Let's recall the presentation that we were given of the New York attacks. At 8:50 am, Tuesday 11 September 2001, the all-news TV channel CNN interrupts its programming to announce that a passenger aircraft has crashed into the North Tower of the WTC. As they don't have any pictures of the catastrophe, the network puts on the screen a fixed shot of the rooftops of New York City which allows one to see the wisps of smoke escaping from the Tower.
At first, it seems we're looking at a spectacular airplane accident. The American airlines, who are on the verge of bankruptcy, maintain their fleet of aircraft more and more poorly… Air-traffic controllers offer a none-too-reliable service… Generalized deregulation leads to the anarchic oversight of corporate agglomerations... What was bound to happen, therefore, has finally come to pass.
Nevertheless, one can't rule out, as CNN is quick to suggest, that this crash might not be accidental. We'd thus be talking about an act of terrorism. We remember that on 26 February 1993, a truck bomb had blown up on the second sublevel of the WTC parking garage, killing six people and injuring 1000 others. The attack had been attributed to an Islamist organization run, out of New York City itself, by Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. For the CNN commentators, if this crash is an attack, then it's probably the work of another Islamist, the Saudi former billionare Osama bin Laden. In a fatwa dated 23 August 1996, this financier, having taken refuge in Afghanistan, called for a holy war against the USA and Israel. The attacks which took place on 7 August 1998 against the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are attributed to him. In several years, he has become US "Public Enemy Number One." The FBI has put a $5 million price on his head. The UN Security Council has asked the Taliban government to extradite him. Since 5 February 2001, the US has been in the process of trying him in absentia in New York.
One after another, the American TV networks set up direct links with New York. At 9:03 am, a second passenger aircraft strikes the South Tower of the WTC. The crash comes along right while numerous channels are broadcasting images of the North Tower burning. It is therefore filmed from various angles and watched live by millions of TV viewers. Judging by the evidence, the US is going to have to face terrorist acts on its own soil. Fearing carbomb attacks, the New York Port Authority closes down all bridges and tunnels to the borough of Manhattan (see, they fear the action of ground commandos!). At 9:40 am, the New York City police informs the population that new airplanes could hit other towers. At 10:00 am, while news of another attack on the Pentagon is being announced, the South Tower of the WTC collapses live on the TV screens, then at 10:29, it's the North Tower that collapses. A cloud of dust envelops Manhattan. They speak of a possible loss of several tens of thousands of dead. The burning airplanes had emitted such an intense heat that the metallic structures of the buildings couldn't stand up to it.
The governor of New York, George Pataki, closes all the official state offices and calls in the National Guard. "I have friends in those towers, I am thinking of them, of their families, and we're trying hard to support all those who have been touched by this tragedy," he confesses. At 11:02, the mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, speaking by phone from New York One, addresses the residents of New York: "Those who are not in Manhattan at the moment, stay at home or at your office. If you are in the financial district, walk calmly to the north, outside the attack zone, so as not to interfere with rescue efforts. We must save as many people as possible." A dense crowd of several tens of thousands of people crosses the bridges (already closed to motor traffic) to get out of Manhattan.
At 5:20 pm, the tower of Building 7 of the WTC, which wasn't hit by the airplanes, collapses without injuring anyone. The New York emergency services think that the building was damaged by the collapse of the two before it. By a sort of domino effect, other neighboring buildings are susceptible to falling down themselves. The New York mayor's office orders 30,000 body bags.
In the afternoon, and the following days, the scenario of the attack is pieced together: Islamic zealots, from the bin Laden network, organized into teams of five and armed with boxcutters, hijacked passenger planes. Fanatics, they sacrificed themselves, driving their kamikaze airplanes into the towers.
At first sight, the facts are indisputable. Nevertheless, the more one enters into the details, the more contradictions appear.
The two airplanes were identified by the FBI as Boeing 767s, the first belonging to American Airlines (Flight 11, Boston-LAX) and the second to United Airlines (Flight 175, Boston-LAX). The companies recognized having lost these planes.
Thanks to passengers who, armed with cellphones, telephoned their relatives during the operation, we know that the hijackers gathered all the passengers in the rear of the airplane, as is classically done to isolate the cockpit. Their action was made easier by the small number of passengers: 81 on Flight 11, and 56 on Flight 175, [[for a total of 137]] out of 239 seats, were occupied.
According to the information revealed by telephone by the passengers, the hijackers were carrying only bladed weapons [Except for Flight 93, which exploded [[sic]] above Pennsylvania. The passengers there indicated that the pirates had at their disposal a box which they said was a bomb.]. After American airspace had been closed, all airborne flights landed and were searched by the FBI. In two of them, Flight 43 (Newark-LAX) and Flight 1729 (Newark-San Francisco), identical boxcutters were discovered hidden under seats. Investigators concluded that all the hijackers were using this type of boxcutter. Later on, the CIA discovered bags of boxcutters in a house where Osama bin Laden had stayed in Afghanistan, which attests that the Islamic zealots had been trained in their use.
It is nevertheless difficult to conceive that the commandant of the attacks had neglected to furnish his men with firearms, taking the risk of seeing his operation fail, partially or totally. It's even more surprising when you consider that it's easier to get certain pistols [Synthetic pistols are not detectable by airport metal detectors. See, for example, http://www.glock.com] through airport security than it is to get boxcutters through.
Why ask such questions? In the collective imagination, it's well known that Arabs, thus these Islamic fanatics, love to cut their victims' throats. The boxcutters allow one to induce that the air pirates were all Arabs, Q.E.D.
Before arriving at New York, the airplanes had to lose a considerable amount of altitude, enough so that the pilots could see the towers straight ahead of them, not below them. Seen from above, a city looks like a map, and all our visual points of reference disappear. In order to hit the towers, they had to be pre-positioned at very low altitude.
The pilots had not only to regulate the altitude of the crash, but also to position the aircraft laterally. The Twin Towers are 63.70 meters [[209 feet]] wide. The wingspan of a Boeing 767 is 47.60 meters [[156 feet]]. One observes in the videos that the aircraft struck precisely in the center of the targets. A simple displacement of 55.65 meters [[182 feet]] and the airplanes would have missed. At average speed (700 kph [[435 mph]]), this distance is covered in three-tenths of a second. Given the poor maneuverability of these machines, this would be a tour de force for seasoned pilots, even more so for apprentice pilots.
The first airplane arrived perfectly straight-on, in relation to the wind direction, which made stabilization easier. But the second one was obliged to execute a complex maneuver of rotation, particularly difficult into the wind. Nevertheless, it too struck its tower at just the right altitude, and dead-center.
Professional pilots assert that few of them are capable of envisioning such an operation, and they strictly rule it out for amateurs [[et l'excluent formellement pour des pilotes amateurs]]. On the other hand, there's an infallible way to achieve this end: using beacons. A signal, emitted from the target, attracts the airplane, which is automatically guided. Now, the existence of a beacon in the WTC has been attested to by radio amateurs who have made note of its signal. It has been detected because it interfered with emissions of TV antennas placed atop the towers. It is probable that the signal was activated at the last moment to avoid its being discovered and destroyed. It is possible that the hijackers had used two beacons, for a single one would have made the affair difficult in spite of the alignment of the targets. In any manner, they would have had to have accomplices on the ground. And if they had had them, it wouldn't have been necessary to deploy a lot of hijackers on board the airplanes. A small team would have been enough to put the aircraft on autopilot. It wasn't, furthermore, necessary at all to have hijackers on board, because there were no hostages to take: hacking into the on-board computers before takeoff, it's possible to take control of an airplane in flight thanks to Global Hawk technology, put into place by the DOD. The Boeing would thus become teleguided, like a drone—an unpiloted airplane.
Subsequently, the Twin Towers collapsed in on themselves. An investigative committee was commissioned by FEMA and carried out by the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) [[Une commission d'enquête a été confiée par la FEMA… à la ASCE]]. According to the preliminary report, the burning of airplane fuel had emitted a great heat which had weakened the central metallic structure. This theory is vigorously rejected by the NYFD and by the professional journal Fire Engineering [$elling Out the Investigation, by Bill Manning, Fire Engineering, January 2002. See also WTC Investigation? A Call to Action (petition published in the same issue of the journal)] which, supported by calculations, maintain that the structures could stand up to fire for a long time. The firefighters assert that they heard explosions at the base of the buildings, and they call for opening an independent investigation. [For example, witness account of firefighter Louie Cacchioli (Brigade 47) http://people.aol.com/people/special/0,11859,174592-3,00.html] They ask questions about substances which were stocked in the buildings and, in the absence of answers, about criminal explosions implicating a team on the ground. A famous expert of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Van Romero, assured that the collapse could not have been caused by anything but explosives [Explosives Planted in Towers, NM Tech Expert Says by Olivier Uyttebrouck, in Albuquerque Journal of 11 September 2001. Retracted in Fire, Not Extra Explosives, Doomed Buildings, Expert Says by John Fleck, in Albuquerque Journal of 21 September 2001 http://www.abqjournal.com]. He retracts his statements in the face of public pressure.
In any event, the airplane crashes do not explain the collapse of a third building, Tower 7. The hypothesis of a destabilization of the foundations was dismissed by the ASCE: in effect, Tower 7 didn't lean over, but collapsed in on itself. The question isn't Was the building dynamited? but rather What other hypothesis could you formulate?
Here's where a New York Times scoop [Secret CIA Site in New York Was Destroyed on Sept. 11, by James Risen, The New York Times, 4 November 2001, http://www.nytimes.com] comes in. The WTC, which was believed to be a civilian target, was actually hiding a secret military target. Perhaps thousands of people perished because they were serving, without knowing it, as human shields. Tower 7—but perhaps also other buildings and the underground areas—were hiding a CIA base [We have made the acquaintance of several witnesses according to whom the CIA base was located on the 9th and 10th floors of Tower 7. As a cover, they used the New York Electronic Crime Task Force attached to the Secret Service. The same sources have managed to get photographs of Tower 7 to us, taken after the collapse of the South Tower, in which one can neatly discern a fire on the 9th floor http://members.aol.com/erichuf/eh_wtc16.jpg. We have not been in a position to verify the authenticity of the photographs or the truthfulness of the information.] [[The last link no longer works]]. In the 1950s it was a simple office spying on foreign UN delegations; under Bill Clinton, this base had illegally extended its activities into Manhattan economic espionage. The principal resources of the American intelligence apparatus had been shifted from anti-Soviet espionage to economic warfare. The New York CIA base had become the most important world center of economic intelligence. This reorientation of intelligence was hotly contested by the most traditional branch of the CIA and by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In retrospect, we can wonder whether the target of the attack on the WTC of 26 February 1993 (six dead, a thousand injured) wasn't this secret CIA station, albeit much less developed at the time.
Knowing that at the time of the first crash, 30,000 to 40,000 people were in the Twin Towers, and that each tower has 110 floors, there would be an average of at least 136 people per floor. The first Boeing hit the North Tower between the 80th and 85th floors. The occupants of these levels perished immediately, whether it be from the effect of the shock or from the fire which followed. The people situated in the upper floors found themselves trapped, the fire climbing. Some prefered to throw themselves into the void rather than succumb to the flames. When all is said and done, the structure collapsed. All the people situated in the upper thirty floors therefore died. According to the law of averages, there must have been at least 4080.
Now, according to the official deathtoll of 9 February 2002, the two New York attacks caused a total of 2843 deaths (total number, including the passengers and crew of the Boeings, the police officers and firefighters who perished in the towers' collapse, and the towers' tenants) [The final death toll of WTC victims is 2,843, AP report of 9 February 2002. This figure is that released by the City of New York. As for the press agency itself, they came up with a lesser figure of 2,799 dead]. This deathtoll is much less than initial estimations and leaves one to think that, appearances to the contrary, the attacks were not aimed at provoking human losses at the maximum scale. To the contrary, there must have been some preliminary intervention, so that numerous people, at least those whose workplaces were on the upper floors, were absent from their offices at the stated time.
Thus, the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed that Odigo, a leading electronic-messaging firm, received anonymous warning messages informing them of the New York attacks, two hours before they happened. The facts were confirmed by Misha Macover, head of the firm [Haaretz, 26 September 2001, http://www.haaretzdaily.com. Information taken up by Daniel Seberg on CNN: FBI Probing "Threating" [[sic]] Message, Firm Says (28 September) http://www.cnn.com See also Instant Messages to Israel Warned of WTC Attack by Brian McWilliams, in Newsbytes 27 September, and Odigo Clarifies Attack Messages by the same author in the next day's edition http://www.newsbytes.com This information was circulated, in a deformed fashion, by an Al-Jazeera commentator, who tried to use it to bolster an argument that the attacks were carried out by the Mossad, who had preliminarily warned Jewish WTC employees. The Qatari network immediately labelled the journalist a storyteller.]. All sorts of warnings could have been addressed to occupants of the North Tower, even if all of them probably weren't taken seriously in the same fashion.
Here one recognizes a schema comparable to that of the attack carried out at Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. That day, a large group of functionaries who worked in the Murrah Federal Building had been given the morning off, so many so that the carbomb explosion killed only 168 people. An attack which we know today had been carried out by military personnel belonging to an extreme-right organization, which had itself been infiltrated by the FBI [A Force Upon The Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate by Kenneth Stern, Simon & Schuster, 1996. See also the first part of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: the Unreported Stories by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Regnery Publishind [[sic]], 1997].
In Oklahoma City, the FBI had thus permitted an attack to be committed, an attack of which they had been informed, although they did limit its impact.
Now let's listen to this strange confession of President George W. Bush. This was during a meeting at Orlando, 4 December:
Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.
But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."
And, Jordan, I wasn't sure what to think at first. You know, I grew up in a period of time where the idea of America being under attack never entered my mind -- just like your Daddy's and Mother's mind probably. And I started thinking hard in that very brief period of time about what it meant to be under attack. I knew that when I got all of the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America. (Applause.)
[[Cut & pasted from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/print/20011204-17.html]]
Therefore, according to his own declaration, the president of the United States saw images of the first crash before the second one had taken place. These images cannot be those taken by chance by Jules and Gédéon Naudet. Indeed, the Naudet brothers stayed at the WTC taking film all day long, and their video wasn't released until thirteen hours later, by the Gamma agency. So we're talking about secret images which were transmitted to him [[Bush]], without delay, into the security-communications room which had been set up in the elementary school in preparation for his visit. But if the US intelligence services were able to film the first attack, then they had been informed of it beforehand. And in that case, why didn't they do anything to save their compatriots?
Let's go back over our information: the terrorists had at their disposal logistical support from ground teams. They activated one or two beacons, warned some of the occupants of the towers so as to limit the human catastrophe, and dynamited three buildings. All of this under the gaze of intelligence services who were as attentive as they were passive.
Could an operation like this have been thought up and directed in an Afghani cave, and carried out by a handful of Islamic zealots?
[[END OF CHAPTER TWO]]
