Before we do, we've got another check of the weather from Mr. Roker.
Al, it is such a pretty morning, isn't it?
Perfect fall morning.
This is an NBC News special report.
Here is Tom Brokaw.
September 11th, the year 2001, a day unlike any other in the long course of American history, a terrorist act of war against this country.
A second airplane!
Your life is going to change, but more important, your son's life is going to change forever.
America will never be the same after September 11, 2001. My God!
Oh my God!
He's on almost everyone's list of the most likely suspects for today's attacks.
The alleged mastermind of America's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
He has described the United States as the devil.
This is the beast.
Meanwhile...
Osama bin Laden is a name that we have been hearing all day long.
They now believe that bin Laden was responsible.
I'm told that Osama bin Laden likely deployed more than 50 terrorists.
They are now, and I'm quoting here, 90% certain.
Somebody provided the logistical support for this operation, and clearly the only person.
Bin Laden comes to mind right away, Mr. Brimmer.
Indeed, he certainly does, bin Laden.
This is his M.O. We have to look to the Middle East.
We have to look to Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden.
Remember, 24 hours ago, it was the Bush tax cut, the Bush budget, the Bush economy.
You don't hear any of that tonight.
It's America's enemy.
America is under attack.
Within hours of the attacks on the Trade Center, There seemed to be one suspect.
Billionaire terrorist Osama bin Laden and his band of ragtag extremists Al-Qaeda were to blame.
They successfully struck the number one military power in the world in an unprecedented fashion.
America would never be the same.
The Patriot Acts, Homeland Security, domestic wiretapping and surveillance, the loss of civil liberties, all in order to fight terror.
Is Osama bin Laden really responsible for the attacks of September 11th?
If so, why can't we apprehend him?
Did you know the FBI does not list 9-11 as one of bin Laden's crimes?
Why not?
According to Rex Toome, chief of investigative publicity for the FBI, it is because there is no hard evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks.
If that is the case, How could the 9-11 Commission conclude it was the work of 19 radical Muslims from the Middle East under the direction of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden?
Bin Laden has been universally blamed for 9-11.
But if one takes a closer look at the available evidence, it points to a much darker power.
Seven years later, what evidence has been gathered?
Let's begin with the hijackers.
Many of them were actually trained within US military bases.
On September 15, 2001, Newsweek reported that U.S. military sources have given information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 90s.
Zaid Al-Ghamdi, Ahmed Al-Nami, and Ahmed Al-Ghamdi listed their address on driver's licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.
Another indication of how the hijackers were tied to U.S. bases was reported on September 12th by Fox and D.C. They stated congratulatory phone calls were made from a separate aeronautical school in Florida, which suggests inside help for the hijackers.
Now here at Emory Riddle School in Daytona Beach, investigators say that they did indeed intercept cell phone calls that originated out of here, calls that were congratulatory after yesterday's attacks, calls the feds say were made by terrorist sympathizers here in Daytona as well as in Broward County.
The New York Times would report that the Defense Department said that Ada had gone to the International Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
Abdulaziz Alamari...
to the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas and Saeed Al-Ghamdi to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio in Monterey, California.
The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute where Al-Ghamdi trained went public and said, Bush knew of the impending attacks on America.
He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism.
He was quickly disciplined and threatened with court-martial.
Even when neighbors called the CIA on hijacker Waleed Alshieri, nothing was done.
Now you might think that some of the neighbors would be shocked to find out that a suspected terrorist lived right down the street from them, but at least one woman we spoke with was not surprised at all.
Diane Albritton was so concerned about what was happening inside the home at 502 Orange Street, she called the CIA. Why was she suspicious?
The odd coming and going, the different rental cars, the odd-looking people that came and went.
At that time, she says, the agency was not interested.
How could it be that the CIA wasn't interested in this woman's story?
Other government officials would go public as well.
J. Michael Springman, a former head of the visa department in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Would blow the whistle that the United States was taking part in covert programs as far back as 1987 to funnel in and protect Islamic terrorists.
Well, it began in Jeddah when I was repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants.
This went on for quite some time during most of my tour there.
Under the American immigration laws, you need to demonstrate that you're going to the United States for a specific purpose, and typically in such a situation, you're going to sign a business deal, or you're going to go as a tourist to see the Grand Canyon, or you're going to the United States as a student to study a particular course of study.
And these were people that had no job in one instance.
He was a Sudanese who was unemployed in Saudi Arabia and a refugee from the Sudan.
But he got a visa for national security purposes after it was taken out of my hands by the chief of the consular section.
At basis, though, I really think that these were more CIA assets, people that were recruited, like all of the folks I've been issuing visas to a couple of years previously.
And these people were tools to be done for a job.
Well, the visas issued to the hijackers in Jeddah came about as a result of it being a CIA consulate.
It was the fifth largest visa issuing post in the Middle East.
It was pretty much a closed system, and they simply brought them through there, knowing that they would be protected by the agency, that people would...
Once I got back to the United States and was out of the Foreign Service, I ran across a couple of people with ties to the American government that told me another story, that the CIA was recruiting fighters for the Afghan war against the then Soviets and that their asset, Osama bin Laden, was working with them.
In the early 1980s, bin Laden worked with operatives from U.S. intelligence, the Pakistani military, and Arab states.
They ran a wide-ranging covert network that recruited and financed Muslim fighters to battle the Soviet army.
It is now known that Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset under the codename Tim Osman.
Bin Laden would use this handle when he would visit the states.
The relationship between bin Laden and the CIA... He was essentially, he was one of the assets, one of the people they could turn to for help if they had questions.
If they wanted somebody recruited, if they wanted somebody sent somewhere, if they wanted information, if they wanted something done, they went to bin Laden.
Bin Laden isn't wanted by the FBI, and he was on a CIA payroll?
Is he the brutal Islamic terrorist we have been led to believe, or a mere frontman?
My question was, is it not true?
That the United States government paid $300 million to the Bin Laden family for the construction of the military camps.
At that point, then the person who was testifying had no choice but to admit, yes, that the money had gone to the Bin Laden family for the construction of those military training facilities in Afghanistan.
However, he added that none of that money went to Bin Laden himself.
Of course it was a joke.
Osama wasn't the only one working with U.S. intelligence.
Hijackers also had ties to federal agencies.
Alleged terrorists Khalid Al-Madar and Nawaf al-Zahami lived with and rented from an FBI informant.
The New York Times stated on October 6, 2002, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a confidential informer who rented rooms in California to two of the September 11th hijackers.
But the Bureau is resisting a request from the Congressional Committee investigating the attacks to interview the informer and his FBI handler.
Several members of the FBI had their investigations into terrorism impeded and shut down, especially when they got close to bin Laden.
John O'Neill was the FBI counter-terror chief responsible for the investigation into Osama bin Laden.
On August 22, 2001, after claims of a repeated obstruction of his investigations into Saudi funding, O'Neill left the FBI. This document is marked secret and WF, which means it walked its way out of the Washington Bureau of the FBI. It indicates that before the attack of September 11th,
agents had wanted to question two members of a very powerful family for their connections to a suspected terrorist organization, Omar and Abdullah bin Laden.
But the agents weren't allowed to.
O'Neill went on to take a new post as head of World Trade Center Security.
He would move into his office days before 9-11 and be killed during the attacks.
I have four children.
I've lost friends.
John, my friend from the FBI, was killed.
We lost a lot of family members.
What did John O'Neill do before we worked in the World Trade Center?
John was the FBI. He was tracking down Osama.
He was tracking down Osama.
Because the government didn't listen to him.
The government didn't listen to him.
The FBI... Hold on.
You want to call a car on a car?
The FBI fucked up.
They knew about the flight training.
That was a fuck-up for having these people in our country.
We all agree on something.
And the important thing is you have to understand, I feel what you feel.
I have your friends there.
I feel what you feel.
That was our world training.
That was our people that fucking died that day.
At a time when bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world, Why would intelligence agencies stop their own investigations, especially as they were closing in on him?
Robert Wright and others within the FBI also had their investigations into terrorism stopped prior to 9-11.
Since August of 1999, I've been working to legally expose the very real and foreseeable Middle Eastern terrorist threats to American citizens at home and abroad.
From 1993 to 1999, I was assigned to the Chicago Division's Counterterrorism Task Force.
The successful investigation, which was codenamed Vulgar Betrayal, V-U-L-G-A-R, Betrayal, led to the June 1998 seizure of $1.4 million of Middle Eastern terrorist funding.
These funds were linked directly to Saudi businessman Yassin Khadi.
On October 12, 2001, Yassin Khadi was designated by the United States government as a financial supporter of Osama bin Laden.
Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch initially tried to help get Wright's story to the proper authorities.
He wanted to come forward long before 9-11.
We were taking those steps beginning last summer to do that.
The FBI had 30 days to allow that to occur.
They violated their own regulations.
They covered it up.
If you didn't hear me, I went specifically.
I called the Attorney General's office just days after 9-11.
I said, Dave Shippers and I represent...
A special agent of the FBI Chicago field office who has years of information about how the FBI did not do its job, did not in any way investigate a meaningful way money laundering in the United States.
You're now claiming you want to do this.
I'd like to make them available to you, Attorney General Ashcroft.
And I was met with a response by Michael Chertoff, head of the criminal division.
We're tired of conspiracy theories.
Michael Chertoff will later become the head of Homeland Security.
The department set up to fight the war on terror after 9-11.
Wright was also restricted from telling any specifics about their investigation.
Robert Wright was then prevented from working on terror investigations.
So what happened to Wright?
He was demoted in and around the time period leading up to 9-11.
He's working on innocuous, meaningless things.
That's what he's doing.
Yes.
He's a paper pusher.
It's because these monies were going through some very powerful U.S. banks with some very powerful interests in the United States.
These banks newer had reason to know that these monies were laundered by terrorists.
And there are very significant potential conflicts of interest in both the Clinton and Bush administration, and in particular this Bush administration, who is as tight with Saudi Arabia as you can get.
The president's father used to stay with the bin Laden family when he would go to Saudi Arabia.
Former President Bush spent the night in D.C. at the White House on September 10th.
We've also learned at NBC that there was a President Bush in the White House during the morning of these events.
His father, former President Bush, was actually at the White House the morning of the attack.
The next day, elite financiers of the Carlyle Group would meet.
This global private equity investment firm would profiteer enormously from the wars in the Middle East.
At the table were both Bush Sr. and Osama's brother, Shafiq bin Laden.
The Bush and bin Laden families had been members since the 90s and would reap the benefits of terrorism coming to America.
After 9/11, the company would become public.
All I do agree with you is on one thing.
Fucking Bush and Clinton, with their relationship with Saudi fucking Arabia, I agree with you.
They're kissing their asses like that.
That's bullshit.
Because they're sucked up, and that family that took off, that's a fucking crime.
The family Mr. Deedle is referring to is, of course, the bin Laden.
While all domestic flights were grounded, suspects closest to the supposed mastermind behind 9-11 were allowed to leave on chartered flights.
Let's show you some video that was taken exclusively by News Channel 2 eight days after 9-11.
That man there is Osama bin Laden's younger brother, Khalil, who had been here vacationing with other family members there on an estate that they owned in West Orange County.
Now I guess we can safely say that there were people within the FBI and other agencies who actively protected and aided the alleged terrorists.
With all the resources available to U.S. intelligence, you would think that someone within would have detected something.
Well, one did.
The black operation program Able Danger identified the hijackers prior to 9-11, but the FBI wasn't interested.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Schaefer, an intelligence officer inside Able Danger, tried to blow the whistle several times.
Was the commission that investigated the 9-11 attacks told that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta had been identified and as al-Qaeda operative more than a year before terrorists struck?
I'm told confidently by the person who did move the material over that the 9-11 Commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents.
I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent.
Schaefer would also meet with Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9-11 Commission.
What did Schaefer tell Zelikow?
I'm quoting how I remember saying it.
We found, as part of the data run, we found two of the three cells which conducted the 9-11 attacks to include Atta.
Schaefer says his unit linked Atta to al-Qaeda leaders, but would not provide any specifics.
As to what he did with the information he had...
We attempted to, first off, use it operationally.
The lawyers said you can't do that.
They're considered U.S. persons.
Therefore, at that point in time, we made a determination as a team that we should move this information to the FBI. But he says beginning in September 2000, three meetings he set up with the FBI were each canceled by military lawyers.
Despite all of this, the 9-11 Commission would deny it any significance and not include it in the report.
Leaving a project targeting al-Qaeda as a global threat a year before we're attacked by al-Qaeda is equivalent to having an investigation of Pearl Harbor and leaving somehow out the Japanese.
Schaefer and his team tried to stop the hijackers prior to 9-11, but were blocked.
Later, the military would begin a smear campaign against them in order to discredit their findings.
A Pennsylvania congressman says there's a smear campaign going on inside the Pentagon, and he wants the defense chief to get to the bottom of it.
Republican Congressman Kurt Weldon says Pentagon officials are trying to ruin one of their own, who's gone public about a top-secret military intel unit.
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, who was the first member of Able Danger to go public, has now been told in writing by the Defense Intelligence Agency that he can't speak to members of Congress or their staff without prior approval.
And now a security clearance which allowed him to deal with classified information has been pulled.
The congressman says Schaefer has been gagged, punished for speaking up.
It's obvious to me that...
This is a clear attempt to silence this guy, but now even more than to silence him, to ruin him as a person and a military officer.
I've talked to all the able-danger players, and they all agree.
This is a witch hunt against Tony.
It's wrong.
It's un-American.
It's unacceptable.
The Pentagon reportedly does not want the public to hear next week's Senate testimony about the former secret intelligence unit known as Able Danger.
Two congressional sources have told Fox News that the military is pressuring senators to move the hearings behind closed doors.
When the Able Danger hearings were held, Schaefer and others were gagged.
Eventually, Schaefer would be able to speak at a whistleblower's hearing.
Many of us take seriously our oath of office to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Let me be up front here.
I am no Boy Scout.
I was not hired as an intelligence officer because I hung out at the Christian Science Reading Room.
My job is to get information using tried-and-true intelligence methodologies.
According to my legal counsel, until I disclosed the able-to-endanger information, I was a rock star.
It was my work as a chief of DIA's Special Mission Task Force back in 1998 that I became involved with Able Danger.
My officers and I were working at the cutting edge of technology and DOD Black operations.
Most of all of my operations and operational records remained classified.
With all this evidence, why did the 9-11 Commission and Pentagon suppress valuable information about the hijackers' activities leading up to the attacks?
*music* It was widely reported that men had been celebrating the attack after recording the first plane strike.
They were not al-Qaeda, but they were detained.
I grabbed my binoculars and I could see the towers from my window.
And this is where, you know, I'm looking.
And all of a sudden, down there, I see this van parked.
And I see three guys on top of the van.
And I could see that they were, like, happy.
You know, they didn't look shocked to me.
You know, they didn't look shocked.
There was a group of Israelis, some of whom later were revealed as Mossad assets, who were arrested after cheering and high-fiving and videotaping the crash of the airplanes into the World Trade Towers.
Several other men were detained after a van full of explosives was stopped outside of Manhattan.
Earlier we had heard that an FBI spokesperson said that there was a report on the George Washington Bridge, which is another facility which you folks are responsible for policing, a report that there had been a van stopped there that had explosives.
Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israelis since September 11th, The Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes.
I would just refer you to the Department of Justice whether I'm not familiar with the report.
I'm aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained.
With respect to why they are being detained and the other aspects of your question, whether it's because they are in intelligence services or what they were doing, I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that.
On March 6, 2002, a draft report from the DEA said it may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity.
Despite all of this, all the Israelis were let go without any espionage charges being filed.
Fox News anchors Britt Hume and Carl Cameron would do a four-part investigation into these allegations in December of 2001 and yield stunning results.
It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel.
Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence.
At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S. Since September 11th, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law or for immigration violations.
A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
Investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it.
A highly placed investigator said there are, quote, tie-ins.
But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, quote, evidence linking these Israelis to 911 is classified.
I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered.
It's classified information.
Now, when the FBI investigated, it quickly unraveled to be the largest foreign spy ring ever.
Uncovered inside the United States, the largest.
Even the Soviet Union had not been spying on the United States as much as Israel has been doing.
So the FBI started to round up these spies.
They started to arrest them very quietly, and they were about halfway through this process of rounding up this spy ring when 9-11 happened.
Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11th, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.
Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid-90s.
These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, May well be an organized intelligence gathering activity.
The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bezalel Academy.
Documents say they, quote, targeted and penetrated military bases, the DEA, FBI, and dozens of other government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel.
The majority of those questioned, quote, stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept, and or explosive ordinance units.
Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as Country A and said, quote, according to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of Country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the U.S. of any U.S. ally.
The document concludes, quote, Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives.
What about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11?
How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?
Well, it's very explosive information, obviously, and there's a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected.
None of it necessarily conclusive.
It's more when they put it all together.
A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have known?
Almost a direct quote, Britt.
It is now apparent that this intelligence ring was inside the U.S., had prior knowledge of 9-11, and had a classified role in 9-11, which officials refused to discuss.
It was also able to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies and secret offices, yet all were released.
The men who were detained due to the report they were taping the first plane crash and then celebrating and joking about it actually went on television and admitted it was their job to record the attack.
. - And at that point we were taken for another round of questioning, this time related to our allegedly being members of Mossad.
The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily.
Our purpose was to document the event.
How could they have known about the attack?
And who sent them to document it?
The evidence points to a large intelligence network inside the United States that had teams on the ground, such as the ones recording the attack, And electronic surveillance teams gathering information.
Another team who was involved that day detonated explosives on the ground.
How would these teams obtain their information?
The investigation on our side basically tracked back to two companies.
The first one was called Amdocs.
This is an Israeli-owned company which does the billing for 90% of the telephone companies inside the United States.
Fox News has learned that some American terrorism investigators fear certain suspects in the September 11th attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone.
How?
By obtaining and analyzing data that's generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a phone call.
Here's how the system works.
Most directory assistance calls and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Limited, an Israeli-based private telecommunications company.
Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America and more worldwide.
It is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdoc's record of it.
In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once.
Sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super-secret National Security Agency, headquartered in Northern Maryland, issued what's called a top-secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Report, TSSCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands, in Israel in particular.
Fox News has learned that the NSA has held numerous classified conferences to warn the FBI and CIA how MDoc's records could be used.
So if you know the name of a police officer, or even if you know the name just of an informant, you can follow that network of who's talking to who and basically determine that whole...
It's an association of names and contacts that represent that unit of operation.
Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles in which telephone information, the types that Amdocs collects, was used to, quote, completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEA, and the LAPD. Amdocs would not be the only company with ties to the Israeli government.
Israel was also gathering information from a separate business, Converse Infosys, who was also listening in.
This company, inside the United States, installs and maintains the phone tapping equipment that law enforcement and the government use to eavesdrop on your phone calls.
The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm with offices throughout the US. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement.
Here's how wiretapping works in the US. Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies.
Custom computers and software made by companies like Converse are tied into that network to intercept, record, and store the wiretapped calls and at the same time transmit them to investigators.
We know we just had this...
A visa bill go through that granted immunity to the telecom companies.
It was Converse Infosystem that was setting up all these special rooms and all the switching centers where the law enforcement or the government or whoever could simply push a button and listen to your phone call.
Gone are the days of the little alligator clips and wires needed to eavesdrop on a phone call.
They can sit in a room anywhere in America, touch a few buttons and listen to your But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Converse have in effect a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.
Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Converse works closely with the Israeli government and under special programs gets reimbursed for up to 50% of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.
But investigators within the DEA, INS, and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israelis spying through Converse is considered career suicide.
And sources say that while various FBI inquiries into Converse have been conducted over the years, they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks.
More to the point, agents within the U.S. government have been told point blank that to even suggest Israeli spying or an Israel linked to 9-11 is career suicide.
It's been described as the third rail of American politics.
If you touch it, you die.
You never get to come back again.
It's all over.
It's the black pit where you can never go.
But there is a bitter turf war internally at FBI. It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment.
And for years they've thrown much of the business to Converse.
A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Converse government contracts over the years now work for the company.
Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call troublesome circumstances that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.
And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counterterrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and surveil immediately changed their telecommunications processes.
They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place.
Somehow, suspected terrorists who were being surveilled by these very Israelis were able to change their behavior to elude the FBI. Israel's former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would boldly state that we are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon.
The United States has wholeheartedly supported essentially state-sponsored terrorism, both domestically in Israel and as part of Israel's foreign policy.
The American relationship with Israel is the root cause of most of the problems the United States is facing around the world today.
Well, I would say this, that there's one big elephant in the living room.
It's never asked about.
People don't like to put it on any video or anything like that.
But it is the relationship between the United States of America and the state of Israel.
It's the fly in the ointment.
It's gotten us into a peck of trouble in the Middle East. - Confirmation of these allegations against Israel would finally come in January of '08, when the Times Online would tell FBI whistleblower Sabelle Edmund's story.
This Turkish translator for the FBI found an international spy ring that included Israel, Turkey, and Pakistan working with household names within the United States.
She was gagged and to this day has been unable to tell her entire account.
Edmund stated that one high-level official, was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon in exchange for money, position, and political objectives.
The article stated that the Turks and Israelis had planted moles in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology.
The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmed.
Then the ISI chief.
Intelligence analysts say that the members of the ISI were close to al-Qaeda before and after 9-11.
Ahmed was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9-11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.
Oddly enough, General Ahmed would be in Washington, D.C., meeting with George Tenet, the current director of the CIA, and others, in the weeks before the attacks.
In fact, on the morning of 9-11 itself, he would be having breakfast with Senator Bob Graham and Porter Goss.
These two men would co-chair the initial congressional investigation.
And Goss would later become the head of the CIA. I was trying to make the point that Ahmed didn't hide the fact, when we met with him in Pakistan and when he was in Washington, that he was close to the Taliban.
Graham would go on PBS and have this to say.
I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.
I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support, and even more important, if the infrastructure...
Of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exist.
Most of that information is classified, I think overly classified.
I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement.
In that report, 27 pages would be completely redacted.
And do you think that will ever become public?
Which countries are you talking about?
It'll become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now.
We need to have this information now.
Are you suggesting that you are convinced that there was a state sponsor behind 9-11?
I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in fundraising, although that was part of it, by a sovereign foreign government.
The day after the attacks, it was apparent that some people within the government were aware of the Pakistani funding of al-Qaeda.
Secretary Powell, one country you didn't mention was Pakistan, and I understand that your deputy has spoken with the ambassador to Pakistan.
Deputy Secretary Armitage did meet with Pakistani officials today.
It would be useful to point out to the Pakistani leadership at every level how helpful they might be if we find a basis to act upon that information.
Senator Joe Biden, who had also met with the head of the Pakistani ISI, would have harsh words on the Senate floor.
And the word should go out to those who pretend that they wish to be our friends, that they're going to have to make some very difficult choices.
Pakistan in particular is going to have to make a very difficult choice very soon.
Words will not be sufficient, actions will be demanded.
When Biden was confronted, he confirmed his meeting with Ahmed, saying Pakistani intelligence was indeed funding the Taliban.
Sir, sir, in the days following 9-11, you met with the head of Pakistani ISI, General Mohamed Ahmed.
It has since come to light that he ordered Said Sheik to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Arab.
Why was he allowed to go back to Pakistan, and why wasn't he questioned, and why were you meeting with him?
I met with him to deliver a message.
That if he didn't, if he didn't stop supporting the Taliban, we would take him out.
Why did we let him go?
We let him fly freely.
We never investigated him.
We never even looked into him.
Look, there's things called diplomatic passports.
We did not arrest Khrushchev when he came.
But he financed the hijackers, and you let him go, and he's free.
He hijacked the hijackers.
No one knew he financed the hijackers.
It's wired.
It's reported.
He would later state that the information was indeed classified.
How did you know the ISI was helping the Taliban, sir?
How did you know they're helping them out?
It is classified.
Pakistan was set up as the silent funding arm of the hijackers.
They were used as a launching base for the occupation of Afghanistan.
To review, we have just learned that many of the hijackers had ties to U.S. military installations, the FBI, and the CIA. That both Israel and Pakistan have classified roles in 9-11 to this day, and the man who co-chaired the initial investigation into 9-11 stated this information would be classified for at least 20 to 30 years.
Virtually none of this information was in the 9-11 commission report.
Instead, you are expected to believe that Osama bin Laden carried out the attacks alone.
Yet two wars and seven years later, he's still on the loose.
The bipartisan commission was full of insiders who whitewashed the events of that day to the point it was comical.
Five years after the horrors of 9-11, there's a new way to look at those unforgettable images.
Through color, caricature, and captions, comic book veterans Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson have brought to life the 9-11 commission report.
It took a year and a half to distill 600 pages down to less than 150. When you hear about the idea of the 9-11 commission report as essentially a comic book, your first reaction is, what are you, crazy?
It's accurate.
I mean, the graphic version is accurate.
That's what happened.
Thomas Keene was the co-chair of the commission with Lee Hamilton.
They would write a book together called Without Precedent.
In it, he would claim that NORAD and the Pentagon did not tell the truth and that indictments were considered.
If the report itself wasn't accurate...
How could the comic book be?
Thomas Keene is now traveling the country in order to instruct teachers on how to teach 9-11 to their young, impressionable minds.
The 9-11 Commission was such a cover-up that Max Cleland, an appointed member, went off on Wolf Blitzer.
A deal announced yesterday between the White House and the Commission investigating the September 11th attacks is proving to be rather controversial.
Under the agreement, only certain members of the Commission will be allowed to review classified documents from the White House, and their notes will be subject to administration review.
Today, some relatives of people who were killed in the attacks criticized the agreement.
And our next guest, who's a member of the commission, claimed the deal is disgusting.
Former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Democrat, joins me here.
Well, you've used the word deal three times.
I don't think the 9-11 Commission ought to be making deals with our own government.
Under the responsibility we have from the Congress and our responsibility to the American people to get all the facts and let all the commissioners look at those facts.
Now, we've had to subpoena the FAA for those documents.
We've had to subpoena NORAD for those documents.
I'm in favor of subpoenaing the White House for the documents we need so that all the commissioners can get...
To see all the documents that we need.
That's the only way we can face the American people and the families and say we have done a thorough investigation independently of the White House and the entire executive branch.
The president has said only a minority of the commission can see a minority of the documents and then they have to clear what they're going to say to the rest of the commission with the White House.
If you're one of those four that gets to see these documents, would that change your opinion?
No.
They don't want any more eyeballs to see their documents than they could possibly get away with.
It's a scam.
It's absolutely disgusting.
Cleland would later resign.
Well, they have something to cover up.
And the 9-11 Commission, of course, was a master cover-up.
We know that question is what it was covering up.
I don't believe the reports on September 11th put out by the 9-11 Commission or by Congress.
I've seen one put out by the 9-11 Commission and it was basically hundreds of pages of nothing.
It was very generic.
It was very indirect, indistinct, devoid of facts, devoid of hard positions.
It was things like mistakes were made.
We need to improve human intelligence.
This is nothing.
I mean, it's like, yes, I stand for truth, justice, and the American way.
But it was vapid.
It was a waste of time and money, but gives the impression that, oh, yes, the government is doing something.
The government is studying the issue.
Well, what makes me really disappointed, and that's an understatement, is...
That Congress's role is oversight.
And Congress, even today, you'll see members of Congress saying, well, we haven't implemented everything that the 9-1-1 Commission recommended.
And the 9-1-1 Commissioners have said that the administration obstructed them, lied to them.
The staff statements were described by various commissioners to be an indictment of the FBI in particular, but also an indictment of the CIA. I don't think the chairman and I have ever characterized the staff statements as an indictment.
It's possible others have done that.
We have not.
And Tom and I have heard repeated praises from people in your business, in the media business.
Thanking us for the quality of those statements.
I'll second that, and by the way, I never, ever would correct the vice chairman, but I'm afraid I did characterize one of those statements as an indictment.
So how can you start with a document that you know is false and take that to the American people as a document by which Congress's accomplishments should be measured.
Dennis Kucinich would present 35 articles of impeachment against the Bush administration in June of 2008. He would stand before the House for almost three hours before reading the last few articles which were regarding 9-11.
He alleged that the administration had not acted on specific warnings prior to 9-11, that they had attempted to cover this information up.
And they had tried to stop any commission from being organized in regards to investigating the attack.
Article 33. Repeatedly ignored and failed to respond to high-level intelligence warnings of planned terrorist attacks in the United States prior to 9-11.
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution.
To take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, failed in his constitutional duties to take proper steps to protect the nation prior to September 11th,
2001. So the congressional report was redacted, and the 9-11 Commission is a cover-up.
Yet our supposed leaders continue to propagate fear of the boogeyman and his disciples.
I do believe that Al-Qaeda has now made it part of their global effort to destroy everything we stand for, and we believe that.
I'm running for President of the United States because I believe the greatest challenge of the 21st century is that of radical Islamic extremism.
I believe it's there.
I believe it's all over the world.
I believe it's a fight, a struggle between good and evil.
everything we value and believe in versus everything that is evil that wants to destroy everything America stands for and leads.
It was an Osama bin Laden job with 19 people from Saudi Arabia.
Yes.
Even bin Laden himself warned us three weeks earlier.
Osama bin Laden warned three weeks ago that he would attack American interests in an unprecedented attack, a very big one.
There was a report, you'll recall, that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9-11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent.
Prior to 9/11, it was widely reported that hijacked planes could be used as weapons.
"By Yusef's group and Bin Laden's group to undertake a suicide mission." Murad narrated to us about a plan by the Ramsey cell in the continental US to hijack a commercial plane and run it to the CIA headquarters in London, Virginia, and also the Pentagon.
And they found more evidence, pointing to other targets, evidence the Philippine government says it passed on to the U.S.
The targets they listed were CIA headquarters, Pentagon, Transamerica, Sears, and the World Trade Center.
Thank you.
President Bush even received the Phoenix memo, stating Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S. in August, right before the attacks.
The president was...
We're aware that bin Laden, of course, as previous administrations has been well known, that bin Laden was determined to strike the United States.
In fact, the label on the PDB was bin Laden determined to strike the United States.
On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented a President's Daily Brief article titled, Bin Laden Determined...
The lead sentence of that president's daily brief indicated that bin Laden and his followers wanted to follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Youssef and bring the fighting to America.
The article cited a more sensational threat reporting that bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft.
The president's daily brief item Included information from the FBI indicating patterns of suspicious activity in this country, consistent with preparations for hijackings.
The president broke his silence today about the revelations earlier this week that he had been briefed before September 11th about a possible al-Qaeda hijacking plot.
The comments took place in the White House South Lawn setting where the press could not ask questions.
While he was honoring the Air Force football team, his comments diverted to what has become Topic A in Washington.
You know what's interesting about Washington?
It's a town, unfortunately, it's the kind of place where...
Second-guessing has become second nature.
What I want to say to my Democratic friends in the Congress is that they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions, as were made by some today, that the White House had advanced information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9-11.
Clark confirms that in June, July and August 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency warned the President in daily briefings of unprecedented indications that a major al-Qaeda attack was going to happen against the United States.
It was so well known that the United States had done several drills with this exact scenario prior to 9-11.
We're going to take a closer look tonight at another example of where, despite the conventional wisdom, there were people in the United States who actually were preparing to defend against the kind of attacks which occurred here on 9-11.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD for short, has been defending the skies over the U.S. and Canada for almost 50 years, 46 to be precise.
USA Today reports that in the two years before the attacks, on September the 11th, NORAD conducted exercises using hijacked airliners as weapons.
And one target was the World Trade Center.
Here's ABC's Brian Ross.
President Bush has said again and again that no one could have imagined what Osama bin Laden ordered for September 11th.
We knew he hated us.
But there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government could envision flying airplanes into buildings.
On such a massive scale.
But that turns out not to be true.
U.S. military planners did envision and practice those very scenarios.
As reported by USA Today, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, conducted exercises with fighter jets, simulating hijacked planes flown into the World Trade Center in the two years before the attacks.
Pentagon planners also envisioned the attack on the Pentagon.
Five months before it happened.
One of these drills was run on June 1st and 2nd of 2001. Amalgam Virgo was an exercise where multiple attack scenarios would be occurring simultaneously, including attacks from cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and hijacked aircraft.
The scenario also envisioned a hijacker taking control of a commercial aircraft And slamming it into the nation's capital.
The exercises would constantly be monitored by military satellites and planes.
Osama bin Laden was the poster boy for this plot, appearing on the cover.
Isn't it a fact, sir, that prior to September 11, 2001, NORAD had already in the works plans to simulate in an exercise A simultaneous hijacking of two planes in the United States.
Colonel Scott, do you have any data on that?
I'm not aware of that, sir.
I was not present at the time.
That was Operation Amalgam Virgo.
Yes, sir.
So what did happen on 9-11?
The truth is, there was a lot more going on that day than we were being told.
There were several war games and exercises being run simultaneously involving multiple government agencies.
John Fulton and a team from the CIA would be conducting a drill at 8.45 a.m.
out of the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia, in which a plane is crashed into a building.
Other drills would literally cripple our defensive and investigative abilities on that morning.
But this very interesting information, Katie, Matt and Tom, from the FBI, they have been operating a massive exercise from their hostage rescue unit.
All of their top teams, about 50 personnel, helicopters, equipment, were in Monterey, California for the last two days, scheduled to fly back today commercially.
So all of those people are out of place.
It's fair to say, according to sources that we've talked to here at NBC, that the FBI rescue operations and other FBI operations are really in chaos right now because they can't reach their officials in New York.
All of their phone lines are down.
And now you've got all of their special experts on this stuck in Monterey, California, trying to get a military flight back because they are no longer commercial flights.
So they are seriously out of pocket.
And there is a real breakdown of the FBI. I actually found myself in Montana with 50 state emergency managers, the director of FEMA, his top staff at the National Emergency Management Association Conference.
A number of emergency managers from New York State, from Pennsylvania, from Virginia, Maryland, the district, most in New England, made the flight on a C-130 last night.
One of the only flights across the country of military aircraft.
Northern Vigilants would redirect fighter jets out of the northeastern sector to patrol Canada and Alaska.
Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Warrior were exercises involving hijacked aircraft that would go in and out of radar.
These would appear real to those involved.
We fought many Phantoms that day.
We got many aircraft calls inbound that morning that turned out to be Phantoms.
During that time frame, we had multiple aircraft called, hijacked all over the country.
These exercises would not cease until after United 93 was brought down and the attacks were over.
Open line.
Surveillance, Sergeant Richmond.
Sergeant Richmond, Sergeant Life from Cheyenne Mountain Test Control.
How are you?
I'm doing fine.
Okay, I need you to terminate all exercise inputs coming to Cheyenne Mountain at this time.
Copy.
And stay on loop until I verify that you're disconnected, or the connectivity is disconnected on the exercise side only.
Okay, do not do any more inputs on the exercise side and stand by.
I got Cheyenne Mountain on the line, terminating all exercise inputs.
That's a program if you didn't know there's exercise.
Oh, yes. - In fact, more hijackings were thought to be taking place.
On a radar scope, it's not just a video game.
It's actually people's lives that you're trying to keep from running into each other.
Other planes were thought to have been hijacked and almost shot down.
The aircraft inbound to Whitehorse from Alaskan airspace was a hijacked aircraft.
And that the military flight crews were aware of this, and they were en route to intercept the aircraft.
Some of these war games and their details remain classified to this day.
So is it any wonder that Donald Rumsfeld gave these warnings to military personnel the day after the attacks?
Finally, I'd like to say a word or two to the men and women in the defense establishment, most of whom deal with classified information.
People deal with intelligence information and make it available to people who are not cleared for that classified information.
The effect is to reduce the chances that the United States government has to track down and deal with the people who have perpetrated the attacks on the United States and killed so many Americans.
Later in the day, weapons are found planted on several other planes.
A U.S. official says of the hijackings, these look like inside jobs.
Sources tell Time that U.S. officials are investigating whether the hijackers had accomplices deep inside the airport's secure areas.
And then there's the story of Flight 23. As bad as things were on Tuesday, there is a possibility that they could have been even worse.
There was some kind of an altercation involving three men described by a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police source as Middle Eastern in appearance.
They attracted the suspicions of the gate staff boarding that flight.
They had already gotten on the plane.
They're asked to leave the aircraft.
They refuse to get off.
The airline, following its normal procedures, according to this police source, calls the police, which immediately dispatch an emergency service team.
So now you have a squad of heavily armed officers that are coming toward the airplane.
And when they get there, the men have vanished.
The gate staff can't find them.
It matches with the type of flights, the transcontinental flights that were hijacked in the other four instances.
Another disturbing fact, if indeed there was an altercation and these men felt they had a case to make and were being treated unfairly, you can't imagine they would have disappeared from the airport.
They would have stayed around and pled their case with the police.
It is extraordinarily unusual to have an airline, after it has boarded passengers, be so suspicious that it's going to ask these customers to get off the airplane.
We got a phone call from a law enforcement officer who was on vacation, was in the United Airlines terminal at the time.
As soon as he approached, they walked out of the terminal, and he looked over.
He described them as Middle Eastern in both appearance and dress.
Not sure what that means, but that was his description.
He said when they left the terminal through the glass doors, he saw them meet a third man, and they then left.
Inside the bags, officials found al-Qaeda instruction sheets.
But false identification prevented investigators from ever locating the bag's true owners.
Coincidentally, the hijacker's identification would be found the exact same way.
There have also been reports of...
Luggage that did not make the plane connection that appears to be tied to one of the alleged perpetrators, and this is being reported by the Boston Globe and contained within the luggage were supposed to be Arabic language flight training manuals as well as videotapes pertaining to operating an aircraft.
Then we have that mysterious suitcase with all of the hijackers names and all of this incriminating evidence that is supposedly taken by one of the hijackers to the airport.
Why, if they are planning on a suicide attack, would they even bother to pack a suitcase?
Or if they're just packing the suitcase to look like they're checking luggage, just throw clothes in there?
Why put a Koran?
Why put flight manuals?
Why put all this incriminating information if it's supposedly going to get burned up?
And then magically, amazingly enough, this one suitcase doesn't make it onto the connecting flight to New York.
And it's just there in baggage handling, waiting to be discovered and found.
If the passengers on Flight 23 used false identification, why wouldn't the other hijackers?
Based on my personal belief and based on the events of that morning, the decision to halt airplanes in all likelihood probably precluded other attacks.
Ada and three others would do dry runs of the attacks before 9-11.
Actor James Woods and others on the plane even filed separate reports to the FAA. Again, nothing was done.
I was on a flight.
Without going into the details of what made me suspicious of these four men, although it would have been blatantly obvious to the most casual observer, I took it upon myself to go to the flight attendant and ask to speak to the pilot of the plane.
The first officer came out.
I reported to him that I felt that the four men, and I said, can you look over my shoulder and see who I'm talking about?
And he said, yeah.
I said, I think they're going to hijack this plane.
I mean, everything they're doing, and I explained to him these details, which I've been asked to keep private.
Until whatever, jurisdiction, you know, whatever trials may take place.
Their behavior was such that I felt they were going to hijack the plane.
I found out later that not only did he make a report, but the flight attendant also made a report of my suspicions to the FAA. My friend Scott said to me, you know, remember that flight you took in August?
I said, yeah, I've been thinking about it all day.
He said, well, maybe you should call the FBI. And I said...
I'm sure they're being inundated, but I thought it overnight, call the local office.
Quarter to seven the next morning, I get a phone call that actually wakes me up, and he said, we want to talk to you about the flight that you took in August.
I said, oh, did the manifest match of any of the flights yesterday and my flight?
He said, well, we can't tell you that.
I said, well, look, I'll get ready, and I'll come down to the federal building.
He said, we're outside your house.
We'll just wait for you.
Wow, 7.15.
Quarter to seven in the morning.
I said, and I, and this is the only funny part of any of this, I said...
How did you know where I lived?
And there was a pause.
He said, we're the FBI. Thank you.
So they came in and I said, look, I'm dying to know, were these the guys?
And he said, well, we've had 36,000 tips in one day.
And there's two of us and we're going to be at your house all this morning.
So you can do the math, but we can't tell you, you know.
So since then, I have identified for sure two of them as two of the terrorists.
Really?
who actually were not on flight 11, but one was on flight 175 and one was on flight 77.
And I had been told unofficially, not by the FBI, but by someone else in actually a higher level of government, believe it or not, just through a coincidence, through a mutual friend, that all four of them were terrorists involved.
As I explained to the FBI, they said, what was your first instinct...
And aside from certain things like four guys getting on a transcontinental flight without any hand luggage, they said to me, you know, what did you think these guys were?
I said, I thought they were either four law enforcement officers or four terrorists, in that they had that thing that guys who are undercover or on a mission have between each other.
other just more evidence that the hijackers had intelligence ties there were almost certainly other targets Maryland's governor on the morning of 9/11 stated that his police department had received threats prior to the attack, not only against the targets that had been hit, but others.
The threats that came in today?
Pardon?
You mentioned threats on Maryland facilities.
Are these threats that came in today?
Yes.
The head of our state police, Dave Mitchell, received a list of 11 sites across the country that were targets, Supposedly this list had been distributed prior to the explosions.
Several of those sites were ones that were under attack.
Another target on that morning was Air Force One.
Although it is never discussed, the perpetrators of the attack somehow got top secret codes that morning.
Brian, what is the credible evidence that Air Force One could have been a target?
These planes were some distance from Air Force One, after all.
The excuse was that, quote, we do not discuss, you know we do not discuss intelligence information.
Air Force One has been said to be a target in the past during President Clinton's trip to Bosnia during his first term, where they stopped in Aviano and switched out into three transport planes.
Similarly, they were escorted by fighter jets, as they have in the past.
It is not routine.
The White House insisting that the evidence was, and thus the zigzag flight path from Florida to Louisiana, the Air Force is insisting that the evidence is provable and credible that the aircraft and the White House were targets.
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, would be pressed on this issue.
If you have a threat to Air Force One, it seems though you're raising an...
An additional threat that perhaps we don't know about.
I'm sorry?
Raising an additional threat?
Is that where the credible threat, or can you say, are we talking about something totally different?
You're asking me, in essence, what the source of information is, and I think the American people...
How did we account for those four planes and what their targets were?
Which, by deduction, you would assume there is something else that we're talking about targeting Air Force One.
Can you make that assumption?
I'm not going to lead you any further as to speculating about what was the nature of the threat to Air Force One.
But as I indicated, and I'll say it again, it was real, it was credible.
I'm just not going to speculate about the nature of it.
On September 20, 2001, World Net Daily would report much more regarding the threat.
The terrorist message threatening Air Force One was transmitted in that day's top secret White House code words.
As the clock ticked away, the Secret Service reached a frightening conclusion.
The terrorists had obtained the White House code.
And a whole set of top secret signals.
This made it possible for a hostile force to pinpoint the exact position of Air Force One, its destination, and its classified procedures.
In fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane's incoming and outgoing transmissions.
In the week after the attacks in New York and Washington, more hair-raising facts emerged.
The terrorists had also obtained the code groups of the National Security Agency.
And were able to penetrate the NSA's state-of-the-art electronic surveillance system.
They seemed to have at their disposal an electronic capability that was more sophisticated than the NSA. They also believe that the terrorists are in possession of all or part of the codes used by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, and...
The intelligence offices of the State Department and Department of Energy.
Since no single individual has access to every top-level code at any given time, a single mole would not answer the case.
It would have to be a large, widely spread number.
U.S. experts do not believe Bin Laden was capable of infiltrating double agents into the heart of the U.S. administration on a large scale.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Global Guardian, a mass Armageddon drill, was in full swing.
The drill would pose all sorts of threats, and even mobilized command centers known as doomsday planes that housed top military personnel.
Although originally scheduled for late October, it was moved up unexpectedly.
One of these doomsday planes was on the scene of the Pentagon strike.
Now to one of the eeriest moments amid the carnage of 9-11.
A mysterious plane was seen flying right over the president's residence.
Even some CNN staffers saw it.
To this day, it has never been officially explained.
Tonight, Chief National Correspondent John King has new details about this great 9-11 mystery.
Today, six years after 9-11, the mystery endures about just what happened in the skies over the White House that terrible day.
A plane flew right over it.
But why?
And what was it?
It appeared overhead just before 10 a.m., a four-engine jet banking slowly in the nation's most off-limits airspace.
About ten minutes ago, there was a white jet circling overhead.
Now, you generally don't see planes in the area over the White House.
That is restricted airspace.
Two government sources familiar with the incident tell CNN it was a military aircraft and say the details are classified.
This comparison of the CNN video and an official Air Force photo suggests the mystery plane is among the military's most sensitive aircraft, an Air Force E-4B. Note the flag on the tail, the stripe around the fuselage.
And the telltale bubble just behind the 747 cockpit area.
The E-4B is a state-of-the-art flying command post, built and equipped for one reason, to keep the government running no matter what, even in the event of a nuclear war, the reason it was nicknamed the Doomsday Plane during the Cold War.
They exercise this type of thing all of the time, and they simply don't talk about it.
So it doesn't surprise me that they are very closed-mouthed about it.
Asked the Pentagon, and it insists this is not a military aircraft, and there is no mention of it in the official report of the 9-11 Commission.
But six years later, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, and the FAA all say they, at least for public consumption, have no explanation of the giant plane over the President's house, just as the smoke began to rise across the river at the Pentagon.
There is also footage of another white mystery plane in the restricted airspace over New York City before the second attack.
and as the second plane strikes the World Trade Center.
There were five E4Bs in the air on 9/11.
They are part of the continuity of government plans in case of an emergency.
This program was launched in the early 80s, headed by none other than George Herbert Walker Bush.
It was being made to consolidate continuity of government programs across several major departments of the government under one office, which turned out later to be called the National Program Office.
As I understood it, this office fell under the jurisdiction of the office of the vice president.
What's the first in charge?
On 9-11, this program was put into effect.
This next one happens a lot these days, it seems, like a story that is both reassuring and scary at the same time.
This morning we learned that the Vice President wasn't the only one sent to an undisclosed location on September 11th, that an entire backup government was and is still there and may be there for as long as anyone now at least can imagine.
Traveling in Iowa, the president for the first time discussed a secret ongoing operation designed to keep the federal government running if Washington is paralyzed by a terrorist strike.
I still take the threats that we receive from Al Qaeda killers and terrorists very seriously.
The operation was first reported by the Washington Post and confirmed to CNN by several administration officials.
The shadow or bunker government involves roughly 100 senior staffers from every cabinet department and major government agency, operates primarily out of two secret bunkers in the eastern United States, and is charged with running the executive branch if communication with Washington is severed.
The secret plan took shape in the minutes and hours after the September 11th strikes as Mr. Bush took a cautious route back to Washington.
And now, nearly six months later, administration officials are scrambling to get more telephone lines and high-tech computers into these secret bunkers, and at least one member of the Bush cabinet is being kept out of Washington at all times, under heavy security, just in case this so-called shadow government is activated and needs a leader.
Despite it being on television and in numerous papers, most people continue to deny that a shadow government even exists.
Now what if I told you that Dick Cheney was the reported head of this group on the day of 9-11?
President Bush cracked jokes about it at a prime rib dinner.
The vice president has been moving among secret locations to provide continuity of government.
A year ago Dick was running the country, Bush said.
Today he lives out of a little suitcase.
Cheney has been part of the succession program since its inception.
To reduce the possibility of decapitation, the National Program Office was directed to create a new program to assure the continuity of government.
It was known as the Presidential Successor Support System, or PSQ. Dick Cheney, Edwin Meese, Tip O'Neill, and Dick Thornburg all have been in the line of succession by virtue of their offices, but our sources say the NPO gave them additional responsibilities under the new system.
Cheney would arrive at the emergency center before the Pentagon was attacked.
Shortly after 9.30 a.m., the president's national security team is in the Situation Room, a secure communications center in the basement of the West Wing.
Vice President Dick Cheney is there, along with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
I arrived at the PEOC at about 9.20 a.m.
I was not.
I was made aware of it.
During the time that the airplane coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the vice president, the plane is 50 miles out.
The plane is 30 miles out.
And when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president, do the orders still stand?
And the vice president turned and...
Whipped his neck around and said, of course the orders still stand.
Have you heard anything to the contrary?
It's like they came into the Pentagon.
When you arrived at 920, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, does the order still stand?
It's probably about five or six minutes.
So about 925 or 926. The 9-11 Commission would cover this up.
By saying Cheney did not arrive in the Emergency Operating Center until more than 15 minutes after the Pentagon strike.
Many of the same people involved in the shadow government benefited the most from the War on Terror.
A key hub for intelligence was the Salomon Brothers building, also known as World Trade Center 7.
This was a massive 47-story skyscraper that would have dominated most city skylines.
At 5.20 in the afternoon, it would collapse into its own footprint.
It also happened to be New York City's number one spook house and operational center.
It housed the Department of Defense, the Internal Revenue Services, The Security and Exchange Commission, the largest Secret Service office in the world, the largest CIA office outside of Virginia, and New York's Office of Emergency Management, or OEM. Beyond the haunting presence of those still missing in the rubble, Ground Zero is filled with guns, drugs, and secrets.
Number 7 World Trade Center was also the New York office of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA ordered the building surrounded by FBI agents shortly after it collapsed.
Since then, they have been searching for computers and a safe filled with classified documents.
Government agents watch the construction workers through binoculars as they search.
The OAM was where local government would rally in the case of an emergency, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster.
The command center on the 23rd floor is bulletproof and bomb resistant, with its own air supply and generators.
It's linked to city airports, the Coast Guard, and the Pentagon.
Computers will soon have detailed blueprints of every major building in New York City.
Surprisingly, it would be deserted when city officials Barry Jennings and Michael Hess arrived.
When the Office of Emergency Management did an activation, they always included our locale.
I received a call shortly after the first plane hit.
I got there.
I had to be inside on the 23rd floor when the second plane hit.
Upon arriving into the OEM EOC, we noticed that everybody was gone.
I saw coffee that was on the desk.
The smoke was still coming off the coffee.
I saw half-eaten sandwiches.
And only me, Mr. Hetz, was up there.
After I called several individuals, one individual told me to leave and leave right away.
Both would go on network television on 9-11 and make the claim they experienced explosions inside the building as they tried to evacuate.
I'll give you a live picture down Church Street.
Fire crews now walking back toward the scene.
We have seen them all morning trying to walk away because what happens is every time a little piece of the building comes down, a huge black cloud comes at us, making it almost impossible to breathe or see anything in front of them.
But now, at least for the past couple of minutes, it has been clear from this space back on Chambers in that area.
So now they're walking back toward the World Trade Center.
And as we keep letting you hear the personal stories, the survivor stories, of exactly what happened inside the World Trade Center when that first plane went in, and, of course, the collapses since then, we're going to bring more of those to you now.
Barry Jennings, you were on the eighth floor.
You worked for the city housing department.
Explain to me the moment of impact.
Well, me and Mr. Hess, the corporation council, were on the 23rd floor.
I told them we got to get out of here.
We started walking down the stairs.
We made it to the eighth floor.
Big explosion.
Blew us back into the eighth floor.
And I turned to Hesh.
I said, this is it.
We're dead.
We're not going to make it out of here.
I took a fire extinguisher and I bust the window out.
That's when this gentleman here heard my cries for help.
This gentleman right here.
And he kept saying, stand by.
Somebody's coming to get you.
They couldn't get to us for an hour because they couldn't find us.
You thought that was it?
I thought we're dead.
I thought that was it.
We have Frank Uciardo back on the phone with us, Brenda, with some New York City officials.
Frank, go ahead.
That's right.
I'm standing here right now just off Broadway by City Hall with Michael Hess, who is the city's corporation counsel.
Mr. Hess, you were trapped in, I believe, 7 World Trade Center.
Go ahead, sir.
Yes, I was.
I was up in the emergency management center on the 23rd floor, and when all the power went out in the building, another gentleman and I walked down to the 8th floor where there was an explosion, and we've been trapped on the 8th floor with...
There was smoke, thick smoke all around us for about an hour and a half.
But the New York Fire Department, as terrific as they are, just came and got us out.
When I made it to the sixth floor and there was an explosion, the explosion was beneath me.
Keep in mind now, it's pitch black in there.
All the lights went out.
So when the explosion happened, it blew us back.
I'm thinking I'm standing on a landing.
I'm actually holding on to a pole above us.
And I had to climb back up because Hess is yelling, what do we do now?
I said, there's only one thing we can do, and it's go back up.
Both buildings were still standing.
Keep in mind, I told you the fire department came and ran.
They came twice.
Why?
Because building tower one fell, then tower two fell.
And then when they came back, they came back with all concern now, like, they're getting me the hell out of there.
I was trapped in there for several hours.
I was trapped in there when both buildings came down.
All this time.
I'm hearing all types of explosions.
All this time, I'm hearing explosions.
When they finally got to us, and they took us down to what they called the lobby, because I asked them, I said, when we got down there, I said, where are we?
He said, this was the lobby.
And I said, you've got to be kidding me.
It was total ruins.
Total ruins.
Now keep in mind, when I came in there, the lobby had nice escalators.
It was a huge lobby.
And for me to see what I saw, It was unbelievable.
And the firefighter that took us down kept saying, do not look down.
And I kept saying why.
I said, do not look down.
And we were stepping over people.
And you know you can feel when you're stepping over people.
This building would fall into its own footprint at 5.20 in the afternoon at nearly free-fall speed.
Almost seven years later, there has still been no official reason given, but some have given the false impression.
That damage caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers brought Seven down.
despite the fact that no other surrounding buildings acted in this manner.
The End
Dr. S. Shyam Sunder would make the claim, on behalf of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, that on about a third of the face, to the center and to the bottom, approximately 10 stories, about 25% of the depth of the building, was scooped about 25% of the depth of the building, was scooped out.
Here is the south face of World Trade Center 7.
Does it look like one fourth of the building is gone?
Perhaps we should take a look inside.
The south face of World Trade Center 7.
The south face of World Trade Center 7.
The south face of World Trade Center 7.
The south face of World Trade Center 7.
It appears it is not scooped out after all.
Members of the media were reporting that the building had collapsed due to structural damage and fire more than 20 minutes prior to it going down.
Now, more on the latest building collapse in New York.
You might have heard a few moments ago was talking about the Salomon Brothers building collapsing, and indeed it has.
Apparently that's only a few hundred yards away from where the World Trade Center towers were, and it seems that this was not a result of a new attack.
It was because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack.
We'll probably find out more now about that from our correspondent, Jane Stanley.
Jane, what more can you tell us about the Salomon Brothers building and its collapse?
The building can clearly be seen in the background as Jane Stanley reports its demise.
The feed would be cut before the building collapsed.
Couldn't comprehend it.
I mean, it almost sounded too far-fetched.
I was wondering what it felt like for you being in Manhattan.
Well, unfortunately, I think we've lost the line with Jane Stanley.
They called me down.
I think it was part of the 9-11 Commission.
They asked me the same questions that you guys are asking me.
And at that point, they said, OK, thank you.
They sent me on my way.
And you told them pretty much everything you just told us.
Yes.
You were in the building, got rock-black explosion, all that.
Yes.
And you know that they didn't mention Building 7 once in the commission report.
I told them that's where I was.
To tell you, it was very scary because they looked like very important people.
They were questioning me about certain things.
I don't know if they liked the answers I gave.
I could care less.
I gave my account of it, the truth, and that was it.
That day I'll never forget.
And the explanations that were given to me are totally unacceptable.
Totally unacceptable.
I'm just confused about one thing and one thing only.
Why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place.
I'm very confused about that.
I know what I heard.
I heard explosions.
The explanation I got was, It was the fuel oil tank.
I'm an old boiler guy.
If it was a fuel oil tank, it would have been one side of the building.
After 9/11, a climate of fear was created.
In order to shut down any opposition, To the Bush administration's new agenda.
A week after 9-11, anthrax began appearing in the mail.
The letters were made to look as though they were the work of Muslim extremists, claiming, death to America and Allah is great.
Now, if you remember, these anthrax letters, they were written to appear to be from semi-literate Muslims.
Very crude handwriting, all of this, all of that.
They really do look more like movie prop letters than real letters.
The targets were government buildings, media outlets such as CBS, NBC, the New York Post, and politicians such as Senator Daschle and Leahy, two members of the opposition party.
When the FBI tested the anthrax, it was highly refined and weaponized.
Colin Powell would go on CNN and deny these allegations.
We've had a lot of stories over the past four or five days.
First, it was weaponized anthrax, then it was highly refined, and then when it was analyzed, it was discovered it was none of the above.
The anthrax used in the attacks was identical to that of the AIM stream, which led the investigation of Fort Detrick.
An analysis of the anthrax that was sent to Senator Daschle's office shows that this anthrax has a sophistication that leads people to know that it can only be produced by a Ph.D. microbiologist, and it would have to be done in a small, well-equipped microbiology and it would have to be done in a small, well-equipped This appears to be the so-called AIMS strain.
That was a strain of anthrax that was first isolated almost 50 years ago at a U.S. Department of Agriculture diagnostic lab in Ames, Iowa.
What's uncommon about this is that it has been engineered in such a way to be, as they say, The Washington
Post would report, genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980. Those labs can trace back their samples to a single military source, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
It's been made quite clear that Al-Qaeda wasn't behind this.
It is a specialized biological weapon only produced by our military in one facility.
High-level FBI and CIA officials said none of the 60 to 80 daily threat reports from intelligence sources contain evidence linking the anthrax attacks to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
This did not stop the mainstream press from trying to blame al-Qaeda.
As investigators race to find answers to the recent wave of anthrax terror, we'll look at what investigators are targeting now.
Since September 11th, Americans have been put on alert.
This is so terrible!
Investigators are trying to ward off more attacks by dissecting the terrorist's plan for September 11th, looking for patterns, methods, associates that could reveal what else terrorists had in mind.
It was not something smuggled in from Iraq.
It was not something smuggled in from any Middle Eastern country.
It was U.S. government ultrafine granulated weaponized anthrax spores.
There was another story that the media absolutely would not touch the story of Dr. Philip Zak.
And it goes back to the U.S. government lab where the anthrax was stored.
It was reported that official U.S. government documents in the anthrax investigation showed that Dr. Zak had entered the laboratory where the anthrax used in the letters was kept without proper authorization after having lost his job.
Somehow the Bush administration would have the foresight to be on Cipro six weeks prior to the attacks.
How convenient.
An attack traced back to U.S. government facilities and the president and his staff happen to be taking the antidote before it's even in the mail.
Well, this is another good example of how certain people consider themselves to be above the rest of us.
On September 11th, I think it'll come as a shock to a lot of people.
But it's been reported by the New York Times and other major news organizations and confirmed by the White House.
The president's office and vice president's office went on Cipro, the antibiotic that was used to combat anthrax.
The White House went on Cipro.
It must have known that either an attack was underway or was imminent.
It shows you that some people in this country are less than equal and are not treated like the political elites.
9/11 was an international intelligence operation that included role players within our own government, as well as in the governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. as well as in the governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Each played a compartmentalized role in order to create a climate of fear and confusion.
This, combined with the evacuation of government offices, kept any type of dissent off the radar.
It was a time when Americans felt they needed to rally around their leaders.
And they did.
I can hear you!
And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!
USA! USA! USA! USA! The power structure used that unity.
to pass nightmarish legislation beginning with the Patriot Act, which was written before 9-11.
Homeland Security was in place prior to 9-11 as well.
Another piece of this, which is something that has been well known to you all, is that the creation of the Office of Homeland Security was something that was planned even before September 11th.
The Bush administration had even written up the plans to invade Afghanistan the week before 9-11.
And as a result of a process that involved the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the National Security Council, a national security presidential directive was developed and prepared throughout 2001 that was approved by what's called the Principals Committee, which is essentially cabinet-level officers involved in national security, on September 4, 2001. That document was then finalized on September 10th.
I think it was focused on al-Qaeda from the various earlier days.
We fight a fabled enemy, the likes of which that can never be defeated.
The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom of jinn in the Middle East.
They were...
What did Iraq have to do with what?
The attack upon the World Trade Center.
Nothing.
While an international intelligence cartel wages psychological warfare against we the people on behalf of the global elite.
And remember, this is a government that over the years has proven that it can be trusted with these powers.
You'd hope, as you mentioned before, that people don't complain about these extra inconveniences because they are simply being put into effect to protect all of us.
They masquerade as our saviors while the media glorifies and indemnifies them.
Either you are with us...
or you are with the terrorists.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe...
The time has come not for a revolution, but a restoration of our Constitution, our Bill of Rights.
But most of all, our morality as a people.
as a people.
The question is, will we be able to put our consumerist obsessions aside long enough to make a difference?
Can we put down the remote control and hold these tyrants accountable?