The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission – John Farmer – says that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon were engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.
Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), and is also a former New Jersey Attorney General. Farmer’s book about his experiences working for the Commission is entitled The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11, and is set to be released tomorrow.
The book unveils how “the public had been seriously misled about what occurred during the morning of the attacks,” and Farmer himself states that “at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.” The publisher of the book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, states that, “Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security.” The report revealed how the 10-member commission deeply suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.
“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
Farmer himself is quoted in the Post article, stating, “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”
And FWIW if they had time to shoot down the last airplane rather than let it crash into another building, I have no problem with that. The passengers on the airplane were dead either way. Do they think America couldn’t handle it if we knew they shot it down?
All North American pilots have a required understanding that NORAD only looks outward from the North American continent via ADIZ/CADIZ… not inward. No one is expecting anything from within the nation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Defense_Identification_Zone
RBG
Any discrepancy is probably because they shot down Flight 93 and then realized it had been retaken.
#42. Really, because terrorists can’t get into the country? Can you say Mexico, Canada? Well then how fucking stupid is that? Do we have fucking idiots running the country? Don’t answer that.
#43. That’s the first reasonable thing I have ever heard you say.
John Famer is worth the read, but the cheesy write up does not does do him justice.
The truth about 9/11 is like “what we were told did not happen” and that means we can kind of figure out what did happen, but not even Farmer knows who and why. So the book could be a huge let down for some.
I can’t blame any Government for running with a quick story, but Invading Iraq because of 9/11 was bullshit thrown in my face.
#43 Any discrepancy is probably because they shot down Flight 93 and then realized it had been retaken.
Well that would have been a major bummer. Any evidence for this outside 9/11 “truthers”?
I believe in a 911 cover-up:
The Bush Administration covered-up their inexcusable bungling before and after the strike.
The Bush adminsitration failed to protect America, despite ample opportunity to do so, and they failed to respond properly to the terrorists, despite repeated warnings that they were screwing up.
This cover-up fuels the 911 conspiracy theorists who believe Bush actually DID 911.
Is that’s what’s going on with this story? COULD the government have intercepted those planes but failed to do so? That seems like the most likely scenario.
“… in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
[Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia]
44 Ron. Cross-border air transgressions are first handled by Air Traffic Control, not NORAD.
RBG
#49 Hugh Ripper, this thread is not about Obama.
#51 Always with the party politics…
# 40 Phydeau – Probably closest to the truth.
Let’s see, you say it’s “inescapably convincing” proof and never say what the proof or “truth” is.
Either state what happened that you can prove or shut up. Just like doping in cycling (where there’s less doping that football – either type – or baseball or skiing or, well, you name it), if you can’t put up, shut up.
I thought I’d put up my own non-proof truth just to show you how purposeless it is, unless the purpose is to enrage the public.
Yeah, this is the lowest form of blog post. Shoot it.
Looks like someone will commit suicide after shooting himself 3 times in the head…
The 9/11 Commission’s Report (remember, it’s the Government’s official account of that terrible day) is at it’s very best, incomplete.
At worst, it’s a fabrication/distortion. Likely, it’s somewhere in between.
I too, would be devastated to learn that my Government was not completely forthcoming about such a tragedy. It therefore, becomes far easier to accept their Report, and subsequently oppose demands for answers to remaining questions.
Do those of you that ridicule “Truthers” for wanting, nay, demanding, answers to outstanding questions, have any idea how stupid you sound by accepting the Commissions Report as the Governments’ full and truthful account of the event(s)?
I’ve said this many times but, although I’ve yet to personally meet an individual American I didn’t like *, American’s are a frickin’ scary bunch.
/T.
* While we’ve never met in person Paddy-O, you are, indeed, the exception. Never got a good vibe from any of your posts.
Ya dig?
#13: So if this “shocking story” is true, how come they did not contact the Justice Department?
Ya know, I don’t have much patience for people who lack the ability to do even the most rudimentary research. The WaPo article referenced in the write-up is easily found.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html
The headline: 9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon – Allegations Brought to Inspectors General
And from the article:
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.
“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
…
For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances.
…
John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said in a recent interview that he believed the panel may have been lied to but that he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.