The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions

Prior to reading this book, I had questions. This book only confirms that we do not have the whole story and the main reason for that is that much of the story is being kept from us by our own government. I have read the opposing reviews of this book and all I can say is they have either been written by people who did not read the book, do not have the intellectual agility to understand the book, or are deliberately trying to decieve you about the content of the book. None of them, in any way, reflect the true nature of this thoughtful, disciplined study of the 9/11 Commission Report. No where does this book say that the towers were dropped by explosives. No where does this book say that two planes were involved in the attack on the Pentagon. It simply states that the Commission, while it's stated goal was to "provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11," falied to even address some very disturbing elements of the "events surrounding 9/11." For instance, this "exhaustively researched," "truth commission," failed to dedicate one sentence of explanation to the collapse of WTC-7; the 47 story building located two blocks away from the World Trade Center that apparently collapsed in an act of sympathy for Towers 1 and 2. It simply was not mentioned. If that were all, it would be enough of an indictment of the Commission to warrent further investigation but unfortunately, it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.... you get the point. In an obscene homage to George Orwell, much of what really happened on 9/11 has already been dumped into the Memory Hole. It may be easier for you to forget, but you will be doing America and America's children a truely egregious offense in doing so. What kind of person do you choose to be? You decide.

The official story sounded plausible to me, so I never questioned it, dismissing the conspiracy theories I heard about now and then as "conspiracy theories". The Commission portrays 9/11 as the result of incompetence, lack of imagination and a huge number of system failures, and ignores and distorts the evidence pointing to inside involvement by numerous high level officials. David Ray Griffin documents this evidence and analyzes the Commission's treatment of 9/11 in a scholarly yet very readable fashion. Relying mainly on mainstream news sources and the government's own statements and actions, he exposes the massive number of ommissons and distortions the official story is composed of. 37 pages of end notes. Some examples of problems with the official story, ignored or distorted by the Commission: All the Commission's members and more than half the staff had at least 1 conflict of interest and Zelikow the exec-director is a long-time Neocon crony, having worked for Bush 1, written a book w/ Condi, and been on the NSC transition team from Clinton to Bush 2. Bush's and the Secret Service's strange half-hour dawdling in their well-publicized location after the 2nd tower was hit, and their claims of being out of the loop before then. Evidence of insider trading worth tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars; a 1200% increase in "put options" (betting the price of American, United and Morgan Stanley [22 floors in the WTC] would plummet), were purchased days before 9/11 by a CIA organization. $100,000 wired to Atta on the orders of Pakistan's ISI chief (Wall Street Journal), who was meeting with the NSC in DC the week of the attacks. Standard FAA/military operating procedures for dealing with possibly hijacked or in-trouble flights were grossly violated on 9/11, and then the procedures, which ordinarily result in Air Force intercepts within 10-15" of the first sign of trouble, were grossly misrepresented by the Commission as being a time-consuming, bureaucratic process. Numerous pieces of evidence pointing to controlled demolition of the WTC, and then the evidence was illegally destroyed. Hani Hanjour couldn't fly a Cessna, but supposedly flew a jumbo jet through a tight 330 degree turn into the Pentagon, the best defended building on the planet, with anti-aircraft guns and just several miles from Andrews Air Force Base, nearly AN HOUR after the first WTC tower was hit. 6 hijackers were found to be alive after 9/11, as reported by ABC, BBC and others shortly after 9/11, yet almost 3 years later the Commission claims they were on the flights. Much evidence of long-standing connections between the Bush's, Bin Laden, his family, the Saudi Royals, Saudi intelligence, Pakistan's ISI, the Taliban, and the CIA was ignored or denied. Bin Laden was treated at an American hospital in Dubai by an American doctor for 2 wks in July '01 and was visited by many of these people, including the local CIA chief- at this time there was a $5 million US bounty on his

Why are so many people so afraid to simply look into some glaring inconsistencies about what we have been told happened on 9/11. Do not the thousands of people who lost their lives then and since deserve our time and a truly thorough and indpendent investigation into what may or may not have happened? David Ray Griffin is trying to shake awake a nation hypnotized by its media into believing that the laws of physics and common sense did not apply on 9/11. Read this book and weep for our country and then go out and help those -- like Dr. Griffin -- who are trying so hard to get the truth out.

This book is arguably the most important landmark in the investigation into 9/11 available on the book market so far. It is a very important, but also truly disturbing, book. For it shows to the reader in meticulous detail that the official investigation led by Thomas Kean and Philip Zelikow into the story about 9/11 presented by the White House has omitted and distorted so many facts that it can never seriously be accepted as the true account of what happened on 9/11. Only very few people have read the 576 pages of the Kean/Zelikow report and tested the quality of the book. It is therefore of great value that Professor emeritus David Ray Griffin has carried out this task and described in detail how sensitive facts regarding mysterious or even illegal behaviour by senior US executives had been supplied in sworn testimony to the Kean/Zelikow commission by members of the FBI but then ignored in the Kean/Zelikow book. Griffin also explains that no mention, let alone explanation, is given of the collapse of WTC 7 or of the BBC report that six of the 19 hijackers were still alive. While Griffin explicitly suspects that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have covered up the true 9/11 story, he never claims to know it himself but asks for a new and truly independent investigation. It is this latter feature which greatly contributes to the credibility and importance of this courageous book. I use this book with my history students to illustrate how history can be distorted through omissions and distortions. I warmly recommend this book to all those who are interested in both 9/11 and the subsequent cover up. Dr. Daniele Ganser, Center for Security Studies, Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland Author of NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (Frank Cass, London and New York, January 2005)

First Dr. Griffin wrote "The New Pearl Harbor". The title comes from the neo-con (Project for the New American Century) report about conquering the world using America's military might, but the need for a new Pearl Harbor before that process can become fully engaged. Now, he has taken the 9/11 Commission Report, placed it under a scholarly microscope, and shown that like the Warren Commission Report about the [...] of President Kennedy, there is little, if any validity to the Report in the final analysis. There are so many facts not addressed, and just as many distorted from the truth in the 9/11 Commission Report as to render it a complete [...]. The conflicting interests of the Commission members are discussed, as well as their lack of impartiality. Further, when one sees the magnitude of the unasked and therefore unanswered questions, which any real investigation would have certainly examined, one can only begin to find answers within the omissions, and truth in the clarification of the distortions. Once arriving at that point, it becomes very clear that there has been no real investigation into the events of 9/11, and that some of the key players involved, or at least reasonably suspected of involvement, have been granted an immunity, of sorts, by the failure of the 9/11 Commission to even consider the evidence available about their possible involvement. Dr. Griffin reports that six of the alleged hijackers are reportedly alive, with the 9/11 Commission simply ignoring that information, and reiterating the list of names of the alleged hijackers given to the public immediately after the attacks. Serious questions are raised by Dr. Griffin about the infamous Mohamed Atta, alleged ringleader of the hijackers, and the information placed in his luggage and intended to be on the plane, such as his will, passport and international drivers license, posing the obvious question of why he would take such items-particularly his will-that he knew would be destroyed by crashing the plane. Of course, there was the partying by Atta and others prior to 9/11, all of whom were purportedly devout Muslims, which simply didn't comport with behavior of religious zealots. The 9/11 Commission simply ignored that information. The Commission also clearly distorted the piloting skills needed by Hani Hanjour to perform a 330 degree turn of Flight 77 so that it would hit the Pentagon. Hanjour had been described as a horrible pilot, yet the maneuver purportedly performed by Flight 77 would have required a highly skilled pilot. The Commission gave contradictory statements about Hanjour's alleged piloting skills, or lack thereof. The collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 in the World Trade Center posed so many unasked and unanswered questions. To observers, the collapse of the Towers and Building 7 seemed to be very odd, as there was simply no reason for them to fall the way they did. On the contrary, there was a volume of evidence available to the Commiss