November 5, 2013
Pearl Harbor and 9/11
Scott Stockdale
More by this author...The similarities between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, that award-winning film-maker Massimo Mazzucco documents in his film September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor, is but the beginning of a film which thoroughly debunks the official version of 9/11.
Ken Allard, a terrorism expert, tells the viewing audience that the evidence was there in advance of Pearl Harbor, as it was for 9/11.
In the same way that President Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor would enrage the public for war against Germany – which was his goal - the neocons in the Bush administration knew 9/11 would enrage the public and prepared for war against Afghanistan, Mr. Allard said.
CNN and Time Magazine reported that on September 10, 2001, a military plan to attack Afghanistan had been placed on George Bush's desk.
Administration officials in both US presidential administrations also knew that if a lie is told often enough – especially by highly regarded public officials – it becomes true in the minds of the public.
Mr. Mazzucco noted that the American propaganda machine – along with its subservient mainstream media - was able to convince 60 per cent of the American public that Hitler was behind Pearl Harbor.
He added that by the end of 2003, public opinion polls showed that nearly 70 per cent of US public believed Saddam was implicated in 9/11.
In his film, Mr. Mazzucco asked why US air defence – arguably the most sophisticated in the world – was unable to intercept even one of the four hijacked air planes on 9/11, in the course of over 1.5 hours.
The official explanation is a series of blunders, miscommunications and mistakes known as “the incompetence theory”.
In an interview, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Federal Aviation Administration is responsible to say there's a hijacking, but Mr. Mazzucco points out that it's standard FAA procedure when it loses contact with a plane to call the Pentagon and within ten minutes it should have fighter jets in the air to intercept the plane.
In an interview in the film, Nelson Garabito, Secret Service agent in charge of protecting the White House air space, said he called his contact at FAA and told him there were two planes headed toward Washington and, an air traffic controller said one was 30 minutes out, and one 45 minutes out.
However, Mr. Mazzucco also notes that Vice President Dick Cheney gave a direct order regarding the plane that was heading toward Washington resulting, in plane not being shot down.
Subsequently at a Congressional hearing into 9/11, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, testified that a young man – who later turned out to be Douglas Cochrane, a military aid to Mr. Cheney – kept the Vice President informed as to the location of the airplane as it approached Washington, but Mr. Cheney stuck to his order that the plane not be shot down.
The 9/11 Commission excluded Secretary Mineta's testimony from its report.
In 2010, Mr. Cochrane comfirmed that he was the young man Secretary Mineta was referring to, but he refused further comment. The 9/11 Commission interviewed Mr. Cochrane in 2004, about the inbound aircraft and the shootdown language used but the interview was withdrawn from public access and remains classified.
While the 9/11 attack was in progress, the US had a large number of fighter planes in Canada and Alaska, simulating hijackings. Understandably, this could have led to confusion with the real hijackings.
However, even after the twin towers and the Pentagon were hit, the war games were not suspended. At the US Congressional inquiry, General Richard Myers Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied that the military exercise interferred with military capacity of response. But Colonel Rober Marr, Commander North East Defense sector, said the four planes that were left to defend the entire East Coast of the US was not enough.
Much of the physical evidence in the film, debunking the official version of 9/11, has been widely disseminated by organizations such as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, such as the fact that no highrise building has ever collapsed due to fire in history; the twin towers and World Trade Center 7 fell at near freefall speed; steel beams weighting many tonnes were scattered hundreds of yards from the fallen buildings; over 100 first responders reported hearing explosions before and during the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings; and unexplainable high temperatures were regularly detected in the rubble of the world trade center months after 9/11.
This evidence is disconcerting enough to those interested in preserviing the official version of 9/11 that they've organized a counteroffensive – a group of "experts" Mr. Mazzucco calls “the debunkers”.
Fortunately or unfortunately – depending on which side of the debate one supports - the debunkers, often coalescing around the magazine Popular Mechanics, have been shown in the film, time and time again, to be simply ignoring or denying incontrovertible facts.
A case in point: Popular Mechanics wrote in its book “Debunking 9/11 Myths”: “Not one of the leading conspiracy theorists has a background in engineering, construction or related fields.” The facts clearly state otherwise, with the over 2,000 professionals who are members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Among the numerous falsehoods propagated by the official version of 9/11, the passengers' reported cell phone calls, from at least threel planes, stand out for their gruesome implications.
Mr. Mazzucco pointed out in his film that it's impossible for cell phones to work at the 30,000 feet plus altitude the planes were flying at.
Cell phones used low power transmitters and receiving towers on the ground pick up and boost the signal before it is routed through the system. Beyond 10,000 feet, it's commonly thought most cell phones become useless.
In 2001, a Japanese TV station conducted experiments using three cell phones from different companies. At 8,000 feet none of the phones worked, in no small part because of speed of the airplane, the cell phone connection would have to be transferred from receiving tower to receiving tower as the plane travelled. Because there was no time to transfer the call, the system would have dropped it. Ten years after 9/11, similar tests showed cell phones still don't work aboard air planes in flight.
Then Solicitor General Ted Olson was telling the media that he received two cell phone calls from his wife Barbara, aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, telling him the plane she was on had been hijacked and, as reported by Mr. Olson: “She said: What should I tell the pilot to do?” He later changed his story, saying that she called from an air phone. One wonders how she got access to an air phone in the middle of a hijacking.
Mr. Mazzucco said the FBI interviewed numerous relatives who received cell phone calls from the hijacked air planes. He said there is no doubt they were forced to call relatives under duress.
The FBI said there was an unusual lack of background noise during the cell phone calls, but nonetheless, the FBI confirmed the cell phone calls. What then, happened to the passengers?
In the film, Mr. Mazzucco said the CIA has been developing plans to swap commercial airliners with military drones since the 1960's. The airliner would land at a military base and a drone would appear on radar as the original plane. It is then remote-guided into the target.
This would explain the immpossible flying patterns these hijackers, who were poor pilots in flying schools on small domestic airplanes, were supposed to have flown, with large commerical jets they'd never even been in the cockpit of before.
Prior knowlege of the 9/11 attacks is yet another salient point in this film. Susan Lindauer, CIA whistleblower said there was so much discussion about these attacks. “Everybody knew,” she said.
Counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke said we have to conclude that there was a high level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share that information.
Republican Senator Curt Weldon, vice chairman of Armed Services Committee in front of Congress, on senate floor denounced the pre-knowledge of 9/11 on the Congressional floor. “This was an attempt to prevent the American people from knowing the facts about how we could have prevented 9/11 and people are covering it up today,” Senator Weldon said.
A joint Senate-Congressional committee investigation concluded that their had been a flood of warnings about terrorist attacks using airplanes.
In the June 9, 2002 London Times an article said M16 warned US about plans to hijack planes and crash them into buildings two years before Sept 11 attacks.
Earlier in 2001, Russian President Putin and German intelligence said Middle Eastern terrorist were training for hijacking. This may be why the FBI advised the Attorney General John Ascroft to stop flying commercial airlines six weeks before 9/11.
Because it's so difficult to counter the evidence in this film, debunkers, including the National Post's own Jonathan Kay, often focus on attacking the messengers who dispute the official version of 9/11.