A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission, breaking dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.
The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.
“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” Lehman said in an interview, suggesting that the commission may have made a mistake by not stating that explicitly in its final report. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.” (The Guardian)
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I don’t think we’re going to get the toothpaste back in the tube on this one. Might as well release those 28 pages now because it’s not going to get any better for our dear Saudi friends. According to RT, the FBI has more potential dirt on the Saudis to the tune of 80,000 files. And what about those five dancing Israelis in New Jersey on 9/11?
TTG
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/911-commission-saudi-arabia-hijackers?CMP=twt_gu
https://www.rt.com/usa/342836-fbi-documents-saudi-arabia-911/
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/[object%20Object]
This last ABC News link leads to an error 404 page. To view it, put "Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?" in a Google search and view it from the first link provided.
Fred, That is harrowing. My great grandfather died in a fire.
I've decided lizard aliens brought down the towers using mind control. Saw it on the internet. Must be true.
Posted by: optimax | 15 May 2016 at 09:03 PM
Tidewater
I think the flexibility built into the towers worked against it in this case. I think you are the only one that read my link. The survivors accounts of the building falling apart are testaments to the buildings increasing instability. There are quotes from experts that knew the buildings were going to collapse: a construction engineer, a building demolition expert and others.
Posted by: optimax | 15 May 2016 at 09:11 PM
"Pull it" is not a demolition term for bringing down a building but is used by firemen to evacuate a building that has become too dangerous to stay inside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43F54hR0NW8
Posted by: optimax | 15 May 2016 at 09:21 PM
thank you. btw I miss your posts - both the wit and that very becoming Hawaiian shirt.
Posted by: rjj | 15 May 2016 at 10:13 PM
This is my last post on this subject.
Here is group of short videos debunking the various conspiracy theories point by point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXFnAIP6A0&index=4&list=PL1CD6D0FB7D395952
Posted by: optimax | 15 May 2016 at 11:00 PM
thanks for the correction.
http://goo.gl/sF2VuB (somehow managed to misplace earlier reply)
Posted by: rjj | 15 May 2016 at 11:47 PM
Tidewater to Optimax, MRW, Cieran, and All,
I think it's interesting that "Pull it" is a fireman's term. I didn't know that. In a way, that simplifies life, doesn't it? I believe in conspiracy, I know that it is often attempted, I love to read about conspiracy, and I believe that conspiracy can actually work. I know some very specific, step-by-step stuff about conspiracies that have worked, including at least one unacknowledged, unadjudicated prison murder, and I know about the 1984 escape from MCC. I understand the triple-cross. In a small way, it has been done to me both by persons inside of prison and ostensibly respectable people in society who kept aspects of their character well-hidden. I now have come to realize that I have taken a hit from more than one person with a personality disorder. I survived, though today I was yet thinking about one of these hits. The kind of conspiracy I know most about blooms in a hot-house kind of controlled environment, I mean prison. I am wary of conspiracy thinking when it has a lot of moving parts, and is on the grand scale. Occam's razor has been talked about a lot in recent years. I learned about that forty years ago. I know that the old guard, now gone, at one of the most prominent of Richmond law firms --some famous lawyers, at least locally, who are like gods to me-- very staunchly believed and would argue same over a few drinks, that that was how everything works and has always worked, all through history. ("The Conspiracy Theory of History.") Some of their sons used to talk about this, debating it as well. Sometimes grinning.
I think you have to grind. I haven't on this topic. I once spent a little time looking at WTC 7 photos and videos. One thing, there was the whole question of a very high atrium in that building, with its support structure which would include at least one long beam (or beams), that might have become vulnerable. I assume that Cieran may be referring to that. Also, though I guess it has been discounted as having had any causative effect leading to the collapse, I am certain an enormous section of steel fell on to WTC 7. Further, if I remember correctly, there were a number of very important government operations going on out of that building. Plus the fuel storage tanks for vehicles? I didn't think that the case was made that the fires in Building 7 were insignificent. I thought that there is also a question about how tightly the building fell in upon itself when you look at some of the pix of the rubble. That would matter if it was supposed to be controlled.
However, there have been an awful lot of pros in the business in this country and in Europe who have stepped forward to state and perhaps to testify that the fall of WTC 7 was a controlled demolition. So, was there some sort of "Zipper effect" accidentally built into the very design of these buildings?
Anyway, I have ordered "102 Minutes" by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. I think that this is a book published in 2011. It amazes me how you turn your head away and then look back into the web a year or two later and there is a huge amount of new information out there.
I am impressed that MRW actually knew that building and that bar, was it Windows On The World? It must have been the bar with THE most dramatic view in New York. I remember some quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of the public television documentaries about those buildings. You could see that The City actually had an end to it, ran out somewhere...
I suspect that MRW is out for blood! I hope maybe we get to hear more about all this, including that bar, and that roof-top, what it was like up there, when the annniversary rolls around.
Posted by: Tidewater | 15 May 2016 at 11:58 PM
Well, I'll note the obvious. A book is NOT an investigation.
Reports of floor cracks and concerned looks of structural engineers are not the same as a thorough investigation by structural engineers and others.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | 16 May 2016 at 01:29 AM
The conversation in this thread points to why critics of the 9-11 Commission report believe that there should be a new investigation. Even those that accept the report's findings: 1) don't have a firm grasp on what caused the collapse; and 2) recognized that the report is incomplete and uncertain. They explain that _some degree_ of uncertainty is to be expected. Critics, are not willing to give this 'benefit of the doubt' in light of the profound post-9/11 changes that have been justified as necessary after the attack..
But now WE KNOW that 28 pages of the report were withheld and that taints the whole report. This demonstrates that politics played a role in the 9-11 Commission report. The CONSPIRACY to withhold these pages gives ammunition to the 'conspiracy theorists' as it is not unreasonable to ask: what else might they be hiding?
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
What I find curious is that conspiracy theorists question everything except the role of the neocons – whose agenda was advanced by the 9-11 attacks. Pre-9-11 neocons were more savvy about ME issues and knew much more about al Queda than most. Yet they don't appear to have used their influence to support effective counter measures. Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station at the CIA has complained that many opportunities to arrest or kill ObL were nixed by Clinton Administration officials in the years prior to 9-11. And Bush anti-terror czar Richard Clark claimed that Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice were most to blame for ignoring the warnings leading up to the attack.
MRW's description (see below) of how Israel/neocons immediately recognized the likely perpetrator and the import of the attack demonstrate just how aware neocons were about the danger of ObL/al Queda. And given that "new Pearl Harbor" was hoped/anticipated to benefit their cause, one could well WONDER if neocons _deliberately_ failed to warn of the danger or otherwise _allowed_ the attack to occur.
What we really need is a Watergate-style investigation that asks: “what did they know, and when did they know it?”
=
MRW (above): "... my ire was piqued when I watched Ehud Barak, of all people, declare on BBC at 11:30 AM EST on 9/11, an hour after the North Tower came down, as if he were the President of the United States, calling for a US-run global war on terror, and declaring twice that it was Bin Laden who done it. Then four hours later Richard Perle and Barak were back for two hours on the BBC to declare positively that Bin Laden did it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke
Posted by: Jackrabbit | 16 May 2016 at 02:06 AM
The February 1993 WTC attack created more damage than made public or at least registered in public memory. IMO of course.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 16 May 2016 at 02:43 AM
Optimax:
I read your link, and especially enjoyed re-reading the New Yorker article from shortly after the attack. That article is required reading for anyone who desires an informed opinion on the subject.
Thanks for posting the link to all that information. There's a lot of recollection there that is hard on the heart, but good for the soul.
--Cieran
Posted by: Cieran | 16 May 2016 at 09:04 AM
Thank you, rjj' I've always thought you are a valuable member of the Committee, which has been around since the founding of the country.
Posted by: optimax | 16 May 2016 at 10:23 AM
Thomas,
I've read that before but their disappearance is still a mystery.
Posted by: optimax | 16 May 2016 at 10:30 AM
Tidewater to William R. Cumming and All,
I just took a quick look at Wiki on the '93 attack. One notes that these lower concrete floors were 30 inches thick. The blast went through three of them. Just to start with...
The costs of "restoration" seem to vary. Terry McDermott states $300 million; another source says $250 million. Yet another put the cost at $835 million. The bomb cost $3,000. Interesting to contemplate what the repainting costs (because of smoke damage) might have been at both the WTC Tower and the Pentagon.
I think the New Yorker article giving the explanation by Mark Loizeaux of Controlled Demolitions of what he thought happened in those buildings must surely be folded into the book "102 Minutes." I was glad that Cieran recommends the article.
The double-take that I am doing is who the players were. (Better late than never.) Some of them had family members involved in both attacks. Khalid Sheik Mohammed went to Chowan College, which is Baptist, right over the Virginia line in Eastern North Carolina!
Posted by: Tidewater | 16 May 2016 at 12:56 PM
pithy Dancing Israeli info, includes redacted FBI reports from Freedom of Info reqs:
http://www.takeourworldback.com/dancingisraelisfbireport.htm
apparently the incident has been classified until 2030. wow.
quite nice writeup on intelligence community's response to Israeli "art students":
http://www.salon.com/2002/05/07/students/ also see
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it/Israeli_art_scam
http://www.rense.com/general87/14_1.htm
a rebuttal of Snopes' article here, includes Larry Silverstein's $3.5B insurance:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/21/maidhc-o-cathail-myth-debunking-snopes-obscures-israel%E2%80%99s-role-in-911/
photos of Israeli "artists" group "Gelatin" taking out a window in the WTC, allegedly testing dropping a gelatin human dummy from a top floor to test as a "performance piece". Rather in poor taste.
http://truthalliance.net/Archive/News/tabid/67/ID/3790/Art-Students-in-WTC-Connected-to-Israeli-Intelligence-Service.aspx
it's alleged that the "BB-18" on the boxes in the second photo to the right of the guy in the pink shirt designate blasting caps, any confirmation?
huge random data dump on Israeli WTC art students here, including conspiracies:
https://911justicehalifax.wordpress.com/israeli-art-of-deception-students-at-wtc/
British newspaper reports 200 Israeli spies arrested in U.S.; Fox news
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1387069/US-arrests-200-young-Israelis-in-spying-investigation.html
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/Israeli-Spying-Part-1.htm
but most of this has been quietly scrubbed from the collective consciousness.
Posted by: Imagine | 18 May 2016 at 04:42 AM
Cheney's shadow gov't dates back years before; he had plans ready to invade Iraq; Borg was operational by 9/11. Also see Oded Yinon.
Posted by: Imagine | 18 May 2016 at 04:59 AM
Israeli and Bin Laden planes specially permitted:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_911_148.htm
Posted by: Imagine | 18 May 2016 at 05:06 AM
Treasury department. Apparently has its own secret police, and consultants/mercs. See pp 103-4 of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man":
"The condition was that Saudi Arabia would use its petrodollars to purchase U.S. gov't securities; in turn, the interest earned by these securities would be spent by the U.S. Dept. of Treasury" for Saudi infrastructure [1974]. "Our own Treasury would hire us, at Saudi expense"..."no one had to obtain congressional approval--a process loathed by corporations...which prefer not to open their books..." "The Saudis, rolling in cash, would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to Treasury, which held on to the funds until they were needed to pay vendors or employees. This system assured that the Saudi money would be recycled back into the American economy...It also ensured that the commission's managers could undertake whatever projects they and the Saudis agreed were useful without having to justify them to Congress." entire chapter on this.
Posted by: Imagine | 18 May 2016 at 01:53 PM
Not sure if this is new info on SST but the U.S. Senate passed a bill authorizing the 9/11/2001 survivors and families to file suit against the KSA in U.S. Courts.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 19 May 2016 at 08:50 AM