The post 9/11 Not an “Intelligence Failure” appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

But this week, land surveyors happened upon it — a piece of a plane’s landing gear, apparently belonging to one of the two jets that slammed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, the police said.

On Wednesday, around 11 a.m., the surveyors called 911 to say they had found a piece of damaged machinery. What the police discovered was a component about 5 feet high, 3 feet wide and about 17 inches in depth. It was lodged in the narrow gap between 50 Murray Street, a residential building, and 51 Park Place, which is empty. There, it had been “out of sight and out of mind for over a decade,” the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said on Friday.

That area is inaccessible from the street, Mr. Browne said, adding that a tiny door opens into the corridor from a neighboring building.

“The odds of it entering that space at exactly that angle that would permit it to squeeze in there,” he said, “it had to come in at almost precisely the right angle.”

Investigators are working under the assumption that the piece is “a portion of the landing gear of one of the two planes destroyed on 9/11,” Mr. Browne added.

He noted that the artifact bore a Boeing serial number and that personnel from the Police Department’s aviation unit had identified it as part of a landing gear. He also noted that it was found near where other wreckage from the jetliners was found shortly after the attacks.

Speaking later on Friday, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly did not completely rule out the possibility that the component had been lowered to the spot where it was discovered (some rope was entwined with it).

On Sept. 11, the landing gear assembly of one of the planes crashed through the roof of 45-47 Park Place, then a Burlington Coat Factory and now used as a prayer space for Muslims.

Park Place is about three blocks north of the World Trade Center site, and 51 Park Place is next to 45-47 Park Place and included in a plan by a developer to create a mosque and community center. The developer, Sharif El-Gamal, said in a statement that his company, Soho Properties, was cooperating with the authorities “to make sure this piece of evidence is removed with care as quickly and effectively as possible.”

The police secured the area as they would a crime scene, Mr. Browne said. It is possible that the medical examiner’s office will decide to sift through the soil there in search of human remains, he said.

Mr. Browne said he could not remember the last time a large piece of wreckage from the attack was discovered.

On Park Place, the police presence attracted a few curious passers-by. But the area bustled with the normal Friday ebb-and-flow of commuters. Men in suits sipped beers inside the nearby Dakota Roadhouse, seemingly unaware of the action outside.

Van Vanable, 63, an iron worker, said the discovery of the artifact was a reminder that healing “is an ongoing process.” Still wearing a red hard hat, Mr. Vanable had just finished a shift installing paneling at 1 World Trade Center, he said, adding that more than a decade ago, he had spent months helping to clean up the wreckage at ground zero.

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting.

The post More 9/11 Airplane Debris Discovered appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.

That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.

On July 24, Mr. Bush was notified that the attack was still being readied, but that it had been postponed, perhaps by a few months. But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history. In response, the C.I.A. set to work on the Aug. 6 brief.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush officials attempted to deflect criticism that they had ignored C.I.A. warnings by saying they had not been told when and where the attack would occur. That is true, as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Throughout that summer, there were events that might have exposed the plans, had the government been on high alert. Indeed, even as the Aug. 6 brief was being prepared, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been assigned a role in the 9/11 attacks, was stopped at an airport in Orlando, Fla., by a suspicious customs agent and sent back overseas on Aug. 4. Two weeks later, another co-conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota after arousing suspicions at a flight school. But the dots were not connected, and Washington did not react.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

The post 9/11 Warnings Revealed: CIA Reports Attack ‘Will Occur Soon’ appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Rival red-top newspaper the Mirror reported the officer was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.

Now working as a private ­investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted the victims’ phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the atrocity.
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The voicemails would likely include harrowing messages from desperate loved ones trying to make contact with their relatives caught up in the 2001 terror strikes on the World Trade Center, in which thousands perished.

A source told the newspaper: “This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their ­relatives.

“His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the ­relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.
The final edition of News of the World.

“The investigator said the ­journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.”

Mr Murdoch made a mercy dash to London on the weekend as his News Corporation company shares took a dive and his takeover plans for Britain’s digital broadcasting network, BSkyB, appeared in tatters.

His entire media empire has been tainted by revelations News of the World reporters allegedly hacked mobile phone accounts of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, families of dead British soldiers, politicians and celebrities.
First priority … Rupert Murdoch, pictured outside his London home with Rebekah Brooks.

Nine reporters allegedly at the centre of the phone scandal and claims of police corruption could face jail, along with three officers.

After spending time at the East London headquarters of News Corporation’s UK arm News International, 80-year-old Mr Murdoch held crisis talks with News International chief executive, and former News of the World editor, Rebekah Brooks – who denies any knowledge of the Milly phone tapping – at his home in Mayfair.

The News of the World was shut down on Sunday after 11,000 documents seized from a private investigator revealed the ugly truth behind many of its scoops.

The operation has been described as “hacking on an industrial scale”, which could have seen as many as 4000 people targeted.

Meanwhile Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband urged Mr Murdoch to put his pay TV expansion plans on ice while police investigated claims of illegal practices and corruption at the News of the World.

And he secured high-level Liberal Democrat backing for a pause in the takeover process, heaping pressure on ministers to act if the News Corporation chairman does not.

Mr Miliband said the public would not understand if News Corporation was allowed to go ahead with taking full control of the satellite broadcaster in the present circumstances.

He spoke out amid reports that News International memos from 2007, handed to the police, appeared to acknowledge payments were made to police for information and that the practice of phone hacking was more widespread than previously thought.

Mr Murdoch clutched a copy of the final edition of the axed News of the World as he was whisked into News International’s headquarters.

He and Mrs Brooks – who is under pressure to quit – then met for around an hour at his Mayfair residence before walking to a nearby hotel for a meal, where they were joined by Mr Murdoch’s son James, the chairman of News International.

The News of the World marked its final edition with a “Thank You & Goodbye” headline and an apology for having “lost our way”.

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The recommendations, which must still be approved by a military tribunal official, set the stage for the high-profile Al-Qaeda suspects to finally face justice almost a decade after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

President Barack Obama’s administration last month abandoned plans to try the five in a civilian court just blocks from the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, felled by Al-Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001.

A letter sent to families of 9/11 victims said fresh charges against Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and Mustapha Ahmed al-Hawsawi would be filed at Guantanamo on Tuesday.

It listed the charges as: “conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft and terrorism.”

Almost identical charges were filed in May 2008 but dropped when the Obama administration announced plans to try the 9/11 suspects in a civilian court in New York.

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