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PETER'S NEW YORK, Tuesday, August 18, 2001--Famed conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose death from brain cancer was reported in the press today, was among the first to raise the question of whether insiders played a direct role in the tragic events of of September 11, 2001 On that day, according to the government's version of the events, four American commercial airliners were hijacked by teams of Muslim terrorists from the Middle East. Two of the airliners were flown into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plowed into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, and a fourth crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania, according to government accounts.Novak was quick to state that the events smacked of a conspiracy of insiders.
"Security experts and airline officials agree privately that the simultaneous hijacking of four jetliners was an 'inside job,' probably indicating complicity beyond malfeasance," said Novak in the lead sentence of his weekly column only two days after 9-11.
Novak's column continued: "In the rage and mourning following Tuesday's disaster, few officials wanted to dwell on how a 10-year hiatus of airline hijackings in this country could be followed by four in one hour. At a minimum, the blame can be put on ill-trained, incompetent personnel performing the screening of passengers. At the worst, security experts fear collusion with terrorists, possibly even extending to the cockpit. This is a subject that the airlines are loathe to discuss."
Novak was not the only journalist to imply that insiders were active in implementing 9-11. New York Times columnist William Safire theorized that the terrorists had assistance from within the major U.S. intelligence agencies.
Safire, in his column of September 13, 2001, stated: "...knowledge of code words, presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the [9-11] terrorists may have a mole in the White House""that, or informants in the Secret Service, F.B.I., F.A.A. or C.I.A."
