 there is good evidence - and we name twoof the princes involved in the book Prince Naef, who had been for a long timethe head of the interior, the internal intelligence, and Prince Sultan, who wasthe defense chief in Saudi Arabia, and is now second highest to the throne, itis said - as recorded in the Wall Street Journal, that they raised a lot ofmoney over the years to pay off Bin Laden not to attack Saudi Arabia. He wasoutside he was in Afghanistan- not to attack Saudi Arabia.In this country if you and I were talking about the Mafia, we would call itprotection money. That is one area, and the people who investigated 9/11 andearlier at the CIA, concluded that theSaudis had been paid protection money for a long time.

The second area that I think is especially interesting, thatboth the joint inquires – and 9/11 Commission delved into it. When the men onthe ground in California arrived,they arrived, and the evidence suggests than an Imam, the religious man at theSaudi consulate first gave them a tour of the area in Los Angeles. And that then after that the two of themconnected with another Saudi, who was paid from official sources but apparentlynot for doing any known work, and had been thought of for a long time as aSaudi agent, they connected with him in a meeting that was odd. He said he heardArabic being talked in a restaurant and the meeting was by pure chance, itdoesn’t sound like it. In fact it sounds like a vary bad spy novel; it doesn’tsound like pure chance. He then dropped a newspaper and talked to them as theypicked it up. He then gave them help….They didn’t speak English, they were prettymuch lost in California, and theywere pioneers if you will of the 9/11operation, the guys who arrived first. Therewere other Saudis who helped them one way or another, - all either left immediatelyon 9/11 or had left two or three weeks before.

CR: We have the distinguished investigative reporter from Ireland, who I used to know from the BBC, what isit did he discover that ought to draw our attention, and what should be theconsequences of that discovery is what I’m asking?

AS: Back to the beginning of our conversation and you askedme why I was doing the book and I said I wanted to look at the conspiracystuff, which certainly had elements of it that convinced huge numbers ofAmericans and equally important huge numbers of people around the world. Thelast poll I saw suggests that 46% of people abroad, which is what the poll wasmostly referring to - people in the middle east, believe that someone otherthan al Qaeda were responsible. Rubbish, of course al Qaeda was behind it. I wanted to deal with the conspiracy theoriesbut get as close as possible to that elusive thing we call the truth and then……

CR: Of all those conspiracies, which one do you think hasmerit?

AS: If you are referring to conspiracy theories, I don’t think any of them havemerit.

CR: Okay, so none of the conspiracy theories have any merit,good.

AS: No. I don’t think so. At the same time, I think that withthis book we hope to get closer to clarity to the issues that do seem tomatter, and one of the big ones is - were elements of a foreign government involved?And I think we are closer to the idea that elements of the Saudi government wereinvolved.

CR: And the nature of their involvement was what?

AS: Collaboration with Bin Lade through protection money.

CR: (Did they have) knowledge of what Bin Laden was doing?

AS: Well, we do have first confirmation, from a former servingCIA officer who was involved in the captureof a bin Laden aide called Abu Zubaydah. And he says that he learned afterwardsthat when Abu Zubaydah was being questioned, he was intensely questioned overweeks, that at one point he was conned into thinking he was being transferredto Saudi custody, with the idea that he would be terrified to tell what he knewbecause the Saudis are famous for torture and worse - killing prisoners and soon. And far from that, he instead said, well,let me give you the name and a phone number, which he knew from memory, of aSaudi Prince, not one of the senior ministers, and said he’ll know, and he saidtell him I’m here and he’ll know what do to. And he subsequently named twoother Saudi princes. All three of those Saudi Princes, and this is a fact, alldied within a week of each other shortly thereafter. There is the thought, and ofcourse all things can be explained by chance, but it is extremely interestingand full of implications that all three of them died by chance within a week ofeach other, and the thought is that maybe it was time to shut them up.

CR: The book is called TheEleventh Day, the True Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, written byAnthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.

[Ron Ecker]

I think LIHOP has a stronger argument than I did before, seemed to be deliberately shutting down leads. Dizzying read. recommend highly.

Yet the authors themselves can't see it? Summers calls LIHOP "daft" (see the transcript posted above by Bill Kelly).

I haven't read this book, but it reminds me already of the book the guy wrote (his name escapes me at the moment) presenting all the evidence for conspiracy in the RFK assassination, then concluding on the last page that Sirhan did it!

I hate to repeat myself, but LIHOP (at the least) is blindingly obvious from the behavior of the men at the top on 9/11, behavior which the 9/11 Commission did not have the guts even to ask questions about, even though the Family Steering Committee asked it to at the outset of the hearings. The Family Steering Committee, in effect, was told to shove it. If the behavior of those men is discussed in this book, I'll be surprised, because there are no logical answers except one.

Edited August 12, 2011 by Ron Ecker

[William Kelly]

I think LIHOP has a stronger argument than I did before, seemed to be deliberately shutting down leads. Dizzying read. recommend highly.

Yet the authors themselves can't see it? Summers calls LIHOP "daft" (see the transcript posted above by Bill Kelly).

I haven't read this book, but it reminds me already of the book the guy wrote (his name escapes me at the moment) presenting all the evidence for conspiracy in the RFK assassination, then concluding on the last page that Sirhan did it!

I hate to repeat myself, but LIHOP (at the least) is blindingly obvious from the behavior of the men at the top on 9/11, behavior which the 9/11 Commission did not have the guts even to ask questions about, even though the Family Steering Committee asked it to at the outset of the hearings. The Family Steering Committee, in effect, was told to shove it. If the behavior of those men is discussed in this book, I'll be surprised, because there are no logical answers except one.

I have the book now and am reading it. I believe that Summers does discuss the behavior of all the men at the top - of both USA and al Qaeda.

[Ron Ecker]

I have the book now and am reading it. I believe that Summers does discuss the behavior of all the men at the top - of both USA and al Qaeda.

Please let us know what he thinks about the U.S. behavior at the top. That's Myers, Rumsfeld, Cheney (according to the testimony of Mineta), Rumsfeld's deputy Wolfowitz, Winfield at the Pentagon (where did he go during the attacks, later wanting people to think he was there?), and Bush (having to finish a pet goat story, then hangs around in a schoolhouse full of kids, even though terrorists would know where he was). It's all stomach-turning.

[William Kelly]

I have the book now and am reading it. I believe that Summers does discuss the behavior of all the men at the top - of both USA and al Qaeda.

Please let us know what he thinks about the U.S. behavior at the top. That's Myers, Rumsfeld, Cheney (according to the testimony of Mineta), Rumsfeld's deputy Wolfowitz, Winfield at the Pentagon (where did he go during the attacks, later wanting people to think he was there?), and Bush (having to finish a pet goat story, then hangs around in a schoolhouse full of kids, even though terrorists would know where he was). It's all stomach-turning.

Well, so far he quotes the pet goat story in full.

[Ron Ecker]

Well, so far he quotes the pet goat story in full.

Well that's certainly a vital 9/11 document. Unearthed after almost ten years!

[William Kelly]

Well, so far he quotes the pet goat story in full.

Well that's certainly a vital 9/11 document. Unearthed after almost ten years!

The goat story is actually pretty funny and has parallels and metaphors we can probably learn something from.

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

Edited August 13, 2011 by William Kelly

[Ron Ecker]

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

Such records could embarrass more than our Saudi friends. They might reveal, for example, who the FAA Hijack Coordinator was on 9/11. The official coordinator happened to be out of the country. But surely there was someone to stand in for him, just like there was for the officer in charge of the Pentagon's War Room who happened to take that morning off. (That was one Pentagon leader who at least had an official excuse for doing nothing during the attacks.) The identity of the Hijack Coordinator was one of the elephants in the hearing room that the 9/11 Commission wouldn't publicly touch. Why?

[Len Colby]

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.

[Len Colby]

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.