http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRltbHXvPpQ

"You can do an investigation, and if you don't really want to research an area, you just don't look at it. If you don't ask them all of the questions, or you don't let them tell you the whole story, ya know... then you can write a report based on half-truths." - 9/11 Family Member, September Eleventh Advocate, "Jersey Girl" Mindy Kleinberg

Source: www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com

Jon Gold
5/1/2013
Updated: 5/5/2013

Hopefully, you remember the time right after 9/11. A time when we were told repeatedly that there were absolutely no warnings, and that no one had any idea something like that could happen. If not, feel free to browse the "9/11 Denials" section available at www.historycommons.org.

A few here will remember that before the 2012 Election Philip Zelikow and Thomas Kean were announced to be part of a "Romney Foreign Advisory Team" if Mittens won. As that didn't happen it looks like Phil is putting out his resume and taking a shot at movie reviews.

Below he dissects Spielburg's new film as it reflects "actual" history.Remember, Phillip Zelikow is a professional when it comes to knowning history and whether a screenplay is a failure of imagination or not.

From the aptly named "Disunion"

DISUNION November 29, 2012,
Steven Spielberg, Historian
By PHILIP ZELIKOW

"Having worked before at the intersection of Hollywood and history, helping a tiny bit with a respectable movie about the Cuban missile crisis called “Thirteen Days,” I approached the new movie “Lincoln” with measured expectations. I had seen how a film could immerse viewers in onscreen time travel without messing up the history too much. But that was the most I hoped for".

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/steven-spielberg-historian/

Is "The Hobbit" far behind? ;)

Posted By Josh Rogin
Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has often endorsed the idea of using "enhanced interrogation techniques" if he is elected and doesn't believe that waterboarding is "torture," but he chose the GOP's most fervent critique of such methods to be the co-chair for intelligence personnel in his transition team.

Philip Zelikow, the long-time diplomat and former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has been named one of two officials in charge of planning for the intelligence side of a potential Romney administration as part of the Romney campaign's "Project Readiness," multiple sources with direct knowledge of the project confirmed to The Cable. Zelikow, who was also the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, co-chairs the intelligence team with former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commission co-chairman Tom Kean.

Zelikow is another GOP senior foreign-policy hand from the realist camp in the top ranks of the Romney transition team. The head of the national security team is former Deputy Secretary of State and former World Bank President Bob Zoellick, a pick that roiled neoconservatives and hawks inside the Romney campaign when it was announced in August. But there are also hawks on the transition team, including former U.N. official Rich Williamson and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman.

A six-year-old memo from within the George W. Bush administration that came to light this week acknowledges that White House-approved interrogation techniques amounted to "war crimes."

"The Bush White House tried to destroy every copy of the memo, written by then-State Department counselor Philip Zelikow. Zelikow examined tactics like waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and concluded that there was no way they were legal, domestically or internationally.

“We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here," Zelikow wrote. The memo has been obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive and Wired's Spencer Ackerman".

In an e-mail exchange with Britain's The Guardian newspaper, Zelikow said he still believes the techniques approved under Bush were "wrong" and may have violated U.S. and international laws. He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supported his position.

Monday, November 7, 2011
By Travis Alford

As the crowd of students, professors and Houstonians brushed off the cold, Philip Zelikow stepped to the podium in The Honors College Commons on Thursday to discuss the US government’s defense against terrorism.

Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, an executive on the President Intelligence Advisory Board and a history professor at the University of Virginia, focused his lecture, “The Twilight of War,” on America’s resiliency and his experience with the horrific events of 9/11.

“It’s my job to make meaning of 9/11,” Zelikow said.

During the lecture, Zelikow spoke of his personal experiences on the scene during Sept. 11.

“I can still smell the sulfur, it stands out,” Zelikow said. “It was as if the terrorist opened up a special path to hell.”

“After the attack, the event entered popular culture,” Zelikow said. “9/11 opened up our eyes to zealousy.”

In the days following the attack, President Bush labeled Osama bin Laden as America’s enemy and the ringleader of 9/11.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/08/national-archive-keeps-bulk-of-911...

By Reuters
Thursday, September 8th, 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ten years after al Qaeda's attack on the United States, the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission's investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed the archives to make most of the material public in 2009, Reuters has learned.

The National Archives' failure to release the material presents a hurdle for historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic events in modern American history.

The 575 cubic feet of records were in large part the basis for the commission's public report, issued July 22, 2004. The commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was established by Congress in late 2002 to investigate the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the pre-attack effectiveness of intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the government's emergency response.

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.

Today I released the short film "Inside 9/11 - Obstructing the investigation":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQXwVs7fV1c

It argues that former 9/11 commisson director Philip Zelikow fired a staff member for investigating highly sensitive evidence of a secret support network for the alleged hijackers in the United States. The recently published interview of former "anti-terror czar" Richard Clarke supports some of the claims made in the film.

To many 9/11 researchers this might not be new, since the issue is already mentioned in Philip Shenon´s book "The Commission", published in 2008. But I thought it might be the right time to remember ...

I was introduced to Kevin Fenton sometime in 2006. We met on 911blogger.com where he was a contributor for many years. I respected his keen insight and appreciated the fact that he used mainstream media accounts and Government documents for his postings there. Kevin is a contributor to the Complete 9/11 Timeline available at www.historycommons.org, along with people like Paul Thompson.

Eventually, Kevin signed up on my site, and started posting his information there. In September 2007, I started work on something I called the Who Is? Archives that was based on the material of the timeline. Kevin was kind enough to write several of the introductions for people mentioned.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/04/exclusive-witnesses-defense-d...

By Catherine Herridge
Published October 04, 2010

A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as "Able Danger."

http://seaclearly.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/fox-news-presents-wtc-7/

SeaClearly
A Harpers Weblog

FOX News Presents WTC 7

Recently, two prominent articles were published – in opposing veins: “NPR & Trust in Government,” by Robert Shetterly (04/19), which called out NPR for allowing the propaganda operative Philip Zelikow to “frame [a] discussion” on “Trust in government,” while failing to note his long record of purposeful (world stage) obfuscation, including a treacherous role in the area of WTC 7, and “Shame On Jesse Ventura!,” by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro (another operative) (04/21), who asserts “that [Larry] Silverstein planned to use controlled demolition on WTC 7” – as if it’s common knowledge/no big deal. The focus here is on Shapiro’s brash, out of the blue, aggressiveness (under the cover of being clueless to the overall picture/consequences), while Shetterly’s should be read for many reasons: clarity, as a depiction of rare courage in our dominant landscape, and as a partial portrayal of how Timing works in our fabricated environment.

This is very surprising.
Common Dreams, a progressive internet website, has censored EVERYTHING relating to 9/11 Truth except a few mentions in which it mocked the whole 9/11 movement. (I was immediately banned from the comment section after just one innocuous comment, and remain banned after a couple of years).
But here we see in CommonDreams.org an article criticizing NPR for using Phillip Zelikow as a spokesman for focusing on Trust in Government.
Zelikow was the oversear of the 9/11 Commission, and used his power to ensure that the truth was ignored or avoided whereever possible.
And in this article, that was mentioned.
Here is an excerpt:

"What surprised me was what Ms. Hansen, and thus NPR, did not tell us about Mr. Zelikow. He was a neocon who worked very closely with Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Carl Rove in the Bush administration. He was one of the primary authors of what has been called the Bush Doctrine -- the right of our country to make preemptive war on other countries in contradiction of international law and our own Constitution. During the Bush administration Zelikow defended the many lies that they told about the reasons for attacking Iraq. And he was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission, the committee that was supposed to tell the world what really happened on 9/11. He ran that committee so that the official version of events could not be questioned. He did not allow witnesses to testify who had seen and heard things that cast the official version into doubt. The commission totally ignored facts that made the official version untenable and it neglected to even mention that World Trade Center tower #7, not stuck by an airplane, also mysteriously collapsed that day."

This is either a big mistake, or things are changing.
I hope it is the latter.

Publish

We have found the famous "What Do I Do Now?" memo drafted by 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow on March 2, 2003. The memo advised staffers newly hired by the commission what they should do after starting work.

The memo was found by Erik at the National Archives and uploaded to the 9/11 Document Archive at Scribd.

Philip Shenon's The Commission highlighted the memo and one controversial section in particular. The section says:

Interactions with commissioners can be helpful to you and them. If you are contacted by a commissioner with questions, please contact Chris [Kojm, Zelikow's deputy] or me. Consulting with the Chair and Vice-Chair, we will be sure that the appropriate members of the Commission staff are responsive.

Shenon called this provision, channelling contacts between the staff and the commissioners through Zelikow and his deputy, "unusual" and "worrying to the staff." He added:

This man belongs in prison.

Documents recently found in the National Archives cast doubt on the integrity of the 9/11 Commission’s Executive Director Philip Zelikow. In an e-mail exchange with author Philip Shenon, Zelikow claimed that he first learned of a dispute on the commission over the investigation of false statements made by NORAD and FAA officials after it had been “percolating for a while” and was not involved in the initial stages of the argument. However, an e-mail chain (scroll down) found in the Archives by History Commons contributor paxvector shows that Zelikow had been involved in the issue from very near the beginning.

Zelikow made the claim he was not involved in the initial stages of the dispute in response to an allegation made by commission staffer John Azzarello and relayed by Shenon. After the staff investigators drafted a memo for the commissioners in early April 2004 outlining why they thought NORAD and FAA officials had deliberately lied to them to overstate the military’s readiness during the attacks, Zelikow “just buried that memo,” according to Azzarello. In response, Zelikow claimed that he had not even known of the issue at the start. The implication was that, as he had not known of it, it could not be him that was orchestrating--or even involved in--a dispute between the staff investigators and the commission’s lawyers, Daniel Marcus and Steve Dunne.

However, the newly found e-mail chain shows Zelikow did know of the issue in April, raising the question as to why he falsely told Shenon he did not. Zelikow is not known to be linked to the FAA, but, if the commission had referred the matter to the Justice Department and it had started a perjury investigation against NORAD officials, this would certainly have had the potential to embarrass his friends at the Pentagon. Zelikow is alleged to have husbanded the issue to ensure a less potentially embarrassing referral to the inspectors general of the FAA and Defense Department, who in the end blamed the false statements on innocent mistakes and poor logkeeping.

A document recently discovered in the National Archives shows that, in a memo to the 9/11 Commission’s chairman and vice-chairman on false statements made by NORAD and FAA officials about the failure of US air defenses, the commission’s Executive Director Philip Zelikow failed to mention the possibility of a criminal referral. This supports allegations that Zelikow “buried” the option of a criminal referral by the commission to the Justice Department for a perjury investigation. The document was found at the National Archives by HistoryCommons contributor paxvector and posted to the History Commons site at Scribd.

In this article, the AP writer continually refers to Zelikow's memo as if it's a fact; as far as I know, the only evidence of it existing in 2005 is that Zelikow, a completely untrustworthy source, claims he wrote it and circulated it. Perhaps he did. Nowhere does this article claim the AP has already obtained a copy, and they say, "Several members of Congress have asked the Obama administration to search for a copy." Still, it will be interesting to see what he has to say, and how he justifies not resigning, knowing what was going on, and having the opinion that he alleges he did.

Profile: Zelikow
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=philip_zelikow

Historian Sheldon Stern found numerous errors in their transcription of JFK tapes, some of which change the context of statements and conversations, despite him being able to clearly understand the words when he reviewed the tapes himself:
May 2000: Future Authors of 9/11 Report Produce John F. Kennedy Book Riddled with Errors
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a052000zelikowmay#a052000...

The article quotes Zelikow as saying he "suspect[s]" he gave Rice a copy:

Most of the new entries recently posted to the 9/11 Timeline concern the 9/11 Commission, in particular contacts between its executive director Philp Zelikow and White House official Karl Rove. Rove called Zelikow at the commission twice+in+June+2003 and again that September. When the commission's staff found out about the calls, they were furious and Zelikow told his secretary to stop+logging+his+calls. Zelikow also reportedly understated the amount of his contacts with Rove in an interview with a reporter.

Many hyperlinks at original; firedoglake has been covering this issue consistently

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/25/zelikow-the-911-commission-...

Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission, and Effectiveness
By: emptywheel Saturday April 25, 2009 4:00 am

If you've been paying attention, you know I've been poring through the 9/11 Report to figure out how useful the interrogation reports from the waterboarded detainees were, and when they made them.

That exercise shows that the 9/11 Report found just 10 pieces of intelligence from Abu Zubaydah's interrogation reports informative and credible; it found just 16 pieces of such intelligence in al-Nashiri's interrogation reports. And while the Commission did find KSM's interrogation reports to be incredibly useful, an incomplete index (I'm working on this, but it's on the back burner for the next week) of the references to KSM show that many of his most productive interrogation sessions came long after he was waterboarded. And, as Philip Zelikow made clear in a memo relating to the torture tape destruction, there were abundant other problems with the quality of the interrogation reports coming from CIA, too.

Several of the new additions to the 9/11 Timeline this week concern the 9/11 Commission, in particular its executive director Philip Zelikow, who played a significant role in shaping the commission's take on assistance allegedly provided to the 9/11 hijackers by elements linked to the Saudi government. First, he blocked+requests+for+interviews by commission investigators researching the allegations, then he denied them access to a key document, the 28+redacted+pages+from+the+Congressional+Inquiry, and finally he fired+one+of+the+investigators.

Philip Zelikow was in Chicago on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. He spoke at the Chicago Council on Global Domination, um, I mean Global Affairs. This is another name for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

Lone Lantern - Chicago 9/11 Truth activists were there to accost him as he arrived.

After the confrontation, two activists infiltrated his speaking event and sat through his creepy speech on global governance. However, their cameras were prohibited and held at the front desk.

Enjoy.

Several of this week's new entries focus on the 9/11 Commission, in particular its Executive Director Philip Zelikow, who offered public+support for the invasion of Iraq in 2002, but did not want the commission to investigate false+claims of links between 9/11 and Iraq. After the commission's investigation started, one+staffer was sent to review CIA documents, and another, Warren Bass, was sent to review NSC material. Bass came+to+favor the account of events in the Bush Administration in the summer of 2001 given by counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke over that given by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. However, Zelikow distrusted+Clarke and tried to protect his friend Rice; it was these ties to Rice which caused both Bass and Commissioner Bob+Kerrey to threaten to quit the commission, although neither of them made good on their threat.

This is a new entry at historycommons.org. Condoleezza Rice didn't deserve "more favorable" treatment. She belongs in prison.

May-June 2004: Zelikow Has Portions of 9/11 Commission Report Rewritten to Be More Favorable to National Security Adviser Rice

About half of this week's new entries concern United Airlines Flight 93. The airline's operations centre sent a message to the plane's co-pilot some minutes before the hijacking, but received+no+reply; it also notified flights of a crash at the WTC around 9:03 but did not send a warning about possible hijackings at this time. The airline's dispatchers were asked to warn+flights at 9:21, the same time Flight 93 sent a routine+message to one of the dispatchers. A couple of minutes later, it checked+in with Cleveland air traffic control; the pilots then sent their last last+message at 9:27.

Many of the new entries in the 9/11 Timeline this week focus on the 9/11 Commission and, in particular, its executive director Philip Zelikow, who co-authored a book with National+Security+Adviser+Condoleezza+Rice in the mid-1990s, but was not+offered a full-time job in the Bush administration despite serving on the transition team. Some of the other commissioners were unhappy with Zelikow's appointment and the degree+of+control+he+exercised. For example, Zelikow had control over the hiring+process, which he used to appoint a current+CIA+officer to lead the commission's investigation of the CIA.

At what point does "criminal negligence" become so extreme that it can be considered "complicity" beyond a reasonable doubt? Shenon attempts to put the "incompetence", "ignorance", "failure to imagine", "system failure" and "covering up incompetence" spin on what he reports while essentially supporting the theory that Al Qaeda outwitted the dimwitted and incompetent US intelligence and defense establishments, but even what he does say seems like grounds for impeachment hearings to me.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/they-knew-but-did-nothing/2008/03/07/12...

visit the link above for the whole excerpt, choice cuts:

"The warnings were going straight to President Bush each morning in his briefings by the CIA director, George Tenet, and in the presidential daily briefings. It would later be revealed by the 9/11 commission into the September 11 attacks that more than 40 presidential briefings presented to Bush from January 2001 through to September 10, 2001, included references to bin Laden.

Quotations from Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 911 Commission, by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton

"We were set up to fail" (14).

"The chief obstacle was the White House, which argued that the congressional inquiry was continuing, and that an independent investigation would distract the government from waging the ongoing war on terrorism" (17).

"The two sides decided to split the difference, allowing eighteen months for the inquiry—a period of time that proved insufficient" (20).

"The White House also suggested some candidates for executive director for our staff. The importance of this position cannot be overstated" (22).

"…we seriously only considered one candidate: Philip Zelikow…. Zelikow was a controversial choice. In the 1990s, as an academic, he had co-authored, with Condoleezza Rice, a book about German unification, and he later assisted Stephen Hadley in running the National Security Council transition for the incoming Bush administration in 2000-2001" (28).

"…our office space and employees had to be cleared by the FBI and CIA to handle top-secret information…" (34)

Thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org

July 9, 2003: Mylroie Testifies Before 9/11 Commission, Airs Theories of Connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda
The 9/11 Commission holds its first set of public hearings on al-Qaeda and its connections to other nations and terrorist groups. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 130-134]

From Secrecy News:
http://fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/02/inside_the_911_commission.html

INSIDE THE 9/11 COMMISSION

"Senior investigators on the 9/11 Commission believed their work was
being manipulated by the executive director to minimize criticism of
the Bush Administration," according to a new book on the Commission.

"Investigative staffers at the Commission believe [executive director]
Philip Zelikow repeatedly sought to minimize the administration's
intelligence failures in the months leading up to 9/11, which had the
effect of helping to ensure President Bush's re-election in 2004," no
less.

That is the sensational thesis of "The Commission: The Uncensored
History of the 9/11 Investigation" by New York Times reporter Philip
Shenon:

http://www.thecommissionbook.com

The claim was immediately disputed by the former Commissioners and by
former staff.

"The author is mistaken in his criticism of the role of Executive
Director Philip Zelikow. The proper standard for judgment is the
quality of the report, and there is no basis for the allegations of
bias he asserts," according to a February 8 statement issued jointly by