http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/04/911-truth-is-not-old-news.html

Every time an important fact undermining the official story about 9/11 is raised, defenders of the government's version try to label it as an "old story" which is "not news".

Are they right?

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/04/would-you-want-to-know.html

Given many people's strong psychological bias against questioning the government's version of 9/11, I wonder if an alternative approach might be helpful.

Specifically, psychologists tell us that many people project parental roles onto the government. Therefore, psychologists say, questioning the government is like questioning one's own parents. Because many people need to believe that the government is protecting them, believing that the government could carry out false flag terror is terrifying.

So psychologists say that if you just try to hammer people with facts, you probably won't reach many of them!

Instead, try starting with the following question (I'll explain why below):

We're adults.

But if you were still a kid, and your parents were abusing you, would you want to know or not?

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/air-traffic-controllers-do-track-planes.html

Before 9/11, no transponder had ever become inactive, and so the military and FAA didn't have any experience on how to track planes with their transponders off. Right?

Well, a Miami-Herald article from September 14, 2001, states:

The transponder [on Flight 77] went off about 9 a.m., the company said.

At that moment, the flight would have been under the control of the Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center, one of 20 regional centers that track flights between airports.

The trouble should have been instantly noticeable, traffic controllers say.

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/faa-notified-military-of-911-hijacked.html

The official story of 9/11 is that the FAA delayed notifying the military about the hijackings. That false statement has been debunked elsewhere.

However, even if the FAA for some reason had not notified the military, it doesn't matter.

Why?

Because the Secret Service -- which is contact with the President and Vice President at all times -- was watching everything the FAA was watching on their radar:

• Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke says that, on 9/11, the Secret Service had “a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.” (Page 7)

• Barbara Riggs, a future deputy director of the Secret Service who was in its Washington, DC headquarters on 9/11, will describe the Secret Service “monitoring radar” during the attacks (see also Star-Gazette 6/5/2006)

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/confirmed-911-planes-were-tracked-even.html

One of the most important parts of the official story is that the government couldn't track the location of the hijacked planes because the hijackers had turned the transponders off. The official version is that, with transponders turned off, only "primary radar" was available to civilian air traffic controllers. Primary radar can track location, but not altitude.

This makes no sense, because America's air defenses need to protect our nation against foreign fighter jets and other airplanes invading our country. Is our trillion-dollar defense system set up so that a Russian or Chinese pilot can invade undetected if he just turns off his transponder? Darn! Why didn't we think of that?!

Primary radar is a red herring.

Why?

Because the military possesses incredible sensitive radar. For example, "military radar can track space debris as small as 10 centimetres across" miles up in space.

AWACS Should Have Tracked Planes

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/norad-stand-down-in-2-minutes.html

NORAD, responsible for intercepting errant aircraft over the U.S., has a standard operating procedure for scrambling planes for interception which takes less than 15 minutes

They did this successfully (on time) 129 times in 2000 and and 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001.

Yet, on September 11th, they failed to do their job 4 times in a single day:

• NORAD, once notified of the off-course aircraft, failed to scramble jets from the nearest bases

• Once airborne, interceptors failed to reach their targets because they flew at small fractions of their top speeds

• Fighters that were airborne and within interception range of the deviating aircraft were not redeployed to pursue them

You might think that the military couldn't find the hijacked planes because the hijackers turned off the transponders. However, a former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview).

Indeed, Norad's stand down on 9/11 is so blatant that Norad has given 3 entirely different versions of what happened that day. Norad's false, ever-shifting explanations were so severe that the 9/11 Commission considered recommending criminal charges for making false statements (free subscription required).

I have previously argued that - if 9/11 really happened because "no one could have imagined" that terrorists would slam planes into buildings, and that honest "mistakes were made" - then the government would have fixed the problems which led to the security breach -- especially the simple fixes.

Similarly, if 9/11 was caused made by mistakes by government employees, the government would have fired or demoted the people who made the mistakes. At the very least, the wouldn't give the people who made the mistakes even more power, right?

But that's exactly what the White House has done. For example:

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/conflicts-of-interest-were-necessary.html

9/11 Commissioner and former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman previously admitted that the Commission purposely put together a staff in which every single staff member had a conflict of interest. He rationalized this by saying that the Commission wanted senior people in the government agencies relevant to 9/11, since they would know what was important and what wasn't.

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/did-us-and-allied-intelligence-agents.html

We've all seen it on television. The defense attorney argues his client was "entrapped". That is, that it wasn't the defendant's idea to commit the crime, but that the police planted the idea and urged him to do it.

Many of us have heard allegations that post-9/11 arrests of suspected Al Qaeda members were based on very thin information. Did you realize that all or virtually all of these arrests occurred due to entrapment? For example:

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/us-and-allied-intelligence-services-had.html

No one could have anticipated 9/11, right? While the U.S. knew about Al Qaeda, the 9/11 plotters and hijackers were still somewhat unknown and unpredictable prior to 9/11. Right?

In fact, U.S. and allied intelligence services had penetrated the highest levels of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. For example:

reddit: http://reddit.com/info/6c59u/comments/?already_submitted=true

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-caused-ground-level-fiery.html

On 9/11, there were multiple reports by credible witnesses of ground-level fiery explosions right before the collapse of the Twin Towers:

Reddit: http://reddit.com/info/6c407/comments/
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/04/cant-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too.html

You might assume that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 because of their design or because the fires were so hot or because of the damage from the hijacked planes. You probably assume that someone who knows alot more than you -- a structural engineer, or a fire expert, or a tall building designer -- has an explanation of why the towers collapsed, and that it all makes perfect sense. At the very least, you assume that you don't have the expertise to even think about why the Twin Towers collapsed, right?

Well, a contradiction in the way the towers collapsed shows that this is not so.

Specifically, there are two possibilities regarding the collapse of Twin Towers on September 11th:

Reddit: http://reddit.com/info/6bzp4/comments/?already_submitted=true

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-911-is-important.html

Some people argue that questioning 9/11 is a waste of time -- which distracts us from the many real problems our country is facing.

There's the economic downturn, the Iraq war, terrorist threats, loss of liberties and a lot of other problems that need fixing. So stop wasting time and distracting everyone with all this stuff about 9/11, right?

Well, before I address that argument, let me ask you one question: how did we get here? How did we get into the economic downturn, the Iraq war, the war on terror, spying and the loss of liberties, and the other problems?

Iraq

Let's start with Iraq. Why are we in Iraq? WMDs, you say!

Actually, President Bush's March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph.

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/03/incompetence.html

And on Reddit.

Newly re-written...

When faced with evidence that elements of our own government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, millions of Americans smugly respond that the Bush administration was too incompetent to have done it. A common statement is "They're too incompetent to even win a war against a bunch of poorly-armed people; how could they have pulled off 9/11?"

Bush certainly acts like a bumbler and a good old boy. Cheney accidentally shot his hunting buddy. And Rumsfeld -- Secretary of Defense when 9/11 occurred -- apparently mangled the planning of the war in Iraq. Right?

Big Fish or Little Fish?

Below is an announcement emailed out about the new book.

"No matter how you feel about who is responsible for the 9/11 attack, at least we need a thorough, independent, unbiased investigation. In this book, Griffin provides 25 useful questions--contradictions worthy of honest answers."

---Jim Hightower, author of Swim against the Current and editor of The Hightower Lowdown

“David Ray Griffin, writing specifically for members of Congress and the media, has presented the often incredible but true details of 25 major contradictions in the Bush administration’s accounts of 9/11. This book, based on careful research but written in a fast-moving, readable style, blows apart the notion that The 9/11 Commission Report presents an accurate account of what happened on September 11. It makes crystal clear the need for a new investigation.”

---Bill Christison, former senior CIA official

“When the smoke finally cleared from the pile of rubble on September 11, 2001, we were left with a host of burning questions. The 9/11 Commission did not provide the answers, despite their extensive mandate. 9/11 Contradictions is a work that needed to be written. With characteristic clarity and focus, David Ray Griffin masterfully lays out the most critical of these questions. Now the challenge is to finally get real answers.”

---Lorie Van Auken, widow of Kenneth Van Auken, killed at WTC 1 on 9/11/01, and member of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission