September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, hijacked planes were flown into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center; another hijacked plane was diverted into a field in Pennslyvania. The collapse of the Trade Center's twin towers killed about 3000 people that day, and released asbestos and toxic waste into the air.

Described as "some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" [1][2], it has become one of the most tragic, and politically important, days in American history.

The Bush Administration has subsequently been confronted with a stream of revelations about failure by government agencies and officials to respond to intelligence leads and warnings about the possibility of a terrorist attack.

These failings have fuelled many conspiracy theories. The most common theme in these is that the attacks were an elaborate deception partially perpetrated by the military/Intelligence Community to galvanize the public to support endless wars, especially in the Middle East oil fields, and domestic repression under the guise of Homeland Security. [3]

"The attacks were allowed to happen to facilitate an aggressive policy of world empire, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asian oil fields, which contain energy supplies that will become even more critical in the near future as oil extraction declines in the non-Islamic world," one states.[4]

In the aftermath of the attacks, the Bush Administration launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a massive military action in Afghanistan - which hosted Osama bin Laden at the time - and subsequently Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. A massive increase in military expenditure, has boosted the stocks of companies that are part of the military-industrial complex.

Masked by a climate of fear, a series of sweeping domestic 'security' measures, which were widely criticised by civil liberties groups as leading to a National Security State, were also introduced. While Bush launched a massive domestic and international program reacting to the attacks, there has been little official reflection on their root causes or the failures of procedure and policy which precipitated this event.

Viewed as a single event, at least two discordant perspectives exist:

• "terrorist attacks on New York and Washington"
• counter-strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon terrorists

Both sides of this story make exactly the same claims against the other side, each claiming for themselves a divine right and labelling the other as 'evil'. In that way, both sides of this story are nearly indistinguishable from each other.

 

Warnings

According to former CIA analyst, Raymond McGovern, "George Tenet warned the President of the United States about the threat of terrorism almost ad nauseam during the entire spring and summer of 2001. In the final analysis, the president had been warned often enough and long enough. He should have done something about it.”

“Bush didn’t know what to do,” McGovern says. “And Condoleezza Rice, his advisor on such things, didn’t know a thing about terrorism. By her own admission she hadn’t opened the file that [Clinton’s National Security Advisor] Sandy Berger left behind that said ‘Read This File First.’ She knew a lot about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but nothing about terrorism. The charitable explanation for why nothing was done is gross ineptitude and gross malfeasance," he said.[5]

Additional Resources

U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century

9 March 2004 report of the Center for American Progress

Environmental Effects

Manhattan's air was bad for months and the Environmental Protection Agency was forced to shut up about this - advocates of letting the public know about the health hazards were placed on the no-fly list. The death toll from lung and related problems is expected to eventually dwarf the death toll from the actual attack.

"There have been few toxic events to match the explosions that pulverized the two World Trade Center towers. The short-term deaths of three thousand people will be dwarfed over the long term by the lethal fallout." [6]

 

These were two of the last big buildings constructed with asbestos, whose health effects are infamous. Once ingested, the fibers can and do make cells cancerous. Thousands of miners and others exposed to asbestos have filed lawsuits against Johns-Manville and others.

 

The EPA knew that spewing all that asbestos into New York's air was a horrific event, and that lives could be saved by taking certain public precautions. Bush stopped that from happening.

 

The WTC also contained countless computer screens, light fixtures, calculators, telephones, network servers, paging systems, copy machines and much more high-tech office equipment laden with mercury and other toxic metals. The concrete, flooring, plastics, chemical cleaners, furniture, metal struts, window glass---all that was also pulverized into a horrific brew of murderous dioxins, furans and lethal powders with hideous killing power.

Additional Resources

9/11 Environmental Action website.

"Exposure and Human Health Evaluation of Airborne Pollution from the World Trade Center Disaster" at the U.S. EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment

Katherine Stapp, "9/11 Blunders Left Workers, Residents Literally in the Dust", Inter Press Service, April 7, 2004. "Even as the White House scrambles to defend its handling of the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, the poisonous gas and dust unleashed by the disaster continue to settle in the lungs of thousands of recovery workers and New York City residents," Stapp wrote.

National Institutes of Health Study

EPA Response

New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health

Law Suits

Mariani Vs Bush (Full Amended Complaint): "Philip J. Berg, Esquire, announced today that he, attorney for Ellen Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when United Air Lines flight 175 was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9-11 at a news conference regarding the filing of a detailed Amended Complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 11/26/03 in the case of Mariani vs. Bush et al that he is alleging President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Feinberg."

 

Other Disinfopedia Resources

See also other notable events on this day in history

9-11 Commission

9-11 Truth Movement

August 6, 2001, President's Daily Briefing Memo

Bill Clinton / Clinton administration

Enemies of freedom

Fortress America

Dick Cheney

Donald Rumsfeld

George J. Tenet

George W. Bush

John Ashcroft

Thomas H. Kean

National Security State

Patriot Act I

Patriot Act II

PNAC

Office of Net Assessment

September 11, 2001, Remarks by President George W. Bush

Why do they hate us?

External Resources

Yale University Avalon Project "September 11, 2001: Attack on America". Includes links to numerous official documents and statements related to the events of 9/11/01.

National Security Archive Sourcebooks.

Jason Vest, Why Warnings Fell on Deaf Ears, American Prospect, June 17, 2002: "For the Bush administration, the Cold War never ended -- so al Qaeda had to get in line behind more serious enemies. ... What did the president know and when did he know it? Following revelations that the White House had reason to suspect an imminent al-Qaeda attack last year, even The New York Times has noted that the perennial post-Watergate question seems entirely appropriate. Nor should it be put exclusively to President Bush: In most countries, the directors of the internal and external security services would have resigned by now. ... Proponents of such blinkered defense priorities -- Andrew Marshall's Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, the Rumsfeld Commissions on ballistic missiles and space, and Frank Gaffney's private, defense contractor-funded Center for Security Policy come to mind -- have produced a steady stream of reports based on dubious methodology."

George Monbiot, Post-9/11 America Is a Religion, Alternet, July 30, 2003.

Eric Alterman, 9/11/01: Where Was George?, The Nation, October 6, 2003.

Henry A. Waxman, Letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, April 12, 2004: "... regarding the departure of members of Osama bin Laden's family and the Saudi royal family following the September 11, 2001, attacks."

James Ridgeway, "Timeline of Tragedy. Picking up the pieces of 9-11, putting them in order, trying to make sense," Village Voice, April 20, 2004.

Websites on 9/11

9/11 Visibility project - an official commemorative site.

September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows - a site of friends and families of victims opposing the use of the attacks to justify war.

9/11 Citizens Watch - a site monitoring developments of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States.

9/11 Environmental Action- a site dedicated to advocating proper cleanup of wastes created in the collapse of the World Trade Centre and subsequent demolition/removal works.

Center for Cooperative Research- extensive links to articles from mainstream and other sources.

Deception Dollar project- extensive links concentrating on investigations into the attacks.

Peace Resource Project - buttons and stickers for 9/11 awareness - a site that proclaims 9/11 as a hoax.

http://kcindymedia.org/feature/display/1004/index.php - an Indymedia site.

Oil Empire: election coups, 9/11, fascism and peak oil - a site that claims the attacks were an 'inside job'.

Test your knowledge of 9/11 - Which one of the 4 plane crashes was the most highly anomalous?