Elias Davidsson

America’s Betrayal Confirmed

9/11: Purpose, Cover-Up and Impunity

Author: Davidsson, Elias

Title: America's Betrayal Confirmed

Subtitle: 9/11: Purpose, Cover-up and Impunity

Subjects: 1. Terrorism - False-Flag

  2. Psychological operations

  3. Human rights - investigation

© Elias Davidsson, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Tonar-og-steinar (Toost) Publishing (Reykjavi, Kirchen)

www.abc911.exposed

Layout by Fabio Biasio

ISBN: 978 9979-889-86-1

Before reading this book

Reading this book may entail a risk. It may anger you. It may make you sad. It may shatter your  beliefs. It will undoubtedly raise questions. Whatever feelings it may cause in you, don’t blame the author. He merely presents facts. Feel free to communicate to him your impressions, point out deficiencies, mistakes of fact, flawed reasoning; ask questions; recommend improvements. You’ll reach him through his web site.

About the author

Elias Davidsson was born in Palestine in 1941. His parents were German Jewish refugees/immigrants. He settled in Iceland in 1962 and retired with his wife to Germany in 2008.His professional life was divided into two distinct periods. In the first period (1961-1983), he worked as a computer expert, thereof 13 years with IBM. In the second period (1983-1999), he worked as music teacher, organist, choir master, arranger and composer. His works for musical education are used in numerous countries and are available commercially.

In parallel to his professional life, Davidsson devoted substantial time to the struggle for peace and justice. He co-founded the Association Iceland-Palestine, spent several years researching the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq and published several papers in law journals denouncing this unprecedented crime. It took more than a year for Davidsson to discover that the official account on 9/11 was not true. His first book on 9/11, “Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11” was published in the U.S. in 2013. Davidsson also published critical books about the London Transport bombings of 2005, the Mumbai attacks of 2008 and the Berlin incident at the Christmas Market of 2016.

© Elias Davidsson, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Dr. Andreas von Bülow

Introduction

Some Methodological Observations

A Practical Note for Readers

Chapter 1: The Road to 9/11 (the decade 1990-2001)

(1) The loss of the Soviet Threat

(2) Restating the rationale for U.S. global military supremacy

(3) Unique opportunities

(4) The benefits of an external threat

(5) Searching for a new adversary

(6) The ideal threat perception: Focused, durable, credible, useful

(7) Building up Osama bin Laden as a global threat

(8) The need for a traumatic event

Chapter 2: Establishing the official account of 9/11

(1) The official account of 9/11

(2) Fox News launched the five memes of the official account within minutes

(3) Bush determined within twenty minutes that "America is under attack"

(4) The “collapse” of the WTC was explained within four hours

(5) Main "facts" were established by Congressional vote within 24 hours

(6) FBI releases the names of “identified” hijackers

(7) FBI releases photographs of “believed” hijackers

(8) 9/11 as the birth of a new era

(9) Counter-Terrorism as the organizing principle for foreign policy

(10) No evidence for an Islamic attack from Afghanistan

(11) No evidence for bin Laden connection to 9/11

Conclusion to Chapter 2

Chapter 3: No evidence of Muslim hijackers

Introduction

(1) No authenticated flight manifests

(2) No one witnessed the hijackers at the security checkpoints

(3) No one witnessed the hijackers boarding the aircraft

(4) Dubious security videos

(5) “Hijackers” without bodies

Conclusions to Chapter 3

Chapter 4: The “hijackers” preferred worldly delights to paradise

(1) Getting drunk at Shuckum’s

(2) Enjoying America’s sex life

(3) Gambling

(4) The “hijackers” did not intend to die on 9/11

Conclusions to Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Were the “hijackers” secretive?

(1) Multiple encounters with police

(2) ‘Atta’ visited an FAA installation

(3) ‘Atta’ showed a keen interest in crop dusters

(4) ‘Atta’ said admiring Osama bin Laden and recruiting Al-Qaeda members

Conclusions to Chapter 5

Chapter 6: Were the “hijackers” sophisticated?

(1) Hani Hanjour’s exploits

(2) ‘Atta’s mysterious Portland detour

(3) Islamic terrorists who love to visit U.S. government offices

(4) Hijackers who don’t know how to order airline tickets

(5) Hijackers who lose their flight tickets

(6) Hijacker who has ticket but wants to buy one

(7) Hijackers who need an Arabic translator at the airport

Conclusions to Chapter 6

Chapter 7: How was the wreckage linked to specific aircraft?

(1) Crash debris must be identified and linked to a particular aircraft

(2) The identities of the aircraft were not determined

Conclusions to chapter 7

Chapter 8: Can aircraft engines vaporize?

(1) The strange crash site at Ground Zero

(2) The stranger crash site at the Pentagon

(3) The strangest crash site at Somerset County, Pennsylvania

Conclusions to Chapter 8

Chapter 9: Can aircraft continue flying past crash time?

(1) Operation Northwoods

(2) Flight UA93 flew past crash time {408}

(3) Flight UA175 flew past crash time

Conclusions to Chapter 9

Chapter 10: What was reported in phone calls from the aircraft?

(1) Puzzling conduct reported

(2) Inexplicable omissions

(3) Serious contradictions

Conclusions to Chapter 10

Chapter 11: What caused the disintegration of the Twin Towers?

(1) Unique events in the history of high-rise, steel-reinforced buildings

(2) The early birth of the official theory

(3) The destruction of the criminal evidence

(4) The first official investigation{506}

(5) The second official investigation

(6) The cover-up by FEMA-BPAT and NIST

(7) The “dustification” of the Twin Towers

(8) Foreknowledge of the Twin Towers’ disintegration

Conclusions to Chapter 11

Chapter 12: Was the collapse of WTC-7 a smoking gun?

(1) The official explanation for the collapse of WTC-7

(2) The Office of Emergency Management

(3) The evacuation of WTC-7

(4) The destruction of the crime scene at WTC-7

(5) The development of fires at WTC-7

(6) No firefighting efforts in WTC-7

(7) Damage to WTC-7 from falling debris

(8) Evidence of explosions at WTC-7

(9) The free fall of WTC-7

(10) Was the fire alarm system in WTC-7 disabled?

(11) Foreknowledge of collapse

(12) Suspect Larry Silverstein

Conclusions to Chapter 12

Chapter 13: How was public fear amplified on and after 9/11?

(1) Bomb scares all over the United States in September 2001

(2) Bomb scares around the world in September 2001

(3) Bomb scares against aircraft in September 2001

(4) Scaring the President

(5) Scaring U.S. legislators

Chapter 14: How was 9/11 investigated?

(1) International norms of adequate investigations

(2) No rush in investigating 9/11

(3) No investigations of aircraft crashes

(4) Sham investigation of the Pentagon damage

(5) Presidential opposition to a Congressional investigation

(6) A Congressional Commission grudgingly established

(7) Thwarting the work of the Congressional Commission

(8) The Congressional Commission’s own sins

(9) No prosecutions of 9/11 planners and facilitators

Conclusions to Chapter 14

Chapter 15. How were victims’ families induced to ask no questions?

(1) Conditionalities

(2) The quest for truth and justice thwarted

(3) Honors bestowed

(4) Inducing 9/11 victims to blame Saudi Arabia and Iran

Conclusions to Chapter 15

Chapter 16: Terrorism in the shadow of military exercises

(1) Evidence of a huge confusion in American skies

(2) The reason for the confusion

(3) The simulated hijackings on 9/11

(4) Did the phone callers participate in the exercises?

Conclusions to Chapter 16

Chapter 17: The revolutionary potential of 9/11 truth

(1) An unprecedented propaganda coup

(2) The dereliction of academia

(3) The dereliction of the Left

(4) A superfluous and futile demand

(5) The revolutionary potential of 9/11 truth

Select Bibliography

List of acronyms

End Notes

Foreword by Dr. Andreas von Bülow

The excellently researched book by Elias Davidsson deals with the events of 11 September 2001, events that stirred and shocked the whole globe. Elias Davidsson’s book is comprehensive, penetrating, fact-rich, thoroughly researched and easy to read, using the best available sources. An admirable and compact reference work about 9/11.

Davidsson presents us with an unbelievable mass of inconsistencies, cover-ups, incongruities; the secrecy and the suppression and destruction of evidence; and the intimidation of witnesses. Those responsible in government and Congress, whether Republicans or Democrats, and to this day also the courts, have prevented for almost 20 years a flawless criminal investigation of this monstrous crime attributed to a small group of Islamic fundamentalist youth. The alleged mastermind: Osama bin Laden, said to have masterminded the events in the United States from a cave in Afghanistan.

Davidsson addresses in detail the background that led to 9/11, namely the collapse of the Soviet Union. With its collapse, the former arch enemy of the United States vanished. The military-industrial-intellectual complex had to find a replacement-enemy in order to prevent the threat of a shrinking military budget. The enemy was found in the guise of what was designated as internationally organized Muslim terror. Up to 60 states which allegedly promoted terrorism thus came into the crosshairs of American foreign and military policy. The states are located at geostrategically significant locations, and most of them are home to economically interesting raw material deposits.

The attacks of 9/11 belong to the category of false flag operations by one or more secret services.  The attacks were planned to have a catalytic effect on the public mind in such a way that they could be convincingly blamed on an enemy. In this way, the planners procured themselves a justification for what they presented as a just campaign of revenge and robbery against the diabolical enemy. This war ruse is actually thousands of years old.

On the basis of Davidsson's analysis, one can see how a false flag operation can be directed against one's own people. In the months leading up to 9/11, the many hints and warnings about the impending attack were ignored and rudely suppressed. The purported cluelessness before the crime was followed within minutes of the attack by the U.S. media trumpeting worldwide the culprits’ identities, including a detailed description of the modus operandi and even the background of the alleged mastermind bin Laden. Day after day, the U.S. government, operating in crisis mode, dominated public perception with its alleged findings. The feeding troughs of the mass media were filled hourly with the components of the script. Any journalist who expressed doubts about the official narrative was pushed aside and risked dismissal -- committing what Americans call “career suicide.”

What then followed was the obstruction of the criminal investigation by the removal and destruction of evidence; the disregard of witnesses who might have disturbed the official narrative; conditions imposed on the investigative committees in both houses of Congress; and generous compensation lavished on 9/11 victims in exchange for waiving their right to initiate court proceedings against the government or the airlines.

Those who doubt government narratives are up against a tactic invented years ago by the CIA, the allegation of “conspiracy theory.” This term has been used to slander all those who expressed doubts about the official account of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, namely the theory of Oswald as a lone perpetrator. Meanwhile, seventy percent of U.S. citizens doubt that official account. By labelling doubters as conspiracy theorists, they are in fact classified as mentally deranged. As no one relishes being viewed as a loonie, people refrain from expressing doubts about government narratives. Those who have been labelled by the media as conspiracy theorists are excluded from mainstream dialogue. As a  result, facts and arguments presented by the mainstream media regarding 9/11 and similar events are one-sided and cannot be taken at face value. The use of this label harms not only the targeted person but the democratic debate.

Davidsson will undoubtedly be called names by those who prefer slander to rational debate. This will not deter him or his readers from pursuing the truth. The factual strength of the book will constitute for a long time a formidable challenge to those who have profited and continue to profit from the official account of 9/11.

Dr. iur. Andreas von Bülow served as secretary of state in the German Federal Ministry of Defence and as Minister of Research and Technology. As a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), he served on the parliamentary committee on intelligence services. He is author of several books.

Introduction

The American people were hit hard on 9/11. The perpetrators did not only kill 3,000 people, mostly Americans, bringing tragedy to their families, but provided justifications for restrictions to liberties and endless wars that have affected millions of people worldwide. The American people have paid dearly in money and blood as a result of this horrendous crime. And so have others.

I feel it my duty, as a veteran defender of human rights, to share with my American friends my knowledge and findings about rights and responsibilities ensuing from the crime against humanity committed on 9/11.Victims and their families possess the right to know the unvarnished facts.The U.S. government and its allies bear the moral, political and legal responsibility in establishing the truth about this crime and ensure the identification and conviction of its perpetrators and accomplices.

The victims of 9/11 and the American people have been denied their rights. This book is intended to empower 9/11 victims, their  families and ordinary Americans to demand their right to the truth and to justice. If it advances this cause, it has accomplished its purpose.

* * * * *

For almost two decades the United States and its allies have succeeded in suppressing popular efforts to expose the deceptive account of the events of 11 September 2001 (hereafter 9/11). Attempts to challenge the official account have met with stiff resistance from governments, academia and the media. Researchers who question the official account are vilified, mobbed and fired from their jobs. Yet despite massive and systematic efforts to denigrate such investigative efforts, public awareness is seeping through that the U.S. government and its allies are covering up the facts. The ranks of those who question the official narrative on 9/11 are growing by the year and may possibly cause a political crisis corresponding in vehemence to the doggedness with which the truth is being suppressed today.

The events of 9/11 were a crime against humanity as the term is defined under international criminal law.{1} The crime of 9/11 has been invoked by governments to justify a bombing campaign against one of the poorest nations on earth, Afghanistan, and the erosion of liberties in numerous countries under the pretext of combating terrorism. Yet none of the plotters and participants in the crime of 9/11 have been prosecuted by the United States government. The U.S. government claims that 19 Muslims, inspired or directed by Osama bin Laden, committed that crime and died in the attacks. But the government has produced no evidence that these men even boarded the planes that they allegedly hijacked. Nor did it produce evidence that they possessed the skills, means and motive to execute this crime. As of this writing, the U.S. authorities have failed to formally identify the real perpetrators of 9/11.

Apart from those whose livelihood depends on covering-up the truth (who will not concern us here), many honest people may wonder why 9/11 is relevant to the problems humanity faces today.

It may not be obvious to everyone that major assaults on democracy, the rule of law, human rights and international peace are directly related to the maintenance of the official 9/11 legend. A partial list of such assaults justified by the 9/11 narrative suffices to demonstrate the relevance of revisiting the 9/11 evidence:

• The war against Afghanistan was originally justified by 9/11, and Afghanistan is still occupied by U.S. troops 19 years later.

• Current efforts by the United Nations to extend the counterterrorism ideology to all UN bodies and agencies undermine international law and the reputation and integrity of the organization as a whole.

• The establishment of dystopian mass surveillance by governments is predicated on the supposed need for intelligence services to detect dormant terrorist cells, a claim that relies in turn on the official 9/11 narrative, which falsely claimed that a terrorist cell in Hamburg had prepared the attacks.

• Democratic rights, such as the Right to Information, are being curtailed by the U.S. authorities because of the alleged need of state institutions to keep secrets from potential terrorists.

• A huge industry of fear-mongering has emerged thanks to a counterterrorism ideology based on the 9/11 narrative. Millions of people now earn their living by stoking the fear of terrorism.

• The failure to identify and arrest the mass murderers of 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in modern times, presents an ongoing security risk for the American people and for the world.

In writing this book, I was guided by two ethical values: truth and justice. This does not shield me from factual mistakes, the use of unreliable sources or errors in reasoning. Readers, acting as a jury, will ultimately judge whether this book reflects such ethical values. I will be grateful for readers’ critical comments.

Numerous excellent books have been written from a critical perspective on the events of 9/11. I wish first to cite two remarkable individuals, who already early on recognized the deceptive nature of the official account of 9/11: Thierry Meyssan, the French director  of voltaire.net, who published two important eye-openers in 2002 and 2003 that have been translated into 26 languages.{2} The other is Andreas von Bülow, former German Minister of Research and Technology, who while being a member of the German Bundestag (Parliament) served on the parliamentary committee that supervises German intelligence agencies. Von Bülow made waves in Germany in 2002 after stating in a TV interview that “planning [and executing] the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms,(…) unthinkable without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry."{3} He later published a book about the role of secret services in international terrorism.{4} Both von Bülow and Meyssan were vilified by mainstream media for daring to question the official account of 9/11 and ultimately excluded from media coverage. 

David Ray Griffin, who only became a 9/11 skeptic a couple of years after the event, has become the leading scholar in 9/11 critical studies. He has written more than ten books on this subject, each with a different slant. Some of his books focus on particular aspects of 9/11, such as the dereliction of the 9/11 Commission, while others contain a heterogenous collection of articles on important facets of 9/11.  His first book, The New Pearl Harbor, served and continues to serve as an excellent introduction to critical studies of 9/11. I concur with Professor Richard Falk's assessment of this book:

David Ray Griffin has written an extraordinary book. If carefully read with even just a 30-percent open mind, it is almost certain to change the way we understand the workings of constitutional democracy in the United States at the highest levels of government. (...) It is rare, indeed, that a book has this potential to become a force of history.{5}

Other authors, such as Webster Tarpley,{6} Michael Ruppert,{7} Peter Dale Scott,{8} and David MacGregor,{9} shed light on covert aspects of U.S. governance that help explain the rationale for the mass-murder of 9/11. These authors contend that there exists a deep and hidden structure ensconced within the official state apparatus of the United States, which wields far greater power than is generally suspected. Their view has been partly vindicated by revelations made in Europe concerning similar structures operating during the Cold War under the name of Stay-Behind Armies or Gladio.{10} Tarpley has also sketched a theory of synthetic terrorism, including a taxonomy of the actors involved. Other authors, including Barrie Zwicker, a veteran 9/11 researcher and producer of one of the best early documentaries on this issue,{11}  have focussed on the role of media in covering-up the crime of 9/11 and that played by leftist gate-keepers in maintaining the belief in the so-called blow-back theory.{12}  Specific aspects of 9/11 have been dealt in depth by several authors. Rowland Morgan, for example, provides an excellent critical analysis of the facts and myths surrounding flight UA93.{13}  Political scientist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed provided a fresh and critical evaluation of the al-Qaeda network and its covert links to Western intelligence agencies.{14} Aidan Monaghan has elicited important information by persistently and judiciously using Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.{15}

I wish to give also credit to four bloggers, who remain largely unknown but whose contributions to 9/11 truth have been original, relevant and significant: Aidan Monaghan, killtown, shoestring and Woody Box (the last three being pseudonyms). I am deeply indebted to their groundbreaking research. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Ansgar Schneider of Bonn, Germany, for having meticulously reviewed the original manuscript and recommended numerous improvements, to Dr. Michael Morrissey, who critically reviewed the manuscript both regarding contents and language and to Dr. Pétur Knútsson of the University of Iceland for his critical comments and encouragement. Any remaining errors are mine. I also thank the numerous journalists, who wittingly or unwittingly revealed facts that help to better understand the complex 9/11 operation. I wish finally to acknowledge the excellent work of the international review panel investigation, summarized in the recent book 9/11 Unmasked. It represents the consensus of 23 eminent scholars regarding many of the aspects of 9/11 that are also discussed in that book.

In this book I argue that the official narrative of 9/11, resting on a hijacking scenario, is pure fiction, or more accurately the most successful deception in known history in terms of the number of deceived people.{16} The success of this propaganda operation is not due to the compelling nature of the official narrative, but to the systematic manipulation of the public on and after 9/11 by official sources and the media despite the factual implausibility of that narrative. An open mind, however, can easily see through the deception, as I hope to show.

Some readers may wonder why I do not discuss here the alleged role of Osama bin Laden in the attacks, if only to refute the claim of his responsibility. As will be shown, even the U.S. authorities did not accuse and charge him for 9/11. Accordingly, examining his verbal output would serve no purpose in this study.

Readers may wish to know who, in my opinion, perpetrated the crime of 9/11. I leave this question to other authors. One author, Kevin Ryan, has already made a substantial contribution in this direction with his recent book Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects. 

This book is organized in a modular manner which is designed to serve as a reference work on 9/11 for journalists, politicians, lawyers, researchers and libraries. Unlike most books and articles on this subject, which merely include links to internet sources – often no longer available – I have taken pains to provide easy and permanent access to most source documents by posting them on my personal website. This allows readers to easily verify the accuracy and relevancy of the facts that I present.

The modular structure of the book means that the chapters can be read in any sequence. Each chapter provides independent evidence substantiating the charge of a government cover-up and/or complicity in the crime of 9/11. This modular architecture provides not only for structural clarity but strengthens the overall conclusion.

Some Methodological Observations

The overwhelming majority of sources for this study consists of (1) official documents, i.e., statements issued by the U.S. government, its agencies, officials, members of Congress, courts and private entities acting at the behest of government authorities; (2) reports from mainstream media. Some credible monographs and blogs are also cited.

Anyone attempting to investigate suspected government malfeasance is engaging in intelligence analysis, namely sifting large amounts of data, including deceptive data to discover what is relevant. James R. Schlesinger, who has been the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of Central Intelligence, and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, explained to a Congressional Committee in 2004 the difficulties facing intelligence analysis:

Intelligence targets naturally seek to conceal what they are doing, and have a strong tendency to mislead you. A central problem in intelligence is to discern the true signals{17} amidst the noise. The relevant signals may be very weak...Moreover, false signals are deliberately planted.{18}

As will be noted throughout this book, even a cursory examination of the 9/11 case reveals a bewildering number of anomalies, contradictions and unanswered questions that in the language of intelligence analysis may amount to “noise.” I have aimed, to the best of my ability, to draw a distinction between noise and significant information.

In mathematics, we solve equations with one or several unknowns by various mathematical operations. The solution may be a single number or a set of numbers. When attempting to solve a criminal mystery, we also use formal operations to discover the unknowns. These operations include deduction, induction, tests of logical coherence, tests of reliability and plausibility, sensitivity tests, Occam’s razor, etc. Where major pieces of evidence are either inaccessible or have been destroyed, the solution to a criminal mystery may not yield a precise answer, but can provide an approximation, adequate for practical purposes. As will be shown herein, the mass murder of 9/11 may never be solved to a degree of precision sufficient for the criminal conviction of any individual. However, it can be solved to an adequate degree of precision for questioning the legitimacy of the institutions which have prevented the establishment of the truth about 9/11.

A Practical Note for Readers

Following an endnote, the reader will find in many cases a number preceded by the #-sign or the =-sign.  These numbers refer to the document cached on my personal website. For document numbers preceded by #, their URL is  <www.aldeilis.net/fake/XXX.pdf>.  For  document numbers preceded by =, their URL is  <www.aldeilis.net/fake/XXX.pdf>.  ‘XXX’ is the 3- or 4-digit number.

The Memoranda For the Record (MFR’s) and FBI 302 forms referred to in this book are found, for the most part, in the 9/11 Commission Records stored at the National Archives (NARA) [see <www.archives.gov/research/9-11>]. Where a document lacks an MFR or 302 serial number, its location (Team and Box number) will be provided to expedite the reader’s access to the document.

Chapter 1: The Road to 9/11 (the decade 1990-2001)

Established in 1922, five years after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, declaring his office extinct. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was preceded by Gorbachev’s unsuccessful attempts to revive the Soviet economy, beginning in May 1985. His liberalization measures led to the emergence from 1986 onwards of nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the diverse republics of the Soviet Union. On 7 December 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech to the United Nations in which he pledged to cut the Soviet forces in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

It is not publicly known when exactly the ruling circles of the United States and of the Western Alliance realized that the dissolution of the Soviet bloc was impending. From the time the Soviet Union withdrew its demoralized military forces from Afghanistan (1986), the telltale signs of a deep economic and structural crisis within the Soviet Union were, however, obvious. Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech to the United Nations in December 1988, cited above, left no doubt in Western minds that the Soviet Union was dying.

The impending demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact represented for the U.S. elite and to all those who based their global policies on the paradigm of the Cold War a massive challenge but opened at the same time exciting opportunities for the U.S. to assert its global hegemony.

(1) The loss of the Soviet Threat

John Lewis Gaddis, an American conservative historian, noted in 1991 what the loss of the Soviet threat meant for American global involvement:

For the first time in over half a century, no single great power, or coalition of powers, poses a “clear and present danger” to the national security of the United States… The passing of the Cold War world by no means implies an end to American involvement in whatever world is to follow; it only means that the nature and the extent of that involvement are not yet clear.{19}

Even before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gregory F. Treverton, later Director at the RAND Center for Global Risk and Security and formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, expressed his awareness that a new foreign policy paradigm was necessary: “America must now address the awkward question of how to organize its defense if deprived of the Soviet threat that has driven it for forty years.”{20}

Robert W. Tucker, pointed out in Foreign Affairs, flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), that to maintain the Western alliance, “a new adversary must be assumed.”{21}

Paul Wolfowitz, at the time Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, warned in 1991 that slashing military expenditures would require to send home people “who had planned to make a career in the military, [thereby throwing] away that strategic asset that’s represented by the quality of our officer corps and the quality of our enlisted people.”{22}

U.S. Representative Les Aspin elaborated as follows:

The way we design weapon systems are with the Soviet threat in mind, or use against the Soviet Union in mind. It drives everything. It drives not only the budgets, it drives the force structure, it drives the kinds of forces you have, it drives the kinds of equipment, it drives the whole business. Take away the Soviet threat and how do you design it? How do you decide what you need? How do you decide how to focus on that? [...] How do you build down the United States military and not destroy the industrial base at the heart of the United States’ military capability?{23}

Senator Sam Nunn was more explicit:

A study by the Defense Budget Project last August predicted the private sector defense industry employment would decline by over 800,000 jobs from 1990 to ’96 as a result of the defense spending reductions in the Budget Summit Agreement, which was entered into last year. The largest single year of decline, almost 300,000 jobs, will be eliminated in the fiscal year ’93, beginning October the 1st.{24}

None of these authors openly expressed the real reasons for the United States to maintain a powerful global military machinery. These reasons were spelled by others.

(2) Restating the rationale for U.S. global military supremacy

Political Columnist Charles Krauthammer explained in 1991 that “economic power is a necessary condition for a great power status. But it certainly is not sufficient, as has been made clear by the recent behavior of Germany and Japan, which have generally hidden under the table since the first shots rang out in Kuwait.” He then insisted that U.S. global military deployment

is in many ways an essential pillar of the American economy. The United States is, like Britain before it, a commercial, maritime, trading nation that needs an open, stable world environment in which to thrive. In a world of Saddams, if the United States were to shed its unique superpower role, its economy would be gravely wounded. Insecure sea lanes, impoverished trading partners, exorbitant oil prices, explosive regional instability are only the more obvious risks of an American abdication. Foreign entanglements are indeed a burden. But they are also a necessity.{25}

Krauthammer’s view was endorsed by Thomas Friedman, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and former advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Friedman expressed his view in an unusually frank manner in the New York Times:

For globalism to work, America cannot be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is… The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist - McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. {26}

General Alfred M. Gray, who served as the 29th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps between 1987 and 1991, offered further justifications for asserting U.S. global hegemony:

The Underdeveloped World’s growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies. These insurgencies have the potential to jeopardize […] our access to vital economic and military resources. This situation will become more critical as our nation and allies, as well as potential adversaries, become more and more dependent on these strategic resources. If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital installations and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capability with flexibility to respond to conflicts across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe.{27}

Such views were crystallized in an official, but classified, document leaked to the New York Times, which published excerpts thereof in 1992.{28} The document was drafted by Dick Cheney, then Defense Secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his Under Secretary for Policy. The policy statements in this document were developed “in conjunction with the National Security Council and in consultation with the President.” The document is known in Pentagon parlance as the “Defense Planning Guidance” and is also known as “The Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

America’s first objective in the post-cold-war era, as defined by the authors of this document, was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” They mentioned, however, three additional aspects to this objective: (1) Establishing and protecting a new international order; (2) Discouraging advanced industrial nations from challenging U.S. leadership; and (3) Maintaining mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from “even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

Another objective mentioned in the document was for the U.S. to “retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.” Such interests include the “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict, and threats to U.S. society from narcotics trafficking.”

While the document stated unmistakably the goal of the United States to remain the sole and leading superpower, it did not reveal the priorities assigned to the various interests that underpinned imperial policies. Placing side by side the need to ensure “access to vital raw materials” with the need to combat “threat to U.S. citizens from terrorism” manifested probably less the confused mind of the authors than their intent to confuse.

(3) Unique opportunities

The major positive effect for the U.S. arising from the demise of the Soviet Union was not military but political. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided dozens of Third World nations political, military and technical support that allowed these nations to assert their independence towards the West. The emergence of a resilient Non-Aligned Movement illustrates this situation. The demise of the Soviet Union reduced substantially the capacity of poorer nations to resist Western pressure and blackmail.

It was to be expected that the U.S., as the sole remaining superpower, would capitalize on this situation to entrench its global hegemony and impose its will on recalcitrant governments. U.S. leaders refrained for good reasons from gloating about the huge opportunities that the demise of the Soviet bloc opened for the United States. Occasionally the term “opportunity” appeared in speeches or articles, but was toned down by emphasizing countervailing challenges and threats.

Sometimes, however, the cat was out of the bag.

President George Bush Sr. recognized already in May 1989 the opportunities opened by what he called the “end of an idea: the final chapter of the Communist experiment.” Addressing graduates of the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, he said:

So today, I want to speak about our security strategy for the 1990s, one that advances American ideals and upholds American aims. Amid the many challenges we’ll face, there will be risks. But let me assure you, we’ll find more than our share of opportunities. We and our allies are strong - stronger, really, than at any point in postwar period…There’s an opportunity before U.S. to shape a new world…The economic foundation of this new era is the proven success of the free market…This time is a time of tremendous opportunity, and destiny is in our own hands. We must combat misguided notions of economic nationalism that will tell us to close off our economies to foreign competition just when the global marketplace has become a fact of life.{29} [Emphasis added.]

When President Bush Sr. highlighted the opportunities opened by the demise of the Soviet bloc, he unwittingly revealed that the purpose of America’s security strategy — the theme of his talk — was not, as one would expect, to ensure the defense of the homeland, but to “shape a new world,” by which he meant a global order run by multinational corporations and global investors.

A year later, President Bush Sr. transmitted to Congress his report on the “national security strategy,” which reflected the “dramatic changes in the international environment” and observed that the United States had reached a “moment of historic opportunity.”{30}

Dick Cheney acknowledged at the time the unique window of opportunity that the U.S. could seize:

We have, in fact, won great depth for our strategic position. The threats to our security have become more distant, not only physically but in time as well. A challenger to our security would have to overcome our formidable alliances and their qualitative advantages that we displayed so impressively in Desert Storm...It is improbable that a global conventional challenge to US and Western security will emerge from the Eurasian heartland for years to come.{31}

Indeed, at the time this statement was made, no state or group of states could have conceivably challenged the supremacy of the United States. Assuming an unrelenting ascendance of China’s economic and military power, the U.S. faced at the time a window of opportunity of 20 years or more to entrench and consolidate its global hegemony. For U.S. leaders there was no time to lose if they were to seize upon this opportunity.

Lawrence Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration 1981-1985, also recognized the time-limited window of opportunity:

[W]hat we have to do right now is maintain stability in the international environment. The military is one of those devices that we have to do that. We have no peer competitor right now. [...] Could we have some in 10 to 15 years? Sure, we could, but we don't have anybody right now.{32}

Observers such as Andrew J. Bacevich warned early on against wasting opportunities: “[W]e would be ill-advised to waste the opportunity for strategic reassessment imparted by our Cold War triumph. Such opportunities are fleeting and we waste them at our peril.”{33}

But was the U.S. really wasting opportunities? In 1990, the United States had already availed itself of its newly gained supremacy to secure the adoption by the U.N. Security Council of a series of resolutions that imposed on the Iraqi people the most draconian economic sanctions in modern history, and authorized any willing State to use “all means” to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. It was clearly understood by the U.N. membership that the innocuous expression “all means” was not a figure of speech. It was promptly translated by the United States and its allies into a devastating bombing campaign against Iraq’s civilian infrastructure that brought the country back to the pre-industrial age.{34} When the representative of Yemen announced that he would oppose the resolution, the United States immediately retaliated by withholding desperately needed financial aid to that country.{35} The United States thus was already demonstrating that it would not permit any challenge to its supremacy.

After 9/11, it became easier to speak of opportunities. Donald Rumsfeld told the New York Times on 12 October 2001, that now “Maybe […] the world will sufficiently register the danger that exists on the globe and have this event cause the kind of sense of urgency and offer the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion much of the world.”{36}

(4) The benefits of an external threat

The notorious Nazi leader Hermann Goering believed that any population can be induced to support war if presented with the perception of a credible external threat. During the war crimes trial at Nuremberg (1946), psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Goering in his cell. Gilbert wrote in his diary, later published in book form:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

Goering answered:

Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war, either in Russia or in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…That is easy. All you have to tell them is that they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.{37}

George Kennan, American diplomat, historian and expert on Soviet policies, expressed a similar idea long ago:

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.{38}

British political commentator Andrew Marr expressed in 1993 what few in Europe dared to say in public, namely that “fear holds the key to the future of NATO.” This was actually the title of his article in the Independent (London). He wrote:

Military alliances are as keen as anyone to cloak themselves in happy-clappy idealism. But they are not kept together by that: they are cemented and underpinned by fear. NATO, whose foreign ministers met yesterday before its summit in January, is searching for a role in the language of democracy and fraternity. But what it really needs to thrive are more fear-soaked nightmares among its people.{39}

Author Webster G. Tarpley explains how a perceived external threat provides cohesion to societies, particularly those ruled by an oligarchy:

It is from [Carl] Schmitt that Samuel Huntington got his idea that an enemy image is absolutely necessary for the cohesion of any society. In reality, however, it is primarily an oligarchical society which requires an enemy image, because that society is based on an irrational principle of domination which cannot stand the scrutiny it would receive in peacetime. George Orwell understood this aspect well when he suggested in 1984 that the endless war among Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia was really a war waged by each of these states against its own population, for the purpose of perpetuating a hierarchical society.{40}

(5) Searching for a new adversary

As the Soviet Bloc disintegrated, Western strategists began looking for a new threat perception that would provide the Western alliance with a long-term focus for foreign policy. In his book, aptly called A Search for Enemies, published in 1991, Ted Carpenter wrote:

Since the Soviet Union’s East European empire began to unravel in the summer of 1989, Bush administration officials and numerous members of the foreign policy community have conducted a frantic search for alternative justifications for the [Atlantic] alliance. The range of suggestions NATO’s supporters have made is testimony to both their creativity and their desperation.{41}

At the time his book was published, the ruling elite in the U.S. had not yet openly identified a threat that could credibly replace that of the Soviet Bloc:

The best they have been able to come up with on short notice is the need to keep the bulk of Washington’s security commitments intact to guard against instability, unpredictability, and uncertainty. Such vague “threats” obviously lack the visceral impact or credibility of a large expansionist enemy such as the Soviet Union.{42}

Robert W. Tucker, writing already in 1990 in Foreign Affairs, pointed out that to maintain the Western alliance, “a new adversary must be assumed.”{43}

Foreign policy and military experts identified in the early 90s a garden-variety of potential threats to perceived U.S. interests – so-called rogue states, the drug trade, threats to sources of raw materials, access to Mid-East oil, terrorism and more – none of which could have provided a focus for American foreign policy.

The communiqué of the North Atlantic Council of 6-7 June 1991 stressed that NATO members prepare to address “other unpredictable developments that are beyond the focus of traditional Alliance concerns, but that can have direct implications on our security” and the “need to address broader issues and new global challenges.”{44} The Council did not specify any global challenges that could in the future have direct implications on NATO members’ security.

Phil Williams, Paul Hammond and Michael Brenner elaborated in 1993 on the need for public legitimation to maintain U.S. leadership in NATO: “Another difficulty with the effort to maintain U.S. leadership in NATO is that of domestic legitimacy… Preserving an alliance without an enemy and a strategy without a threat will not be easy…Without an external threat that acts as rallying point, unifying focus and target, the rampant pluralism and sectionalism of the U.S. political system may be impossible to overcome.”{45}

Both NATO hesitations and the Defense Planning Guidance suggest a frantic search for justifications to maintain or even extend the role of the Western Alliance. Yet the threats listed in official documents appear surprisingly vague, as discussed earlier with relation to the Defense Planning Guidance. Some even appear puzzlingly implausible.

Peter Jenkins, writing in The Independent in November 1991, illustrated the confusion prevailing at the time:

Suppose in the circumstances of today an American president were to propose contributing a 150,000- strong standing army to a military alliance for the purpose of defending Western Europe. Defend it against what, Congress would want to know? ...in the long run it is difficult to see how its cohesion [of NATO] can survive in the absence of any coherent external threat. Islamic fundamentalism is an alarming and destabilising force in the world, but can we imagine seriously the Muslim hordes once more at the gates of Vienna or Warsaw? Russia, more plausibly, could degenerate into a morbidly nationalistic state heavily armed with nuclear weapons, but it is hard to imagine such a Russia embarking on a course of western expansionism. Proliferation of nuclear weapons around the Mediterranean, or even further afield, in time may give new relevance to the doctrine of minimal nuclear deterrence towards which Nato is implicitly moving. Yet these contingencies do not mix into a cement of threat in any way comparable to the Soviet menace as construed during the Cold War.{46}

(6) The ideal threat perception: Focused, durable, credible, useful

(a) A focused threat

Foreign policy commentators have for decades called for, and often lamented the lack of, a coherent and focused foreign policy.

In 1993 the editorial of the Christian Science Monitor called for a “more certain foreign policy in which American power and purpose are aligned” and deplored that the “White House still lacks a focused foreign policy.”{47}

In 1994, Walter R. Mears, vice president of Associated Press, cited President Clinton saying that “without a disciplined, focused foreign policy, overseas problems would swarm in and divert him from the home-front issues he wants to handle.”{48}

In 1995 we have Sen. McCain criticizing President Clinton for a “ lack of focus and a lack of priority and threats by the President of the United States to send us -- our American troops -- almost anywhere....There's got to be a more coherent and focused foreign policy so the American people are comfortable as to where their young men and women might go.”{49}

In 1998, R.C. Longworth, senior writer of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “When everything is important, nothing has priority. Various think tanks and seminars have tried to outline a focused foreign policy for a post-Cold War America, with limited impact. [...] A blue-ribbon commission gathered by Harvard turned out a report called "America's National Interests" that noted a "drift" in foreign policy because the former single-minded goal of defeating communism has been replaced by a wish list of desirable goals.”{50}

Senator John McCain addressed in 1999 the Arab American National Leadership Conference, saying: "I finally want to sum up by saying [...] what we need is a consistent, focused foreign policy… I believe -- that the United States of America can be the greatest force for good in the history of this world."{51}

President Reagan may have provided the clue for the lack of a U.S. focused foreign policy during the 1990s. In a speech he held in Chicago in 1982 he countered charges that his administration had not as yet developed a coherent foreign policy. He said he did not believe it was necessary "to spell out in detail and in advance a formula which will guide our every move in international relations.”{52} Did U.S. leaders, after the demise of the Soviet Union, proceed according to Reagan’s advice of discretion, while they were preparing the Global War on Terror launched on 9/11?

 John Lewis Gaddis, mentioned earlier, emphasized in mid-1989 the need for a focused adversary that “has the effect of shaking people up within the bureaucracy in a major way”:{53}

Kreisler: You’re saying that having a clearly focused adversary was important for contributing to a democracy’s ability to have a clear-cut strategy.

Gaddis: Sure. One of the things Kennan always said about Stalin was that Stalin always required an outside enemy to provide a justification for his own rule, to provide coherence, legitimacy. But I would not limit it just to Stalin under the Soviet Union. It seems to me that you could make the same argument about the United States, and about the NATO alliance in particular…But as that sense of clear and present danger begins to erode, then arguments about priorities, objectives, policies begin to surface, as we see very clearly right now in the NATO alliance. So, to an extent, coherence in an alliance structure, and consensus in foreign policy, does depend on a sense of a threat out there…

Kreisler: Do you think an immediate crisis would get our juices stirring, so to speak? An economic depression, an environmental catastrophe, is that what you have in mind? Or do you have in mind an ongoing, continuous threat?

Gaddis: If you can use 1941 or 1947 as analogies, it would have to be something a little more specific than just a Great Depression, it would have to be something like the fall of France in 1940, or something like the perceived crisis over Greece and Turkey in 1947. Something that, even though its influence may have been exaggerated, it has the effect of shaking people up within the bureaucracy in a major way. I don’t see anything like that out there this time because, again, we’re dealing with a very different kind of situation. We were dealing with enemies then, perceived enemies. If the Gorbachev strategy of depriving us of an enemy continues, then that element is not going to be present, and it may be more difficult to formulate something.

(b) A durable threat

The ideal new threat had to last many decades for more than ideological reasons. Senator Sam Nunn explained:

The forces and equipment we used during Operation Desert Storm … were in large part based on defense decisions made 10-20 years ago. The decisions we make this year will affect our military capability 10 years from now and 20 years from now.{54}

Dick Cheney, at the time Secretary of Defense, referred equally to the long-term need for a focused threat, because “decisions we’re making now will shape the forces available twenty years from now.” He emphasized that “America cannot base its future security on just a shaky record of prediction or a prudent recognition of uncertainty.”{55} He thus made it clear that the durability of a threat perception is a requirement for military planning.

(c) A credible threat

Credibility does not necessarily mean that the adversary must represent a true threat. It rather means that the public must perceive the threat as credible. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Hollywood films have portrayed Arabs and Muslims as devious and threatening creatures. Author Shaheen who undertook the Sisyphean task to examine Hollywood’s treatment of Arabs (he watched more than 1,100 films), could hardly find examples before 9/11 in which Arabs or Muslims were represented as ordinary human beings, let alone as people deserving respect and admiration.

In the introduction to his revealing work Reel Bad Arabs, Shaheen wrote:

Seen through Hollywood’s distorted lenses, Arabs look different and threatening. Projected along racial and religious lines, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in American cinema. From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy Nr. 1 – brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money-mad cultural ‘others’ bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially Christians and Jews.{56}

Shaheen discovered parallels between the depiction of Arabs by Hollywood and that of Jews in Nazi films: both project images of hook-nosed, scheming and lecherous persons lurking in the shadows to prey upon innocent Christians.{57}

Regarding the depiction of Muslims, who are widely regarded in the West as “Arabs,” Shaheen writes:

Islam, particularly, comes in for unjust treatment. Today’s imagemakers regularly link the Islamic faith with male supremacy, holy war, and acts of terror, depicting Arab Muslims as hostile alien intruders, and as lecherous, oily sheikhs intent on using nuclear weapons. When mosques are displayed onscreen, the camera inevitably cuts to Arabs praying, and then gunning  down civilians. Such scenarios are common fare.{58}

Shaheen discusses more than 900 feature films displaying Arab characters, the majority as villains.

Western audiences, fed on Hollywood fare, have no difficulty conceiving of Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists. No other group of people could better fulfill that role.

(d) A useful threat

A substantial portion of world oil resources is located under the feet of Muslims and oil has been and remains for the United States a strategical commodity. This was made clear by James R. Schlesinger, when he addressed the House of Representatives on 15 January 1991:

Mr. Chairman, you and Senator Warner have posed the question, “What are America's interests in the Gulf?” I shall mention three and leave it to the committee to decide whether they are in ascending or descending order of importance. First is oil; there is no way of evading this simple reality. Oil provides the energy source that drives the economies of the industrial and underdeveloped worlds. Were the principal exports of the region palm-dates or pearls or even industrial products, our response to Iraq's transgression would have been far slower and far less massive than has been the case. Nonetheless, this should not be misunderstood. Our concern is not primarily economic. [...] Instead, our concern is strategic; we cannot allow so large a portion of the world's energy resources to fall under the domination of a single, hostile party.{59}

Some Muslim countries are regularly accused by the United States and its allies of sponsoring international terrorism.{60} Such accusations are leveled in order to justify threats, economic sanctions and military interventions. Among those accused of supporting terrorism are countries named by Wesley Clark in a speech he held in 2007 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. According to him the following seven countries were targeted by the U.S. government for regime change after 9/11: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.{61} For unexplained reasons Afghanistan, the first country attacked after 9/11, was not on the list.

Another benefit for choosing the specter of Islamic terrorism as the new threat, was that large Muslim communities live in Western countries. The claim of having to uncover Islamic terror cells allegedly ensconced within Muslim communities will later be used in justifying a panoply of government oppressive measures, such as the surveillance of entire populations, increased government secrecy and the erosion of the rule of law. Where such cells did not exist, the FBI created them. From a governance perspective, such measures have always been desirable.

(7) Building up Osama bin Laden as a global  threat

The promotion of an Islamic terrorist threat began massively in 1998 with the building of the icon of villain Osama bin Laden, who had relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Since 1998 he was presented by Western media as a serious international threat, whose opinions were worth analyzing and commenting upon, as if he were a leader of a super-power. Eminent journalists were sent to interview him at his retreat in Afghanistan. Describing him as a threat to Western interests bore no relation to reality, since he had no army, planes, missiles, tanks, submarines, banks, or mass media. He relied on Western technology for his communications with the outside world and on Western media to promote his views. Apart from his verbal exhortations, he had nothing with which to threaten any state, let alone the national security of the United States. By the time 9/11 occurred, the public mind had already been prepared to regard him as the most probable suspect.

As 9/11 approached, the alleged bin Laden threats became increasingly shrill, as if to prepare the American public for the coming attack. The press agency UPI, for example, disseminated the following scare dispatch to its subscribers on 6 April 2001 (byline Richard Sale):

The threat of attack by terrorists linked to Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden Friday caused the United States to close three of its embassies in South America, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The embassies closed were in the capitals of Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador. A U.S. intelligence official said, “It's best to take the worst case scenario.”

Another U.S. government official said; “There was a certain level of huffing and puffing” being intercepted between cells of known and suspected bin Laden operatives, and U.S. security specialists had the “feeling we should take certain precautions.”

According to a source, the tip on bin Laden came from Argentine intelligence. “Of all the groups in the area, Argentina is most dedicated to fighting terrorism,” he said.

The tri-border area between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil has been described as a bin Laden terrorist “nerve center,” according to one expert U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It's a tremendous network, and there were indications it was being activated for something specific,” he said.

Bin Laden operatives had arrived “over a period of time” apparently for the purpose of carrying out special missions. Local Shiite Muslims put up the operatives in their homes, helped them move around, furnished them with maps and diagrams of various target areas, he said.

In the three years leading to 9/11, I found Osama bin Laden mentioned in more than 600 English-language news reports every month on the average. According to one study, CBS and NBC News published significantly more stories mentioning Bin Laden in 2000 than those mentioning Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and Germany’s Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder. Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden was mentioned more often in American media than the U.S. President himself. 

Yet, after 9/11 the U.S. leadership lost interest in the man. At a press conference held on 19 September 2001, President George W. Bush was asked: “Do you to your mind have irrefutable evidence that links al Qaeda, and specifically Osama bin Laden to these attacks?” He answered: “When we take action, we will take action because we believe -- because we know we'll be on the right. And I want to remind people that there have been terrorist activities on America in the past, as well [...] This is a war not against a specific individual, nor will it be a war against solely one organization.” In President Bush’s Address to the Nation of 7 October 2001, he did not even mention Bin Laden or any nexus between Afghanistan and 9/11. In President Bush’s Press Conference of 13 March 2002, a journalist asked: “Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden.  Why is that?” The President’s answer: “Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he’s alive at all. Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not; we haven’t heard from him in a long time [...] So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.”{62}

As can be ascertained on the website of the FBI, Osama bin Laden was neither accused nor charged by the U.S. authorities for 9/11. He finished serving his role as the poster-boy of international terrorism.

(8) The need for a traumatic event

In order to unite the population behind a pro-active foreign policy, which the United States sought to pursue, it was not sufficient for U.S. leaders to promote a threat that does not bite: a real, traumatic and catalyzing event was necessary. This necessity was recognized early on by leading U.S. strategists, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski, foreign policy advisor to several U.S. presidents, recognized in the 1990s the difficulty for a democratic regime to mobilize its population behind imperial policies except after a sudden and shocking event. In his often-quoted book The Grand Chessboard, he wrote:

Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization…[T]he pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.{63} The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.{64}

The authors of a report titled “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,” published in September 2000 by the “Project For a New American Century (PNAC),“ also referred to Pearl Harbor as a “catastrophic and catalyzing event,” necessary to accelerate the process of transforming U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs.”{65}

  In the 1950s the CIA conducted psychological experiments on unsuspecting citizens designed to control their behavior through exotic drugs, electro-shock, radiation and other means.{66} Eighty institutions were involved in the program, dubbed MKUltra, including forty-four universities and twelve hospitals.”{67} The effect of these experiments was to cause among the subjects a state of dis- orientation, regression and dependency upon the examiner. A general shock doctrine was later developed by economist Milton Friedman and applied on an entire nation, Chile, in 1973. The economic shock doctrine included a drastic reduction of living standards accompanied by overt and ruthless political repression against anyone resisting this shock doctrine. The extent and brutality of this repression led to their designation as crimes against humanity. The method was later copied to other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Indonesia, in order to serve corporate interests. In Indonesia the killings reached genocidal proportions.

   In her book called The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein correctly highlights the similarity of the shock doctrine, as applied to entire nations, to the process of torture. The shock doctrine achieves “on a mass scale what torture does one on one in the interrogation cell. The clearest example was the shock of 11 September, which, for millions of people [...] opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited.”{68} Although the author claimed in her book, published in 2007, that the corporate world “does not deliberately scheme to create the cataclysms on which it feeds,”{69} the facts filling her book provide evidence to the contrary, namely that certain shocks are indeed planned before they occur, particularly where they serve foreseeable benefits.

Philip D. Zelikow, who later became the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, and his co-authors Ash Carter and John M. Deutsch, designated catastrophic terrorism in a paper they published in 1998 as the “new danger” facing America. They also spelled out its implications and consequences, as if they already had it all planned:

Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently.{70}

Not only did catastrophic terrorism occur on 11 September 2001, but it was followed by precisely those measures the above authors had described in 1998: 9/11 was immediately described by U.S. leaders as a watershed event in American history, allowed wider surveillance of citizens, the erosion of civil liberties and the use of deadly force. The event also caused the American people to rally around the flag and support war, as they did after Pearl Harbor. Did Osama bin Laden heed the desires of U.S. strategists by presenting the United States with a new Pearl Harbor on a silver platter? Or were Zelikow and his co-authors merely prescient?

Chapter 2: Establishing the official account of 9/11

A unique, unambiguous, official account of the events that took place on 11 September 2001, emerged within days.

Every major historical event is sooner or later described in a simplified and easily apprehended manner. What distinguishes the official narrative of 9/11 from most historical accounts, however, is the swiftness with which it took its definitive form. This  narrative was not based on factual evidence but assembled to serve a political agenda, as was later the case with alleged Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction.

(1) The official account of 9/11

On the morning of 11 September 2001 four civilian airlines with dozens of passengers and crew, designated as flights AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93, were hijacked by teams of four or five Muslim fanatics. Each team included one trained pilot. The hijackers took control of the airliners and flew a Boeing 767 assigned to flight AA11 into the North Tower of the WTC in New York, another Boeing 767 assigned to flight UA175 into the South Tower and a Boeing 757 assigned to flight AA77 into the Pentagon. The fourth airliner, a Boeing 757 assigned to flight UA93, presumed to have been destined to crash on the White House, did not reach its target. It crashed in an empty field in Pennsylvania after the passengers rose up and tried to seize control of the aircraft. 

As a result of the impact of the aircraft on the Twin Towers and the ensuing fires, both towers collapsed soon afterwards onto their own footprint, causing massive deaths. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda network were shortly thereafter blamed for conceiving, planning, financing and coordinating the attacks.

(2) Fox News launched the five memes of the official account within minutes

Anchors and journalists of Fox News, one of the main, arch-conservative, U.S. TV networks, spawned five central memes of the official 9/11 account within minutes of a reported plane crash on the World Trade Center, i.e. before that account was imposed by the U.S. government.{71}

At 08:57:34a.m. Jon Scott took over as news anchor at Fox News. At this point Scott was told that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. What did he say? That an army bomber had smashed by accident into Empire State Building in WWII. Fifty seconds later, Scott dismisses the theory of an accident.

Thirty five seconds later – at 08:58:55 –  Scott launched casually two memes that would underpin the official account of 9/11 for years to come: One, that the attacks were the work of Islamic fanatics and two, that they were executed by suicide pilots. He first reminded viewers of “the bombing back in 1989 [sic] of the World Trade Center”, attributed to Islamic terrorists, then added that the current attack “may have been simply a suicidal pilot who wanted to make a point.” Was Scott merely improvising? At that point in time, he had no apparent reason to suspect foul play.

Only three minutes later, at 09:02:58a.m. Scott says with some hesitation: "We just saw another one... Another plane just flew into the second tower. This has to be deliberate, folks...Now, given what has been going on around the world, some of the key suspects come to mind, Osama bin Laden...Who knows what.” Designating the suspect of a mass murder living 5000 miles away within 33 seconds of the first overt signs of an ongoing crime, must have been a world record. Scott’s reaction to the horrendous sight of a plane plunging into the South Tower is remarkable. His voice does not express emotion. He reports his observations matter-of-factly. By mentioning Osama bin Laden as a suspect, Scott launched the third meme of the official account. 

To consolidate the above memes, Scott brought in at 09:07:39a.m. his colleague Eric Shawm whom he asked rhetorically: "Now, Eric, I am reminded again of what happened back in 1989 [sic]. The intent of those terrorists back then was to actually bring down the tower, wasn't it?"  With this statement Scott launched the fourth meme, namely that of an Islamic plan to “bring down the towers.” Eric Shawn confirms in turn some of these memes, saying two minutes later  – at 09:09:31a.m. – "What we've long feared and many of worried about and thought could never happen would be a terrorist attack, a deliberate, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as we are witnessing right now”, adding half a minute later that this an attack “on the very soul in the very heart of our nation”. Shawm thereby introduced the fifth meme, namely that of a war against the United States. He did so twenty minutes before President George W. Bush made this claim when speaking from a primary school in Florida.

The focus on Osama bin Laden was soon given a sort of official imprimatur.  At 09:32:04a.m. Scott is told over the phone by Rita Cosby: "Jon, I've just been told from a U.S. law enforcement official [unidentified], that they are saying it is evident that this is a terrorist related attack, and among the key targets, key people that they're looking at is Osama bin Laden."

Note the convoluted way Osama bin Laden was introduced. But this did not deter Scott from demonstrating once again his erudition. Fifteen minutes later, speaking to William Daley, he said: "Bill, I know that Osama bin Laden likes airplanes."

Readers may interpret all of the above statements as irresponsible musings by a conservative American long conditioned to view Muslims as a threat. Indeed, Fox News is widely regarded as an anti-Muslim propaganda outlet, strongly committed to U.S. militarism. But there exists an alternative explanation. Fox journalists may have been given the task of launching early on these five future memes of the official account of 9/11. I leave it to readers to evaluate these two theories.

(3) Bush determined within twenty minutes that "America is under attack"

Approximately 20 minutes after being informed that an aircraft had crashed into the South Tower of the WTC, President George W. Bush announced to the nation that an “apparent terrorist attack on our country” had taken place.{72} Such wording was not self-evident, for at the time neither President Bush nor his aides possessed any evidence that the country had been attacked from the outside.

The TV networks did not, however, miss the cue: they and numerous print media headlined their news reports almost immediately, ’America Under Attack,’ suggesting that a war had been declared against the country. This message was followed up by the adoption of numerous federal, regional and local measures that are normally only taken in times of war. Such a definitive message from the most authoritative sources repeated continuously over several days ensured that any lingering doubt about this (unsubstantiated) claim would be treated as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

(4) The “collapse” of the WTC was explained within four hours

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York were steel-reinforced skyscrapers. They were specifically constructed to withstand the impact of heavy aircraft. Never in history did  such buildings collapse because of an aircraft impact or of fire. Yet both buildings vanished completely within 100 minutes after being impacted.

The official explanation for the demise of both Twin Towers of the WTC in New York was established within just four hours. When asked in a press conference on 11 September 2001 at 2:30p.m. (EST), whether the disintegration of the skyscrapers had been caused by the planes "or by something else," New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani,  answered, muttering:

We believe, we believe that it was caused by the after-effects of the, of the planes hitting the...buildings. We don't know, we don't know if there were additional explosions.{73}

Experts invited by national television networks to comment felt surprisingly confident in explaining - within hours - why the Twin Towers disintegrated, although they had no precedent to rely upon. Jim DeStefano from the National Council of Structural Engineers, for example, explained to CNN at approximately 4:20 P.M (EST) – relying exclusively on what he saw on television -  that

the impact [of the aircraft] was sufficient to cause damage to the columns and the (...) systems supporting the building. That couples with the fire raging and the high temperatures softening the structural steel that precipitated a destabilization of the columns and clearly the columns buckled at the lower floors causing the building to collapse.{74}

(5) Main "facts" were established by Congressional vote within 24 hours

On 12 September 2001, shortly after 10:00a.m., the following Draft Resolution, containing multiple factual allegations, was presented by Senator Tom Daschle to the U.S. Congress:

H.J. Res. 61

   Whereas on September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked and destroyed four civilian aircraft, crashing two of them into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.;

   Whereas thousands of innocent Americans were killed and injured as a result of these attacks, including the passengers and crew of the four aircraft, workers in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon, rescue workers, and bystanders;

   Whereas these attacks destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center, as well as adjacent buildings, and seriously damaged the Pentagon; and

   Whereas these attacks were by far the deadliest terrorist attacks ever launched against the United States, and, by targeting symbols of American strength and success, clearly were intended to intimidate our Nation and weaken its resolve: Now, therefore, be it

    Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress--

    (1) condemns in the strongest possible terms the terrorists who planned and carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, as well as their sponsors;

    (2) extends its deepest condolences to the victims of these heinous and cowardly attacks, as well as to their families, friends, and loved ones;

    (3) is certain that the people of the United States will stand united as our Nation begins the process of recovering and rebuilding in the aftermath of these tragic acts;

    (4) commends the heroic actions of the rescue workers, volunteers, and State and local officials who responded to these tragic events with courage, determination, and skill;

    (5) declares that these premeditated attacks struck not only at the people of America, but also at the symbols and structures of our economic and military strength, and that the United States is entitled to respond under international law;

    (6) thanks those foreign leaders and individuals who have expressed solidarity with the United States in the aftermath of the attacks, and asks them to continue to stand with the United States in the war against international terrorism;

    (7) commits to support increased resources in the war to eradicate terrorism;

   (8) supports the determination of the President, in close consultation with Congress, to bring to justice and punish the perpetrators of these attacks as well as their sponsors; and

    (9) declares that September 12, 2001, shall be a National Day of Unity and Mourning, and that when Congress adjourns today, it stands adjourned out of respect to the victims of the terrorist attacks.

In the debate that ensued, Senator Trent Lott revealed that the Draft Resolution had already been discussed on the very day of the attack with Senator Daschle, in which “tough decisions” were made, but did not elaborate.{75}⁠

That the Congress condemned the mass murder of 9/11, expressed its sympathy to the victims and their families and commended the valiant efforts of rescue teams and first responders was normal and to be expected. Numerous governments and international bodies did so in the following days without suggesting how, by whom and why the mass murder was executed. What distinguished the congressional resolution was the specificity of the factual allegations it included, specifically the premise that the United States had been the subject of an attack from outside its borders (“attacks against the United States”, “the United States is entitled to respond under international law”, “war against international terrorism”), for which no evidence was adduced.

Congressional resolutions do not emerge in a void. Each resolution has a drafting history and is adopted to serve a purpose. The drafting history of the above resolution is not known. It was only alluded to in Senator Lott's address.

One must, therefore, presume that the inclusion of specific allegations in the above resolution had a purpose. The most plausible explanation for including these factual allegations is, that the U.S. government wanted to cast in stone the foundations of the 9/11 account. Securing a Congressional imprimatur to that account and linking it to the ensuing war, ensured that questioning the official account would be regarded as a betrayal of the victims and as unpatriotic. Indeed, despite ample time for debates on 12 September 2001, members of Congress displayed a surprising lack of curiosity about the actual events of the previous day: No member of Congress demanded concrete evidence in support of the factual determinations he or she was asked to vote for. Instead, one after the other rose to pledge his or her allegiance to the flag, invoked the grace of God and expressed unreserved loyalty to the President, a scene reminiscent of a religious ritual.

(6) FBI releases the names of “identified” hijackers

On 14 September 2001, the FBI released the names of 19 individuals whom it “identified” as hijackers aboard the four airliners that allegedly crashed on 11 September 2001 into the North and South Towers of the WTC, into the Pentagon, and on a field at Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania.{76} While the 19 "hijackers" are listed there as "identified", for many of them no birth date is indicated, giving rise to the question what was meant by “identified.” 

(7) FBI releases photographs of “believed” hijackers

On 27 September 2001, the FBI released photographs alleged to be of the 19 individuals mentioned in the September 14 press release. These individuals were no longer designated as "identified" on the FBI website but merely as "believed to be the hijackers of the four airliners that crashed on 11 September 2001."{77} Emphasizing the tentative nature of the identification, the press release added the following caveat:

It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.{78}

Apparently, these "attempts to confirm the true identities" of the alleged hijackers are still “under way” today, because this press release has not been superseded.  As will be shown in this book, the U.S. government has not produced any evidence that individuals bearing these names participated in the mass murder of 9/11.

(8) 9/11 as the birth of a new era

U.S. opinion and political leaders designated 9/11 immediately as a defining historical event. Members of Congress stated on 12 September 2001 that the U.S. has entered a new era or a new chapter in its history. Their statements echo Philip D. Zelikow’s remarks made in 1998: “Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after” (see Chapter 1(9)). The following numbers refer to the page in the Congressional Record:

• ”As an American, make no mistake about it, we did wake up in a new world in America. It is a new era.” (Mr. Schumer, S9286)

• ”We stand at the violent birth of a new era in international relations and national security.” (Mr. Hutchinson, S9307))

• “We have entered into a new era of our history.” (Mr. Hastert, H5509)

• “With this attack, the United States has entered a new era.” (Mr. Boyd, H5330)

• “We find ourselves at the dawn of a new era of warfare in the 21st century, one made more sinister by the stealth, cunning, and terror.” (Mr. Kind, H5561)

• “Yesterday’s act of war will go down in history as an act that forever changed America.” (Mr. DeGette, H5518)

• “A new chapter in our history was opened yesterday. Its opening pages will forever be emblazoned in our memory.” (Mr. Turner, H5526)

• “11 September 2001 was the clarion call to arms in a new war against terrorism. It will be unlike any war America has ever fought. The enemy is nameless, faceless, and operates without borders.” (Mr. Goodlatte, H5530)

• “This is a solemn moment in our Nation’s history.” (Mr. Graves, H5534)

• “Life in America as we know it will change.” (Mr. Shays, H5501)

• “We live in a new world, and we will never go back.” (Mr. Gephardt, H5503)

• “Yesterday … represents the opening salvo in this new millennium in America’s global struggle against international terrorism. It is a struggle like no other our Nation has ever faced.” (Mr. Lantos, H5505)

• “[W]e have declared this to be a new day, a new chapter in history.” (Mr. Rockefeller, S9326)

• “America will be forever changed.” (Mr. Hagel, S9326)

• “Yesterday the world changed for every American.” (Mr. Baucus, S9327)

(9) Counter-Terrorism as the organizing principle for foreign policy

In the wake of the war of aggression against Afghanistan, Congressman Lee H. Hamilton said that fighting terrorism had become “the organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy.” Stopping short of calling 9/11 an opportunity, he added: “If we act with foresight and resolve we can transform this moment, as we transformed Pearl Harbor, from one of our greatest tragedies to one of our finest hours.”{79}

 (10) No evidence for an Islamic attack from Afghanistan

On 26 September 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was asked at a press conference held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, "Sir, two weeks into the crisis, is the United States incapable of telling its allies precisely what the findings are in regard to evidence related to Osama bin Laden or other terrorists that you might think were behind the attack?"  Wolfowitz' answer: "I think the evidence is there for the whole world to see. I think many of the people in this room watched it live on television, watched the two towers of the World Trade Center coming down. If you want evidence I'll be happy to -- oh, I can't, I guess. The FBI controls it."{80} 

On 28 September 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft was asked whether the U.S. government was able “to trace any of the 19 hijackers back to Afghanistan.” His response: “I don’t think I’m capable of answering that question.”{81} 

In a fax sent by the U.S. Department of State on 1 October 2001 to all U.S. embassies worldwide, and later released to the public, embassy officials were told that “the United States is not obliged in any way to make any kind of showing as a prerequisite or precondition to the exercise of its right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, whether now or in the future.”{82} The U.S. authorities declared themselves hereby under no obligation to prove to the world that they were attacked from outside their borders and reserved for themselves the right to attack any country on the base of secret evidence.

On 2 October 2001, before he embarked upon a tour of the Middle-East, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked in a Press briefing: "Will you be sharing with the leaders [you plan to visit] any evidence of Osama bin Laden's connection with the [9/11] attacks?" He answered:

I think that I will not be sharing the evidence. I would be happy to, but I think that has been done amply. The evidence of the attack is on television every day. The linkages between the terrorist networks involved are on television every day. And it strikes me that anyone who is slightly interested has a very clear idea of what took place the fact that a terrorist organization that's being harbored by more than one country, and has relationships with other terrorist organizations, was directly involved. I don't know if we need any more evidence, or do I think that anyone is asking for any more evidence, except the Taliban.{83}

When President Bush addressed the nation on 7 October 2001 to announce the initiation of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan, he did not link that country to the events of 9/11. He did not even mention 9/11 in his speech.{84}

On the same day - 7 October 2001 — the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, John Negroponte, delivered a letter to the President of the UN Security Council in which he listed the reasons for what he called “military operations” against Afghanistan.{85} In that letter he wrote that his government “has obtained clear and compelling information that the al-Qaeda organization, which is supported by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, had a central role in the attacks.” The letter did not include any evidence in support of the claim that al-Qaeda (if such organization existed at all) played any role whatsoever in the 9/11 attacks.

The bombing campaign against Afghanistan constituted a crime of aggression under customary international law and  should have triggered punitive action by the Security Council of the United Nations against the aggressors.{86} NATO members and other governments were undoubtedly aware that the U.S. had failed to prove a link between Afghanistan and 9/11 and that it was acting unlawfully, but they kept silent.{87}

(11) No evidence for bin Laden connection to 9/11

On 5 June 2006, Ed Haas, a U.S. journalist, contacted the FBI after having noticed that the Most Wanted poster for Osama bin Laden on the FBI website did not mention any suspected links to 9/11.{88}  Haas asked for an explanation. Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI responded, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11."{89} This admission by the FBI, five years after bombing Afghanistan and killing thousands of people, should have prompted worldwide coverage. Yet the mainstream media concealed this admission from the public.

Conclusion to Chapter 2

Students of international affairs will already at this point realize that the main facts of 9/11 were imposed politically, i.e. before any investigation; that the U.S. government attacked Afghanistan without any legal justification; that the U.S. government has not accused Osama bin Laden over 9/11; that it failed to determine the identities of the alleged hijackers; and that U.S. allies have closed their eyes to these facts. Such conclusions justify a thorough citizens’ investigation of the mass murder committed on 9/11.

Chapter 3: No evidence of Muslim hijackers

Introduction

The official account of 9/11 is based on a hijacking narrative according to which 19 individuals, whose names and photographs have been posted on the website of the FBI,{90} boarded aircraft designated as flights AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93 on the morning of 11 September 2001. These individuals are said to have hijacked those aircraft in flight and crashed the aircraft in suicide attacks into symbolic landmarks in the United States.

According to the official account, an aircraft assigned to flight AA11 was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York; shortly thereafter an aircraft assigned to flight UA175 was flown into the South Tower of the WTC. At 9:37 a.m. an aircraft assigned to flight AA77 impacted the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth aircraft, assigned to flight UA93, crashed in an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers had risen against the alleged hijackers and attempted to retake control of the aircraft. It was later surmised that the pilot of the aircraft had intended to crash into the White House. So the official account.

Within hours of the operation, the FBI began to interview airline and airport employees who could provide information about what they had experienced that morning before and during the boarding of these flights. It can be safely assumed that all relevant evidence about the boarding of the four aircraft has been obtained by the FBI.

This chapter deals with one, and only one, question, namely: Did the individuals designated by the U.S. government as the hijackers of 9/11 board the designated flights?

It must be stated that even if these individuals had boarded these four flights, it does not necessarily prove that they did what they were accused of having done. In order to accuse them of mass murder, other evidence would be needed to prove that they actually hijacked the airliners and caused them to crash at the designated sites.

Shortly after the FBI released names and photographs of the alleged hijackers, questions about their identities began to emerge. The family of Hamza Alghamdi, one of the alleged hijackers, said the photo released by the FBI "has no resemblance to him at all.”{91} CNN showed a picture of another alleged hijacker, identified as Saeed Alghamdi. That man, a pilot, was alive and working in Tunisia.{92} The photograph of a Saudi pilot by the name of Waleed Al Shehri was released by the FBI as one of the alleged hijackers: he protested his innocence from Casablanca, Morocco.{93} Two people with the name of Abdulaziz Alomari presented themselves, surprised to see their names on the FBI list of suspected hijackers. One of them, a Saudi engineer, said he lost his passport while studying in Denver, Colorado, in 1995. Of the FBI list, he said: "The name is my name and the birth date is the same as mine. But I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Center in New York."{94} Another Abdulaziz Alomari was found working as a pilot with Saudi Airlines.{95}  Salem Alhazmi, also listed by the FBI as an alleged hijacker, was indignant at being named as a suspect for a mass murder.  He said he works in petrochemical plant in Yanbu (Saudi Arabia).{96} Abdul Rahman Al-Haznawi, brother of another suspect, said “There is no similarity between the photo published [on Thursday] and my brother.” He said he does not believe his brother was involved in the crime: “He never had any such intention.”{97}  Gaafar Allagany, the Saudi government’s chief spokesman in the United States, said in an interview in Washington that the hijackers probably stole the identities of legitimate Saudi pilots.{98} The FBI maintained the names and photographs it originally posted on its website as those "believed to be the hijackers" of 9/11,{99} including those of living individuals. The 9/11 Commission did not at all address these conflicting reports. The passive and tentative formulation used by the FBI in attributing the crime to particular perpetrators, remains the official position of the agency.

One basic goal of a criminal investigation is to identify the perpetrators. To prove that specific individuals could have hijacked an aircraft, it must be first demonstrated that they boarded that aircraft. To demonstrate this fact, the following four classes of evidence should have been produced by the U.S. authorities in September 2001 or shortly thereafter:

Authenticated flight manifests,{100} listing the names of all the passengers and crew members, including those suspected of hijacking;

Authenticated security videos from the airports, which depict the passengers (and the alleged hijackers);

Sworn testimonies of personnel who attended the boarding of the aircraft;

Formal identification of the bodies or bodily remains from the crash sites, including chain-of-custody reports.

The scope of this chapter is limited to examining whether the U.S. government has produced the above four classes of minimal evidence and if so, whether that evidence is admissible, relevant and compelling. If such evidence does not exist or is deemed to lack credibility, it shall be presumed that these individuals did not board the aircraft and that, consequently, no “Islamic hijackings” had taken place.

(1)  No authenticated flight manifests

The primary source used by airlines to identify the victims of aircraft crashes is the flight manifest. A flight manifest is a legal document proving — also for insurance purposes — that particular individuals boarded an aircraft. To ensure the reliability of flight manifests airlines check the identities of passengers who board the aircraft. In order to serve as legal documents, flight manifests must be duly authenticated by those responsible for their accuracy, including by their signature.

With regard to the four 9/11 flights, American and United Airlines have consistently refused to demonstrate that they possess authenticated manifests of these flights. Surprisingly, neither the corporate media nor the 9/11 Commission demanded the release of these authenticated documents.

Between 11 and 14 September 2001, the mainstream media published names of the alleged hijackers and passengers. Some of these names were then deleted and replaced by other names. These irregularities are examined below.

(a) Adding and deleting passengers' names

On 13 September 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that “between three and six individuals on each of the hijacked airplanes were involved” in the hijackings.{101} Later at a press briefing, he specified that there were exactly 18 "hijackers" – five on each of flights AA11 and UA175 and four on the others.{102} On the same day FBI Director Robert Mueller said that a “preliminary investigation indicated 18 hijackers were on the four planes -- five on each of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, and four each on the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.”{103}  A day later the number grew to 19.{104} 

On 14 September 2001, the name of Mosear Caned (phon.) was released by CNN as one of the suspected hijackers on "a list of names (...) that is supposed to be officially released by [the Justice Department] sometime later today".{105} His name disappeared a few hours later from the list of suspects and replaced with that of Hani Hanjour when CNN posted a new list of suspects released by the FBI.{106} It was never revealed where Caned's name came from in the first place, who this person was supposed to be, or why the name was later replaced by “Hani Hanjour.”{107} No other passenger (or "hijacker") bore a name resembling Mosear Caned.

The Washington Post reported, however, that the original flight manifest did not include the name of Hani Hanjour, later named as the pilot of flight AA77. In its final edition of 16 September 2001 the Post explained that Hanjour’s name "was not on the American Airlines manifest for [flight 77] because he may not have had a ticket."{108} This report fits with the declaration by Attorney General Ashcroft of 13 September 2001 that only four "hijackers" had been on flight AA77.{109} The counsel for American Airlines, in a letter to the 9/11 Commission of 15 March 2004, also appears to confirm the absence of Hanjour from that flight, writing, “We have not been able to determine if Hani Hanjour checked in at the main ticket counter.“{110} Yet Hanjour's name appears later on an unauthenticated passenger list of flight AA77. 

According to CNN on 14 September 2001, "federal sources initially identified [Adnan] Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari as possible hijackers who boarded one of the planes that originated in Boston." (emphasis added). Yet, a few hours later, CNN issued the following correction: "Based on information from multiple law enforcement sources, CNN reported that Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari of Vero Beach Florida, were suspected to be two of the pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center. CNN later learned that Adnan Bukhari is still in Florida, where he was questioned by the FBI...Ameer Bukhari died in a small plane crash" on 11 September 2000. CNN attributed this information to "federal sources.” These names disappeared from unauthenticated passenger lists published later and replaced by new names. 

On 12 September 2001, various newspapers published partial passenger lists of the crashed flights. These reports included the names of Jude Larson, 31, and his wife, Natalie, 24, referred to as passengers aboard flight AA11.{111}  A person who claimed to be a friend of Jude’s father, Steve Jocelyn of Lahaina on Hawaii, told the Honolulu Advertiser that Jude "was an amazing guy, a cool kid. He was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky guy with a good heart."{112} He said that Jude had visited Maui often, was working as a horticulturist in Washington State but decided to enter medical school a few years ago. A week later, the same newspaper reported that it had been "unable to confirm the identity of (...) Steve Jocelyn," and was unable to locate him.{113}

On 18 September 2001, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported that the newspaper had received an email from Jude, giving notice that he and his wife were alive.{114} According to the paper, "a person claiming to be with the airlines" had called Jude's father and told him that his son and daughter-in-law had been passengers on flight AA11.{115} The Honolulu Advertiser of 20 September 2001, which published a detailed report on this apparent hoax, wrote that Jude’s father Curtis Larson, a "sculptor and jewelry maker," now claimed he had been duped. According to Jude, the report continued, his real name is not Larson but Olsen. He also said he is 30, not 31, years old, that he does not study in Los Angeles but works as a landscaper in Olympia, Washington State, and that his wife is not pregnant.{116} Assuming that a prestigious news agency, such as Associated Press, would check with American Airlines and the FBI whether the Larsons were in fact passengers on flight AA11 before releasing its story, it would follow that the Larsons had been listed on the original passenger lists of flight AA11 or their names changed.

(b) Curious discrepancies in names

According to the Boston Globe, one of the passengers on flight AA11, suspected to have been a hijacker and sitting next to ‘Mohamed Atta’, was Abdulrahman Alomari.  In the list of alleged hijackers released on 14 September 2001 by the FBI, Alomari’s first name is spelled Abdulaziz. Unnamed federal investigators “said they could not explain the discrepancy between the American Airlines passenger list and their list.”{117} The name Abdulrahman Alomari was also mentioned by the Washington Post on 14 September 2001, as one of the “five hijackers who took over American Airlines flight 11 (…) according to a source familiar with FBI’s list of the hijackers.”{118}

As early as 12 September 2001, the TV network NBC displayed a photograph of ‘Mohamed Atta’ and mentioned his name, but of no other suspects.{119} In the late afternoon of 13 September 2001, various American TV networks displayed photographs of ‘Mohamed Atta’ and ‘Marwan al-Shehhi,’ designated as suspects in the mass-murder of 9/11. Surprisingly, ABC News (13 September 2001, 7:02p.m. EST) captioned the photograph of ‘Atta’ with the name ‘Amanullah Atta Mohammed.’{120}  It was not explained from where the network got ‘Amanullah.’ Was there someone impersonating Mohamed Atta, using Amanullah as a first name?

On 22 September 2001, T.A. Badger of Associated Press reported that one of the alleged hijackers whom he named Ziad Jarrahi (with a final “i”) had been seen in San Antonio, California, in mid-June 2001.{121} Who was the Jarrahi who was repeatedly{122}  mentioned by the American media? Was he someone else, distinct from Ziad Jarrah (without final “i”) who is alleged to have piloted flight UA93? Perhaps, if we believe the testimony of Charles Lisa, the landlord of an apartment he rented to a certain Jarrahi and who told The Miami Herald that this Jarrahi and his friend Alhaznawi had “German passports.”{123} Ziad Jarrah, who had studied in Germany, was, however, a Lebanese citizen and is not known to have obtained a German passport. Was Jarrahi perhaps the name of someone whose role was to impersonate Ziad Jarrah? According to Elizabeth Neuffer, whose detailed report on Ziad Jarrah and his family was published in the Boston Globe of 25 September 2001 “FBI agents, reviewing flight manifests, found a Ziad Jarrahi – the ‘i’ in the last name a possible misspelling – on United Airlines Flight 93.”{124} Yet, the unauthenticated passenger lists circulating on the internet spelled his name without final “i”. Elizabeth Neuffer, incidentally, died on 9 May 2003, in Iraq in what was reported as a car accident.

The fluctuations in the number and names of the alleged “hijackers” could not have occurred if the names had been based on authentic flight manifests.

(c) Releasing bogus passenger lists five years later

In 2006 a seven-page set of faxes, purporting to represent the original flight manifests, was published in a book by Terry McDermott.{125} These released images are of bad quality and cannot constitute, for the following reasons, faithful copies of the original flight manifests: (1) The published lists appear to have been pasted together from various computer printouts;{126} (2) The lists are not authenticated by any airline or law-enforcement official and are not signed by anyone; (3) It is not clear when and by whom the lists were printed; (4) Ziad Jarrah’s name is spelled correctly on the list of flight UA93, whereas the FBI referred to him initially as Jarrahi;{127} (5) The name of Hani Hanjour appears on the AA77 list, whereas the Washington Post reported that his name did not appear on the original American Airlines list for the flight (see above); (6) The list does not include names originally claimed as suspected hijackers; (7) Neither the FBI nor the airlines have been willing to confirm that these lists faithfully represent the original flight manifests.

(d) FBI and airlines refuse to release copies of authentic passenger lists

In 2004 I attempted to obtain from American Airlines copies of authenticated passenger lists for the two American Airlines flights of 9/11. Karen Temmerman, Customer Relations, American Airlines, responded on 9 September 2004:

At the time of the incidents, we released the actual passenger manifests to the appropriate government agencies who in turn released certain information to the media. These lists were published in many major periodicals and are now considered public record. At this time we are not in a position to release further information or to republish what the government agencies provided to the media.{128}

The airline did not explain why it was not in a position to confirm what had already been for a long time in the public domain.

On 29 November 2005, I tried again to obtain the passenger list of flight AA77 from American Airlines.{129} Sean Bentel of American Airlines first sent me a typed list that consisted of nothing more than the first and last names of 53 passengers from that flight. The list did not include Arab names. Asking again for “something more authentic,” Sean Bentel responded that ”the names I sent you are accurate… There may have been a formatting problem.” In turn I responded that the problem was not the formatting of the data. Here is what I wrote:

What I am asking is a replica of the original passenger list (either a scan of the original, or at least a document faithfully reflecting the contents of that list)…[namely] the list of the paying passengers who boarded AA77. Can I take it that the list you sent me faithfully reflects the names of the paying passengers who boarded AA77?

Within hours Sean Bentel answered in the most laconic manner: “Mr. Davidsson, Names of terrorists were redacted. Sean Bentel.” Asked in return “why can’t you send me a facsimile copy of the passenger lists, including the names of the terrorists?” Sean Bentel answered, “This is the information we have for public release.” This was the end of this exchange.

I also turned to United Airlines. On 21 October 2004, I asked per email why the original flight manifests have not yet been publicized and whether United Airlines had provided some media with a copy of the original flight manifests. The airline answered that “[a]ll matters pertaining to the September 11th terrorist attacks are under the investigation of the U.S. Federal Authorities. Please contact the FBI.” That was it.

In February 2012, I requested on the base of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the FBI the release of Document 302, serial 7134, which contains “flight manifests for hijacked flights” and “information related to manifests.”{130} The request was denied.

As the names of all victims and alleged hijackers were publicized within days after 9/11, there could be no plausible reason for refusing to confirm the accuracy and authenticity of information that already exists in the public domain. Authenticated flight manifests were neither provided to the Congressional Joint Inquiry of 2002 nor to the 9/11 Commission. It must therefore be presumed that no genuine flight manifests for the four 9/11 flights exist or that whatever the airlines and the FBI do possess does not correspond with the official allegations.

To sum up: No document has been produced by the airlines or the U.S. government proving that anyone, let alone the alleged terrorists, had boarded any of the four flights that were allegedly hijacked on 9/11.{131}

(2)  No one witnessed the hijackers at the security checkpoints

As for flights AA11 and UA175, which reportedly left from Logan Airport, Boston, the 9/11 Commission found that “[n]one of the [security] checkpoint supervisors recalled the hijackers or reported anything suspicious regarding their screening.”{132} Carter Bibbey, a manager for Globe Aviation Services Corp., who was supervising screeners at the American Airlines terminal in Boston, told the Boston Globe on 10 October 2001 that his five screeners didn’t detect any weapons — either legal or illegal on the morning of 9/11.{133}

As for flight AA77, which reportedly left from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., the 9/11 Commission wrote that “[w]hen the local civil aviation security office of the FAA later investigated these security screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing unusual. They could not recall that any of the passengers they screened were CAPPS selectees.”{134} As for flight UA93, which reportedly left from Newark Liberty International Airport, the 9/11 Commission indicated that the “FAA interviewed the screeners later; none recalled anything unusual or suspicious.”{135} According to an undated FBI report, the ““FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site.”{136} Yet no screener mentioned coming across a single knife that morning.{137}

A seasoned Israeli security expert, Rafi Ron, President of New Age Security Solutions, with thirty years’ experience in security, intelligence and counterterrorism for the government of Israel and formerly Director of Security at Tel-Aviv Ben-Gurion International airport, addressed the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on 21 September 2005. He said:

I would like to point out that the Achilles heel of the suicide terrorist is his behavior. A person intending to commit an extreme act of violence, in most cases for the first time in his/her life, as well as to terminate his own life is most likely not to behave like the ordinary people around him going about their daily routines. A signal example is Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”), who was clearly detected by both security and non-security personnel as a suspicious person before and during boarding AA flight from Paris (Dec. 2001).{138}

In the light of the above testimony, it is significant that no security employee noted anything suspicious in the behavior of the 19 persons who allegedly were intending to commit an extreme act of violence and to terminate their own life within the next hour.

(3)  No one witnessed the hijackers boarding the aircraft

Normally airline employees tear off the stubs of passengers' boarding cards and observe the boarding of aircraft at the departure gates. Under the circumstances of 9/11, one could have expected to read interviews with some of these airline employees, because they were the last to see the passengers alive. Yet no such interview is known to have taken place. The 9/11 Commission does not mention the existence of any deposition or testimony by airline personnel who saw the “hijackers” or any other passenger board the aircraft. As a response to my request to interview American Airlines gate agents of flight AA77, the airline responded that their identities cannot be revealed for privacy reasons.{139} Among the FBI documents released in 2009, I found interviews with Liset Frometa (conducted on 11 September 2001){140} and Maria Jackson (conducted on 22 September 2001),{141} who testified to have worked at gate 32 for flight AA11, and one FBI 302-form recording an interview with an unidentified female employee of American Airlines who testified on 11 September 2001 that she “worked the gate for AA flight 11” and “boarded the passengers for this flight” but did not mention the gate number.{142} Neither of these ladies mentioned having seen any of the alleged hijackers. Maria Jackson was shown a “photo spread of subjects” but did not recognize anyone.

(4) Dubious  security videos

Apparently, none of the three airports from which the four 9/11 aircraft reportedly departed (Boston Logan, Newark International and Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.) possessed surveillance cameras at the boarding gates. There exists thus neither eyewitness testimony nor a visual documentation of the boarding process. 

The Boston Herald reported a few weeks after 9/11 that Logan Airport has no security videos in the terminals, gate areas or concourses.{143} Logan officials acknowledged this 'deficiency'. This is significant because two of the 9/11 flights originated from Logan airport.{144} 

According to the 9/11 Commission's staff, Newark International Airport, from which flight UA93 reportedly departed, did not have such equipment either.{145} According to the 9/11 Commission's Final Report, "there is no documentary evidence to indicate when the hijackers passed through the [security] checkpoint[s], what alarms may have been triggered or what security procedures were administered."{146}

Yet many people are convinced that they have seen footage of the suspected hijackers passing through security checks. Indeed, some footage was shown around the world on television, but not the boarding process of any aircraft. What was shown was footage from Portland (Maine) Jetport and from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. 

The footage from Portland Jetport purports to show suspects ‘Atta’ and ‘Alomari’ passing the security checkpoint before they board a connecting flight to Boston on the morning of 11 September 2001. The authenticity of the footage has been disputed for two reasons: (1) Michael Tuohey, who carried out the check-in of the men at the Portland Jetport, said on CNN that they were “very business looking. They had on ties and jackets." After being shown the security video, he found it curious that „they both have like open collar. They have like dress shirts with open collar...but that’s them."{147} (2) The security video displays two different recording times, as shown below.{148} 

Kenneth R. Anderson, the pilot of Colgan Air flight 5930, which carried the two men from Portland to Boston on the morning of 9/11, said he remembered two Arabic or Mid-Eastern males who were passengers on that flight. They were the last to board the aircraft and the last to exit the aircraft and sat in the last row of the plane. He described one of the individuals as wearing glasses.{149} Yet neither ‘Alomari’ nor ‘Atta’ are known to have worn glasses. Anderson also said that one of them was 5’9” and the other 5’11” tall. According to an FAA certified copy of Atta’s airman file, Atta’s height was 5’7.”{150} No information is available on ‘Alomari’s height.

But even if the video recording from Portland were authentic,{151} in the sense of depicting two persons resembling ‘Atta’ and ‘Alomari’, it does not tell us what they did after they arriving in Boston.

„Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari" at Portland Jetport on 11 September 2001 

The other footage shown on TV and found on internet sites,{152} purports to depict the alleged hijackers of flight AA77 as they pass through the security checkpoint at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. This recording was not released voluntarily by the U.S. government, but was forced out in 2004 by the Motley Rice law firm representing some survivors’ families.{153} According to the 9/11 Commission, the video “recorded all passengers, including the hijackers, as they were screened.”{154} Yet none of the publicly available versions of this recording shows the passengers from flight AA77, some of whom were well known nationally. Another version of this video emerged years later from somewhere. It was not either authenticated by official sources.

Jay Kolar, who published a critical analysis of this footage,{155} made an important point: He pointed out that the recording lacks a camera identification number and a time stamp (date:time clock). Joe Vialls, who also analyzed this video recording in 2004, elaborated: “Just this single terminal at Dulles Airport has well over 100 such cameras, everyone of them with an individual camera identification number and date-time clock of its own.”{156} He explained: “On-film data [such as camera number and date-time stamp] is essential, of course, because it would be extremely difficult to track a target around the airport without these basic tools, and absolutely impossible to sort out the precise time and date of an event that occurred more than two years before, which is exactly what the 9-11 Commission now claims to have done.”

A further element suggests that the Dulles video was made before 9/11. Dulles airport security manager Ed Nelson told authors Susan and Joseph Trento that shortly after arriving at Dulles airport on the morning of 9/11, FBI agents confiscated a security tape from a checkpoint through which they said the alleged hijackers had passed on the way to their boarding. He then described the scene and expressed his surprise that the FBI agents could so fast pick out “the hijackers” from hundreds of other passengers on the footage:

They pulled the tape right away… They brought me to look at it. They went right to the first hijacker on the tape and identified him. They knew who the hijackers were out of hundreds of people going through the checkpoints. They would go “roll and stop it” and showed me each of the hijackers… It boggles my mind that they had already had the hijackers identified… Both metal detectors were open at that time, and lots of traffic was moving through. So picking people out is hard… I wanted to know how they had that kind of information. So fast. It didn’t make sense to me.”{157}

Aside from the dubious source of the Dulles footage, it does not show who boarded an aircraft but provides only blurred images of individuals whose identities cannot be verified. Such an artifact would be inadmissible in a court of law as evidence of the participation of the depicted individuals in mass murder.

(5) “Hijackers” without bodies

 According to the official account, the 19 alleged hijackers died in aircraft crashes at the WTC, the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The Pittsburgh Tribune of 13 September 2001 – two days after the events – reported that the

remains from the main crash site [of flight UA93] have been taken a makeshift morgue at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory near the Somerset County Airport. State police escorted a tractor-trailer truck into the back of the armory late yesterday evening, according to a resident who lives nearby. The lights were turned off briefly as the truck was directed to the rear of the armory. A short time later, the lights were turned on as the police cars and the truck left, said the man who declined to be identified.{158}

Unidentified officials spoken to by The Times (U.K.) in October 2001 said they expected that the bodies of the 9/11 suspects would be identified “by a process of elimination.”{159}  They did not explain why they did not expect the bodies to be positively identified, one by one.

Chris Kelly, spokesman of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), where the identification of victims’ remains from flights AA77 and UA93 took place, said that the authorities were reluctant to consider releasing the hijackers’ bodies: “We are not quite sure what will happen to them, we doubt very much we are going to be making an effort to reach family members over there.”{160} He did not explain why no efforts would be made to locate the families of the alleged hijackers.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was at the time subject to the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense.

According to Llonald Mixell, Vero Beach, Florida, landlord of ‘Alomari’, one of the alleged hijackers, the FBI “searched the Omari home [and] agents left a list of materials seized, including hair samples and air conditioning filters.”{161} There were more such samples available from the alleged hijackers’ hotel rooms and cars. Yet, according to Dr. Jerry Spencer, a former chief medical examiner for AFIP, cited by CBS News, “the terrorists are usually not in our possession in the United States like this”{162} — whatever that means. According to Jeff Killeen, spokesman for the FBI field office in Pittsburgh, “there haven’t been any friends or family members trying to claim the remains of [the hijackers].”{163} The family of Ziad Jarrah in Lebanon was reported as early as 16 September 2001 as “ready to cooperate with the authorities.”{164} The U.S. authorities did not respond to this offer.

In mid-August 2002, a news report on the victims’ remains noted that the DNA of the alleged hijackers still had not been checked, because “little attention has been paid to the terrorists’ remains.”{165}

When the AFIP announced it had positively identified the human remains of all “innocent” passengers and crew members from the flights, the agency had not yet identified the remains of any of the alleged hijackers. Kelly said later: “The remains that didn’t match any of the samples were ruled [by default] to be the terrorist,”{166} confirming the prescient statement published earlier by The Times. Tom Gibb, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that the “air pirates [for flight UA93] have been identified as Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, Saeed Al-Ghamdi and Ahmed Alnami — but not so positively identified that officials will list the names in official records.” Coroner Wallace Miller said that the “death certificates [for the suspected hijackers] will list each as ’John Doe’.”{167} Under a ruling issued on 11 October 2001 by a Somerset County judge and cited by Tom Gibb of the Post-Gazette, everyone who died aboard flight UA93 “except the terrorists” will get death certificates. Gibb wrote that at the “insistence of the FBI, the terrorists won’t be getting them because investigators aren’t sure of their identities.”{168}

According to the AFIP, bodily remains from virtually all passengers of flight AA77 which allegedly crashed at the Pentagon could be identified by their DNA which miraculously survived the inferno (except the “hijackers”). At the same time,  representatives of the Department of Justice and the FBI told the staff of the 9/11 Commission that the contents of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) for that flight “were destroyed by the intense heat it had been subjected to.”{169} Such devices are, however, constructed to resist far greater impact and temperatures than human DNA.

Among documents transmitted to the 9/11 Commission and released in 2009, one document contains the claim by the FBI that DNA profiles of Ziad Jarrah provided by the German Federal Police (BKA) to the FBI “matched the sample of one of the sets of unknown human remains.”{170} The aforementioned FBI document is not signed, dated or otherwise authenticated. The U.S. authorities have not, in any case, relied on this document to claim that Ziad Jarrah’s remains had been positively identified.

As will be shown in a later chapter, no bodies or blood, nor aircraft debris were sighted by eyewitnesses at the reported crash site of flight UA93.

As for the remains of the suspects who allegedly hijacked flights AA11 and UA175, a spokeswoman for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, where the identification of the victims from the WTC took place, said she had received from the FBI in February 2003 profiles of all ten hijackers who allegedly died at the WTC, so “their remains could be separated from those of victims.” She added, however: “No names were attached to these profiles. We matched them, and we have matched two of those profiles to remains that we have.”{171} In 2005, the number of matched samples from New York increased to three.{172}

In an essay entitled “Who They Were,” Robert Shaler of the forensic unit in New York City, set down his inside account of the identification effort: “No names, just a K code, which is how the FBI designates ‘knowns,’ or specimens it knows the origins of,” he wrote, adding, “we had no direct knowledge of how the FBI obtained the terrorists’ DNA.”{173} His statement was echoed in 2009 by his deputy, Howard Baum, in a Newsweek interview: “We had no idea where the profiles came from or how they were developed.”{174} 

The lack of positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains, compounded by the glaring absence of chain-of-custody reports regarding these remains, means that the U.S. authorities have failed to produce concrete evidence that the alleged hijackers died on 11 September 2001, let alone at the reported crash sites.

Conclusions to Chapter 3

The FBI confiscated immediately after the attacks of 9/11 all available documentation regarding the boarding of the aircraft that were allegedly hijacked. Dozens of witnesses from the airlines and the respective airports were interviewed by the FBI on the very day of the attacks and thereafter. All existing evidence regarding the boarding of the four 9/11 flights must therefore be in the hands of the U.S. authorities.

 A government innocent of mass murder would be expected not only to seek the truth about the crime, but to show particular zeal in doing so, including the presentation of the most incriminating evidence it possesses. It would do so both to satisfy a legitimate expectation of its own population (and in the case of 9/11 of the world community) and to dispel any existing suspicions of a cover-up or of complicity in the crime. The U.S. government, to this day, has failed to do so.

On the basis of the evidence provided in this chapter, the following conclusions impose themselves:

• Due to the lack of concrete and verifiable evidence that the 19 alleged hijackers boarded the four aircraft, it is unconscionable and slanderous to accuse these individuals of participation in the mass-murder.

• By consistently refusing to confirm through authenticated documents that the 19 alleged hijackers had boarded the four aircraft, the U.S. government manifests its bad faith and justifies the suspicion that it is covering up crucial facts regarding the mass murder.

• By ignoring the numerous and glaring contradictions regarding the identities of the alleged hijackers, the 9/11 Commission manifested its intent to support unsubstantiated government allegations against the accused individuals.

• By refusing to release copies of original, authentic flight manifests and to allow interviews with personnel responsible for the boarding of the four aircraft of 9/11,{175} the airlines manifest their complicity in covering up the mass murder.

Chapter 4: The “hijackers” preferred worldly delights to paradise

According to the official account, the crime of 9/11, allegedly perpetrated by Muslims, reflected their hateful and extremist ideology. They were said to have intended to kill as many “unbelievers” as possible and to sacrifice their lives for Allah. As compensation they would enter paradise and enjoy the delights of 72 virgins. The Final Report of the 9/11 Commission includes the words Islam and its variants hundreds of times.

In this section we will see ‘Atta’ and ‘al-Shehhi’ (two of the alleged suicide-pilots) drinking alcohol, engaging in extramarital sex and gambling. Such does not fit the profile of genuinely religious Muslims who hope to gain entrance into paradise. Mohamed Atta’s former professor, Dittmar Machule of Hamburg, Germany, told Liz Jackson of ABC Australia in October 2001: “I would put my hand in the fire that this Mohamed el-Amir I know will never taste or touch alcohol.”{176} Mohamed’s acquaintances and teachers in Hamburg actually did not know him as “Mohamed Atta,” but as “(Mohamed) el-Amir” and described him as a polite and introverted person.

(1) Getting drunk at Shuckum’s

Shuckum’s is a restaurant and oyster bar in Hollywood, Florida. According to numerous news reports, ‘Atta’ and ‘al-Shehhi’ spent hours at that bar a few days before 9/11, heavily drinking alcohol.

(a) When did this episode took place?

• On 5 or 6 September 2001 (FBI 302 reports){177}

• On 6 September (NBC News, 12 September 2001){178}

• On 7 September (Associated Press{179} and The New York Times{180}, 12 September 2001)

• On 8 September (Boston Globe, 23 September 2001; Time Magazine,{181} 24 September 2001).

(b) What took place at Shuckum’s?

Tony Amos, Shuckums’ manager, declared to Ken Thomas of the Associated Press on 12 September 2001 that “two men” had each consumed several drinks and had given the bartender a hard time. Amos said: “The guy Mohamed was drunk, his voice was slurred and he had a thick accent.”{182} Bartender Patricia Idrissi said to a journalist of the St. Petersburg Times that the men were “wasted” (drunk) when they entered the bar. She said she directed them to a nearby Chinese restaurant. They later returned and “each ordered five drinks,” she said.{183} According to the New York Times of 12 September 2001, the “man (…) drank Stolichnaya vodka for three hours.”{184} Patricia Idrissi said that the men argued about their bill. Then one of the men pulled a wad of $100 and $50 bills, paid the tab and left her a $3 tip. The bar employees said FBI agents had told them that at least one of the men was from Pakistan and that the passenger manifests of one of the hijacked airliners showed they were registered as passengers on one of the hijacked planes that took off from Boston.{185} Patricia Idrissi told journalists, “Mohamed said he worked for American Airlines and he could pay his bill.”{186}

In another account of this episode, Mohamed “played video games,” and the other two “had about five drinks each.”{187}

On 13 September 2001, U.S. media had already designated the heavy drinker as ‘Atta’.{188}

The reports agree on two points: (a) that the patrons drank heavily; and (b) that they made a fuss before paying their bill. But were the drinkers ‘Mohamed Atta’ and ‘Marwan al-Shehhi’?

(c) When did the FBI visit Shuckum’s?

According to the St. Petersburg Times of 13 September 2001, FBI agents arrived at Shuckum’s “soon after the attack,” but not later than in the late afternoon of September 11.{189} The Associated Press of 12 September 2001 reported that FBI came to Shuckum’s “Tuesday night.”{190} It was never explained how the FBI knew by that time that ‘Atta’ and ‘al-Shehhi’ had frequented bars, let alone a particular bar among the approximately 48,000 bars that operate in the United States or the roughly 4,000 bars that exist in Florida.

How did the FBI know exactly where to go only a few hours after the attacks? How did they know which neighborhoods, which flight schools and which restaurants to investigate so soon in the case? These were questions asked by Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 victim’s relative at a hearing before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry.“{191} She never received an answer.

(d) How was the Shuckum’s episode linked to 9/11?

According to NBC News, “FBI agents showed Atta’s passport photo to the bar staff.”{192} According to the New York Times, “federal agents arrived at the seafood restaurant and bar and flashed pictures of him and another man who they said were suspected of being involved in the terror attacks that morning.”{193} According to an FBI Timeline, “Marwan Alshehhi’s photo was identified by [....] bartender, as being present at Shuckum’s Raw Bar in Hollywood, Florida from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM, [9/6/01] with unknown male.”{194} As for ‘Mohammed Atta’, he “was identified by [...] waitress, as being present at Shuckum’s Raw Bar, Hollywood, Florida [on 9/5/01], where he played a video game for three hours.”{195}

(e) Vodka metamorphosed into cranberry juice

As religious Muslims do not drink alcohol, the initial story of the Shuckum’s spree was toxic to the official legend of fanatic Muslims. But on 16 September The Washington Post reported from Shuckum’s that “Atta played video Trivial Pursuit and blackjack with great determination,” –- another atypical occupation of religious Muslims – while “al-Shehhi and the other man had about five drinks each.”{196} Six days later, alcohol disappeared completely from the story. According to the September 22 issue of the Washington Post, the manager on duty that night said that he didn’t recall seeing ‘Atta’ drink alcohol.{197} On 27 September another “newspaper of record,” the Los Angeles Times, reported Shuckum’s owner saying that “Atta sat quietly by himself and drank cranberry juice and played a video game, while al-Shehhi and the other customer tossed back mixed drinks and argued.”{198}

Tony Amos may have been induced to retract his original testimony. Author Daniel Hopsicker discovered weeks after 9/11 that Tony Amos and Patricia Idrissi, the sources of the above reports, had vanished.{199} Almost ten years later, the Miami Herald discovered Tony Amos as the owner of El Sloppy Taco in Brunswick, Maryland. He confirmed to the Miami Herald that, at the time, FBI agents had indeed shown him photos of ‘Atta’ and ‘al-Shehhi’ and told him that “they were on the [flight] manifests.”{200}

(2) Enjoying America’s sex life

It appears that the “hijackers” did not expect to reach paradise to enjoy the 72 virgins, as the legend has it, but preferred the certainty of worldly sex.

Several of the alleged 9/11 hijackers made trips to Las Vegas, the City of Sin, and were seen in the local Strip clubs.

‘Al-Shehhi’ was reportedly seen by stripper Samantha in Las Vegas. Samantha remembers him settling into a crushed red velvet chair, staring blankly up at her while she undulated her hips inches from his face. He didn’t look evil, she said. Not even interesting. Certainly not like a man who would, just three months later, hijack a jet and smash it into the World Trade Center. To the 29-year-old stripper ‘al-Shehhi’ simply looked “cheap.” “He spent about $20 for a quick dance and didn’t tip more,” she said.{201}

Alleged hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi reportedly hung out at Cheetah’s, a nude bar in San Diego near their Islamic Center.{202}

While staying at the Ramada Inn Hotel in Jacksonville for a week starting 25 February 2001, Ziad Jarrah reportedly frequented Wacko’s strip club. A worker there said later that the FBI came to the club after 9/11 to ask questions and show pictures “of the 9/11 terrorists,” and a dancer recognized Jarrah from a photo line-up.{203} First Coast News commented, “Questions still remain as to what Jarrah was doing in Jacksonville.”{204}

‘Atta’ and ‘al-Shehhi’ were also seen (on an unknown date) at Sunrise 251, a bar in Palm Beach, Florida, where they spent $1,000 in 45 minutes on Krug and Perrier-Jouet champagne. ‘Atta’ complained about the bill. “It’s outrageous,” he said. “Why are you arguing?” said ‘al-Shehhi,’ “We have plenty of money and we are not going to need it.” ‘Atta’ was entertained by a tall busty brunette in her late twenties while ‘al-Shehhi’ went with a shortish blonde. Both women were known locally as regular companions of high-rollers.{205}

On 7 September 2001 – four days before their alleged entry into paradise – alleged hijackers ‘Alomari’ and Satam al-Suqami reportedly employed “the services of two prostitutes from the Sweet Temptations escort service in Boston.”{206} Subsequent interviews of the “escorts” determined that they “serviced two Arab gentlemen” on 7 September 2001 at the Park Inn. One prostitute, when shown an automated teller machine (ATM) surveillance photograph of al-Suqami, stated that he was “very familiar.” The second prostitute identified ‘Alomari’ as a possible customer, after viewing a visa photograph.{207}

A driver working at an escort service told the Boston Herald that he drove a call girl to the Park Inn in Chestnut Hill on 9 September 2001 around 10:30 p.m. to “service” one of the alleged hijackers. It was her second trip to his room that day, said the driver.{208}

On 10 September 2001, four other alleged hijackers in Boston (‘al-Shehhi’, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, Mohand al-Shehri, and Satam al-Suqami) reportedly called around to find prostitutes to sleep with, but in the end gave up for unknown reasons.{209}

(3) Gambling

 On 7 June 2002,⁠ a Las Vegas blackjack dealer by the name of Gerd Sternberg reported that Ziad Jarrah and ‘Atta’ had been playing at his table in Caesar’s palace in Las Vegas. According to Sternberg, both of them were cash players and he did not know if they were hotel guests.{210} Good Muslims know that their religion prohibits gambling.{211}

Sun Cruz Casinos turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers. Michael Hlavsa, chairman of SunCruz Casinos, said that two or three men linked to the 9/11 hijackings may have been customers on his gambling ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida’s Gulf Coast. One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise was the same as one of the suspected terrorists, Hlavsa said.{212} The FBI did not confirm the men’s identities, and the cruise line declined to identify the men being investigated. Hlavsa said that in the days after the attack, cruise employees said they recognized some of the hijacking suspects as former customers.{213}

(4) The “hijackers” did not intend to die on 9/11

The media told us that the 9/11 “hijackers” planned and desired to die as martyrs on 11 September 2001. The FBI was somehow able to track and document in great detail their movements and transactions in the United States for more than 18 months, suggesting that the agency had them under observation. The FBI released detailed timelines about these activities, comprising hundreds of pages.{214} Their various transactions before 11 September 2001 do not suggest that they were preparing to die. All the following names belong to the alleged hijackers.

On 25 August 2001, ‘Atta’ reportedly established on the American Airlines website a frequent flyer account.{215} On the eve of their supposedly climactic day, 10 September 2001 at 9:22 p.m. ‘Atta’ and ‘Alomari’ reportedly purchased a 6-volt battery adapter at a Wal-Mart in Scarborough, Maine.{216} What were they supposed to do with a battery adapter on the way to their maker?

On 3 September 2001,‘al-Shehhi’ and ‘Atta’ purchased with a credit card a pair of stereo headphones and a Sony Walkman AM/FM Cassette recorder at Circuit City in Delray Beach, Florida.{217} ‘Al-Shehhi’ was identified on the same day at Piercing Pagoda (Pompano Square Mall) with an unknown Arabic male “purchasing two 18-inch necklaces and [a] man’s ring” for $81.62. His companion, who also purchased a silver necklace and a men’s ring, was probably Waleed al-Shehri.{218} Were these necklaces intended for the 72 virgins?

Ziad Jarrah’s uncle, Jamal Jarrah, said in a telephone interview with the Boston Globe from the village of al-Marj, Lebanon, that two days before 9/11, his nephew called and told the family that he intends to come home (to Lebanon) for a cousin’s wedding in mid-September.