War on terrorism: 9-11?

It's a bit refreshing to hear that there are people asking questions about 9-11. And Jared Israel, over this hour we're going to be talking about those questions, taking calls from our listeners, hearing your answers.

Before we get started though, can you give us a little thumb-nail sketch of who Jared Israel is, what you do, where you're from.

Well, I'm from New York. I'm from the 60's generation. I'm an old guy. During the 60's - what did you do in the 60's?

Don't say that, it makes me feel old.

You are; you are. You're not getting better; you're getting older.

I was active in the civil rights movement and the student movement against the war in Vietnam. And then I did just regular life things. I got back into activity in l998, dealing with media coverage of, especially, Yugoslavia, and since then media coverage of 9-11. Analyzing media distortion is a special interest of mine. I did a lot of that during the war in Vietnam. So I have some experience.

Sort of an investigator of journalists.

Well, that's right. The thing that our Website, Emperor's Clothes, does is look at how the media misrepresents information. Frighteningly, we find it occurs in definite patterns, which are very hard to explain in a nice way. But that's what we do. We study the facts.

Very quickly, after the tragic events of September 11th you-all devoted a rather extensive portion of your Website to a critique of the information we were given. Do you want to share just a broad outline of what your research has shown?

Well, the first thing that shocked me and a lot of other people too because I've heard this from people in the military and the Customs Department - was that no planes went in the air over Washington, D.C. until after the Pentagon was hit.

You're talking about planes that might intercept incoming -

Yeah. Intercept doesn't necessarily mean an aggressive act. It means a plane goes up and interacts with another plane.

There's a huge Air Force Base 10 miles from the Pentagon, Andrews Air Force Base, that has two combat-ready fighter wings. The Air National Guard Fighter Wing describes itself as being maintained in the highest possible state of combat readiness. None of those planes went in the air. But then, a few minutes after the Pentagon was hit, they did go in the air, because we have news reports about that. Why would that happen?

So essentially, four planes are hijacked and they're able to observe these planes on their radar, going off course and yet, no response. Is that it?

Well, here's for example. At 9:06 the FAA, according to their account, closed the air corridor between Cleveland and Washington, DC. (1) If they closed this air corridor, which is one of the most extreme actions the FAA has ever taken, why wouldn't they put planes in the air over Washington?

After the first two hits. The second World Trade Center hit was at 9:03, approximately. So this was at 9:06, within three minutes.

The U.S. has a very sophisticated air force. On Emperor's Clothes we posted some of the documents which lay out what NORAD, the FAA - the Federal Aviation Administration - and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are supposed to do when there's a hijacking. (2)

The FAA says they knew or strongly suspected there was a hijacking by 8:20. (3) We believe they knew sooner but let's take their word. Vice President Cheney said on 'Meet the Press' on September 16th, that the Secret Service went on emergency open lines with the FAA as soon as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Which was at 8:45 Eastern Time, right? So, if the Secret Service was on open lines to the FAA at 8:45; if at 9:06 the corridor between Washington and Cleveland was closed, then how could it be that no planes were put in the air over Washington?

What time was the Pentagon hit?

The Pentagon was hit at approximately 9:45 Eastern Time, so we're talking about an hour and 40 minutes between the time they knew there was a hijacking and the time the Pentagon was hit. That hijacked plane was flying west from Boston. So they knew it could have been flying to Washington, right? Why didn't they put planes in the air?

When you ask these questions, what answers are given?

Well, no Official has answered us. Which is amazing, because the documentation that we've produced has gotten a tremendous readership.

The answers they have given in general to this question, because it has been raised by millions of people, is, "We just weren't ready. We didn't realize this kind of thing was coming."

That was the first answer they gave. And then they changed the answer on the 14th of September and said they had put planes in the air but it was too late. This is very important because they didn't say that during the first three days. They only discovered that they had put planes in the air three days, four days after the event. Now just think about that.

These planes were put in the air from where?

They claimed two planes were put in the air from Otis Air Force Base but weren't in time to catch Flight 11 before it hit the World Trade Center. And they claimed planes were sent out of Langley Air Force Base, which is around 126 miles south of Washington, DC, near Newport News. They claimed that again those planes were too late.

Now, that story is simply absurd. Consider. A plane hit the Pentagon, supposedly, because we're going by their story, at 9:45. That plane left Dulles Airport. It went west 300 miles to Ohio and turned around.

Supposedly the transponder was turned off. Turning off a transponder does not make a plane invisible. It merely means that certain aspects of the tracking become non-functional and some more recent radar can't then see the plane, but basic radar can. There are several radar stations that would have been able to see that plane in that area. Keep in mind that it was at 9:00 Eastern Time that this happened. This was around 30 minutes after they knew another plane had been hijacked and flown into a building. Planes have not been hijacked in the US for many years and this would be the second possible hijacking. A few minutes later they closed the air corridor from Cleveland to Washington, D.C., so they knew something was happening, right?

There are multiple radar stations that can scan that air corridor, including military stations. There are also military aircraft that have the capacity to go up and see 250 miles with basic radar. So they can see planes with the transponder turned off. I mean, after all, hostile military planes can't be expected to turn on their transponders when they invade your country.

How could it be possible for Flight 77 to go to Ohio and turn around under those circumstances and fly 50 minutes back to the Pentagon and nothing be done? How could no planes be put in the air over Washington, DC during the entire period that that plane was coming from Ohio back to Washington, DC, given all that they knew and given that they knew enough to close the air corridor? This is like you're standing there and a dog walks by and you notice it has the head of a cat.

Good that people are asking these questions. Wouldn't people rejoinder that it's been many years since planes had been hijacked in the US so the authorities are just not used to it happening?

Well, unless we're talking about people who got frozen by some special ray...I mean a plane had been hijacked at 8:20 and they don't deny that they have the capacity to intercept.

The defense that is made by the government, is basically stupidity and incompetence. That's what they say. "We were confused; we didn't know." This spectacle of Bush...

Let's get to Bush in just a moment...We got a caller.

Let's take the caller.

Was it something I said?

I was getting off the point slightly and it would have been a long way back so let me just deal with the specific thing you asked. I said it's been a long time, about 10 years, since the previous hijacking. And you asked, wouldn't it be reasonable to say that the people in the government were unprepared?

And many people have raised this point. The media raised it a good deal. People in the government said it, Rumsfeld said it; they all made this point. And their behavior said it. I mean, the spectacle of Bush reading to children about goats after the second WTC crash, when the air corridor to Washington, DC from Cleveland had been shut down and when, Cheney said on Meet the Press, there were direct lines from the Secret Service to the FAA -

The Secret Service was with Bush.

And they were with Bush. And here he is sitting in a publicly known place reading to children - it's just mind-boggling. It's a nonsense point.

You know, ordinary people say, "I was shocked." And the spin-masters are trying to create the impression that the same goes for the people responsible for air safety and air defense, that they're just like us. But they are not. Air traffic control is a carefully organized, military-type operation or else the planes would hit each other. When a plane goes off course, it doesn't have to be hijacked. And if they can't make contact with the pilot and find out what's going on, they have a procedure which is they send a plane up. They don't have to have evidence of hostile intent to send a plane up. They just have to have -

Do you know how often they do that?

Not very often but they do do it. For instance, when Payne Stewart's Lear jet went out of control, they sent planes and chased it across the country and determined it was on autopilot and it was going to go to an unpopulated area. There was no evidence there of hostile intent.

There were articles in the New York Times of September 13th and September 15th which stated that the Pentagon knew that that plane was coming from Ohio. The Pentagon was in touch with the FAA immediately about it. Now, under those circumstances why wouldn't they scramble planes into the air from Andrews Air Force Base?

Just think about it. The President's plane flies into and departs from Andrews Air Force Base. You mean to tell me they have no fighter escorts there? If the President is in trouble they have to call from Langley Air Force Base to please come help? They have 10,000 people working there and they can't put a plane in the air? Please.

Did Andrews Air Force Base put something on their Website?

They did. You know, we don't' want to sound paranoid; we're just the messenger. The Andrews Air Force Website, prior to 911, stated that its job included the protection of Washington, D.C. After 9-11 that information was removed. Now unfortunately for them, there is an archive Website, which we have cited on Emperor's Clothes, which maintains images of Websites in previous periods. So we can prove that the information was there, and was removed. (4)

Before 9-11, the D.C. Air National Guard Website had a statement that they maintained planes in the highest possible state of combat readiness.(5)

Now if that doesn't mean they're ready to fly what does it mean? What's the highest possible state of combat readiness? That statement was on the DC Air National Guard Website before 9-11. (5)

On one of those Websites there's a note that says it was changed on September 12th. Literally. Why? Why would they remove the information that the job of these forces was to protect Washington, D.C. unless to hide the fact that they had failed at their job?

Now, how would it be possible for a failure like that to occur out of incompetence? We're not talking about ordinary incompetence. Two planes had hit buildings in New York. They knew those planes had been highjacked. They knew a hijacked plane was coming towards Washington, D.C. They didn't know it for just five minutes. They knew it for almost an hour.

We've got another caller. Hi, Caller.

Hi. I want to thank you for this program. A question for the guest. Assuming all of this is true, which, these are pretty obvious facts, do you believe that this prior knowledge was an effort by Bush to legitimize the global war on terrorism and following that - what steps are being taken on a national level to make this information available and widely known to the American public?

These are two big questions, Caller. Can we start with talking about what you think was the motive?

Jared, was this in your opinion something where our government knew something was coming and didn't take action? Or was it actually our government in connivance with the perpetrators? You know obviously the political advantage since September 11 has gone to the Right - it's gone to the Bush administration and their allies in the military industrial complex. If you look at who's benefited, this is clearly something that has not only benefited what was previously a tottering and what many people saw as an illegitimate administration - and they now have some of the highest political ratings any have ever had.

You know, aside from the question of Right/Left, there's the whole question of the effect on ordinary people. Because another way of putting what you said would be that immense amounts of money and power have moved from ordinary people to very rich people. I mean, you know, if you listen to Bush's Town Hall meeting - I think it was the one in Florida - everybody gets up and says, "You are the greatest leader in history - what are we going to do about the layoffs?" In other words, they first bow to him and then they say, "We've all lost our jobs." And he says, "It's not the role of government to help you." It's the role of government only to make war, right? We have small government - makes war. So what you're saying has a lot of truth to it.

Here's my own feeling: obviously, foreknowledge and planning mean the same. Because it's not reasonable that powerful forces in our government would simply know that terrorists were going to do this and let it happen without them having an intimate connection with those terrorists. That is, how could they know, otherwise?

* MARK HAIM What if there was intelligence gathering, with people under surveillance and they chose, because it was to their political advantage, to let them do what they were doing?

It doesn't make sense. Consider Bush's behavior. Without saying that he knew days before, we know that he knew before he left his hotel that the first World Trade Center had been hit and we know, from Cheney, that the FAA had open lines to the Secret Service, which was with Bush. Why did the Secret Service let him go to that school? That school is 5 miles from an international airport. According to Time magazine -

No, the Booker school is in Sarasota and there's something called the Sarasota-Brandenton International Airport five miles from the Booker on Martin Luther King Boulevard there.

Time Magazine published, it was either in '93 or '94, an article saying that the biggest fear among presidential security forces was that a plane would be hijacked from an international airport and used to fly into a building where he was staying.

Now, if that was the biggest fear of the Secret Service, and if the Secret Service knew that there was a hijacking at 8:20, and that the hijacked plane later hit a building, which according to Cheney, they knew - how would it be conceivable for them to let him go to that school?

I mean it would be an act of treason to let him go to that school under those circumstances unless they knew for sure that he was safe. And only somebody in on the scam knows anything for sure.

So if he was merely aware from Intelligence reports that *something* was going to happen, that would not, in the mind of any reasonable, conservative-acting, Secret Service person be sufficient to allow him to go to that school. He had to know that that school could not possibly be a target.

Of course later in the day he scurried from one -

Isn't that something? After everything happened, suddenly his entourage in Sarasota went into the most extreme security mode. The same people, in the same town, closed down all of the airports - Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport was closed down.

They closed down airports all over the country didn't they?

But they closed down Sarasota-Brandenton before the others and they ordered that the education commissioner not be permitted to land. They blocked all the roads. The guys in security at the airport said they'd never seen anything like it - in fact they implied it was absurd.

This was all for show.

Let's take this other caller. Hi, Caller, you're on Evening Edition.

Yeah, I'm listening to what this man's saying and I don't think the government knew what was going on after the first plane hit. I think they thought it was a stray and I just can't buy what he's saying. I think the man has an agenda. I think you have an agenda. And I'm not believing anything you-all say.

Caller, one thing I want to make clear. I have not endorsed my guest's point of view. I'm just interviewing him. And I think it's an interesting hypothesis he has. I simply am exploring this question and invited a guest who's done quite a bit of research to answer your questions.

I think he's taken some pieces of a puzzle, put them to together and he ain't got the whole picture yet but he's trying' to make it work.

Ok. Any specific question, Caller?

Why does he have a grudge against the United States government? Does it go back to the 60's?

Jared, would you like to respond to that?

Well, I mean, "And do you still beat your wife?"

Look, things happened that day that affected us all tremendously. The opinions that I'm putting forward are held by many people in the military. As I mentioned before, people in the Customs department, on two occasions, have expressed them to me and we've received a lot of email from military people who were very pleased we were bringing these points up. We have an Air Force that didn't respond. Whether I'm critical of the government about other things, which I am, and whether I care passionately about this country, which I do - because I have nothing to gain from raising unpopular points - these are secondary to the question of the facts I am bringing up. The facts are shocking and one doesn't want to believe them. And the easiest thing to do under that circumstance is to say. "You must have an agenda." Well, even if I did have an agenda - are the facts wrong?

Jared, we've got another caller trying to -

Can I just comment on one other thing he said?

He said that after the first plane hit they didn't didn't think this was an act of terrorism. Well, here are some facts.

The FAA reported in Newsday that they knew at 8:20 that Flight 11 had been hijacked out of Boston.

Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center at about 8:45.

Now, what possible reason would anyone have to believe that a plane, which had been hijacked, and then hit the biggest building in the US, did it by mistake? That would be absurd.

And we have reports from, for instance, the Daily News in New York: "9:08 a.m. Police radio broadcasts, 'This was a terrorist attack. Notify the Pentagon.'" Daily News, New York, September 12th.

Ok. We've got a caller. Hi, Caller, thanks for your patience.

I just got cut off and I don't appreciate his comments about the wife beating because I don't do that.

No, that's an expression, you know, when you accuse somebody of something and ask him a question in an accusative way, it's like saying, "And do you still beat your wife?"

You see, because you said, "Why do you have an agenda?" That assumes I *have* an agenda. So how can I answer?

You know, when you have a family and you raise criticisms of family members, it's because you love them and I rather passionately love the people in this country.

The experiences I had in the 60's were of working with people to change things. I saw the decency of the American people. I saw white people who have been affected by racism come to sympathize with black people. I saw people who had learned from birth that you don't question the government, question the government about Vietnam. I'm talking about soldiers. And I, myself, by the way, started out, if I may say, when I was a young man, as somebody who would have agreed with you completely, that is I was completely opposed to people who were questioning. So I myself have gone through this kind of change. And I think the American people, and people around the world feel this about us, have many wonderful traits, openness to ideas and so on.

But I'm talking about criminal actions. I'm saying we have evidence that suggests criminal action. And we know that powerful people throughout history have been capable of such things in the interests of money. That's been true throughout history. Why would our country be an exception?

[At this point a man called in and raised two questions to which Jared Israel responded. The questions were:

1) What about the 4th plane, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania?

2) What about the accusation that the smooth way the twin towers collapsed suggested explosive charges had been planted in the buildings?]

Well, we're trying, at least at Emperor's Clothes, to stick to what we're sure of. We really don't know what happened with that plane in Pennsylvania. We looked into it a bit and, while it was a terrible tragedy, it was secondary because things were so much clearer with flight 77, the one that hit the Pentagon.

On the question of the WTC towers, I've heard arguments on both sides and we've stayed pretty much away from it though we reported a little on what some people have said, because we really don't know.

However, I can tell you this: the firefighters in New York, in their publication, have been very upset, not only with the crass way Mayor Giuliani dealt with them, at a certain point trying to stop them from finding the bodies of their brothers, but also because of the haste with which the structural material was removed and melted down, instead of having a proper fire investigation to determine cause.

But there are a lot of possible explanations other than that there was a demolition.

So since we don't know the answers on those two points, we've not tried to give opinions. Indeed, in general we're *not trying to give opinions*. We're not trying to point out suspicious circumstances. We're trying to focus on what we can be sure of and then make logical deductions that would follow, without prejudice and without emotion, if we can. So that's why we're dealing with the reported behavior of key leaders and then analyzing what those reports mean.

For example, regarding the reports we have about planes and their movements and when those reports were made - those things we can be sure of because the reports are in print. That is, we can be sure that they wrote that at a particular time. So we try to deal with that on Emperor's Clothes.

[Caller asks if Jared Israel knows anything about a report prior to 9-11 that Attorney General Ashcroft would be using Air Force One instead of public transportation.]

No I don't. Here's an important thing. People have healthy suspicions which I'm not trying to put a damper on. But when an event occurs, there are necessarily certain coincidences which you can then mistakenly see as causative. Because naturally a whole bunch of things will happen and some of them will look like they're related. So that's why we try to hone in on things that are specifically related to this event: procedures that were not followed. What are the procedures? We have them on the Website. We have the report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which says that the first thing the FAA does when there's a hijacking is notify the Secretary of Defense. But according to Assistant Secretary of Defense Victoria Clarke, it was she who first told Rumsfeld about the World Trade Center attack. And after that, what did he do? According to Clarke, he stayed in his office until after the Pentagon was hit. He did not join her in the National Military Command Center. Now, this is an unbelievable behavioral response. It can't be explained by saying there were no hijackings for many years. This woman comes in and tells Rumsfeld the two biggest buildings in the New York have just been hit by hijacked planes and Rumsfeld says, "I have to make some phone calls."

What would be the reason for him staying out of the National Military Command Center for 45 minutes or more? What would be the *sane* reason? The only reason that we could think of was that if he wasn't in there he couldn't be held responsible for the lack of response that he knew was going to take place. So it was important for him *not* to be in there at that time.

The same thing happened with Richard Myers. He's acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11th. On September 13th he's going for a nomination hearing to be made head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is the most important day of his life because on this day, that he is acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - and he's an Air Force General with thousands of hours of time flying fighter planes - this is the only day the United States has ever been attacked from the air.

Myers claims he is at Senator Max Cleland's office in the morning - 8:40 Eastern Time. He sees on TV that the first plane has hit the World Trade Center. He claims on Armed Services Radio that at that point he went in and met with Cleland for an hour. Nobody called him and told him that a second plane had hit, that the air corridor had been closed between Washington and Cleveland, that a plane had been hijacked in Ohio and was flying back to the Pentagon.

Then he also claims that when he walked out of Cleland's office, he was handed a portable phone and it was the head of NORAD - the North American Aerospace Defense Command - telling him the Pentagon had been hit.

Now these are unbelievable assertions. Doesn't the man have a beeper? Doesn't the man have a cell phone? Doesn't the man have a secretary who knows where he is? General Myers was, after all, acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military. Wouldn't anybody inform him that planes were being hijacked and flying into buildings?

And you know what Myers said he talked to Max Cleland about? He claims he sat there and they discussed the danger of terrorism. Now this is like a satire. It seems unbelievable.

Hi, Caller. Can you make a very quick pointed question?

Yeah. I'm extremely concerned that what we've just heard for the last hour parallels exactly the anti-Semitic view that's been pushed throughout the Arab world and into parts of Europe that this was a conspiracy and that Jews in particular were forewarned about the attacks on the World Trade Center so that they would not go to work that day.

That's a lie, though. That, of course, isn't true.

You're playing into the hands of the anti-Semitic people.

Because we have a short time left, let me say, first of all, that I'm Jewish. Second of all I loathe anti-Semitism. This gentleman is Jewish, too.

The anti-Semitic stuff was started three days after 9-11 by General Gul, the former top CIA- connected person in Pakistan. He told MSNBC that "The Jews" must have done it. This line has been pushed by Fox TV which is, in my opinion, a very questionable institution and it's been pitched by some fascistic people on the Internet, trying to turn this situation, which is always done when there's a problem, trying to turn this situation, which has zero connection with Jewish people into an attack on Jews so that ordinary people, who don't want to question the US government, because it's such a horrifying idea, have a convenient group to pin it on. A scapegoat group. And that's what the whole business is with saying that all the Jews stayed home from the World Trade Center. Which is an insult to the many Jewish people and many other people who were friends of theirs who died on that day.

Caller, does that answer you question?

Well, I would agree but you're playing into the hands of those people who are doing exactly what you are complaining about.

Well, the problem is what I'm saying, is true. And we can't *not* tell the truth because liars will try to twist it. So because I agree with the danger here, I'm going to post, within the next week, post an exhaustive look at the attempt to twist this into anti-Semitism - which I know is very prevalent. And, which I am entirely opposed to. (6)

Caller, I appreciate you getting in on this. We have no time left, but thank you so much for calling.

Thank you very much.

Jared we are right now just about out of time and there's so much I wanted to touch on that we haven't even started on. One caller asked about the efforts to get this out to more people. I wanted to talk about the political implications of those of us in the peace movement raising these concerns. We also haven't touched on bin Laden at all.

No, which I'd love to talk about.

I'm wondering might you be available to come back and finish this issue next Tuesday night?

Sure. Why not. Anytime you want.

1) 'Newsday,' September 23, 2001, 'AMERICA'S ORDEAL; Where System Failed; Air attack on Pentagon indicates weaknesses,' by Sylvia Adcock, Brian Donovan and Craig Gordon. The direct link is
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nd23.htm#1

2) The article, "Cheney's Cover Story,' has a much material on the prescribed response to a hijacking. On the FAA, see http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm#a
On The Joint Chiefs, see 'Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1 June 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," 4.Policy (page 1)
PDF available at:
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf
Backup at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf

3) 'Newsday,' September 23, 2001, 'AMERICA'S ORDEAL; Where System Failed; Air attack on Pentagon indicates weaknesses,' by Sylvia Adcock, Brian Donovan and Craig Gordon. The direct link is http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/nd23.htm#2

4) The changes in text of the Andrews Air Force Base-related Websites are documented (with links) and discussed in 'UPDATES TO GUILTY FOR 9-11,' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indictupdate.htm

5) The DCANG Website was changed, removing the pledge to maintain planes in the "highest possible state of readiness." You can still access that text, however, through http://www.archive.org Go to
http://web.archive.org/web/20010203183700/http://dcandr.ang.af.mil/
Click on "Headquarters" and you should see it. If that link stops working, go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm

6) The promised article on anti-Semitism related to 9-11 is late, but in the works.
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arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)