eleven slash three

One is never sure about what to say or do on this anniversary. Back in 2002, I couldn't believe this day was coming. In 2003, the national mood was still somber, but there was also a small sense that people had started to get over 9/11. They will never forget that it happened, but the mourning had already eclipsed. Now it's 2004, and September 11 almost feels like a normal day. Maybe this is because it's a Saturday and the mood is naturally festive. Or maybe it's because Iraq and the upcoming election have done so much to divide this nation. Or maybe none of this matters because so much time has passed, and the majority of us have moved on with our lives.

Last week, my sister returned a book I loaned to her what seems like ages ago, but it was probably only a few months. The book, published by Disinformation and edited by The Memory Hole's Russ Kick, is titled "Everything You Know is Wrong," and it's chockful of articles featuring badly underreported information. Given my stance that the mainstream media doesn't print the knowledge we, as a society, need to know to make informed decisions, you've probably already guessed that this book is my cup of tea.

I've only had time to read two chapters of it. The first appendix, called "More Secrets and Lies," will be discussed on this blog at a later date. The second one is what I'll be focusing on for the third anniversary: "September 11, 2001: No Surprise," by Russ Kick. It's a long article which builds a case proving that the US government knew 9/11 was imminent. Kick briefly details 47 situations that, while not uncovering a smoking gun, proves that so much intelligence existed before 9/11 that they only way our government could have been taken by surprise is if they are completely, totally, and utterly incompetent. I have issues with a couple of the articles Kick cited, but his research and footnotes are rock solid.

I'm going to quote a few of the situations Kick detailed, the ones that struck me as being most important to his case of the US having prior knowledge that 9/11 was about to happen. Whenever possible, I will add links to the articles Kick has in his footnotes. Some of these articles have vanished from the web, but they are still in Lexis/Nexis, so I'll make text file links for them.

Read then and decide (or debunk) for yourself.

_COMMUNICATIONS OF BIN LADEN AND HIS TERRORISTS WERE BEING MONITORED BY US INTELLIGENCE FOR YEARS

What are we to make of the fact that the FBI intercepted bin Laden's men making a celebratory phone call just after the attacks? [*] Had the US been unable to monitor al Qaeda's calls before September 11, but miraculously managed to start intercepting calls on that very day? Of course not. Based on just this information, we can deduce that US intelligence has been monitoring the terrorists' communications before the crashes.
...
A Time magazine columnist has claimed that when documents presented at the embassy bombing trials made it clear that al Qaeda's messages were being intercepted, bin Laden's organization stopped using satellite phones, the result being, "We lost him." Then how can we explain the fact that US intelligence intercepted the terror organizations calls on September 10 [Referenced in a Wash. Times article, "Intercepts Foretold of 'Big Attack,' by Rowan Scarbourgh, that's not in Lexis/Nexis for some reason] and 11? Obviously , despite official claims to the contrary, the US was monitoring the conversations of al Qaeda and bin Laden around the world up to and including the day of the attacks...

_PEOPLE KNEW BEFOREHAND ABOUT ATTACKS

Reports have been swirling that ordinary people, mostly Arab-Americans in Ney York City, knew about the attacks before they happened. FBI agents have told the media that they're tracking down numerous people who spoke of the impending attacks in the New York area, thereby confirming that such warnings occured ... "The officer said the story 'had been out on the street' and the number of leads turning up was so 'overwhemling' that it was difficult to tell who has heard about the attacks from second-hand sources and who had heard it from someone who may have been a participant," according to the Journal News of Westchester, New York. [*]

...Three incidents of which we know details invovle schoolchildren (which makes sense since kids are notoriously poor judges of when to keep their lips buttoned). On September 10, 2001, a fifth-grader in a Dallas suburb made a startling declaration to his teacher: "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." The boy was absent from school on September 11 and 12. [*]
...
In another incident, this one in Jersey City, a pupil at an unnamed school had warned people to stay away from lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11. Several hijackers lived in Jersey City. [*]

Even more to the point, one week before the attacks, a Brooklyn high-school freshman pointed out a classroom window at the WTC towers and said to his teacher, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week." They boy's family had recently immigrated from Pakistan. [*]

_FLORIDA NATIONAL GUARD ACTIVATED FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE ATTACKS

In what might be a case of ESP, Florida Governor Jeb Bush - who is, of cours,e the president's brother - called up his state's National Guard on September 7, 2001. Executive Order 01-261 repeatedly makes reference to the Guard aiding law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of "civil disturbance." ... [*]

_RUSSIAN MEDIA WARNED OF A HUGE, DESTABILIZING ATTACK ON US

...On July 12, Pravda ran a page-one article headlined: "The Dollar and America Will Fall Down on August 19?" While speaking at a conference focusing on the financial collaspe of the US, Dr. Tatyanan Koryagina - who works for a division of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development - gave an interview to the newspaper. The interview asked her, "All the participants at the hearings stated that America is a huge financial pyramid, which will crash soon. Still, it is hard to uunderstand how this could happen in the first and richest country of the world - without a war, without a missile or bomb strikes?" She cryptically replied: "Besides bombs and missiles, there are other kinds of weaponry, much more destructive ones." [*]

_THE FINAL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE: CIA DIRECTOR GEORGE TENET KNEW WHAT WAS COMING

The most damning quote of all comes from an on-the-scene bulletin from National Public Radio on the morning of September 11. Congressional correspondent David Welna was reporting from the Capitol building as it was being evacuated: "I spoke with Congressman Ike Skelton - a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee - who said that just recently the Director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack - an imminnent attack - on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected." [*]

So there you have it: Proof that our government was monitoring al-Qa'ida's phone calls, some of the Arab population in New York City had prior knowledge of the attacks, it looks like somebody in Russia had prior knowledge (the article also gets into evidence that Iraq knew it was coming, and the Philippines and Israel also warned us), the president's brother may have had prior knowledge, and George Tenet just fucking knew. There's really no possible way that our government couldn't have known 9/11 was coming.

So why did it happen?