Draft

The 9/11 Commission

On December 17, 2003 Chairman Kean announced that the attacks could and should have been prevented, and was pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame. "There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." Kean also promised major revelations in public testimony beginning in January from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and possibly President Bush and former President Clinton. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/eveningnews/main589137.shtml]

On July 21, 2004, the Chicago Tribune noted that the 9/11 commission's final report does not declare that the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history was preventable, though some panelists said during the 20-month investigation they believed the hijackers could have been stopped [Chicago Tribune Archives July 21 2004]. The Tribune’s statement documents the rapid deterioration of the Kean Commission as an instrument of truth.

The Kean commission was originally vaunted as independent, which is absolutely false. The Executive director Philip Zelikow was a member of the transition team from the Clinton to Bush administrations. This transition involved downgrading the importance and visibility of the Counter-Terrorism Security Group.

Although he recused himself from involvement in the

investigation of the transition, it was revealed on January 15, 2004 that both Zelikow and Jamie Gorelick, a commission member, were both still so closely involved in the events under investigation that they have been interviewed as part of the inquiry. "Did he interview himself about his own role in the failures that left us defenseless?" asked Lori Van Auken, the widow of 9/11 victim Kenneth. [1/15/04 UPI] Zelikow has retained close professional and informal ties to members of the Administration.

As Executive Director, Zelikow retained the power to hire all Commission staff and coordinate the flow of Kean's investigation. He also had access to all testimony—and managed all upcoming witnesses, document requests and subpoenas. [11/21/03 www.tomflocco.com] Victim families complained of Zelikow’s conflicts of interest in an Oct. 3 2003 letter to the Commission, but were rebuffed. [10/14/03 Washington Post]

At least half the remaining commission members have ties with either the intelligence agencies, or the administration; i.e., ties with the entities being investigated. Chairman Kean has business links with Bin Laden's brother in law. [www.tomflocco.com]

Former Commissioner Max Cleland, a triple amputee veteran of the Vietnam war and former Democratic Senator from Georgia, was certainly the most critical of the Commission. Cleland said the White House was "cherry picking" documents it wanted to withhold. "It's obvious that they're sifting the information to the 9/11 commission now," [7/7/2003 WSJ] Cleland became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons. "It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here" he said in a Washington interview. He also said Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists be-fore September 11 than it has ever admitted." [10/26/03 NYT]

On Nov. 12, 2003, the Commission announced that after months of talks and the threat of subpoena it reached agreement with the White House to provide limited access to the President's Daily Briefs. Under the accord, only two members of the 10-member commission would have access to the full library of daily briefings prepared in the Bush and Clinton administrations and two other members would be allowed to read just the copies of the briefings the White House deemed relevant to the inquiry. [11/13/03 NY Times] Insiders Zelikow and Gorelick were the only two members granted full access. Cleland’s response: "This is a scam, it's disgusting. America is being cheated." [11/13/03 CNN with Wolf Blitzer: 9/11] In an interview with Eric Boehlert of Salon, Cleland noted “The president’s … decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple.”… "It is a national scandal." [11/21/03 salon.com] Immediately after his comments on CNN and Salon, Cleland, was “approved” by Mr. Bush to serve on the Board of the Export-Import Bank. Because statutes governing the panel bar anyone who holds a federal job, he had to leave the Commission. [Washington Times] The removal of Cleland also removed any pretense of Commission “independence”.

Very few of the questions originally asked by the (victim) Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission. (FSC) were answered, or even asked by the Commission. These had largely to do with lack of accountability. For example, the inaction of President Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld, General Myers and others during the actual time of the attack. More disturbingly, the FSC abruptly changed it’s tone from demanding answers to its questions, to thanking the Commission for its failure to answer the steering committee’s questions, and urging that the Commission’s recommendations for deeper levels of bureaucracy and “intelligence” be implemented as soon as possible.

Although you will not find accountability in the Commission’s hearings, you will find lots of laughter. For example, transcripts of the 8^th public hearing, on counter-terrorism policy, revealed 19 instances of laughter on March 23, and 65 references to laughter on March 24. Transcripts of the 10^th public hearing, on law enforcement and the intelligence community, revealed 27 instances of laughter on April 13 and 40 instances of laughter on April 14. The format resembles a TV sitcom. (See www.9-11commission.gov),

In previous public hearings regarding major issues of national security and timeline of the events of 9/11 no testimony was taken under oath. As of Sept. 17 2003 however, according to Commissioner Roemer on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, the Commission was asking that those who testify in closed door meetings do so under oath. [9/17/03 CSWJ] The commission also tolerated the presence of intimidating administration “minders” during hearings.

Because of her fluency in Middle Eastern languages, Turkish-American Sibel Dinez Edmonds was hired by the FBI soon after the attacks of 9-11 to translate terrorism related intercepts , many of which were received long before 9-11.

In a May 7 interview with Jim Hogue, Edmonds said she came across “some very significant issues .... there are certain instances where the Bureau is being asked by the State Department not to pursue certain investigations or certain people or certain targets of an investigation--simply citing ‘diplomatic relations.’ …You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points …” [SE interview: /baltimorechronicle.com/050704SibelEdmonds.shtml]

Edmonds began reporting her concerns to mid level FBI management in December 2001. Getting nowhere, she took the issue to higher levels, all the way up to Assistant Director Dale Watson and Director Robert Mueller. The response was, let it alone, or expect retaliation. She had better luck with the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC), soon earning the confidence of Senator Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa), and Senator Patrick Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member from Vermont. Grassley said “... the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” [www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/25/60minutes/main526954.shtml]

At the SJC’s request, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice started an expedited investigation of Edmond’s issues, promising that their report would be out by fall of 2002. On October 18th 2002 however, Attorney General Ashcroft, at the request of FBI Director Mueller, publicly asserted the "state secret privilege" on everything that had to do with Edmonds' case. [Chicago Tribune July 29 2004]

The UK Independent reported that Edmonds said she spent more than three hours on Feb 11 in a closed session with the 911 commission, providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. [independent.co.uk 02/04/04 archives] According to Tom Flocco, 9-11 Commission member Richard Ben Veniste mentioned Sibel Edmonds by name at the April 13-14 hearing during FBI Director Robert Mueller’s testimony; however, he did not question Mueller about Edmonds' astonishing charges, saying "it would be inappropriate to address Edmonds’ allegations in public," adding that they were nevertheless serious. [tomflocco.com story id 60]

The subject of the April 13-14 hearing was "Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community.” The transcript, appearing on the Commission's website, (www.9-11commission.gov), Includes Mr. Mueller’s testimony. Mr. Ben-Veniste's comments are there, but no reference to Sibel Edmonds. Needless to say, Sibel Edmonds also did not make it into the 911 Commission's report. [See Sibel Edmonds Open Letter to Commissioner Kean: www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-08-01-edmonds.php]

Brief analysis of the “9/11 Commission Report”

The portion of the report actually examining the events of 9/11 is relatively small. Of the 13 chapters in the 600 page book, only Chapter 1, pg 1-47, and Chapter 9, 278-323; less than 100 pages, deal with the events of 9/11. Chapter 8, pg 254-277, 23 pages, deal with the issue of advanced warnings. Notes on the thirteen chapters comprise about 65 pages. Most references given in the notes are not readily accessed or verified.

According to the official story, our government was completely surprised by the attacks of 9/11, but within hours had identified 19 alleged hijackers and within days the global master mind, Osama bin Laden.

Chapter 1: “We have a few planes”:

The report notes the names of the 19 alleged hijackers and their seat assignment in the aircraft. Detailed descriptions of the alleged hijackers activities are provided, including specific interactions with airport personnel , such as difficulty in understanding questions from security workers. [pg 2 f] It is interesting that such interactions could be reconstructed after the fact, considering the thousands of passengers per day that are processed by international airports. This is supported by the report’s words on the screening of American 77: “When the local civil aviation security office of the FAA later investigated the screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary.” [pg 3] It is also interesting that passenger manifests for the four flights, widely available on the internet, include only American names; no foreign, and specifically neither Arabic nor Islamic names.

According to the Sun Sentinel, two weeks after the terrorist attacks, investigators still were not sure who all the hijackers really were. The 19 terrorism suspects apparently used stolen identities, multiple identities and fake names, obfuscating their trail so successfully that even thousands of federal agents are having difficulty sorting it out. This could explain why as many as seven of the alleged hijackers were found to be alive subsequent to the attacks. The significance of this will become clear in the analysis of the “Visa Express” in Chapter 2.

The report notes that “passengers and flight crew [of United flight 93] began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones.” Pg [12] Other report references state “airphones”, while a number of additional references merely state “calls”, from all flights were made, or “callers” provided information, without documenting the type of call. Shortly after the attacks, media reported that calls originated from cellphones. Later, the narrative became fuzzy; and it was suggested that $10-a-minute Airfones were involved. Some of the alleged calls, including one made from flight 93, were made from inside locked lavatories, which are not supplied with airphones, and therefore must have been by “cellphone.”

[www.nypress.com/17/30/news&columns/AlanCabal.cfm]

Technical arguments were initially provided which questioned the authenticity of the cell phone calls. For example, Jim Heikkila reported on August 17, 2002 that the electronic handshake required to place a cell phone call takes approximately 45 seconds. At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone's five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. [http://www.prisonplanet.com/planes_of_911_exceeded_their_software_limits.htm]

The information from Heikkila was corroborated by an article in the August 2004 issue of USA Today, which states that cell phone connection was impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph before the development of the "pico" cell, which was only recently tested.

The authenticity of alleged phone calls is critical, for these calls supply all of our knowledge of the events inside the hijacked aircraft. Yet the Commission report does not attempt to sort out spurious “cellphone” calls from possibly legitimate airphone calls. Neither the Commission nor it’s report address why there should be any documented instances of spurious cellphone calls, such as those reportedly made inside locked lavatories.

The report paints the picture that scrambling jets was really complicated: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government” [pg 17]. But the fact is that rapid scrambling and interception was routine before June 1 2001. Before that date, according to spokespersons from NORAD, from the time the FAA senses something is wrong, “it take about one minute” for it to contact NORAD, and then NORAD can scramble fighters “within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States. According to Global Outlook magazine, between September 2000 and June 2001, fighter jets were scrambled at least 67 times. [www.globalresearch.ca] According to an Air Force timeline, military jets provided an emergency escort to golfer Payne Stewart’s stricken Learjet starting about 20 minutes after contact with his plane was lost. [http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad]

On June 1 2001, the normal, efficient procedures for jet interceptor scramble were superceded by a new convoluted order issued by the Pentagon. This order inserted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into the decision making process. [Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubican Pg 309] (The same Donald Rumsfeld who was no where to be found until the attacks were over)

The report notes a dearth of interceptors on official alert, and stated that other facilities, not on alert, would need time to arm fighters and organize crews [pg 17] This statement is contradicted by an article in Aviation Week and Space Technology (AWST), which reported that minutes after the second WTC crash at 9:03, military base commanders from all over the US were calling NORAD and volunteering to scramble planes. The Commander at Syracuse NY said he could get a plane in the air armed with cannon in 10 minutes. Yet none of these planes were put into the air until after the last hijacked plane had crashed (about 9:40) [AWST 6/3/02]

The report claims numerous severe inaccuracies in NORAD testimony, and notes fighters were scrambled

for spurious reasons; for example the report claims “The notice NEADS (NORAD’s North East Air Defense Sector) received at 9:24 was that American 11 had not hit the world trade center and was heading for Washington D.C.” and “The aircraft were scrambled because of the report that American 11 was heading South” [pg 34] So far this issue appears only in the Star tribune, in which Senator Dayton accused NORAD officials of lying. A spokesman for Colorado Springs-based NORAD said, "We stand on our testimony to the commission."

[www.startribune.com/stories/484/4904237.html].

Yet the entire history of the reported NORAD/FAA air defense response timeline has been filled with changes, inconsistencies and contradictions. The timeline provided in the first eight pages of Richard Clark’s book Against All Enemies also conflicts with that of the Commission. [see http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040731213239607]

On 9-11, NORAD, the FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and possibly the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills; in some cases involving hijacked airplanes, and in some cases inserting imaginary blips onto FAA and military radar screens. At least two of these drills; Vigilant Guardian and Northern Vigilance, appear to have pulled fighter aircraft away from the scene of the attacks [Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon pg 336 f.]

The report notes that “at 9:05, Andrew Card whispered to [Bush] ‘A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.’ The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. … The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening. … He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15.” [pg 38] The commission was exceedingly supportive of Bush’s account of his actions. Bill Sammon, White House correspondent for the Washington Times, and generally supportive of the administration, in a book called Fighting Back, describes Bush as smiling and chatting with the children “as if he didn’t have a care in the world” and “in the most relaxed manner imaginable.” Sammon in fact referred to the president as “the dawdler in chief.” The White House put out a different account a year later when Andrew Card was quoted as saying that after he told the president of the second attack, Bush excused himself….”within a matter of seconds,” contradicting the video tape evidence. [The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin. Pg 61] The commission did not address the issue of the changed story.

The report notes “On the morning of September 11, Secretary Rumsfeld was having breakfast at the Pentagon with a group of members of Congress. He then returned to his office for his daily intelligence briefing. The Secretary was informed of the second strike in New York during the briefing; he resumed the briefing. After the Pentagon was struck, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist in rescue efforts. [pg 37] Gail Sheehy of the L.A.Times quoted Mindy Kleinberg, one of the victim family members who helped to force the 9-11 commission into existence: "Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" The lead military officer that day, Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield, told the Commission that the Pentagon's command center had been essentially leaderless: "For 30 minutes we couldn't find" Rumsfeld. For more than two hours after the Federal Aviation Administration became aware that the first plane had been violently overtaken by Middle Eastern men, the man whose job it was to order air cover over Washington did not show up in the Pentagon's command center. It took him almost two hours to "gain situational awareness," he told the Commission. [Los Angeles Times Friday 13 August 2004]

Chapter 2, “The Foundation of the New Terrorism”;

2.3: “The Rise of Bin Ladin and Alqaeda (1988-1992)

The report states: “The international environment for Bin Ladin’s efforts was ideal. Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funneled through Pakistan: The Pakistani military intelligence service (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISID), helped train the rebels and distribute the arms. But Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the Unite States. Note 23 states “CIA officials involved in aiding the Afghan resistance regard bin Laden and his “Arab Afghans” as having been militarily insignificant in the war and recall having little to do with them.” Typically CIA officials have poor recall. Michael Springman worked for the federal government for slightly more than 20 years. First, with the Commerce Department International Foreign Trade Administration and then with the Dept. of State. Among other things, he was a Consulate officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a BBC interview, he was repeatedly ordered by high level State Deptment officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. He complained bitterly, both in Jeddah, and the US, but was met with silence.

He found that what he was seeing was an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. The intension was that they would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the “Soviets”. Neither the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, nor the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later shook the State Department's faith in the Saudis.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm]

In a longer interview on the Alex Jones Show,  Springman states “According to the Los Angeles Times, fifteen of the nineteen people, the Saudis who were allegedly responsible for flying planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, … got their visas from the Consulate at Jeddah. Now, according to a journalist I know in Florida, this was done through a new wrinkle in the visa procedures there. At the time I was running the visa section, I personally interviewed at least one member of the family or just about everyone who wanted to travel to the States. They had switched things so that the visas would be submitted, in many instances, through travel agencies, that were approved by the Consulate. [Someone] would go to the travel agency and say I want to go to the United States - … get me a visa, I have to visit relatives there, etc. And they would simply send a package of passports and visa applications over to the Consular's section. And because they came from a reputable source, people didn't look too closely at it…” [www.infowars.com/transcripts/springman2.htm]

This processs is now sometimes called “Visa Express” by 9/11 researchers. No wonder thousands of federal agents could not track down the identities of the alleged hijackers. Solution? Hire more federal agents!!

Chapter 3, “Counterterrorism Evolves”:

Chapter 3.7 …and in the Congress” discusses the issue of power of the legislative branch versus power of the executive branch, including the congressional intelligence committees.

The highly regarded Asia Times wrote: “If the 9-11 Commission is really looking for a smoking gun, it should look no further than at Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time.”. The Times notes that the general was breakfasting with Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham on the morning of September 11. Goss and Graham happen to be the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, who would eventually head up the “Joint Intelligence Committee Investigation” of 9/11. Goss is the named replacemnt of former CIA Director George Tenet. According to the Times, In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant

Saeed Sheikh - the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida. “…the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story: Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed's cellular-phone numbers.”

[www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html]

No mention is made in the report of the breakfast with General Ahmad.

Chapter 7, “The Attack Looms” :

The report suggests a 9/11 plot was evolving. Section 7.3 “Assembling the Teams” states that “During the summer and early autumn of 2000, bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan started selecting the muscle hijackers-the operatives who would storm the cockpits and control the passengers.” Pg [231] Although this sentence is footnoted, the assertion is not backed up by any documentation. In the section “Recruitment and Selection for 9/11”; terms such as “recruits”, “targeted for recruitment” “chosen for the 9/11 operations” Etc. appear sprinkled thru a commentary generally only describing the alleged terrorists backgrounds. Very little information is actually provided about the details of any “plot”.

This is consistent with the fact that seven months after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller stated “In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.” Law enforcement officials say that while they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers in the months before the attacks -- all legal except for a few speeding tickets -- they have found no evidence of their actual plotting.”

[www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/3163998.htm?1c]

Chapter 9, “Heroism and Horror”:

The report related events at the WTC complex and the Pentagon. A large part of Chapter 9 concerned the response of emergency services at the WTC complex on 9/11/01. The City of New York refused to release hundreds of original tapes, because they contained “opinions and recommendations” of the responders, “since such opinions and recommendations are to be distinguished from factual material” [NYT 12/21/03] The 0911 Commission agreed to accept the redacted tapes. Why would the Commission not be concerned with our first responder’s recommendations?

The report attributes severe damage to the 77^th floor, 22^nd (security office) floor, the lobby, and B4 level of the North Tower to a fireball from airplane impact. [pg 285] The report references in a note video footage taken by a team of two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were accompanying emergency responders from Enginehouse 7. The report does not reference the content of the footage, which is as follows: “To their surprise, the firefighters of engine 7 found widespread damage to the entire lobby area. Over and over, these professional firefighters expressed their complete puzzlement over the damage in this area. there was no indication of an incendiary-type explosion or fire in this area.

[www.thepowerhour.com/postings/911-oddities-revealed.htm] Reference at indymedia website: [http://sdimc.org/webcast/front.php3?article_id=912]

Further, the report does not tell us that the entire accumulation of evidence and investigation briefs on two highly important cases were being stored in the security (FBI) office, nor that the Head of Security of the WTC dug thru the debris to rescue someone. Apparently the fireball was not very hot.

http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/9-11/evidence_of_us_corporate_guilt.htm

Stationary Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sub-basement level of the North Tower, gives a harrowing eyewitness account of numerous ground and sub-basement level explosions in the on-line publication Chiefengineer. For example, “The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone. ‘There was nothing there but rubble, ‘Mike said. ‘We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press ? gone!’ The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. ‘There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can't see anything’ he said. [www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029]

The report notes that at 9:03 flight 175 hit the South tower, crashing thru the 77^th to 85^th floors. “The plane Banked as it hit…, leaving portions of the building undamaged on impact floors. As a consequence- and in contrast to the… North Tower- stairwell A Initially remained passable from at least the 91^st floor down, and likely from top to bottom. [pg 293] The report notes that by 9:58. the battalion chief had reached the 78^th floor on stairwell A; he reported that it looked open to the 79^th floor, well into the impact zone. [pg 301] This is a reference to the so called “lost tape” which verified that members of the fire department reached the scene of the crash zone of South tower, and thought they had things under control. The report fails to ask why the DOJ required family members to sign a statement that they would not discuss the contents of the tape in order to hear it. [http://americanfreepress.net/08_09_02/New_York_Firefighters__/new_york_firefighters__.html]

The report notes: “the North tower began its pancake collapse” [pg ] The report does not discuss what a “pancake collapse” is supposed to be, nor why the cause of the collapses, according to FEMA in it's "Building Performance Assessment" final report, has never been determined. [www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/wtc-report/wtc_Ex_Sm.pdf]

The report does not state that structural engineers and fire safety experts, including some who took part in the original assessment, believe the FEMA investigation was inadequate, and are calling for a new independent and better financed inquiry [{NYT 12/25/01]. The report does not state that in it’s March 6 2002 report, the Science Committee of the House of Representatives called for a broader WTC investigation. [www.house.gov/science/press/107/107-175.htm] ;[www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/letter.pdf]

The report notes the incredible survival of a dozen people descending Stairwell B as the North tower collapsed. One of the amazing survivals was Genelle Guzman McMillan, the last person pulled alive from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. She was discovered on Sept 12, 2001, 27 hours after the towers had fallen. During her descent, on the 13th-floor landing, McMillan “heard a rumble. ‘A big explosion,’ she now calls it. ‘The wall I was facing just opened up, and it threw me on the other side,’ she says. She was struggling to reach a friend ‘when the rubble just kept coming down....Everything just kept coming harder and harder.’“

[www.azcentral.com/news/sept11/sept11survivor.html]

The report covers the events at the Pentagon in two quick pages [pg 314-315], with no details of the crash of the “Boeing 757” into the Pentagon, with no reference to the great controversy on this issue.

Chapter 10, “Wartime”:

The commission had been aware of, and reported on six charter flights that carried 142 Saudi passengers out of the US between September 14 and 24 201. [pg 329] However, documents obtained from the government by Judicial Watch show that commercial airline flights that left between September 11, when US airspace was closed, and September 15, 2001 carried 160 Saudi passengers out of the US. Judicial Watch stated that this information had been provided to the commission, [August 2004 issue of Judicial Watch Verdict]

however this information was not included in the report.

Chapters 11, 12, and 13 deal with Foresight and Hindsight, What to do, and How to do it. The huge loss of life the commission is supposedly addressing by its recommended changes in the US security structure was due to the collapse of the north and south WTC towers. The cause for the collapse has never been determined, so how does a change in security structure address this problem?

Rodger A. Herbst for