The Family Steering Committee (FSC) has reviewed the 9/11 Commission Report in depth and compared it to the list of questions they had presented to the Commission over the course of its work. As a result of this review, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken of the FSC have issued a 'report card' on the Commission's work entitled, FSC Questions to the 9/11 Commission with Ratings of its Performance in Providing Answers, which lists each question and the rating they applied to each. This document can be downloaded from the following site: http://www.911pressfortruth.com/downloads.
Their report card showed that of the major questions the FSC asked the Commission to pursue as they questioned officials, only 10% were satisfactorily answered, while 25% were inadequately answered and 65% were generally ignored or omitted from the report.
A petition to Congress signed by 25 military, intelligence and security veterans states in part, "Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission's report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the Commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention. The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations."
Many observers, such as Paul Hellyer former Minister of National Defense of Canada, believe the inquiry carried out by the 9/11 Commission was very shallow and superficial, and that the inquiries should have been undertaken in much greater depth.
Specific Omissions and Contradictions in the 9/11 Commission Report
1. Failure to even mention the Able Danger program of the Department of Defense (DOD). Intelligence officers working in the Able Danger program allegedly identified Mohammed Atta and at least two other terrorists a year or more before 9/11. When they tried to transfer that information to the FBI they were denied. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Mohammed Atta in 2000 would be precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists, yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded Able Danger was historically insignificant. The 9/11 Commission staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigate the issues relative to Able Danger that were presented to them. They effectively dismissed the importance of Able Danger based on what many believe was their preconceived conclusion on the 9/11 story they wished to tell.
2. Failure to address serious intelligence issues. For example, Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator and a witness to the Commission, made the commissioners aware of purposeful mistranslations and late translations of critical documents leading up to 9/11. But the Commission did not pursue this. Thus, one must assume that other serious issues were in the same manner omitted from the report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of the report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations.
3. Conflicting Air-Defense Timelines. The Commission's report presents a timeline of air-defense response that differs radically from all the previous official accounts. The original account given two days after the attacks was presented by General Richard Myers, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11. He appeared on September 13, 2001 before the Senate for hearings, scheduled many weeks earlier, to consider his promotion to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the hearing Myers told the Senate that no fighter jets were scrambled to intercept any of the 9/11 flights until after the Pentagon was struck, which occurred at 9:37 AM.
On September 18, 2001, General Ralph Eberhart, commanding officer of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), presented another timeline, in which he stated that NORAD had scrambled two squads of fighters prior to the crash of United Airlines Flight 175 into the south tower of the World Trade Center (WTC). NORAD stuck to this second version of the timeline of events, with minor revisions. And in a handsome four-color book entitled Air War over America, commissioned by NORAD and written by Leslie Filson, a historian hired by the Air Force, NORAD's version of the events on 9/11 is described in some detail. The book implies that NORAD had in fact received timely warnings from the FAA to which NORAD had responded.
Another timeline was adopted by the Commission, one which conflicts significantly from NORAD's timeline, and which effectively places almost all the blame for the delayed air defense response on the FAA. This new timeline was presented in June 2004 in a statement by the commission staff. Throughout their testimony before the Commission, on the other hand, FAA officials maintained that they had in fact provided adequate and timely information to NORAD via phone bridges. In developing their own timeline, the Commission chose to ignore almost all previous testimony and submissions from NORAD and the FAA. The Commission apparently felt a need to make the FAA a scapegoat for the lack of fighter response on 9/11.
4. Failure to mention or explore the relation between the ISI (the Pakistani Intelligence Service) and 9/11. Why did the head of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta before the attacks, and then why was he in Washington, D.C. meeting with the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on the day of the attacks? The Commission ignored these questions.
5. Failure to identify the groups who benefited from the 9/11 attacks. The Commission failed to connect the dots and identify those people and groups who, at least by early 2004, had gained and profited by the 9/11 attacks and the resulting war on terror.
6. Failure to address the nearly free-fall collapse of World Trade Center Towers One and Two.
7. Failure to include even one mention of the collapse of WTC 7. The Commission's report makes no mention of the total collapse of WTC 7 at the World Trade Center in the late afternoon of 9/11/01. The report does mention the fact that the Office of Emergency Management's (OEM) was located on the 23rd floor of WTC 7. And it notes that at 9:30 AM on that day a senior OEM official ordered the evacuation of the facility after a Secret Service agent advised him that additional commercial planes had not been accounted for. But the fact that the report completely fails to mention, or discuss the causes of, the nearly free-fall collapse of WTC 7 is strange.
8. Failure to document or analyze wreckage at the attack/crash sites. The Commission's report contains no reference to the wreckage of the four airplanes. Neither is there any mention of building remains or rubble. The only reference to the words 'wreckage' or 'remains' was in relation to the asbestos content of the dust from the Twin Towers. Thus, the Commission appears to have accepted without comment the fact that the rubble and steel fragments from the Twin Towers, and the airplane wreckage from Flight 77 at the Pentagon, were removed and disposed of without any expert examination. (Available photographs of the crash scene at the Pentagon reveal no evidence of parts that could be associated with the remains of a Boeing 757 airplane.) The report, thus, fails to mention that none of the wreckage/rubble underwent the thoroughgoing forensic investigation that would have assisted in understanding the nature of the crashes and subsequent building collapses.
9. Failure to discuss the different versions of the passenger lists for the hijacked airliners. No mention was made in the report of the fact that differing passenger lists emerged in the first few weeks after the attacks, including the fact that most lists failed to show anyone with a Middle Eastern name. In addition, the report surprisingly fails to provide: (1) the names of the passengers on each flight; or even (2) the number of passengers on board each airplane.
Andrew Mills is a groundwater hydrologist employed in an engineering consulting company. He and his wife have six children and 18 grandchildren. He was active in the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, and spent 9 years in India as a missionary specializing in water supply. Funded by the Egyptian government and USAID, in the early 1980's he investigated and reported on the water resources of the Sinai peninsula. He formed the New Jersey Peace Mission in the 1980s which arranged for groups to lobby in D.C. to stop funding the Contras in Nicaragua.
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