7 September 2007

911 The New Evidence

A new book challenges many of the myths which have grown up around the 911 attacks. 911 The New Evidence, out now in the UK (Constable) and soon in the US (pub Carol and Graf), makes the case for a new fully independent investigation into the 911 attacks. Henshall is available for interview.

Henshall's call is supported by a Zogby poll out today (ref see below): 51% of Americans support a new congressional enquiry into Bush and Cheney's role before during and after the 911 attacks, 30% support the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney and 67% say the 911 Commission should have investigated the still unexplained collapse of Building 7 (which was announced to the media 30 minutes before it fell symmetrically to the ground at freefall speed). Previous polls have found that fewer than 20% of Americans believe they have been told the full story of the 911 attacks. Although some broadcasters have suggested otherwise, 911 victims groups are in the forefront of demands to reopen the enquiry. Many witnesses heard by the 911 Commission have denounced it as a whitewash, concuring with commissioner Max Cleland who resigned early on.

Ian Henshall, co-author with Rowland Morgan of the best seller 911 Revealed, described in the Sunday Times as exposing "vast gaps" in the official story. 911 Revealed became a non-fiction best seller. Henshall has now trailed through a wide range of Washington officials' memoirs, US government documents and mainstream press reports, concluding that the myths of the 911 attacks - the lack of warnings, the lucky 19 hijackers, the silent takeovers of the planes' cabins, the passengers' mobile phone calls - cannot be true.

Interviews and review copies

Henshall is available for interviews. He is in London on Monday 10 and Tuesday 11, but several slots are taken. To seek an interview on these days please email straight away and call 01273 326862 or 079469 39217.

For interviews on other dates and review copies of 911 The New Evidence please email the press contacts at the end of this message and copy a reply to this email.

Notes

In the run-up to the 911 anniversary Ian Henshall has been interviewed by a range of radio stations and the book has been featured in the Daily Express and the Sport with wider coverage pending in national and global media.

He has established that:

* The 2006 Moussaoui trial and Inspectors' reports have confirmed accusations from FBI officers in the field: in summer 2001 a network of senior CIA, Justice Department and FBI officials systematically obstructed the FBI field officers who suspected what was planned and could have foiled the attacks. The FBI was legally the lead agency. CIA officers at first falsely testified that they had informed the FBI of the threat posed by presumed hijackers Al Hazmi and Al Mihdhar and later told inspectors they "could not recall" why they did not.

* The "anti-hijack exercise" scheduled by the Pentagon at the time the "real" attack took place seems more than an extraordinary coincidence and a close reading of partially released air traffic control transcripts indicates that the exercise may have involved at least one of the planes used in the attacks.

* If video and flight recorder evidence released by the US government is correct, Flight 77 could not have hit the Pentagon. The government admitted at the Moussaoui trial that contrary to the official myth, reflected in a series of feature films and tv documentaries, only two mobile phone calls were made from Flight 93. One reported smoke and an explosion shortly prior to the crash.

* Condoleeza Rice falsely stated on oath to the 911 Commission that Bush's August 2001 CIA briefing, which warned him of the possibility of an attack within America and was still secret at the time she testified, did not mention any specific targets. In fact it mentioned New York and predicted a possible hostage taking. Intriguingly, the presumed hijackers apparently told passengers on two planes that this was their plan.

* The "Independent 911 Commission" misrepresented evidence from Pentagon officials, made false statements and failed to ask the right questions. The Commissioners, far from being independent, were trusted members of Washington's permanent government. Commissioner Hamilton the leading Democrat was a political ally of Cheney from when they worked together on the Iran-contra scandal in the late 1980's. Commissioner Cleland resigned in disgust.

* Early official reports into the collapse of the Twin Towers present clear evidence - vaporised and sulpfurised steel, seismic events preceding the plane impacts - suggesting that, as eyewitnesses reported at the time, the neat symmetrical collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at near freefall speed was the result of explosions in the buildings.

* Ex UK foreign minister Robin Cook wrote in The Guardian that the original meaning of Al Qaeda was "the database", ie the list of Afghan arab freedom fighters closely linked to if not controlled by the CIA. Recent statements from officials, along with press reports at the time, make it clear that Al Qaeda had links with the CIA or the DIA well into the 1990's. Osama Bin laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan was managed by Ali Mohamed, Washington's spy at the heart of Al Qaeda who trained Osama Bin laden's personal bodyguards. Alleged 911 ringleader Khaled Sheikh Mohammed lived in Pakistan for years while secretly indicted by the US Justice Department. He was probably an asset of Pakistan's ISI. US government documents show the ISI was working closely with George Tenet and the CIA on a secret project in the months before 911. Its boss General Ahmad was in secret Washington meetings with top officials and congressmen before during and after the 911 attacks. Reports from India, supported by the French media said that the terrorist money trail went back to Ahmad, who took early retirement shortly after the news came out. The claim by Washington journalist Gerald Posner that the ISI was colluding with Al Qaeda against the wishes of the CIA seems an unlikely explanation.

8. A close examination of the paper trail from 2000 and 2001 shows beyond doubt that the decision (and probably detailed planning) to invade Iraq was taken before, not after, the 911 attacks and CIA boss Tenet was involved in the plans. The record shows an unusual series of long meetings (denied by Tenet in evidence he gave on oath to the 911 Commission) with Bush in Texas in the weeks up to 911. One such meeting, still unacknowledged in Tenet's recent memoirs, lasted for a full day and included the chiefs of staff whose planes apparently failed to intercept any of four hijacked planes. The official account has left an unexplained and undocumented black hole of 20 minutes at the Pentagon situation room at the height of the crisis.

9. Cheney who championed plans to invade Iraq before 911 was in charge of the Pentagon on the morning of 9/11 and almost certainly in charge of the hijack exercise.

10. BBC News was recently embarrassed by video surfacing on the internet which showed an announcer stating the the "Saloman Brothers Building" (WTC7) had collapsed while in the background it still stood intact. WTC7 housed the largest Secret Servcice office in the US and was the repository of high level fraud investigations. Many of these records were lost in the collapse.

Henshall draws no firm conclusions but ends with a working hypothesis for investigators to follow up.

"9/11 THE NEW EVIDENCE"
pub Sept 2007 Constable (UK) ISBN 978-1-84529-514-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/11-New-Evidence-Ian-Henshall/dp/1845295145/
publicity: "Sam Evans" <Sam@constablerobinson.com>

Call for a Coalition Against Arming Theocratic States
By Lenni Brenner

It is time for enlightened Americans, religious or unbelievers, to unite in a coalition against arming theological states. Its immediate task would be to help defeat both parts of President Bush’s scheme to sell $20 billion worth of satellite-guided bombs, fighters and naval vessels to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and increase US military grants to Israel by 25%, to $30.4 billion over 10 years.

No mincing words: Since the beginning of the cold war against ‘godless Communism,’ one of Washington’s overriding Middle Eastern strategies, arming religious states, has been catastrophic for the region’s people. Bush’s extension of it guarantees more disasters for them and Americans.

The 7/28 New York Times described his strategy:

“[T]o contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies.”

Everyone old enough to cross streets alone knows that oil is the consideration. After WW ll, the US replaced Britain as the Gulf’s imperial overlord, and he seeks to dominate the economically crucial region. But the vast majority of Arabs and Iranians know, thru experience, that official Washington remains their nonstop enemy.

In 1948, Democrat Harry Truman, needing campaign funds from wealthy pro-Zionist Jews, recognized officially Orthodox Jewish Israel. He loaned it money used to buy weapons to drive hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians into exile. In 1953, Republican Dwight Eisenhower shifted gears. He brought Said Ramadan of the Muslim Brotherhood to the White House. The US patronized Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets and those Iranians and Arabs seeking to nationalize their countries’ imperialist owned oil industries.

That year, Eisenhower’s CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddegh for nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. It restored Shah Muhammad Reza Palevi’s “For the Shah, Iran and Islam” despotism. Regime opponents were tortured and murdered for 26 years. Eventually the Shia clergy broke with the US puppet, bringing him down in 1979. That’s their valid domestic claim to legitimacy. But their Islamic republic is brutal. Nevertheless, its millions of internal opponents, anti-regime Muslims, atheists, drinkers, feminists, gays, Marxists, Baluchi and Kurdish nationalists, etc., don’t want the US or Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear installations, or the US trying to replace the Ayatollahs with yet another marionette.

The US learned nothing from its Iranian debacle. That same year, Democrat Jimmy Carter secretly started arming Afghan Sunni fundamentalists against the Soviet-imposed regime in Kabul. They won under Republican Ronald Reagan, who allied with the Saudis in a jihad against ‘godless’ Communism. The first thing America’s fundos did was take away rights women had under the pro-Soviet regime. Then they fought among themselves, with the Taliban winning.

In 1991, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and old Bush sent thousands of troops to Saudia to protect the pro-American regime. Osama bin Laden, a leader of bipartisan Washington’s terrorist allies in Afghanistan, finally realized that the Saudi dynasty were American dependents. He broke with them and the ‘Crusaders’ and, in time, blew up the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocents.

“Blow back” is CIA slang for unforeseen negative consequences of its plots and 9/11 was truly the inevitable result of Washington’s using religious fanatics in its imperial machinations. Although bin Laden had broken with the dynasty, post-9/11 Saudia is absolutely unpopular here. Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi citizens. Americans, right to left, understand that they were inevitable end-products of the regime’s indoctrination.

The country’s male chauvinism is spectacular. Women must wear veils in public and can’t drive cars. They need their father or husband’s approval to leave the country. There is blatant discrimination against Shia Muslims. Open Christian churches are forbidden. So it isn’t surprising that the proposal to further arm this ultimate high-tech medieval regime has generated A to Z opposition to Bush’s scheme.

American Atheists, Inc., founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who got prayers tossed out of US public schools, warns that

“Bush’s plan to sell $20 billion of advanced military hardware to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and provide more aid to Israel threatens to further destabilize the region and fuel religion-based terrorism.”

Ellen Johnson, AA’s President, added that

“Creating jobs and economic opportunity, securing full rights for the region’s women, encouraging an authentic civil society with personal rights — all of this is needed to challenge the rampant clerical terrorism that plagues the Middle East.”

Israel, worried about Shia Iran’s nuclear ambitions, backs Bush’s sales to Sunni Saudia. But some pro-Zionist Congressional Democrats are opposed. They claim that the Saudi regime backs Sunni terrorists in Iraq, killing American troops. More important. they fear for Israel if the dynasty were to be overthrown. Alternative regimes, left or Al-Qaeda, would be serious foes. They feel that increasing US arms to Israel can’t compensate it for the risk that the weapons sold to the Saudis would ultimately be used by its determined opponents.

When Israel is denounced for its crimes, Zionists typically respond by asking ‘why is Israel being singled out? Why aren’t people also crying out against Saudi Arabia’s crimes?’ Israel shouldn’t be singled out. Americans must oppose arms going to all governments violating human rights. But aren’t these Democrats now singling out Saudi Arabia? Why aren’t they likewise excoriating Israel for its political sins?

Moshe Katsav just resigned as Israel’s President. The Attorney General announced sufficient evidence to indict him for raping his office manager. Eventually he pled guilty to committing an indecent act under coercion. This is usually punished by up to 10 years imprisonment but he got a one-year suspended sentence. Twenty-thousand people demonstrated in the streets, demanding that he go to prison.

Katsev was President of an Orthodox Jewish state. Every morning an adult Orthodox male thanks God for “making me a man, not a woman.” Women thank him for “making me what I am.” They are segregated in Orthodox synagogues. Wives can’t divorce their husbands in the country’s religious courts and there is no civil divorce. If their husbands won’t divorce them, they can’t remarry. There are thousands of women in this situation.

“Reform Judaism” is America’s largest Jewish sect. “Conservative Judaism” its 2nd largest. Orthodoxy is 3rd, ca. only 10% of US Jews. There are Reform and Conservative Israeli rabbis, but they can’t perform legal marriages. Only Orthodox rabbis can. And of course there is no Israeli civil marriage. Israel’s Palestinian minority must also marry in religious ceremonies. In the ultimate theocratic state comedy, an Israeli supreme court judge had to go to Cyprus to marry a Conservative woman.

Theoretically, all Israeli male Jews must serve in the military. Some Orthodox become regular soldiers. But others do their hitch in Orthodox-only units, shielded against contact with Jewish women soldiers who might be menstruating. Another 11% of 18 year olds are completely exempt from the military so they can study theology, while Israel’s many atheists must kill or be killed, fighting for a state rooted in their legal inequality.

Orthodox superiority over rival Judaic sects is superimposed on massive colonial inequality for native Palestinian Muslims, Christians, Druze and atheists. In 1948, Israel drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. The truth is in the uncensored University of California edition of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Memoirs, published after his 1995 assassination by a Zionist:

“‘Driving out’ is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the legion. The inhabitants of Rami watched and learned the lesson. Their leaders agreed to evacuate voluntarily, on condition that the evacuation was carried out by vehicles.”

Religious inequality went further after Israel’s 1967 victory. All ‘Israeli’ settlements in the West Bank are Jews-only, even though 1.4 million of Israel’s 7.1 million citizens are Palestinian. Some of these, male members of the Druze sect, Muslim Bedouins, and some Christians, fight in Zionism’s wars. Yet none can live in the settlements. And some Jews-only settlements are Orthodox-only. Not even atheist Zionists can live in them.

Bush just signed an “Advance Democracy Act,” requiring the State Department to develop strategies helping tyrannies turn into democracies. No one takes it seriously. The pro-Bush NY Sun reported that “passage into law comes as Mr. Bush himself has abandoned most of his democracy promotion agenda.” The Gulf arms deal means the end of “any remnant of public pressure for these states to afford their citizens the rights to assembly, free speech, or petition.” And Bush and the Democrats wouldn’t dream of applying the law to Israel. To hear them tell it, ‘Israel,’ with its legal ethnic, religious and sexual inequalities, ‘is the only democracy in the Middle East.’

The proposed coalition’s constant task must be education. Few Americans are familiar with Washington’s Middle Eastern history. Few know their party’s role. Even fewer understand the theological distinctions between Sunni and Shia Islam, or know that Israel has no civil marriage or divorce. The young never heard of the Shah. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was Reagan’s favorite among his Afghan anti-Soviet “freedom fighters,” but how many voters know that he is now killing American troops? How many can explain the conflict between Palestinian Hamas and Fatah or why the US backs Fatah?

The coalition must establish a “just the facts, ma’am” website where everyone can get the details re the above topics and more. Among other things, the public should be able to conveniently read the program of the major political players in the region, theological or secularist.

Members must agree to its prime demand, no weapons to theocratic states, anywhere. But disagreement is inevitable re how to get to a democratic secular Middle East in a democratic secular world. That’s good because debates between members, and with supporters of Washington’s policies, would attract attention to the coalition message.

Every wannabe presidential candidate of every party expected to be on the 2008 ballot should be questioned, ASAP, re arming religious states, and the public should be informed of their answers or failure to answer.

Given the disastrous history of Democratic and Republican arming of religious fanatics, the coalition and the public would benefit from debating whether it should endorse a candidate of a 3rd party committed to ending arming religious states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel, but with the proviso that individual members would still be free to vote as they wished.

There are existing rival coalitions dealing with aspects of the Middle East. Many demand that the US get out of Iraq. Others call for justice for Palestinians, others oppose war with Iran. US gays speak out against gay executions in Iran. Feminists demand equal rights for Afghan women. The proposed coalition should always act as a catalyst trying to unify the broad movement in action. In general, it should ask to speak at anti-war rallies on issues related to its mandate and, where invited to do so, help build such actions, especially among secularists.

Allow me a personal theological/political point as the proponent of such a coalition. I’m an atheist. But the new movement shouldn’t be an atheist front. There are atheist Zionists. There are atheist Arab nationalists who use terror against Israel. But every July 4th, Americans remember Thomas Jefferson, a deist, not an atheist, who did his best to separate church and state in his new republic. The new coalition can end arming of bigot states if it educates America about what he meant by religious freedom.

Some readers are atheists, some are religious. That’s fine. His last written words were about his Declaration of Independence and its meaning for the world. If you are interested in scrolling him up to our times and building such a coalition to operate in their spirit, contact me:

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

***

Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at 10, and a left political activist at 15, in 1952. He was arrested 3 times during civil rights sit-ins in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in prison when a court revoked his probation for marijuana possession, because of his activities during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.

Immediately on imprisonment, he spent 4 days in intense discussion with Huey Newton, later founder of the Black Panther Party, whom he encountered in the court holding tank.

He was an antiwar activist from the 1st days of the Vietnam war, speaking frequently at rallies in the Bay Area. In 1963 he organized the Committee for Narcotic Reform in Berkeley. In 1968 he co-founded the National Association for Irish Justice, the American affiliate of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

He worked with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), the legendary “Black Power” leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in the Committee against Zionism and Racism, from 1985 until Ture’s death in 1998.

Brenner is the author of 4 books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Jews in America Today, and The Lesser Evil, a study of the Democratic Party. His books have been favorably reviewed in 11 languages by prominent publications, including the London Times, The London Review of Books, Moscow’s Izvestia and the Jerusalem Post.

He has written over 120 articles for many publications, including the American Atheist, New York’s Amsterdam News, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, The Atlanta Constitution, CounterPunch, The Jewish Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Middle East International, The Journal of Palestine Studies, The New Statesman of London, Al-Fajr in Jerusalem and Dublin’s United Irishman.

In 2002 he edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.
It contains complete translations of many of the documents quoted in
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall.

In 2004 he edited Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State:
Writings on Religion and Secularism.

He blogs at www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner and can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.

I don’t have to do any promotion on this book. Read the news and you can’t get away from the theme of “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets.”

Here’s the mob mind at work in the President’s latest speech on Iran. Haven’t we heard it all? Lies, damn lies, and not even a statistic in sight. It’s WMD in Iraq, Volume 2. No mushroom clouds this time — the threat is nuclear holocaust, nothing less. Who could possibly believe this? It’s not even clear where the Iranians have got in their nuclear research; meanwhile the U.S. has enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet several times over. But no — the government tells us we need to be afraid — oh so, afraid.

Why do people buy this stuff? Over and over?

Here’s Glen Greenwald at Salon, via blogger, Firedoglake (thanks for the tip to Ali Eteraz)
George Bush, speaking before yet another military audience, yesterday delivered what might actually be the most disturbing speech of his presidency, in which he issued more overt war threats than ever before towards Iran:

The other strain of radicalism in the Middle East is Shia extremism, supported and embodied by the regime that sits in Tehran. Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran backs Hezbollah who are trying to undermine the democratic government of Lebanon. Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent, and target Israel, and destabilize the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late (Applause.)

Leave aside all of the dubious premises — the fact that the U.S. is supposed to consider Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” because of its support for groups that are hostile to Israel; that Iran is arming its longstanding Taliban enemies; that Iran is some sort of threat to Iraq’s future even though it is an ally of Iraq’s government; and that Iran’s detention of American-Iranians inside its own country is anything other than retaliation for our own equally pointless detention of Iranians inside of Iraq, to say nothing of a whole slew of other provacative acts we have recently undertaken towards Iran. Leave all of that aside for the moment. Viewed through the prism of presidential jargon, Bush’s vow — “We will confront this danger before it is too late” — is synonymous with a pledge to attack Iran unless our array of demands are met. He is unmistakably proclaiming that unless Iran gives up its nuclear program and fundamentally changes its posture in the Middle East, “we will confront this danger.” What possible scenario could avert this outcome?

By now it is unmistakably clear that it is not only — or even principally — Iran’s nuclear program that is fueling these tensions. As Scott Ritter and others have long pointed out, the fear-mongering warnings about an Iranian “nuclear holocaust” (obviously redolent of Condoleezza Rice’s Iraqi smoking gun “mushroom cloud”) is but the pretext for achieving the true goal — regime change in Tehran. Bush all but said so yesterday:

We seek an Iran whose government is accountable to its people — instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

In other words, we “seek” a new government in Iran. Are there really people left who believe, with confidence, that Bush is going to leave office without commencing or provoking a military confrontation with Iran? Bush also added: “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.” To underscore the fact that this is not mere rhetoric, the U.S. military in Iraq, following Bush’s speech, arrested and detained eight Iranian energy experts meeting in Baghdad with the Iraqi government — handcuffing, blindfolding, and interrogating them — only to then release them when the Iraqi government protested. The path we are on — with 160,000 of our troops in Iran’s neighbor, escalating war-threatening rhetoric, and increasingly provocative acts — is obviously the path to war….”

“The handwriting is on the wall here. All these reports from unnamed sources about Iranian support for Iraqi “insurgents” of this or that faction. The display with much fanfare of captured weapons in Iraq identified as of Iranian manufacture. All these confident allusions to a nuclear weapons program Iran denies exists, for which the IAEA finds no evidence. All these assertions that Iran plans to cause a second Holocaust through a nuclear attack on Israel. Norman Podhoretz’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece praying for the U.S. to bomb Iran. John McCain’s crooning “Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.” The disinformation, distortion, even vilification of Iran in popular culture. The propaganda barrage is reminiscent of that which preceded the criminal invasion of Iraq.”

Gary Leupp in Counterpunch.