http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/williambunch/williambunch.txt |
1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell
| President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United
| States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?
|
| Rice has suggested in vague terms that the president's brief
| - prepared daily by the CIA - included information that
| morning about Osama bin Laden's methods of operation -
| including hijacking. But when the congressional committee
| probing Sept. 11 asked to see the report, Bush claimed
| executive privilege and refused to release it.
|
| 2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon
| officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?
|
| On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS
| News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters
| rather than commercial flights because of a "threat
| assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised
| to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his
| term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a
| group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel
| plans for the next morning, apparently because of security
| concerns."
|
| Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information
| about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared
| with the American public?
|
| 3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance
| stocks before Sept. 11?
|
| On Sept. 10, 2001, the trading ratio on United Airlines was
| 25 times greater than normal at the Pacific Exchange, where
| traders could buy "puts," high-risk bets that the price of a
| company's stock will fall sharply. The next day, two
| hijacked United jetliners crashed, causing the company's
| shares to plummet and ultimately leading the airline into
| bankruptcy. CBS News later reported that at intelligence
| agencies, "alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in
| the U.S. stock options market" on the day before the
| attacks.
|
| The unusual stock trading suggests that someone with a
| sophisticated knowledge of finance also had advance
| information about the impending attack. But two years later,
| no one has been charged in this matter, and officials have
| not indicated even if the probe is still open.
|
| 4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as
| participants in the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?
|
| Probably not. Just 10 days after the attacks, a report by
| the British Broadcasting Corp. said that some of the
| supposed hijackers identified by the FBI appeared to be
| alive and well. The BBC story said Abdelaziz al-Omari, named
| as the pilot who crashed the jet into the World Trade
| Center's North Tower, was reported by Saudi authorities to
| be working as an electrical engineer. He reported his
| passport had been stolen in Denver in 1995. Saudi officials
| said it was possible that another three people whose names
| appear on the FBI list also are alive.
|
| The article, which can be read at Unanswered Questions,
| makes a persuasive case that another man was posing as Ziad
| Jarrah, the alleged pilot of hijacked Flight 93, which
| crashed in Shanksville, Pa. So why did this story line
| vanish into thin air?
|
| 5. Did any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as
| reported in calls from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?
|
| Quite possibly. An internal Federal Aviation Administration
| memo written at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the attacks said
| that a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11 -
| Israeli-American Daniel Lewin - had been shot to death by a
| single bullet before the jet slammed into the North Tower of
| the World Trade Center. The FAA insists the memo was a
| mistaken "first draft," even though the alleged shooting is
| described in great detail.
|
| Aboard Flight 93, passenger Thomas Burnett told his wife,
| Deena, in a 9:27 a.m. cell-phone call: "The hijackers have
| already knifed a guy, one of them has a gun, and they are
| telling us there is a bomb on board."
|
| Why has this angle of Sept. 11 not been investigated in more
| detail?
|
| 6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept
| the four hijacked jets?
|
| During the depths of the Cold War, Americans went to bed
| with the somewhat reassuring belief that jet fighters would
| intercept anyone launching a first strike against the United
| States. That myth was shattered on 9/11, when four
| hijacked-jetliners-turned-into-deadly-missiles cruised the
| American skies with impunity for nearly two hours.
|
| Why did the North American Aerospace Defense Command seem
| unaware of literally dozens of warnings that hijacked
| jetliners could be used as weapons? Why does NORAD claim it
| did not learn that Flight 11 - the first jet to strike the
| World Trade Center about 8:45 a.m. - had been hijacked until
| 8:40 a.m., some 25 minutes after the transponder was shut
| off and an astounding 15 minutes after flight controllers
| heard a hijacker say, "We have some planes..."?
|
| Why didn't the fighters that were finally scrambled at Otis
| Air Force Base in Massachusetts and Langley Air Force Base
| in Virginia fly at top, supersonic speeds? Why didn't
| fighters immediately take off from Andrews Air Force Base,
| just outside Washington, D.C.? Why was nothing done to
| intercept American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the
| Pentagon, when officials knew it had been had been hijacked
| some 47 minutes earlier?
|
| And why has no one been disciplined for the worst breakdown
| in national defense since Pearl Harbor?
|
| 7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to
| Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the
| worst attack on America in its history?
|
| In arguably the greatest understatement in U.S. history,
| Bush told a questioner at a California town-hall meeting in
| January 2002 that 9/11 "was an interesting day."
| Interesting, indeed. In the two years since the attacks,
| questions have only grown about the president's bizarre
| behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota
| classroom that America was under attack.
|
| "I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there,
| listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in
| a building," World Trade Center widow Lorie van Auken, a
| leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who have raised
| questions about the attacks, told Gail Sheehy in the New
| York Observer.
|
| Why did Bush read a children's story about a pet goat and
| stay in the classroom for more than a half-hour after the
| first plane struck the World Trade Center and roughly 15
| minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him that it
| had been a deliberate attack? Why didn't he take more
| decisive action, and why wasn't he hustled to a secure area
| while the attacks were clearly still under way?
|
| Conspiracy advocates have cited these strange lapses as
| evidence that Bush knew about the attacks ahead of time, but
| why would anyone with advance knowledge appear so clueless?
|
| For a fascinating read on the subject, go to: An Interesting
| Day. <[br /> |
http://unansweredquestions.org/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html | , local mirror at
|
http://uscrisis.lege.net/911/aninterestingday/ ]
|
| 8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?
|
| The most popular version - that heroic passengers who fought
| with the hijackers successfully stormed the cockpit - has
| become so widely accepted that people were jarred last month
| when an Associated Press report seemed to contradict it. The
| AP story took one line out of a congressional report and
| wrote that the FBI now believes the hijackers crashed the
| plane on purpose.
|
| Many were dismayed that the FBI would change its story, but
| the government had never put out an official story. Some
| unidentified government officials had first floated the
| hijackers-crashed-the-plane-on-purpose theory in late 2001.
|
| Based solely on circumstantial evidence from several
| cell-phone calls made by passengers, most of the public and
| the mainstream media have come to believe that the plane
| crashed because of a struggle between the passengers and the
| hijackers.
|
| Meanwhile, the FBI reportedly has enough hard information
| about what really happened on Flight 93 to have worked up a
| flight-simulation video. But that video, the cockpit audio
| recording and the hard data from the other "black box," the
| flight data recorder, is still top secret.
|
| The issue symbolizes the government's continuing refusal to
| release information about what really happened on Sept. 11.
| Even some relatives of Flight 93 victims are growing unhappy
| that more information has not been publicized.
|
| 9. Was Zacarias Moussaoui really "the 20th hijacker"?
|
| Almost certainly not, even though the allegation has been
| repeated hundreds of times in the media. The Moroccan
| native, who has been in custody since his August 2001 arrest
| on immigration charges after he attended a flight-training
| school in Minneapolis, has admitted that he is a member of
| al Qaeda and wanted to commit terrorist acts in America. But
| he arrived here much later than the Sept. 11 hijackers and
| reportedly had no contacts with them.
|
| The issue is important because some family members of Sept.
| 11 victims who are seeking information about what happened
| that day have been turned down because of the ongoing
| Moussaoui case.
|
| 10. Where are the planes' "black boxes"?
|
| Nothing is more critical to learning about air disasters
| than the so-called "black boxes." They are the 30-minute
| audio recordings of cockpit chatter and the fight-data
| inputs which show the speed, direction and operational
| condition of the plane, and which are encased in material
| designed to withstand a high-speed crash. Yet the government
| has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on the black boxes
| from Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and from
| Flight 93.
|
| FBI Director Robert Mueller has said Flight 77's data
| recorder provided altitude, speed, headings and other
| information, but the voice recorder contained nothing
| useful. Why not? Why not release the information to the
| public? Why has a docile mainstream media not demanded this
| information?
|
| And how come none of the four "indestructible" black boxes
| was recovered from the World Trade Center, even as
| investigators said that a passport belonging to one of the
| hijackers had been found in the rubble, undamaged, a week
| after the towers's collapse?
|
| 11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so
| quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks?
|
| CBS News reported that the defense secretary was making
| notes about invading Iraq even before the fires from Flight
| 77 had been extinguished on the other side of the Pentagon.
| Rumsfeld wrote that he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether
| good enough
hit S.H." - Saddam Hussein - "at the same
| time. Not only UBL" - Osama bin Laden. He added: "Go
| massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
|
| Rumsfeld and a number of other Bush administration officials
| have ties to a once-obscure policy group called the Project
| for a New American Century. In a 2000 white paper, PNAC -
| which had long urged an American invasion of Iraq - said
| that for the United States to assert itself properly as the
| world's lone superpower, "some catastrophic and catalyzing
| event - like a new Pearl Harbor" - would be required.
|
| That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today.
|
| 12. Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?
|
| 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building, was not struck by
| an aircraft on Sept. 11, yet the building mysteriously
| collapsed at 5:20 p.m. that afternoon. Apparently debris
| from the jetliner attacks on the adjacent twin towers
| started a fire at No. 7. But as the New York Times noted:
| "No building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise,
| had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire."
| Investigators have speculated that excess diesel fuel for
| emergency generators fanned the flames, but the full story
| may never be known.
|
| Some questions also have lingered about why the two
| 110-story towers collapsed. But investigators think the
| burning jet fuel - compounded by paper-and-electronics-laden
| cubicles and possibly insulation matter - burned long
| enough, at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees, to weaken
| the structural steel.
|
| 13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously
| high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC
| collapse?
|
| Because apparently some White House officials felt that the
| health of the American economy and Wall Street was more
| important than the health of New York City residents who
| lived nearby. For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press
| release from the Environmental Protection Agency said:
| "Recent samples of dust gathered by OSHA on Water Street
| showed higher levels of asbestos in EPA tests." That was
| deleted and replaced with this: "The new samples confirm
| previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA
| standards and consequently is not a cause for public
| concern."
|
| A key figure in the changes was the head of the White House
| Council on Environmental Quality, who - you can't make this
| stuff up - is a lawyer who formerly represented the asbestos
| industry.
|
| In fact, the EPA told workers and residents that it was safe
| to return to lower Manhattan at a time when some test
| results had not been analyzed and other key tests had not
| even been performed. The outcome? Key medical professionals
| say thousands of New Yorkers have developed respiratory
| illnesses associated with exposure to the dust. Symptoms
| include periodic gasping for air, a choking sensation and
| unusual sensitivity to airborne irritants, apparently from a
| type of "occupational asthma" called Reactive Airways
| Disease Syndrome.
|
| 14. Where is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location?
|
| We'll never know, but a widely reported rumor was that it
| was right here in the Keystone State. The speculation is the
| vice president spent the days after the attack at Site R, a
| secretive Cold War-era site, also known as Alternate Joint
| Communications Center, deep inside Raven Rock Mountain. The
| mountain is in western Pennsylvania, near Waynesboro.
|
| 15. What happened to the more than $1 billion that Americans
| donated after the attack?
|
| The largest recipient, the American Red Cross, says it
| already has used $741 million from its Liberty Fund to help
| more than 55,000 families cope with the death of loved ones,
| serious injuries, physical and mental health concerns,
| financial loss, homelessness and other effects of the
| attacks.
|
| Of that, $596 million was in the form of direct financial
| assistance to families of those killed or seriously injured,
| as well as to displaced workers, residents and emergency
| personnel who were seriously affected. Depending on
| individual needs, this financial assistance included up to a
| full year's living expenses, estate and
| special-circumstances cash grants, and more.
|
| 16. What was the role of Pakistan's spy agency in the Sept.
| 11 attacks and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist
| Daniel Pearl?
|
| The idea that Pakistan is considered a leading American ally
| in the war on terror is both ironic and a bit disturbing
| when one considers that there are proven links between
| Pakistan's intelligence agency, the notorious ISI, and the
| Taliban, as well as likely ties to al Qaeda and bin Laden.
|
| In October 2001, the Wall Street Journal and many reputable
| news organizations in South Asia reported that the head of
| the ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, was fired after being
| linked to a $100,000 payment that had been wired to al Qaeda
| hijacker Mohamed Atta in America to pay for the Sept. 11
| attacks. The New York Times said the intelligence service
| even used al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train covert
| operatives for use in a war of terror against India.
|
| In recent weeks, two troubling reports have emerged. The
| highly regarded French journalist Bernard-Henri Levy has
| written that Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl had been
| murdered by elements of the ISI because he'd learned that al
| Qaeda "is largely controlled by the Pakistani secret
| service" and that Islamic extremists control the nation's
| nuclear weapons. And investigative reporter Gerald Posner
| writes that bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah not only
| revealed a link to top Saudis but also to high-ranking
| Pakistani air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir. Mir, who is said
| to have cut protection deals in secret meetings with bin
| Laden, died earlier this year in a plane crash that also
| killed his wife and closest confidants.
|
| 17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?
|
| Actually, it's not clear whether this question should even
| be on this list. Two years later, it's not known whether the
| anthrax-laden letters that killed five Americans from
| Connecticut to Florida, and targeted some leading Democratic
| pols and TV news anchors, had anything to do with the Sept.
| 11 attacks. Indeed, the list of potential suspects - al
| Qaeda terrorists, Saddam, crackpot U.S. scientists - hasn't
| been narrowed down. Our government's utter cluelessness
| about a reign of terror that rattled the nation and
| dominated the headlines in fall 2001 is an investigative
| failure of epic proportions.
|
| One man, a former Army biomedical researcher named Steven J.
| Hatfill, has been labeled "a person of interest" by the FBI,
| but nothing definitive has linked Hatfill to the crime. Just
| this summer, federal investigators drained a Frederick, Md.,
| pond where they speculated the anthrax letters might have
| been assembled, but tests of soil samples taken after the
| draining yielded no evidence of biological weapons. And now
| Hatfill has sued the government for invading his privacy -
| in a case that may never be solved.
|
| 18. What happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in
| a Philadelphia bus terminal in fall 2001?
|
| Do you remember this front-page headline from Oct. 20, 2001:
| "In Phila. locker, a lethal find; Explosive 'would probably
| have leveled' bus depot." You can be forgiven if you don't.
| There's been no mention in local media since late 2001 of
| the alarming discovery of one-third of a pound of lethal C-4
| and 1,000 feet of military detonation cord in a locker at
| the Greyhound bus terminal in Center City, even though it's
| possibly the most direct link between Philadelphia and
| domestic terrorism.
|
| Investigators conceded a couple of months into their probe
| that the trail had gone stone-cold. They speculated that the
| material had been stolen from an Army base and that the
| culprit, who rented the locker on Sept. 29, 2001, decided
| that the material was too hot to handle after the Sept. 11
| attacks. The truth may never be known.
|
| 19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional
| Sept. 11 report?
|
| It's not a total mystery. Everyone has acknowledged that the
| pages contain highly embarrassing information about links
| between the Sept. 11 hijackers and the government of Saudi
| Arabia, America's supposed ally in the Middle East and home
| to the world's largest oil reserves. One of those officials
| is said to be Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, whose wife,
| Princess Haifa, indirectly funded at least two of the Sept.
| 11 terrorists during their time in San Diego. The prince is
| so close to the Bush family that he's known, incredibly, as
| "Bandar Bush." This week, Time reports that just after the
| Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S. commercial airspace was still
| closed to our citizens, Bush allowed a jet to stop at 10
| U.S. cities to pick up and fly home 140 prominent Saudis,
| including relatives of bin Laden.
|
| A new must-read book by investigative reporter Posner - "Why
| America Slept" - takes the conspiracy to the highest of
| levels of the Saudi government. He says a top bin Laden
| lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002,
| stunned investigators when - allegedly given the "truth
| serum" sodium pentothal - fingered three top Saudis. They
| were Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the Westernized
| owner of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem; Prince Turki
| al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime
| intelligence chief, and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud
| al-Kabir.
|
| The most incredible part of the story is what happened next.
| In an eight-day period in late July 2002, Prince Ahmed died
| at age 43 from a heart attack, Prince Turki died in a car
| crash and Prince Fahd "died of thirst." Coincidence? What do
| you think?
|
| 20. Where is Osama bin Laden?
|
| Remember how President Bush vowed on Sept. 17, 2001, that he
| was determined to catch bin Laden "dead or alive"? Well, the
| good news is that if he wants bin Laden "alive," there's
| still a chance that could happen. Intelligence experts now
| agree that bin Laden successfully escaped his Tora Bora
| hideout in Afghanistan back in December 2001 - when the U.S.
| failed to commit ample manpower to the chase - and that the
| al Qaeda leader is alive and well, and plotting new attacks.
|
| "We don't know where he is," Army Col. Rodney Davis,
| spokesman for America's forces in Afghanistan, said
| recently. But Newsweek seems to know where to find bin
| Laden: in the remote, mountainous - and lawless - Kunar
| province of Afghanistan. The magazine chillingly reported
| that just five short months ago, bin Laden convened the
| biggest terror summit since Sept. 11 at a mountain
| stronghold there. The participants reportedly included three
| top-ranking representatives from the Taliban, several senior
| al Qaeda operatives and leaders from radical Islamic groups
| in Chechnya and Uzbekistan. The topic was carrying out
| attacks against U.S. interests inside Iraq.
|
| The most chilling aspect of the Newsweek report is that bin
| Laden has access to biological weapons and is determined to
| find a way to use them against the United States. A source
| from the Taliban told the magazine: "Osama's next step will
| be unbelievable."
|
| But this week, ABC News reported that the hunt for bin Laden
| has been narrowed to a different area - a 40-square-mile
| section of the Waziristan region of Pakistan. The report
| said that local residents suspected of trying to inform
| Americans about bin Laden's whereabouts were executed in
| broad daylight.
|
|
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