9/11 - Commission or Coverup?

9/11 - Commission or Coverup?
By Mike Hersh, Apr 30, 2004

As the 9/11 Commission winds down into the final phases of an apparent cover-up, lingering questions remain unanswered - even unasked. Aside from several oddities and unanswered questions - conflicts between the official "coincidence theory" and inexplicable facts including:

1. Absence of fighter jets which should have scrambled to interdict the hijacked airliners,

2. Incongruities between photographic evidence of damage to the Pentagon grounds building and an airliner impact,

3. The sequence of events at the World Trade Center which defy physics.

The 9/11 Commission should have investigated the possibility that some elements in the US military and / or intelligence services may have condoned if not orchestrated the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Inconceivable? Hysterical conspiracy theory? Unfortunately not.

November 7, 2001 ABC News reported that during the early 1960s, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff - the interface between the military and civilian leadership - entertained a strategy to manipulate the nation into war against Cuba. David Ruppe's story, Headlined "Friendly Fire" and sub-headed "Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba" detailed:

"Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities."

These US Government plans included "hijacking planes" and "orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities." The motivation, confirmed by ABC, was "to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro." ABC based its report on a book called "Body of Secrets," by reporter James Bamford.

ABC News explained, "America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: 'We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,' and, 'casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.'"

We have conclusive evidence highly placed officials formulated plans to "Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War." This is according to ABC News, not some internet conspiracy theory. The concept of killing innocent Americans with the avowed intention of driving us into war against a despot targeted as a threat to national security dates back to the John F. Kennedy years. In 1962, government officials targeted Fidel Castro's Cuba. Was it Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2001?

So we know government officials not only foresaw, but considered using terrorism as a tool to trick the public into supporting war in 1962, but is there any proof current administration officials would consider this? Yes.

PNAC - the Project for the New American Century - published a blueprint for remaking US Defense and Middle East polices. They advocated invasion of Iraq to establish a beacon of Democracy. In their January 26, 1998 letter to then-President Clinton, PNAC advocated "military action as diplomacy is clearly failing" and "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power."

Among the signatories were Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as well as other high-ranking Bush Administration officials Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, and Paul Wolfowitz. See: http://www.newamericancentury.org/

PNAC called for an aggressive military-based approach to American foreign policy in their document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century A Report of The Project for the New American Century dated September 2000. Presaging Bush "Axis of Evil" rhetoric and policy.

PNAC claimed "adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons." They considered Iraq an attractive pretext to establish US military control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region: "Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

These statements and others calling for an "increase in strength, more permanent basing arrangements" in the Gulf place the Bush Administration rush to war in Iraq in clearer context. According to these documents, top-level Bush policy-makers hoped to establish a large permanent military presence in the region, and they considered Iraq the ideal location.

Lamenting restraints "Domestic politics and industrial policy" placed on their ambitions, the PNAC members observed, "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." See: Rebuilding America's Defenses, pp.16, 26, 29, 51, http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

How much different is Northwoods from PNAC and 9/11? Flash forward forty years. Taken together with the obstruction, secrecy and bald-faced lies from Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell and others, reports about plans to engineer support for war through a "new Pearl Harbor" (PNAC) or "hijacking planes" and "orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities" (Northwoods).

ABC reports, according to evidence Bamford uncovered, "The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years."

We don't have to wait four decades. We have the PNAC plans dating back to early 1998, as well as evidence the Bush/Cheney administration planned to carry out the PNAC plans within days after assuming power, several months before 9/11/01. This as revealed by former Bush Administration officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill.

These and other lingering questions remain unanswered - even unasked - in the carefully orchestrated, constrained and obstructed investigation into the most deadly attack on US soil in US history. In the wake of the Team Bush's catastrophic failure to keep us safe, we may not be able to force the Bush/Cheney PNAC Administration to come clean, but we can - and must - force them out of office.

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