Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI officials enabled 9/11 and evaded government investigations, by Kevin Fenton. Waltersville, OR: Trine Day, 2011. 416 pages.

“Enabling 9/11 was a job done at the office, with memos” (15).

It is a non-controversial fact that the NSA, CIA and FBI missed a number of opportunities to disrupt the 9/11 plot. Many, but not all, of these failures were documented by the four main investigations that dealt with pre-9/11 intelligence failures: those by the Congressional Joint Inquiry, the 9/11 Commission, the Department of Justice Inspector General and the CIA Inspector General. The best-known investigation, the 9/11 Commission, ultimately concluded that 9/11 was preceded by “four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management” (339). This is the narrative largely held to by mainstream politicians and media, but these explanations do not credibly account for what happened at the NSA, CIA and FBI in the years, months and weeks leading up to 9/11. This has been demonstrated by a number of researchers, but Kevin Fenton’s* book, Disconnecting the Dots, has the most comprehensive documentation and in-depth analysis to date. Primarily using the official reports, the available source records and some reporting by mainstream media and journalists, Fenton documents how specific CIA and FBI officials engaged in deliberate efforts to protect the 9/11 plot from discovery and disruption by FBI investigators, and that the most probable explanation is that this was done in order to enable the 9/11 attacks.

One of Fenton’s major strengths is that he limits himself to his area of expertise; Disconnecting the Dots is narrowly focused on the pre-9/11 intelligence failures and the official investigations of these failures. The book is a complex and dense compilation of interrelated names, dates, bits of information and sequences of events, a situation that is unavoidable due to the complex nature of the subject. Fortunately for the reader, Fenton’s style and presentation are simple and lucid, which helps make the complicated and often unclear nature of the subject more easily understood. Whenever possible, he names those responsible for the decisions and actions being examined, though this is sometimes impossible due to the limited amount of information that has been made public. Whenever a particularly complex set of issues or series of events have been examined in a chapter, Fenton provides a summary at the end of that chapter, and at a number of points in the book he summarizes what can be understood from the pattern of facts presented up to that point. His analysis considers the full range of available evidence, assesses the quality of individual pieces and does not go beyond the evidence. When he does draw conclusions they are generally conservative and understated, and he is careful to address other possible explanations for the evidence.

This is a scathing, one-star review of a book which pretends to be a truth seeking/telling book, and at this moment, 63 of 68 people found the review helpful!

Dr. David Ray Griffin's Review of

"The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11", by John Farmer

Although John Farmer's "The Ground Truth" has attracted a lot of favorable attention, it is a deeply flawed book, containing misleading claims and providing an extremely one-sided account of 9/11.

Much of the attention received by the book has been prompted by misleading claims made by Farmer and his publisher. The book's dust-jacket calls it the "definitive account" of 9/11, but it actually deals almost entirely with only one question about that day: why the airliners were not intercepted.

Brilliant Spotlight Exposing Criminal 9/11 Cover-Up by US Government Agency

by Tod Fletcher

In THE MYSTERIOUS COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE CENTER 7: WHY THE FINAL OFFICIAL REPORT ABOUT 9/11 IS UNSCIENTIFIC AND FALSE, David Ray Griffin provides an overwhelmingly convincing case that the latest official US government account of the events at “Ground Zero” on September 11, 2001, is false. He examines in detail the whole series of publications by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) purporting to explain the highly “mysterious” collapse of World Trade Center 7, a 47-story steel-framed skyscraper across the street from the North Tower, which was not struck by a plane and yet collapsed into its footprint, at nearly free-fall speed, shortly after 5 PM that day.

a review of David Ray Griffin's new book, OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE?

http://www.amazon.com/Osama-Bin-Laden-Dead-Alive/dp/1566567831/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242912603&sr=1-2

by Tod Fletcher

OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE? by David Ray Griffin is a crucially important and timely examination of the whole range of evidence bearing on the question, is Osama bin Laden still alive? The importance of this question for the present comes from the fact that the United States under its new president is escalating its offensive in Afghanistan and expanding the war into Pakistan, and has claimed that the "hunt for bin Laden" is one of its principal motivations for doing so. Either explicitly or implicitly, the US government and major media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post continue to assert that bin Laden is alive, hiding in the tribal territories on the "AfPak" border, posing an undiminished threat to US security.

Review of Marc Estrin's Skulk

Progressive Press, P.O. Box 126, Joshua Tree, California, 2009

by Charles R. Simpson - State University of New York, Plattsburgh

Marc Estrin's Skulk is a darkly entertaining comedy of misguided if well-intentioned political fumbling. Its unlikely pair of protagonists, coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, hatch a scheme to make a complacent America ask, "Who really bombed the Pentagon and the World Trade Center?" But wait, wasn't the question of 9/11 answered in 2004 by a the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission? Didn't they analyze 2.5 million pages of documents and interview 1,200 people to conclude that a global conspiracy operating under the name "Al Qaeda" orchestrated the attacks, helped along by U.S. intelligence failures? Why would Estrin push against this juggernaut of political analysis when expert scrutiny and our own eyes--via images of the day from the broadcast networks--have established the contours of this rubble-strewn landscape? And isn't a novel a rather lightweight vehicle with which to plow back the weight of settled history? Estrin's project is ambitious.

Editorial Review

"If you intend to vote in November and read only one book between now and then, this should be it.” —Los Angeles Times

================================

CAPE COD TIMES
August 03, 2008
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080803/LIFE/808030317

"The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," by Jane Mayer (Doubleday. 392 pages. $27.50)

"The Dark Side," Jane Mayer's gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it.

Steve Alten’s, The Shell Game, The First 911 Novel

by Joseph Danison / March 26th, 2008

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/steve-altens-the-shell-game-the-first-911-novel/

In 2008, the American people are more dangerously naïve than they ever were in the 18th Century, their imagination for evil dangerously circumscribed and manipulated so that the threat to national security seems to always come from without, never from within. The smiley face of the elected government conceals the dark faces of those never elected and the people live in a politically repressed condition like hysterical Victorian virgins haunted by nuclear nightmares and the self-righteous psychosis of the Book of Revelation. Like children never taught to be wary of strangers, they are easy victims to patriotic political predators who play on their fears with promises of security and stimulus payments.

Political thrillers are the dirty books for today’s politically repressed. Unlike many novelists in this genre who regularly make the best seller list, Steve Alten integrates fact and fiction so closely that students of 911 will not be offended by any misrepresentations of the reality of that event, unless they take issue with Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon. Unlike other popular writers whom one suspects are working for the Public Affairs Office of the CIA, Alten does not represent the “intelligence community” as an altruistic public service group, but rather as a cozy deny of ideological vipers. In the complex shadow world of black operations, he deftly and believably depicts the machinations of sociopathic agents, the serial rapists of the rule of law and the political perverts who carry out the dirty deeds from which the righteous virtual political reality on display before the American public is constructed.

Continued...
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/steve-altens-the-shell-game-the-first-911-novel/

(You can hear Peter Dale Scott talk about "The Road to 9/11", in this interview with Bonnie Faulkner, which aired October 10, 2007.)
(A slightly older video here, from August 8, 2007 - good biographical background on Scott, as well as a long talk about the book.)

"9/11 was the largest homicide by far in American history, yet it has never been adequately investigated. The public has been told of a conspiracy that included terrorist conspirators organized and financed abroad. But if U.S. defenses had functioned on that day as they had previously, the four planes at a minimum should have been intercepted by fighter aircraft. Yet we are told that even this did not happen. There is a domestic side to 9/11 as well, about which we still know next to nothing. Key evidence requested by the commission was initially withheld until subpoenas were issued, and some evidence was deliberately destroyed. Worse, there are systematic suppressions of evidence in the 9/11 Commission Report itself, along with unresolved contradictions in testimony and occasional misrepresentations of some crucial facts.

This chapter and the next will explore these issues and make the case that Vice President Cheney is himself a suspect in the events of 9/11 who needs to be investigated further."

- Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11, p.194 (emphasis added)

In a major new book from the The University of California Press, author Peter Dale Scott turns up the heat on the George Walker Bush administration, (with a spotlight focused firmly on Vice President Cheney), and presents a carefully researched scholarly volume that offers several challenges to the official narrative of 9/11 as presented in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Scott's case against Cheney is presented toward the end of a text that is much more than just another volume focused on the events of 9/11. With the craftsmanship of a published author and English Professor, Scott uses his expertise to take the reader on a guided tour of recent American history, placing 9/11 within a context-rich environment rife with malfeasance, malice, and the never-ending meddling of rich and powerful entities, through proxy politicians and organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Heritage Foundation.

By Stephen Badhwar

It has been six years since the events of September 11, 2001. It has been 3 years since the release of the 9/11 Commission Report. Yet there appears to be a growing number of questions surrounding this seminal event.
We all heard how 19 Arab hijackers commandeered four airliners and steered three of them into their targets. The fourth was overtaken by passengers and caused to slam into a field.
We were told that Arab extremists led by Osama bin Laden had orchestrated these attacks from Afghanistan. We were told that they hate Americans because of their freedoms.

This event constituted the grossest breach of national security since Pearl Harbour. Many wondered how such a massive failure of intelligence was possible.
The American public demanded that there be an official enquiry into the attacks. The Bush Administration waffled for over a year until finally, after intense pressure from families of 9/11 victims, it awarded 14 million dollars to put together a commission.

DEBUNKING 9/11 DEBUNKING
David Ray Griffin
Olive Branch Press, 2007, 392 pages

David Ray Griffin only has one setting on his blender: "Annihilate".

With DEBUNKING 9/11 DEBUNKING, Griffin puts the "Official Conspiracy Theory" (OCT) into the blender, along with the reports and publications that shore it up.

It turns out that the defenders of the OCT don't have a monopoly on the facts, but they do have a lot of time on their hands when it comes to putting makeup on the pig that is the Grade-A Government Approved ballad of Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers. For some reason, however, they are absent where their critical skills could be very useful, like casting a spotlight on the incompatible stories that NORAD told to the 9/11 Commission, (and the world), regarding their reactions to the hijacked planes on 9/11.

"They lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 Commission to create a false impression of competence, communication, coordination and protection of the American people." - Senator Mark Dayton, July 31, 2004.

"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." - Thomas H. Kean, August, 2006.

Apparently, NORAD's lies are no big deal to "debunkers". Well, they are a big deal to a growing number of people, and after the thorough dissection that the shifting NORAD 9/11 timeline gets from Griffin, via the utter shredding of Michael Bronner's Vanity Fair piece entitled, 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes... you have to wonder how honest the intent of the average debunker truly is.

http://tinyurl.com/yszxef

No way back...except forward..., April 27, 2007

If I really lived in a "free" country, I would not be the only air traffic controller speaking out about the events of 9/11/2001. There would be others much younger, much more up-to-date, but there would be none any more patriotic. So, if anyone were to claim that my statements quoted in this enlightening book are self-serving, I must deflect that aside and state that I am still serving my country as many current air traffic controllers, government employees and military personnel would also do if their careers were not threatened by the various agencies within the the United States Government. Current controllers will never forget the events of PATCO and 1981 as they were hired to replace us, and those in the military know that they must follow orders. They all KNOW that they would be punished somehow should they excercise their rights of free speech.

And with me being fired by a president of the United States might lead one to believe that I hold anger at this action, and I do, but it is only that the PATCO strike, as seen historically, was only the "labor" portion of a 40+ year plan hatched by conservatives to dismantle our democracy which they have done in ways far, far greater than just labor and income disparity issues. My road since hasn't been pretty, but I'm not yet "terminated".

Nearing my 60th birthday, coming of "political age" after reading The Pentagon Papers, and having an unusual vantage point from which I can view 9/11/2001 [I am also an experienced pilot] allows me to put this latest attack on our country into a longer term context. Eventually, as it is now known that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attacks and actually took precedent actions to provoke the Japanese into the attack, we will come to see that the attacks on 9/11/2001 were self inflicted and done for the self-serving reasons of a narrow band of wealthy people, the military industrial complex and huge multi-national corporations who operate above common law and use our planet and its resources for themselves, and for whatever it is that they believe in. Since most people's "belief structures" cannot accept this except perhaps through some form of knowledge "osmossis" over the years, it will take some time for this full knowledge to reach into their souls. This form of societal denial can be explained better by experts, but it exists.

When it does come time for the common person to gain the strength to look deeply into what has happened to our country, and they want to focus upon the events of 9/11/2001, they will not have to go any farther than Dr. David Ray Griffin's work on the subject, and "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" will serve as THE SEMINAL WORK on the subject. This will even be true to those of us who know a great deal about 9/11/2001...those of us who comprise what is known as the "9/11 Truth Movement".

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=865&Itemid=1

9/11 AND AMERICAN EMPIRE: Intellectuals Speak Out, Reviewed
by Carolyn Baker
Monday, 22 January 2007

"...As a member of academia myself, I am buoyed by the caliber of scholars included in the Griffin-Scott volume, particularly in the light of what I consider higher education’s abject paranoia regarding skepticism of the official story of 9/11. As I stated when recently interviewed by Jason Miller at Civil Libertarian Blogspot, professors at the end of their academic preparation often emerge with rigid concepts of how they “should” think or how they “should” teach, to such an extent that they become almost terrified of being viewed as conspiracy theorists and develop what I call “conspiracy phobia” in which case, they become as intellectually stilted and irrelevant as the tormenters of Galileo during the Spanish Inquisition. At one time in history the notion that microscopic organisms called bacteria even exist, let alone foster and spread disease, was considered an outlandish violation of reason and logic, as was the theory that the earth was not flat or that human beings would someday travel around the globe in “flying machines.” Academics of those eras took enormous pride in their ability to think critically and not engage in fallacies of logic, but history has proven that for these individuals, things were anything but what they seemed...

...Currently in so-called progressive discourse about 9/11, there appear to be two perspectives regarding the political, economic, geopolitical, Constitutional, and social significance of the event. The first group believes that 9/11 was used opportunistically by the Bush administration to extend its global domination project and that the administration knew the attacks were coming but allowed them to happen; the second group believes that more than having foreknowledge, the Bush administration, in fact, orchestrated the event. Within these two perspectives, there exist myriad theories regarding the evidence for either allowing the event or orchestrating it.

Some individuals believe that physical evidence is important to analyze, while others do not. Still others believe that some other object besides a plane hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, while other individuals are virulently opposed to that notion. I personally believe that a consideration of the physical evidence, although it has virtually all been destroyed and removed from any possibility of examination, is relevant, and I disagree with those who assert that debates regarding the physical evidence are a distraction from the analysis of motive, means, and opportunity. For me, it is not either/or but both/and. Critical thinking demands an inclusive examination of all facets of any crime..."

Continued...
http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=865&Itemid=1

Older review;
http://www.911blogger.com/node/3168

Posted over at 911truth.org;

Book Review: Peter Lance Indicts FBI/DoJ, but Leaves CIA as Unindicted Co-conspirator

Saturday, January 6 2007

by Michael Richardson

Most of the journalistic foundation for the 9/11 truth movement is a vast mosaic of articles, each containing one or more significant fragments, and most have been written by journalists who had no particular dedication or greater awareness of 9/11. Those who have written in depth about 9/11 have used this mosaic (and of course have been aided considerably by resources like Paul Thompson's Complete 9/11 Timeline), but few actually do on-the-ground journalism. Peter Lance is one of the few investigative journalists who has dedicated himself to the historical thicket of 9/11. In addition to using the mosaic, he travels to interview people, develops contacts inside the key agencies, gets his hands on damning FBI 302 documents, and bothers people who deserve to be bothered. For the last four years, he has obsessed on 9/11 and many of its deep-political tendrils, producing the equivalent of dozens of rich, original articles.

Lance's implied theory of 9/11 — that the 9/11 hijacking plot basically slipped past the greasy fingers of a corrupt and egotistical DOJ/FBI — no doubt irritates many in the movement for truth about 9/11 for whom the "inside job" theory is creed, yet he has unearthed some of the most important gems in the struggle to bring real truth and justice to 9/11. Most importantly, he has shown how the efforts of the Southern New York division of the Justice Department, since the early 90s, have been half-baked, ridiculously negligent, and at times blantently criminal. His work has been instrumental in fleshing out the continuum between the New York cell of the Blind Sheikh (proto-al Qaeda) in the early 1990s and the crimes of September 11, 2001, tracking the FBI all along in its failures and refusals to expose, arrest, and convict. In Triple Cross, a whole chapter is given to a New Jersey check cashing store which, had the FBI used common sense and monitored the place once they knew, early on, that it was a hub of al Qaeda activity, they probably would have snuffed out the 9/11 plot before Clinton had left office. Lance has also definatively fingered Dietrich Snell as the 9/11 Commission staff member who forged the Commission's official timeline into a deception by claiming that the 9/11 plot was conceived in 1998 — two years after Snell's DOJ office had known of a planes-as-missiles plot from interrogations of Abdul Hakim Murad.

Ali Mohamed is a neglected rosetta stone for understanding al Qaeda, and with Triple Cross Lance has created the most expansive and detailed account of this "master spy" to date. He also shows how Mohamed's U.S. exploits were interwoven with key people and events covered in Lance's two previous books (1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up), as Mohamed had trained the Blind Sheikh's followers in New York in the early 1990s during the time Mohamed was stationed at Fort Bragg. The re-telling of earlier narratives makes this book Lance's definative oeuvre on 9/11, but Triple Cross still reads like a new book, first because most of us would need a refresher on the sprawling material, but also because Lance has unearthed quite a few more fascinating nuggets. For example, he further solidifies the case that Ramzi Yousef, from his New York jail cell in 1996, orchestrated the timed bombing of TWA Flight 800. After the publication of his last book, Sibel Edmonds put him in touch with a "recently retired NSA staffer" who saw a translation of an NSA intercept originally spoken in Baluchi (Yousef's native tongue) which read, "Flight 800 . . . what had to be done has been done." This intercept had also been mysteriously, temporarily removed from the normal translation stream long enough to exclude it from the FBI's Flight 800 investigation.

Ali Mohamed was involved with most of the major al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests: the assassination of Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990, the 1993 WTC bombing, the African Embassy bombings in 1998 and, even though he was arrested in late 1998, Lance proposes that he also helped train some of the 9/11 hijackers in hijacking techniques. Astoundingly, Mohamed participated in these operations while also being a U.S. citizen, being enlisted in the U.S. military (serving at Fort Bragg on two occasions), and being an FBI informant in California. Importantly (and much more on this below), he also had ties to the CIA. Lance shows Mohamed moving snake-like between U.S. agencies and military postings, often flaunting his activities with al Qaeda at a time when the FBI certainly knew what this meant. Importantly, in the early 90s, Mohamed was debriefed about Bin Laden and al Qaeda by FBI and NSA counter-terrorism officers, but all records of this interview — which would prove that the government was aware of Bin Laden's anti-U.S. intentions years earlier than it has claimed — have been "lost"...

Continued...
http://911truth.org/article.php?story=20070106133625637

http://www.disinfo.com/site/displayarticle17589.html

In The Terror Conspiracy, author Jim Marrs does what he does best; condenses a massive amount of information on an interesting topic, and fashions this information into a highly readable narrative. 2006 has been a remarkable year for writing on 9/11, especially in book form. Beginning with Elsevier's "The Hidden History of 9-11-2001", this was quickly followed by Barrie Zwicker's powerful "Towers of Deception", and the tight combination of "9/11 and American Empire" - Vol. I, and Vol. II.

Marrs' volume is well placed this close to the end of the year, as it covers so much information, and touches on many of the topics covered in the previous 9/11 books. The Terror Conspiracy is very much an expanded version of Marrs' previous book "The War on Freedom". "The War on Freedom" was ahead of its time in 2002, so much so that Marrs' publisher killed the book because they "did not want to upset the families of 9/11 victims". If you've seen 9/11 Press for Truth, then you know that claim is pretty far from accurate. Apparently, the publisher wanted to leave the job of upsetting the families of 9/11 victims squarely in the hands of the United States government.

(Thanks, Elizabeth for sending this in.)

Drawing the Lessons of 9-11 (book review, Sid Shniad)

The Hidden History of 9-11-2001
Research in Political Economy
2006 Volume 23.
Ed. by Paul Zarembka

Governments have long found it useful to manufacture rationale for pursuing war and repression. The sinking of the Battleship Maine at the outset of the Spanish-American-Cuba War is the classic example. When President Harry Truman wanted to offer assistance to anti-Communist forces in Greece and Turkey in 1947, Republican senator Arthur Vandenburg promised his support if Truman would “scare the hell out of the American people.” In 1962, the Pentagon mounted Operation Northwoods, a plan involving false-flag actions, state-sponsored terrorism and the hijacking of planes on U.S. and Cuban soil designed to generate American public support for an invasion of Cuba. Then there was the case of the distraught young Iraqi woman testifying before U.S. Congressional hearings in the run-up to Gulf War I about babies being tossed out of incubators by Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.

The essays included in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 lead to the conclusion that the attack on the World Trade Center may have been the biggest false-flag operation of them all. This 2006 issue of Research in Political Economy examines different aspects of 9-11, which, taken together, provide a serious challenge to those who dismiss the possibility that a government-based conspiracy was behind the events of 9-11.