David Ray Griffin, 9-11 Contradictions (2008) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) — Digging Deeper LII 2008, 7:00 p.m.

July 21,

David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink Publishing, March 2008). Preface. Contradictions may be between or among different sources, self-contradictions, or contradictions with media accounts (vi-vii). This book is non-technical: “Each chapter revolves around a simple contradiction, which anyone can recognize” (vii). This book is not a conspiracy theory, because it “contains no theory about what really happened” (viii; cf. “This book . . . is about contradictions, not mysteries” [160]). “Here, then, is the point of the book: 9/11 has clearly been the most important event in recent history. The accepted story about 9/11 has been used to increase military spending, justify wars, restrict civil liberties, and exalt the executive branch of the government. And yet there are serious contradictions within this accepted story: this book documents 25 of them. The existence of so many contradictions within such an important story is intolerable. Congress and the press are the two principal institutions with the power and the responsibility for looking into such matters. This book is intended as a tool to help them fulfill this responsibility” (viii). Research has relied on “the Complete 911 Timeline produced by Cooperative Research” (viii [www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project]). Special thanks to Matthew Everett, Elizabeth Woodworth, and Tod Fletcher, as well as Griffin’s editor and wife (viii-ix). PART I: QUESTIONS ABOUT BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND PENTAGON LEADERS Ch. 1: How Long Did George Bush Remain in the Classroom? On the first anniversary of 9/11, the White House apparently organized promotion of the notion that Bush left the classroom quickly, but a contrary account had already been published in the Tampa Tribune on 9/1/02 and was later confirmed by the now well-known video (2-4). The White House seems to have made efforts to orchestrate supporting statements until abandoning the effort in 2004 (4-6). Possible motive: the true account called Secret Service conduct into question, and even suggested the president knew he was not in danger (6-11). Ch. 2: When Did Dick Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker? Among the conflicting accounts of when in the hour after the second plane hit the World Trade Center Vice President Dick Cheney went to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), the 9/11 Commission chose one with weak support and ignored many others which implied that he was there as early as 9:10 or 9:15 a.m.; the question of whether Cheney was there before or after the Pentagon was hit, and what “orders” he may have given (according to Sec. of Transportation Norman Mineta’s recollection) is an important one (12-21). Ch. 3: Was Cheney Observed Confirming a Stand-Down Order? Mineta reported, and later confirmed, that Cheney was heard around 9:25 or 9:26 to confirm “orders” that only make sense if they were stand-down orders not to shoot down a plane bearing down on Washington, but other accounts and the 9/11 Commission’s account replace this with various “harmless” versions (22-30). Ch. 4: Did Cheney Observe the Land-All-Planes Order? The 9/11 Commission said FAA chief Ben Sliney ordered all planes down on his own, but Norman Mineta claimed to have made the order; Griffin speculates the reason is because evidence for the latter is associated with accounts that place Cheney in the PEOC before the Pentagon was hit (31-39). Ch. 5: When Did Cheney Issue Shootdown Authorization? The 9/11 Commission reported (as did the film “United 93”) that Cheney gave shoot-down authorization sometime between 10:12 and 10:18, after Flight 93 had crashed, ignoring much evidence, including testimony by Richard Clarke, that the order was given between 9:45 and 9:55 (40-45).

Ch. 6: Where Was General Richard Myers? Gen. Myers, the acting chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was in Sen. Max Cleland’s office, which the 9/11 Commission endorsed, ignoring altogether counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke’s published report that Myers was at the Pentagon (and thus reinforcing the idea that “the military was not informed about the hijacking of either American Flight 77 or United Flight 93 prior to their crashes” (52; 46-57). Ch. 7: Where Was Donald Rumsfeld? Richard Clarke wrote in Against All Enemies that Rumsfeld participated in a video conference shortly after the second plane hit the World Trade Center (58-59). The 9/11 Commission ignored Clarke’s account and endorsed Rumsfeld’s version, not acknowledging the discrepancy for the 9:10-9:40 period (59-61). Accounts differ on when and whether Rumsfeld went to the Executive Support Center, where a teleconferencing studio is located (61-63). Accounts differ on whether Rumsfeld discussed rules of engagement for shooting down civilian airliners before or after the Pennsylvania plane was shot down, and when DEFCON 3 was effected (63-68). Questions remain about why Rumsfeld abandoned his command post to go to the Pentagon attack site after it was hit (68-70). The Clarke-Commission discrepancy is “[t]he main question” (71). Ch. 8: Did Ted Olson Receive Calls from Barbara Olson? “It is certainly strange that Ted Olson’s original story, that he received two cell phone calls from his wife [Barbara Olson], was later contradicted by Olson himself [saying that she had used the airliner’s phones to place a collect call; however, no such phones existed on that plane]; that his later story, according to which she had used an onboard phone to make these calls, was implicitly contradicted by American Airlines; and that both versions of his story were implicitly contradicted by the FBI, which is part of the very governmental department for which Olson formerly worked” (78; 72-78). PART II: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE US MILITARY Ch. 9: When Was the Military Alerted about Flight 11? A NORAD document issued on Sept. 18, 2001, provided times when the military was notified of the four hijacked flights that were widely used until Jun. 17, 2004, when the 9/11 Commission “began providing a new account, which was then fully developed in The 9/11 Commission Report, published that July” (80; 80-81). NORAD gave 8:40, and the 9/11 Commission 8:38, as the time of notification for Flight 11 (81). But three independent accounts place it much earlier—8:20, 8:31, or 8:27 (81-85). Ch. 10: When Was the Military Alerted about Flight 175? Although the record shows it was aware of them, in its report the 9/11 Commission simply ignored all evidence (from about half a dozen independent sources) that the military knew of the second plane in time to intercept it (86-93). Ch. 11: When Was the Military Alerted about Flight 77? NORAD’s 9/18/01 news release said it was notified at 9:24 (9495). The New York Times reported on 9/15 that the military was discussing the hijack by about 8:45 (95-96). The FAA told the 9/11 Commission that prior to “formal notification” at 9:24, it was communicating “continuously” with the military from about 8:50 (96-100). The 9/11 Commission Report said this was “incorrect,” and even that the 9:24 report was not “received”; “NEADS [NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector] never received notice that American 77 was hijacked,” it said on p. 34 of its report (100-01). The 9/11 Commission dealt with contradictions either by omitting other evidence (Mineta’s account, an FAA memo, a NYT report, an FBI report, an American Airlines report, the Secret Service’s links to the FAA, the presence of military liaisons at the FAA, as well as the implausibility of claimed ignorance of the Indianapolis air

controller), or declaring it “incorrect” (NORAD’s official testimony) (100-08).

because it “played a central role in the process of placing blame on al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks” (169).

Ch. 12: When Was the Military Alerted about Flight 93? The 9/11 Commission concluded that the military learned of the hijacking of United 93 only at 10:07, after its 10:03 [according to the 9/11 Commission] crash in a field outside Shanksville, PA, ignoring evidence from four White House officials, three military officers, and the 2003 FAA memo discussed in ch. 11, as well as the fact that military liaisons were at the FAA Command Center and that there is evidence that the Secret Service and the FBI had prior knowledge of the hijacking (109-18).

Ch. 17: Were Hijackers Reported on Cell Phone Calls? “It has been widely believed that there were at least fifteen . . . cell phone calls” from UA 93 (11), UA 175 (2), and AA 77 (2) (177; 170-77). But evidence presented by the FBI in the 2006 trial of Zacharias Moussaoui “entails” that only two cell phone calls were made at relatively low altitude from Flight 93, contradicting The 9/11 Commission Report, hundreds of articles, explicit testimony from survivors’ relatives, and at least four popular films (177-81). Since the FBI evidence presented dated from Sept. 20, 2001, why did the FBI permit untrue public accounts to proliferate? (181-82).

Ch. 13: Could the Military Have Shot Down Flight 93? Despite repeated official denials, rumors persist that United 93 was shot down by military aircraft (119-20). The 9/11 Commission’s account claimed to explain how the plane was brought down (hijackers fearing passengers were about to take control of the aircraft), to rule out that the military knew of the hijacking and that any shoot-down authorization had been given, and to know that the crash took place at 10:03, rather than at 10:06, as previously reported (120-21). Five sources, however, maintain that shoot-down authorization came before United 93 crashed (121-23). Ten sources said that military jets were positioned and ready to shoot down United 93, and one published report said a pilot said orders had been given to down the flight, and that the plane crashed “just as [Lt. Anthony] Kuczynski and his crew were about to intercept” (124; 123-26). Despite “virtuously unanimous agreement on the 10:06 crash time during the first week after 9/11” and a confirming seismological study in spring 2002, the 9/11 Commission embraced a time given on a NORAD timeline issued on 9/18/01, putting the crash at 10:03—which helped explain the flight cockpit’s going completely silent then, but ignored a contradiction with its timeline in the account given by Lyz Glick of a phone conversation with her husband, Jeremy Glick, a passenger on the plane (126-30). Ch. 14: Had 9/11-Type Attacks Been Envisioned? At least eleven statements from U.S. officials denied that the possibility of domestic civilian airliners being used to attack the U.S. had ever been envisioned (131-33). Although abundant evidence exists that such attacks had been imagined and that they had even been the basis for training exercises, the 9/11 Commission concluded on p. 17 of its report that “the threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States—and using them as guided missiles—was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11” (13339). PART III: QUESTIONS ABOUT OSAMA BIN LADEN & THE HIJACKERS Ch. 15: Were Mohamed Atta and the Other Hijackers Devout Muslims? The 9/11 Commission portrayed Mohamed Atta as a devout Muslim and gave an account of his various residences in 2001, and ignored many accounts of him involved in drinking and gambling, as well as newspaper accounts (later suppressed from Lexis-Nexis) of a relationship and cohabitation with a Venice, FL, stripper (142-56). Ch. 16: Where Did Authorities Find Atta’s Treasure Trove of Information? The official account contains a hardto-explain displacement to Portland, ME, by Atta and a confederate the day before the attacks, with them then taking early morning US Air flight 5930 to Logan Airport from Portland to board the Boston-to-Los Angeles flight AA11 (15760). Originally, accounts reported that two brothers, Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, went to Portland and were believed to be hijackers, but these were quickly revised when one of the Bukharis was discovered in Florida, and the other was reported to have died earlier in a plane crash (160-64). On Sept. 14-16, the narrative was progressively revised to the final version, introducing inconsistencies in the record that have never been explained (164-67). In 2002, evidence of Atta’s presence in NYC on the 10th and possibly 9th of September was reported, adding another problem (167-68). “The 9/11 Commission dealt with these contradictions by ignoring them” (168). The “treasure trove” is important

Ch. 18: Is There Hard Evidence of bin Laden’s Responsibility? Although “The 9/11 Commission Report is entirely constructed around the idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks,” evidence for this “was never provided,” and “an FBI spokesperson has even contradicted the assumption that the FBI has such evidence” (183). The report presents an explicit narrative linking bin Laden to the attacks (183-84). On Sept. 23 Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.S. would present the evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11 in “a paper, a document”; this promise was withdrawn the next day on the grounds that all the evidence was “classified,” but Seymour Hersh reported in the Oct. 1, 2001, New Yorker that there was a lack of hard evidence (184-89). The British government on Oct. 4 asserted bin Laden’s guilt, but said the evidence was “too sensitive to release” and that the document asserting it “does not purport to provide a prosecutable case” (190). The FBI’s chief of investigative publicity, Rex Tomb, in June 2006 said “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” but the mainstream press has not pursued this story (191; 191-94). Though aware of the problem, and the 9/11 Commission did not claim hard evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility either (194-96). PART IV: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PENTAGON Ch. 19: Could Hani Hanjour Have Flown American 77 into the Pentagon? Though Hani Hanjour was a notoriously bad pilot, the flight trajectory of AA 77 was one demanding “extraordinary skill”; the 9/11 Commission dealt with this by asserting in a footnote referring to a flight instructor whom investigators have been unable to locate: “Hanjour successfully conducted a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters in Gaithersburg, MD” (203; 198-206). Ch. 20: What Caused the Hole in the C Ring? First reports attributed to the hole in the C Ring of the Pentagon to the nose of AA 77’s Boeing 77, but it was too fragile to penetrate the structure (207-08). Official reports failed to support the nose theory (208-11). The book produced by Popular Mechanics, entitled Debunking 9/11 Myths, said a report of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) attributed the hole to the landing gear, which it did not (21213). Witnesses reported the landing gear elsewhere (213-14). Ch. 21: Did a Military Plane Fly over Washington during the Pentagon Attack? According to The 9/11 Commission Report, the only military plane in the air near Washington, D.C., was a C-130H that identified the incoming aircraft as a Boeing 757 (214). But several observers are on record as seeing a white plane circling the White House (214-15). The Air Force denies any knowledge of it (216-17). On Sept. 12, 2007, CNN broadcast a segment on the plane, identifying it as an Air Force E-4B, presumably the one that serves as the National Airborne Operations Center (217-18). There is evidence it was over Washington before the Pentagon was struck (218-20). While plausible explanations have been advanced, official denials and the 9/11 Commission’s silence on the matter need explanation (220-23). PART V: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER Ch. 22: How Did Rudy Giuliani Know the Towers Were Going to Collapse? New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Peter

Jennings of ABC News on 9/11 that “we were told the World Trade Center was gonna collapse”; he later explained away his statement in a way that is not credible (226-27; 232). No other modern steel-reinforced building has ever collapsed due to fire, and the towers were built to survive an airplane crash; no professional on the scene feared they would collapse (except NYFD Chief Ray Downey—who died in the North Tower collapse—who said, “Boss, I think these buildings could collapse. . . . there were bombs up there”) (231; 227-32). Giuliani told a different story to the 9/11 Commission, and it did not ask him to explain the contradiction (232-33). Testimony in the oral histories recorded by the NYFD contained the information that the source of the warning was the Office of Emergency Management, whose director reported directly to Giuliani; the 9/11 Commission did not refer to this, though the report referred abundantly to these oral histories (233-36). Ch. 23: Were There Explosions in the Twin Towers? The 9/11 Commission made no mention of testimonies of explosions in the towers (237-38). The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a 2005 report declaring “aircraft impacts and subsequent fires” as the cause of the collapses, and claimed in 2006 that “[t]here was no evidence (collected by NIST, or by the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors” (238-39). However, there are abundant testimonies: almost one fourth of the [500] oral testimonies of firefighters “included descriptions of phenomena suggestive of explosions going off in the Twin Towers before and during their collapses that could not plausibly be explained as resulting from the impact and fire”; Griffin quotes forty-seven of them (239-50). But both the 9/11 Commission and the NIST “ignored, and even denied the existence of, testimonial evidence that was in their possession” (252; 250-52). Ch. 24: Were There Explosions in WTC 7? The 9/11 Commission did not mention the collapse of the 47-story WTC 7, and no official explanation has been published; a preliminary report indicates that fires will probably be blamed (253-54). There were, however, reports of explosions (25455). Accounts by Michael Hess and Barry Jennings indicate explosions in WTC 7 before the towers collapsed, though NIST’s timeline and Rudy Giuliani asserted the opposite (25560). A decision was made not to fight the fires in WTC 7 and firefighters acted with foreknowledge of the collapse (260-63). Testimony exists that there were plans to “bring down” the building, and experts have concluded it was a controlled demolition (263-65).

Ch. 25: Did the WTC Rubble Contain Evidence that Steel Had Melted? Several witnesses reported seeing what they took to be molten steel in the rubble of the towers, even 21 days after the attacks, though jet fuel fires could not have produced this (266-67). The 9/11 Commission ignored the question; NIST failed to consider it, and one of its chief scientists denied there were any eyewitness reports of molten steel (268-70). Three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute who examined some of the steel attributed the melting to a “eutectic reaction” that can sulfidize steel and cause it to melt at a lower temperature, but NIST did not consider their findings or test for thermite residues (270-74). Summary and Conclusion. Summary of the 25 “internal contradictions” (275-79). “The official account . . . is a conspiracy theory” (280). According to well established criteria in the philosophy of science, a good theory “should not be inconsistent with any of the relevant facts” and “devoid of internal contradictions,” but “official conspiracy theory about 9/11” fails these tests and “is clearly an outrageous theory. And yet this theory has been used to justify attacks on two countries, which have caused over a million deaths, including the deaths of thousands of Americans. This theory has also been used to justify extraordinary rendition, torture, warrantless spying, the denial of habeas corpus, and a general undermining of the United States Constitution” (280). Notes. 58 pp. Index. 8 pp.

[About the Author. David Ray Griffin was born in 1939 and lives in Santa Barbara, CA. He grew up in the Disciples of Christ church, but abandoned ambitions for the ministry in college. He graduated from Northwest Christian College in Eugene, OR, and has a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, where he embraced a Whiteheadian version of process theology. In 1973, he returned to Claremont and established the Center for Process Studies with John B. Cobb. In 1983 he started the Center for a Postmodern World in Santa Barbara, and edited the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Philosophy from 1987 to 2004. In the spring of 2003 he examined Paul Thompson’s timeline and read Gore Vidal’s Dreaming War, which pointed him to Nafeez Ahmed’s The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001. Believing they provided a prima facie case for some level of governmental complicity, he became involved in the 9/11 Truth Movement by writing a magazine article that grew into The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Olive Branch Press, 2004). He has also written The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (2006), and Debunking 9/11 Debunking (2007), and, with Peter Dale Scott, has edited 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (2006).]