9/11: Lies?
    By Matthew B. Robinson, PhD           
    Associate Professor of Criminal Justice       
    Appalachian State University
robinsnmb@appstate.edu

Here are some of the unbelievable, yet widely reported, examples of dishonesty from members of the Bush Administration with regard to the warnings that they say NEVER came.  Check these claims versus the warnings posted on this web site!

∙    September 14, 2001 – FBI Director Robert Mueller claims: “If we had understood [that hijackers trained in the United States to be pilots] we would have – perhaps we could have averted this.”  Yet, the FBI did, on many occasions, learn just this!

∙    September 16, 2001 – President Bush claims: “Never in anybody’s thought processes ... about how to protect America did we ever think that the evil doers would fly not one but four commercial aircraft into precious US targets ... never.”  Yet, NORAD, the Pentagon, and the FAA did learn about this and even made preparations for it!

∙    September 17, 2001 – FBI Director Robert Mueller claims: “There were no warning signs that I’m aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country.”  This is simply false!

∙    September 17, 2001 – NORAD gave briefing to White House regarding fighter response times on 9/11.  Its time line is released the next day and contains numerous errors regarding what it did on 9/11 to protect the country.

∙    February 6, 2002 – CIA Director George Tenet says “We are proud of [our record on 9/11]” and claims that the 9/11 plot was only “in the heads of three or four people.”  Yet, the evidence shows many, many people knew of the plot!

∙    February 6, 2002 – FBI Director Robert Mueller claims: “There was nothing the agency could have done to anticipate and prevent the [9/11] attacks.”  Yet, the evidence suggests the FBI could have prevented the attacks simply by sharing the news of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui with other agencies and the American people!

∙    April 19, 2002 – FBI Director Robert Mueller asserts: “In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot.”  He also says the hijackers used “extraordinary secrecy” and claims that “investigators have found computers, laptops, hard drives, or other storage media that may have been used by the hijackers, who hid their communications by using hundreds of pay phones and cell phones, coupled with hard-to-trace prepaid calling cards.”  Each of these claims has been refuted by statements made by CIA Director George Tenet.

∙    May 15, 2002 – White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says “The President did not – not – receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers ... Until the attack took place, I think it is fair to say that no one envisioned that possibility.”  Yet, in October 2001, Paul Pillar, the former CIA Counter Terrorism Director, said: “The idea of commandeering an aircraft and crashing it into the ground and causing high casualties, sure we’ve thought of that.”

∙    May 16, 2002 – National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice claims: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.”  She also said that “even in retrospect there was nothing to suggest that.”  Yet, a look at the evidence paints such a clear picture of what was coming that it is embarrassing we missed it!

∙    May 16, 2002 – Major airlines spokespersons hold a press conference and claim they received no warnings regarding a specific hijacking threat and that they were not told to heighten security.  In fact, the FAA and airlines were warned about threats in the summer of 2001.

∙    June 18, 2002 – FBI Director Robert Mueller says: “To this day, we have found no one in the United States except for the actual hijackers who knew of the plot and we have found nothing they did while in the United States that triggered a specific response about them.”  Is this because we let them all the country after 9/11?

∙    October 17, 2002 – NSA Director Michael Hayden says the “NSA had no [indications] that al Qaeda was specifically targeting New York and Washington ... or even that it was planning an attack on US soil.”  He also says the “NSA had no knowledge ... that any of the attackers were in the United States.”  Yet, the NSA did intercept calls between KSM and Mohamed Atta in the summer of 2001 and between Abu Zubaida (UBL’s chief of operations) and others in the US in September 2001.

∙    April 8, 2004 – National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice asserts to the 9/11 Commission that “[Richard] Clarke never asked me to brief the President on counter terrorism.”  Clarke asked many times and was jumping up and down screaming to get the Bush Administration to take his warnings about al Qaeda seriously.

∙    April 13, 2004 – President Bush says: “We knew he [UBL] had designs on us.  We knew he hated us.  But there was nobody in our government, and I don’t think the previous government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.”  If President Bush doesn’t know that this had been envisioned and even planned for, isn’t this proof he was out of touch with the members of his intelligence agencies who had the information?

There is a little bit more to this story, isn’t there?  We knew they wanted to attack us, how they wanted to attack us, and even that they were going to attack us at any minute.  But, no one is admitting to that.  I wonder why???

As noted by former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry into intelligence failures of 9/11, President Bush’s statements and those of his Administration about the 9/11 attacks are inaccurate.  Graham says: “The first was that it was a surprise, a bolt from the blue.  The second was that no one could have imagined such an attack carried out in such a manner.  The third, that since no one could have envisaged the use of commercial aircraft as a weapon of mass destruction, no one could be held accountable.  The forth was that for all of the devastation, the attack was basically quite simple, requiring nineteen people and a sum of money estimated between $175,000 and $250,000" (p. 112).  These are all false!

In fact, the threats were many, and we knew it was coming ... there were at least 12 instances in which intelligence found information outlining terrorist plans to use airplanes as weapons, there were at least 12 instances in which the plot could have been interdicted but mistakes by individual people assured it did not happen (and yet not a single person has been held accountable for their failures), and the plot was very complex and resilient.  In fact, as Graham notes: “I find a pattern of substantial logistical, personnel, and kills development and financial support consistent with what the President was told in his fateful August 6 briefing.  I further suspect that the pattern of such support was more pervasive than is currently known or acknowledged” (p. 113).  Graham also says this structure of support was maintained by a nation-state [and no he does not say it was Iraq!].

Graham asserts that “after September 11, members of the Bush administration would claim that nobody could have imagined that planes might be used as weapons, during the course of our inquiry, we found that the possibility had been imagined, investigated, and interdicted more than once, and that in one case the Pentagon had been a target”!  His examples include: 1) Algerian terrorists who in 1994 tried to fly an Air France plane into the Eiffel Tower; 2) Project Bojinka in 1995 to blow up 11 planes simultaneously and crash a twelfth into CIA headquarters and thirteenth into the Pentagon; 3) an August 2001 plot to fly a plane into a US embassy in Nairobi or bomb it from a plane (p. 81).