Section N

From 911answers

Investigations and Alleged Cover-ups

Introductory text here.

• N.1. Signs of a Systematic 9/11 Cover-up
  • N1.1. Attack Cover-ups
    • N1.100. Airplane black boxes were found at Ground Zero, according to two first responders and an unnamed NTSB official, but they were "disappeared" and their existence is denied in The 9/11 Commission Report.
    • N1.101. U.S. officials consistently suppressed and destroyed evidence
      • N1.101a. The rapid and illegal scrapping of the WTC ruins at Ground Zero disposed of almost all of the structural steel indispensable to any investigation of the collapse mechanics.
      • N1.101b. Tapes, recorded by air traffic controllers who handled the New York flights, were destroyed
    • N1.102. Whistleblowers (like Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer) were intimidated, gagged and sanctioned, sending a clear signal to others who might be thinking about speaking out.
    • N1.103. Officials who "failed" (like Myers and Eberhard, as well as Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman of the FBI) were given promotions.
  • N1.2. Aftermath Cover-ups
    • N1.200. The White House deliberately pressured the EPA into giving false public assurances that the toxic air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe. This knowingly contributed to an as-yet unknown number of health cases and fatalities, and demonstrates that the administration does consider the lives of American citizens to be expendable on behalf of certain interests.
  • N1.3. Additional Cover-ups
    • N1.300. Silencing the September 11 Families
      • N1.300a. September 11th families who accepted victims' compensation were barred from pursuing discovery through litigation, making the compensation effectively a form of hush money.
      • N1.300b. Those who refused compensation to pursue litigation and discovery had their cases consolidated under one judge, Judge Hallerstein, who as a rule dismissed them.
    • N1.301. Eliot Spitzer
      • N1.301a. Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York State, snubbed pleas by New York citizens to open 9/11 as a criminal case.
      • N1.301a. Spitzer also refused to allow his employee, former 9/11 Commission staff member Dietrich Snell, to testify to the Congress about his (Snell's) role in keeping "Able Danger" entirely out of the 9/11 Commission Report.
    • N1.302. Media Blackout of Prominent Doubters
      • N1.302a. The official story has been questioned by many important figures. Although not all of these people agree fully with each other, all would normally be considered newsworthy. Why has the corporate-owned U.S. mass media remained silent about these statements?
        • N1.302a-a. members of the US Congress
        • N1.302a-b. retired high-ranking officers of the US military
        • N1.302a-c. the three leading third-party candidates for President in the 2004 election
        • N1.302a-d. a member of the 9/11 Commission who resigned in protest
        • N1.302a-e. a former high-ranking adviser to the George W. Bush administration
        • N1.302a-f. former ministers to the German, British and Canadian governments,
        • N1.302a-g. the commander-in-chief of the Russian air force
        • N1.302a-h. 100 luminaries who signed the "9/11 Truth Statement“
        • N1.302a-i. the President of Iran
        • N1.302a-j. the President of Venezuela.
      • N1.302b. Why has the corporate-owned U.S. mass media granted due coverage only to the comments of actor Charlie Sheen?
• N2. Investigations
  • N2.1. The 9/11 Commission
    • N2.100. Bush Administration Stonewalling
      • N2.100a. Colin Powell promised a "white paper" from the State Department to establish the authorship of the attacks by al-Qaeda. This was never forthcoming, and was instead replaced by a paper from Tony Blair, which presented only circumstantial evidence, with very few points actually relating to September 11th.
      • N2.100b. Bush and Cheney pressured the (freshly-anthraxed) leadership of the Congressional opposition into delaying the 9/11 investigation for months.
      • N2.100c. The administration fought against the creation of an independent investigation for more than a year.
      • N2.100d. The White House thereupon attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger as the chief investigator.
      • N2.100e. The White House acted to underfund and obstruct the 9/11 Commission.
    • N2.101. Official Lies to the Commission
      • N2.101a. Rice, Rumsfeld, and Bush repeatedly claimed, falsely, that "No one could have imagined planes into buildings"
    • N2.102. Ignoring the September 11 Families
      • N2.102a. The September 11th families who fought for and gained an independent investigation (the 9/11 Commission) posed 400-plus questions, which the 9/11 Commission adopted as its roadmap. The vast majority of these questions were completely ignored in the Commission hearings and the final report.
    • N2.103. Conflict of Interest
      • N2.103a. The membership and staff of the 9/11 Commission displayed awesome conflicts of interest.
      • N2.103b. The September 11th families called for the resignation of Executive Director Philip Zelikow, a Bush administration member and close associate of "star witness" Condoleezza Rice. They were snubbed.
    • N2.104. Internal Dissent
      • N2.104a. 9/11 Commission member Max Cleland resigned, condemning the entire exercise as a "scam" and "whitewash."
    • N2.105. Flaws in the 9/11 Commission Report
      • N2.105a. The 9/11 Commission Report is notable mainly for its obvious omissions, distortions and outright falsehoods.
      • N2.105b. The report ignored anything incompatible with the official story.
      • N2.105c. The report banished important issues to footnotes.
      • N2.105d. The report dismissed the still-unresolved question of who financed 9/11 as being "of little practical significance".
  • N2.2. National Institute of Standards and Technology
    • N2.200. NIST Omissions
      • N2.200a. After the destruction of the WTC structural steel, the official Twin Towers collapse investigation was left with almost no forensic evidence, and thus could only provide dubious computer models of ultimately unprovable hypotheses.
      • N2.200b. The NIST report failed to even test for the possibility of explosives. Why not clear this up?
    • N2.201. The 9/11 Commission and NIST both allowed the continuing cover-up of how Motorola's faulty radios, purchased by the Giuliani administration, caused firefighter deaths at the WTC.
      • N2.201a. Like the controlled demolition of the Towers, this once again shows the expendability of even the first responders.
  • N2.3. Federal Emergency Management Agency
  • N2.4. Journalistic Investigations
    • N2.4.100. The senior researcher on Popular Mechanics' 9/11 debunking piece is a distant cousin of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff

• N.3. Accountability
  • N3.1. The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.

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Text that would appear in the answer pages:

 The Commission's mandate is to provide a “full and complete accounting” of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future. 

Specifically, Section 604 of Public Law 107-306 requires the Commission to investigate "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," including those relating to intelligence agencies; law enforcement agencies; diplomacy; immigration, nonimmigrant visas, and border control; the flow of assets to terrorist organizations; commercial aviation; the role of congressional oversight and resource allocation; and other areas determined relevant by the Commission for its inquiry.

President Bush initially refused to allow for an independant investigation.

• • • N2.201 Public Law 107-306 provided for the reprogramming of $3 million for the Commission. Congress subsequently appropriated, and the President signed into law, an additional $11 million appropriation for the Commission. Recent legislation authorized an additional $1 million, bringing the Commission’s total budget to $15 million.

The Commission is confident that it can fulfill its mandate with this amount. We appreciate very much the support of Congress and the President for this level of funding.

• • • N2.203 President Bush and Vice President Cheney meet privately with Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton, but prefered not to meet with all 10 Commissioners.

The Commission plans also meet with President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

• • • N2.204 The Commission had access to every document. It asked to see—more than two million pages—including the most sensitive documents the government possesses. The President has yet to assert executive privilege on any document. The Commission also has interviewed every single official with whom we requested to meet, including national security advisers, cabinet secretaries, FBI directors, chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and directors of central intelligence, past and present.

N3.1. Pres. Clinton's NSA (National Security Advisor) Sandy Berger pled guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. He took five copies of an after-action report -- one during his September 2003 visit to the Archives and four during his October 2003 trip. He admitted to officials that he then used scissors to cut up three copies that night while at his office. At first he had said he had either misplaced or unintentionally thrown them away. He was reviewing the documents at the request of Pres. Clinton and in preparation for the 9/11 commission. http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/04/01/berger.plea/index.html