Debunking the cartoon-like physics of 9/11 official myth

From VeteransToday, July 11th, 2011 

More Proof of 9/11 Duplicity

by Jim Fetzer

My 4th of July article, “Inside Job: Seven Questions about 9/11”, raised questions about the events of 9/11 and whether more may have been involved than the official account of nineteen Islamic fundamentalists hijacking four commercial carriers, outfoxing the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and perpetrating these atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan.

These are the first plane crashes in its history that have not been investigated by the NTSB. An FBI official, when asked why not, replied, “It wasn’t necessary because we saw them on television.” But we did not see what happened at the Pentagon or in Shanksville “on television”—and what we have seen on TV does not look right.

We have no videos of the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville and only the five frames from the Pentagon of Flight 77. We have familiar footage of Flight 175 hitting the South Tower and less familiar footage of Flight 11 impacting with the North Tower. Since it was not broadcast that day, that footage raises interesting questions about George W. Bush’s public remarks that, when he watched the plane hit the North Tower, he thought to himself, “There’s one terrible pilot!”

His comment, after all, only makes sense assuming it occurred before the second hit, after which anyone should have realized this was no accident but a deliberate occurrence. Bush added that “the TV was obviously on”, but since the public broadcasts did not show it at that time, the thought has crossed my mind that he may have actually seen it “live” on a closed Secret Service channel, which would be stunning evidence that 9/11 was indeed an inside job.

Since I’ve made several observations about the Pentagon, I want to discuss some troubling aspects of the other crash sites. For those who want more on the Pentagon, I recommend “Pandora’s Black Box”, from Pilots for 9/11 Truth, as well as “National Security Alter” from Citizens Investigation Team, both of which support the existence of a large plane—presumably, a Boeing 757—that flew toward the Pentagon but did not crash into it, consistent with my earlier study.

(1) Flight 11 hitting the North Tower

(a) Remarkably Jules Naudet, a French filmmaker, just happened to be in the vicinity doing a modest documentary about New York Firemen out looking for a “gas leak”. As Leslie Raphael has explained, that a cameraman should have been in precisely the right position to film this event depended upon a rather large number of conditions—either as a matter of coincidence, as the government would have us believe, or by design. If this occurred by chance, it’s improbability is astonishingly small. An odd flash occurs just as the flying objectmakes contact with the building:

(b) While the image is too blurry and indistinct to be identifiable as a 767, a time-sequence of the image in motion as it approaches the tower—prepared by Rosalee Grable—does not bear even a faint resemblance:

(c) And when you compare the pattern at the time of impact with what we see subsequently, there does not seem to be lot of room for doubt that they do not appear to be the same. So the question arises, why not?

(2) Flight 175 hitting the South Tower

The footage of the South Tower hit exemplifies several anomalies, including a Boeing 767 flying at an impossible speed, an impossible entry into the building (in violation of Newton’s laws), and even passes through its own length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its own length in air—which is impossible, unless this 500,000 ton, steel and concrete building posed no more resistance to its trajectory in flight than air. The structure of the building, moreover, meant that it actually intersected with eight different floors as follows:

Each of those floors consisted of steel trusses connected at one end to the core columns and at the other to the steel support columns. They were filled with 4-8” of concrete (deeper in the v-shaped grooves) and posed enormous horizontal resistance. (Imagine what would happen to a plane encountering one of them suspended in space!) The windows were 18” wide and the support columns one meter apart, while there were no windows between floors, which means far less than 50% if the plane should have entered via them. But as Jack White shows here, that is not what the videos display:

Notice that the plane completely enters the building before its jet fuel explodes, when one would have thought that, since its fuel is stored in its wings, they should have exploded on entry—which is comparable to the failure of the 757 at the Pentagon to have its fuel explode when its wings hit those lampposts. And while some have sought to support the claim that this was a real 767 based upon the engine found at Church & Murray, it did not come from a 767 and, if this FOX News footage is authentic, appears to be a plant, as another of Jack’s studies reveals:

So how can a Boeing 767 travel at am impossible speed (as Pilots for 9/11 Truth has confirmed), enter a steel and concrete building in violation of Newton’s laws, pass through its own length into the building in the same number of frames that it passes through its own length in air, and not have its fuel explode as it makes contact with that massive edifice? Even the frames from the Pentagon show a huge fireball upon impact. If that was true of the 757 there, why is it not also true of the 767 here? It looks as though, in this respect, Flight 77 fakery was just a bit better than Flight 175 fakery.

(3) Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville

(a) A Boeing 757 weighs about 100 tons with a wingspan of about 125′ and a tail that stands 44′ above the ground. It would have been overwhelmingly larger than the trucks in this photograph, where the alleged crater from the crash was situated. Compare this crash site with those from bona fide crash sites to begin to appreciate the enormity of the deception involved. “This is the most errie thing”, the coroner observed at the scene. “I have not, to this day, seen a single drop of blood. Not a drop.”

(b) The reporter for FOX News had similar observations, which I have also verified from the taped interview:

FOX News reporter: It looks like there’s nothing there, except for a hole in the ground.

Photographer Chris Konicki: Ah, basically that’s right. The only thing you can see from where we where, ah, was a big gouge in the earth and some broken trees. We could see some people working, walking around in the area, but from where we could see it, there wasn’t much left.

Reporter: Any large pieces of debris at all?

Konicki: Na, there was nothing, nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there.

Reporter: Smoke? Fire?

Konicki: Nothing. It was absolutely quite. It was, uh, actually very quiet. Um, nothing going on down there. No smoke. No fire. Just a couple of people walking around. They looked like part of the NTSB crew walking around, looking at the pieces…” – FOX (09/11/01)

(c) An alleged eyewitness, Val McClatchey, who resides less than two miles from the purported crash site, claims to have taken a photo showing a plume of smoke from the crash site. Like the smoke coming from the series of dumpsters at the Pentagon, alas, there are good reasons to suspect that her photo was faked. The plume resembles those from detonation explosions more than it does fires from crash sites–and estimates of the location of the plume place it over a pond, which suggests that this is yet another fake photograph in the 9/11 inventory. Indeed, there are many good reasons to suspect that 9/11 was staged with Hollywood-style special effects.

Planes or No-Planes?

Serious students of 9/11 are therefore placed in a dilemma. If they are committed to truth, as the name “9/11 Truth” implies, then they have to confront the evidence that supports the conclusion that all four of the plane crashes–one way or another–appear to have been faked. To put it more precisely, there is no credible evidence of a plane crash in Shanksville nor at the Pentagon, while the evidence for the New York events appears to support video fakery. In a circumstance like this, the best move may be to take a step back and ask yourself if there is any circumstantial evidence that might help to resolve the question in your own mind. Here I would observe that the following considerations be borne in mind, namely:

(i) Elias Davidsson, “There is no evidence that Muslims committed the crime of 9/11″, has shown that the government has never actually proven that the hijackers were aboard any of those planes;

(ii) David Ray Griffin, “Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners”, has shown that the evidence shows that all of the alleged phone calls from all four of the airplanes were faked;

(iii) Col. George Nelson, USAF (ret.), has observed that, of the millions of uniquely identifable component parts from those four airplanes, the government has yet to produce even one;

(iv) John Lear, among our nation’s most distinguished pilots, has observed that, before a pilot can pull away from a terminal, he must submit an envelope (with a flight plane, check list, and passenger data), yet none of those envelopes has ever been produced; and,

(v) FAA Registry data shows that, for the four planes allegedly involved in crashed on 9/11, the planes corresponding to Flights 11 and 77 were not deregistered until 01/14/2002 and those for Flights 93 and 175 not until 09/28/2005, which suggests that at least two of those planes were still in the air long after 9/11.

What this suggests to me (and others more expert than I in matters of this kind) is that 9/11 was a staged event designed as a psy-op that was intended to instill fear in the American people to manipulate us to support political policies–including wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq–that we otherwise would never have considered. Since that is the objective of terrorism, the weight of the evidence that students of 9/11 have discovered supports the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration has been practicing terrorism on the American people. So take your time and sort this out for yourself. We are talking about the pivotal event of the 21st Century, whose effects–for better or for worse–are enduring to this day.

---

Jim Fetzer founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth and maintains its web site at http://911scholars.org.

The Manchurian Alien Son of the CIA can't guarantee social security checks will go out on aug3

(This means that they already spent ALL of the Social Security contributions. That is why they need even more debt to pay Social Security checks)


From media monarchy 

Separa

meanwhile, military funding will continue on schedule...

from cbsnews: President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News. The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2. Lawmakers from both parties want to use the threat of that deadline to work out a broader package on long-term deficit reduction, with Republicans looking to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending, while Democrats are pushing for a more "balanced approach," which would include both spending cuts and increased revenue through taxes.

_________-

Related:

You're So Easy to Rule

US Paper Money That Was Actually WORTH Something; The Gold Certificate

From Goon Squad :

A gold certificate in general is a certificate of ownership that gold owners hold instead of storing the actual gold. It has both a historic meaning as a US paper currency (1882–1933) and a current meaning as a way to invest in gold.

Gold certificate

The gold certificate was used from 1882 to 1933 in the United States as a form of paper currency. Each certificate gave its holder title to its corresponding amount of gold coin. Therefore, this type of paper currency was intended to represent actual gold coinage. In 1933 the practice of redeeming these notes for gold coins was ended by the U.S. government. When U.S. paper money was modernized in 1928, gold certificates ceased to be issued.When the U.S. was taken off the gold standard in 1933, gold certificates were withdrawn from circulation. As noted above, it was illegal to own them.

'Modernized' in 1928 and were no longer issued? Just in time for the Crash of '29.....But they were still issued, as you'll see.

Gold certificates are very much like the world's first-ever paper bank notes.

Starting in the 17th century, gold certificates were issued by goldsmiths in London and Amsterdam to customers depositing gold bullion into their safe-keeping. These gold certificates then acted as proof of gold ownership. In time, the certificates were passed from hand to hand just like cash payments, without the hassle of having to move the gold bullion itself.

In the mid-19th century, the US Treasury began to issue gold certificates that could be exchanged for gold from its vaults. These gold certificates circulated as money until 1933, when the US government banned private gold ownership inside the United States.

Thank Jehovah for the Federal Reserve!!

$100,000 U.S. Gold Certificate 

During the early 1930s, the United States and the rest of the industrialized world experienced an economic depression. In 1934, the United States continued its movement toward removing its currency from the gold standard. It even became illegal to possess gold coins or gold-based currency until Congress relented somewhat for collectors. The Gold Certificate Series of 1934 poses a slight puzzle since the United States was off the gold standard by 1934. The $100,000 note shown here was not intended for general circulation but was used as an accounting device between branches of the Federal Reserve. This $100,000 note was the highest denomination ever issued by the United States.

Before the computer age, this was the way to move your wealth offshore.


To be used to ship wealth (Most of it stolen) offshore and deposit in some tax-free haven that 'Uncle Sam' knew about, but looked the other way when needing more income, just like today.
Back during the first Federal Reserve engineered 'Great Depression,' most Americans had trouble scraping together $100, let alone ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.

Are these notes now sitting in our gold depository at Ft. Knox, which no one wants to audit, because the gold bars seem to have disappeared and replaced with more Fed 'toilet paper'?

They'll tell Grandma and Grandpa to "Piss off, we need your Social Security money for OUR own deviant purposes."

And tell the poor with jobs that don't have a benefit package that includes health insurance or the millions and millions of Americans who lost their job, thanks to the deliberately engineered Federal Reserve 'Great Depression, Part II" to "Fuck off, you loafers, get a job, NO more Medicaid, we have to keep cutting taxes on our rich and VERY rich gazilliionaires and corporations that really don't pay any taxes, but we need to kiss Wall Street ass to get those BIG bribes... sorry, I mean to say 'campaign' donations."

"Sorry, gotta run, that was the doorbell which means my Wall Street buds AGAIN sent over my favorite $10,000 a night call girl!!!!"

"Hot damn, I just LUV being a 'public' servant."

Money As Debt-Full Length Documentary
Money As Debt is a fast-paced and highly entertaining animated feature by artist & videographer, Paul Grignon. It explains today's magically perverse DEBT-MONEY SYSTEM in terms that are easy to understand.

Check out his website at this link 

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal, there is no human relation between master and slave. Debt- government, corporate and household has reached astronomical proportions. Where does all this money come from? How could there BE that much money to lend? The answer is...there isn't. Today, MONEY IS DEBT. If there were NO DEBT there would be NO MONEY. If this is puzzling to you, you are not alone. Very few people understand, even though all of us are affected.


Money As Debt II-Promises Unleashed explores the baffling, fraudulent and destructive arithmetic of themoney system that holds us hostage to a forever growing DEBT... and how we might evolve beyond it into a new era.

Bailouts, stimulus packages, debt piled upon debt...Where will it all end?
How did we get into a situation where there has never been more material wealth & productivity and yet everyone is in debt to bankers?
And now, all of a sudden, the bankers have no money and we the taxpayers, have to rescue them by going even further into debt!


The Federal Reserve's illegal, has been from the beginning, since you CAN'T change the Constitution by merely passing a law.

Abolish the Fed and use the RICO laws to take BACK our wealth.

Abolish the Fed and watch these 'Wars for Wall Street and Israel' stop. 

Burn It! Shred It! Compost It! DESTROY THE "9/11 COMMISSION REPORT" at the 9/11 Myth Destruction Picnic Friday, July 22nd!

From Truthjihad.com blog 

By Kevin Barrett

 Matt Naus will discuss the upcoming 9/11 Myth Destruction Picnic on Truth Jihad Radio Wednesday, July 12th, 1 to 1:30 p.m. (followed by Susan Lindauer on Libya till 2, then Methodist minister James Wall, former Editor and current Contributing Editor of Christian Century Magazine, from 2 to 3).

*  *  *

 What's the best way to destroy an evil, poisonous myth?

One method: Prove that it isn't true.

The 9/11 truth movement has long since done that. At this late date, anybody who thinks WTC-7 came straight down in 6.5 seconds from a few modest fires and a hitherto-unknown phenomenon called "thermal expansion"may as well still believe in Santa Claus.

The problem is, empirical truth isn't enough. In fact, it isn't really the issue. Myths (sacred narratives) work in a realm of symbolism, image, and emotion. Trying to knock out a pernicious myth with critical reason and empirical fact is a little bit like trying to slow down an approaching fifty-foot tidal wave by shining a flashlight at it.

9/11 was the biggest symbolic event ever; it walloped collective human emotions much more powerfully than any other event in history. To undo its evil effects, we need to channel a whole lot of symbolic/emotional power against it.

And that is what the 9/11 Myth Destruction Picnic does.

The 9/11 Myth Destruction Picnic is the brainchild of Matt Naus, who shares with Lou Stolzenberg the the unofficial title as Wisconsin's most dedicated, hardest-working 9/11 truth activist.

Matt participated in the 2006 - 2007 Boston Tea Parties for 9/11 Truth, during which gargantuan effigies of the 9/11 Commission Report were thrown into Boston Harbor. (These events launched the Tea Party movement, for better or worse...)

The problem with the Boston Tea Party for truth was: Who wants to do an outdoor event in December?

So Matt said: Why not destroy the 9/11 Commission Report, and the myth it embodies, on the anniversary of its publication...which happens to be July 22nd?

The fun part: Thinking up ways to destroy the accurséd book!  Matt suggests: "1) shred it and add the shredded paper with some animal waste, like from a bull, into a compost mixture 2) tar & feather it 3) drill holes in it 4) barbeque it 5) pretend to pee on it (we don't want to violate any laws) we'll fill a long balloon with Mellow Yellow and then poke a pin size hole in the balloon squirting out the Mellow Yellow and make it look like we are pissing on it."

Matt's Milwaukee picnic starts at 1 pm and continues till dusk. It will take place Friday, July 22nd, at Juneau Park 801 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive, Milwaukee.

I urge everyone to hold their own 9/11 Myth Destruction Picnic on Friday, July 22nd, 2011 -- the seventh anniversary of the emergence of the foul and putrid Report from the south end of a north-facing bull owned byself-proclaimed mythologist Philip Zelikow.


Since 9/11's tenth anniversary is fast approaching, the media should be hungry for interesting, colorful stories of the way people are commemorating the biggest event of the century. Send out press releases announcing the Myth Destruction Picnic just in case there is an honest news outlet in your area. (If you live in a small town or rural area, the odds are pretty good.)


* * *


And speaking of myths, a certain "f---g scumbag" named David Aaronovitch (that's what he claims Ian Henshall called him, and hey, if it fits, wear it) libeled me in the Jewish Chronicle two weeks ago by brutally ripping my words out of context in order to falsely characterize my views on the Nazi holocaust. Aaronivitch wrote: "(Richard) Gage himself has appeared on a US radio programme hosted by one Kevin Barrett, who has described the Holocaust as a 'destructive myth.'"

Aaronovitch either recklessly or intentionally neglected to mention that when I speak of the Holocaust as a myth, I always make it clear that I am using the scholarly sense of the word myth (sacred narrative) rather than the vernacular sense ("lie," false account). Additionally, I have on literally hundreds of occasions made statements that make it clear that I do not dispute the gist of the standard Western historical account of German mass murders of Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, communists, handicapped people, slavs, and so on during World War II. In fact, I get all kinds of flak from people who DO dispute the standard account of these events, precisely because I do not.

By falsely implying that I deny the standard account of these Nazi murders, Aaronivitch commits libel. Indeed, he accuses me of a speech act that is a crime in many Western European countries, including some I traveled through shortly before he published his libel!

I understand that the UK libel laws are much stronger than the American ones. Maybe it's time for Ian Henshall and I to find a good British lawyer.

_________-

Related:

Where did the bodies go? 3,000 "deaths" from 9/11 not in Social Security death index


The Ugly Truth Podcast July 12, 2011

Glenn Beck in Israel, paying homage to the beast and promising to continute his propagandizing of Americans into continuing Israel’s wars in the Middle East. We are joined by semi-regular guest Keith Johnson of www.revoltoftheplebs.com to discuss Beck’s position as a CIA/Mossad asset and where it is all going from here.

Download Here

As always, thank you for supporting the financial needs associated with putting this program together.

Co-Chair of 9/11 Inquiry: American Government Covered Up State Assistance to Hijackers

From Washington's Blog,  JULY 11, 2011

It's front page news today that:

Journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World paper tried to access the mobile phones of 9/11 victims, a former New York City police officer claimed on Monday.

It's also front page news today that the new Secretary of Defense - Leon Panetta -said that American soldiers are in Iraq because of 9/11, even though AFP notes:

That was one of the justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion, but the argument has since been widely dismissed.

(see this for details).

But a more important story - and one which might focus on a more appropriate country
country than Iraq - is that the co-chair of the Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry (Bob Graham) today alleged a cover up by the U.S. government of state assistance by Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers.
Graham is no flake. He was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 10 years (including 18 months as chairman), member of the CIA External Advisory Board, chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, 18-year U.S. senator, two-term governor of Florida, co-chair of the national commission on the BP oil spill, and member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Graham writes today in the Daily Beast:

The first two hijackers who entered the United States did so through Los Angeles International Airport in mid-January 2000. Within days they were urged by a shadowy man, already described in an FBI report as an “agent” of the Saudi government, to relocate to San Diego with promises of extensive support—promises on which he promptly delivered.

The agent’s cover was as a ghost employee of a contractor to an agency of the Saudi government—paid a salary and allowances but never expected to show up and work. His real job was to monitor Saudi youth in San Diego getting an education to ensure they were not also plotting the overthrow of the monarchy.

When the two future hijackers reached San Diego, the agent’s allowances were substantially increased. Upon their arrival the agent secured and paid for an apartment. He arranged flight lessons. He introduced them to a tight circle of Muslims, primarily Saudis, who offered additional support.

Yet the support being funneled to the two visitors proved insufficient for their decidedly non-Islamic tastes—alcohol, strip clubs, even a desired, though unfulfilled, marriage to a stripper. The agent then tapped another source of funds: a welfare account maintained for the benefit of Saudis in need by the wife of the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

That is some of what we do know, and we got a sufficient glimpse to know what we didn’t know. Still unanswered after nearly 10 years are the questions of the full extent of the Saudi pre-9/11 involvement: Did any or all of the other 17 receive support from Saudi interests? Why would Saudi Arabia do this? Do the Saudis have the will and capability to aid future attacks against the United States? And most important: Why the cover-up by our government?

I have attempted to address these questions in the final report of the congressional commission and the nonfiction book Intelligence Matters,published in 2004. Each was censored by authorities in the intelligence community, particularly on the role of the Saudis in 9/11.

***

Why would the Saudis have given substantial assistance to at least two of the hijackers, and possibly all 19? The answer I have come to is survival—survival of the state and survival of the House of Saud.

This is stunning. Graham is saying - and actually has said for years - that the Saudis were involved in 9/11, but the U.S. government has been censoring this fact.
But it doesn't end there.
As I noted last year:

Investigators for the Congressional [9/11] Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . .

* * *

The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

And see this Newsweek article.
The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also described numerous obstructions of justice by the government into the 9/11 inquiry.
As I also pointed out last year, Graham - as well as the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission - found that witnesses were also intimidated into being quiet:

As I detailed previously, both the Joint Intelligence Committee and 9/11 Commission investigations into 9/11 had government "minders" intimidating witnesses into not saying anything the government didn't like.

You may assume that the issue of "minders" is overblown, and is not really that important.

But, as the New York Times noted in 2003:

The panel [i.e. the 9/11 Commission] also said the failure of the Bush administration to allow officials to be interviewed without the presence of government colleagues could impede its investigation, with the commission's chairman suggesting today that the situation amounted to "intimidation" of the witnesses.

***

[9/11 Commission co-chairs] Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton suggested that the Justice Department was behind a directive barring intelligence officials from being interviewed by the panel without the presence of agency colleagues.

At a news conference, Mr. Kean described the presence of "minders" at the interviews as a form of intimidation. "I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency," he said. "You might get less testimony than you would."

"We would rather interview these people without minders or without agency people there," he said.

And as I previously noted, a recently released 9/11 Commission memo complains that:

• Minders “answer[ed] questions directed at witnesses;”

• Minders acted as “monitors, reporting to their respective agencies on Commission staffs lines of inquiry and witnesses’ verbatim responses.” The staff thought this “conveys to witnesses that their superiors will review their statements and may engage in retribution;” and

• Minders “positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions.”

Still think this isn't an important issue?

Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and chair of the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, said in 2005:

The [9/11] commission's findings were based on an interview with al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Arabian officials present. "He had no motivation to speak truthfully as to his role," he said.

When government officials are present, it creates conditions where the witness "has no motivation to speak truthfully."

Bottom Line: The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton, and chair of the the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11, Bob Graham, said that minders obstructed the investigation into 9/11.

In his Daily Beast article today, Graham also goes into more detail regarding the American cover up of 9/11:

The most perplexing unanswered question remains: Why would the United States engage in a cover-up? Many have pointed to the special personal friendship between the royal family and the highest levels of our national government. The fact that the Saudis were allowed to fly a planeload of their elite home from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11, when all other commercial aviation was grounded, is often cited as support for that position. In fact, all that actions such as this do is make America’s post-9/11 reaction to the Saudis even more mysterious.

Secrets deemed this critical by both governments are bound to be buried under many layers of official protection and unofficial obfuscation. The actions since 9/11 are a perverted application of Winston Churchill’s truism on the Allies’ plans to end World War II: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

How far has the American cover up gone?
Here are some hints:

• The 9/11 Commission's co-chairs said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements (free subscription required)

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
  

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up"
  

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ." He also says that it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

• And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry - recently said "At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened". He also said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true." And he said: "It's almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened"

• A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates andpersonally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”

• The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said "The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup"

• The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility

• The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

• Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11

(Other than that, the American government has been totally forthcoming .)

Note: This essay does not address one way or another whether any countries other than Saudi Arabia might have been involved in the 9/11 attacks themselves.