He says, “9/11 was not an inside job” (a phrase I particularly hate), but states it as an opinion. Then goes on to say, “The reality is that the Bush White House covered up much about 9/11, including its own incompetence. How much we don’t know.” If we don’t know how much they’re covering up, then how can he state emphatically that “9/11 was not an inside job” (a phrase I particularly hate)? - Jon

Source: buzzflash.com

BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
May 12, 2008

As we take a reprieve from the 2008 elections for a day, we wanted to take note of a Chicago Tribune editorial that repeats the story of how Dick Cheney approved the shooting down of United Flight 93 on 9/11:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House bunker and had to make a momentous recommendation to President Bush, who was in flight aboard Air Force One: that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any civilian airliners that might be hijacked and headed for other targets.

Bush concurred—and shortly after, the moment of truth arrived. A military aide approached Cheney: “There is a plane 80 miles out,” he said. “There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?” Cheney had thought through the complex implications of that question, had discussed it with his boss, and didn’t hesitate to answer: “Yes.” That plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before fighter jets could reach it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Reuters

Reasons to think it’s true:

• The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say. One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. [4/13/2006 - Rawstory]
  
• During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already ‘underway’ inside Iran, RAW STORY has found. - [4/15/2006 - Rawstory]
  
• Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. - [4/17/2006 - New Yorker]
  
• Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group has also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.” (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.) - [11/27/2006 - New Yorker]
  
• Iran-Contra veterans working out of Dick Cheney’s office are using stolen funds from Iraq to arm al Qaeda-tied groups and foment a larger Sunni-Shia war - [3/17/2007 - Tomdispatch]
  
• A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources - [4/3/2007 - ABCNews]
  
• “Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course: a coordinated campaign, directed with the help of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates….The bill for the covert part of this activity, which has involved funding sectarian political movements and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, is said to amount to more than $300 million. It is being paid by Saudi Arabia and other concerned Gulf states, for whom the combination of a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq and a nuclear-armed Iran means trouble.” [5/7/2007 - The Atlantic]
  

REUTERS
Reuters US Online Report Top News
May 12, 2008 12:36 EST

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran’s intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz.

Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza Jamshidi told state television the terrorists behind the bombing were agents of the U.S. and British governments in Iran.

“The relationship of those who planted the bombs in Shiraz with the U.S. and Britain was identified and they were being financially supported and in fact they acted as foreign agents in Iran,” he said.

“In view of the documents obtained the judiciary in cooperation with the government and the Foreign Ministry will file lawsuits with international authorities against their supporters, who on the one hand claim to fight terrorists and on the other hand provide them with equipment,” he said.

He was clearly referring to Britain and the United States, but did not give details on how Tehran would take legal action against them.

Iran has in the past accused the two countries of trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic by supporting rebels, mainly those in sensitive border areas.

Tehran’s accusations over the mosque blast echo allegations U.S. officials have made about Iranian support for militias in Iraq that have fought U.S. and U.S.-backed government forces there, accusations Tehran denies.

Iran and the United States are also at odds over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Washington suspects is aimed at making bombs. Iran says its program is for producing electricity.

Security is normally tight in Shi’ite Muslim Iran and bomb attacks have been rare in recent years. Several people were killed in 2005 and 2006 in blasts in a southwestern province with a large Sunni Arab population.

Shiraz is a southern city with more than one million inhabitants and is a popular tourist destination.

This upcoming Tuesday, 5/13/2008, unless time slots can be rearranged because of the busy summer schedule, will be our last 9/11 Truth Tuesdays at the Anthony Wayne Movie Theater. I believe this has been the longest run of 9/11 Truth movies in a movie theater in the history of this movement.

This effort has not been easy, but any effort worth doing will never be.

Thank you to everyone at the Anthony Wayne Movie Theater. Thank you to Jeff Cobb for your honest journalism. Thank you to everyone that helped us to promote 9/11 Truth Tuesdays. Thank you to 9/11 Family Members Bob McIlvaine, Lorie Van Auken, and Mindy Kleinberg, 9/11 First Responder and founder of the FealGood Foundation, John Feal, and to Directors Dylan Avery and Ray Nowosielski for joining us on January 29th (with the exception of John who was sick). Without you, that night would not have been the success that it was. Thank you to Kyle Hence, Ray Nowosielski, Penny Little, Dylan Avery, and John Albanese for allowing us to use the movies you created. Thank you to the other filmmakers for the other movies we used as well.

Thank you to everyone that came, and brought people every Tuesday since January 1st of this year.

I would like to give a very special thank you to Betsy Metz. Someone that has spent $1,000’s upon $1,000’s of her own money, asked for nothing in return, and in fact donated what little money was made to the FealGood Foundation to help the 9/11 First Responders. Someone that has devoted the last 6 months of her life to this cause. Someone that brings a smile to everyone she meets. Someone that lights up every room she enters. Thank you Betsy for allowing me to be apart of something very special. You are a hero. For both America, and the world. Everyone owes you a huge debt of gratitude. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Please stay tuned… we are not done yet.

It was my pleasure. Thank you to Justin Martell, and Eric Jackman. - Jon

Source: jamartell.blogspot.com

Here is the video. First, I’d like to thank Jon Gold for his help with me in creating this video, as his guidance has proved to be invaluable. The sources appear long enough for viewers to see the headline and source so that they can verify it if so inclined. Below the video are my comments to Perino:

Dana,

Justin Martell

Tonight, I received a very special treat. A video of Justin Martell questioning White House Press Secretary Dana Perino about 9/11. With scripted questions that I helped him to write. He did a FANTASTIC job, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it. It will be made available in the coming days. Congratulations, and thank you to Justin Martell, and Eric Jackman for some of the best video I’ve ever seen.

Over the years, I have tried my best to voice my opinion, when I thought it was necessary, in the hopes of helping this movement “improve” its message. I have voiced my opinion, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

One thing I have learned over these many years, is that I can’t control what other people do. I can only control what I do. I have also learned that “policing” what other people do, is time consuming, and arrogant. No one is perfect. If you do your absolute best, that’s good enough for me, and should be good enough for everyone else. In my opinion.

That being said, with regard to doing your best, I want you to think on this. The people that were murdered on 9/11 no longer have a voice. They don’t have the ability to ask for truth and accountability with regard to what happened to them. When you speak, you speak for everyone that was murdered on 9/11. As well as for their families.

Please do your very best. No one can ask for more than that.

I’ve transcribed some of the pages having to do with Cheney from Phil Shenon’s book, “The Commission“. The back cover says, “How Vice President Cheney tried to pressure the Commission to change its assessment of his actions on 9/11, and how he may have tried to cover up his role.”

Pages 29-31
Daschle would be out of his job as majority leader in January, when the new Republicans would be sworn in. The GOP already controlled the House. Daschle figured that with Republicans in full control on Capitol Hill, Congress would be out of the business of oversight, especially when it came to September 11 and the performance of the Bush White House in dealing with the threat of al-Qaeda before and after the attacks.

It had become clearer and clearer to Daschle and other Democrats–and to the Washington press corps and even some Republicans–that the White House was hiding something, perhaps many things, about what Bush knew about al-Qaeda threats before 9/11.

To Daschle, that explained why Bush and Cheney had taken such a personal role in the campaign to try to block any outside review of September 11, especially the creation of the commission. Daschle had heard through Trent Lott, his Republican counterpart, that Karl Rove and the White House political office had orchestrated the behind-the-scenes effort to block legislation to create the commission. “It’s all Rove,” Lott told Daschle.

In January 2002, before Congress had scheduled its first public hearings on pre-9/11 intelligence failures, Cheney called Daschle personally to complain about any public airing of the issues. Cheney’s tone with Daschle was polite but threatening. Daschle, who was being interviewed by a Newsweek reporter when the vice president’s call came through, was smart enough to allow the reporter to remain in the office to listen to Daschle’s end of the conversation. Daschle wanted a witness.

The vice president urged Daschle to shut down any additional public hearings on 9/11, warning him that a public discussion of intelligence errors before the attacks would do damage to the struggle to capture bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda–and would do political damage to the Democrats as well.

“Mr. Majority Leader, this would be a very dangerous and time-consuming diversion for those of us who are on the front lines of our response today,” Cheney said. “We just can’t be tied down with the problems that this would present for us. We’ve got our hands full.” Daschle remembered the tone as vintage Cheney” “muffled, kind of under the breath, quiet, measure, very deliberate.”

If the Democrats went forward anyway, Cheney said, the White House would portray the Democrats–by daring to investigate what went wrong on 9/11–as undermining the war against terror. That was a potent political threat at a time, four months after the attacks, when Bush was riding as high in opinion polls as he ever would Democrats were facing a difficult midterm election in November 2002 as a result.

“I respectfully disagree with your position, Mr. Vice President,” Daschle replied. “It is imperative that we try to find out what happened on September 11 and why.”

To Dashle, it was preposterous for the White House to argue that 9/11 should go uninvestigated. He knew that modern American history offered plenty of support for an independent investigation. From Pearl Harbor to the Kennendy assassination to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, “there’s been a review of what happened after every tragedy this nation has experience,” Daschle said.

Page 54-55
In January 2003, Graham and the other members of the committee were still the focus of a criminal investigation by the FBI into whether someone on the panel had leaked classified information. A report on CNN on June 19, 2002, revealed the wording of messages sent among al-Qaeda sympathizers in the days and hours before 9/11. The messages (”Tomorrow is zero day,” “The match is tomorrow”) were intercepted by the National Security Agency but not translated from the original Arabic until after the attacks. The CNN report aired only hours after the messages were shared with Graham’s Committee.

The leaks resulted in a fierce White House protest. Vice President Cheney called Graham at home.

“What the hell is going on, Bob?” Cheney asked. “We have tried to be as cooperative as possible, but we cannot tolerate this leakage to the press. If this continues, we will terminate our assistance to the committee.” Graham thought Cheney’s warning “disingenuous and pompous,” but he felt compelled to call in the FBI. Without some sort of leak investigation, Graham thought, the White House would follow through on Cheney’s threat and shut down all cooperation.

Page 411-412
The feelings of relief were not universally held in the White House. Dick Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, were outraged by the commission’s timeline on Cheney’s actions on September 11–and the clear suggestion that Cheney had issued an unconstitutional shoot-down order that morning without Bush’s knowledge or approval.

Kean learned about Cheney’s outrage a few days before the report’s release when he was pulled aside for a phone call. It was Cheney, who made it clear he was angry. He was demanding that the sections be rewritten to remove the insinuation.

“Governor, this is not true, just not fair”, Cheney told Kean, according to other commissioners who later heard Kean describe the call. Cheney said he thought it was startling that the commission did not accept the word of the president of the United States and the vice-president. “The president told you, I have told you, that the president issued the order. I was following his directions.”

The truth, Kean knew, was that the staff did not believe what Bush and Cheney were saying. Kean ended the call by promising the vice president that he would ask the staff to give the material about the shoot-down another review before publication. But no major changes were made.

To the surprise of some of the commissioners and the staff, there was no similar protest from Cheney or anyone else in the White House over the commission’s conclusion that there was no significant alliance between al-Qaeda and Iraq. After the earlier blowup with Cheney over Iraq, the staff had gone back and reviewed everything the commission had in its files about the ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. At the end of it, the staff was more convinced than ever that there had been no serious collaboration between the terrorists and the Iraqis, no matter how much the administration wanted to cling to the idea to justify the war.

Source: deseretnews.com

By Tad Walch
Deseret News
Published: Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:19 a.m. MDT

Sixteen months ago, Brigham Young University and Steven Jones parted ways, but he said this week he isn’t bitter about the academic divorce.

He certainly hasn’t curtailed his volatile research on the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

(Yes, three towers fell, not just two. If you didn’t know that, Jones is particularly interested in reaching you with his message that some other group, in addition to al-Qaida, likely contributed to the collapses.)

In fact, Jones is the lead author of a paper on the collapses published April 18 in a civil engineering journal.

The journal article does not list his past tie to BYU, and that’s a big Mission Accomplished for university leaders, who felt they acted to protect BYU’s reputation when they worked out a retirement package with Jones and he left at the end of 2006.

But Jones is sharing a cramped BYU office with some professors. He also does research in a BYU lab as an outside user with a student who works with him.

Most importantly, he is preparing several more papers that, if they pass peer review and are published, will give him the peace of mind that his case reached the public.

Jones was energized in November when he and others received a response from the national lab charged by Congress to determine why and how the towers collapsed. The letter contained the following phrase:

“We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse.”

“That,” Jones said, “really was progress. It made me believe we could talk with them.”

It is striking. After producing a 10,000-page report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology can’t explain the collapse. And on its Web site, NIST clearly states that nowhere in its report did it say that steel in the Twin Towers melted due to fires. In fact, the fires reached only 1,000 degrees Celsius. Steel melts at 1,500 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said that its best hypothesis for the fall of the third tower, WTC 7 — diesel fuel stored in the building caused fires that collapsed the building — has a “low probability” of being correct.

At the time of his separation with BYU, which he admitted was painful, Jones found himself burned by his association with a loose confederation of 9/11 truth-seekers, some of them clearly kooky conspiracy theorists, and by some of his own statements.

Now, he and a number of scientific colleagues are taking a more cautious, mainstream approach.

His new peer-reviewed paper in the Open Civil Engineering Journal doesn’t rip NIST or FEMA or the government. It does just the opposite. It lays out 14 points of agreement Jones and his colleagues have with the official government reports.

“We’re getting to a higher level of discussion with this paper,” Jones said.

The open paper can be found for free on the Web at www.bentham.org.

So what does Jones think happened?

Jones wants NIST to look at new evidence he found in Ground Zero dust samples since leaving BYU. The dust is full of iron-rich spheres and red-gray chips with the chemical signatures of high-tech cutter-charge explosives that he said could explain the collapsed towers. The spheres come from molten metal that Jones said could be caused by cutter charges.

“It’s like when you spray water into the air, you get droplets,” Jones said. “These spheres are evidence of extremely high temperatures beyond what the fires could have reached.”

He’s offered samples to NIST and invited NIST to visit one of his group’s labs. A NIST spokesman has said that would be a waste of taxpayer dollars, though Jones said the cost would be less than $5,000.

Jones is cautious with money himself. He and his wife are selling off their real-estate investments to make ends meet, but he said they are comfortable and about to move to Sanpete County.

“I haven’t profited a penny off this,” he said. “I don’t want to, and I’ve been careful not to. I’m concerned about the country, and I’m worried the truth is being covered up here.”

He’s careful not to speculate about a cover-up, though he said the growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq has made many more people receptive to his research.

Would it really hurt the people at NIST to talk to him once?

This pretty much speaks for itself.