For more info on what might have been known beforehand see a book
entitled The New Pearl Harbor by David R. Griffin. He gives a
qualified, non-hysterical account of whether the Bush administration
was actually complicit in the events of 9/11. Here's a breif review:
The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush
Administration and 9/11 - Book Review
National Catholic Reporter by Rosemary Ruether
Until recently I dismissed the suggestions that the Bush
administration might have been complicit in allowing 9/11 to happen as
groundless "conspiracy theory" I regarded the federal investigative
bureaucracies as suffering from a "lock the barn door after the horse
has escaped" syndrome. American government agencies seemed to me to be
full of repressive energy and exaggerated overreach after some
atrocity had occurred, but remarkably incompetent when it came to
preventing something in advance. There is no question that the Bush
administration has profited greatly from the 9/11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, but I did not imagine that it could
have actually known they were being planned and deliberately allowed
them to happen.
Thus it was with some skepticism that I agreed to read the new book
written by David Ray Griffin, a process theologian from the Claremont
School of Theology in Claremont, Calif., that argues the case for just
such complicity This book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions
about the Bush Administration and 9/11, is due for release this month.
Griffin admits that he too was skeptical toward such suggestions until
he began to actually read the evidence that has been accumulated by a
number of researchers, both in the United States and Europe. As he
became increasingly convinced that there was a case for complicity, he
planned to write an article, but this quickly grew into a book.
The first startling piece of evidence that Griffin puts forward is
establishing the motive among leaders in the Bush administration for
allowing such an attack. Already in 2000 the rightwing authors of the
"Project for the New American Century: Rebuilding America's Defenses"
opined that the military expansion they desired would be difficult
unless a "new Pearl Harbor" occurred. They had outlined plans for a
major imperial expansion of American power that included a greatly
increased military budget and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
primarily to secure oil supplies but also to control the region
generally But they believed that the American people would not have
the will for such actions without some devastating attack from outside
that would galvanize them through fear and anger to support it. In
short, they had already envisioned facilitating a major attack on the
United States in order to gain the public support for their policy
goals.
Griffin then shows the considerable evidence that the Bush
administration knew in advance that such an attack was being planned,
despite claims by the administration that such an attack was
completely unanticipated. As early as 1995 the Philippine police
conveyed to the United States information found on an al-Qaeda
computer that detailed "Project Bojinka," which envisioned hijacking
planes and flying them into targets such as the World Trade Center,
the White House and the Pentagon. By July 2001 the CIA and the FBI had
intercepted considerable information that such an attack was planned
for the autumn. Leaders of several different countries, including the
Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as leaders of Russia, Britain, Jordan,
Egypt and Israel, conveyed information to the United States that such
an attack was being planned. It appears not only that all these
warnings were disregarded, but that investigations into them were
obstructed.
The actual events of Sept. 11 leave many puzzling questions. Standard
procedures for intervention when a plane goes off course were not
followed in the case of all four airplanes. Within 10 minutes of
evidence that a plane has been hijacked, standard procedures call for
fighter jets to intervene and demand that the plane follow it to an
airport. If the plane fails to obey, it should be shot down. There was
time for this to happen before the plane was over New York City in the
case of the first jet and more than ample time in the case of the
second. Moreover, when the order was finally given to intervene, it
was not to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, 70 miles from New
York City, but from Otis Air National Guard in Cape Cod, Mass.
Griffin also examines unexplained issues about the other two planes.
Eyewitnesses and on-site evidence suggest that a missile or guided
fighter aircraft, not a large commercial plane, crashed into the
Pentagon. Moreover the part of the Pentagon that was hit was not where
high-ranking generals were working, but an area under repair with few
military officials. Flight 93 was the only plane shot down, although
only after it appeared that passengers were on the verge of taking
control. Griffin also examines the conduct of President Bush on that
day, giving considerable evidence that he knew of the first crash
immediately after it happened but delayed his response for about half
an hour, nonchalantly continuing with a photo op with elementary
schoolchildren.
These are only a few details of the myriad data that Griffin assembles
to show that not only did the Bush administration have detailed
information that such attacks were going to occur on Sept. 11 and
failed to carry through protective responses in advance, but that it
also obstructed the standard procedures to intervene in these events
on the actual day it happened.
Griffin concludes the book with some considerable evidence of the way
the Bush administration has obstructed any independent investigation
of 9/11 since it occurred, both withholding key documents and
insisting that the official investigation, when it was set up, limit
itself to recommendations about how to avoid such an event in the
future, and not focus on how it actually was able to happen. Griffin
writes in a precise and careful fashion, avoiding inflammatory
rhetoric. He argues for a high probability for the Bush's
administration's complicity in allowing and facilitating the attacks,
based not on any one conclusive piece of evidence but the sheer
accumulation of all of the data. He concludes by calling for a
genuinely independent investigative effort that would examine all this
evidence. He plans to send the book to the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (called the Kean commission
after Thomas Kean, its chair), although Griffin expresses doubts about
the commission's independence.
I found Griffin's book both convincing and chilling. If the complicity
of the Bush administration to which he points is true, then Americans
have a far greater problem on their hands than even the more ardent
antiwar critics have imagined. If the administration would do this,
what else would it do to maintain and expand its power? |
