The 9/11 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush
By Cheryl Seal
At the very least Bush allowed 9/11 to happen. But the evidence indicates his guilt involves more than just a huge intentional sin of omission � this now seems certain. So it is ulcer-fomenting to watch him, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and their PR army try to sell America yet another Big Lie � that they had no idea such a thing as 9/11 could happen...they could never have imagined it in their wildest dreams...they had no specific warnings...there was nothing unusual about the summer 2001 warnings, etc, etc, ad nauseam. I have compiled some material that clearly shows that the above litany is blatantly, arrogantly false. But first, let's hold a preliminary hearing in the "Court of Common sense".
To see through a wall of propaganda and determine what's really going on, one must tune out the spin completely and take a good, objective look at what has been DONE and what the parties involved have to GAIN by their actions. Let's look at the well-documented facts:
First, when Bush, Rice and the other top Reichmeisters discarded the warning on August 6, Bush's approval ratings had sunk to just 49% � this is the red zone for a president. As any political expert or presidential historian: Hit 45%, and impeachment may soon loom on the horizon.
Second, Bush's actions throughout his entire life show a clear and consistent pattern: without exception, he has always chosen the path that will benefit himself and his corporate friends the most and will do so in the face of even the most outraged criticism.
Third, the stolen election of 2000 proves that Bush was willing to participate in a very daring, very large scale crime in pursuit of power.
Fourth, Bush's father's approval ratings went from shaky to astronomical within a month of declaring war on an "evil terrorist" leader back in 1991. This lesson could hardly have been lost on Bush, Jr.: Start a war and the emotions of the public can be whipped up to a point that will push presidential approval ratings way, way up.
So, given the above facts as "evidence," what do you imagine a self-serving man who has faced no serious opposition from Congress, the press, or the American public would be likely to do? A bookie would most certainly lay odds that Bush would stand aside and allow an event like 9/11 to happen.
Another action that must be considered in the cold hard light of day is Bush's behavior after 9/11. He seized upon national fears, worked at intensifying them, and immediately, without waiting for Congress or serious discussions with other nations, called for an attack on Afghanistan and a global war on terrorism. At the same time, he worked through John Ashcroft with stunning swiftness to dismantle civil liberties. These are not the actions of a leader who wants to keep his nation calm, reassured, and standing tall in its principles in the wake of tragedy. They are the actions of an opportunist who knows, from watching his father's presidency, that the window of opportunity for consolidating his power will be narrow: Bush Sr.'s approval rating high lasted only a few months.
Last, why would Bush admit to having been warned about 9/11 in the first place? In the corporate and political world, this admission is a strategy that has been used over and over by creeps who are guilty of huge crimes and know the heat is on. By confessing to a lesser charge, they try to draw the heat away from the main, more dangerous issue. Ken Lay, the head of Anderson, and every criminal who has ever copped or tried to cop a plea bargain have used this ploy. If Bush were innocent of any complicity in 9/11, why should he make ANY statement? It is always the guilty who feel the need to make statements: "I am not a crook!", "I never had sex with that woman!" Or how about that row of tobacco industry CEO's who all swore that none of them knew their product was harmful or addictive?
Therefore, based on the evidence, I would say we have a phony president who is as guilty as hell, who knows that someone has the goods on him and is breathing down his neck. He is gambling that by making a preemptive strike while he still has control of the media, he can spin a protective wall around himself. Thus, we have Dick Cheney appearing on 5/19 on Meet the Press, being "interviewed" about the 9/11 flap by his friend and neighbor Russert. Yep, that's right �both interviewer and interviewee live in the feudally exclusive Kalorama suburb of D.C., where houses START at around $1 million. In fact, on the same program, Russert had the arrogance to even mention how he'd seen his buddy out taking the air on his new "It" scooter. How cozy! And this is what is being served to America in the name of a free and honest press. Ya got a problem? Just pick a pal in the press corps and tell him what questions you want him/her to ask you so you can spin them in just the way you want.
Russert asked Cheney how he responded to charges that the information existed in several reports which showed that a WTC-type attack was a possibility. Cheney responded �incredibly!� that reading all those reports weren't his concern. There's just too darn many of them. Russert let this ridiculous response go totally unchallenged and unqualified.
Here are the questions that are missing �the questions a real journalist would have asked: "So then, Mr. Cheney, just what are your criteria for a report that is important enough for you to read? How do you prioritize what you read or what those under you are directed to call to your attention? What reports on this matter DID you read?"
It is insulting to America's intelligence that such questions are not being asked. It's like a grand jury that refuses to ask a murder suspect questions like "Where were you on the night of such and such? What was your relationship to the victim?" but instead says, "Well, here's what we heard from the police that someone thinks you may have killed someone. Go ahead and explain yourself. Don't worry �we won't interrupt you or ask you any uncomfortable questions. And, by the way, your good pal who lives down the block volunteered to serve as jury foreman!"
Here's one last FACT to consider. The GOP spent $40 million to pursue an ultimately merit-less case against Clinton that involved diddling an intern and some questionable real estate deals. Since Bush took office, not one dime has been spent by Congress to investigate Cheney and his secret energy dealings, Bush's stolen election, Tom Delay's boiler room scams that have bilked doctors out of millions, the mysterious wild trading of American and United Airlines stock the week before 9/11 or any of the other crimes that were far more serious than Clinton's offenses. Meanwhile, the GOP �so eager to spend millions to investigate an office romance� has worked overtime to block the initiation of any serious investigation into the biggest crime to have ever been perpetrated on American soil that claimed nearly 3,000 lives. WAKE UP AMERICA!!
"Vague Warning" or Blueprint for Disaster?
The story Bush wants the world to buy is that the warnings he received were vague, routine, too general to act upon. Condi Rice wants us to believe that no one in the administration could have dreamed the hijackers would fly into a landmark building. But, as they say in show biz, this is "lies, lies, and damn lies."
Since 1993, scores of people, collectively, in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and CIA have know that an attack like 9/11 was not only a possibility �but an increasingly likely probability. Because I am not writing a book here, I will confine myself to summarizing the most obvious pieces of evidence that Bush and his team had to work with. However, they are enough to convict him in any court of opinion.
Terrorism 2000 Report
Don't confuse this 1993 study with the report turned out by the Bush administration in April 2001 under the same title. The 2001 release, a summary of terrorist activity in 2000, lifted the title of the original document, no doubt as a smokescreen to confuse anyone who might be seeking the 1993 document through a search engine or library archives.
In 1993, the Pentagon commissioned, via the Department of Defense's office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a think tank-style study of the ways terrorists could execute large-scale acts of terrorism on the US. Participants in the $150,000 study consisted of a panel of 41 intelligence/security experts that included former ranking CIA, FBI, State Department and Rand Corporation officials, as well as an ex-KGB general and Israeli intelligence agent.
One of the problems the team brainstormed over was the various ways an airplane could be used to destroy national landmarks �in fact, the WTC was most certainly on the panel's list of possible targets. One conclusion reached by the team as a future trend in terrorist activity was that extremists would seek to maximize their impact by escalating their attacks from one-at-a-time truck bomb/suicide bomber events to multiple, simultaneous targeting, thereby touting their power and stretching the victim governments' ability to respond.
The possible terrorist scenarios the team outlined scared the socks off folks in the government. One high-level official described it as "too outrageous." As a result, the team's report, Terrorism 2000 (a reference to terrorism in the new millennia) was blocked from public release. Even a toned down version that had been proposed as a way to raise public awareness and improve national preparedness was killed! A draft of the report was nonetheless passed on through the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is absolutely no doubt that this information was available to everyone in the Bush Administration, including Ms. Rice. It should have been required reading �especially since many of the predictions made by the report had already come true before 9/11.
Four instances of planes used as weapons before 2001
1994: A Federal Express Flight engineer was apprehended as he tried to storm the cockpit of a DC-10. The engineer, despondent over his impending firing, had planned to crash the plane into a Fed Ex building in Memphis.
1994: A pilot stole a Cessna and tried to crash it into the White House. He instead hit a tree on the White House grounds, not far from Clinton's bedroom.
1995: An Islamic fundamentalist group hijacked an Air France flight and loaded the plane with 27 tons of fuel in Marseilles as a way to turn it into an incendiary bomb when they crashed it into the Eiffel tower. This plan was thwarted when Special Forces stormed the craft before it could leave Marseilles.
1995: Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to planting timed explosive devices on eleven US airline flights in an attempt to create a "multiple attack" event (as outlined in the "too outrageous" Terrorism 2000 report). The same terrorist group also planned to crash on airplane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and another into the Pentagon (but Condi didn't dream anyone would ever try such a thing in 2001?). This scheme was not a wild and fevered plot. It was in the advanced planning stages �to the point where specific flights had already been selected. Murad himself was going to be the suicide pilot who hit the CIA headquarters. Where did he get his pilot training? In a US flight school.
The specifics of the "vague warning"
The most glaring lie Bush is using in his current spin is his claim that the warnings he received were too vague to act upon. However, the facts all by themselves scream "liar!"
From April, 2001 right up to the day the WTC and Pentagon were slammed, urgent warnings of impending large-scale attacks by terrorists had been issued to the Bush administration from multiple sources. Germany, Egypt, Russia and Israel all delivered alerts that accurately foretold the scale of the attack and that it would involve a prominent landmark of some type. This would automatically put the WTC and Pentagon on the short list, especially as both landmarks had been targeted before (as mentioned above, the Pentagon attack was averted).
The German intelligence agency BND warned the US and Israel both in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." This is hardly vague, and hardly refers to an "overseas danger" to Americans (which of our prominent landmarks is in Europe or Asia, pray tell?).
On June 13, Egypt sent an urgent warning that a plane stuffed with explosives could be used as a weapon against George Bush. It was assumed, incorrectly at that time that the target could be the G-8 summit in Genoa, held in June 2001.
Vladimir Putin was so certain of the information he received in the summer of 2001 of an impending attack that he personally instructed Russian intelligence to tell Bush "in the strongest possible terms" (his own words on September. 15, 2001) of an impending attack involving airports and government. The Russians told the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been specially trained to execute suicide missions. It was around the same time that the FBI was receiving tips about suspicious Arabic men in US flight schools.
In August, 2001, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad warned the CIA and FBI that as many as 200 al Qaeda members were infiltrating the US and planning "a major assault on the US" against "a large-scale target" in a setting where Americans would be "very vulnerable."
The NSA cracked bin Laden's encryption code by February 2001
Even before April, the Bush administration HAD TO KNOW something was up and probably had info that was even more specific than the warnings given above. According to UPI correspondent Richard Sale, by February 2001, the National Security Agency had broken Osama bin Laden's communications encryption system. We know that the encryption was broken because the Bush administration reported AFTER 9/11 that it had intercepted encrypted calls bin Laden made to his mother two days before the attack, saying "In two days, you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while." If this message was intercepted before the attack, what others were intercepted as well that the Bush administration did NOT reveal? Most likely six-months'-worth of terrorist planning.
The CIA knew of suspicious airline stock trades by September 7
Last but not least, the CIA knew a week before the attack WHICH airlines were most likely to be hijacked. The Agency maintains an advanced program called Promis, which monitors unusual stock market activity, SPECIFICALLY as a way to anticipate potential terrorist attacks. Promis provides 24-hour continuous real-time data on stock market activity and the FBI and Justice Department have both admitted that Promis was up and running all through the summer and fall of 2001. So there is no doubt whatsoever that as early as September. 7, the CIA knew that something was going down and knew which airlines were being targeted. Even a third-grader could have put this information together with the long litany of warnings above from foreign sources and come up with the conclusion that an American or United Airlines craft was going to be hijacked in the near future and most likely used to crash into a landmark, quite possibly the World Trade Center.
More smoking facts
According to the official government web site of the Military District of Washington the Pentagon ITSELF planned in detail how it would respond to just such a scenario from October 24-26 2000. And this was no low-level exercise, since it took place in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room. This story was run in Unknown News and picked up the same day by Democrats.com which fortunately, kept a copy because within 24 hours, the story �along with the entire Military District website� was scrubbed by the White House!
The model used in this simulation and the response plan was developed by Don Abbott, who is the founder of FieldSoft, a company that makes emergency-response software programs and systems, including FdonScene. This program, according to the FieldSoft site, "is the first �and only� fire service, software application specifically designed for incident commanders and their staff in-the-field. The commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) product is designed to support in field operations for any type of emergency response. Basically, FDonScene is an automated COTS tool that actively facilitates control and coordination of people, procedures, events, and other resources with the touch of a finger.The application is specifically designed for fast, simple and easy use by the incident commander, as well as members of the command staff."
Bush was without doubt very familiar with FdonScene because it was first endorsed by the Texas Fire Chiefs Association while he was governor (1998). And, as the FieldSoft brochure mentions, "FieldSoft has engineered software necessary to integrate FDonScene with a consequence management system under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)." So this is definitely a program well known to and used by the military.
Now, in light of this, consider this fact: By a "miracle" of coincidence, the FdonScene program had been set up and made ready to go for use by the emergency response teams at the WTC disaster just a few days before the disaster, as if in anticipation. The brochure boasts: "Over 700 victims passed through the Atlantic Highlands Ferry Port in New Jersey following the September 11, 2001 WTC attack. Two fire departments, three local police departments, as well as representatives from county, state, and federal agencies were on hand to assess and assist the victims as they embarked. Emergency units on the scene included 40 ambulances, an FD communications unit, a decontamination unit, and 10 pieces of fire apparatus. A communications unit member on scene at the Port, who had seen a ninety minute demonstration of the software a few days earlier, brought a trial copy of FDonScene on line and used it to track people, resources, and events. A second person watched how the software was being used, and took over operation of it a few hours later. Overall, the software was operated successfully for 14 hours." Nowhere can any reference to WHO the "unit member" was, or who the "second person" was.
In another FieldSoft "success story" for a different product, the same ominous vagueness is found: "The Organization of American States (OAS) planned a major meeting in a North American city. Intelligence gathering operations revealed that anarchists planned to disrupt the meeting. The local police service evaluated a number of software systems that could be used to help manage law enforcement activities from the joint operations center (JOC). PDonScene was elected 3 weeks prior to the opening ceremonies." The software was configured and in place at the JOC as delegates commenced OAS activities. PDonScene was used throughout the 4 day event to manage hundreds of local, provincial, and federal law enforcement officers. The software helped law enforcement managers successfully manage peaceful labor �and not so peaceful anarchist� demonstrations by thousands of people, at several different venues throughout the community. "We [the agency] purchased the software because operation of it looked simple," stated a JOC Staff Sergeant. That Sergeant went on to say that "we found it [PDonScene] exceptional in that it showed the situation in real time with both [officer] names and call signs".
July: Shortly after the Bay of Pigs crisis, the Kennedy administration allowed the FAA to pass a rule that permitted commercial airline pilots to be armed. The rule was passed to protect flights from possible hijacking by Cubans. Although no airline ever availed themselves of this right, it seems very strange that the rule was rescinded in July 2001, right at the HEIGHT of the most serious terrorist warnings to be issued by intelligence sources in decades. It seems, instead, that this should have been the time for the Bush administration to insist that pilots be armed! Just like the timing of everything that happened in the second half of 2001, we sniff something a lot more foul than politics
Mid-August: A flight school in Minnesota flight reported Zacharias Missouri to the local FBI office after Missouri requested training in how to fly a jet, but not in how to land or take off. Although Moussaoui was arrested, agents did not search his computer and thus missed vital clues.
Early September: (from a letter from a reader): I was listening to "The Connection" on PBS this morning. The subject was terrorism (of course). During the show, a man called in who said his wife was a VP at an all-girls college. Just before 9/11, a Saudi prince called up and said to cancel his daughter's registration for the fall and send him a refund. On 9/11, at 9:30, Saudi security was there to pick up 3 princesses from the school. The man said his wife called the FBI, but they didn't pay any heed to her. Hopefully, you will hear that from this link.
This incident most certainly was reported to the FBI after September 11 and most clearly indicated there could be a Saudi connection. Yet the Bush administration has refused to pursue an active investigation of Saudi ties to September 11 and instead focused entirely on Afghanistan �though NONE of those responsible for September 11 came from Afghanistan, and, as it turns out, none trained there, they all trained in Europe or the US. However, there was nothing in it for Bush to bomb Saudi Arabia �we already get their oil!
Bin Laden's hunter O'Neill was killed at WTC: Was he also a casualty of the Bush administration?
Until he resigned, in August of 2001, John O'Neill was the director of antiterrorism for the FBI's New York office. O'Neill had worked on the investigations of the first WTC bombing in 1993 and the attacks on the American embassies in Africa in 1998. He became one of the world's top experts on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. O'Neill believed that "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia." Yet the Bush administration blocked O'Neill's efforts to investigate the Saudi ties to bin Laden. The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism, asserted O'Neill, were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.
For example, Bush blocked an FBI investigation of the bin Laden family and kept his family's business ties to the bin Ladens as secret as possible. Among these business dealings were bin Laden investments in the Carlyle Group and connections between bin Laden and George W. Bush's first oil companies. It must have truly enraged O'Neill if he knew that Osama bin Laden had flown to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by local CIA agent Larry Mitchell on July 12.
O'Neill was very well aware of the warnings that came out in the summer of 2001. But it was obvious that he was considered more of a liability than an asset to the oil-obsessed Bush administration. Back in 2000, O'Neill had been investigating the bombing of the SS Cole, for which he was sure bin Laden was responsible. However, the US ambassador to Yemen, one Barbara Bodine, hamstrung FBI efforts at every turn, publicly calling O'Neill a liar, refusing to allow his men to be armed with more than small handguns and, in general, crippling the investigation. Although Bodine claims she was trying to keep diplomatic relations running smoothly, her history shows otherwise:
Barbara Bodine has served primarily under rightwing old boys and in areas where their oil interests are being served. Under Reagan she served as Deputy Principle Officer in Baghdad, Iraq. Under Bush, Sr., she served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait and was there during the Gulf War. She has also worked for Bob Dole, and far more ominously, for Henry Kissinger. Now, under Bush, Jr., she is in Yemen impeding an FBI investigation that focused on the son of a Bush family business associate.
What makes Bodine's actions toward O'Neill particularly despicable is that she was said to be in part to blame for the Cole disaster. Even though she had been warned that the risk of attacks on Americans in the Yemen area were extremely high at that time, the Cole entered port under the lowest grade of security permitted in the Middle East with no warning to the destroyer. A top military analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency quit in protest the day after the bombing because of Bodine and General Anthony Zinn's decision to allow the Cole to come into the port.
In July, Bodine had O'Neill and the FBI barred from Yemen. About that time, O'Neill's name had been proposed by Richard Clarke as Clarke's successor as terrorism czar at the National Security Council. But a very mysterious incident that had happened nearly a year before was dredged up and used to blow that possibility out of the water. In November of 2000, at a retirement seminar in Tampa, O'Neill left his briefcase for a few moments in the convention room to go around the corner to use the phone. When he returned in a few minutes, the brief case, containing some papers considered classified, was gone. It soon turned up, but the incident was seized upon as an excuse to guarantee O'Neill would not get promoted. Was it a real theft? Or a set up to squeeze out the man who asked too many questions about Saudis and oil? O'Neill had finally had enough and quit.
Meanwhile, from February through August, the entire time that the danger from bin Laden was the greatest, Bush was focusing most of his efforts on persuading the Taliban to allow him and his oil pals put a pipeline through Afghanistan. Bush wanted to swipe the oil-rich Caspian region from Russian control. Back when Bush thought he could cut a deal with the Taliban, he did not consider them "evil." In fact, back when he smelled an easy deal in the wind, Bush described the Taliban's repressive regime as "a source of stability in Central Asia" that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline. So, in Spring of 2001, in Texas oil wheeling-dealing style, Bush handed $43 million in taxpayer dollars over to the Taliban to sweeten the pot. Still, however, there was no deal.
Laila Helms, the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms, worked as a public relations coordinator for the Taliban at this time. According to Helms, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden or provide the coordinates of his whereabouts. However, apparently under Bush's orders, the State Department refused this deal �a deal that would have removed Bush's best trump terrorist card from his stacked deck. Instead, on August 2, State Department officials met with Taliban reps in Islamabad and there delivered this ultimatum: give us what we want for the oil companies and we will "carpet your with gold." If you don't, "we will bury you beneath a carpet of bombs." The Taliban still held out.
Four days later, Bush was given the warning that could have, if acted upon, saved 3,000 American lives and the thousands of civilian lives lost in Afghanistan since October. Instead, he chose to ignore it.
In early September, O'Neill took a job at the WTC as head of security there. Right before the disaster, he told friends he felt sure an attack was imminent and that he feared that terrorists would try to finish the job they had begun in 1993 to destroy the WTC. John O'Neill was in the first tower when it was hit. He was on his way into the second tower to help evacuate people when he was killed.
O'Neill must have sensed �the best detectives have that uncanny "sixth sense"� that something very big, very horrendous might go down and that he might not survive. In June and July, 2001 he met with French intelligence analyst Jean-Charles Brisard (in June in Paris and in July in New York City). O'Neill confided much of what he knew about the bin Laden situation and Bush to Brisard �a fellow intelligence officer, but one who was not under the Bush administration's thumb. Brisard and his associate Guillaume Dasqui�, an intelligence analyst and the editor of Intelligence Online, dedicated their book "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" (released in France in November 2001) to O'Neill. The book has been vigorously avoided by US publishers and everyone in the mainstream US press except Paula Zahn, who has presented excerpts of it.
History will be kind to John O'Neill. It will not be kind to George W. Bush.
The Pentagon Tragedy: A Plot that Keeps on Thickening
One of the things that has bothered me since the morning of 9/11 is how little attention the Pentagon tragedy received. All you could hear screamed from the media and White House for months was WTC! WTC! WTC! Heroes of Flight 93! Heroes of Flight 93! It was an endless litany �education through repetition. In fact, 9/11 became synonymous, almost forcibly, with the WTC. Yet, over 200 people died at the Pentagon, including the ill-fated passengers on Flight 77, right at the heart of the city. Why so little focus on this tragedy? I believe that of all the events of 9/11, the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon was the most telling, it was the hottest, smokiest of the smoking guns. The key to the whole mystery may well lie in this five-sided building built by FDR's administration. First, here's a little long-overdue background on the Pentagon.
The history of the Pentagon
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, even before the US entered the conflict, our War Department was gearing up for the possibility. However, there was no real home for the Department of Defense �it was scattered across DC in 17 different buildings. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot of red tape to cut through �when the green light was given to come up with a place to put the DOD, by God, they came up with a plan in four days! In this relative blink of an eye, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell developed a scheme for a three-story humongous complex capable of housing 40,000 workers (it later grew to five floors after WWII broke out). But, Somervell's plan for a five-sided structure was not, as one might expect, symbolic, or an effort to create a stylized giant chevron. Instead, it was the most practical idea that suggested itself: the 67-acre site chosen (a former Deptartment of Agriculture Farm on the Potomac) was bound on five sides by five existing roads. Voila! The Pentagon. Cost estimates for the original project was $35 million �about what a couple of out buildings for storing old munitions might cost now! Believe it or not, the project was considered highly controversial. Some complained that it took up land intended for the expansion of Arlington Cemetery. Others said the DOD shouldn't be housed outside the District of Columbia, while some (we jaded 21st centurians would have to laugh at this) complained that the cost was too high.
One problem Congress wrangled over was what to do with the building once WWII was over. Although some wanted to turn it into a warehouse, most people assumed that the building would become a veterans' hospital. It is very telling that no one believed there would be a need for 40,000 defense department workers after the War. That was because no one foresaw that war was soon to become a way of life �in one form or the other� for Americans. This shift to an all-war (ours or someone else's we supply weapons for) all the time focus can be traced to the Cold War mentality that many in high places locked into during the 1950s and never left (and has never allowed the rest of us to leave).
In any case, the classic monster of a building (over 5 million square feet!) that we call the Pentagon was begun in 1941 a few months before Pearl Harbor (the appropriations b
The 9/11 Evidence That May Hang George W. Bush
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Dennis
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The 9/11 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush
By Cheryl Seal
At the very least Bush allowed 9/11 to happen. But the evidence indicates his guilt involves more than just a huge intentional sin of omission � this now seems certain. So it is ulcer-fomenting to watch him, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and their PR army try to sell America yet another Big Lie � that they had no idea such a thing as 9/11 could happen...they could never have imagined it in their wildest dreams...they had no specific warnings...there was nothing unusual about the summer 2001 warnings, etc, etc, ad nauseam. I have compiled some material that clearly shows that the above litany is blatantly, arrogantly false. But first, let's hold a preliminary hearing in the "Court of Common sense".
To see through a wall of propaganda and determine what's really going on, one must tune out the spin completely and take a good, objective look at what has been DONE and what the parties involved have to GAIN by their actions. Let's look at the well-documented facts:
First, when Bush, Rice and the other top Reichmeisters discarded the warning on August 6, Bush's approval ratings had sunk to just 49% � this is the red zone for a president. As any political expert or presidential historian: Hit 45%, and impeachment may soon loom on the horizon.
Second, Bush's actions throughout his entire life show a clear and consistent pattern: without exception, he has always chosen the path that will benefit himself and his corporate friends the most and will do so in the face of even the most outraged criticism.
Third, the stolen election of 2000 proves that Bush was willing to participate in a very daring, very large scale crime in pursuit of power.
Fourth, Bush's father's approval ratings went from shaky to astronomical within a month of declaring war on an "evil terrorist" leader back in 1991. This lesson could hardly have been lost on Bush, Jr.: Start a war and the emotions of the public can be whipped up to a point that will push presidential approval ratings way, way up.
So, given the above facts as "evidence," what do you imagine a self-serving man who has faced no serious opposition from Congress, the press, or the American public would be likely to do? A bookie would most certainly lay odds that Bush would stand aside and allow an event like 9/11 to happen.
Another action that must be considered in the cold hard light of day is Bush's behavior after 9/11. He seized upon national fears, worked at intensifying them, and immediately, without waiting for Congress or serious discussions with other nations, called for an attack on Afghanistan and a global war on terrorism. At the same time, he worked through John Ashcroft with stunning swiftness to dismantle civil liberties. These are not the actions of a leader who wants to keep his nation calm, reassured, and standing tall in its principles in the wake of tragedy. They are the actions of an opportunist who knows, from watching his father's presidency, that the window of opportunity for consolidating his power will be narrow: Bush Sr.'s approval rating high lasted only a few months.
Last, why would Bush admit to having been warned about 9/11 in the first place? In the corporate and political world, this admission is a strategy that has been used over and over by creeps who are guilty of huge crimes and know the heat is on. By confessing to a lesser charge, they try to draw the heat away from the main, more dangerous issue. Ken Lay, the head of Anderson, and every criminal who has ever copped or tried to cop a plea bargain have used this ploy. If Bush were innocent of any complicity in 9/11, why should he make ANY statement? It is always the guilty who feel the need to make statements: "I am not a crook!", "I never had sex with that woman!" Or how about that row of tobacco industry CEO's who all swore that none of them knew their product was harmful or addictive?
Therefore, based on the evidence, I would say we have a phony president who is as guilty as hell, who knows that someone has the goods on him and is breathing down his neck. He is gambling that by making a preemptive strike while he still has control of the media, he can spin a protective wall around himself. Thus, we have Dick Cheney appearing on 5/19 on Meet the Press, being "interviewed" about the 9/11 flap by his friend and neighbor Russert. Yep, that's right �both interviewer and interviewee live in the feudally exclusive Kalorama suburb of D.C., where houses START at around $1 million. In fact, on the same program, Russert had the arrogance to even mention how he'd seen his buddy out taking the air on his new "It" scooter. How cozy! And this is what is being served to America in the name of a free and honest press. Ya got a problem? Just pick a pal in the press corps and tell him what questions you want him/her to ask you so you can spin them in just the way you want.
Russert asked Cheney how he responded to charges that the information existed in several reports which showed that a WTC-type attack was a possibility. Cheney responded �incredibly!� that reading all those reports weren't his concern. There's just too darn many of them. Russert let this ridiculous response go totally unchallenged and unqualified.
Here are the questions that are missing �the questions a real journalist would have asked: "So then, Mr. Cheney, just what are your criteria for a report that is important enough for you to read? How do you prioritize what you read or what those under you are directed to call to your attention? What reports on this matter DID you read?"
It is insulting to America's intelligence that such questions are not being asked. It's like a grand jury that refuses to ask a murder suspect questions like "Where were you on the night of such and such? What was your relationship to the victim?" but instead says, "Well, here's what we heard from the police that someone thinks you may have killed someone. Go ahead and explain yourself. Don't worry �we won't interrupt you or ask you any uncomfortable questions. And, by the way, your good pal who lives down the block volunteered to serve as jury foreman!"
Here's one last FACT to consider. The GOP spent $40 million to pursue an ultimately merit-less case against Clinton that involved diddling an intern and some questionable real estate deals. Since Bush took office, not one dime has been spent by Congress to investigate Cheney and his secret energy dealings, Bush's stolen election, Tom Delay's boiler room scams that have bilked doctors out of millions, the mysterious wild trading of American and United Airlines stock the week before 9/11 or any of the other crimes that were far more serious than Clinton's offenses. Meanwhile, the GOP �so eager to spend millions to investigate an office romance� has worked overtime to block the initiation of any serious investigation into the biggest crime to have ever been perpetrated on American soil that claimed nearly 3,000 lives. WAKE UP AMERICA!!
"Vague Warning" or Blueprint for Disaster?
The story Bush wants the world to buy is that the warnings he received were vague, routine, too general to act upon. Condi Rice wants us to believe that no one in the administration could have dreamed the hijackers would fly into a landmark building. But, as they say in show biz, this is "lies, lies, and damn lies."
Since 1993, scores of people, collectively, in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and CIA have know that an attack like 9/11 was not only a possibility �but an increasingly likely probability. Because I am not writing a book here, I will confine myself to summarizing the most obvious pieces of evidence that Bush and his team had to work with. However, they are enough to convict him in any court of opinion.
Terrorism 2000 Report
Don't confuse this 1993 study with the report turned out by the Bush administration in April 2001 under the same title. The 2001 release, a summary of terrorist activity in 2000, lifted the title of the original document, no doubt as a smokescreen to confuse anyone who might be seeking the 1993 document through a search engine or library archives.
In 1993, the Pentagon commissioned, via the Department of Defense's office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a think tank-style study of the ways terrorists could execute large-scale acts of terrorism on the US. Participants in the $150,000 study consisted of a panel of 41 intelligence/security experts that included former ranking CIA, FBI, State Department and Rand Corporation officials, as well as an ex-KGB general and Israeli intelligence agent.
One of the problems the team brainstormed over was the various ways an airplane could be used to destroy national landmarks �in fact, the WTC was most certainly on the panel's list of possible targets. One conclusion reached by the team as a future trend in terrorist activity was that extremists would seek to maximize their impact by escalating their attacks from one-at-a-time truck bomb/suicide bomber events to multiple, simultaneous targeting, thereby touting their power and stretching the victim governments' ability to respond.
The possible terrorist scenarios the team outlined scared the socks off folks in the government. One high-level official described it as "too outrageous." As a result, the team's report, Terrorism 2000 (a reference to terrorism in the new millennia) was blocked from public release. Even a toned down version that had been proposed as a way to raise public awareness and improve national preparedness was killed! A draft of the report was nonetheless passed on through the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is absolutely no doubt that this information was available to everyone in the Bush Administration, including Ms. Rice. It should have been required reading �especially since many of the predictions made by the report had already come true before 9/11.
Four instances of planes used as weapons before 2001
1994: A Federal Express Flight engineer was apprehended as he tried to storm the cockpit of a DC-10. The engineer, despondent over his impending firing, had planned to crash the plane into a Fed Ex building in Memphis.
1994: A pilot stole a Cessna and tried to crash it into the White House. He instead hit a tree on the White House grounds, not far from Clinton's bedroom.
1995: An Islamic fundamentalist group hijacked an Air France flight and loaded the plane with 27 tons of fuel in Marseilles as a way to turn it into an incendiary bomb when they crashed it into the Eiffel tower. This plan was thwarted when Special Forces stormed the craft before it could leave Marseilles.
1995: Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to planting timed explosive devices on eleven US airline flights in an attempt to create a "multiple attack" event (as outlined in the "too outrageous" Terrorism 2000 report). The same terrorist group also planned to crash on airplane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and another into the Pentagon (but Condi didn't dream anyone would ever try such a thing in 2001?). This scheme was not a wild and fevered plot. It was in the advanced planning stages �to the point where specific flights had already been selected. Murad himself was going to be the suicide pilot who hit the CIA headquarters. Where did he get his pilot training? In a US flight school.
The specifics of the "vague warning"
The most glaring lie Bush is using in his current spin is his claim that the warnings he received were too vague to act upon. However, the facts all by themselves scream "liar!"
From April, 2001 right up to the day the WTC and Pentagon were slammed, urgent warnings of impending large-scale attacks by terrorists had been issued to the Bush administration from multiple sources. Germany, Egypt, Russia and Israel all delivered alerts that accurately foretold the scale of the attack and that it would involve a prominent landmark of some type. This would automatically put the WTC and Pentagon on the short list, especially as both landmarks had been targeted before (as mentioned above, the Pentagon attack was averted).
The German intelligence agency BND warned the US and Israel both in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." This is hardly vague, and hardly refers to an "overseas danger" to Americans (which of our prominent landmarks is in Europe or Asia, pray tell?).
On June 13, Egypt sent an urgent warning that a plane stuffed with explosives could be used as a weapon against George Bush. It was assumed, incorrectly at that time that the target could be the G-8 summit in Genoa, held in June 2001.
Vladimir Putin was so certain of the information he received in the summer of 2001 of an impending attack that he personally instructed Russian intelligence to tell Bush "in the strongest possible terms" (his own words on September. 15, 2001) of an impending attack involving airports and government. The Russians told the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been specially trained to execute suicide missions. It was around the same time that the FBI was receiving tips about suspicious Arabic men in US flight schools.
In August, 2001, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad warned the CIA and FBI that as many as 200 al Qaeda members were infiltrating the US and planning "a major assault on the US" against "a large-scale target" in a setting where Americans would be "very vulnerable."
The NSA cracked bin Laden's encryption code by February 2001
Even before April, the Bush administration HAD TO KNOW something was up and probably had info that was even more specific than the warnings given above. According to UPI correspondent Richard Sale, by February 2001, the National Security Agency had broken Osama bin Laden's communications encryption system. We know that the encryption was broken because the Bush administration reported AFTER 9/11 that it had intercepted encrypted calls bin Laden made to his mother two days before the attack, saying "In two days, you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while." If this message was intercepted before the attack, what others were intercepted as well that the Bush administration did NOT reveal? Most likely six-months'-worth of terrorist planning.
The CIA knew of suspicious airline stock trades by September 7
Last but not least, the CIA knew a week before the attack WHICH airlines were most likely to be hijacked. The Agency maintains an advanced program called Promis, which monitors unusual stock market activity, SPECIFICALLY as a way to anticipate potential terrorist attacks. Promis provides 24-hour continuous real-time data on stock market activity and the FBI and Justice Department have both admitted that Promis was up and running all through the summer and fall of 2001. So there is no doubt whatsoever that as early as September. 7, the CIA knew that something was going down and knew which airlines were being targeted. Even a third-grader could have put this information together with the long litany of warnings above from foreign sources and come up with the conclusion that an American or United Airlines craft was going to be hijacked in the near future and most likely used to crash into a landmark, quite possibly the World Trade Center.
More smoking facts
According to the official government web site of the Military District of Washington the Pentagon ITSELF planned in detail how it would respond to just such a scenario from October 24-26 2000. And this was no low-level exercise, since it took place in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room. This story was run in Unknown News and picked up the same day by Democrats.com which fortunately, kept a copy because within 24 hours, the story �along with the entire Military District website� was scrubbed by the White House!
The model used in this simulation and the response plan was developed by Don Abbott, who is the founder of FieldSoft, a company that makes emergency-response software programs and systems, including FdonScene. This program, according to the FieldSoft site, "is the first �and only� fire service, software application specifically designed for incident commanders and their staff in-the-field. The commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) product is designed to support in field operations for any type of emergency response. Basically, FDonScene is an automated COTS tool that actively facilitates control and coordination of people, procedures, events, and other resources with the touch of a finger.The application is specifically designed for fast, simple and easy use by the incident commander, as well as members of the command staff."
Bush was without doubt very familiar with FdonScene because it was first endorsed by the Texas Fire Chiefs Association while he was governor (1998). And, as the FieldSoft brochure mentions, "FieldSoft has engineered software necessary to integrate FDonScene with a consequence management system under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)." So this is definitely a program well known to and used by the military.
Now, in light of this, consider this fact: By a "miracle" of coincidence, the FdonScene program had been set up and made ready to go for use by the emergency response teams at the WTC disaster just a few days before the disaster, as if in anticipation. The brochure boasts: "Over 700 victims passed through the Atlantic Highlands Ferry Port in New Jersey following the September 11, 2001 WTC attack. Two fire departments, three local police departments, as well as representatives from county, state, and federal agencies were on hand to assess and assist the victims as they embarked. Emergency units on the scene included 40 ambulances, an FD communications unit, a decontamination unit, and 10 pieces of fire apparatus. A communications unit member on scene at the Port, who had seen a ninety minute demonstration of the software a few days earlier, brought a trial copy of FDonScene on line and used it to track people, resources, and events. A second person watched how the software was being used, and took over operation of it a few hours later. Overall, the software was operated successfully for 14 hours." Nowhere can any reference to WHO the "unit member" was, or who the "second person" was.
In another FieldSoft "success story" for a different product, the same ominous vagueness is found: "The Organization of American States (OAS) planned a major meeting in a North American city. Intelligence gathering operations revealed that anarchists planned to disrupt the meeting. The local police service evaluated a number of software systems that could be used to help manage law enforcement activities from the joint operations center (JOC). PDonScene was elected 3 weeks prior to the opening ceremonies." The software was configured and in place at the JOC as delegates commenced OAS activities. PDonScene was used throughout the 4 day event to manage hundreds of local, provincial, and federal law enforcement officers. The software helped law enforcement managers successfully manage peaceful labor �and not so peaceful anarchist� demonstrations by thousands of people, at several different venues throughout the community. "We [the agency] purchased the software because operation of it looked simple," stated a JOC Staff Sergeant. That Sergeant went on to say that "we found it [PDonScene] exceptional in that it showed the situation in real time with both [officer] names and call signs".
July: Shortly after the Bay of Pigs crisis, the Kennedy administration allowed the FAA to pass a rule that permitted commercial airline pilots to be armed. The rule was passed to protect flights from possible hijacking by Cubans. Although no airline ever availed themselves of this right, it seems very strange that the rule was rescinded in July 2001, right at the HEIGHT of the most serious terrorist warnings to be issued by intelligence sources in decades. It seems, instead, that this should have been the time for the Bush administration to insist that pilots be armed! Just like the timing of everything that happened in the second half of 2001, we sniff something a lot more foul than politics
Mid-August: A flight school in Minnesota flight reported Zacharias Missouri to the local FBI office after Missouri requested training in how to fly a jet, but not in how to land or take off. Although Moussaoui was arrested, agents did not search his computer and thus missed vital clues.
Early September: (from a letter from a reader): I was listening to "The Connection" on PBS this morning. The subject was terrorism (of course). During the show, a man called in who said his wife was a VP at an all-girls college. Just before 9/11, a Saudi prince called up and said to cancel his daughter's registration for the fall and send him a refund. On 9/11, at 9:30, Saudi security was there to pick up 3 princesses from the school. The man said his wife called the FBI, but they didn't pay any heed to her. Hopefully, you will hear that from this link.
This incident most certainly was reported to the FBI after September 11 and most clearly indicated there could be a Saudi connection. Yet the Bush administration has refused to pursue an active investigation of Saudi ties to September 11 and instead focused entirely on Afghanistan �though NONE of those responsible for September 11 came from Afghanistan, and, as it turns out, none trained there, they all trained in Europe or the US. However, there was nothing in it for Bush to bomb Saudi Arabia �we already get their oil!
Bin Laden's hunter O'Neill was killed at WTC: Was he also a casualty of the Bush administration?
Until he resigned, in August of 2001, John O'Neill was the director of antiterrorism for the FBI's New York office. O'Neill had worked on the investigations of the first WTC bombing in 1993 and the attacks on the American embassies in Africa in 1998. He became one of the world's top experts on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. O'Neill believed that "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia." Yet the Bush administration blocked O'Neill's efforts to investigate the Saudi ties to bin Laden. The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism, asserted O'Neill, were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.
For example, Bush blocked an FBI investigation of the bin Laden family and kept his family's business ties to the bin Ladens as secret as possible. Among these business dealings were bin Laden investments in the Carlyle Group and connections between bin Laden and George W. Bush's first oil companies. It must have truly enraged O'Neill if he knew that Osama bin Laden had flown to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by local CIA agent Larry Mitchell on July 12.
O'Neill was very well aware of the warnings that came out in the summer of 2001. But it was obvious that he was considered more of a liability than an asset to the oil-obsessed Bush administration. Back in 2000, O'Neill had been investigating the bombing of the SS Cole, for which he was sure bin Laden was responsible. However, the US ambassador to Yemen, one Barbara Bodine, hamstrung FBI efforts at every turn, publicly calling O'Neill a liar, refusing to allow his men to be armed with more than small handguns and, in general, crippling the investigation. Although Bodine claims she was trying to keep diplomatic relations running smoothly, her history shows otherwise:
Barbara Bodine has served primarily under rightwing old boys and in areas where their oil interests are being served. Under Reagan she served as Deputy Principle Officer in Baghdad, Iraq. Under Bush, Sr., she served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait and was there during the Gulf War. She has also worked for Bob Dole, and far more ominously, for Henry Kissinger. Now, under Bush, Jr., she is in Yemen impeding an FBI investigation that focused on the son of a Bush family business associate.
What makes Bodine's actions toward O'Neill particularly despicable is that she was said to be in part to blame for the Cole disaster. Even though she had been warned that the risk of attacks on Americans in the Yemen area were extremely high at that time, the Cole entered port under the lowest grade of security permitted in the Middle East with no warning to the destroyer. A top military analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency quit in protest the day after the bombing because of Bodine and General Anthony Zinn's decision to allow the Cole to come into the port.
In July, Bodine had O'Neill and the FBI barred from Yemen. About that time, O'Neill's name had been proposed by Richard Clarke as Clarke's successor as terrorism czar at the National Security Council. But a very mysterious incident that had happened nearly a year before was dredged up and used to blow that possibility out of the water. In November of 2000, at a retirement seminar in Tampa, O'Neill left his briefcase for a few moments in the convention room to go around the corner to use the phone. When he returned in a few minutes, the brief case, containing some papers considered classified, was gone. It soon turned up, but the incident was seized upon as an excuse to guarantee O'Neill would not get promoted. Was it a real theft? Or a set up to squeeze out the man who asked too many questions about Saudis and oil? O'Neill had finally had enough and quit.
Meanwhile, from February through August, the entire time that the danger from bin Laden was the greatest, Bush was focusing most of his efforts on persuading the Taliban to allow him and his oil pals put a pipeline through Afghanistan. Bush wanted to swipe the oil-rich Caspian region from Russian control. Back when Bush thought he could cut a deal with the Taliban, he did not consider them "evil." In fact, back when he smelled an easy deal in the wind, Bush described the Taliban's repressive regime as "a source of stability in Central Asia" that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline. So, in Spring of 2001, in Texas oil wheeling-dealing style, Bush handed $43 million in taxpayer dollars over to the Taliban to sweeten the pot. Still, however, there was no deal.
Laila Helms, the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms, worked as a public relations coordinator for the Taliban at this time. According to Helms, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden or provide the coordinates of his whereabouts. However, apparently under Bush's orders, the State Department refused this deal �a deal that would have removed Bush's best trump terrorist card from his stacked deck. Instead, on August 2, State Department officials met with Taliban reps in Islamabad and there delivered this ultimatum: give us what we want for the oil companies and we will "carpet your with gold." If you don't, "we will bury you beneath a carpet of bombs." The Taliban still held out.
Four days later, Bush was given the warning that could have, if acted upon, saved 3,000 American lives and the thousands of civilian lives lost in Afghanistan since October. Instead, he chose to ignore it.
In early September, O'Neill took a job at the WTC as head of security there. Right before the disaster, he told friends he felt sure an attack was imminent and that he feared that terrorists would try to finish the job they had begun in 1993 to destroy the WTC. John O'Neill was in the first tower when it was hit. He was on his way into the second tower to help evacuate people when he was killed.
O'Neill must have sensed �the best detectives have that uncanny "sixth sense"� that something very big, very horrendous might go down and that he might not survive. In June and July, 2001 he met with French intelligence analyst Jean-Charles Brisard (in June in Paris and in July in New York City). O'Neill confided much of what he knew about the bin Laden situation and Bush to Brisard �a fellow intelligence officer, but one who was not under the Bush administration's thumb. Brisard and his associate Guillaume Dasqui�, an intelligence analyst and the editor of Intelligence Online, dedicated their book "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" (released in France in November 2001) to O'Neill. The book has been vigorously avoided by US publishers and everyone in the mainstream US press except Paula Zahn, who has presented excerpts of it.
History will be kind to John O'Neill. It will not be kind to George W. Bush.
The Pentagon Tragedy: A Plot that Keeps on Thickening
One of the things that has bothered me since the morning of 9/11 is how little attention the Pentagon tragedy received. All you could hear screamed from the media and White House for months was WTC! WTC! WTC! Heroes of Flight 93! Heroes of Flight 93! It was an endless litany �education through repetition. In fact, 9/11 became synonymous, almost forcibly, with the WTC. Yet, over 200 people died at the Pentagon, including the ill-fated passengers on Flight 77, right at the heart of the city. Why so little focus on this tragedy? I believe that of all the events of 9/11, the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon was the most telling, it was the hottest, smokiest of the smoking guns. The key to the whole mystery may well lie in this five-sided building built by FDR's administration. First, here's a little long-overdue background on the Pentagon.
The history of the Pentagon
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, even before the US entered the conflict, our War Department was gearing up for the possibility. However, there was no real home for the Department of Defense �it was scattered across DC in 17 different buildings. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot of red tape to cut through �when the green light was given to come up with a place to put the DOD, by God, they came up with a plan in four days! In this relative blink of an eye, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell developed a scheme for a three-story humongous complex capable of housing 40,000 workers (it later grew to five floors after WWII broke out). But, Somervell's plan for a five-sided structure was not, as one might expect, symbolic, or an effort to create a stylized giant chevron. Instead, it was the most practical idea that suggested itself: the 67-acre site chosen (a former Deptartment of Agriculture Farm on the Potomac) was bound on five sides by five existing roads. Voila! The Pentagon. Cost estimates for the original project was $35 million �about what a couple of out buildings for storing old munitions might cost now! Believe it or not, the project was considered highly controversial. Some complained that it took up land intended for the expansion of Arlington Cemetery. Others said the DOD shouldn't be housed outside the District of Columbia, while some (we jaded 21st centurians would have to laugh at this) complained that the cost was too high.
One problem Congress wrangled over was what to do with the building once WWII was over. Although some wanted to turn it into a warehouse, most people assumed that the building would become a veterans' hospital. It is very telling that no one believed there would be a need for 40,000 defense department workers after the War. That was because no one foresaw that war was soon to become a way of life �in one form or the other� for Americans. This shift to an all-war (ours or someone else's we supply weapons for) all the time focus can be traced to the Cold War mentality that many in high places locked into during the 1950s and never left (and has never allowed the rest of us to leave).
In any case, the classic monster of a building (over 5 million square feet!) that we call the Pentagon was begun in 1941 a few months before Pearl Harbor (the appropriations b
By Cheryl Seal
At the very least Bush allowed 9/11 to happen. But the evidence indicates his guilt involves more than just a huge intentional sin of omission � this now seems certain. So it is ulcer-fomenting to watch him, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and their PR army try to sell America yet another Big Lie � that they had no idea such a thing as 9/11 could happen...they could never have imagined it in their wildest dreams...they had no specific warnings...there was nothing unusual about the summer 2001 warnings, etc, etc, ad nauseam. I have compiled some material that clearly shows that the above litany is blatantly, arrogantly false. But first, let's hold a preliminary hearing in the "Court of Common sense".
To see through a wall of propaganda and determine what's really going on, one must tune out the spin completely and take a good, objective look at what has been DONE and what the parties involved have to GAIN by their actions. Let's look at the well-documented facts:
First, when Bush, Rice and the other top Reichmeisters discarded the warning on August 6, Bush's approval ratings had sunk to just 49% � this is the red zone for a president. As any political expert or presidential historian: Hit 45%, and impeachment may soon loom on the horizon.
Second, Bush's actions throughout his entire life show a clear and consistent pattern: without exception, he has always chosen the path that will benefit himself and his corporate friends the most and will do so in the face of even the most outraged criticism.
Third, the stolen election of 2000 proves that Bush was willing to participate in a very daring, very large scale crime in pursuit of power.
Fourth, Bush's father's approval ratings went from shaky to astronomical within a month of declaring war on an "evil terrorist" leader back in 1991. This lesson could hardly have been lost on Bush, Jr.: Start a war and the emotions of the public can be whipped up to a point that will push presidential approval ratings way, way up.
So, given the above facts as "evidence," what do you imagine a self-serving man who has faced no serious opposition from Congress, the press, or the American public would be likely to do? A bookie would most certainly lay odds that Bush would stand aside and allow an event like 9/11 to happen.
Another action that must be considered in the cold hard light of day is Bush's behavior after 9/11. He seized upon national fears, worked at intensifying them, and immediately, without waiting for Congress or serious discussions with other nations, called for an attack on Afghanistan and a global war on terrorism. At the same time, he worked through John Ashcroft with stunning swiftness to dismantle civil liberties. These are not the actions of a leader who wants to keep his nation calm, reassured, and standing tall in its principles in the wake of tragedy. They are the actions of an opportunist who knows, from watching his father's presidency, that the window of opportunity for consolidating his power will be narrow: Bush Sr.'s approval rating high lasted only a few months.
Last, why would Bush admit to having been warned about 9/11 in the first place? In the corporate and political world, this admission is a strategy that has been used over and over by creeps who are guilty of huge crimes and know the heat is on. By confessing to a lesser charge, they try to draw the heat away from the main, more dangerous issue. Ken Lay, the head of Anderson, and every criminal who has ever copped or tried to cop a plea bargain have used this ploy. If Bush were innocent of any complicity in 9/11, why should he make ANY statement? It is always the guilty who feel the need to make statements: "I am not a crook!", "I never had sex with that woman!" Or how about that row of tobacco industry CEO's who all swore that none of them knew their product was harmful or addictive?
Therefore, based on the evidence, I would say we have a phony president who is as guilty as hell, who knows that someone has the goods on him and is breathing down his neck. He is gambling that by making a preemptive strike while he still has control of the media, he can spin a protective wall around himself. Thus, we have Dick Cheney appearing on 5/19 on Meet the Press, being "interviewed" about the 9/11 flap by his friend and neighbor Russert. Yep, that's right �both interviewer and interviewee live in the feudally exclusive Kalorama suburb of D.C., where houses START at around $1 million. In fact, on the same program, Russert had the arrogance to even mention how he'd seen his buddy out taking the air on his new "It" scooter. How cozy! And this is what is being served to America in the name of a free and honest press. Ya got a problem? Just pick a pal in the press corps and tell him what questions you want him/her to ask you so you can spin them in just the way you want.
Russert asked Cheney how he responded to charges that the information existed in several reports which showed that a WTC-type attack was a possibility. Cheney responded �incredibly!� that reading all those reports weren't his concern. There's just too darn many of them. Russert let this ridiculous response go totally unchallenged and unqualified.
Here are the questions that are missing �the questions a real journalist would have asked: "So then, Mr. Cheney, just what are your criteria for a report that is important enough for you to read? How do you prioritize what you read or what those under you are directed to call to your attention? What reports on this matter DID you read?"
It is insulting to America's intelligence that such questions are not being asked. It's like a grand jury that refuses to ask a murder suspect questions like "Where were you on the night of such and such? What was your relationship to the victim?" but instead says, "Well, here's what we heard from the police that someone thinks you may have killed someone. Go ahead and explain yourself. Don't worry �we won't interrupt you or ask you any uncomfortable questions. And, by the way, your good pal who lives down the block volunteered to serve as jury foreman!"
Here's one last FACT to consider. The GOP spent $40 million to pursue an ultimately merit-less case against Clinton that involved diddling an intern and some questionable real estate deals. Since Bush took office, not one dime has been spent by Congress to investigate Cheney and his secret energy dealings, Bush's stolen election, Tom Delay's boiler room scams that have bilked doctors out of millions, the mysterious wild trading of American and United Airlines stock the week before 9/11 or any of the other crimes that were far more serious than Clinton's offenses. Meanwhile, the GOP �so eager to spend millions to investigate an office romance� has worked overtime to block the initiation of any serious investigation into the biggest crime to have ever been perpetrated on American soil that claimed nearly 3,000 lives. WAKE UP AMERICA!!
"Vague Warning" or Blueprint for Disaster?
The story Bush wants the world to buy is that the warnings he received were vague, routine, too general to act upon. Condi Rice wants us to believe that no one in the administration could have dreamed the hijackers would fly into a landmark building. But, as they say in show biz, this is "lies, lies, and damn lies."
Since 1993, scores of people, collectively, in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and CIA have know that an attack like 9/11 was not only a possibility �but an increasingly likely probability. Because I am not writing a book here, I will confine myself to summarizing the most obvious pieces of evidence that Bush and his team had to work with. However, they are enough to convict him in any court of opinion.
Terrorism 2000 Report
Don't confuse this 1993 study with the report turned out by the Bush administration in April 2001 under the same title. The 2001 release, a summary of terrorist activity in 2000, lifted the title of the original document, no doubt as a smokescreen to confuse anyone who might be seeking the 1993 document through a search engine or library archives.
In 1993, the Pentagon commissioned, via the Department of Defense's office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, a think tank-style study of the ways terrorists could execute large-scale acts of terrorism on the US. Participants in the $150,000 study consisted of a panel of 41 intelligence/security experts that included former ranking CIA, FBI, State Department and Rand Corporation officials, as well as an ex-KGB general and Israeli intelligence agent.
One of the problems the team brainstormed over was the various ways an airplane could be used to destroy national landmarks �in fact, the WTC was most certainly on the panel's list of possible targets. One conclusion reached by the team as a future trend in terrorist activity was that extremists would seek to maximize their impact by escalating their attacks from one-at-a-time truck bomb/suicide bomber events to multiple, simultaneous targeting, thereby touting their power and stretching the victim governments' ability to respond.
The possible terrorist scenarios the team outlined scared the socks off folks in the government. One high-level official described it as "too outrageous." As a result, the team's report, Terrorism 2000 (a reference to terrorism in the new millennia) was blocked from public release. Even a toned down version that had been proposed as a way to raise public awareness and improve national preparedness was killed! A draft of the report was nonetheless passed on through the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is absolutely no doubt that this information was available to everyone in the Bush Administration, including Ms. Rice. It should have been required reading �especially since many of the predictions made by the report had already come true before 9/11.
Four instances of planes used as weapons before 2001
1994: A Federal Express Flight engineer was apprehended as he tried to storm the cockpit of a DC-10. The engineer, despondent over his impending firing, had planned to crash the plane into a Fed Ex building in Memphis.
1994: A pilot stole a Cessna and tried to crash it into the White House. He instead hit a tree on the White House grounds, not far from Clinton's bedroom.
1995: An Islamic fundamentalist group hijacked an Air France flight and loaded the plane with 27 tons of fuel in Marseilles as a way to turn it into an incendiary bomb when they crashed it into the Eiffel tower. This plan was thwarted when Special Forces stormed the craft before it could leave Marseilles.
1995: Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to planting timed explosive devices on eleven US airline flights in an attempt to create a "multiple attack" event (as outlined in the "too outrageous" Terrorism 2000 report). The same terrorist group also planned to crash on airplane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and another into the Pentagon (but Condi didn't dream anyone would ever try such a thing in 2001?). This scheme was not a wild and fevered plot. It was in the advanced planning stages �to the point where specific flights had already been selected. Murad himself was going to be the suicide pilot who hit the CIA headquarters. Where did he get his pilot training? In a US flight school.
The specifics of the "vague warning"
The most glaring lie Bush is using in his current spin is his claim that the warnings he received were too vague to act upon. However, the facts all by themselves scream "liar!"
From April, 2001 right up to the day the WTC and Pentagon were slammed, urgent warnings of impending large-scale attacks by terrorists had been issued to the Bush administration from multiple sources. Germany, Egypt, Russia and Israel all delivered alerts that accurately foretold the scale of the attack and that it would involve a prominent landmark of some type. This would automatically put the WTC and Pentagon on the short list, especially as both landmarks had been targeted before (as mentioned above, the Pentagon attack was averted).
The German intelligence agency BND warned the US and Israel both in June that Middle Eastern terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." This is hardly vague, and hardly refers to an "overseas danger" to Americans (which of our prominent landmarks is in Europe or Asia, pray tell?).
On June 13, Egypt sent an urgent warning that a plane stuffed with explosives could be used as a weapon against George Bush. It was assumed, incorrectly at that time that the target could be the G-8 summit in Genoa, held in June 2001.
Vladimir Putin was so certain of the information he received in the summer of 2001 of an impending attack that he personally instructed Russian intelligence to tell Bush "in the strongest possible terms" (his own words on September. 15, 2001) of an impending attack involving airports and government. The Russians told the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots had been specially trained to execute suicide missions. It was around the same time that the FBI was receiving tips about suspicious Arabic men in US flight schools.
In August, 2001, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad warned the CIA and FBI that as many as 200 al Qaeda members were infiltrating the US and planning "a major assault on the US" against "a large-scale target" in a setting where Americans would be "very vulnerable."
The NSA cracked bin Laden's encryption code by February 2001
Even before April, the Bush administration HAD TO KNOW something was up and probably had info that was even more specific than the warnings given above. According to UPI correspondent Richard Sale, by February 2001, the National Security Agency had broken Osama bin Laden's communications encryption system. We know that the encryption was broken because the Bush administration reported AFTER 9/11 that it had intercepted encrypted calls bin Laden made to his mother two days before the attack, saying "In two days, you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while." If this message was intercepted before the attack, what others were intercepted as well that the Bush administration did NOT reveal? Most likely six-months'-worth of terrorist planning.
The CIA knew of suspicious airline stock trades by September 7
Last but not least, the CIA knew a week before the attack WHICH airlines were most likely to be hijacked. The Agency maintains an advanced program called Promis, which monitors unusual stock market activity, SPECIFICALLY as a way to anticipate potential terrorist attacks. Promis provides 24-hour continuous real-time data on stock market activity and the FBI and Justice Department have both admitted that Promis was up and running all through the summer and fall of 2001. So there is no doubt whatsoever that as early as September. 7, the CIA knew that something was going down and knew which airlines were being targeted. Even a third-grader could have put this information together with the long litany of warnings above from foreign sources and come up with the conclusion that an American or United Airlines craft was going to be hijacked in the near future and most likely used to crash into a landmark, quite possibly the World Trade Center.
More smoking facts
According to the official government web site of the Military District of Washington the Pentagon ITSELF planned in detail how it would respond to just such a scenario from October 24-26 2000. And this was no low-level exercise, since it took place in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room. This story was run in Unknown News and picked up the same day by Democrats.com which fortunately, kept a copy because within 24 hours, the story �along with the entire Military District website� was scrubbed by the White House!
The model used in this simulation and the response plan was developed by Don Abbott, who is the founder of FieldSoft, a company that makes emergency-response software programs and systems, including FdonScene. This program, according to the FieldSoft site, "is the first �and only� fire service, software application specifically designed for incident commanders and their staff in-the-field. The commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) product is designed to support in field operations for any type of emergency response. Basically, FDonScene is an automated COTS tool that actively facilitates control and coordination of people, procedures, events, and other resources with the touch of a finger.The application is specifically designed for fast, simple and easy use by the incident commander, as well as members of the command staff."
Bush was without doubt very familiar with FdonScene because it was first endorsed by the Texas Fire Chiefs Association while he was governor (1998). And, as the FieldSoft brochure mentions, "FieldSoft has engineered software necessary to integrate FDonScene with a consequence management system under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)." So this is definitely a program well known to and used by the military.
Now, in light of this, consider this fact: By a "miracle" of coincidence, the FdonScene program had been set up and made ready to go for use by the emergency response teams at the WTC disaster just a few days before the disaster, as if in anticipation. The brochure boasts: "Over 700 victims passed through the Atlantic Highlands Ferry Port in New Jersey following the September 11, 2001 WTC attack. Two fire departments, three local police departments, as well as representatives from county, state, and federal agencies were on hand to assess and assist the victims as they embarked. Emergency units on the scene included 40 ambulances, an FD communications unit, a decontamination unit, and 10 pieces of fire apparatus. A communications unit member on scene at the Port, who had seen a ninety minute demonstration of the software a few days earlier, brought a trial copy of FDonScene on line and used it to track people, resources, and events. A second person watched how the software was being used, and took over operation of it a few hours later. Overall, the software was operated successfully for 14 hours." Nowhere can any reference to WHO the "unit member" was, or who the "second person" was.
In another FieldSoft "success story" for a different product, the same ominous vagueness is found: "The Organization of American States (OAS) planned a major meeting in a North American city. Intelligence gathering operations revealed that anarchists planned to disrupt the meeting. The local police service evaluated a number of software systems that could be used to help manage law enforcement activities from the joint operations center (JOC). PDonScene was elected 3 weeks prior to the opening ceremonies." The software was configured and in place at the JOC as delegates commenced OAS activities. PDonScene was used throughout the 4 day event to manage hundreds of local, provincial, and federal law enforcement officers. The software helped law enforcement managers successfully manage peaceful labor �and not so peaceful anarchist� demonstrations by thousands of people, at several different venues throughout the community. "We [the agency] purchased the software because operation of it looked simple," stated a JOC Staff Sergeant. That Sergeant went on to say that "we found it [PDonScene] exceptional in that it showed the situation in real time with both [officer] names and call signs".
July: Shortly after the Bay of Pigs crisis, the Kennedy administration allowed the FAA to pass a rule that permitted commercial airline pilots to be armed. The rule was passed to protect flights from possible hijacking by Cubans. Although no airline ever availed themselves of this right, it seems very strange that the rule was rescinded in July 2001, right at the HEIGHT of the most serious terrorist warnings to be issued by intelligence sources in decades. It seems, instead, that this should have been the time for the Bush administration to insist that pilots be armed! Just like the timing of everything that happened in the second half of 2001, we sniff something a lot more foul than politics
Mid-August: A flight school in Minnesota flight reported Zacharias Missouri to the local FBI office after Missouri requested training in how to fly a jet, but not in how to land or take off. Although Moussaoui was arrested, agents did not search his computer and thus missed vital clues.
Early September: (from a letter from a reader): I was listening to "The Connection" on PBS this morning. The subject was terrorism (of course). During the show, a man called in who said his wife was a VP at an all-girls college. Just before 9/11, a Saudi prince called up and said to cancel his daughter's registration for the fall and send him a refund. On 9/11, at 9:30, Saudi security was there to pick up 3 princesses from the school. The man said his wife called the FBI, but they didn't pay any heed to her. Hopefully, you will hear that from this link.
This incident most certainly was reported to the FBI after September 11 and most clearly indicated there could be a Saudi connection. Yet the Bush administration has refused to pursue an active investigation of Saudi ties to September 11 and instead focused entirely on Afghanistan �though NONE of those responsible for September 11 came from Afghanistan, and, as it turns out, none trained there, they all trained in Europe or the US. However, there was nothing in it for Bush to bomb Saudi Arabia �we already get their oil!
Bin Laden's hunter O'Neill was killed at WTC: Was he also a casualty of the Bush administration?
Until he resigned, in August of 2001, John O'Neill was the director of antiterrorism for the FBI's New York office. O'Neill had worked on the investigations of the first WTC bombing in 1993 and the attacks on the American embassies in Africa in 1998. He became one of the world's top experts on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. O'Neill believed that "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia." Yet the Bush administration blocked O'Neill's efforts to investigate the Saudi ties to bin Laden. The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism, asserted O'Neill, were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.
For example, Bush blocked an FBI investigation of the bin Laden family and kept his family's business ties to the bin Ladens as secret as possible. Among these business dealings were bin Laden investments in the Carlyle Group and connections between bin Laden and George W. Bush's first oil companies. It must have truly enraged O'Neill if he knew that Osama bin Laden had flown to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by local CIA agent Larry Mitchell on July 12.
O'Neill was very well aware of the warnings that came out in the summer of 2001. But it was obvious that he was considered more of a liability than an asset to the oil-obsessed Bush administration. Back in 2000, O'Neill had been investigating the bombing of the SS Cole, for which he was sure bin Laden was responsible. However, the US ambassador to Yemen, one Barbara Bodine, hamstrung FBI efforts at every turn, publicly calling O'Neill a liar, refusing to allow his men to be armed with more than small handguns and, in general, crippling the investigation. Although Bodine claims she was trying to keep diplomatic relations running smoothly, her history shows otherwise:
Barbara Bodine has served primarily under rightwing old boys and in areas where their oil interests are being served. Under Reagan she served as Deputy Principle Officer in Baghdad, Iraq. Under Bush, Sr., she served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait and was there during the Gulf War. She has also worked for Bob Dole, and far more ominously, for Henry Kissinger. Now, under Bush, Jr., she is in Yemen impeding an FBI investigation that focused on the son of a Bush family business associate.
What makes Bodine's actions toward O'Neill particularly despicable is that she was said to be in part to blame for the Cole disaster. Even though she had been warned that the risk of attacks on Americans in the Yemen area were extremely high at that time, the Cole entered port under the lowest grade of security permitted in the Middle East with no warning to the destroyer. A top military analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency quit in protest the day after the bombing because of Bodine and General Anthony Zinn's decision to allow the Cole to come into the port.
In July, Bodine had O'Neill and the FBI barred from Yemen. About that time, O'Neill's name had been proposed by Richard Clarke as Clarke's successor as terrorism czar at the National Security Council. But a very mysterious incident that had happened nearly a year before was dredged up and used to blow that possibility out of the water. In November of 2000, at a retirement seminar in Tampa, O'Neill left his briefcase for a few moments in the convention room to go around the corner to use the phone. When he returned in a few minutes, the brief case, containing some papers considered classified, was gone. It soon turned up, but the incident was seized upon as an excuse to guarantee O'Neill would not get promoted. Was it a real theft? Or a set up to squeeze out the man who asked too many questions about Saudis and oil? O'Neill had finally had enough and quit.
Meanwhile, from February through August, the entire time that the danger from bin Laden was the greatest, Bush was focusing most of his efforts on persuading the Taliban to allow him and his oil pals put a pipeline through Afghanistan. Bush wanted to swipe the oil-rich Caspian region from Russian control. Back when Bush thought he could cut a deal with the Taliban, he did not consider them "evil." In fact, back when he smelled an easy deal in the wind, Bush described the Taliban's repressive regime as "a source of stability in Central Asia" that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline. So, in Spring of 2001, in Texas oil wheeling-dealing style, Bush handed $43 million in taxpayer dollars over to the Taliban to sweeten the pot. Still, however, there was no deal.
Laila Helms, the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms, worked as a public relations coordinator for the Taliban at this time. According to Helms, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden or provide the coordinates of his whereabouts. However, apparently under Bush's orders, the State Department refused this deal �a deal that would have removed Bush's best trump terrorist card from his stacked deck. Instead, on August 2, State Department officials met with Taliban reps in Islamabad and there delivered this ultimatum: give us what we want for the oil companies and we will "carpet your with gold." If you don't, "we will bury you beneath a carpet of bombs." The Taliban still held out.
Four days later, Bush was given the warning that could have, if acted upon, saved 3,000 American lives and the thousands of civilian lives lost in Afghanistan since October. Instead, he chose to ignore it.
In early September, O'Neill took a job at the WTC as head of security there. Right before the disaster, he told friends he felt sure an attack was imminent and that he feared that terrorists would try to finish the job they had begun in 1993 to destroy the WTC. John O'Neill was in the first tower when it was hit. He was on his way into the second tower to help evacuate people when he was killed.
O'Neill must have sensed �the best detectives have that uncanny "sixth sense"� that something very big, very horrendous might go down and that he might not survive. In June and July, 2001 he met with French intelligence analyst Jean-Charles Brisard (in June in Paris and in July in New York City). O'Neill confided much of what he knew about the bin Laden situation and Bush to Brisard �a fellow intelligence officer, but one who was not under the Bush administration's thumb. Brisard and his associate Guillaume Dasqui�, an intelligence analyst and the editor of Intelligence Online, dedicated their book "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" (released in France in November 2001) to O'Neill. The book has been vigorously avoided by US publishers and everyone in the mainstream US press except Paula Zahn, who has presented excerpts of it.
History will be kind to John O'Neill. It will not be kind to George W. Bush.
The Pentagon Tragedy: A Plot that Keeps on Thickening
One of the things that has bothered me since the morning of 9/11 is how little attention the Pentagon tragedy received. All you could hear screamed from the media and White House for months was WTC! WTC! WTC! Heroes of Flight 93! Heroes of Flight 93! It was an endless litany �education through repetition. In fact, 9/11 became synonymous, almost forcibly, with the WTC. Yet, over 200 people died at the Pentagon, including the ill-fated passengers on Flight 77, right at the heart of the city. Why so little focus on this tragedy? I believe that of all the events of 9/11, the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon was the most telling, it was the hottest, smokiest of the smoking guns. The key to the whole mystery may well lie in this five-sided building built by FDR's administration. First, here's a little long-overdue background on the Pentagon.
The history of the Pentagon
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, even before the US entered the conflict, our War Department was gearing up for the possibility. However, there was no real home for the Department of Defense �it was scattered across DC in 17 different buildings. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot of red tape to cut through �when the green light was given to come up with a place to put the DOD, by God, they came up with a plan in four days! In this relative blink of an eye, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell developed a scheme for a three-story humongous complex capable of housing 40,000 workers (it later grew to five floors after WWII broke out). But, Somervell's plan for a five-sided structure was not, as one might expect, symbolic, or an effort to create a stylized giant chevron. Instead, it was the most practical idea that suggested itself: the 67-acre site chosen (a former Deptartment of Agriculture Farm on the Potomac) was bound on five sides by five existing roads. Voila! The Pentagon. Cost estimates for the original project was $35 million �about what a couple of out buildings for storing old munitions might cost now! Believe it or not, the project was considered highly controversial. Some complained that it took up land intended for the expansion of Arlington Cemetery. Others said the DOD shouldn't be housed outside the District of Columbia, while some (we jaded 21st centurians would have to laugh at this) complained that the cost was too high.
One problem Congress wrangled over was what to do with the building once WWII was over. Although some wanted to turn it into a warehouse, most people assumed that the building would become a veterans' hospital. It is very telling that no one believed there would be a need for 40,000 defense department workers after the War. That was because no one foresaw that war was soon to become a way of life �in one form or the other� for Americans. This shift to an all-war (ours or someone else's we supply weapons for) all the time focus can be traced to the Cold War mentality that many in high places locked into during the 1950s and never left (and has never allowed the rest of us to leave).
In any case, the classic monster of a building (over 5 million square feet!) that we call the Pentagon was begun in 1941 a few months before Pearl Harbor (the appropriations b
