The Day Before September 11

I've been suspicious about the true facts of 9/11 for some time. I have been hesitant to wade into that pool because it is already polluted with disinformation, and because I know what a life suck investigating such events can be.

It's clear the government failed to act on numerous warnings from qualified people about an imminent terrorist attack. What remains to be proven, in my opinion, is whether people in the government covered up such warnings out of ignorance, or because they wanted the attacks to happen and wanted to make sure no one stopped them.

I have browsed through a few of the books and started doing my own little timeline of events. One event really struck me as a smoking gun, and today seems an appropriate day to share this.

On the CNN site, in a timeline available from this page, I found this stunning entry:

SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 A CIA plan to strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan, including support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, is given to the White House. Sen. Dianne Feinstein asks for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney. The California Democrat is told that Cheney's staff would need six months to prepare for a meeting.

When I read this, I was stunned. Feinstein is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a group that works closely with intelligence agencies and--ostensibly--provides oversight of intelligence activities. (I say ostensibly because the committee does not know of, and therefore has no option to approve or disapprove all intelligence activities). How could it be that, as the 9/11 Commission report states, when the "system was blinking red" on a possible terrorist attack on the country, and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee comes to say hey, something serious is afoot and we need to talk, the VP's office could blow off Feinstein by saying they couldn't review her plans for six months?

Curious, I called Senator Feinstein's office and asked, is it normal for the VP to blow off a meeting with Senator Feinstein for six months? The four people I spoke to in her office all said and did the same thing. They said no, that's not usual, what is this about? I said this is about the Senator's 9/10 visit to Cheney, the day before 9/11. At this, each staffer got nervous and transferred me to the next person. None of them would even confirm that this conversation had transpired, but in the end, I found it on a press release on Feinstein's senate site:

I was deeply concerned as to whether our house was in order to prevent a terrorist attack. My work on the Intelligence Committee and as chair of the Technology and Terrorism Subcommittee had given me a sense of foreboding for some time. I had no specific data leading to a possible attack.

In fact, I was so concerned that I contacted Vice President Cheney's office that same month to urge that he restructure our counter-terrorism and homeland defense programs to ensure better accountability and prevent important intelligence information from slipping through the cracks.

Despite repeated efforts by myself and staff, the White House did not address my request. I followed this up last September 2001 before the attacks and was told by 'Scooter' Libby that it might be another six months before he would be able to review the material. I told him I did not believe we had six months to wait.

This just begs the question. Did Scooter Libby know what was going to happen? Did he know just how busy they really would be over the next six months? It's hard not to see that as a possibility.

I was particularly interested that it was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby who put Feinstein off. Libby was one of the co-signers to the seminal document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In contrast to JFK's call that we seek a true peaceful co-existence with other countries, rather than a "pax Americana," the PNAC report calls for just that - ensuring a pax Americana. This is the same report that said,

the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

That quote gave rise to the notion that perhaps 9/11 was made or allowed to happen by the government as an excuse to get us back into a war. We know now that the government tried hard to make that war one in Iraq, despite the fact that no evidence from 9/11 linked Iraq to the attack in any way. So we went to Afghanistan instead and made a great show of taking down the Taliban, even as we let Osama Bin Laden slip through our fingers at Tora Bora. We had pinpointed his location by radio. We could absolutely have picked him up. Several friends of mine in the black ops world have told me repeatedly that we've known were OBL was at all times. A man in Hollywood was approached by a CIA operative to do a documentary of the secret tailing of OBL. So it's not like we can't find him.

And if we weren't picking him up, why? Could it be because ties between his actions and those of our intelligence community might raise disturbing questions about 9/11?

We know now too that not only were there no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, but, as the Downing Street Memo tells us, that Team Bush knew there were no weapons, and were deliberately falsifying intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq anyway.

When Ambassador Joe Wilson tried to tell us intelligence was being falsified to justify the march to Iraq, what happened? Scooter Libby talked to Judith Miller of the New York Times about the fact that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, was a covert CIA operative. Six days later, Robert Novak reveals this fact in a column that essentially broke the law by revealing the identity of a covert source.

I think Libby told Miller to leak it, and that Miller willingly complied. I think that Miller is in jail not because she believes in the first amendment, but because that is the only thing shielding her directly from criminal charges. And if Libby was so in the loop as to have been a part of this illegal outing, is it possible he was in the loop before the fact on 9/11? It's certainly possible. It is a fact? Of course not. This is speculation, but I believe that his meeting with Feinstein on the 10th should be investigated. Why did he tell her it would be six months before they could review her proposal when such a timeframe was utterly out of keeping re a request from a high profile Senator to the Vice President?

People like David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, and recently, former intelligence analyst John Newman are presenting serious questions as to whom al Qaeda was really serving in their attack on America. It's not out of the realm of possibility that they were serving the Neocon agenda for a "new Pearl Harbor." We've seen, in graphic relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, how the concerns of ordinary people are not even on the radar to the President, the Vice President, or any of his high-level cabinet members. The president played golf and guitar while people drowned. Condi bought $1000+ shoes. VP Cheney was preserving the last days of his vacation. Is it so hard to believe that people with this kind of concern for America might have done more than even allowing 9/11 to happen, but might have, in some way, encouraged it?

I cannot, in a blog post, present the necessary evidence to show this to be not an idle, but a rather informed opinion on these events. I would direct you to start to do your own reading, not just online, but in books, where evidence can be presented in detail, with footnotes. I will hasten to add that I am not one of those who thinks a missile hit the Pentagon. I met people in DC who told me of their experiences of seeing a plane hit the building.

Just because I have serious questions as to what happened on 9/11 does not mean I agree with the theories of others who share my questions. And a reading of the 9/11 Commission Report, which I commenced recently, brought up far more questions than answers. The report is strange, bearing paragraphs that seem to be answering accusations not made directly in their pages, begging the question of what they are trying to hide. It's bizarre, and disturbing. So I want to know. And wanting to know does not put me in the same bucket with some of the truly whacko conspiracy theorists on this issue, whose theories I strongly disagree with. It puts me in the bucket with many reasonable people who care about the future of our country, at a time when that future seems increasingly bleak.

I look forward to a point 30 years from now, after which many more documents will have been pried from the government showing what they really knew about the impending actions of 9/11. The recently released JFK assassination files have shown us a good deal than we ever knew before about the government's pre- and post-assassination interest in Oswald, things we didn't have documentation on thirty years ago. What will we learn about OBL and al Qaeda years from now? Whatever it is, I'll bet confidently that it won't match what we've been told to date.