NEW HAMPSHIRE 9/11 TRUTH: Newspaper Article

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9/11 Effort to go on Peterborough NH Town Article Voted Down 422-157.

By MEGHAN PIERCE
5/13/2010, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Peterborough, New Hampshire

PETERBOROUGH — Their petition article failed at the polls Tuesday, but the eight Peterborough members of the Monadnock 9/11 Truth Alliance say they are not backing down.

“We are delighted that about a third of the people think this was something worth looking into,” Karin Wells said. “We will continue to educate and tell people. ... It’s swimming upstream. It’s so hard.”

The petition article on Tuesday’s Town Meeting ballot asked voters to send a message to the government by asking the town to instruct the state Congressional Delegation to pursue a new and independent investigation to address thoroughly all of the evidence and unanswered questions related to the events of Sept. 11 2001.

“It’s simply to make noise and make people aware of it,” Wells said.

Voters said no, 422-157.

Left to right: Former Republican Governor Walter Peterson, Carol Wyndham and Kathleen Iselin try to educate voters to the importance of calling for a New Investigation into 9/11.

The eight Peterborough members — Karin and Peter Wells, Mike Casner, Jack Meagher, John and Carol Wyndham, and Jay and Kathleen Iselin — make up almost half of the 20-member Keene-based group, Monadnock 9/11 Truth Alliance.

“We’re pleased that Gov. [Walter] Peterson is among our ranks. We think that it’s an indicator of how more and more politicians are realizing the weight of this issue,” Jay Iselin said.

Peterson, who signed the petition, told the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript yesterday that he did not expect the petition article to pass, but that asking questions when you have doubts is always the right thing to do.

Left to right: John Wyndham PhD (Physics) and Carol Wyndham. Not shown - but who were there - are Architect Peter Wells, Engineer Jack Meagher, Jay Iselin, Karin Wells and Mike Casner.

“You should question some things if they don’t make sense,” he said. “I don’t think it’s unpatriotic.”

Peterson said both he and his wife, Dorothy, decided to support the petition article after watching one of the videos of the collapse of the Twin Towers, which he said looks like a controlled demolition to them. “That raised questions because that’s not how a building would fall if it was attacked,” Peterson said. “Both Dorothy and I had viewed the video and there were certainly a lot of serious questions raised about what happened there.”

“Most people don’t want to bother. But I think if you raise a question, if you really have a doubt, you should say it,” Peterson said.

The members of the truth alliance spent Tuesday outside of the Town House asking voters to say yes to their petition and said they did change some minds, but they were also met with hostility from some voters who opposed the petition. “We’re presenting facts and they’re presenting attacks on our character,” Kathleen Iselin said.

Members said that despite their defeat they plan to continue their search for the truth and to educate the public on the issue. A movie series in Depot Square will continue, starting May 22, every Saturday from 9:11 a.m. to 9:11 p.m. The public is welcome to come, watch a movie about the 911, ask questions of group members and pick up literature.

“ It’s simply to make noise and make people aware of it."
- Karin Wells, Peterborough

"But I think if you raise a question, if you really have a doubt, you should say it."
- Walter Peterson, Peterborough

"Able Danger"

Blog Note: READABILITY is a simple (free) tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. If you're searching for more information about 9/11 Truth - you're apt to get bug-eyed reading online.

The following article has been reprinted from the archives of the Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2005

An Incomplete Investigation: Why Did the 9/11 Commission Ignore "Able Danger"?

by Louis Freeh

"It was interesting to hear from the 9/11 Commission again on Tuesday. This self-perpetuating and privately funded group of lobbyists and lawyers has recently opined on hurricanes, nuclear weapons, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and even the New York subway system. Now it offers yet another "report card" on the progress of the FBI and CIA in the war against terrorism, along with its "back-seat" take and some further unsolicited narrative about how things ought to be on the "front lines."

Yet this is also a good time for the country to make some assessments of the 9/11 Commission itself. Recent revelations from the military intelligence operation code-named "Able Danger" have cast light on a missed opportunity that could have potentially prevented 9/11. Specifically, Able Danger concluded in February 2000 that military experts had identified Mohamed Atta by name (and maybe photograph) as an al Qaeda agent operating in the U.S. Subsequently, military officers assigned to Able Danger were prevented from sharing this critical information with FBI agents, even though appointments had been made to do so. Why?

There are other questions that need answers. Was Able Danger intelligence provided to the 9/11 Commission prior to the finalization of its report, and, if so, why was it not explored? In sum, what did the 9/11 commissioners and their staff know about Able Danger and when did they know it?

The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically significant." This astounding conclusion--in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings--raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself.

The facts relating to Able Danger finally started to be reported in mid-August. U.S. Army Col. Anthony Shaffer, a veteran intelligence officer, publicly revealed that the Able Danger team had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers by mid-2000 but were prevented by military lawyers from giving this information to the FBI. One week later, Navy Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, confirmed "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."

On Aug. 18, 2005, the Pentagon initially stated that "a probe" had found nothing to back up Col. Shaffer's claims. Two weeks later, however, Defense Department officials acknowledged that its "inquiry" had found "three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes." These same officials also stated that "documents and electronic files created by . . . Able Danger were destroyed under standing orders that limit the military's use of intelligence gathered about people in the United States." Then in September 2005, the Pentagon doubled back and blocked several military officers from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about the Able Danger program.

Two members of Congress, Curt Weldon and Dan Burton, have also publicly stated that shortly after the 9/11 attacks they provided then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley with a "chart" containing preattack information collected by Able Danger about al Qaeda. A spokesperson for the White House has confirmed that Mr. Hadley "recalled seeing such a chart in that time period but . . . did not recall whether he saw it during a meeting . . . and that a search of National Security Council files had failed to produce such a chart."

Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, reacted to Able Danger with the standard Washington PR approach. He lashed out at the Bush administration and demanded that the Pentagon conduct an "investigation" to evaluate the "credibility" of Col. Shaffer and Capt. Phillpott--rather than demand a substantive investigation into what failed in the first place. This from a former New Jersey governor who, along with other commissioners, routinely appeared in public espousing his own conclusions about 9/11 long before the commission's inquiry was completed and long before all the facts were in! This while dismissing out of hand the major conflicts of interest on the commission itself about obstructions to information-sharing within the intelligence community!

Nevertheless, the final 9/11 Commission report, released on July 22, 2004, concluded that "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks." This now looks to be embarrassingly wrong. Yet amazingly, commission leaders acknowledged on Aug. 12 that their staff in fact met with a Navy officer 10 days before releasing the report, who "asserted that a highly classified intelligence operation, Able Danger, had identified Mohammed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn." (Capt. Phillpott says he briefed them in July 2004.) The commission's statement goes on to say that the staff determined that "the officer's account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation," and that the intelligence operation "did not turn out to be historically significant," despite substantial corroboration from other seasoned intelligence officers.

This dismissive and apparently unsupported conclusion would have us believe that a key piece of evidence was summarily rejected in less than 10 days without serious investigation. The commission, at the very least, should have interviewed the 80 members of Able Danger, as the Pentagon did, five of whom say they saw "the chart." But this would have required admitting that the late-breaking news was inconveniently raised. So it was grossly neglected and branded as insignificant. Such a half-baked conclusion, drawn in only 10 days without any real investigation, simply ignores what looks like substantial direct evidence to the contrary coming from our own trained military intelligence officers.

No wonder the 9/11 families were outraged by these revelations and called for a "new" commission to investigate. "I'm angry that my son's death could have been prevented," seethed Diane Horning, whose son Matthew was killed at the World Trade Center. On Aug. 17, 2005, a coalition of family members known as the September 11 Advocates rightly blasted 9/11 Commission leaders Mr. Kean and Lee Hamilton for pooh-poohing Able Danger's findings as not "historically significant." Advocate Mindy Kleinberg aptly notes, "They [the 9/11 Commission] somehow made a determination that this was not important enough. To me, that says somebody there is not using good judgment. And if I'm questioning the judgment of this one case, what other things might they have missed?" This is a stinging indictment of the commission by the 9/11 families."

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, has led the way in cleaning up the 9/11 Commission's unfinished business. Amid a very full plate of responsibilities, he conducted a hearing after noting that Col. Shaffer and Capt. Phillpott "appear to have credibility." Himself a former prosecutor, Mr. Specter noted: "If Mr. Atta and other 9/11 terrorists were identified before the attacks, it would be a very serious breach not to have that information passed along . . . we ought to get to the bottom of it." Indeed we should. The 9/11 Commission gets an "I" grade--incomplete--for its dereliction regarding Able Danger. The Joint Intelligence Committees should reconvene and, in addition to Able Danger team members, we should have the 9/11 commissioners appear as witnesses so the families can hear their explanation why this doesn't matter.

Mr. Freeh, a former FBI director, is the author of "My FBI" (St. Martin's, 2005).

Here is another article on the subject of "Able Danger" reprinted from the archives of the New York Times, September 22, 2005:

Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry on Sept. 11 Plot

By Douglas Jehl

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department on Wednesday of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday. The only testimony provided by the Defense Department came from a senior official who would say only that he did not know whether the claims were true.

But members of the panel, led by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said they regarded as credible assertions by current and former officers in the program. The officers have said they were prevented by the Pentagon from sharing information about Mr. Atta and others with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A Pentagon spokesman had said the decision to limit testimony was based on concerns about disclosing classified information, but Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said he believed the reason was a concern "that they'll just have egg on their face."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the Pentagon of "a cover-up" and said, "I don't get why people aren't coming forward and saying, 'Here's the deal, here's what happened.' "

The Pentagon has acknowledged that at least five members of Able Danger have said they recall a chart produced in 2000 that identified Mr. Atta, who became the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot, as a potential terrorist, but they have said that others with knowledge of the project do not remember that.

"Did we have information that identified Mohamed Atta?" said William Dugan, an assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for intelligence oversight, restating a question put to him. "I've heard the testimony presented, but I don't know."

Among those who testified about Able Danger was Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has mounted an aggressive campaign to call public attention to the program, which used computers to sift through volumes of unclassified data in an effort to identify people with links to Al Qaeda.

Another witness, Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer, testified on behalf of two clients whom the Pentagon barred from speaking at the hearing. The clients, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army Reserve officer, and J. D. Smith, a former contractor on the project, were in the audience.

Erik Kleinsmith, a former Army major who was involved in early stages of Able Danger, told the committee that, by April 2000, the program had collected "an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map Al Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States." Mr. Kleinsmith said that his affiliation with the project ended about that time and that he had no recollection of information that identified Mr. Atta.

But Mr. Kleinsmith told the committee that he had been "forced to destroy all the data, charts and other analytical product" in compliance with Army regulations that prohibit keeping data related to American citizens and others, including permanent residents who have legal protections, unless the data falls under one of several restrictive categories."

No Bin Laden information in years, says Gates

The US has had no reliable information on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in years, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has admitted. *

Mr Gates told ABC News in remarks broadcast on Sunday: "Well, we don't know for a fact where Osama Bin Laden is. If we did, we'd go get him."

A Taliban detainee in Pakistan told the BBC last week that he had information Bin Laden was in Afghanistan this year. However, Mr Gates said he could not confirm that information.

When asked by ABC's This Week programme when the US last had any good intelligence on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader, Mr Gates said: "I think it's been years."

He could not confirm the details of the Taliban detainee, who claimed to have met Osama Bin Laden numerous times before 9/11.

The detainee said that in January or February he met a trusted contact who had seen Bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden had previously been thought to be on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan.

But the detainee said that militants were avoiding Pakistani territory because of the risk of US drone attacks.

The detainee said Bin Laden was well.

'Safe havens'

Mr Gates' comments came after US President Barack Obama announced a decision this week to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

He recalled that the US was fighting there in response to the 9/11 attacks against America by al-Qaeda, and had made the decision to invade "only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden".

Mr Obama said al-Qaeda leaders had escaped into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002 and had been able to "retain their safe-havens along the border".

A recent US Senate report prepared by the Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff concluded that Bin Laden had been "within our grasp" in Afghanistan in late 2001.

But it said that at the time, calls for US reinforcements had been rejected, allowing the al-Qaeda leader to "walk unmolested" into Pakistan's unregulated tribal areas.

Last week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Pakistan to do more to find Mr Bin Laden.

"We've got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody's been able to get close to [Ayman al-] Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda," he said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani responded by saying he did not think Bin Laden was in Pakistan, and that his country had yet to be given any "credible or actionable information" by the US on Bin Laden.

* BBC News

See Video of last interview with Benazir Bhutto in which she names Osama bin Laden's killer.

9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon

Allegations Brought to Inspectors General

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 2006

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.”

Although the commission’s landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department’s early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the inspector general’s office will soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was “knowingly false.” A separate report, delivered secretly to Congress in May 2005, blamed inaccuracies in part on problems with the way the Defense Department kept its records, according to a summary released yesterday.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department’s inspector general’s office said its investigation is complete and that a final report is being drafted. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she could not comment on the inspector general’s inquiry.

In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate — though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals — and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night.

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. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft — American Airlines Flight 11 — long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies’ reluctance to release the tapes — along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence — led some of the panel’s staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.

“I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described,” John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. “The 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.”

Arnold, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, told the commission in 2004 that he did not have all the information unearthed by the panel when he testified earlier. Other military officials also denied any intent to mislead the panel.

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.

“My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don’t know,” Lehman said. “But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn’t seem to make sense to me.”

* We found this excellent article thanks to the Magicians for 911 Truth Website.

NEW HAMPSHIRE 9/11 TRUTH

9/11 Effort to go on Peterborough NH Town Article Voted Down 422-157.

"Able Danger"

No Bin Laden information in years, says Gates

9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon

Scientists find Catastrophic Collapse of WTC due to explosives - proof in the dust

Not Hit by anything, WTC BUILDING #7 Collapses on 9/11

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