So, what really happened?

Another oddity from September '01 which needs re-examination is the apparently large sale of airlines futures just prior to the attack.

Sept. 4-5, 2001 - A freshman at Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School who had recently emigrated from Pakistan reportedly predicts the destruction of the World Trade Center a week prior to the 9-11 attacks, according to the JournalNews newspaper in White Plains, NY. Citing "three police sources and a city official familiar with the investigation" as well as confirmation from the FBI that the bureau had received this information, the paper reported that in the midst of a heated class discussion the student pointed to the World Trade Center from a third story window and said, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week." New York City Board of Education spokeswoman Catie Marshall confirmed for the JournalNews "that school officials reported the matter to police within minutes of the Sept. 11 attack" and students told the paper that "FBI agents and NYPD detectives descended on the school on Sept. 13 to interrogate the student [who made the prediction] and others in his class," which was "an English class for Arab-American students." [Source: The JournalNews, Oct. 11, 2001]

Sept. 10, 2001 - The Houston Chronicle reports the FBI was notified of a fifth grader from a Dallas suburb who told his teacher, "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." The Chronicle was unclear on specifically when Garland, Texas school district officials told the FBI about the incident, but it was some time between Sept. 13, 2001 and the story's publication date of Sept. 19, 2001. [Source: Houston Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2001]

Aug. 11 or 12, 2001 - U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on US fraud charges and claiming to be an officer with US naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope, which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]

Sept. 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that it describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The US Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]

Jan. 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for Mike Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a naval lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; Toronto Superior Court records]

Sept. 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred. [Sources: CNN; ABC; MSNBC; Los Angeles Times; The New York Times]

Oct. 29, 2001 - The Bush Administration drafts "an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public," wrote the Washington Post. The order also required members of the public to prove "at least a demonstrated, specific need'" for a president's papers to be released. Critics contend this would overturn the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which releases documents after 12 years. The White House maintained that a Supreme Court decision in 1977 allows presidents various privileges for their records. [Source: Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001, Wa Po link here]

1993 kam das Buch "Case Closed" des Zeitgeschichtlers Gerald Posner auf den Markt, das die gängigsten Theorien bis ins Detail entzauberte. Posner kam zu dem Schluss, Ursache aller Spekulationen sei die Unfähigkeit der Amerikaner, sich einzugestehen, dass jeder Irre mit einem handelsüblichen Gewehr den Präsidenten der Weltmacht USA treffen kann.

1993 saw the publication of "Case Closed", by the historian Gerald Posner, who debunked the most common [conspiracy] theories [about JFK] in great detail. Posner eventually came to the conclusion that the cause of all these speculations was the inability of the Americans to admit to themselves, that just any crazy man who owns a gun of the kind you can buy legally, can in fact shoot the president of world power USA.

Was NORAD Merely Grossly Incompetent?
NORAD seems to have no respect for the truth. In late 2001, Major General Larry Arnold wrote how NORAD's 9/11 response was "immediate" and "impressive." Moving into outright fiction, Arnold claimed, "we were able to identify, track and escort suspected hijacked aircraft after the initial attacks," "our reaction time outpaced the process in some instances," "our well-practiced rapid response capability may very well have prevented additional surprise attacks on the American homeland saving countless lives," and so on. [American Defender, 2001] With Arnold sitting next to him, Major General Craig McKinley admitted in the May 2003 hearings, "We had not positioned prior to September 11, 2001, for the scenario that took place that day." [New Jersey Star-Ledger, 5/24/03] "McKinley admitted that NORAD was utterly unprepared for the attack." [UPI, 5/23/03] He called NORAD's 9/11 stance "a Cold War vestige." [New Jersey Star-Ledger, 5/24/03] NORAD now claims to be so incompetent that they had to rely on the FAA for all radar information, and even had to go through the FAA to communicate with their own pilots. [Knight Ridder, 5/24/03]

NORAD's explanations about 9/11 have never made sense, and their new eagerness to be seen as an incompetent "Cold War vestige" is equally suspect. NORAD officials brazenly lied throughout their testimony. In the new NORAD timeline they presented, they even claimed that CNN first began showing images of the World Trade Center on fire at 8:57 when it is easily verifiable that CNN began doing this at 8:48. [CNN, 9/11/01, NORAD Testimony, 5/23/03] Like their many other lies, one can see how this lie serves to cover up the extent of their failure. Unfortunately, the Independent Commission did not require that testimony be given under oath, so these officials cannot be charged with perjury.

One Toronto Star columnist wrote in May 2003, "The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version [of what happened on 9/11]. Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the huge holes in the fabric of that official story." [Toronto Star, 5/18/03] A Sarasota Herald-Tribune columnist recently called the "restrained - even failed - standard US military air defense protocols while the attacks were occurring" a "real mystery" that deserves a serious investigation. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 5/20/03] But most of the mainstream media doesn't appear at all interested in these mysteries.

Given the many warnings that came before 9/11, it is not only NORAD that deserves blame for the utter failure to defend the skies on 9/11. Thousands of lives could have been saved if standard procedures were properly followed. Perhaps only those in the World Trade Center's North Tower need have died, if the FAA and NORAD did their job properly. No wonder the government passed a law making it difficult for relatives of the 9/11 terrorists to sue anyone but the terrorists. [Los Angeles Times, 1/17/02] There has been no accountability for all these failures and needless deaths. There still has not been one demonstrable firing or punishment for any government employee because of 9/11. Many unanswered questions remain, and are likely to remain unanswered until people put pressure on the media and government to finally stop covering up what happened on 9/11.

Also see the essay, An Interesting Day: Bush on 9/11, for more analysis on related topics. For more details on what happened on 9/11, see a detailed timeline about that day. Comments can be directed to: paulthompson22b @yahoo.com (remove the space). Thanks to Melissa Kavonic, Allan Wood, Allan Duncan, and Derek Mitchell for their assistance. See also 9/11 Citizens Watch, a group that is trying to keep pressure on the Independent Commission.

Here you go, nimh: The Indian Express

Also see the essay, An Interesting Day: Bush on 9/11,

CNN.com/American Morning

"Also see the essay, An Interesting Day: Bush on 9/11"

Well, I just did and boy, am I pissed.