Unanswered 9/11 question?

[bartl]

There is a question that I have had ever since it was revealed that there were people in the government who had some warning about 9/11.

How many other threats had an equal or greater level of evidence at that time, which never panned out?

In other words, were the 9/11 warnings something that should have been dealt with, or were they a needle in a pile of other needles?

[Lord Destiny]

9/11 itself is an unanswered question...

[GHalecki]

The idea that anyone in the government had any clear reliable information even hinting at 9/11 is in my mind, highly unlikely, bordering on unbelievable, but I won't debate that here.

It has been stated that FDR had a very good indication that the Japanese were planning on some sort of attack on the US and did nothing to prevent it.
The theory is that FDR needed a wounded, outraged american people in order to accomplish the econimical and military objectives that he was looking for an excuse to put through.
He needed an excuse to declare war on Germany, and used the attack from Japan to get the people in "war mode". FDR just redirected that energy into the the war in Europe, where he (correctly I might add) saw the biggest and most immediate threat.

I find this very plausable, that FDR would allow such a tragedy to justify his political goals. I say this because of his actions, and lack thereof, between his election and inaugeration.
He ran and won on a platform denouncing his predicessor for not taking the swift decisive actions needed to save the country from the Great Depression. After the election, Hoover contacted FDR, asking him what sort of economic policies he wished to see implimented, as at the time it the presidential inaugeration was later than it is now, and Hoover wanted to give him as much a head start as he could. FDR had the oppertunity to take the swift and decisive action that he called for, but his reply to Hoover's offer was to "let him stew in it".

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

The idea that anyone in the government had any clear reliable information even hinting at 9/11 is in my mind, highly unlikely, bordering on unbelievable, but I won't debate that here.


Well you should, because there's pretty strong evidence that Richard Clarke was begging the government to focus on Al Qaeda as they were planning an assault on the country.
Of course, Cheney is now bad mouthing Clarke saying it was his failing... despite those pesky memo's from Clarke.

Also, regardless of blame - they made arrests and new who was behind it all very quickly after it happened - almost as though they didn't need much more evidence than they already had.

I actually remember reading Stven's columns around that time, and he was on the money about a lot things that came out later.

[Steven Grant]

I actually remember reading Stven's columns around that time, and he was on the money about a lot things that came out later.

There are a million stories in the naked city, but only eight basic plots...

- Grant

[GHalecki]

Actually, my previous post was caused by my misinterpreting what I was reading in the OP.

But I maintain that there may (and almost surely was) have been information about that particular plot for 9/11, but little evidence that you could draw any particular knowledge from that information in relation to singling that out from dozens, hundreds, or thousands, of seemingly comperable pieces of information.

I get the feeling that most plots (and I can only assume that there have been many) were foiled in very mundane ways, than the best efforts of the US inteligence community. By a terrorist missing a connection with his contact because of traffic or a flat tire, or a cop notices something completely at random about the person, or they go into the wrong bar and get killed by a skinhead. of they talk too close to a hidden bug that the FBI are using in a case against the mob on a completely unrelated issue, something like that.

I am sure that there have been a ton of cases though, where terrorist plots have been foiled directly due to the increased security efforts after 9/11. Why would one assume that if Al Queda had thirty guys to do the business that day, they wouldn't have another thirty or three hundred? And if they had the people willing, they would certainly TRY to make use of them. Even a botched attack or one that does very little damage to the country in material terms, would serve their purpose of scaring the American people.
I just hope that I am still alive to find out the details when they finally come to light.

[Lord Destiny]

I am sure that there have been a ton of cases though, where terrorist plots have been foiled directly due to the increased security efforts after 9/11.

That's a colossal assumption. But if so, then why wouldn't we hear about it? There's no way the Bush admin would have kept it secret. Every little thing has been exploited to maximum P.R. advantage.

The lack of stories tells me they foiled nothing (not that they were aware of).

Why would one assume that if Al Queda had thirty guys to do the business that day, they wouldn't have another thirty or three hundred? And if they had the people willing, they would certainly TRY to make use of them. Even a botched attack or one that does very little damage to the country in material terms, would serve their purpose of scaring the American people.
I just hope that I am still alive to find out the details when they finally come to light.

Your logic here directs me in the opposite direction. If they're so capable, and yet are doing nothing, and have so much to gain even if they fail, then maybe our perception of Al Qaida is false.

Maybe (1) they're not capable.

Maybe (2) they can't do it without some inside help.

Or maybe (3), they didn't do it in the first place.

[bartl]

That's a colossal assumption. But if so, then why wouldn't we hear about it?
What makes you think that we haven't?

http://wcbstv.com/local/Terrorism.New.York.2.244858.html

More recent:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090430_Final_2_Ft__Dix_defendants_sentenced.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11254053/

[Paul McEnery]

That's a colossal assumption. But if so, then why wouldn't we hear about it? There's no way the Bush admin would have kept it secret. Every little thing has been exploited to maximum P.R. advantage.

The lack of stories tells me they foiled nothing (not that they were aware of)..

Oh, that's not fair.

There's the invasion from the Planet Voltron, and those guys wanted to steal all our ice cream. Including Vanilla!

And the pegwhiffiters from the yellow dimension, who meant to replace our eight note octave with a fifteen note octave. Can you imagine?

And the clone zombie Liberace army, flying over our homes and schools in a fleet of open-topped grand piano B-52s. Would you really want to tell your grandchildren that you allowed that to happen on your watch?

Plus, giant turtles, sentient whirlwind monsters, the lightning beast and...

Wait, we are talking about the planet Rann, aren't we?

[rick]

9/11 itself is an unanswered question...

No, not really.

[Steven Grant]

No, not really.

It's a semi-answered question.

- Grant

[Riddles_McMurphy]

The truth? Criminal Elements within the US government staged a "false flag" Terrorattack on its own citizens, in order to manipulate public perceptioninto supporting its agenda.

[rick]

It's a semi-answered question.

- Grant

No Grant 9/11 is a fully answered question.

Terrorists planned and carried out a highly successful attack against the US that the American government might have been able to prevent if people at the highest level of the government had been doing there job instead of letting political ideology blind them to the intelligence information their subordinates were warning them about.

Not too much more to figure out really.

[rick]

The truth? Criminal Elements within the US government staged a "false flag" Terrorattack on its own citizens, in order to manipulate public perceptioninto supporting its agenda.


Riddles, between that post and the stupid things on the comm board about Jackson, I am quickly comming to the conclusion that you are something of an idiot.

[Riddles_McMurphy]

That's cool Rick.

[rick]

That's cool Rick.

A honest to God friendly suggestion, take about two steps back and think about what you are writing. Especially if you are convinced that you are 100% correct in what you are saying.

It's when someone is the most certain about what they are saying that they are most likely to be wrong.

[Riddles_McMurphy]

A honest to God friendly suggestion, take about two steps back and think about what you are writing. Especially if you are convinced that you are 100% correct in what you are saying.

It's when someone is the most certain about what they are saying that they are most likely to be wrong.

You don't have to agree with what I write, put me on your ignore list or something.

[rick]

You don't have to agree with what I write, put me on your ignore list or something.

I don't ignore people, it isn't polite.

[Steven Grant]

No Grant 9/11 is a fully answered question.

Terrorists planned and carried out a highly successful attack against the US that the American government might have been able to prevent if people at the highest level of the government had been doing there job instead of letting political ideology blind them to the intelligence information their subordinates were warning them about.

Not too much more to figure out really.

Okay, on that level I'm inclined to agree with you. The unanswered questions don't involve any of that, though. The remaining important questions involve why all our air response protocols were ignored and, in fact, overruled.

And I still suspect, as I suspected at the time, that "people at the highest level of government" were perfectly happy to let the hijackings happen. They just didn't expect anyone to start using jumbo jets as guided missiles. Hijackings were once a fairly standard affair. Someone hijacked a plane, made demands, got a lot of press coverage, some negotiation was eventually reached and pretty much all the hostages were inconvenienced but unharmed. I do believe that administration had foreign policy objectives - or, as you put it, political ideology - whose propaganda needs standard hijackings would have served quite nicely: rile up the public, no real harm done.

In other words, where we mainly disagree is in our assessments of the administration's desire to halt the hijackings, if, in fact, warning of them reached anyone at high levels. In your version, warnings were stupidly ignored, but, presumably, had they not been ignored they'd've been dealt with. In mine, they were seen as an opportunity. And clearing up remaining questions about our air response would likely clear that up as well.

- Grant

[Village Idiot]

Terrorists planned and carried out a highly successful attack against the US that the American government might have been able to prevent if people at the highest level of the government had been doing there job ...

9/11 should never have happened.

There is no excuse for the cockpits still being accessible to hijackers. The Israelis figured that out decades ago, and all other countries should have followed suit.

That still could not have prevented airplanes from being blown up, but it certainly would have stopped any attempted hijackings and subsequent use of the planes as weapons.

[rick]

And I still suspect, as I suspected at the time, that "people at the highest level of government" were perfectly happy to let the hijackings happen. They just didn't expect anyone to start using jumbo jets as guided missiles. Hijackings were once a fairly standard affair. Someone hijacked a plane, made demands, got a lot of press coverage, some negotiation was eventually reached and pretty much all the hostages were inconvenienced but unharmed. I do believe that administration had foreign policy objectives - or, as you put it, political ideology - whose propaganda needs standard hijackings would have served quite nicely: rile up the public, no real harm done.

In other words, where we mainly disagree is in our assessments of the administration's desire to halt the hijackings, if, in fact, warning of them reached anyone at high levels. In your version, warnings were stupidly ignored, but, presumably, had they not been ignored they'd've been dealt with. In mine, they were seen as an opportunity. And clearing up remaining questions about our air response would likely clear that up as well.

- Grant


Actually I can agree about most of that being completely possible.

You are of course absolutely correct that right up until the moment smashed the first plane into the WTC, hijackings were mostly political theatre, and I can easily see where the administration would have been fairly drooling at the possibility of a drawn out traditional hijacking being used as an excuse to further their agenda in the Middle East.

That honestly could be true and I can see the circumstances where such a thing could happen. But at the same time I do have my doubts in the case of 9/11 simply because from the time the first plane was taken over until the first strike at the WTC, I seriously doubt that the Bush administration would have been competent enough to make a decision one way or another.

And of course by then everything turned into a complete clusterfuck and anything that the administration possibly could have hoped for was literally buried under the rubble.

You tell me, am I just being naïve by thinking that the Bush administration was simply not competent enough to use the situation to their advantage to begin with?

[rick]

9/11 should never have happened.

There is no excuse for the cockpits still being accessible to hijackers. The Israelis figured that out decades ago, and all other countries should have followed suit.

That still could not have prevented airplanes from being blown up, but it certainly would have stopped any attempted hijackings and subsequent use of the planes as weapons.

Of course it should never of happened.

It was pure hubris to think that we were safe because we were here.

[Steven Grant]

You tell me, am I just being naïve by thinking that the Bush administration was simply not competent enough to use the situation to their advantage to begin with?

I wouldn't say naive, but I would say you're giving them the benefit of the doubt. You could convince me the Ghost himself wasn't competent enough to know what to do in the situation, but I don't believe for a second that Cheney wasn't, and Cheney, from everything I've read, was the guy everyone ran to for orders. And, whoever's president, there are protocols in place for dealing with such things; it's not like everyone has to run to the President for specific orders in situations where no special foreign policy considerations apply (like, say, shooting down a British plane in American airspace). The Air Force doesn't have to go far up the chain of command to scramble a few planes to intercept three or four hijacked aircraft and order them to be escorted to landing. Nuking Scranton, sure, they'd need special permission. Shooting down a commercial jetliner, probably. I can even see where they might not stop the first jet to smash through a Trade Tower, because who'd really be expecting it, and who wants to shoot down a jet over Manhattan if they're not expecting a major terrorist event to occur. But the second one? The Pentagon? Uh-uh.

Something was screwy there. (In fact, there were reports from the ground at the time of planes shooting down the hijacked plane over Pennsylvania that supposedly crashed due to Average Americans rising up against the evil terrorists and sacrificing themselves. But these reports were all routinely dismissed, and I don't recall whether the 9/11 Commission ever called any of the witnesses to testify. Why ruin a good patriotic myth?) This is the stuff about 9/11 that has never really been addressed. I suspect it's why the White House stonewalled their own handpicked commission. As I think I've mentioned before, I also have half a suspicion that all that "third tower" business that had all the conspiracy buffs up in arms and still does was largely a cut-out to steer attention away from this.

(I have some good news, and I have some bad news: we're not paranoid...)

- Grant

[Steven Grant]

It was pure hubris to think that we were safe because we were here.

That was the big shock of 9/11 for most Americans: the shattering of the rather hubristic notion that American soil was somehow sacrosanct.

Curiously, it's also hubris to believe we're in constant danger of imminent catastrophic terrorist attack. (I'm not suggestion you think this, Rick, I'm just saying in general...) I'll never forget being in Los Angeles the morning and subsequent week of 9/11 and for days Angelenos were not only absolutely convinced L.A. was the next terrorist target - because if you're going to destroy the core of American civilization, of course you'll attack Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Disneyland! - but by day 3 they were all getting pretty cranky that no attack had been made. They were seriously treating it like al-Qaeda had said, "Southern California, you just don't rate." It was weird. Lord only knows how they'll react if Kim Jong Il lobs a missile at Hawaii and doesn't bother targeting Mendocino...

- Grant

[Michael P]

The Air Force doesn't have to go far up the chain of command to scramble a few planes to intercept three or four hijacked aircraft and order them to be escorted to landing. Nuking Scranton, sure, they'd need special permission.

Damn. There goes my weekend...

[rick]

That was the big shock of 9/11 for most Americans: the shattering of the rather hubristic notion that American soil was somehow sacrosanct.

Curiously, it's also hubris to believe we're in constant danger of imminent catastrophic terrorist attack. (I'm not suggestion you think this, Rick, I'm just saying in general...) I'll never forget being in Los Angeles the morning and subsequent week of 9/11 and for days Angelenos were not only absolutely convinced L.A. was the next terrorist target - because if you're going to destroy the core of American civilization, of course you'll attack Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Disneyland! - but by day 3 they were all getting pretty cranky that no attack had been made. They were seriously treating it like al-Qaeda had said, "Southern California, you just don't rate." It was weird. Lord only knows how they'll react if Kim Jong Il lobs a missile at Hawaii and doesn't bother targeting Mendocino...

- Grant


I tell you what Steven, when I was in Beirut, back in October 1983, I was blown-up by some angry motherfuckers who drove a truck into the barracks I was standing next to killing a huge number of people and wounding a whole bunch of others, including me. So when I woke up to see the attacks playing out on my television on that gorgeous September morning the thing I felt the most was a certain amount of familiarity.

But you know what, I have to admit that despite what I had been through I was as gullible as the next guy thinking that we had a great big moat protecting us from the badmen who wanted to hurt us.

It’s one thing to be blissfully unaware of the dangers out there, but I have always been just a little mad at myself for knowing what it was like out there and thinking that since I was hone I didn’t have anything to worry about.

As for the “conspiracy”, I still have not seen too much to convince me that the administration was able to do much to stage manage the event, however considering who the evil bastards running the country at the time were, I would not be at all surprised if they had.

It’s funny because when we got hit in Lebanon, it wasn’t more than a month or so before the Regan administration managed to distract the country by invading Grenada and I was not at all surprised when I saw the Bush administration copy that page from the Regan playbook when they invaded Iraq.

And yeah, I lived out in Whittier for awhile and if there is one thing that doesn't surprise me is that some people in LA felt left out.

[bartl]

No Grant 9/11 is a fully answered question.

Terrorists planned and carried out a highly successful attack against the US that the American government might have been able to prevent if people at the highest level of the government had been doing there job instead of letting political ideology blind them to the intelligence information their subordinates were warning them about.

Not too much more to figure out really.
Except for the question which started out this thread: how much other evidence, equally credible with the evidence of the upcoming 9/11 attack was there that didn't come out to anything? Should the 9/11 attack have stood out, or was it one of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of equally possible attacks?

[rick]

Except for the question which started out this thread: how much other evidence, equally credible with the evidence of the upcoming 9/11 attack was there that didn't come out to anything? Should the 9/11 attack have stood out, or was it one of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of equally possible attacks?


I'm sorry Mr. Lidofsky, but I really have nothing to say to people who are more councered with excusing the incompetence of the Bush adminstration than they are with learning the lessions that 911 taught us.

[bartl]

I'm sorry Mr. Lidofsky, but I really have nothing to say to people who are more councered with excusing the incompetence of the Bush adminstration than they are with learning the lessions that 911 taught us.
And I have nothing to say about people who are more concerned with proving that there is a Santa Claus than they are with learning the lessons 911 taught us.

Now, how about something RELEVANT to my question??????

Now, if you are assuming that I am trying to defend the Bush administration, please note that the answer to my question would definitely support one side or the other, yet neither side has ever provided an answer. If the evidence was standing out there on its own, then it shows the incompetence of the Bush administration. If it was a needle in a pile of needles, it shows why the attacks weren't stopped.

As far as learning from it, if it stood alone, we need to make the information flow more easily. If it was a needle in a pile of needles, then we should find out what we could have done to differentiate this threat from the other threats.

There was an attitude in the Bush Administration which I feel was highly destructive to the country: they insisted on putting out little meaningless slogans, and refused to discuss the reasons why they did anything. I've pictured Karl Rove telling everybody, "Hey, Americans will NEVER understand the TRUTH! Let's just say give them a few slogans to rally around, THAT they'll understand!" In the meantime, a religious right managed to screw the chances of the only competent Republican running for President, while the Soros machine screwed the chances of the only competent Democrat who had a shot at being nominated (I will admit to the competence of Joe Biden in spite of his multiple verbal gaffes, but I don't believe he ever had any chance at the nomination). And Senator Clinton, in spite of her competence, has shown the same traits that I despised in Bush.