William F. Jasper
The
New American
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
9/11 Press for Truth effectively presents some of the most glaring
discrepancies, lies, and coverups concerning the deadliest terrorist
attack on American soil.
Henry Kissinger "nearly fell off the couch." He spilled
his coffee on himself. He was visibly shaken. The next day he
announced that he was stepping down as chairman of the 9/11 Commission,
the post to which President Bush had named him a couple of weeks
earlier. What had caused the always poised and famously unflappable
"Dr. K" to come unhinged? Why the abrupt resignation
from the chairmanship he had so recently accepted amidst such
fanfare?
The day before his resignation, Dr. Kissinger invited a small
group of 9/11 family members to the New York office of Kissinger
Associates, the premier global consulting service to presidents,
princes, potentates, and corporate executives. The date was December
12, 2002. Kissinger, no doubt, expected them to be putty in his
hands. After all, he is the fabled, gravelly voiced eminence who
has strode across the world stage for the better part of half
a century. Wars, revolutions, financial panics, political scandals,
and economic crises — he has come through them all, not
only unscathed but almost apotheosized to demigod status.
But the ever calm and supremely confident diplomat was unnerved
when Laurie Van Auken, whose husband was killed in the World Trade
Center, said the families wanted him to disclose his client list
to assure there was no conflict of interest. She asked if there
were any Saudis among his clients and if any were members of the
bin Laden family.
Kristen Breitweiser, another 9/11 widow who was there, gives
this account of the meeting: "Kissinger told us to trust
him. We told him we couldn't.... Kissinger seemed stunned....
He didn't understand the fuss about his client list — they
were all reputable people, he said. Kissinger seemed stricken
and became unsteady. In reaching for his cup of coffee he bobbled,
knocked the pot, spilled his own cup and nearly fell off the couch."
After their hard-fought campaign to get an independent investigation,
the 9/11 families were understandably alarmed when President Bush
announced the appointment of Kissinger, a longtime adviser and
mentor to President Bush (not to mention Bush Sr., Richard Nixon,
David and Nelson Rockefeller, et al.). In reporting on the nomination,
the New York Times (part of Kissinger's media fan club) noted
that Kissinger is the "consummate Washington insider,"
and wondered if his selection "is not a clever maneuver by
the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed."
Of course it was a containment maneuver, though, as events have
shown, it was not quite "clever" enough.
The Kissinger-9/11 story and many other important stories related
to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — and the
subsequent official investigations and coverups — are grippingly
told in the important video documentary, 9/11 Press for Truth.
Though it does not provide all the answers, this brave quest for
justice by 9/11 families and independent researchers does at least
ask many of the right questions — very pointed questions
that most Americans have forgotten, or likely never even heard
of amongst the incessant coverage related to 9/11 and its aftermath.
9/11 Press for Truth is a well-crafted exposé that will
be an eye-popper to many Americans who still believe that the
9/11 Commission Report issued in 2004 represents the culmination
of an exhaustive, good-faith effort by federal authorities to
get to the bottom of what went wrong and how it was that this
devastating attack so easily overcame our nation's defenses.
9/11 Press for Truth centers around four widows who lost their
husbands in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These
four women — Laurie Van Auken, Patricia Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg,
and Kristen Breitweiser — have come to be known as "the
Jersey Girls." As months dragged on after the attacks and
it became more and more apparent that the official "investigation"
was turning into stonewalling and coverup, this quartet came together
with other grieving survivors to build public pressure for a genuine
investigation.
The documentary begins by telling the story through the eyes
and voices of these determined wives and mothers who refuse to
be bullied or cajoled into silence or tricked into accepting half-truths
and lies for answers. Friends and relatives, as well as government
officials, told them to just "let it go," to just grieve
and heal and get on with their lives. But as Patricia Casazza
says in the video, "We were looking for answers." Finding
answers to some of their very troubling questions was an essential
prerequisite for real healing.
Many of the families had been compiling notebooks, computer archives,
and recorded videos of news stories and official statements. They
were confused and angered by the steady stream of conflicting,
contradictory statements of government officials and the adamant
opposition of the Bush White House to an independent investigation.
They were equally outraged by the complicity of the major media
in willingly propagating the government's ever shifting "Party
line" on so many troubling aspects of 9/11. They were also
exasperated by the way in which the government — aided and
abetted by the media — fragmented and effectively hid so
many of the 9/11 facts and documents even when they did finally
release them by dribbling them out here and there amidst an avalanche
of other stories.
The Jersey Girls and their fellow 9/11 family members got a big
boost when they discovered Paul Thompson's "Complete 911
Timeline," an easily accessible online source where thousands
of media stories and public source documents have been compiled
and collated. In most cases, the original source can be accessed
through a URL web link. As anyone who's made a serious attempt
to sort through the labyrinth of 9/11 stories (this writer included)
can tell you, Thompson's timeline is an indispensable research
tool.
Within the limits of its 85-minute time frame, 9/11 Press for
Truth does an admirable job of effectively presenting some of
the most glaring discrepancies, lies, and coverups concerning
the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. It does this
largely by layering video news clips of public officials and events
surrounding 9/11 with statements from, and interviews with, 9/11
family members (including the Jersey Girls), Paul Thompson, and
other investigators and journalists.
9/11 Press for Truth asks, for instance, why NORAD fighter jets
weren't scrambled on that fateful morning. Fighters are sent up,
on average, more than twice a week to check on planes that have
strayed off course or are not responding to the FAA or local air
towers. This happens routinely — more than 100 times per
year, and without any major signals that a hijacking or terrorist
attack is underway. Why, on September 11, 2001, did this air defense
system uniquely — repeatedly — fail, even after the
first plane hit the World Trade Center and it was blindingly apparent
that we were under attack? The 9/11 Commission Report's explanation,
which contradicts four previous explanations by federal officials
on this matter (all four of which also contradict each other),
is fraught with discrepancies, errors, omissions, and contradictions.
The 9/11 families are still demanding to know what really happened
and why? Ditto for other unexplained (and seemingly inexplicable)
subsequent events such as the repeated "escapes" of
Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan
— apparently courtesy of the governments of Pakistan and
the United States. 9/11 Press for Truth presents interviews with
Gary Berntsen, the CIA's field commander in charge of Operation
Jawbreaker, the agency's hunt for bin Laden in the caves of Tora
Bora. Berntsen and others have charged that bin Laden and large
convoys of his followers were repeatedly allowed to get away when
they were about to be taken by U.S. forces. When the Taliban and
al-Qaeda legions were trapped by U.S. forces in Kunduz, Afghanistan,
in November 2001, the Pakistani government sent in planes to airlift
the terrorists to safety in Pakistan, with the apparent blessing
of the U.S. government.
There has also been amazing resistance by U.S. officials and
the major U.S. media to a thorough investigation of the involvement
of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, in the 9/11 attacks.
In the video we see a reporter at a press conference asking Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice about the visit of ISI chief General
Mahmood Ahmad to Washington, D.C. She evades the question. The
State Department's official transcript of the press conference
conveniently "erases" the inconvenient question by saying
it was "inaudible." (It is clearly audible on the video).
General Ahmad, convincing evidence shows, may actually have been
the paymaster for 9/11 hijackers' leader Mohammed Atta. Yet Pakistan's
President Musharoff and the ISI are supposed to be our key allies
in the war on terror.
But like so many other important aspects of the 9/11 investigation,
Pakistan's support of international terrorism has been ignored
or actively covered up by our government and the U.S. media.
This documentary is important not only for its content but for
its professional packaging and high production values, which add
to its credibility. But its main value may lie in the hope it
gives that common, ordinary people — without office or power
— can make a difference. It transcends partisan politics
and should be seen by all Americans who are committed to justice
and are determined to secure our country against similar —
or worse — attacks in the future.
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