koala Site Admin
Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 712
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Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:24 am Post subject: Other points of interest |
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Former US Representative Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing on July 23, 2005, into "what warnings the Bush administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." Panelist and former CIA official Melvin Goodman was quoted as saying "Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian and I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom." Many 9/11 conspiracy theorists testified at the hearing, including Michael Ruppert, Peter Dale Scott, David Ray Griffin, Wayne Madsen and several others.
Between 1993 and 2000, Marvin Bush, President Bush's brother was a principal in a company that provided security for both the World Trade Center and United Airlines. According to an article by David Ray Griffin "from 1999 to January of 2002 their cousin Wirt Walker III was the CEO." According to its president CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down". This last statement has been used by some conspiracy theorists to say that the contract "expired" on September 11, 2001. Barbara Bush allegedly confirmed this theory in her book Reflections (ISBN 0-7432-2359-4) also stating 9/11 was the day the contract expired. However, no specific quote is provided to support this allegation, and a search for the words "contract" or "expired" yields no results. Mr. Bush was also a former director and now is an advisor to the board of directors to a firm HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc that had what it called a small participation in the World Trade Center property insurance coverage and some of the surrounding buildings. Marvin Bush was on a subway under Wall Street when the attacks happened.
The day before the 9/11 attacks, President Bush's father former President George H.W. Bush and several members of his cabinet had been present at a Carlyle Group business conference with Shafig Bin Laden a brother of Osama bin Laden at the Ritz-Carlton hotel located several miles from the Pentagon. The conference was continuing with the remaining cabinet members and Bin Laden's brother at the time of the Pentagon attack. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) along with conspiracy websites have suggested that Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The New York Times reported that members of the bin Laden family were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks. The official 9/11 commission later concluded that "the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United States on charter flights" and that the exodus was approved by special advisor Richard Clarke after a request by Saudi Arabia who feared for their nationals safety.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter to President Bush said, “September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?” He also wrote, “Some believe that the hype paved the way-- and was the justification-- for an attack on Afghanistan”.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in remarks delivered on September 12th 2006 said that it was plausible the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks and that "The hypothesis is not absurd ... that those towers could have been dynamited". The motive might have been "To justify the aggressions that immediately were unleashed on Afghanistan, on Iraq"
The Washington Post reported in its August 3, 2006 edition that "For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances" and that "Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial account of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public" and that "Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted". Sources told the Post this was done to hide a bungled Pentagon response. |
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