Is anyone interested in Apollo missions...

[Steve Ulman]

Jack-

Could you please give us your source for the "NBC Frame" so we can all verify the time it was taken?

Or am I supposed to do your work for you?

[Len Colby]

Jack doesn't it seem odd to you that the "CNN" frame is sepia toned and hazy while all other shots of the towers show clear blue skies? Even the supposedly simultaneous "NBC" frame show this. Looks like a clear sign of alteration to me.

Also in light of all the evidence that yes of course Willis Carto is a Nazi, I repeat my question about your quoting his publications.

Edited December 15, 2005 by Len Colby

[John Simkin]

Aaron McGruder is the cartoonist behind the award winning Boondocks. In a recent interview he said:

"When you consider how quickly and how forcefully the extreme right came into power in the last few years - not just in terms of war but the clampdown on American journalism ... well, ultimately, some counter-voice gets through. It will always be somewhat limited and marginalised. It's just fortunate for me that my voice was allowed to continue. There is a silent majority that is opposed to the direction of the country and my strip gives them a small outlet every day to feel like they're not crazy. I keep telling people, 'Powerful corporations allow you to see that strip every day so it's not the revolution.' But sometimes it surprises me."

The Boondocks revolves around two child characters - 10-year-old Huey and eight-year-old Riley - who have moved, with their grandfather, from the southside of Chicago to a white suburb where they attend the J Edgar Hoover elementary school.

In one strip in the aftermath of 9/11 included Huey calling the FBI's terrorism tip-off line to say that he knows of many Americans who helped train and finance Osama Bin Laden. "All right, let's see," he tells the operator. "The first one is REAGAN. That's R-E-A-G ... Hello? Hello?"

A couple of years ago McGruder and Condoleezza Rice met at an awards ceremony. Both of them were given an award by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the oldest civil rights organisation in the country. Beforehand, McGruder had told anyone who would listen that Rice was a mass murderer (it was not long after the invasion of Afghanistan) and that he would have no qualms about telling her so to her face. However, this did not happen. He now says "I had a brief encounter with her and I knew I had to say something. I said something like: 'I don't want you guys to kill me so I'm just going to mind my own business.' I was eminently aware when I met Condi that she could make my whole family disappear. I have never been fearless. I've always had a healthy fear of this government."

[Robert Howard]

Aaron McGruder is the cartoonist behind the award winning Boondocks. In a recent interview he said:

"When you consider how quickly and how forcefully the extreme right came into power in the last few years - not just in terms of war but the clampdown on American journalism ... well, ultimately, some counter-voice gets through. It will always be somewhat limited and marginalised. It's just fortunate for me that my voice was allowed to continue. There is a silent majority that is opposed to the direction of the country and my strip gives them a small outlet every day to feel like they're not crazy. I keep telling people, 'Powerful corporations allow you to see that strip every day so it's not the revolution.' But sometimes it surprises me."

The Boondocks revolves around two child characters - 10-year-old Huey and eight-year-old Riley - who have moved, with their grandfather, from the southside of Chicago to a white suburb where they attend the J Edgar Hoover elementary school.

In one strip in the aftermath of 9/11 included Huey calling the FBI's terrorism tip-off line to say that he knows of many Americans who helped train and finance Osama Bin Laden. "All right, let's see," he tells the operator. "The first one is REAGAN. That's R-E-A-G ... Hello? Hello?"

A couple of years ago McGruder and Condoleezza Rice met at an awards ceremony. Both of them were given an award by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the oldest civil rights organisation in the country. Beforehand, McGruder had told anyone who would listen that Rice was a mass murderer (it was not long after the invasion of Afghanistan) and that he would have no qualms about telling her so to her face. However, this did not happen. He now says "I had a brief encounter with her and I knew I had to say something. I said something like: 'I don't want you guys to kill me so I'm just going to mind my own business.' I was eminently aware when I met Condi that she could make my whole family disappear. I have never been fearless. I've always had a healthy fear of this government."

I must say that Aaron Macgruder is a fascinating person, the comment he made about 'I dont want you guy's...) reminds me of what the mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin quipped during Katrina. Something like 'if anything happens to me you'll know the CIA did it."

[William Kelly]

THE 177TH NJANG ON 9/11 – Why none of the hijacked airlines were intercepted.

By William Kelly – bkjfk3@yahoo.com

The new, state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar communications facility at the 177th New Jersey Air National Guard base at the Atlantic City airport is now there because of the events of September 11, 2001, a belated effort to ensure that there are no more breakdowns in the lines of communication and command like those that occurred on 9/11.

While some of the problems have been addressed by the 9/11 Commission Report and recommendations, there are still unanswered questions about what happened that day, among them – why were none of the hijacked planes intercepted by jet fighters?

There is also the question as to why no one has been held responsible and accountable for the breakdown in our national and personal security that day? Most of those in command positions that day are still there or have been promoted. At the Atlantic City Airport, the new communications facility is there as a direct result of what happened on 9/11.

It was just another weekday for most of those who worked at the 177th New Jersey Air National Guard base at Atlantic City airport, including James Cusak, an F-16 pilot who, with his wingman, was taxing out to the runway shortly before 8:30 am on September 11, 2001.

Sometime after 8 a.m., Cusak, whose radio handle is “Gilligan,” along with his wingman, a former Navy pilot who attended Annapolis, were all fueled and ready to go. They slowly made their way out to the end of the runway, prepared to go on a practice bomb run in upstate New York. They waited at the end of the runway for quite a while, without being given the signal to take off. After about twenty minutes, both pilots later said they sensed something was wrong, and suspected something had happened, perhaps a personal family emergency, but not what was really going down.

Eventually they were told not to take off and return to headquarters.

It would be fifteen minutes before the first hijacked plane would crash into the World Trade Center and the world would know something was wrong, but some of those on duty at the 177th headquarters knew because they had received a troubling telephone call from a Boston Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official requesting jet fighter support for a hijacking in progress.

The 177th has jet fighters, except that after being on 24-7, 24 hour, seven days a week alert status for decades, that’s more than twenty years, the unit was taken off alert two years earlier, in 1999.

Usual missions for the 177th included escorting Soviet planes down the coast heading for Cuba and South America, and buzzing Russian nuclear submarines offshore. Now they were occasionally enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq and running training exercises, as they were on that Tuesday morning, September 1, 2001.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has a large facility (The William Hughes Technical Center) right there at the Atlantic City Airport, is responsible for air traffic safety in the continental United States. When FAA officials in Boston realized there was an air emergency, and more than one plane was being hijacked by terrorists, they notified the military.

The FAA Boston Center made the call – but apparently to the wrong number. The closest base to Boston with jet fighters on alert status was Otis AFB at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, but Boston FAA Center called Atlantic City, outside the routine chain of command.

Apparently the person who received the call in Atlantic City informed Boston FAA that they were off alert and Otis was the closest base on alert because Otis also got a panicky call from Boston FAA requesting jet fighter assistance for a hijacking. But because that call too, did not come through the regular chain of command, the pilots there got ready, but didn’t take off until ordered to do so.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report [p. 20 Military Notification and Response], “Boston Center did not follow the protocol in seeking assistance through the prescribed chain of command. In addition to notification within the FAA, Boston Center took the initiative, at 8:34, to contact the military through the FAA’s Cape Cod facility. The center also tried to contact a former alert site in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out. At 8:37:52, Boston Center reached NEADS. This was the first notification received by the military – at any level – that American 11 had been hijacked.”

[Footnote p. 458- (115) FAA memo, “Full Transcript: Aircraft Accident; AAL1; New York, NY: September 11, 2001,” April 19, 2002, p. 5; Terry Biggio interview (Sept. 22, 2003); Collin Scoggins interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004;): Daniel Bueno interview (Sept. 22, 2003).”]

According to transcripts of a tape of that conversation, it went like this:

“FAA: Hi Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out…”

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.”

At the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector was involved with NORAD in a number of war games [ Vigilant Guardian – simulated Russian attack over the Artic; Vigilant Warrior – simulated hijackings; Northern Vigilance – simulated attack over Alaska and Canada; Northern Guardian and a CIA/NRO exercise of a plane crashing into a defense contractor building.], so the confusion was mounted by these war games.

If a similar call came in to the 177th, they would have been told that the 177th was not on alert and to try Otis, which was on alert. It is probable the 9/11 Commission Report got the order of phone calls backwards, and the call to the Atlantic City came in before the call to Otis, since Otis was on alert and there would have been no need to notify Atlantic City if Otis was already called, unless they called Atlantic City before notifying NEADS. Notifying NEADS would have been the correct chain of command rather than notifying the alert base(s) directly.

While it has yet to be determined exactly who in Boston made the call and who in Atlantic City received the request, (and if there is a tape recording or transcripts of the conversations), the call set off an alarm at the 177th base that is still being heard. It delayed the take-off of two F-16 jet fighters from their bombing practice mission, and brought them back to their headquarters and led to the construction of the new, multi-million dollar communications facility at the base.

By the time the two pilots arrived back at their 177th headquarters that September 11th morning, helmets in hand, they saw the first burning tower on television, and realized what was up. But they also realized how unprepared they were for what was happening. For one thing, while their planes were fueled and ready to go, the bomb displacements on their planes had to be reconfigured from bombs to air-to-air missiles, and the missiles had to be retrieved from a remote former nuke bunker hundreds of yards away and then mounted under their wings.

If the two F-16s on the runway at 8:30 am would have taken off on time, they would have intercepted the first plane before it crashed into the WTC, although without any weapons, they would only have been able to observe the situation.

When United Air Flight 175 was hijacked at approximately 8:42 am [see map: 9/11 CR p. 32], it flew directly south before cutting over the New Jersey Pine Barrens and North to strike the WTC. It was a path that would have intersected the 177th F-16s had they taken off anytime before 9 am, a full half hour after the first request for assistance came in to Atlantic City.

Piloted by Victor Saracini, an Atlantic City native, whose daughter was an acquaintance of Cusak, UA 175 out of Newark, N.J. was one hijacked plane that could have been intercepted by the jet fighters, but it wasn’t because the planes were refitted with air-to-air missiles.

Cusak later said that he wondered what he could have done if he intercepted a hijacked airliner without being armed. Could he have tipped its wings or rammed the plane or otherwise prevented the hijacked plane for completing its suicide mission? He concluded that he couldn’t have done so without dying himself, and maybe would have done so, but was never presented with that circumstance.

As General Richard Meyers USAF, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We are the last line of defense,” and the air forces should come into play only after the failure of all other lines in the multi-layered defense including the penetration of the country at the borders, evading airport security, breaching the cockpit and hijacking the plane, so the air defense failures are magnified by those before it.

117th MISSION STATUS – OFF ALERT

First let’s address the issue of the changing of the mission status of the 177th N.J. Air National Guard that for over two decades, always had two planes on alert status, on the tarmac, armed, fueled and ready to go, and two pilots on standby, within a few hundred yards of the planes, with the ability to intercept planes or boats from upper New York state to Virginia, or to affect a protective air umbrella over New York, Philadelphia or DC within a matter of minutes.

Historically, the 177th NJANG began in September 1917 as the 199th Aero Squadron, an active duty training unit during World War I. In 1958, the 199th Fighter Squadron moved to Egg Harbor Township, N.J., and was activated in 1961 during the Berlin crisis. In 1962 it was re-designated the 177th Tactical Fighter Group, and was reactivated during the Pueblo incident in 1968, as well as during Desert Storm and in Panama. But the 177th was most proud of its active, alert status protecting the skies from New York to Virginia.

With 17 single-seat F-16C “Fighting Falcon” aircraft, the wing maintains its base in buildings on a 296 acre tract at the Atlantic City International Airport, which is also the home of the William Hughes FAA Technical Center. The airport’s extra-long runways are cleared for landings of the Concord, when it was flying, and Air Force One.

A typical mission at the height of the Cold War would be to intercept and escort Soviet Russian aircraft heading for Cuba and South America, or buzz a Soviet nuclear submarine offshore, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Communism in Russia, the mission of the 177th changed. They were taken off alert status in October, 1998, according to the Defense Reform Initiative (DRI).

As Cusak later explained, the new defense posture would be a quadrangle grid, with an alert base responsible for each grid, a sort of zone defense, which he attributed to Gen. Colon Powell, then Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When General Meyers testified before the 9/11 Commission, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick asked him, “….You know 20/20 hindsight is perfect, but if I were sitting at the Pentagon and seeing the kinds of threats that were coming in that summer, I would say to myself, is business as usual appropriate? I mean, the question I have is whether you thought to say: Should we have defenses pre-positioned in a way that we don’t? We know that our forces, that our aircraft from NORAD came to late to the Pentagon.”

Meyers response: “Sure, we changed our whole air defense posture at the end of the Cold War. We went from about 22 sites [on alert status – including the 177th] down to about 7, I believe, between the United States and Canada, PURPOSELY AND AT DIRECTION OF OUR LEADERSHIP.” (Emphasis added –BK).

So a subtle, but profound change in military and defense policy occurred in 1997-1998 when the Defense Reform Initiative was enacted, and “designed to streamline the organizational structure and business practices of the Department of Defense.”

Still unasked is why did it cost more to do less? As 9/11 Commissioner and former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a pilot himself publicly pondered, “We have hundreds of jet planes that cost millions of dollars each all along the coast, so how much more would it cost to keep some of them armed and fueled?”

At the time, as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review proposals of May, 1997, the Air Force removed the Air National Guard (ANG) fighter wings, including the Atlantic City and Andrews AFB units, from their traditional and historic air defense alert mission status and made them part of the general-purpose fighter force, reducing the number of dedicated air defense units from 10 in 1997 to 4 in 2001. Others have sited statistics that they went from 20 to 7, including those in Canada and Alaska, but in any case, the number of jet fighter bases on alert was dramatically decreased before 2001.

Reported in the 177th’s 1998 Annual Report, “As a result of NORAD tasking, the 177th Fighter Wing began conversion to the general purpose F-16 mission on October 1, 1998. This action ended the wing’s 25-year association as part of NORAD’s alert force. During that tenure, the wing’s NORAD responsibility included providing air sovereignty of the mid-Atlantic between Long Island, New York and the Virginia Capes. As of October 1, the wing extended into its extensive period of general-purpose F-16 role, the 177th will be capable of assuming a variety of air force missions to include overseas deployments and assignments to one of the newly created Air Expeditionary Force.” One of the overseas deployments the 177th participated in was enforcing the “No-Fly Zone” over Iraq.

In the months leading up to September 11, 2001, the 177th ran simulated and real bombing runs, and simulated and live air-to-air missile training at Tyndal Air Force Base in Florida, the home of the First Tactical Air Force Headquarters of the NORAD defense system of the Northeast Sector of the continental United States.

The 177th also participated in Operation Stand Down, a community effort to assist homeless veterans, that through its name, infers the non-alert status of the deactivated wing.

On the morning of September 11th 2001, the 177th was not part of the NORAD defense command, which was engaged that morning in an annual war game exercise – VIGILANT GUARDIAN, or any of the other war games being enacted.

According to S. Rowan Wolf, another change in command status occurred on May 8, 2001, when it was announced that President Bush placed Vice President Dick Chaney in charge of Domestic Counter-Terrorism. Wolf interprets that, “…dramatically changed the decision making chain of authority, effectively centralized all response to Chaney, not to NORAD.”

In addition, as the military would repeatedly point out during the 9/11 Commission inquiry, the FBI, FAA and domestic law enforcement agencies were tasked with the primary response to a terrorist attack, not NORAD, which as a military department, was prevented by “Pose Comatas” from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities.

Nor were the pilots trained to respond to a situation such as being ordered to shoot down an unarmed commercial airliner with Americans on board, even though that scenario was part of some of the war imagined war games being conducted by the military.

An order to shoot down an unarmed commercial airliner would have to originate with the president and come down the official chain of command, opposite the way the early warnings of hijacked planes went up the chain of command.

Regardless of the possible armed military response, they do have a clear role to intercept, monitor, survey and escort planes that have strayed from their planned route, which they did many times over the preceding two years under the new quadrangle zone defense posture. They did not need to know if this was a hijacking to respond as they had in the past when the first sign of an air emergency was clear – off course, off transponder, off communications and not responding to commands. “They routinely respond to any plane that drifts off-course,” said John Judge, of the 9/11 Citizens Research Project, “and did so hundreds of times a year before 9/11, but not on that day.”

So on the morning of September 1, 2001, the entire air defense of North America was in the hands of 14 fighter pilots on alert at 7 sites in the continental United States, Alaska and Canada.

As General Meyers testified, “In accordance with Department of Defense (DOD) directives in effect on 9/11, NORAD was to monitor and report the actions of any hijacked aircraft, as requested by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We had procedures for potential air hijackings, which were based on the premise that a hijacked aircraft would be used for ransom or political purposes, not as a weapon.”

“On the morning of 9/11, we were conducting a NORAD command post exercise and our headquarters and regions were postured for ‘wartime conditions.’ Six minutes prior to the first attack on the World Trade Center, the FAA informed NORAD of the potential hijack of American Airlines Flight 11. As events unfolded throughout the morning, NORAD responded immediately with fighters and appropriate airspace control measures. Unfortunately, due to the constraints of time and distance, we were unable to influence the tragic circumstances.”

The entire excuse of the DOD for not intercepting any of the hijacked planes is set in the timeline-chronology. But rather than six minutes before the first plane hits the WTC, 8:40 am, when NEADS is alerted, the alarm should have gone off ten minutes earlier, at 8:30 when the FAA Boston Center first attempted to call Atlantic City and Otis, but they off alert, and could not respond without being ordered through the chain of command.

William Kelly

Bkjfk3@yahoo.com

Parts of this article appeared in the Egg Harbor Township Current newspaper.

[Len Colby]

I'm still waiting for your reply Jack.

[T. Casey Brennan]

I think both Clinton & Bush could have done more.

I'm on the forum now, and Bill Clinton signed a very nice document in my honor when he was Governor. It's posted at:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~mthorn/clinton.htm

I was interviewed on the X-Zone radio program on January 3, 2006...you can still listen in the X-Zone archives at:

http://www.xzone-radio.com/archives.htm

Best,

T. Casey Brennan

http://tcasey.inri.net

[Len Colby]

I think both Clinton & Bush could have done more.

I'm on the forum now, and Bill Clinton signed a very nice document in my honor when he was Governor. It's posted at:

I was interviewed on the X-Zone radio program on January 3, 2006...you can still listen in the X-Zone archives at:

Best,

T. Casey Brennan

Casey - With all due respect, I think that at this point everyone know about your radio interview, website and letters from Clinton and Kissenger, you no longer need to Spam unrelated threads.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

I have been researching this topic now for over a year, and have engaged in lively debate with other Forum members. I feel its time to reveal all formal evidence linking the Bush regime to this event. Unfortunately apart from, conjecture, rumour, coincidence and supposition I have found no smoking gun, and feel rather than slink away from the subject I should "come clean" I can not, and will not accuse anyone of such a heinous crime based on the flimsy evidence I have to hand. I make no such claim about photo analysis, as this was not my area of research, nor expertize. One thing I am sure of though is that President Bush lied about what he witnessed at the school that fatefull morning, but this is hardly enough to speculate on wider matters. Steve.

[Jack White]

http://www.st911.org/

[Evan Burton]

Jack White (AM)

Photoanalyst

Should that be "Claims to be a Photoanalyst'? Far more accurate...

[Len Colby]

Jack White (AM)

Photoanalyst

Should that be "Claims to be a Photoanalyst'? Far more accurate...

Fetzer is one of the founders of that group of course he wants to build up Jack's credentials because he cites Jack as an expert in his JFK books. The more he can "build up" his collaborators credentials the more 'credible' his work becomes. This is why the contributors to those books all defend each other and build up the stature of the others so vigorusly. By diming the star of any of them you dim the stars of the rest and the brighter each of their stars the brighter the stars of the others.

Len

[Len Colby]

I have been researching this topic now for over a year, and have engaged in lively debate with other Forum members. I feel its time to reveal all formal evidence linking the Bush regime to this event. Unfortunately apart from, conjecture, rumour, coincidence and supposition I have found no smoking gun, and feel rather than slink away from the subject I should "come clean" I can not, and will not accuse anyone of such a heinous crime based on the flimsy evidence I have to hand. I make no such claim about photo analysis, as this was not my area of research, nor expertize. One thing I am sure of though is that President Bush lied about what he witnessed at the school that fatefull morning, but this is hardly enough to speculate on wider matters. Steve.

I'm surprised no one has (until now) responded this thread.

The possibilty that the the Towes were demo'd or that the Pentagon was hit by a missile are zero and the póssibility that Bush set up 9/11 are almost as slim. Did he know what was comong and purposely let it happen? I would not put it passed the SOB but have not seen any compelling evidence.

He was certainly negligently disinterested in the threat of terrorism before 9/11 but I'm not even sure if his administration had been more on top of things if the attacks could have been prevented. At the very least he exploited the tragic events that day to persue his rightwing agenda.

I debate 9/11 (and other conspiracy theories) here http://apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cg...d=othertheories and don't really have enough time to start debating it here to. Check out the "Paul McCartney is Dead" thread. Steve I think you in particular would enjoy it although there are a lot of "inside jokes" which you will only get if you read other threads.

Len

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Yeah, the McCartney stuff is a scream, I love the fact one Guy claims its proof of Pauls demise that the quality of his music declined after he formed Wings, Hasnt he ever heard, Obla-di obla-da, Honey Pie, Martha my dear, Lovely rita, and plenty more, all written for the Beatles. McCartneys music tends to be Sublime, PennyLane, or xxxx, C-moon, and always has been.

[Len Colby]

"Some guy" That was me!! I was joking though. You should get a deep sea diver's helmet too, for protection.