Did Certain Foreign Governments Facilitate the 9/11 Attacks? : Information Clearing House - ICH

Did Certain Foreign Governments Facilitate the 9/11 Attacks?  : Information Clearing House - ICH

Did Certain
Foreign Governments Facilitate the 9/11 Attacks?



– and why is the US government keeping the evidence
a secret?



By Justin Raimondo




August 29, 2014 "ICH"
- "Anti
War" - -
Some thirteen years after the event, the shadow of
the

9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
in Manhattan and the Pentagon still darkens our
world. The legacy of that terrible day has impacted
not only our foreign policy, bequeathing to a new
generation an apparently

endless "war on terrorism," it also has led
directly to what is arguably the most

massive assault on our civil liberties since the
Alien and Sedition Acts. Getting all the information
about what happened that day – and why it happened –
is key to understanding the course we have taken
since.


This was
supposed to have been the purpose of the 9/11
Commission, whose massive

report is now looked to as the primary source on
the subject. Yet there is another, far more specific
investigative report, the one issued by the
intelligence committees of both houses of Congress,
entitled "Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities
Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September
11, 2001."


If you
actually take the time to read the report, all goes
along swimmingly (except for occasional redactions)
until you get to p. 369, whereupon the text is
blacked out for the next
twenty-eight pages.


What is in
the twenty-eight censored pages? You aren’t allowed
to know that, but members of Congress can read them

provided they write to the heads of the Senate
and House intelligence committees and get
permission. If such is granted, they are escorted
into a soundproof carefully guarded room in the
company of various spooks, where they get to read
the material: they aren’t allowed to take notes.



Do you get
the impression someone has something to hide?


The
censored section is entitled "Finding, Discussion
and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National
Security Matters," and the introduction – left
largely intact – is instructive:


"Through
its investigation, the Joint Inquiry developed
information suggesting specific sources of foreign
support for some of the September 11 hijackers while
they were in the United States. The Joint Inquiry’s
review confirmed that the Intelligence Community
also has information, much of which has yet to be
independently verified, concerning these potential
sources of support. In their testimony, neither CIA
nor FBI officials were able to address definitively
the extent of such support for the hijackers
globally or within the United States or the extent
to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or
inadvertent in nature."


The alleged

Saudi connection to the 9/11 attacks has had

a lot of play: it is widely believed that in the
immediate aftermath of 9/11 special permission was
given to fly members of the Saudi royal family

out of the country when the whole nation was in
lockdown. This raised suspicions, along with the
incontrovertible fact that the

majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi
citizens. In a 2002 interview with Gwen Ifill on
PBS, Senator Bob Graham of Florida, then on the
Senate Intelligence Committee,

went public with the news that foreign
governments were in on the 9/11 attacks:


"GWEN
IFILL: “Senator Graham, are there elements in this
report, which are classified that Americans should
know about but can’t?”


SEN. BOB
GRAHAM: “Yes, going back to your question about what
was the greatest surprise. I agree with what Senator
Shelby said the degree to which agencies were not
communicating was certainly a surprise but also I
was surprised at the evidence that there were
foreign governments involved in facilitating the
activities of at least some of the terrorists in the
United States.”


In the
years since his retirement, Sen. Graham has been
steadily pounding away at this point, and his

persistence has usually been interpreted as a
demand to reveal the extent of Saudi complicity in
the attacks. And while the Saudis may well have been
involved, either directly or otherwise, I would
bring your attention to Graham’s statement and the
introduction to the Joint Inquiry report, which
indicate that more than one foreign government was
involved. But if it wasn’t just the Saudis, then who
else was involved?


We don’t
have to rely on pure speculation, in spite of the
fact that us ordinary peons in flyover country
aren’t allowed to read those 28 pages. That’s
because a few members of Congress have taken the
trouble to apply for permission to read them,
including Representatives Walter Jones (R-North
Carolina), Tom Massie (R-Kentucky), and Stephen
Lynch (D-Massachusetts). According to their own
accounts, they came out of that soundproof spy-proof
room reeling. Here’s what Jones

says:


"I was
absolutely shocked by what I read. What was so
surprising was that those whom we thought we could
trust really disappointed me…It does not deal with
national security per se; it is more about
relationships. The information is critical to our
foreign policy moving forward and should thus be
available to the American people. If the 9/11
hijackers had outside help – particularly from one
or more foreign governments – the press and the
public have a right to know what our government has
or has not done to bring justice to the
perpetrators."


"One or
more foreign governments," eh? Who in the Middle
East – or anywhere else, for that matter – are among
"those whom we thought we could trust"? That doesn’t
sound like the Saudis to me. Would anyone really be
surprised or "disappointed" to learn that they were
playing games behind our back?


Rep.
Massie’s

statement is even more revealing:


"I had
to stop every two or three pages and rearrange my
perception of history. And it’s that fundamental –
those 28 pages….It certainly changes your view of
the Middle East."


Would the
discovery of Saudi perfidy "change your view of the
Middle East" in a "fundamental" way? The Kingdom has
been

exporting its fanatic brand of Wahabism –
fundamentalist Sunni ideology – spreading terrorism
and political instability across the region for

many years. So this is nothing new: and for
those of us old enough to remember the

Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, their two-timing
nature is taken for granted.


Graham has
been explicit in accusing the Saudis of

financing at least some of the 9/11 hijackers,
as well as facilitating their entry into the United
States. However, the Joint Inquiry indicates that
more than this was involved: the phrase "foreign
support for some of the September 11 hijackers
while they were in the United States" jumps out
at me, at least implying that it wasn’t just
financing – after all, how much did the 9/11 attacks
actually cost Al Qaeda in terms of dollars and
cents? – but also that operational assistance was
given on the ground.


Given – by
whom?


In the wake
of 9/11, while the smoke from the downed World Trade
Building was still clouding the skies over
Manhattan,

I noticed a news item in the Washington Post
that rang all kinds of alarm bells, or at least it
should have – although our vaunted Fourth Estate was
too busy signing on to the newly-minted "war on
terrorism" to notice. The story was headlined "Government
Calls Several Cases ‘of Special Interest,’ Meaning
Related to Post-Attacks Investigation." Reporter
John Mintz related that at least 60 Israelis "of
special interest to the government" had been rounded
up and that several of these had training in
counter-terrorist techniques. As I noted at the
time:


"Well,
spying is indeed a time-honored tradition, and
something tells me these guys are no ordinary
tourists, but since the US Government is keeping mum
about everything connected with this investigation,
we just don’t know. In rounding up untold hundreds
of mostly Arab Muslim men, and interviewing
thousands more, the Ashcroft Sweep is clearly
designed to gather information that might lead them
to the remaining conspirators. It could be that the
Israelis, or at least some of them, fall into this
category: while not being directly involved, maybe
they know something. Nothing else could account for
the government’s ‘special interest.’"


Not long
after that, in the hard winter of 2001, Fox News ran
a four-part series –

part 1,

part 2,

part 3, and

part 4 – reported by Carl Cameron that let the
cat out of the bag.

Part one started out with a bang:


"Since
September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been
arrested or detained, either under the new patriot
anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A
handful of active Israeli military were among those
detained, according to investigators, who say some
of the detainees also failed polygraph questions
when asked about alleged surveillance activities
against and in the United States.


"There
is no indication that the Israelis were involved in
the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that
they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about
the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly
placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins.’ But
when asked for details, he flatly refused to
describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these
Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you
about evidence that has been gathered. It’s
classified information.’"


The Fox
series detailed an extensive and highly
sophisticated
Israeli
spy network inside the US – including not only
hundreds of agents on the ground masquerading as
"art students," but also hi-tech spying tapping into
our phone system and US eavesdropping capabilities –
with the first part ending in this dialogue between
Cameron and Fox News anchor Brit Hume:


“HUME:
Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge
of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are
investigators that some Israeli agents may have
known something? 


CAMERON:
It’s very explosive information, obviously, and
there’s a great deal of evidence that they say they
have collected – none of it necessarily conclusive.
It’s more when they put it all together. A bigger
question, they say, is how could they not have know?
Almost a direct quote."


Days after
the broadcast of part four, the whole series
disappeared from the Fox News site. The powerful
pro-Israel lobby

went after reporter Cameron, accusing him of
anti-Semitism on account of his upbringing: he had
grown up, in part, in the Middle East, where his
father was an archeologist working in Iran. Pressure
was applied to media organizations not to do any
follow up reporting on this story of Israeli
complicity.


Yet some
major media organizations did pursue the story:
Le Monde did
a
piece that added some new information:



"Six of
the intercepted “students” had a cellular telephone
bought by an Israeli ex-vice-consul in the United
States. Two others, at an unspecified time, arrived
in Miami by direct flight from Hamburg, and went to
the residence of an FBI agent, to try to sell him
artwork, left again for the Chicago airport to go to
the residence of an agent of the justice department,
then again took a plane directly for Toronto – all
in one day.


"More
than a third of these ‘students,’ who, according to
the report, moved in at least 42 American cities,
stated they resided in Florida. Five at least were
intercepted in Hollywood, and two in Fort
Lauderdale. Hollywood is a town of 25,000
inhabitants to the north of Miami, close to Fort
Lauderdale. At least 10 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11
were residing in Florida."


Noting that
Hollywood, Florida, was the stomping grounds of
"four of the five members of the group that diverted
American Airlines flight number 11," including
ringleader Mohammed Atta, and going on to link
others to the same area, Le Monde concluded:


"This
convergence is, inter alia, the origin of the
American conviction that one of the tasks of the
Israeli ‘students’ would have been to track the
Al-Qaida terrorists on their territory, without
informing the federal authorities of the existence
of the plot."


Salon.com
did

an excellent follow up by ace reporter

Christopher Ketcham, and some others followed
suit, but only here at Antiwar.com did we continue
to

consistently report on this important story –
arguably, along with the Snowden revelations, one of
the biggest stories in the history of modern
journalism.


When I
first started writing about the question of Israeli
complicity in the 9/11 attacks, I was told that I
would henceforth be consigned to the margins: I was
a "truther," a crackpot, and, naturally, an
"anti-Semite." But why, I asked, would Fox News –
surely one of the most pro-Israel news organizations
on the planet – have run a four-part series pointing
the finger directly at Israel if it didn’t comport
with the facts? Why is this a "conspiracy theory" if
the CIA’s own National Counterintelligence Center
was concerned enough about those "art students" to
post

a warning about them on its official web site?
The NCC noted, in March, 2001:


“In the
past six weeks, employees in federal office
buildings located throughout the United States have
reported suspicious activities connected with
individuals representing themselves as foreign
students selling or delivering artwork. Employees
have observed both males and females attempting to
bypass facility security and enter federal
buildings.”


Ketcham,
writing in Salon, theorized that the "art students"
were a ploy to divert attention away from the
hijackers, and, perhaps, to simultaneously shield
Atta and his crew from US counterintelligence.


It would
serve the Israelis well to concentrate exclusively
on the alleged Saudi connection to 9/11, and this
has been the case so far. Yet the public statements
of those who have actually seen the censored 28
pages in the Joint Inquiry report do not comport
with this narrow focus. What else other than
evidence of Israeli complicity in the 9/11 terrorist
attacks would cause these members of Congress to
"rearrange" their "perception of history"? Can you
think of a better description of the Israelis than
"those whom we thought we could trust," as Rep.
Jones put it?


I would
also note that both Massie and Jones took the

unusual step of voting "no" on funding the
Israeli "Iron Dome" antimissile system, along with a
tiny minority in both parties. Why do you suppose
that is?


So the
question boils down to – Why? Why would the
Israelis, who were tracking the Israelis on our
territory, not only fail to let us know but perhaps
act to shield them from law enforcement’s gaze? The
answer, I believe, is indicated by the

role

played by

Israel since the attacks in agitating for US
military action in the Middle East. In 2003, Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, anticipating the Iraq
war,

declared that Syria, Iran, and Libya had to be
"disarmed" as well. And Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking
to a conference at Bar Ilan University in 2008, was
more direct. As

reported by Israeli news outlets
Ha’aretz and Ma’ariv:


“’We are
benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on
the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American
struggle in Iraq,’ Ma’ariv quoted the former prime
minister as saying. He reportedly added that these
events ‘swung American public opinion in our
favor.’” 


What’s in
the 28 censored pages of the Joint Inquiry into
9/11? We don’t know for sure – but if Israel is
involved, then we do know why they won’t let us read
those pages.



Representatives Jones, Lynch, and Massie have
sparked a movement to declassify the 28 pages:
go here for more
information. This is a fight we need to win –
but we can only do it by raising a huge stink. Call
or write your congressional representatives and urge
them to join the three congressmen who are fighting
for your right to know. And spread the word.



Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of
Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph
Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at
The American
Conservative, and writes a monthly column
for Chronicles. He is the author of
Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost
Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center
for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of
the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard
[Prometheus Books, 2000].