9/11 News Stories

Excerpts of Key 9/11 News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

[April 10, 2006] The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have...helped the Bush administration tie the war to...Sept. 11. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," [said] Col. Derek Harvey, who...was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature...made him more important than he really is." One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war. There were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter. Filkins's resulting article...ran on the Times front page. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million. "Villainize Zarqawi" one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed..."PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work. One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said..."The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse. "It looks like thermite with sulfur added," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters. Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers. The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site. Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse. Jones said his studies are confined to physical causes of the collapses, and he doesn't like to speculate about who might have entered the buildings and placed thermite and sulfur.

Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information suggesting a 9/11 cover-up:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up

When David Ray Griffin, noted theologian and professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, first heard someone say that Sept. 11 was an inside job, he scoffed. [But later] Griffin began to delve into 9/11 conspiracy theories after looking at a time line of the events of Sept. 11, 2001...on the Internet. He found himself swayed by the catalog of inconsistencies and strange coincidences. Griffin points to historical evidence that the U.S. government would be capable of such a thing. Operation Northwoods, a plan concocted by the Pentagon in the '60s as a way of taking Castro from power, included ideas about how a terrorist attack on U.S. soil could provide a pretext for military action. While many conspiracy theories have been passed around, it's been very easy to dismiss many of the theorists as...crazy. But Griffin comes to his controversial conclusions with lucidity and calm. He even sees a connection between his long-standing work as a theologian and his new position as a political writer. "In both cases, the concern is for the good of the world as a whole."

Why, if the impact destroyed the planes’ supposedly crash-proof flight-recorder black boxes, was the FBI able to find, in perfect condition, the passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the...Flight 11 hijackers? How could they, an hour after the first World Trade Center crash, allow an obviously hostile airplane to smash into the Pentagon, headquarters of the entire military-industrial complex? A story in Newsweek...said these generals were told earlier that week not to fly. [On 9/11 a] fireman indicated the building in front of us. “That building is coming down,” he said. At 47 stories, it would be a skyscraper in most cities. Five minutes later, at 5:20, the building, 7 World Trade Center, crumbled. What happened at 7 WTC might be the key to the entire mystery. The $500 million insurance profit made by Larry Silverstein [and] the list of 7 WTC tenants sets conspiracy heads spinning: The IRS, the Department of Defense, and the CIA kept offices on the 25th floor. The Secret Service occupied the ninth and tenth. The Securities and Exchange Commission (home to vast records of bank transactions) was on floors 11 through 13. The 23rd floor was home to Rudy Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, his crisis center. Central to the scenario is a comment made by Silverstein in a 2002 PBS documentary. “We’ve had such a terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” “Pull it”...is the term usually used for controlled demolition. 7 WTC is not even mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report.

The sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui was supposed to have been the government's best opportunity to hold someone accountable for the deaths on Sept. 11, 2001. But after federal prosecutors finished laying out their case this week, even those who strongly supported an aggressive prosecution may wonder whether the trial has shed as much light on Mr. Moussaoui's culpability as it has on the missteps and mistakes by law enforcement agencies. The testimony of two prosecution witnesses, in particular, has brought renewed and unwelcome attention to how the [FBI] dealt with early warning signs. Mr. Moussaoui is the sole person to go to trial in an American courtroom for the attacks. Under cross-examination...Mr. Samit acknowledged that after the attacks he had written strongly worded reports saying his superiors had improperly blocked his efforts to investigate Mr. Moussaoui. He added that he was convinced that Mr. Moussaoui was a terrorist involved in an imminent hijacking plot. He offered a devastating comment from a supervisor who said pressing too hard to obtain a warrant for Mr. Moussaoui would hurt his career. Mr. Samit also wrote that his superiors did not act because they were guilty of "criminal negligence" and they were gambling that Mr. Moussaoui had little to offer. The lost wager, Mr. Samit said, was paid in many lives.

[March 22] HAMMER: A Charlie Sheen shocker. Tonight, the actor`s stunning statements on 9/11. Maybe the airplanes did not take down the Twin Towers. And maybe the government is covering it all up. SHEEN: The more you look at stuff, especially specific incidents, specific events in and around the fateful day, it just -- it just raises a lot of questions. HAMMER: Charlie Sheen, star of CBS`s successful sitcom, "Two and a Half Men", says point blank, 9/11, the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, this is all a cover up. [March 23] It's been pretty hard to believe the response we got today to the incredible story Showbiz Tonight broke last night, after Charlie Sheens' startling claims that the government may be covering up what really happened on 9/11. So many emails coming in...we've been really overwhelmed today. Between the emails, the blogs, the websites -- everybody is writing and talking about it. [March 27] HAMMER: Over the weekend I had the opportunity to sit down with Sharon stone. She commended Charlie Sheen for having the guts to speak his mind. SHARON STONE: I think you have to be brave enough to say how you feel and stand in the face of authority and say it. That`s why we have freedom of speech. HAMMER: Responses at SHOWBIZ TONIGHT absolutely overwhelming. The e-mails continue to flood in. They were coming in all weekend long. We were asking the question; do you agree there is a government cover-up of 9/11? More than 53,000 of you voted in our online poll. Eighty-three percent of you agreed and said yes; 17 percent of you said no.

The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but "criminal negligence" by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks. Samit told MacMahon he couldn't persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. Samit's complaints echoed those raised in 2002 by Coleen Rowley, the bureau's agent-lawyer in the Minneapolis office. Rowley went public with her frustrations, was named a Time magazine person of the year for whistleblowing. Samit revealed far more than Rowley of the details of the investigation. For each nugget of information, MacMahon asked Samit if Washington officials called to assess the implications. Time after time, Samit said no.

The details of what happened to the four hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, have been known for years, but when a prosecutor read a simple minute-by-minute account of the attacks, the jury deciding the fate of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui hung on every word. In a similar vein, the missed opportunities of the FBI and other agencies to prevent Sept. 11 have been known for years, but when FBI agents are forced to admit them on cross-examination, they seem fresh to the jury. FBI agents have been forced to admit under cross-examination that the FBI knew years before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida had plans to use planes as missiles to destroy prominent buildings. They also had to acknowledge numerous missed opportunities in the months before Sept. 11 to catch two of the hijackers with terror links known to the government, even though the pair frequently used their own names in this country to rent cars, purchase plane tickets and even, once, to file a police report after getting mugged.

Note: What all of the media articles on this important case fail to mention is the laptop computer of Moussaoui was confiscated weeks before 9/11, yet FBI headquarters systematically undermined requests by Minneapolis FBI agents to search the computer. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#moussaouilaptop. And a full two weeks before 9/11 an FBI Minnesota supervisor said he was trying keep Moussaoui from “taking control of a plane and fly it into the WTC," yet his investigation was repeatedly blocked by top officials. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#moussaoui

Two operatives at the center of the Able Danger controversy have sued the Defense Department for denying them contact with their lawyers during closed congressional hearings. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and J.D. Smith were among a dozen intelligence officers and contractors who worked on the clandestine program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to track al-Qaida. They are accusing the Pentagon...of violating their First Amendment rights by blocking their access to legal counsel during the closed sessions. "Able Danger identified the Sept. 11, 2001, attack leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the 9/11 plot's 19 hijackers, as possible members of an al-Qaida cell linked to the 1993 World Trade Center attack or its participants," the suit said. Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient who fought undercover in Afghanistan, caused a stir in August when he stepped forward to say that he and other Able Danger operatives had identified Atta as long as 21 months before the Sept. 11 attacks. That claim - later supported by the Able Danger team's leader, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott - contradicted a central finding of the commission Congress had set up to probe the Sept. 11 attacks, which concluded that none of the hijackers had been known to U.S. authorities before the assault.

Note: Though the major media once gave Able Danger good coverage, only the Sacramento Bee has mentioned that the team's leader is one of the individuals who stepped forward. For lots more on the vitally important Able Danger program, click here.

A society of experts and scholars has now joined with Judicial Watch in calling for release of videos that are being held by the Department of Defense, which are essential to understanding events at the Pentagon that transpired on September 11, 2001. Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which is dedicated to exposing falsehoods and establishing truths about the events of 9/11, has gone beyond Judicial Watch by calling for the release of other films and evidence that, its officers maintain, are essential to understanding 9/11. "It is outrageous that the government is withholding this vital information", said James H. Fetzer, founder and co-chair of the society. They are calling for immediate release of the full Pentagon surveillance tape as well as video tapes seized by FBI agents minutes after the Pentagon hit; a complete inventory of the plane wreckage and debris from Flights 11, 77, 93, 175 or any other aircraft that crashed or was destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Note: Though Yahoo! News picked up this important article, no major media found it newsworthy until many months later.

Operation Northwoods. This 1962 white paper from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested possible justifications for a war against Cuba, including a never executed idea in which the CIA would detonate a drone aircraft to make it look like Fidel Castro had shot down an American passenger plane. Project for the New American Century [PNAC]. As evidence of the motives behind a government-planned 9-11, theorists point to one 28-word passage in a September 2000 [PNAC] report written with help from the likes of Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz: "The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor. "Theorists point to Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision to stop flying commercial [planes] in the summer of 2001, as well as a San Francisco Chronicle report that Mayor Willie Brown received a warning of 9-11, as evidence that some people had foreknowledge of the attack. World Trade Center 7. This building -- the last to fall on 9-11 -- is key to all controlled-demolition theories. Its sudden fall onto its own footprint, and developer Larry Silverstein's reference on TV to telling the FDNY to "pull it," are seen as evidence that WTC7 was rigged to fall. Meanwhile, a convincing official explanation hasn't exactly been forthcoming.

Note: We generally avoid partisan sources, but as so few are reporting the vital questions around 9-11, we've included this article. You can find another informative article from the same newspaper on the same day at http://villagevoice.com/news/0608,murphy,72254,6.html. For our highly reliable, verifiable information on the 9-11 cover-up, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/911information. For an amazing free video with testimony from dozens of survivors on all of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psP_9RE0V2I

Mr. Kleinsmith and the two colleagues who testified with him in [a House Armed Services Committee] open session are convinced that had the information they developed been acted on, not only 9/11, but also the October 2000, attack on the destroyer USS Cole in which 17 sailors died could have been prevented. Through computer scanning of some 2.5 terabytes of classified and unclassified data, the Able Danger team identified five "nodes" of al-Qaeda activity. One was in Brooklyn. Another was in the port of Aden in Yemen, where the USS Cole was attacked. Able Danger linked Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers to the Brooklyn cell, said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who was the liaison between the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Able Danger team. Colonel Shaffer testified he tried three times to have Able Danger data on the Brooklyn cell presented to the FBI, but that on each occasion Pentagon lawyers forbade the meeting. In a commentary in the Wall [Street] Journal last November, Louis Freeh, who was FBI director at the time, said that if he had been told about what Able Danger had learned, 9/11 likely would have been prevented. In March, 2000, Mr. Kleinsmith was ordered to stop all work on Able Danger, and, later, to delete all the information collected. It is clear there is a cover-up. One would think a Washington press corps obsessing about a hunting accident in Texas would be more curious about it.

Note: Though Able Danger received wide media coverage when first reported six months ago, the amazing revelations of the recent hearings have received very little attention, which is why we include this article from the leading newspaper of Toledo, Ohio. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on Able Danger, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/abledanger911

Military and intelligence officers told spellbound lawmakers Tuesday that their careers had been ruined by superiors because they refused to lie about Able Danger, Abu Ghraib and other national security controversies. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer ... told a House Government Reform subcommittee that he and other intelligence officers and contractors working on the top-secret program code-named "Able Danger" had identified Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, but were prevented from passing their findings to the FBI. "Many of us have a personal commitment to ... going forward to expose the truth and wrongdoing of government officials who, before and after the 9/11 attacks, failed to do their job." Shaffer contradicted recent statements by Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, who denied having met with Shaffer and other Able Danger operatives in Afghanistan in October 2003. "I did meet with him," Shaffer said. "I have the business card he gave me. I find it hard to believe that he could not remember meeting me." The commission's chairman and vice chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, released a statement saying the panel had looked into the work of Able Danger and found it "historically insignificant."

Note: Though Able Danger received wide media coverage when it first came out six months ago, CNN was the only major media outlet to give significant coverage to this most important news. Yet CNN did not post the text of the program on their website. Why isn't our media covering this vital topic? For lots more on this, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/911information and http://www.WantToKnow.info/abledanger911

Five government whistleblowers said Tuesday they had faced retaliation for calling attention to alleged government wrongs. They told their stories to the House Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, whose chairman, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., indicated an interest in altering the law to better protect national-security whistleblowers. Army Spc. Samuel Provance laid out what he considers to be a pattern of systemic abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He said his rank was reduced for disobeying orders not to speak about mistreatment he saw at the prison. Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, has called attention to possible constitutional abuses and security breaches at NSA. He said he was given psychological evaluations deeming him mentally unstable, and his clearance was revoked. He's now unemployed. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer says the Defense Intelligence Agency has made a series of allegations against him since he disclosed information about a program known as Able Danger. He says the program identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the attack. Richard Levernier, a retired Energy Department nuclear security specialist, said he lost his security clearance and effectively his job for giving the media an unclassified report about shortfalls in nuclear security.

A Moroccan convicted of belonging to a terrorist cell that included three Sept. 11 hijackers was freed from prison Tuesday after a federal court ruled he shouldn't be jailed with appeals still pending. A statement by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court said the lower court had been wrong to order el Motassadeq returned to custody because appeals by both the defense and prosecutors were still pending. Mounir el Motassadeq, 31, was sentenced to seven years in prison in August by a court in Hamburg. In 2003, he became the first person anywhere to be convicted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks when he was found guilty of membership in a terrorist organization. The Moroccan acknowledges he was close to the hijackers but insists he knew nothing of their plans. Defense lawyers criticized the lack of direct testimony from witnesses such as Ramzi Binalshibh, a key Sept. 11 suspect held by the U.S.

Note: See http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#hijackersmilitary to read news articles by CBS, New York Times, and Los Angeles times describing how the FBI identified 50 individuals involved in orchestrating 9/11 and had 40 of them in custody. Yet not one of these people was ever tried. Is it logically possible that the 19 hijackers could have pulled off 9/11 without any support? Why have only two people worldwide ever been officially accused on involvement in 9/11 planning? And one of those two is now freed?

A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood. U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the destruction of the World Trade Center. "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said. She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the collapse of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air. In her ruling, Batts noted that the EPA and Whitman said repeatedly beginning just two days after the attack that the air appeared safe to breathe. The EPA's internal watchdog later found that the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances.

Our nation was irretrievably transformed by 9/11 -- and yet there remain troubling questions about what really happened. Why did building WTC-7 fall, though no aircraft struck it? Fire alone had never before caused a steel skyscraper to collapse. Why did no U.S. military jet intercept the wayward aircraft? Why has there been no investigation of BBC reports that five of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were alive and accounted for after the event? A group of experts and academicians devoted to applying the principles of scientific reasoning to the available evidence [and] 'letting the chips fall where they may,' last week accused the government of covering up evidence that the three destroyed New York City buildings were brought down that day by controlled demolition rather than structural failure. The group, called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, has a website, www.st911.org.

Note: This article is also available at http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0201-28.htm

The twin towers did not fall because aircraft hit them. Demolition explosive charges made them collapse. If you look at close-up video you see puffs of explosives coming out the sides of the buildings as they topple. An advertisement that makes this allegation has been airing in New York for months. It ends with a voice saying: "Reopen the investigation and address the unanswered questions of 9/11." If you go to the website reopen911.org you find a series of even more startling claims. Did a plane actually hit the Pentagon? Photos taken on September 11, 2001, show no cabin, no tail and no engines. What about the phone calls by passengers from the hijacked planes? "You can't make calls from aircraft."

Note: Though this article pokes fun at people who challenge the 9/11 story, yet it also raises serious questions. We are thankful for any media attention, even that which refutes the 9/11 movement, as any press brings the subject more fully into public awareness. See our 9/11 Information Center for more.

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, has sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed by over half of the House of Representatives requesting that he allow "former participants in the intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER to testify in an open hearing before the United States Congress." The letter has 246 signatures (144 Republicans, 101 Democrats, and one Independent), including senior members and leadership on both sides of the isle. "The full story of ABLE DANGER deserves to be heard by the American people," said Weldon. "Secretary Rumsfeld must understand that the will of Congress is behind allowing members of the ABLE DANGER effort to testify in an open hearing about the work they were doing prior to 9-11 to track the linkages and relationships of al-Qaeda worldwide. Congressional efforts to investigate ABLE DANGER have been obstructed by Department of Defense insistence that certain individuals with knowledge of ABLE DANGER be prevented from freely and frankly testifying in an open hearing.

Note: Why did no media found this key story worth covering? The request was never granted, while the investigation was eventually declared closed by the military without any significant outside investigation.

The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically significant." This astounding conclusion -- in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings -- raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself. The Able Danger team had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers by mid-2000 but were prevented by military lawyers from giving this information to the FBI. The Pentagon...blocked several military officers from testifying...about the Able Danger program. The chairman of the 9/11 Commission reacted to Able Danger with the standard Washington PR approach. [He] demanded that the Pentagon conduct an "investigation" to evaluate the "credibility" of Col. Shaffer and Capt. Phillpott. The final 9/11 Commission report...concluded that "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks." This now looks to be embarrassingly wrong. The Joint Intelligence Committees should reconvene and, in addition to Able Danger team members, we should have the 9/11 commissioners appear as witnesses so the families can hear their explanation why this doesn't matter.

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Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.