Critically, the U.S. Air Force ordered personnel to operate on a state of heightened security throughout the Continental United States to defend against any intrusion on U.S. airspace on those days.
NORAD had trained for “Bojinka” for two years.
And yet, inexplicably, the full scope of rationale for the heightened security alert was never explained to the military.
Indeed, NORAD has acknowledged that U.S. forces were advised to go on alert only because of the Russian military exercises. The U.S. military was not warned “Bojinka” might be in play, though factions of U.S. intelligence were shouting from the rooftops about a possible attack, and pleading for multi-agency cooperation at that very moment.
Failure to adequately alert and deploy the Central Command of the U.S. Armed Forces, despite the heightened security risk against a known target—definitely qualifies as “command negligence.”
Through no fault of its own, because of poor communications from the White House, the U.S. military was only half-loaded for a massive strike against the United States, when it should have been fully braced to confront a major domestic assault.
Subsequently, Air Force commanders experienced confusion on September 11. The regional NORAD commander for New York and Washington reported that some commanders at NORAD thought 9/11 was part of the military exercises.
“In retrospect, the exercise should have proved to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid military response to the terrorist attacks on September 11,”133 said Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NEADS. “We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board.”
However, other NORAD officials were initially confused about whether the 9/11 attacks were real— or part of the exercise.”134
As a result, at the exact moment that US and foreign intelligence around the world buzzed about a massive terrorist attack on New York City, citing the World Trade Center as the primary target, the US Air Force was locked and loaded— for war games off the coast of Russia. The U.S. Air Force was on high alert throughout the Continental United States from September 10 onwards— yet received no effective communication regarding a high level threat inside New York City.
With better communications, there’s no question that the Air Force would have done much better than to dispatch a single fighter jet to Manhattan and another to Washington. They would have launched all available aircraft to bring down the hijackers pronto.135
Options for pre-emptive military action were definitely available.
When a small aircraft buzzed the White House in the 1980’s, missiles got placed on the rooftop to shoot down future aircraft that came too close.
A couple of months before 9/11, world leaders gathered for a G-8 World Economic Summit in Genoa, Italy. Intelligence suggested terrorists might crash an airplane into the conference building hosting the world leaders. Overnight, Genoa became heavily fortified with anti aircraft missiles, along with significant NATO Air Force protection. The G-8 Global Summit progressed unscathed.
Didn’t all of this advance intelligence warrant the deployment of a single anti-aircraft or missile battery on top of the World Trade Towers, too?
It would have been shockingly simple and cost effective to implement. Instead, the most powerful Military Command on the planet was badly misused—cut out of the loop, denied knowledge of a significant threat against the sovereign United States.
That’s hard evidence of command failure about the military level.
The second level of “command negligence” relates to the failure to coordinate an appropriate, unified response to a known threat between U.S. intelligence and federal law enforcement. Heightened cooperation between the CIA and FBI required “command leadership” from the White House. Yet despite urgent requests in August, 2001, that inter-agency cooperation never materialized.
Bottom line: “9/11 was an organizational failure, not an intelligence failure,”136 as John Arquilla, of the Naval Postgraduate School put it succinctly:
Consider the time line of the warnings.
According to a Joint House-Senate Congressional inquiry,137 in March 2001 an intelligence source claimed a group of Bin Ladin operatives was coordinating an unspecified attack on U.S. soil. One of the alleged operatives resided inside the United States.
In April 2001, U.S. Intelligence learned that terrorist operatives in California and New York were planning strikes in both of those states.
Between May and July of 2001, the National Security Agency reported at least 33 chatter communications, indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack. These individuals appeared to possess no actionable intelligence that would have identified who, how many, when or where the attack would start.138
In May 2001, the Intelligence Community learned that Bin Ladin supporters planned to infiltrate the United States via Canada, in order to carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives. Further investigation by the Defense Department indicated that seven individuals associated with Bin Ladin had departed various locations for Canada, Britain and the United States.139
By May, U.S. intelligence had gathered sufficient evidence to show that some Middle Eastern terrorist group was planning an imminent attack on key U.S. landmarks, including the World Trade Center. This coincides precisely with the timing of the portentous warning from Dr. Fuisz that I must confront Iraqi diplomats, and aggressively demand any fragment of intelligence regarding airplane hijackings.
In June 2001, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) acquired information that key operatives in Bin Ladin’s organization were going underground, while others were preparing for martyrdom.140
In July 2001, the DCI gained access to an individual recently traveling in Afghanistan, who reported: “Everyone is talking about an impending attack.” The Intelligence Community was also aware that Bin Ladin had stepped up his propaganda efforts to promote Al Qaeda’s cause.
On August 6, Richard Clarke presented a Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush, outlining the gravity of Al Qaeda’s threat. Sometime on August 7 or 8, I telephoned Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department, with a request for an “emergency broadcast alert throughout all agencies,” seeking “any fragment of intelligence regarding possible airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings.” I described the threat as “imminent,” with the “potential for mass casualties.” And I cited the World Trade Center as the expected target.
On August 16, 2001, U.S. Immigration detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
On September 4, 2001, the FBI Office in Minneapolis sent urgent cables about the Moussaoui investigation to the Intelligence Community, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Secret Service, and several other federal agencies in Washington. Despite urgent warnings from the FBI in Minneapolis about Moussaoui’s likely involvement in some terrorist conspiracy, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to get a search warrant from the secret intelligence court in Washington141 so they could crack open Moussaoui’s computer.
Finally, on September 10, 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted two communications between individuals overseas, suggesting imminent terrorist activity. These communications were not translated into English and disseminated until September 12, 2001. These intercepts gave no indication what activities might occur. It remains unclear whether they referred to the September 11 attacks.142
By any measure, U.S. intelligence performed in an outstanding capacity, anticipating the threat posed by al Qaeda.
All of which raises serious questions as to how Central Command at the White House could have allowed such valuable raw intelligence to go unused between agencies?
Various factions of U.S. intelligence buzzed that a major terrorist attack was about to occur. There was an outpouring of pleas for aggressive coordination and pre-emptive planning. In its frustration, the Intelligence Community made a herculean effort to break through the gridlock and appeal direct
ly to the Justice Department.
Unhappily, law enforcement at the Justice Department received no “command” support from the Attorney General’s Office. That sort of top level mandate would have been required for cooperation to occur between Intelligence and law enforcement, which perform two very different missions. With the crucial exception of the FBI office in Minneapolis, the response at the Justice Department was abysmal.
Intelligence sharing functioned properly. Outreach to law enforcement was made in a time effective manner. Yet nothing happened.
The command leadership dropped the ball, pure and simple. Command leaders failed to pull resources across agencies to implement the most basic precautionary safeguards. There’s no question but that qualifies as a major “command failure” and “command negligence,” as defined by General Clark and the U.S. military establishment.
The third argument for “command negligence” involves the White House failure to accept full command responsibility after 9/11.
When there’s a tragedy or crisis, Americans expect our leaders to stand forward and embrace their responsibility for the welfare of the nation, invoking the full power of their authority. As Harry Truman put it so bluntly, “The buck stops here.”
President Bush’s performance as Commander in Chief at the start of the attack was awkward at best. At a town hall meeting in Orlando, Florida on September 12, a young audience member addressed President Bush.
Question: “One thing, Mr. President, you have no idea how much you’ve done for this country. And another thing is that – how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?”
PRESIDENT BUSH: “Well – Well, Jordan, you’re not going to believe where – what state I was in, when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card – well, actually I was in a classroom, talking about a reading program that works. And it – I was sitting outside the – the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower of a – of a – you know. The TV was obviously on, and I – I used to fly myself, and I said, “Well, there’s one terrible pilot.” And I said it must have been a horrible accident.”143
The President’s statement was largely incoherent. Somehow he translated the child’s question: “How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?” to a more concrete “What state was I in when I heard about the terrorist attack?” “Oh, Florida.” He interjected seemingly random comments about my cousin, Andy Card, and barely made it through the answer. This sort of disconnected rhetoric was typical and expected by those who followed President Bush closely.
[Crucially, in this statement, President Bush admitted knowing about the Mossad video of the first airplane crashing into the towers. That video becomes very important for identifying Israel’s advance knowledge about 9/11, on the morning of September 11. See Chapter 7]
More than that discredited the White House. After 9/11, Republican leaders pushed very hard, as long as possible, to avoid an investigation, hiding from criticism of their pre-9/11 inertia. When the 9/11 Commission was finally established, the White House designated a budget nowhere close to sufficient for a serious investigation.
Blue ribbon commissions are a trademark of the federal government. When a topic appears too hot for Congress to handle, a commission of distinguished officials gets appointed from the top ranks of both political parties to address it. But President Bush and Vice President Cheney wanted no part of a 9/11 investigation. Indeed, Cheney rang up Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Democrat-South Dakota) and asked him to limit the investigation to communication failures between agencies.144
“The Vice President expressed concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism,” Senator Daschle told CNN.
Unable to stop the 9/11 investigation, the White House tried to starve the Commission of funds, finally allocating an $11 million budget, a pittance of what Congress spends on far less important tasks.
Once the 9/11 Commission was formed, the White House saw to it that a White House insider was selected for the all important job of Staff Director. Phillip Zelikow was a close professional colleague of Condeleeza Rice. They wrote a book together on foreign policy, and Rice brought Zelikow onto the Bush 2000 transition team. An academic of some distinction, Zelikow authored two notable position papers for the Bush transition team. The first studied how to manage terrorist threats. The second justified a preemptive invasion of Iraq.
In other words, Zelikow was neck deep in the policies that produced the command negligence for 9/11 and the preemptive invasion of Iraq.
It’s hardly surprising that so much information in this book never got published in the 9/11 Commission report.
General Clark stops short of declaring that President Bush engaged in “deliberate” command negligence, in order to justify going to War with Iraq. He leaves open the possibility that top White House officials showed gross incompetence in their organizational leadership, and may have used the Iraq War as a distraction from their own mediocrity.
That’s where I diverge from General Clark’s outstanding arguments. I take a stronger position. I agree that “command negligence” occurred, building up to 9/11. But I know for a fact that key leaders deliberately ignored multiple advance warnings presented by domestic and foreign intelligence sources, and willfully failed to enact the most basic cautionary measures to defend the World Trade Center—which was already identified as the primary target of the attack.
That raises the most controversial questions that have spun through the 9/11 Truth Community for years: Was 9/11 allowed to happen, or made to happen—in order to manipulate public rage into support for President Bush’s secret agenda of invading Iraq?
Put more succinctly: Did the White House practice “deliberate negligence” to create a Pearl Harbor Day that would push the U.S. into War with Iraq?
Unequivocally, I believe the answer is yes.
Alternatives to War— The 9/11 Incentive
Given the rallying for peace in the international community before 9/11, the concept of War against Saddam was inconceivable without some major provocation. The international community was inflamed with a desire for cooperation and reconstruction. Any U.S. aggression would have been condemned as a “rogue” action— There would have been no “Coalition of the Willing” standing by to absorb the costs and contribute troops to the Mission. The secret war agenda would have died.
For its part, a faction of U.S. Intelligence had analyzed potential flashpoints for future tensions with Iraq, and moved to neutralize them. The peace framework addressed all major U.S. objectives in Iraq, including some not previously considered by the Bush Administration.
The White House was thoroughly apprised of all progress to implement those goals in Baghdad—and by corollary, our rapidly sinking sanctions policy.
That illustrates damnably why the Pro-War camp needed 9/11. Neo-conservatives needed to set up Saddam’s government as a paper-tiger, an external enemy that would incite popular hatred, and overcome international resistance to War.
Neo-conservatives had lost all legitimate justifications for War. So they had to invent one. Osama bin Laden saved the day, when he came along with a conspiracy to hijack airplanes and strike the Twin Towers. Right up to that point, the Bush Administration had lost every other excuse for War. It was flatly impossible.
Was the goal seizing Iraq’s oil after all? Vice President Cheney fought for years to protect the confidentiality of his pre- invasion meeting with U.S. oil executives. But there have been enough leaks to speculate that Cheney carved up Iraq’s oil reserves, and replaced the existing contracts held by foreign oil companies.
In testimony before Congress, U.S. oil executives denied that such a meeting with Vice President Cheney occurred. But in late 2005, a White House document confirmed that Cheney’s meeting took place.145
There’s also the matter of the Caspian Sea Pipeline, which runs from Kaza
khstan through Iran. A primary source of Russian oil, the Caspian Pipeline is geographically sensitive to hostilities between Iran and the West. It’s entirely possible that top officials wanted to concentrate U.S. military bases in Iraq, on the border of Iran, as a check on Tehran’s ambitions to dominate and manipulate oil supplies. Looking at the map of military bases surrounding Iran, it’s obvious they’ve done it.
Unhappily for Capitol Hill cronies of the oil industry, instead of securing vast wealth for its stockholders, war and sanctions accomplished their own worst ambitions. Sanctions fundamentally annihilated Iraq’s oil infrastructure and pipelines for the foreseeable future. Cost prohibitive damage was exacerbated by repeated acts of sabotage by Iraq’s nationalist insurgency. A large percentage of Iraqi people are convinced the United States invaded Iraq to seize its oil resources. A critical sub-group of that population chose to degrade their own oil infrastructure, rather than allow the U.S. to steal Iraq’s national wealth.
Distrust of Washington
Tragically today, the vast majority of citizens around the world have no confidence that we’ve been told the truth about 9/11. From that despair, the “9/11 Truth Movement” has emerged. Ordinary citizens have put together a Terror Timeline, culling information that the government would not provide.
For me, that’s heart breaking to watch. I know from personal experience the ripples of advance warnings that ran like wildfire through the intelligence community before 9/11. I recall my own desperate efforts to reach the Justice Department, at the urgent command of my CIA handler. And I know the White House floated the idea of War in Baghdad for months before the attack, because I was commanded to issue those threats myself, if a 9/11 scenario occurred and Baghdad failed to share intelligence with the U.S.
On the morning of my arrest, one more thing threatened pro-War Republicans. I had full knowledge of Iraq’s efforts to cooperate with the 9/11 investigation, and how that effort had been snubbed.
I was always one to call a spade, a spade. Citing my direct contact with Iraq, I was ready to turn Washington on its ear, declaring the War on Terrorism a “fraud” and the White House rejection of peace an act of public deception.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 15
