I offer, for the sensible, level-headed person that resides in all of us, the reasonable questions surrounding the 911 attacks that We the People should be asking, yet whos overlords deem to be off limits.

Upon closer examination, many critical, yet lesser known aspects of the crime are poison to key officials and key agencies. The events leading to the attacks, the failures to intervene militarily during the attacks and especially, the stunning secrecy surrounding each aspect of the crime in the aftermath - when agencies and officials are called to account is where the demons reside - in the details.

Why were the repeated, urgent and specific warnings of an unprecedented terrorist attack ignored by the Bush inner circle? With the CIA director George Tenet later proclaiming that the US intelligence system was "blinking red", why was antiterrorism expert Richard Clarke removed from Bush's inner circle by Condoleezza Rice in the months before the attacks?

In the first eight months of the Bush administration, with unprecedented warnings coming from at least eleven foreign intelligence agencies in addition to over 40 Daily Presidential Briefs with urgent warnings, the bombing of the USS Cole and the bombings of two US embassies abroad yet to be addressed, why did the Bush administration reduce antiterror funding - right up until the attacks of 911?

Why did the Bush administration ardently oppose ANY investigation from the start? Why did both Bush - and later Cheney - contact the democratic Congressional leadership to warn that "the democrats would pay a high price" for an investigation into 911 of too much depth'?

Why was a team of legal specialists assembled by Bush insiders to select the members that would make up the 911 Commission? Why was the 911 Commission staffed with well-engrained, political insiders - all steeped in conflicts of interest in their official duty, supposedly "to offer the fullest possible account of the 911 attacks"?

With subpeona power, why did the 911 Commission receive, (and not object), when they received less than 3,000 of the 12,000 documents that it requested from the White House?

Why did the arrangement that compelled National Security Advisor Rice to testify before the Commission include provisions excluding sworn testimony from Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, or any other White House officials?

Why were decades long Bush family ties with the bin Laden family and the Saudi Royal family completely suppressed throughout the congressional investigation and deliberately omitted by the 911 Commission?

(A twenty-eight page, highly detailed report of these critical connections was reviewed and suppressed by both "investigative committees", as per White House demands.)

Why were numerous key FBI and intelligence officials surrounding the events of 911 gagged - even threatened, while key military, intelligence and political officials that utterly failed were ALL promptly promoted?

Why was the San Diego FBI "asset", with whom two of the hijackers would live before 911, sequestered by the FBI in a secret location and prevented from testifying before the Commission?

Why did Bush agree to "meet with" the 911 Commission only with Dick Cheney at his side? Why were no cameras, transcript or recordings allowed? Why did neither agree to be sworn? Why were all notes taken by the Commission members confiscated by the Secret Service when Bush and Cheney concluded their "meeting" with the Commission?

Why was Pakistan's Intelligence Chief Mahmud Ahmed not questioned when it was confirmed that he personally authorized a $100,000 wire transfer to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the days before the 911 attacks?

Why would the 911 Commission, (or any investigative body), proclaim in their report that "the financing of the 911 attacks is, ultimately, of little importance"?

Why were the connections with and training of several of the alleged hijackers by US intelligence and military agencies in the months and years before the 911 attacks suppressed by the Commission?

Why did Jeb Bush, the president's brother and governor of Florida leave his state aboard a US military C-130 transport aircraft the evening of 911, with the entirety of the records from the flight shool that was attended by several of the hijacker pilots? Why was this ignored by each investigative body? What could warrant this extraordinary action?

Why was the testimony of 118 NY firefighters, that spoke to massive and repeated explosions within the WTC towers following the initial airliner strikes, (as clearly evidenced in a wide array of on-site videotapes and civilian testimony), unaddressed and ignored by the 911 Commission?

(Why did the city of New York fight the release of this testimony for over five years, and release it only after numerous court and FOIA battles?)

Why did the $20 million NIST report, conducted by many experts in the field of explosive technologies, ignore, avoid and not test for any possibility of explosives in the demise of the WTC towers - including the collapse of WTC 7?

Who had the power to facilitate the unduly fast clearing and disposal of debris at the crime scenes, especially in New York and at the Pentagon? What was the official reason?

Why would it be necessary, in the conduct of military war drills on 911, to inject large numbers of "phantom" radar images into the civilian radar system that made locating the actual hijacked airliners by the FAA impossible?

(All military air drills were taking place hundreds of miles from both the US Capitol and New York City.)

Of the myriad air drills in progress on 911, (the essence of the official version and critical in the staggering failures to respond to the attacks), why was only one briefly mentioned in a footnote deeply buried in the final report by the 911 Commission?

When key, top-level Pentagon officials offer three sharply contradictory versions of their failures over a sixteen month period, (the final one to the 911 Commison), and the members of the Commission know that they are lying, why has this critical aspect of the crime not been addressed?

(The 911 Commission members knew the Pentagon officials were lying and considered referring perjury charges to the Justice department. Perjury by any key witness in any trial is a reversable error).

Why did agents of the FBI immediately confiscate numerous civilian videotapes of the Pentagon impact, even as people were burning to death in the aftermath? Why are the videotapes of the crash classified, to this day?

Why are the aircraft remains from flights 93 and 77 classified?

How, by whom and for what purpose were long-established aircraft intercept procedures and protocols significantly revised only four months prior to 911?

How, when, by whom and for what purpose were the numerous air drills, (critical in the failures to intervene), originally planned for October 2001, re-scheduled for the week of 9/10/2001?

How, why and by who's design was vice president Dick Cheney granted unprecedented command and control of all US air defense training and coordination only three months before the 911 attacks?

Was the Pentagon, or was it not, equipped with a missle defense system on 911, and if so, why did it utterly fail in preventing American Airlines flight 77 from crashing into the building?

Why were the results of 'Able Danger', a pre-911 intelligence operation that produced countless red flags about those that would eventually hijack airliners on 911, suppressed by both the congressional investigation and the 911 Commission? Why were libraries of Able Danger records destroyed both before and after the 911 attacks?

Why were so many critical investigations into those that would become hijackers hampered and halted by mid and upper level FBI supervisors? Why were numerous FBI operatives prevented from testifying?

When two FBI agents that were being repeatedly ignored by their supervisors about suspicious Muslim men taking flight training, they went to former Clinton prosecutor David Schippers. Mr Schippers contacted Attorney General Ashcroft many times, to no avail. Why was this critical failure ignored?

Why was FBI translator Sibel Edmonds fired and gagged, her critical, 3 1/2 hour testimony about widespread inconpetence and outright corruption within the FBI ignored?

Why was the critical testimony by US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, (that sharply contradicted Cheney's rendition of events during the 911 attacks), not only ignored - but expunged from the Commission transcripts and video archives?

How, and by who's design were the members of Odigo, an Israeli owned text message service, warned fully two hours before the 911 attacks - and why wasn't this pursued by the 911 Commission?

With confirmed, widespread identity theft and mistaken identites among the alleged hijackers, why hasn't the FBI revised the original list of the accused? How can the crime of the century be tied to al Qaeda, or anyone, when identities are known to be fraudulent?

Why would ICTS, the Israeli owned company that provided security at Boston's Logan airport, Washington's Dulles airport and Newark's airport, (departure points for all four hijacked airliners), push for, (and receive), legislation to be inserted into the Patriot Act that gave them immunity from any liability in the 911 attacks?

Why hasn't the FBI or any US law enforcement agency charged Osama bin Laden in the attacks on the United States of America on September 11, 2001?

As in any crime, whether it be petty theft or the crime of the century, there is a motive. Why did every investigative body deliberately suppress the motive - the cause - the impetus behind the 911 attacks?

Yeah. By complete surprise. No one could have imagined it. Four airliners were hijacked by fanatical Muslims and three reached their targets on September 11, 2001.

What could be worth hiding? Indeed.

by Michael McCoy (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 487 comments [26 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008 at 8:53:36 PM

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Michael, That's not a comment, that's an ARTICLE. You need to publish that bad boy! :D

by Kim McDaniel (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 30 comments) on Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:27:06 PM

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Hi Kim...

Thanks for the kind words.  Always good to confer with, and have the approval of, another rabblerousing seeker of truth.

I submitted a nearly identical article to OpEdNews for publication on the anniversay of the attacks, (Thursday), that deals with the same glaring and unanswered questions. 

In the article, I confronted the obvious, yet unspoken causes for the attacks, and by acknowledging the gorilla in the room I may have crossed the line.

Seems some truths are too likely to offend the wrong crowd.

Best...  Michael

by Michael McCoy (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 487 comments [26 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:09:17 AM

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I'd like to repost them on a myspace bulletin, with proper attribution of course, to all of my myspace friends.

by Ishmael1 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Sep 11, 2008 at 8:46:50 PM

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