WORLD FINANCE REORGANIZATION

thanks to merkel and sarkozy we will have a LESS FRAUDULENT
international finance regime by april 2009.

Obama and Brown will have no choice but to agree.

Today we saw Geithner caving in... if you can't beat them,
join them.

China has put its foot down.. the world is no longer prepared to
finance the USA and Britain and the angloamerican waste.

OTTAWA, March 26 (Reuters) - China's proposal to replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency will not get much attention at the upcoming G20

guardian.co.uk
US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed creating a powerful systemic risk regulator with the authority to probe deep into non-bank financial enterprises ...

The plan announced this week by the US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner
is designed to clear away a large load of so-called "toxic assets"
clogging up America's financial system. But what are these assets? And
how will the plan work?

Normal loans go bad every time the economy enters a recession, as
companies' profits fall and mortgage-holders lose their jobs. But on
top of that familiar problem, banks and other financial institutions
have created complex financial securities, called derivatives, so
blindingly complicated that even the people creating them didn't
really understand them.

============

Wall Street Journal - .Mar 25, 2009.
In a recent essay, Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China's central bank, recommended creating an expanded reserve currency made up of a basket of major ...

=================

PARIS, March 25 (Reuters) - It was legitimate to discuss the role of reserve currencies in the world but the U.S. dollar is likely to keep hold of its position, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday.

He said discussions on a new currency would likely take some time and he preferred to focus on fixing the economic crisis.

Zhou Xiaochuan, China's central bank governor, earlier this month said the world should consider basing the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as a super-sovereign reserve currency.

"The discussion about a new currency is absolutely legitimate and will probably take place in the coming months but it is not a new thing," Strauss-Kahn said.

Special Drawing Rights are based on an IMF-created global currency basket comprising the dollar, euro, sterling and yen.

"There is no reason to believe it can move rapidly. It is an interesting point but I am more focussed today on the way out of the crisis and the way to solve the crisis than on the system itself," he added

===============

A global 'super currency' to replace the buck? 6:10 PM, March 25, 2009

On a day when the dollar had every right to rally given surprisingly upbeat U.S. economic data, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner briefly knocked the greenback for a loop.

From Bloomberg News:

Geithner was initially asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York about proposals from People.s Bank of China Gov.

Zhou Xiaochuan

for a new international reserve currency. Geithner said, .As I understand his proposal, it.s a proposal designed to increase the use of the International Monetary Fund.s .special drawing rights.. And we.re actually quite open to that..

Some currency traders suddenly choked, reading into Geithner.s comments that the U.S. was .open to. the idea of a new currency that might someday usurp the dollar.s role as the preeminent holding of governments and institutional investors worldwide.

Within minutes of Geithner.s remarks, the dollar slid. The DXY index, which tracks the dollar.s value against six major currencies, fell 1.2% before stabilizing and creeping back up. The euro surged to $1.365 from $1.345.

From Bloomberg:

Roger Altman, who worked with Geithner as deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, later asked Geithner whether he wanted to .clarify. his remarks.

"I.d like to ask one final question, in effect on behalf of the market,. said Altman, founder of Evercore Partners Inc. .Let me ask the question this way: Do you see any change over the foreseeable future in the basic role of the dollar as the world.s key reserve currency?.

Geithner responded by saying that .I think the dollar remains the world.s dominant reserve currency..

Later, on CNBC, Geither reverted to the boilerplate line that Treasury secretaries have mouthed forever, which is that a .strong dollar. is in "America's interest." The DXY index ended the day just slightly lower than on Tuesday.

China's idea for a sort of "super currency" based on a basket of major currencies shows its ongoing concern about the money it has invested in U.S. securities amid record borrowing by Uncle Sam. If the greenback.s value were to collapse, it would take with it China's massive holdings of dollar-denominated assets, including Treasury bonds.

Unfortunately for the Chinese, it would be no snap to create a new global super currency, even if everyone thought it was a good idea.

As for using the IMF.s special drawing rights, currency strategist Marc Chandler at Brown Bros. Harriman & Co. notes that an SDR .is not money in the commonly used sense of a means of exchange or a store of value. It is primarily a unit of account" -- a way nations can settle up trade balance surpluses and deficits, for example.

In other words, there.s no danger anytime soon of the world.s wallets, bank and investment accounts being stuffed with SDRs rather than dollars.

But in their role as the U.S. Treasury's single biggest creditor, the Chinese have put America on notice: They're worried about their money, and they aren't going to be shy about telling us so.

-- Tom Petruno

latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/03/on-a-day-when-1.html

Calel Calek Perechodnik - Jews Poles Germans

Calel (Calek) Perechodnik (born Warsaw, 8 September 1916, died between August and September 1944) was a Polish Jew who joined the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Otwock Ghetto. His wartime diaries were published posthumously as Am I a Murderer? (in Polish, Czy ja jestem morderc.?).

A secular Jew, Perechodnik was born in 1916 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Otwock, south east of Warsaw. His family ran a movie theater named Oasis. He earned a degree in agronomy at the Warsaw University of Life Science. Perechodnik's wife Chana (née Nusfeld) was also from Otwock; their only daughter, Athalie, was born in 1939, before the German invasion of Poland.

Perechodnik's memoir is the only known written recollection of a Jewish ghetto policeman. It records such events as his and his father.s compliance with the Polish radio broadcast command to go eastward to fight in 1939, the formation of the Judenrat in Otwock, Himmler.s visit to Warsaw, the death of Czerniakow, the rounding up of Jews in the ghettos; life in, and escape from, a work camp; the experience of being hidden in Warsaw, the beginning of understanding of what was happening in the death camps, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. His information is now considered by various researchers and experts on the holocaust to be remarkably accurate, and according to these researchers, the notes show proof that the Jews at that time knew what was happening.

The German occupation of Poland encouraged anti-Semitism among the gentile population. Some Poles started harassing Jews and in some cases, willingly helped the Gestapo in apprehending and deporting them (see: Szmalcownik). Perechodnik expressed his anguish and astonishment at the savagery of those Poles who turned against the Jews. It was, he wrote, "the greatest disillusionment that I have endured in my life."

he Perechodniks lost their house and most of their belongings and Calel had to deposit all of his savings in a "blocked account" in a German bank, which was immediately appropriated by the Germans.

In 1940, Perechodnik and his family, along with the 8000 other Jews of Otwock, were transported to the Otwock ghetto. In February 1941, fearful of being sent to a labor camp and hoping that the job would provide a shield for himself, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter, he joined the Jewish Ghetto Police, organized by the local Judenrat councils under German Nazi orders to maintain order in the ghetto.

In early 1942, the German authorities began rounding up Jews to be put into trains which were destined to go to Treblinka. The Jewish police were ordered to assist in this effort and they complied with the orders. Assured by the commandant of the Ghetto Polizei that his family would be protected, On 19 August 1942, Perechodnik brought his own wife and daughter to the ghetto's main square. But he was betrayed: Anka and Athalie were among 8,000 Otwock Jews sent to their deaths in Treblinka. Subsequently, he was sent to a labor camp.

On 20 August 1942, Calel Perechodnik escaped to Warsaw, where he spent 105 days in hiding with his mother and other Jews in the apartment of a Polish woman for a stiff fee. His father, Aryan in appearance, remained at large to support the family until he was captured by the Gestapo and executed. While in hiding, he spent the time writing. He joined the Polish Underground; it was during this time that he contracted typhus.

On 1 August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising began as part of a nationwide rebellion, Operation Tempest. It is now known that Perechodnik participated in the uprising, even though it is not clear as to what role he played in the Uprising. Sometime in late August or early September, 1944 after the Uprising failed, he committed suicide in his bunker by swallowing cyanide. He was 27 years old.

Shortly before Perechodnik died in 1944, he entrusted his manuscript to a Polish friend. After the war ended, the memoir was given to Perechodnik.s brother, Pesach Perechodnik, who had survived the war in the Soviet Union. The original copy of the memoir was presented to the Yad Vashem Archives, and a copy was given to the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, which today is the Jewish Historical Institute. This book was the first publication of the complete document. The manuscript was largely forgotten and remained virtually unknown in English-speaking countries until Frank Fox's translation in 1996. It was released in Polish and Hebrew in 1993 prior to its translation into English in 1996. Since then, it has been translated into many languages.

Its original title is "A History of a Jewish Family During German Occupation. but its title was later changed to "Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman".

In his last years life, Perechodnik completely changed his attitude towards the Jews and the Jewish faith and traditions. In his memoir, he rejected belief in God and the religious traditions of his Orthodox Jewish family. He became very bitter toward the Jews and frequently criticized them, even blaming them for bringing these events on themselves because of their insistence on cultural and religious isolation. He was sarcastic about others, as well as self-deprecating about his own Jewishness.

===============

From someone who actually read the book:

There is a little bit more to the story of how the memoir got written and published. At the end of the war, Perechodnik joined the Russian army. Shortly after, he became sick. It was one of those infectious diseases that were running rampant in the war aftermath. The Russians refused to give him medicine and treatment because he was a former ghetto policeman and they largely saw him as a colluder with the Nazis, and they believed that he had only joined the Russian army because Russia had won the war. Also, they didn't really need new recruits very much because the fighting was finished, and all that remained was police-style duty being done to prevent a collapse into anarchy. Perechodnik hid out in the boarding house because German citizens were still killing Jews mostly to prevent them from consuming food, which was in extremely short supply. He wrote his memoir knowing that he was going to die soon from his disease. He gave the manuscript to a non-Jewish friend and made the man promise to get the memoir to his (Perechodnik's) brother to be published. He believed that only if the people knew about the Jews' own complicity in the Holocaust would such an event be avoided in the future. Perechodnik was on his death bed by this time and he died a few days later. The friend traveled all the way to Canada where he found the brother, who had fled to Canada from Poland at the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland at the beginning of the war. The brother took the manuscript and promised to do what he could. He wanted to immigrate to Israel however. The Israeli government told him that he would be denied entrance if he published the manuscript, so the brother handed over the manuscript to the Israeli government and thusly became a proud citizen of Israel. The manuscript was held by the Israelis as a confidential document, but this confidentiality expired after 50 years, at which time it was published.

I found the book to be a major eye-opener. I was astounded by the Jews' own complicity in the Holocaust. The European Jews (at least in Poland, where the book took place) have a bribery-oriented culture. Their entire mode of living is focused on getting ahead by paying bribes to obtain preferential treatment, and (on the other side of the coin) "influence peddling" or "cronyism." The SS used this to their advantage. The SS would make a big announcement that they were going to "liquidate the ghetto." They would then covertly spread the word that liquidation could easily be avoided by simply paying a bribe. They located influential members of the Jewish ghetto and gave them the title Ghetto Policeman (GP). The GP's job was to decide which Jews got taken away to Treblinka and which ones (the majority) were spared. Rather than liquidate the ghetto, only a handful of Jews were actually killed. The SS did this repeatedly, gradually chipping away at the Jewish population, which was the best that the SS could do given their extremely limited budget. All of the money in the ghetto would make its way into the GP's hands over time, as everybody was paying him bribes to be spared. The SS would then go to the GP's house and arrest him, and they would find all of the community's money hidden under the floorboards of his house, which they would confiscate. Nobody stood up to fight for the GP because everybody in the ghetto hated the GP and considered him to be their oppressor. They cheered when he was arrested! This made the job of the SS very easy. As an example, let's say that there were twelve SS officers liquidating the ghetto. They outnumbered the GP by 12:1 and could win this fight easily. The ghetto however, outnumbered the SS by perhaps 4000:12 and could have easily defeated the SS, if only they had fought against the SS. They never did though, except in very rare cases such as the Warsaw liquidation. By this time, essentially all of the Jewish wealth had been transferred to the SS. Also, the Jews were starving, which makes warfare a physically challenging activity. At this late date, the SS had a lot more money available and could field hundreds of soldiers armed with real guns and attack dogs and other tools useful in a fight.

My impression from the book, was that the SS totally blundered into this "strategy" that I have described above. In the beginning, the SS had a very small budget and only a handful of members. Their job was obviously impossible! Each SS member knew that his job was impossible and low morale caused him to become corrupt and begin accepting bribes. Normally you would expect that corruption would weaken an organization and cause it to fail. The exact opposite happened and corruption of the SS caused the SS to succeed. Only because the Holocaust was impossible, did the Holocaust become possible.

Perechodnik presents a brutally honest description of European Jewry. At one point he tells a story of how the SS were killing all of the Jews in a particular town (Otwock, I think it was). The SS were executing the Jews by forcing them at gunpoint to lie face-down, whereupon they shot the prostrate Jews in the back of the head. Perechodnik tells of one case in which a soldier in the city park ordered five Jews to lie face-down. When he tried to shoot them however, he discovered that his rifle was out of bullets. A lot of the Polish people had come out to watch the fun. The soldier asked one Polish boy to go to the SS headquarters and fetch him a box of bullets. The boy jumped on his bicycle and took off. The soldier then sat down on the ground, leaned up against a tree, and smoked a cigarette. The boy returned after about 20 minutes with the box of bullets and the soldier paid the boy a handful of coins from his pocket. He then loaded his rifle and shot the five Jews in the back of the head. The Jews had laid there face-down on the grass awaiting death, and they had not risen up to fight the unarmed soldier. Apparently they were waiting for better than 5:1 odds!

Most GPs, at the time of their arrest, were sent to Treblinka for liquidation. Perechodnik admits that he was spared this fate because he allowed his wife and daughter to go to Treblinka in his place. Instead of death, he got a promotion, and became a GP in Warsaw which was the nearby big city. Perechodnik knew that at Treblinka the Jews' fat was rendered into soap. Sometimes when he was taking a bath he would look at his bar of soap, think about his wife and daughter, and begin crying. At this time, he actually owned a handgun (what he refers to as a "barker"), but he still lacked the courage to go shoot an SS officer.

It is interesting that Perechodnik's spelling of the word "Treblinka" varies throughout the book. He obviously only knew the word verbally and hadn't seen it in writing. Also, his own understanding of what was going on at Treblinka evolved during the course of the book. It is also interesting that the word "treblinka" is the Russian word for "bag." The Russians have a phrase "pashul la treblinka" that literally means "get in the bag" but would be translated into English best as "get with the program." That really adds an element of humor to the SS use of the word as the name of their death camp!

I recommend Perechodnik's book. You will get a glimpse of the Holocaust very much different than what you get in Hollywood movies such as "Defiance."

===============

list of works by Holocaust victims, published after they died.

* Hélène Berr: Journal
* Moshe Flinker: Young Moshe.s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe
* Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
* Petr Ginz: The Diary of Petr Ginz
* Éva Heyman: The Diary of Éva Heyman
* Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary
* Rutka Laskier, Rutka's Notebook
* Abraham Lewin: A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
* Kim Malthe-Bruun: Heroic Heart: The Diary and Letters of Kim Malthe-Bruun
* Irène Némirovsky: Suite Française
* Kim Malthe-Bruun: Heroic Heart: The Diary and Letters of Kim Malthe-Bruun
* Oskar Rosenfeld: In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lodz
* Yitskhok Rudashevski: Diary of the Vilna Ghetto
* Dawid Rubinowicz: The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz
* Dawid Sierakowiak: The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto
* Jerzy Feliks Urman: I'm Not Even a Grown-up: Diary of Jerzy Feliks Urman

zionist herzl quote
http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22anti-semites+shall+be+our+best+friends%22

The anti-semites shall be our best friends." Diary excerpt from Zionism creator Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) (Source). What is a Zionist?

Gladio and Olberman

"... although the Italian media were driving force in the 1990s in the investigation against Gladio, a code name denoting the clandestine NATO stay-behind operation in Italy after World War II, Turkish media serve the opposite purpose by trying to hinder the Ergenekon proceedings."

Lack of principles makes unions of journalists status quo agents
The consistent failure of journalists' unions to take a principled and democratic stance on antidemocratic current events -- and even supporting them from time to time -- is the result for them serving as a tool for the official state ideology, observers say.

There are hundreds of local and national journalists' unions in Turkey, but these unions have failed to raise their voices against a number of antidemocratic practices, such as the country's many military interventions and the General Staff's denial of entry to some journalists and media outlets to military briefings and meetings on the grounds that they do not comply with its accreditation criteria. Furthermore, the press has failed to support the trial of the Ergenekon gang, a clandestine terrorist organization with members from various state agencies including the military, as well as from politics, the business world, the academy, media and other civilian sectors, charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

Turkish journalists' unions have failed to stand up for democracy, according to Star daily columnist Berat Özipek, partly because these institutions have not organically emerged from society, as is the case with such institutions in fully democratic countries.

"Unfortunately, journalists' unions in Turkey, just like many professional organizations, bring to mind the professional organizations in authoritarian regimes. They have a function similar to theirs. Their opposition to the government does not show that they are in favor of freedom. The 'government' and 'state' distinction in Turkey is unacceptable in a real democratic regime. Most of the time, the job of journalists' unions in Turkey is to keep the government in line with the state's anti-democratic tendencies, not to keep an eye on democracy," Özipek stated.

These unions try to shape public opinion according to the inclinations of the "establishment" and support democracy only when it does not result in a huge change to the status quo, Özipek went on to say, adding that this was the reason they support military interventions and feel uneasy with the Ergenekon trial.

So far the tone taken by journalism unions has been against the Ergenekon investigations, which is seen as a Turkish version of Italy's "Clean Hands" operation; Turkey's prosecutors, backed by the government, have for the first time taken action to confront the illegal formations nested in the state structure that were involved in a series of shadowy acts aimed to ignite chaos in the country.

In reaction to the arrest earlier this month of Cumhuriyet daily Ankara Bureau Chief Mustafa Balbay as part of the Ergenekon proceedings -- wherein he was accused of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order -- head of the Contemporary Journalists Association (ÇGD) Ahmet Abakay criticized the court ruling, believing it to be an attempt to intimidate journalists. "It begs the question of whether Balbay is being forced to testify again as part of an attempt to deter journalists, writers and opponents from [covering] the case. It looks like government pressure is being put on the media, and it seems rational to look for an ulterior motive behind his arrest."

Another reaction came from Ercan I.pekçi, head of the Turkish Journalists Union (TGS), who also criticized the arrest, saying, "I think it is pushing the law too far to associate a statement of opinion with an attempt to overthrow the constitutional regime."

Today's Zaman columnist Hüseyin Gülerce finds it striking that although the Italian media were driving force in the 1990s in the investigation against Gladio, a code name denoting the clandestine NATO stay-behind operation in Italy after World War II, Turkish media serve the opposite purpose by trying to hinder the Ergenekon proceedings.

"From the very beginning, Turkish media have acted as the tool of official state ideology in Turkey. It assumed the duty of manipulating public opinion and joined forces with the judiciary, universities and the wealthy to clear the way for all the military interventions," he said.

The Press Council, the leading journalists union in Turkey, has on many occasions sided with the state ideology -- its president, Oktay Eks,i, making statements downplaying the charges against Ergenekon suspects and implying that the operation is aimed at cracking down on the government's opponents.

Indeed, in the days before the Feb. 28, 1997 unarmed military intervention that led to the overthrow of a coalition government led by the Islamist-leaning Welfare Party (RP), newspapers ran a large number of stories warning of Islamic fundamentalism. Some of these stories were cited as evidence by National Security Council (MGK) generals in a statement the council issued which had led to the uprooting of the government.

Fears of a military tutelage regime have turned journalists' unions into sickly institutions in Turkey, says Taraf daily's Alper Görmüs,, adding that this has led them to be ineffective in their bid to support democracy because they have failed to show a consistent stance against antidemocratic political moves.

Görmüs, complained that journalists' unions in Turkey are hard to understand -- siding with democracy yet opposing secularism -- and said that their stance toward democracy was very well reflected in their opposition to the investigation into Ergenekon.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=169645&bolum=101

========================

Dick Cheney Operated a Secret Assassination Ring Outside CIA?

Wow!! Seymour Hersh apparently has a book coming out that will reveal this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUlJ39EZOaQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KayPHTANaAM

'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for March 12, 2009

Read the transcript to the Thursday show

updated 10:20 a.m. ET March 13, 2009

Guest: John Dean, Clarence Page, Lawrence O.Donnell, Margaret Carlson, Howard Fineman

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST (voice over): Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow?

Assassination tango: The Bush/Cheney execution squads -- Sy Hersh.s stunning scoop.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SEYMOUR HERSH, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Under President Bush.s authority, they.ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That.s been going on, well, in the name of all of us.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Howard Fineman on the political fallout; John Dean on a war crime startling even for that administration.

Mind like a Michael Steele trap: The RNC chairman offends everybody, again. Asked, "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?" He replies, "Yes, I mean, again, I think that.s an individual choice." But under fire from the right, now he calls for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

Billo leads the smear-mongers on Speaker Pelosi.s use of military aircraft, which is actually less than Speaker Hastert.s use of military aircraft.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL O.REILLY, TV HOST: And we.re throwing money out the window and bankrupting a nation. And this woman is whipping around the world. I think she owes us an explanation, am I wrong?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: At this point, you still have to ask you pathetic liar!

Bests: Even conservatives are wising up, sales of Coultergeist.s newest book -- down about 67 percent.

Worsts: Newt.s solution to teenage pregnancy -- pay girls not to get pregnant. Wait -- Newt, doesn.t that mean you.d be paying at least some of them to have sex? What.s the word for that again?

All that and more -- now on COUNTDOWN.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great work.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

OLBERMANN (on camera): Good evening from Tampa.

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford issued an executive order that read in part, quote, "No employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination."

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN tonight: As we reported on this newshour last night, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, claiming to have uncovered a covert executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney.s office. A reminder -- if one is needed -- that in 1976, Mr. Cheney was the chief of staff to President Ford. Meaning, by the time Cheney was back in the West Wing, it appears he had either forgotten about his own boss. executive order or worse, he had decided to ignore it.

Mr. Hersh is making the revelations at a forum in Minnesota two nights ago. The topic: America.s constitutional crisis. Hersh saying of Mr. Cheney and his inner circle, quote, "They ran a government within the government." Adding, "Eight or nine neoconservatives took over our country."

Hersh.s bombshell allegations about the assassination ring, the result of reporting for a book he says might be still a year or two away from being published. Hersh is telling MinnPost.com in an email after the event, that the disclosures are, quote, "not something he wanted to dwell about in public."

The toothpaste, however, is already out of the proverbial tube here. When the discussion touched upon the abuses of executive power, Mr. Hersh asked how these things tend to happen and whether they continue to happen to this day. In his reply, the reporter describing a secret commando unit officially called the "Joint Special Operations Command."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HERSH: It.s a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody except in the Clinton, I mean, in the Bush/Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They do not report to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to Mr. Gates, the secretary of defense. They report directly to him.

They are not -- they have absolutely no -- Congress has no oversight of it. It.s an executive assassination wing essentially, and it.s been going on and on and on.

And just today in "The Times," there was a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It.s been going into, in -- under President Bush.s authority.

They.ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That.s been going on, well, in the name of all of us.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: A CIA spokesman today responding to Hersh.s allegations by calling him, quote, "utter nonsense."

Two angles on this, at minimum -- John Dean in a moment.

First, we.ll call in our own Howard Fineman, senior Washington correspondent for "Newsweek" magazine, who.s book, "The Thirteen American Arguments" has just been released in paperback.

Howard, good evening.

HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: If Sy Hersh alleges here, the vice president, the former vice president and a covert assassination ring operated without talking to the CIA, how exactly would the CIA be in the position to call Mr. Hersh.s reporting "utter nonsense"?

FINEMAN: Well, moreover, Keith, if there a -- if there in fact is such a thing as Seymour Hersh.s reporting seems to indicate and the CIA was kept in the dark about it, the last thing they would want to do right now is admit it. So, either way, they don.t have an interest in confirming no matter what they know at this point.

In checking around in the intelligence community today, I can say this, you know, Seymour Hersh is somebody they respect. They don.t always trust. But they put it this way, as one of them said to me, look, I don.t know anything about this specifically at all, but I wouldn.t dismiss what Sy Hersh is saying without checking carefully. That.s their backhanded way of saying it.s worth looking into, for sure.

OLBERMANN: Presumably, the second half of his allegations, which was that the CIA was involved significantly in domestic operations in the last eight years, that would be something somebody in the CIA probably could deny with some degree of credibility. But as to the other thing .

FINEMAN: Right.

OLBERMANN: . just because we might not be surprised by what Mr. Hersh is alleging, I mean, people who look at Dick Cheney would say, well, yes, that sounds plausible if it isn.t actually true -- should that make this revelation any less shocking or if true any less egregious and essentially terrifying to the nature of the democracy?

FINEMAN: Well, depressing is another word I would use and

infuriating. If it pans out, if when Sy.s book comes out, it.s all there -

because it would be of a piece with the picture that.s emerging. "We became what we beheld," to use a phrase from a great movie called "The Untouchables." And I think it.s clear in the days right after 9/11 that, especially Vice President Cheney and he managed to convince George W. Bush, and maybe he didn.t need a whole lot of convincing, that secrecy and really, lawlessness was the way to go in the early days.

And rather than focus on catching Osama bin Laden, to use another phrase, they didn.t let a good crisis go to waste. And they used the atmosphere of crisis after 9/11 for all kinds of aggregation of power -- accumulating power in the executive and really within the vice president.s office in a way that we haven.t seen outside of declared wartime and even there, with more strictures than were the case here.

OLBERMANN: Could this report or report of a report -- since he doesn.t have anything on this yet other than his allegation -- could it possibly put some muscle, some steam behind the truth commission that Senator Leahy is calling for, but a truth commission that would allow for the necessity of prosecutions? Because if this is true, you have to prosecute this, there.s no way around this.

FINEMAN: Yes. This would be even beyond the -- be beyond the powers, I think, of the commission of inquiry that Senator Patrick Leahy is talking about. I talked with one of his aides a little earlier, their point of view is, basically, look, not that many people have signed on to Senator Leahy.s call for a commission of inquiry, but one other shoe-dropping, one other big proven, you know, strong allegation and members of the Senate are going come running to Leahy to sign on. This could be that thing depending on how much it pans out.

I checked with Senator Russ Feingold.s office, he would be one of the people out there pounding on his desk on the Senate floor. He hasn.t done it yet. I think people want to look and see what Sy Hersh has around this topic. But one more really strong series of allegations like those OLS, you know, those Justice Department memos that came out the other week, another one like that, I think, you are going to see a lot of senators wanting to join Senator Leahy.s side on this.

OLBERMANN: And what about the Obama administration in response to this? Because the way Sy Hersh talked about the Joint Special Operations Command and the way the "New York Times" did in referencing it the other day, they both used the present tense. If this is still in existence, are we going to have to see some sort of cleaning out of the stables inside this administration to just say again like the Justice Department memos you just referenced. Do these things have to be put out there right now by President Obama?

FINEMAN: Well, I think -- I think they are undergoing a complete review of all of the intelligence apparatus within the executive branch. Some people know a lot about of what they are looking at, other people.s don.t -- other people don.t. General Jones inside at the National Security Council does. Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, doesn.t that much.

But, yes, don.t forget that -- don.t forget that Obama has not ruled out completely the use of some tactics like rendition. But I guarantee you that what he.s going to do is going to be about law and not secrecy if he can avoid it.

OLBERMANN: Howard Fineman of MSNBC and "Newsweek" -- as always, Howard, great thanks.

For more on the legal questions raised by Sy Hersh.s reporting, let.s turn to John Dean, White House counsel under Richard Nixon, FindLaw.com columnist, and author of both, "Worse than Watergate" and "Broken Government."

John, good evening.

JOHN DEAN, NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: First and foremost, let.s begin with the executive order that I quoted at the beginning from President Ford that banned U.S. involvement in political assassinations. If that is the case, wouldn.t an executive assassination ring that reported directly to the vice president.s office be, on the face of it, illegal, and might it also be on a face of it, a war crime?

DEAN: Well, clearly, fighting terrorism is not dealing with tiddlywinks. We want our government to deal with the most effective tools they have. But they also have to be legal. The executive order, really, is nothing more than direction to the executive branch and the presidency is the only one who you can even argue might have the authority to engage in assassinations. It.s an unresolved question.

So, it.s potentially a war crime, it.s potentially just outright murder, and it could clearly be in violation of the Ford executive order.

OLBERMANN: Last summer, writing about the Joint Special Operations Command, Sy Hersh described a Bush administration mindset that posited that the president could not keep covert CIA operations free of congressional interference or oversight, but he could do that with clandestine military activities. So, they then claimed that everything secret was military not CIA.

Is there a legal merit to that argument, and if so, what is it?

DEAN: Well, it.s a thin argument. It kind of reminded me when I heard it, of Nixon.s claim when he was paying hush money, he was really funding a humanitarian defense fund for the Watergate burglars.

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: I.m not sure it works. It.s an argument. It is nothing more, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Does it explain though -- I mean, does that mindset explain the Bush administration.s persistent devaluation of the CIA into not much more than a public relations firm that it would manipulate? I mean, all the intelligence moved under the control of, if not necessarily the vice president.s office when it wasn.t there, would go to Donald Rumsfeld.s office at the Pentagon. They really kind of neutered the CIA.

DEAN: Well, there.s no question they did that. This is a very interesting potential as further explanation as to why they might do that.

We got to remember, however, the CIA has maintained a clear covert operative entity inside of its operations. So, from the intelligence standpoint, I can understand why they wanted to neuter it. From an operational standpoint, I.m not quite sure, because a lot of the people they hire come from this special operations unit in the military. So, I think that, you know, it.s an interesting argument. I.m not sure it.s the full one.

OLBERMANN: The second part of the -- of the, I guess it was Hersh, essentially, a slip by Sy Hersh saying that Central Intelligence had been heavily involved in domestic spying in the Bush administration. That.s clearly, that has -- we.ve been through this before, right? That has been clearly defined as utterly illegal?

DEAN: That is, by statute, that is illegal. There.s no question about that. Now, the CIA is well aware of it. Every CIA director is pinned down on that question when he goes through a confirmation proceeding. So, I don.t think there.s any question that.s illegal and it would be quite shocking if they were engaging in the sort of things that Sy suggests.

OLBERMANN: What does this suggest to you as the remedy? Are we, again, at that point, where the minimum standard is a truth investigation, a truth committee or commission with the prospect, at least, of prosecutions that -- in other words -- not handing out immunity like it was candy?

DEAN: Well, I think that.s -- you know, this is serious stuff, Keith, obviously.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

DEAN: And I think -- I think that Sy is a highly reliable reporter. He doesn.t throw things out unless there is some basis and fact for this sort of thing. He.s written around this subject. He -- there.s quite a bit actually out on the record already about Rumsfeld authorizing assassinations.

So, I think that this is something that the Congress probably should get into and I.m not sure a truth commission would necessarily do it. So I suspect the intelligence committees, if they haven.t already looked, will look.

OLBERMANN: Speaking of looking, nobody has come up with a roster of possible people to whom he was referring -- the victims of this. Have we seen anything like that? Have you seen anything like that?

DEAN: In some of Sy.s writings, he said as many as 10 different countries had been targeted for Special Ops activities. And this could, indeed, run the gamut. So, I don.t know that we have a target, and maybe that.s what is the bombshell in his book.

(LAUGHTER)

OLBERMANN: Well, we.ll have to take a look back through about seven years worth of news.

John Dean, author of "Worse Than Watergate" and "Broken Government" -- as always, thanks so much for your perspective tonight, John.

DEAN: Thank you, Keith.

OLBERMANN: So, where does the moral flexibility implied by a Cheney death squad story come from? No politician could spring fully grown from the ground dreaming of secret international assassination rings. Not even Dick Cheney.

The answer might lie in another story tonight. It turns out that two weeks ago, the embattled chairman of the Republican National Committee told an interviewer he believes a woman has a right of choice between abortion and bearing a child. But he denied another choice. Homosexuality, he said, is no more a choice than is being black. And today, he had to repudiate both of those statements to insist those were not his viewpoints.

So, if Dick Cheney is the finish line, what.s the starting point? Michael Steele selling if not his soul then its component parts to lead a political party with which that soul so clearly disagrees?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Michael Steele tells an interviewer that women should have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. Upon clarification, he says he meant to say he supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.

Nancy Pelosi cleared of wrongdoing and chump up charges over her authorized use of military aircraft. But the lunatic fringe insists otherwise.

And in Worsts: Newt Gingrich with a remarkable suggestion about preventing teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, his solution is, in part, teen prostitution. Fasten your seat belts.

You are watching COUNTDOWN on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: RNC Chairman Michael Steele may long to return to the circular firing squad with which he has so quickly become so accustomed. Since left to his own devices, he managed just to self-inflict even greater damage.

In our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN: This time, it.s Steele on abortion rights. Mr. Steele notably used the words individual and choice in talking about abortion to "GQ" magazine in an interview conducted by Lisa DePaulo two weeks ago but released late yesterday.

Steele: "The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other."

Question: "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?" Steele: "Yes, I mean, again, I think that.s an individual choice." "You do?" "Yes, absolutely."

And let the damage control begin. Mr. Steele released a statement today which reads in part, "I tried to present why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a, quote, .choice. before deciding to put me up for adoption. I thank her every day for supporting life. The strength of the pro-life movement lies in choosing life and sharing the wisdom of that choice with those who face difficult circumstances."

And in the "GQ" interview, Steele did say that he thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. But then, this -- question: "OK, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have a choice you just said they should have?" Steele: "The states should make the choice. That.s what the choice is.

The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide."

I know he.s not sticking to that either. The other part of Steele.s mea culpa to the Republican Party today, corrects that. "I support our platform and its call for a human life amendment." That, of course, is the far more draconian view of the Republican Party, a constitutional amendment that would prohibit abortion nationwide, no states. choice.

But when then-Lieutenant Governor Steele running for the Senate appeared on "Meet the Press," October 29th, 2006, with Tim Russert, on the question of whether he would propose a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion. Mr. Russert said, "So, you wouldn.t do that?" And Steele said, "No."

Let.s turn now to Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist of the "Chicago Tribune," Clarence Page.

Clarence, good evening.

CLARENCE PAGE, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Of course, the recriminations have begun. The former governor, Mike Huckabee, derided the seemingly pro-choice comments from Mr. Steele. Ken Blackwell who unsuccessfully ran against Steele for the RNC chair said Steele should get to work or get out of the way.

Is this about it because this man spoke his mind and then sort of reversed field entirely? Is this it for his chairmanship?

PAGE: I don.t think his chairmanship is over, Keith, even though it may look like it to us as outsiders. He.s in a rough patch, though, a very rough patch. His problems are -- number one, he seems to have forgotten how conservative the party platform is. That.s how he got jumbled up over the abortion question.

You know, he was -- back when he was lieutenant governor in Maryland, an overwhelmingly Democratic state, that kind of a moderate position trying to finesse choice versus life went over OK. It placated the masses, if you will. But there is that human life amendment clause in the platform and he seems to have slipped up on that.

But I think a bigger problem for him internally is -- he hasn.t done anything yet constructively to build the party. By that, I mean, he.s -- now, he went in, he fired the staff. Maybe that needed to be done, there were a lot of complaints. But he hasn.t rebuilt it nor has he engaged in the strategery -- the strategic planning that they need right now to try to build themselves back from being the regional party they have been in the last couple of elections.

So, this next month the kind of fund-raising he does can make a difference in so far as he stays in the job or not.

OLBERMANN: But isn.t this a fundamental question that sort of transcends politics? That what he.s really guilty of here is saying -- as he literally, when he was asked if pro-choicers have a place in the party, he said absolutely. Is this just not -- isn.t it -- he is pro-choice to some degree, maybe to some limited degree and he.s being forced to deny what he believes to keep his job.

Isn.t that the sort of tenuous situation? The center can.t hold on that forever, can it?

PAGE: Well, I talked to Michael Steele. He was my lieutenant governor as a Marylander. He.s pro-life. He.s a Catholic. He is very forthright as far as his personal beliefs go.

He also, though, is in your choice to vote Republican. He wants to build the party. And he knows that that really draconian pro-life position that the platform has doesn.t go over well with the majority of Americans. So, he tries to finesse it. I think that is where he got bollixed up.

But, you know, there.s a kind of thing that he needs to -- well, right now, he is in a phase where the base needs to be fed. That.s the way a lot of party leaders feel. They are not worried that much about outreach right now as they are worried about getting to the base and raising money and building up the internal strength. So, it.s that kind of a conflict he.s got to deal with.

OLBERMANN: So, a guy who doesn.t believe this stuff is out there

trying to sell this stuff to people who don.t want to buy this stuff which

it seems to me -- a problem.

(LAUGHTER)

OLBERMANN: Especially if you -- I mean, if you marry it to this other part here, and marry is used unintentionally, they were in that -- also in the "GQ" interview, this was another issue of choice.

He was asked, "Do you think homosexuality is a choice?" And he said,

"Oh, no. I don.t think I.ve ever really subscribed to that view that you

can turn it on and off like a water tap. You just can.t simply say, oh,

like, .Tomorrow morning, I.m going to stop being gay.. It is like saying,

.Tomorrow morning, I.m going to stop being black.."

I mean, it.s a reasonable, accurate contextual view obviously. It seems .

(CROSSTALK)

OLBERMANN: Is it destined to doom him within his own party at some point?

PAGE: Well, yes. I mean, that.s one -- you know, Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council and other social conservatives in the base talked to him and complained about this. I mean, that was a strong position, Keith, just to equate homosexuality with race is the sort of position that the gay pride movement has been promoting for decades, and that the Republican conservatives have been fighting against. He just kind of gave away the whole battlefield you might say.

So, that.s the kind of thing that he has to backpedal away from or else he.ll try to change the party from inside. I doubt that.s going to happen right now.

OLBERMANN: Yes. Or he might go to a place where there are people who seem to agree with him on these critical two points of the cultural wars of our time. It.s called the Democratic Party.

PAGE: You mean .

OLBERMANN: But, who knows.

(LAUGHTER)

PAGE: I thought so. I.ve heard of them -- yes.

OLBERMANN: They tend to mention this a lot.

Clarence Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of "The Tribune" of Chicago -- great thanks, Clarence.

PAGE: Thank you, Keith. Stay tuned.

OLBERMANN: The course of the colonel. More than two decades under water, which jinx will now supposedly be broken after the Colonel Sanders statue is finally rescued from its water or something?

And speaking of things that only look human, Coultergeist.s amazing vanishing book sales.

That.s next -- this is COUNTDOWN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Bests in a moment, and Coultergeist has apparently lost better than 2/3 of her book buying audience.

But, first, on this date in 2002, the birth of a five-tiered public alert system. Conjuring up images of "Duck and Cover" film from 1950s, the Department of Homeland Security revealed its color-coded threat advisory system. Cue the widespread panic and duct-tape paranoia. Then-DHS Secretary Tom Ridge changed advisory colors 10 times in the system.s first two years. Mostly in response to, as the "Daily Kos" joke went today, the dire threat of Democrats winning elections.

On that note, let.s play Oddball.

We begin in Osaka, Japan, where the curse has been reversed. First the back story, which curse. In 1985, and the fans of the Hai Shi (ph) Tigers baseball team celebrated their Japanese World Series win right there. Tradition dictated tossing the victors into the air, but since star slugger Randy Bass was not available, the fans grabbed the next best thing, a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders from the local KFC.

After the requisite air toss, fans did what any fried chicken enthusiast would do, they tossed the colonel into the river. Since that fateful night, the Hai Shi Tigers have been on a red hot losing streak. But now 24 years later, the colonel has been located. A group of construction workers found the Sanders torso, the legs and the right hand while dredging up the river. Might these workers now help our woe begotten Pittsburgh Pirates?

To Orlando, Florida, where the dolphin population at Sea World has come up with a lazy way to spend Sunday afternoon. Tiny bubbles in the water. These dolphins have learned the art of bubble making by expelling air through their blow hole. They use their nose to twist, to spin and to reshape the bubble ring, sometimes biting a bigger ring to make a smaller one. Yes, sometimes you just need to show video as an excuse to say the word blow hole on TV.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Smearing Nancy Pelosi. The right says the speaker made unprecedented demands for military aircraft access. The only thing unprecedented seems to be the degree to which the right keeps lying about the allegations in the face of the facts.

Nothing a radio guy likes better than his face on a billboard, maybe not this billboard.

These stories ahead, but first time for COUNTDOWN.s top three best persons in the world.

Number three, best taxed persons. A New York legislator wants to institute a new pole tax, pole. The law would tax patrons of strip clubs 10 dollars. When would the tax be levied? At the door, as part of the cover charge, while you still have your wallet. OR maybe you could make the G in G-string stand for government issued.

Number two, best phony delusion, Scott Allan Witmer, having been accused of driving drunk in Pennsylvania, said he could not be prosecuted or charged because he was his own country. He claimed sovereignty. Quote, I live inside myself, not in Pennsylvania. Mr. Witmer asked for a trial on that basis. The judge in the case then ordered that Mr. Witmer proceed instead to a mental exam, and within 48 hours, Mr. Witmer came to his senses and pleaded guilty. "I wanted to try it out," he said.

Number one, best American book reading public. Condi Naste Portfolio

reporting on sales for Ann Coulter.s latest tome. Her 2006 book sold

280,000 copies. Her offering from six years ago sold nearly 400,000

copies. This one somewhere between 100,000 and 130,000. And it came out

two full months ago. From three books ago to two books ago, she lost more

than a third of an audience. And from two books ago to this one, she has

lost another half. It is morning in America.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: In April 2007, behind the scenes at COUNTDOWN, we jumped all over a story making the rounds that President Bush had almost blown himself up when he plugged an electrical cord into a hydrogen electric hybrid car. We put it in our run down and went about producing the segment. But when we watched the actual videotape closely, we saw it was not Mr. Bush.s fault at all. We did the segment anyway. We exonerated the president, because when a story changes course on you, you have to go with it, rather than continue to force it to go you way, no matter how you might feel about the subject.

Which brings us to our third story tonight, the conservative group Judicial Watch had its big expose on Nancy Pelosi, in which the only thing exposed was the speaker.s guiltlessness. They have obtained emails from Pelosi.s staff and Pentagon staff concerning Pelosi.s use of military aircraft. Judicial Watch concluding, quote, "these documents show that Speaker Pelosi treats the Air Force like her personal airline, with unreasonable requests for military travel, unconcerned about wasting taxpayer money, with last minute cancellations."

Except the actual documents show no such thing. ABC News reporting that Pelosi uses military transport less than once a month, wherein Republican predecessor Denny Hastert was an almost weekly frequent flyer. Last-minute cancellations? Yes, when she first became speaker, before the Air Force told her she had priority, so she could stop reserving flights she might not need.

Unreasonable requests? Maybe, except that most of those requests were for other members of Congress, because her office coordinates their military travel too. Not a single Pelosi trip was for political purposes. A Pentagon spokesperson yesterday said no one there found Pelosi.s aircraft use excessive. In fact, no less that Bush Press Secretary Tony Snow, the late Tony Snow, when the right first pushed this non-scandal, defended Pelosi.s plane use.

No surprise, considering it was first ordered by his boss, perhaps the most infamous gratuitous user of military aircraft for political purposes ever.

Let.s turn now to MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O.Donnell, also a contributor at HuffingtonPost.com. Lawrence, thanks for your time tonight, sir.

LAWRENCE O.DONNELL, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be here, Keith.

OLBERMANN: I started this segment talking about how sometimes a story doesn.t germinate the way you expect it to or maybe even the way you might want it to. Does that sound like what happened here? The far right got all worked up about Pelosi getting military flights. Judicial Watch filed these Freedom of Information requests, and then ignored the fact that the results completely refuted the narrative they were trying to sell?

O.DONNELL: Well, you know, Keith, when you go through all of that work of doing a Freedom of Information Act request, you build up a little momentum in a certain direction. And they just couldn.t turn themselves around when they got these e-mails that showed absolutely nothing. But Judicial Watch really jumped the shark with this story. Judicial Watch has become a parody of itself with this story.

To give them one credit, they do on their website allow you to link to the evidence that they use. When you link to that evidence, as I did today, and sat there delighting in these e-mails between the Speaker.s Office and the military on these planes, you keep trying to find anything that they could possibly base the story on. There is absolutely nothing there.

You know, President Bush, I think wisely, after 9/11, when they saw on that day that the vice president had to be rushed out of his office in the White House because they believed the White House was under attack -- once we started living in a world where the White House could be under attack in something other than a bad movie, it became wise to think about succession. If you were to somehow lose the president and the vice president, the speaker of the House becomes president.

With that in mind, President Bush said the speaker should have military aircraft for travel the same way we do, the same way the first two do, president, the vice president. The third one there in line should have it, too. That is where this comes from. It.s an invention of President Bush.s and probably a wise one.

OLBERMANN: The invention of this story though, and the attempt to make Nancy Pelosi look bad for some reason, which seems most operative in that? Is it that bass-ackwards narrative that the Republicans are the grown ups when it comes to the military, and everyone else are just kids out there? Or is this simple, good old-fashioned sexism?

O.DONNELL: It seems they are trying to create the image of diva, that she is demanding this extraordinary kind of limo or something, in an unnecessary way, and in an unnecessary situation. Of course, this wasn.t her idea to use military transport this way. But it is a good idea. She uses it wisely when you examine these records. There.s just nothing there.

What is in the records, as you have said, is plenty of notations of senators, Republican senators, Democratic senators, and Congressmen requesting these planes. Some of them, by the way, canceling at the last minute, deciding they are going to cancel the use of those things. There is some sort of extra expense involved in that, understandably, for the military.

But Judicial Watch tries to find something wrong in all of this and lay it entirely at Nancy Pelosi.s feet, when you can.t find anything wrong in these documents that anyone is doing in the Congress with these planes. You can imagine that someone.s abusing the privilege somewhere, but Judicial Watch didn.t find it.

OLBERMANN: When you hear constant refrains about earmarks, about government waste, et cetera, they.re all good government stuff that Republicans not only failed to reform or address or hold themselves to when they were in power, but which they abused far more willfully and far more obviously than Democrats have. Do you think the Republican party really thinks that voters don.t remember what they did when they had the unfettered power to express their own values?

O.DONNELL: Yes. I think they are relying on this very short attention span of both the media and the public. They are betting on that. They are also betting on the best way to play this game is to try to keep the public.s eye on the pebbles of government, instead of the giant mountains of government, like the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, Medicare, Social Security. To see people screaming about earmarks when Social Security and Medicare are the giant expenditures in the budget is to reveal that those people are not serious about government.

OLBERMANN: MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O.Donnell, also, as we mentioned, a contributor to "The Huffington Post." As always, sir, great thanks.

O.DONNELL: Thanks, Keith.

OLBERMANN: The DNC unveils the winner of the new Rush Limbaugh Hometown Billboard Contest. Seriously, that is the best you.ve got? The man who brought us the Contract with America now has a scheme to tackle teenage pregnancy. It involves paying teenage girls to have sex. Worsts ahead.

When Rachel joins you at the top of the hour, Bernie Madoff may now be behind bars, but what is being done to make sure he or it never happens again.

But first, because they may be gone but their deeds outlive them, the headlines lingering from the previous administration.s 50 running scandals, still bushed.

Number three, everything is bigger in Texas-gate, even the cow pies.

The Texas House today considering a resolution to honor the Blin (ph) College Lady Buccaneers Volleyball team, Region Six, teacher of the year Bonnie Blum of Bellville, and a former president named George W. Bush, of whom it is said, he, quote, lived each day with the safety and prosperity of his fellow citizens foremost in his mind. In fact, the Bush presidency was the weakest period for the US economy in decades, job growth worst in 70 years, income growth worst in 40 years, not counting the other Bush.

And living each day with our safety foremost in his mind? When the CIA warned him on August 6th, 2001, of al Qaeda.s intent to attack inside the U.S., President Bush told his briefer, all right, you.ve covered your ass now. By the way, he was in Texas when that happened. Our congratulations to Bonnie Blum and the Lady Buccaneers.

Number two, we fight them there so blah, blah, blah-gate. In Mr. Bush.s rainbow of rationales for having invaded Iraq was this, that fighting them there meant we would not have fight them here. At the Senate Committee hearing yesterday, U.S. law enforcement officials revealed that they have been here for years, recruiting Americans to join a radical Islamic group tied to al Qaeda in Somalia. The number who have already left already in double digits. One, a 27-year-old Minneapolis college student, carried out a suicide bombing in Somalia last October. Now law enforcement officials testify the U.S. is worried that eventually they will be indoctrinated and trained to fight us here.

Number one, spreading freedom-gate. This of course another shade in the rationale rainbow. Today, two examples of American freedom on the march. The Iraqi shoe thrower will spend three years in prison. And then there is 23-year-old Said Pervez Komkash (ph). Afghanistan.s Supreme Court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for a nonviolent crime. His sentence isn.t the crime. The crime is the crime. He committed blasphemy. Komkash.s offense? He allegedly circulated an article on women.s rights. His lawyer learned of the 20-year sentence when he showed up to present a defense. No need. The court had already decided, 20 years for blasphemy. Crime and punishment in a justice system you bought and paid for with American blood and treasure.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Karl Rove says the Obama White House shouldn.t pee on the leg of Boss Limbaugh during such difficulties, economically speaking. Sounds like Karl is admitting his guy left enormous economic difficulties and pee.

That.s next, but first time for COUNTDOWN.s number two story, tonight.s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to Rupert Murdoch, whose "New York Post" printed the following item today, "just when you thought Keith Olbermann inflated ego couldn.t expand further, the MSNBC blabber mouth was running around a Yanks/Reds spring training game Tuesday night autographing baseball cards featuring his own smug face. Stats on the back identified him as a lefty slugger. One fan at the game said he looked like such a jerk.

The Post.s Bill Hoffman (ph) confirms his source for this was a Post.s sportswriter at the game. That would probably have been Yankee.s beat man George King, which would seem to be supported by the number of mistakes in the story. I wasn.t handing them out. I gave one to a friend. Them is also wrong. I only had one card with me. The rest of my traveling supply had gone to charity. The quote about how I looked is also fabricated, since I gave the only card to a friend, in a private booth in the press box, and there were no witnesses.

Mr. Murdoch and his people also don.t think anybody would realize that the story they printed, which would be trivial even if had been close to being true, would be seen as revenge for my having criticized the newspaper Monday for slandering Michael wolf on the gossip page. There is a reason that Rupert.s vanity newspaper loses 50 to 60 million of his dollars a year. That is because it is now a sloppily produced vanity newspaper.

The runner up tonight, Victoria Jackson, former actress, now providing a sad coda to her brief fame on "Saturday Night Live" by appearing as a right wing curiosity on Sean Hannity.s TV show. She announced that Hannity, Governor Palin and Boss Limbaugh should be running this country. Then she explained her status as a has been by saying, in that nails on a blackboard voice of hers, quote, "my motivation is gone because Obama will punish me if I.m successful. That.s how you start communism."

Not to worry, Victoria. You haven.t been successful since "Garfield and Friends" went off the air in 1994.

But our winner, Newt Gingrich. He wants health reform in this country and he knows how to get it. Pay for it. Not pay for doctors or medicine or hospital, but pay people to do healthy things. Pay poor people money not to smoke, pay teenage girls money not to get pregnant. Wait a minute. Paying teenage girls to not get pregnant while having sex. There is a flaw in that logic somewhere. What could it be? Oh yes, legally, that would be government-sponsored child prostitution. Newt bordello brain Gingrich, today.s worst person in the world!

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Boss Limbaugh calls them the drive by media, the folks who replay the ludicrous antics and shameful statements that he spews, maliciously slandering Limbaugh by quoting verbatim the words of his biggest enemy, himself. In our number one story, it is not drive by media, but media that you might drive by, about which Limbaugh can now start belly aching. The DNC.s Caption this Billboard contest is over. The winner unveiled today. It is OK, sort of, I guess.

Last week, the Democratic National Committee began soliciting slogans

for a billboard that it would purchase in Boss Limbaugh.s home town of West

Palm Beach, Florida, as a response to Limbaugh.s call for the Obama

administration to fail. Eighty thousand submissions and more. But before

we get to the actual winner, some of a select group of also rans from a

comment section of Farc.com. The DNC did not select "please do not feed

the ego," "bring me Solo and the Wookie" -- that.s a Jabba the Hut

reference -- and that.s not winner. Finally, not used was, "fat, dumb and

conservative is no way to go through life, son."

But your winner, from somebody named William C of Camden, New Jersey, Americans didn.t vote for a Rush to failure. On that note, let.s call in Margaret Carlson, political columnist for "Bloomberg News" and the Washington editor of "The Week Magazine." Margaret, good evening.

MARGARET CARLSON, "BLOOMBERG NEW": Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Rush to failure is the winner? Isn.t it vague and frankly not nearly as funny as "Please do not feed the ego?"

CARLSON: Not funny at all, really. You have to stop and think about it, which is the last thing you want somebody reading a billboard to have to do. If you are going to run a contest that would occupy the mind of a teenage boy for an hour, you need to make it -- you need to get a slacker movie, wacky kind of intelligence brought to it, and go the whole way and make it really funny.

It is not the least bit funny. Yours, please don.t feed the ego, is a little bit funnier.

OLBERMANN: But fat jokes are -- the fat jokes in there, the ones about Jabba the Hut and stuff, they.re funny. But honestly, physical jokes should be out of bounds for both parties. But the runner-up was Rush hour is over in America. Isn.t that better than Americans didn.t vote for a Rush to failure? It is simple and it gets the point across. Doesn.t it?

CARLSON: That is much better, especially since it is on a billboard on a highway.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

CARLSON: I do wonder though, Keith, if -- you said there were 80,000 submissions for this.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

CARLSON: Aren.t the donors to the DNC going to wonder about people sitting around opening up 80,000 submissions and reading them and sort of carefully assessing is "Please feed the ego" as good as "Rush hour is over in America?" I don.t think so.

OLBERMANN: Well, you are also assuming they read all of them. They just said there were 80,000 submissions. It could be, let.s read the first ten or 20 that come in and we.ll go to lunch, which is why they -- somebody must have suggested Mt. Rush-less, which would have been funny by itself. It doesn.t necessarily mean anything.

CARLSON: That is good, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Just a corn ball thing that came to me. It has been about two weeks since the CPAC thing and since the smack down started going back and forth. Has the story run its course, or is it going to be kind of a permanent fixture of American politics? Or what happens from now on?

CARLSON: Well, Republicans say the Democrats are the ones that are stirring this pot. But it was CPAC that invited Rush to give the speech and treated him as if he were the leader of their party, or at least its most famous person. By the way, if he were a committee man from Oklahoma, I bet he would be the leader of the Republican party. He happens to be a radio talk show host.

The idea that Democrats want it and Republicans, it is their sideshow for the moment -- it is not a bad one, because, by the way, Rush is probably the best-known figure in the Republican party at the moment. Name one person that more than five people outside the beltway would recognize or want to listen to. Mitch McConnell? I don.t think so. Eric Cantor, he is an up and coming person maybe, a teeny tiny bit. But he doesn.t have name recognition yet. Rush is what there is.

OLBERMANN: Just to that point, when John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were satirized on "Saturday Night Live," when they were played by --

Boehner famously by Dan Aykroyd -- it was clear the studio audience did not know who either of them was supposed to be. Your point is well taken.

One thing I want to throw in here, a quote we did not get to, this is Rove in the "Wall Street Journal:" in the face of our enormous economic challenges, top White House aides decided to pee on Mr. Limbaugh.s leg. The only nice part about that, Margaret, is finally somebody is admitting that politicians do that.

On that note, Margaret Carlson of "Bloomberg News" and "The Week," thanks as always, Margaret.

CARLSON: We didn.t know before. Thank you, Keith.

OLBERMANN: That is COUNTDOWN for this the 2,133rd day since the previous president declared mission accomplished in Iraq. From Tampa, I.m Keith Olbermann, good night and good luck.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

END

http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2008/08/nose-out.html DON'T FORGET HOW
911 was done...
http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2008/11/ua175-wtc-hologramme-ghostplane.html
http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2008/01/luc-courchesne-911-ua-175-hologram.html

http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2007/08/david-thom-pictures.html

==========================================================
Financial Times: 911 planes were holograms

Yes, the secret is out! The airplanes that hit the World Trade Center were holographic projections. FINANCIAL TIMES of London is the most trustworthy newspaper in the world and their report on the 9/11 conspiracy theories gives a perfect overview of the current state of research into this US military atrocity.

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2008/06/financial-times-nose-out.html
==========================================================

I take it you already know that NO 767 jet ever hit the WTC. This is proven by the LIVE TV footage, just listen to Ace Baker or watch September Clues ON THAT POINT. (my blog has the links, see below)

If you believe that a Boeing 767 hit the tower, look again :

http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2007/08/framed.html

If you still believe hollow aluminium planes butter into buildings THEN DO NOT READ ON.

OK, so you are a noplaner.

Do you really think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have authorized the massaker in the USA with the threat that some idiot camera would show an explosion WITHOUT PLANE (or a missile)???

Nah, that's crazy. They could not hope to control all footage.

OK, so NOW YOU BELIEVE IN HOLOGRAMS!!!

it is 100% logical!

Are Holograms possile?

Sure! Someone left us THE PERFECT HINT on Wikipedia!

Please read this again. Someone left us a hint:

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2008/01/luc-courchesne-911-ua-175-hologram.html#dynhol
(you MUST READ THIS)

LOOK AT THE PICTURE OF A HOLOGRAM:
The "plane" looses wings and is distorted:

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2008/01/luc-courchesne-911-ua-175-hologram.html

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2007/10/911-hologram-theory.html

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2007/10/u2r2h-holo-tvf-missile-flyby-projector.html

Hey, I don't blame you for your scepticism... it *IS* difficult to swallow. Hey, but that was the idea!!

Please leave comments on my blog!!

Lets ask another one:

1- Do you believe ALL FOOTAGE that shows an airplane hitting tower WAS FAKED??

2- What do you think is the likelihood of uncensored footage to have made it into the public -- given that the second hit was under the eyes of potentially thousands of video-camera owners?

3- Given the likelihood is LOW BUT NOT ZERO, and given you insist that NO 767 hit the tower what do you think the risk was to the perps of the # hitting the fan

You see what I am driving at, huh?

You know what I think. I think it is IMPOSSIBLE that the perps would have risked it.

HENCE... the logical conclusion (people, get this into your heads!) is:

Why? because THERE WERE films, photos and eyewitnesses and they were NOT ALL FAKED

in fact there were some that were faked by the perps, wanting us to believe there were 767s.

Can you not see that Noplaners are dangerous... they contain the seed for holograms... or to put it as I do:

If you are a noplaners, you MUST be a hologrammer

If you do not agree, come forward, it shall be possible to make you understand.

Here, I quote in full:

Dynamic holography

There exist also holographic materials which don't need the developing process and can record a hologram in a very short time. This allows to use holography to perform some simple operations in an all-optical way. Examples of applications of such real-time holograms include phase-conjugate mirrors ("time-reversal" of light), optical cache memories, image processing (pattern recognition of time-varying images), and optical computing.

The amount of processed information can be very high (terabit/s), since the operation is performed in parallel on a whole image. This compensates the fact that the recording time, which is in the order of a µs, is still very long compared to the processing time of an electronic computer. The optical processing performed by a dynamic hologram is also much less flexible than electronic processing. On one side one has to perform the operation always on the whole image, and on the other side the operation a hologram can perform is basically either a multiplication or a phase conjugation. But remember that in optics, addition and Fourier transform are already easily performed in linear materials, the second simply by a lens. This enables some applications like a device that compares images in an optical way.[7]

The search for novel nonlinear optical materials for dynamic holography is an active area of research. The most common materials are photorefractive crystals, but also in semiconductors or semiconductor heterostructures (such as quantum wells), atomic vapors and gases, plasmas and even liquids it was possible to generate holograms.

So the technology is NOT IMPOSSIBLE. The military value (fool the enemy!) is enourmous. It is a technology MADE FOR UNDERCOVER and PSYOP bloodbaths.

please DEAL WITH IT!! don't let it simmer... cook it up!

Ho--lo--gram are as worthy of investigation as CGI-inserts are!

=========

Why it necessarily was holograms that hit the WTC?

good question and people are figuring it or something like it out...

South Tower Anomalies III - Addressing the Debunkers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh7cKDXnS_s

pretty good hologram here..
i'm sure governments have better technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BueH_V0Hhm8&feature=related

MYERS 911 culprit ALI BABA OSAMA FAIRY TALE

"Eyes on the Horizon" An insider.s look at global war on terror

Retired Air Force general reflects on lessons learned from September 11

Haha! Not just "a" general. He was RESPONSIBLE, like his boss, Henry Hugh Shelton!

MSNBC publishes an excerpt of this fairy tale of Ali Baba and the 19 covert operators:

TODAY books

updated 4:35 p.m. ET March 12, 2009

In a captivating memoir, retired Air Force General Richard Myers talks candidly about his career in the military, the unforgettable events of September 11, and the global war on terror. With an insider.s perspective, he outlines the mistakes made by the White House, Pentagon leadership, and the intelligence community. Here's an excerpt:

*** Arab hijackers who can tal into unsecured phone lines? Israel's (Mossad's)
Amdocs Ltd. can***

http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=israel+phone+usa+billing

Dick Myers writes (by way of a CIA ghostwriter, no doubt):

My driver, Dan Downey, braked hard at the Pentagon River Entrance, and we jumped from the car. The steps were crowded with men and women fleeing the building, many still coughing from the smoke inside. Col. Matt Klimow, my executive assistant, stood near the door, waiting calmly with a notebook. As we entered, my senses were assaulted: People moved quickly through the smoky corridors toward the exits. Speakers in the ceiling blared repeatedly, .Evacuate the building! Evacuate the building!.

We ran against the flow of the crowd to the National Military Command Center off the D Ring. The NMCC has been portrayed in many fanciful ways in Hollywood films and television dramas, usually with overly dramatic lighting and stadium size screens projecting the flow of distant battle on land, at sea, and in the air. Although there is a certain Star Wars flavor to the Command Center, in reality the facility is a communications hub, a switchboard connecting the Pentagon, the civilian government, and the combatant commanders. Horseshoe shaped computer cubicles dominate the Current Actions Center, which is about the size of a basketball court. At one end is the NMCC deputy director of operations. office, a windowless room with several desks, a conference table, and lots of telephones.

When we entered the Command Center, all the officers on duty were working calmly at their stations, despite the smoke wafting in through the ventilation system, the fact that the Pentagon had just been struck, and the distracting blast of the evacuation alarm.
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Army Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield was the duty officer in charge of the center that morning. The smoke wasn.t as bad inside his closed office where he was participating in a conference call linking the NMCC, North American Aerospace Command (NORAD), and the White House, which had been under way since just before we arrived at the Pentagon.

We learned that there was apparently a fourth hijacked aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, bound nonstop for San Francisco. Like the other planes, it had switched off its transponder, making it much harder if not impossible to track on ground radar.

A military aide in the White House relayed an important message. .NORAD estimates the aircraft is headed toward Washington,. Winfield said. .Vice President Cheney has forwarded the President.s authorization to go Weapons Free if that plane is confirmed hijacked and threatens the White House or the Capitol..

Weapons Free, I thought . permission to shoot down the hijacked plane.

There were U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard fighters up as we spoke, searching for that Boeing 757 widebody, heavily laden with fuel. No one in the Pentagon knew how many passengers were on board, but I realized the President had made the right decision in authorizing fighters to shoot down the aircraft before it reached Washington or another city. I also thought of those fighter pilots who would be ordered to kill their fellow Americans along with the hijackers. Many of the Air National Guard pilots also flew for the airlines, which would make obeying the shootdown order that much harder. But as a young pilot myself, I.d learned that war was an unforgiving business that tested moral strength as well as physical courage.

General Winfield was doing a good job of managing the information flow and keeping the chain of command plugged in, linking the President (the National Command Authority), the Secretary of Defense, the combatant commanders, and the other relevant military and civilian organizations. So I went to find Secretary Rumsfeld. As I left the Current Actions Center, CNN showed the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsing in an avalanche of smoke and debris. The announcer said something about a possible death toll of ten thousand.

The smoke was thickening on the E Ring corridor. And it was almost as bad in the Secretary.s office suite. One of Rumsfeld.s aides told me he was .outside,. helping with the wounded. I left word that I was returning to the NMCC.

When I got back there was a period of confusion about the flight numbers of the hijacked aircraft known to have crashed and the one still airborne. This was exacerbated by a communication glitch making it impossible to speak directly to the Federal Aviation Administration on the secure conference call, but we did confirm that the FAA had grounded over twenty one hundred airborne civilian aircraft by then and had diverted all inbound overseas flights. Even though we still could not communicate directly with senior FAA officials on this secure circuit, we were confident they were working as fast as possible to clear U.S. air space. There was no alternative, however: Terrorists who could hijack aircraft so readily could probably also eavesdrop on unsecured phone lines. At this time, it was tough to judge the full scope of the danger we were facing, so the conference call had become an .air threat. call, which followed priorities and protocol that I knew well from my days in command of NORAD in Colorado Springs.

One of those priorities was guarding the President of the United States aboard Air Force One, which was en route from Florida to an air base in Louisiana. NORAD had scrambled a fighter escort for the plane and now ordered a wide area AWACS airborne radar surveillance plane up on the West Coast to search for intruding or hijacked aircraft in that sector.

I also recommended that all American military commands and units worldwide go to THREATCON Delta, the highest alert level. Officially, this meant, .A terrorist attack has occurred or intelligence has been received that action against a specific location is likely.. Terrorists had staged major attacks in New York and Washington. Although we did not yet have reliable intelligence on when and where they would strike next, it seemed likely that they would.

After 10:00 A.M., an Air Force officer working in the White House told us that Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had requested the implementation of .continuity of government measures.. These were taken only in the gravest of emergencies, and most recently had been expected to meet the Cold War threat of nuclear attack. But those had been training exercises; this was real.

The measures included establishing a survivors. core of key federal government members. A rotating staff of around 150 senior officials from every cabinet department would be sent to two secure underground bunkers within driving or helicopter flight distance of Washington. Their families and loved ones could only contact them through a .sterile. toll free phone number.

Another element of the emergency plan was launching the National Airborne Operations Center. This was a high technology command, control, and communications center carried aboard a converted Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Some in Washington considered it an expensive, unnecessary relic of the Cold War, but with the capital itself now under imminent threat, it was clear that NAOC was still a useful part of the inventory. I asked Matt Klimow to verify that the plane was airborne.

NORAD now confirmed that there was an Air Force combat air patrol over Washington. If ordered to do so, the fighters would shoot down any hijacked airliner threatening structures and people in the city.

While the conference call proceeded, the CNN picture showed another horrible telescopic image: The north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed from the upper floors, the tall building.s sides billowing out like a flimsy cardboard box on a bonfire. The mushrooming cloud of smoke and dust evoked a nuclear explosion.

REALLY!! NO KIDDIN! Check www.drjudywood.com for details!!

I wondered how many thousand people trapped in that burning tower had just died.

Information reached us by a variety of routes . NORAD updates, National Security Council and FBI intelligence reports, and forwarded FAA data, which was still slowed by our lack of a direct secure channel to the agency leadership. At 10:17 A.M., we got word that the blip image of the aircraft that the FAA had assumed to be United Flight 93 had just disappeared from the radar, eastbound over southcentral Pennsylvania. This could mean several things. Was it flying so low that radar couldn.t see it? If so, was the plane still a threat to Washington? At this point we didn.t have answers to these questions.

A report from the Military District of Washington announced that almost every government office in the capital had been evacuated and that many people were leaving the city on foot. The CNN image of this flood of evacuees soon appeared on our TV screens.

This was a nightmare, and we didn.t know when it would end. But at 10:21 A.M., United Airlines confirmed that its Flight 93 had crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Unless there was another hijacking before all the flights still airborne landed, this first phase of the terrorist attack had apparently ended. But we couldn.t be certain what was happening overseas or if the terrorists had held more aircraft, large or small, in reserve for a second wave . or if they had options other than airplanes in the execution stage.

Confusion rose and fell. Fractured, unconfirmed reports reached us from the intelligence community and the Secret Service: A civil aircraft was down near Camp David (false report). ... a car bomb had exploded near the State Department, raising the question of where the nearest biochemical protection team was located (false report) . . . three commercial aircraft were .squawking. Mayday distress calls (false report) . . . the fighters responding to the situation that were not under NORAD control did not have a clear understanding of the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for hijacked planes. In other words, the country was at war again, and the fog of war was descending.

Added to this situation, acrid smoke started filling the operations floor of the NMCC and was thickening to the point that it was potentially hazardous.

But we now had a secure video teleconference scheduled, linking the Defense Department.s civilian and military leadership with the rest of government. The NMCC facility for secure teleconferences was a tiny room with a thick, airtight door. This protected us from the smoky operations floor, but the space was severely cramped. Somehow we found room for Secretary Rumsfeld and Steve Cambone, Rumsfeld.s lanky special assistant, myself, Assistant Sec¬retary for Public Affairs Torie Clark, General Counsel Jim Haynes, and Vice Adm. Ed Giambastiani, the Secretary.s military assistant, with Matt Klimow jammed into a corner, taking notes. By now, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had reached Site R, from where his image appeared in a small box at the upper righthand corner of our screen.

Again, the main issue under discussion was Rules of Engagement for NORAD to follow should there be more hijackings. The civilian leadership had their experts and a lawyer, we had ours. Some of us were developing bad head¬aches from the deteriorating air quality.

Back in the NMCC director of operations. office, Ed Giambastiani, a veteran submariner with years spent submerged, announced, .There.s no clean air in this center. It.s filling up with CO2.. He told Matt Klimow to find a firefighter with an air monitor, while he searched out an alternative place to meet.

The doomsday bellow of the fire alarm, .Evacuate the building!. had finally stopped. Our eyes were starting to sting, some streaming tears, and Secretary Rumsfeld was hacking because he had breathed thicker smoke helping to evacuate the wounded earlier.

.Sir,. I told him, .I.m worried about the people outside this office supporting us, because the air is worse out there..

Rumsfeld nodded. .We.re going to stay in here as long as we can..

We tallied the preliminary casualty and damage to the Pentagon estimates.well over one hundred killed or missing, scores wounded, including many terribly burned.and the complete destruction of a large wedge on the western, .Navy Side. of the building.

DON'T FORGET THAT FINANCIAL COMPTROLLERS DIED IN THE PENTGON CELLAR. THEY WERE INVESTIGATING THE LOST TWO TRILLION DOLLARS THAT RUMSFELD HAD PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED THE DAY BEFORE!!

google BARBARA HONEGGER 911

.We need to have the press on board, to keep them up to speed,. I told Torie Clark. .It.s important for historical reasons and to get the word out. Don.t leave them behind..

APOLLO GUARDIAN EXERCISE WAS RUNNING AT THE TIME!!

Secretary Rumsfeld asked loudly enough for everybody to hear, .What else could the enemy do?.

He was thinking ahead, engaging in Rumsfeld.s well known outside the box speculation.

.NBC,. I said. I didn.t mean the National Broadcasting Corporation. I meant nuclear, biological, and chemical.weapons of mass destruction.

At noon, Vice Adm. Tom Wilson, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, confirmed what everybody at the conference table had already surmised: The attacks had undoubtedly come from al Qaida.

Usama bin Laden and his al Qaida leadership were dug in deeper than ever in Afghanistan, still protected by the Taliban. Afghanistan was in the Area of Operations of Gen. Tommy Franks.s Central Command. Like Hugh Shelton, Tom Franks was overseas. Franks.s plane was on the ground at the Navy base in Suda Bay on Crete.
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.Ask him to get back to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, as soon as possible,. I told Matt Klimow. .I want General Franks to start looking at options for al Qaida..

If the President and the Secretary ordered us to go to war in Afghanistan, we were going to have to do it before winter, and that didn.t leave us a lot of time in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.

With that responsibility in Tom Franks.s hands, I turned to the others. .We need to keep asking, .What.s next?. .In the face of such a concerted attack, we couldn.t fall behind. I assured Secretary Rumsfeld that General Franks was now examining all options for al Qaida.

Reports from the combatant commanders around the world were coming in. Their bases and facilities were sealed tight at the highest possible alert status. No unidentified aircraft, vessel, or vehicle could approach any American military installation. At least our troops were protected. There wouldn.t be another USS Cole today.

But it was too late for many in this building. Matt Klimow arrived with an Arlington County firefighter in tow. The report was not good: The concentration of CO2 in some corridors was 88 percent, near deadly. The level in the NMCC was 32 percent. Oxygen in the NMCC was still a breathable 16 percent, but falling. When it hit 13 percent, the fireman urged us to evacuate. Ed Giambastiani brought some good news. He.d found a smoke free shelter, .OSD Cables,. a communications hub near the Office of the Secretary of Defense complex. We relocated there.

It was from here that I passed on the Secretary.s authorization for a partial Reserve call up, including fighter pilots, aerial tanker crews, and communications specialists. With the country suddenly at war,

HAHA SUDDENLY!! SURPRISE SURPRISE! THE US TOLD THE TALIBAN IT WOULD BOMB THEM WEEKS BEFORE 9/11!!!

we would need all the help we could muster, and much of that help was in the Reserve and National Guard.

After noon, Air Force One landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where President Bush broadcast a brief message to the nation. The Department of Defense, he said, was taking all appropriate security measures, including putting the military at the highest alert level worldwide. The President asked for prayers for the thousands who had died and for their families.

.Make no mistake,. he said. .The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts..

Excerpted from .Eyes on the Horizon. by Richard Myers. Copyright © 2009 by RMyers and Associates, LLC. Reprinted with permission of Threshold, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29658595/page/2/

911 truth CREDIBILITY - on the line

Check out the PROFESSIONALS who put their credibility on the line by being counted amongst the people who belive that 911 was NOT DONE BY ARABS, but by the US MILITARY.. and inside job, a covert operation, a false flag wet job.

THE PRETEXT FOR WAR AND RULE BY FEAR.

Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (pl911truth.com) is today being launched as the latest formal group calling for a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001. The organization is headed by Councilor (Senator) Yukihisa Fujita of Japan and former Senator Karen Johnson of Arizona.

This initiative is formed around a petition asking President Obama .to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11..

Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth thus joins other concerned citizens. groups calling for a new investigation, including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth.

Independent researchers from these professions have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that the official investigations have been cover-up operations.

Senator Yukihisa Fujita explains the new initiative: .Thus far there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or in other capitals around the world. Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth has been formed to encourage such a response..

The organization is being launched with 20 charter members, including a former US governor, a former US senator, former US representatives, and former and present members of the British, German, Japanese, Norwegian, and European parliaments.

Charter member Robert Bowman, former head of the .Star Wars. program, explains the continuing relevance of the issue: .The 9/11 Tragedy has been used as the excuse for two deadly wars of aggression, for taking away our rights, and for committing war crimes that have undermined America.s reputation. Only by exposing the truth about 9/11 can we end this madness..

Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth invites other people who hold, or have held, a political office.whether elected or appointed, whether municipal, state, provincial, national, or international. to sign the petition at pl911truth.com.

Senator Johnson sums it up: .The organization believes that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now.not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books.so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed..

Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth

Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects and engineers (622 licensed professionals have signed, plus 3000 supporters and A&E student http:/ae911truth.org/ ) firefighters http://firefightersfor911truth.org/ intelligence officers http://patriotsquestion911.com/ lawyers http://l911t.com/ medical professionals http://mp911truth.org/ military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots http://pilotsfor911truth.org/ have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official .investigations. have really been cover-up operations.

Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response.

We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed.

We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media.

An .independent. investigation means, specifically, independent from the U.S. administrations that were in power prior to, and at the time of, the 9/11 attacks, who might have things to hide. As shown by New York Times writer Philip Shenon in his 2008 book, The Commission, the 9/11 Commission was run by its executive director, Philip Zelikow, and he was very closely associated with the Bush administration. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which issued the official reports on the destruction of the World Trade Center, is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which means that, while writing these reports, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration. We need an investigation that is free from such conflicts of interest.

If you hold, or have held, a political office (elected or appointed) in the United States or in any other country, you are invited to examine our petition (click on .Petition and Members list. under the Main Menu). If you decide to join, go to the Sign the Petition page. Becoming a member of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth will not require any time beyond that which it takes to sign the petition---although additional activity to spread 9/11 truth is, of course, encouraged.

34 Political Leaders have already signed the petition

Brae Antcliffe BA LLB, Elected Alderman to the Council of The City of Sydney, Australia, early 1980s for 3.5 years

Berit Ås, former member of Parliament, Norway (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Shirley Bianchi, 1999-2007 District Two San Luis Obispo County Supervisor, California (Retired) Click here to see statement

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement

Andreas von Bülow, former State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense, West Germany; former Minister of Research and Technology; former member of the German Parliament (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Donald R. Bustion, former Assistant Attorney General of Texas

Giulietto Chiesa, Italian member of the European Parliament; vice chairman, Committee on International Trade; member, Committee on Security and Defense (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Matt Cole, Board of Trustees, Town of Alma; Alma, Colorado, USA

Wolfram Elsner, PhD, former head of the Planning Division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the State of Bremen; director of the Bremen State Economic Research Institute; and Bremen State Official for Industrial Defense Conversion, 1989 - 2001 (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Douglas Nixon Everingham, Member, House of Representatives, Australia, 1967-75 and 1977-84, Minister for Health 1972-75, a Vice-President, World Health Assembly 1975, Parliamentary Adviser, UN delegation. Click here to see statement

Jeanette Fitzsimons, Co-leader of the New Zealand Green Party since 1995, and member of the House of Representatives since 1999. Click here to see statement

Constance Fogal, Canadian Action Party Leader, 2004-2008 (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Yukihisa Fujita, member of the House of Councilors, National Diet of Japan; Chairman, Special Committee on North Korean Abduction Issue and Related Matters; former member of the House of Representatives (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Ole Gerstrom, Member of Parliament, Denmark, 1973-1975. Click here to see statement

Senator Mike Gravel, United States Senator (1969 - 1981) (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Dan Hamburg, former Californian member of the US House of Representatives (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Joel S. Hirschhorn, Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment 1978-1990 (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement

Barbara Honegger, former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to President Ronald Reagan (1981 - 1983) (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Tadashi Inuzuka, member of the House of Councilors, National Diet of Japan (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Karen S. Johnson, former member of the Senate of the State of Arizona, where she was chair of the Family Services Committee (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Scott Kennedy, former Mayor and City Council Member, (12 years), Santa Cruz, California

Senator Prof. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, member of Pakistan's Senate since 2006; member of Standing committee on Education and Science and Technology; member of Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs; Vice President of Jamaat e Islami (Pakistan) Click here to see statement

Paul Lannoye, former Belgian member of the European Parliament, where he was vice chair of the Committee on Energy, Research, and Technology (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Jon Paul McClellan, chief election judge (appointed), Eastside Precinct, Orange County, North Carolina; former elected chair of the precinct organization. Click here to see statement

Cynthia McKinney, former Georgian member of the US House of Representatives, where she was a member of the Armed Services Committee and the International Relations Committee (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Michael Meacher, Minister of the British Parliament; former Minister of the Environment; former Undersecretary for Industry (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Per Mohn, deputy representative to the Norwegian Parliament from Akershus, 1989.1993

Dr. Andrew J. Moulden, Leader of the Canadian Action Party (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

David Nelson, Hate Crimes Working Group (appointed advisory commission), U.S. Department of Justice, Utah, 1997-2001 Click here to see statement

Marty B. O'Malley, elected Democratic member of Council, Forest Hills, PA Click here to see statement

Bruce Randall, elected Longmeadow (Massachusetts) Water & Sewer Commissioner, 2002-2003, then Chairman, 2003-3004 Click here to see statement

Val Scott, founding member of Canada's New Democratic Party; former Trustee and Vice Chairman of North York Board of Education, Ontario, Canada (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement

Gianni Vattimo, member of European Parliament, 1999 - 2004 (Italy); Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs; Committee on Employment and Social Affairs; Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota (Charter Member of PL911Truth)

welcome Guests Download Podcast

Unwelcome Guests: #453 - American Fascism and 9/11

Date: 2009-03-08 Length: 01:59:00

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/32011

Letter to Congress regarding the 9/11 Commission Report 9/13/04, signed by the following 25 military, intelligence, and law enforcement veterans: http://www.nswbc.org

"[W]e the undersigned wish to bring to the attention of the Congress and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the report and its recommendations. .

Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission.s report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention. .

The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations. ...

The Commission, with its incomplete report of "facts and circumstances", intentional avoidance of assigning accountability, and disregard for the knowledge, expertise and experience of those who actually do the job, has now set about pressuring our Congress and our nation to hastily implement all its recommendations. ...

We the undersigned, who have worked within various government agencies (FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA, Customs) responsible for national security and public safety, call upon you in Congress to include the voices of those with first-hand knowledge and expertise in the important issues at hand. We stand ready to do our part." http://www.nswbc.org

Edward J. Costello, Jr. . Former Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI. Former Judge pro tem., Los Angeles, CA.

John M. Cole . Former Intelligence Operations Specialist, in the FBI.s Counterintelligence Division. In charge of FBI.s foreign intelligence investigations covering India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 18-year FBI career.

Mark Conrad, JD . Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations. Former Federal Sky Marshall. 27-year U.S. Customs career. Currently Associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents. Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University.

Rosemary N. Dew . Former Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, FBI. Former member of The President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) and the Electronic Commerce/Cyber Crime Working Group. 13-year FBI career.

Bogdan Dzakovic . Witness before the 9/11 Commission. 14-year Counter-terrorism expert in the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration. Team Leader of the FAA's Red (Terrorism) Team, which conducted undercover tests on airport security through simulated terrorist attacks. Former Team Leader in the Federal Air Marshal program. Former Coast Guard officer. (See also individual statement above.)

Sibel D. Edmonds . Witness before the 9/11 Commission. Former Language Translation Specialist, performing translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations, FBI. (See also individual statement above.)

Steve Elson . Former Special Agent with the U.S. Navy and the FAA. Specialist in Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and Security. Twenty-two years military experience, primarily in Naval Special Warfare and nine years Federal service with the FAA and DEA. Retired Navy SEAL. (See also individual statement above.)

David Forbes . Former head of Thames Valley Police Fraud Squad, trained at New Scotland Yard. Over 30 years experience in law enforcement, commercial and industrial security-related risk management, and service sector business management. Currently Aviation, Logistics and Govt. Security Analyst, BoydForbes, Inc.

Melvin A. Goodman . Former Division Chief and Senior Analyst at the Office of Soviet Affairs, CIA,1966 - 1990. Senior Analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, 1974 - 1976. Professor of International Security at the National War College 1986 - 2004. Currently Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author and co-author of five books on international relations. (See also individual statement above.)

Mark Graf . Former Security Supervisor, Planner, and Derivative Classifier, Department of Energy. Former Chairman of the Rocky Flats (DOE) Physical Security Systems Working Group from 1990 through 1995.

Gilbert M. Graham . Retired Special Agent, Counterintelligence, FBI. 24-year FBI career.

Diane Kleiman . Former Special Agent, US Customs.

Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret) . Former Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Also served on the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency. 20-year Air Force veteran. (See also individual statement above.)

Lynne A. Larkin . Former CIA Operations Officer. Served in several CIA foreign stations and in the CIA's counter-intelligence center helping chair a multi-agency task force and seminars on coordinating intelligence among intelligence and crime prevention agencies.

David MacMichael, PhD . Former Senior Estimates Officer with special responsibility for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the CIA's National Intelligence Council. Former Captain, U.S. Marine Corps.

Raymond L. McGovern . Former Chairman, National Intelligence Estimates, CIA, responsible for preparing the President. Daily Brief (PDB) for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. 27-year CIA veteran. Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. (See also individual statement above.)

Theodore J. Pahle . Former Senior Intelligence Officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency. His 37-year intelligence career was exclusively as a HUMINT (Human Intelligence) operations officer with DIA, Office of Naval Intelligence and U.S. Army Intelligence. He is a Middle East and Latin American operations specialist. Today, he continues to support the HUMINT effort as a contract instructor.

Behrooz Sarshar . Retired Language Translation Specialist, performing Farsi translations for counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations dealing with Iran and Afghanistan, FBI.

Brian F. Sullivan . Retired Special Agent and Risk Management Specialist, FAA. Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Military Police.

Commander Larry J. Tortorich, U.S. Navy (ret) . Former Deputy Program Manager for Logistics . Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. 24-year Navy career in the fields of aviation and counterterrorism. Two years as a federal employee with DHS/TSA in the fields of security and counterterrorism.

Jane A. Turner . Retired Special Agent, FBI. 24-year FBI career.

John B. Vincent . Retired Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI. 27-year FBI career.

Fred Whitehurst, JD, PhD . Retired Supervisory Special Agent / Laboratory Forensic Examiner, FBI. 16-year FBI career. Former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer.

Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret) . Retired Army officer and former U.S. Diplomat. Served 13 years on active duty with the U.S. Army and 16 years in the U.S. Army Reserves. She was a member of the International law team in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada and served in Panama and Somalia. She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. She helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001. One of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. (See also individual statement above.)

Matthew J. Zipoli . Special Response Team (SRT) Officer, DOE. Vice President, Security Police Officer's Association, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

U.S. FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

Max Cleland

Senator Max Cleland

Senator Max Cleland . Former member of the 9/11 Commission, resigned in December 2003. Currently serves on the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. U.S. Senator from Georgia 1997 - 2002. Secretary of State of Georgia 1982 - 1996. Administrator of the U.S. Veterans Administration 1977 - 1981. Former Captain, U.S. Army. Awarded Silver Star and Bronze Star for bravery in Viet Nam. Triple amputee from war injuries.

* Article New York Times 10/26/03: "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted." http://www.commondreams.org

* Article Boston Globe 11/13/03: "If this decision stands [to limit access to White House documents], I, as a member of the [9/11] Commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the Commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised. . . . This is `The Gong Show'; this isn't protection of national security." http://www.

* Article Salon 11/21/03: Regarding the 9/11 Commission "It is a national scandal." http://dir.salon.com

* Resigned from the 9/11 Commission, 12/03, after having served on it for 12 months. Former Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska was selected to replace him. The 9/11 Commission Report was issued 7 months later.

* Interview Democracy Now 3/23/04: "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up." http://www.democracynow.org

* Bio: http://memory.loc.gov

Terrill Arnold

Terrell E. Arnold, MA

Terrell (Terry) E. Arnold, MA . Former Deputy Director, Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, U.S. State Department. Former Chairman, Department of International Studies, National War College. Graduate of the National War College. Retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the U.S. Department of State. He has served as a security and crisis management consultant for several Fortune 500 companies. He also served as a crisis management consultant for several Federal agencies, including The State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and Korean conflict. Author, co-author, and editor of Fighting Back: Winning the War Against Terrorism (1986), Beyond the Iran-Contra Crisis : The Shape of U. S. Anti-Terrorism Policy in the Post-Reagan Era (1988), The Violence Formula: Why People Lend Sympathy and Support to Terrorism (1990), Think About Terrorism: The New Warfare (1991), A World Less Safe: Essays on Conflict in the 21st Century (2005).

* Essay It is Vital to Move Beyond 911 7/3/07:

"More than five years after the fact, Washington leadership keeps the American people fixated on the events of 9/11. They have brought us no closer than we were on September 12, 2001 to resolving how it was executed and by what enemy. They tell us repeatedly that it was the work of al Qaida, but they have yet to show us the proofs. They told us the official version of what happened that day, but their story is laced with contradictions, and the facts visible on the ground at the time belie much of the official account. Our leadership gave us a Sopranos blank screen ending to a terrible tragedy, while working below the radar to avoid our established laws and slowly to destroy our democratic institutions. Every American must look carefully at the pattern of decay that began with 9/11. ...

As an alleged post 9/11 defense, the War on Terrorism is a gigantic fraud. ...

We cannot let a single criminal act, the facts and perpetrators of which are still obscure, destroy our society. With all respect due to those who lost family and friends in the attacks of 9/11, there is no evident search for justice, truth or our future safety in the US government actions outlined in this paper. Instead we are watching the most brutal power games of our times that benefit the few at the expense of the rest of us." http://www.rense.com

* Bio: Library of Congress

Edward Peck

Edward L. Peck

Edward L. Peck . Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan. Former Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs at the State Department. U.S. Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq (1977 - 1980). 32-year veteran of the Foreign Service.

* Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. . As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
o An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
o Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
o Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
o The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." http://www.911truth.org/article

* Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Peck

Morton Goulder

Morton Goulder

Morton Goulder . Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Warning under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter (1973 - 1977). Served as Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy. Founder of Sanders Associates.

* Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. . As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
o An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
o Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
o Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
o The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." http://www.911truth.org/article

Marcus Raskin

Marcus Raskin, JD

Marcus Raskin, JD . Former member of the special staff of the National Security Council in President Kennedy.s Administration. Senior Fellow and Professor of Policy Studies, George Washington University. Co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Advisor to the Episcopal Urban Bishops. Former member of the Presidential Commission on Education and advisor to the Bureau of the Budget and the Office of Science and Technology in the Executive Office of the President. Author, co-author and editor of more than 20 books on national security and domestic affairs, including The Four Freedoms under Siege: The Clear and Present Danger from Our National Security State (2006), In Democracy's Shadow: The Secret World of National Security (2005), Liberalism (2003), Visions and Revisions: Reflections on Culture and Democracy at the End of the Century (1998), Abolishing the War System (1992), The Common Good: Its Politics, Policies, and Philosophy (1986), The Politics of National Security (1979).

* Endorsement of The New Pearl Harbor: "This is an important, extraordinarily well-reasoned and provocative book that should be widely read. Griffin raises disturbing questions that deserve thoughtful and truthful answers from our government." http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/sveniot/nph/

* Bio: http://www.ips-dc.org/bios.htm#Marcus%20Raskin

Louis Freeh

Louis Freeh

Louis Freeh . Director of the FBI, 1993 - 2001. Former U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Former Deputy United States Attorney in New York. Former FBI agent. Former officer in the United States Army JAG Corps Reserve.

* Essay An Incomplete Investigation - Why did the 9/11 Commission ignore "Able Danger"? Wall Street Journal 11/17/05: "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 and arrest terrorists. 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. . No wonder the 9/11 families were outraged by these revelations and called for a "new" commission to investigate." http://www.opin

* Interview Lou Dobbs Tonight CNN 11/30/05: Regarding the Able Danger anti-terrorism data mining program.

Lou Dobbs: Why is there this reaction to what is called by more than half of our congressmen and women, to open up and to allow our elected representatives to know what happened?

Louis Freeh: Well, it's a great question. I mean, the issue here, which was the issue when the 9/11 commission first responded to this, is they obviously missed something. They obviously didn't consider what at least is a very important allegation.

Their response to it, it was historically insignificant. Historically insignificant that an intelligence unit may have identified by name and photo, Mohamed Atta a year before the 9/11 hijackings as a member of al Qaeda in the United States.

Lou Dobbs: Tim Roemer, Slade Gorton, other members of the 9/11 commission have said they just had no hard evidence to deal with here. How do you respond?

Louis Freeh: I disagree with that. I was a prosecutor and an FBI agent for many, many years. I deal in facts. You have two witnesses. You have United States Naval Academy graduate, Captain Phillpott, you have Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, an army intelligence officer. These aren't data loaders, these are intelligence experts who both have said, unequivocally, this unit identified Mohammed Atta by name and possibly photo in mid 2000.

To say that they don't have any documents to prove their case, these aren't informants that we have to verify their credibility. We have testimonial evidence, which, as a prosecutor, that's more potent sometimes than documentary evidence.

Lou Dobbs: You were director of the FBI until June of 2001. Were you ever aware of Able Danger? Was the FBI ever given any reason to sense that there was some military intelligence or military intelligence evidence or suggestion that there would be an attack or some relationship to Mohamed Atta?

Louis Freeh: Absolutely not. Myself, but also my former colleagues and current FBI colleagues, we read about this in the newspapers in August of this year. And what is very significant here Lou -- which is a point that has been made, and which I think you made -- we had officers at Able Danger who made appointments, actually made appointments to go to the FBI and share this intelligence in 2000 and those appointments were canceled.

It had to be a very powerful stimulus, this intelligence and information, to make these officers want to really breach the chain of command and go directly to the FBI. We'd like to know why those appointments were canceled." http://transcripts.cnn.com

* Editor's note: The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that only three of the alleged hijackers were known to U.S. intelligence agencies prior to 9/11; Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdar. There is no mention in the Report that the names and photographs of alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and alleged ring-leader Mohamed Atta had been identified by the Department of Defense antiterrorist program known as Able Danger more than a year prior to 9/11 and that they were known to be affiliates of al-Qaida. Able Danger also identified Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar. http://www.foxnews.com. See also Rep. Curt Weldon, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, Major Erik Kleinsmith, and James D. Smith.

* Bio: http://www.fbi.gov/libref/directors/freeh.htm

Mike Gravel

Senator Mike Gravel

Senator Mike Gravel . Former U.S. Senator from Alaska 1969 - 1980. Candidate for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. Most well known for entering over 4,000 page of the the Pentagon Papers into the U.S. Senate record, thus making public the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. (See also Daniel Ellsberg.) Also known for his successful one-man filibuster for five months in 1971 that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft (military conscription) in the United States. Former Member, Alaska House of Representatives 1962-1966, elected Speaker in 1965. Former Counter-Intelligence officer, U.S. Army. Founder, The Democracy Foundation. Author of Citizen Power: A People's Platform (1972), Pentagon Papers, In Four Volumes: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam (1971), Jobs and More Jobs (1968). Contributing author to The Case for a Nuclear Moratorium (1974).

* Member: Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Association Statement:

"Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots---have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official .investigations. have really been cover-up operations.

Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response.

We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed.

We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media."

* Video interview by Davis Fleetwood 7/23/07:

Question: 53% of the Americans in the New York Times / CBS [poll] think the government is lying to them about 9/11. Why is that question not asked at these debates?

Senator Gravel: I don't know. They don't want to ask it. And I pledge to the people who are concerned about that, that should I become President, we're going to have a new investigation.

Question: Do we know the whole truth about 9/11?

Senator Gravel: Hell, no! http://www.youtube.com

* Video interview on INN World Report (New York) 2/15/08:

Lenny Charles: In New York, we have a ballot initiative coming forward. They're collecting signatures from New York citizens to have a new 9/11 investigation. And you've been asked to be a Commissioner if that investigation goes forward. What are your thoughts on that?

Senator Gravel: I have told the leaders of this organization, Les Jamison and Dr. Pepper, I would be honored to serve on that Commission. And I hope the citizens of New York pass this initiative. And I don't know if they'll be able to overcome the powers of the Federal government, but I tell you, if I become President of the United States, that Commission will be created in spades.

We will have a Commission that will re-examine not only what happened at 9/11 and post-9/11, but how -- re-examining all of the intelligence prior to 9/11 -- why the failure took place. And they'll subpoena anybody and everybody and they'll put them under oath, starting from the President of the United States on down. And if there's any perjury taking place or criminality is discovered, we'll prosecute them from the President on down to the fullest extent of the law. And if they go to jail, they go to jail.
At about the 80% point in the video http://innworldreport.net

* Endorser of and proposed Commissioner of a New Investigation into 9/11 as described in the New York City Ballot Initiative 11/08: "Petition to Create a NYC Independent Commission with Subpoena Power to Conduct a Comprehensive and Fact-Driven Investigation of All Relevant Aspects of the Tragic Events of September 11, 2001 and Issue a Report.

WHEREAS, many New York City voters believe that there remain many unanswered questions critical to establishing the truth about all relevant events leading up to, during and subsequent to the tragic attacks occurring on September 11, 2001 (.9/11.), and

WHEREAS, no prior investigation by any New York City agency or any other governmental entity has resulted in the citizens being provided with those critical answers or information necessary to establish the truth about those tragic events, ...

An independent, temporary New York City commission (the .Commission.) is hereby created to conduct a comprehensive, factdriven investigation into the events that took place on 9/11, as well as to thoroughly examine related events before and after the attacks, including any activities attempting to hide, cover up, impede or obstruct any investigation into these 9/11 events, following wherever the facts may lead. The Commission shall publish one or more reports of their findings."

* Presidential campaign website: http://www.gravel2008.us/

* Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel

Lincoln Chafee

Senator Lincoln Chafee

Senator Lincoln Chafee . U.S. Senator from Rhode Island 1999 - 2006. Served on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Currently a distinguished visiting fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

* Endorser of and proposed Commissioner of a New Investigation into 9/11 as described in the New York City Ballot Initiative 11/08: "Petition to Create a NYC Independent Commission with Subpoena Power to Conduct a Comprehensive and Fact-Driven Investigation of All Relevant Aspects of the Tragic Events of September 11, 2001 and Issue a Report.

WHEREAS, many New York City voters believe that there remain many unanswered questions critical to establishing the truth about all relevant events leading up to, during and subsequent to the tragic attacks occurring on September 11, 2001 (.9/11.), and

WHEREAS, no prior investigation by any New York City agency or any other governmental entity has resulted in the citizens being provided with those critical answers or information necessary to establish the truth about those tragic events, ...

An independent, temporary New York City commission (the .Commission.) is hereby created to conduct a comprehensive, factdriven investigation into the events that took place on 9/11, as well as to thoroughly examine related events before and after the attacks, including any activities attempting to hide, cover up, impede or obstruct any investigation into these 9/11 events, following wherever the facts may lead. The Commission shall publish one or more reports of their findings."

* Bio: http://bioguide.congress.gov

Bob Graham

Senator Bob Graham

Senator Bob Graham . Former U.S. Senator from Florida 1987 - 2004. Former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Co-Chairman of the Joint House-Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (JICI) that investigated the events of 9/11. Former Governor of Florida 1979 - 1986

* Article Salon 9/8/04: "As the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman during the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the run-up to the Iraq war, Sen. Bob Graham tried to expose what he came to believe were national security coverups and manipulations by the Bush administration. But he discovered that it was hard to reveal a coverup playing by the rules. Much of the evidence the Florida Democrat needed to buttress his arguments was being locked away, he found, under the veil of politically motivated classification. ...

Question by Mary Jacoby: You write about the Bush administration's suppression of the joint House-Senate intelligence panel's findings on Saudi Arabian links to 9/11. What exactly was suppressed, and why?

Bob Graham: In general terms it included the details of why we [on the committee] had raised suspicion that the Saudi government and various representatives of Saudi interests had supported some of the hijackers -- and might have supported all of them. My own personal conclusion was that the evidence of official Saudi support for at least two of the terrorists in San Diego was, as one CIA agent said, incontrovertible. ...

The White House played a heavy role throughout not only our investigation but the investigation of the 9/11 commission." http://dir.salon.com

* Article Boston Globe 9/5/04: "Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters," obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees." http://www.boston.com

* Editor's note: Despite the finding of the Joint House-Senate Select Intelligence Committee's 2002 Report (p.415) of "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers", the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 172) states, "Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government -- or government official -- supplied any funding." For more information on foreign support of the 9/11 hijackers, see Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Major John Newman, William Bergman, and Michael Meacher.

* Bio: http://bioguide.congress.gov...

Mark Dayton

Senator Mark Dayton

Senator Mark Dayton . Former U.S. Senator from Minnesota 2001 - 2006. Member, Senate Committee on Armed Services and Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Services.

* Senate Hearings on the 9/11 Commission Report 7/31/04: "They [NORAD] lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 Commission. ... For almost three years now NORAD officials and FAA officials have been able to hide their critical failures that left this country defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history." http://www.911truth

* Editor's note: On August 1, 2006, Thomas Kean, Chairman of the 9/11 Commission said, "We, to this day, don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth. ... It's one of those loose ends that never got tied." Link Despite the many public statements by 9/11 Commissioners and staff members acknowledging they were repeatedly lied to, not a single person has ever been charged, tried, or even reprimanded for lying to the 9/11 Commission.

* Article Star Tribune 7/31/04: "Dayton, a former Minnesota state auditor, called the FAA's and NORAD's failures "the most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I've ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector." http://www.911readingroom.org

* Bio: http://bioguide.congress.gov

Patrick Leahy

Senator Patrick Leahy, JD

Senator Patrick Leahy, JD . U.S. Senator from Vermont 1974 - present. Chairman, Judiciary Committee. Former Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

* Interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now 9/29/06:

"For one thing, we would have been asking the questions about what's been going on for six years. We've had a rubberstamp congress that automatically has given the President anything he wants, because nobody's asked questions. Nobody's asked the questions that are in the Woodward book that's coming out this weekend, where you find all the mistakes were made because they will acknowledge no mistakes. The Republicans control both the House and the Senate. They will not call hearings. They won't try to find out how did Halliburton walk off with billions of dollars in cost overruns in Iraq. Why did the Bush administration refuse to send the body armor our troops needed in Iraq? Why did they send inferior material?

And, of course, the two questions that the Congress would not ask, because the Republicans won't allow it, is, why did 9/11 happen on George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen? And secondly, when they had Osama bin Laden cornered, why didn't they get him? Had there been an independent congress, one that could ask questions, these questions would have been asked years ago." http://www.democracynow.org

* Bio: http://bioguide.congress.gov

Jesse Ventura

Gov. Jesse Ventura

Gov. Jesse Ventura . 38th Governor of Minnesota 1999 - 2003. Member, U.S. Navy Underwater Demolition Team 12 (precursor to SEAL) 1969 - 1975. U.S. Navy Reserves, SEAL Team 1. Former professional wrestler and actor. The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987). Author or co-author of I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom up (2000), Quotations of Chairman Jesse (2000), Do I Stand Alone?: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals (2001), Jesse Ventura Tells It Like It Is: America's Most Outspoken Governor Speaks Out About Government (2002), The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War (2004).

* Member: Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Association Statement:

"Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots---have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official .investigations. have really been cover-up operations.

Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response.

We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed.

We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media."

* Interviewed on The Alex Jones Show 4/2/08:

"Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, Ventura said that his initial reaction to 9/11 was much like most people at the time, and he accepted the official story outright, a response he now regrets because he was in a position of power and could have used it to raise a lot of pointed questions.

"I kicked myself when it initially happened that the light didn't go off but I was so shocked that this thing had even taken place that I apologize for not being more aware," said Ventura, adding that watching Loose Change at the insistence of his son was part of the catalyst for his wake up call.

Host Alex Jones is executive producer of Loose Change (get it here), the most watched Internet movie of all time. Ventura said he ran through a rollercoaster of emotions when he saw the film.

"When I finally did watch it I went through every emotion you could imagine, from laughing, crying, getting sick to my stomach, to the whole emotional thing," said the former Governor.

"To me questions haven't been answered and are not being answered about 9/11," said Ventura, before highlighting the collapse of Building 7, a 47-story tall skyscraper that was not hit by a plane but collapsed in its own footprint in the late afternoon of September 11.

"Two planes struck two buildings .... but how is it that a third building fell 5 hours later?" asked Ventura, "How could this building just implode into its own footprint 5 hours later - that's my first question - the 9/11 Commission didn't even devote one page to that in their big volume of investigation," added the former Governor.

Ventura then explored how it was possible that all three buildings could rapidly collapse at almost free fall speed.

"How could those buildings fall at the speed of gravity - if you put a stopwatch on them, both of those World Trade Center buildings were on the ground in ten seconds - how can that be?" asked Ventura.

"If you took a billiard ball and dropped it from the height of the World Trade Center in a vacuum it would hit the ground in 9.3 seconds and if you took that same billiard ball and dropped it 10 stories at a time and merely stopped it and started it it would take 30 seconds - if you dropped it every floor of the World Trade Center to the ground, simply stopping and starting it on gravity it would take over 100 seconds to reach the ground," he surmised.

Having undergone Basic Underwater Demolition Seal training, Ventura is speaking from an experienced standpoint and he unequivocally stated that he thought the buildings were deliberately imploded.

"Upon looking at the film in super-slow motion and the way the buildings fell and comparing that to the way that they do like a controlled demolition of a hotel in Las Vegas, they both fell identical."

"I did watch the film of Building 7 going down and in my opinion there's no doubt that that building was brought down with demolition," said the former Governor.

Ventura also questioned the lack of wreckage outside of the Pentagon after Flight 77 allegedly struck the building.

"When I was watching Loose Change with a friend of mine - he happens to work for a company that helps build the Boeing airplanes and they said that when the engines completely disappeared and were destroyed, his response was, excuse my French - bullshit!," said Ventura.

"I turned to him and said why and he said because they're made of titanium steel - they can't disintegrate." http://prisonplanet.com

* Video interview The Alex Jones Show 9/26/06: "The thing I question on 9/11 was simply the fact; where were our planes? When all this was going on and planes were being hijacked an hour apart and there were four of them They cover about a six-hour space. At no time, to my knowledge, did we have any fighter planes up in the air. Why? ...

In light of the fact that there was a cover-up that got us into the Viet Nam war and there was, in my opinion, a cover-up of John Kennedy's assassination, I would just say that I don't believe it's beyond reason to not at least consider that the government certainly would do things like that." http://www.infowars.com/articles

* Interview Black Op Radio 8/20/04: "At first, again, I wanted to believe 9/11, you know. But the problem I have with 9/11 is just a real simple one. I'm trying to figure out -- and of course they're now attempting to answer it somewhat -- how we could have failed so miserably in not having air defense. ...

And the problem I have with 9/11 is that. Where the heck was our defense? Who was sleeping at the wheel? While all of these planes... I mean, I've been to air traffic control when I was Governor, and you've got a dozen people there looking at these dials, watching every plane in their sector. They know where it's going and they know what direction it's supposed to be going

Now, how is it that these planes were able to be hijacked at half hour intervals, turned directly opposite the way they're supposed to be going and no bells went off, no emergency sirens went off, no fighter jets were scrambled? Just what the hell happened in that area of time?! And that's the part that troubles me about 9/11. ...

I mean here's the Pentagon, the head of our military. How was this plane able to circle the city of Baltimore [sic] at least once, picking out a target, and then drive into it, and we didn't have -- nothing up in the air? There wasn't one scrambled fighter jet up there to defend in any way, shape, or form?" http://www.libertypost.org

* Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Ventura

Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul, MD

Congressman Ron Paul, MD . 9-term Congressman from Texas, 1979 - 1985, 1997 - present. Candidate for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. Member of the House Financial Services Committee, the International Relations committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. On the Financial Services Committee, he serves as the Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for President. Physician. Former Flight Surgeon, U.S. Air Force.

* Audio interview The Alex Jones Show 1/18/07: "Dr. Ron Paul, Texas Congressman exploring a run for President, appeared on The Alex Jones Show Wednesday and had the following to say about 9/11:

Caller: I want a complete, impartial, and totally independent investigation of the events of September 11, 2001 . I'm tired of this bogus garbage about terrorism. Ask Michael Meacher about how he feels about this bogus war on terrorism. Can you comment on that please?

Congressman Paul: Well, that would be nice to have. Unfortunately, we don't have that in place. It will be a little bit better now with the Democrats now in charge of oversight. But you know, for top level policy there's not a whole lot of difference between the two policies so a real investigation isn't going to happen. But I think we have to keep pushing for it. And like you and others, we see the investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on." http://www.total911.info

* Radio interview on Wake Up America with Pat Gorman 6/21/07: In response to a caller's question about the 9/11 investigation.

Congressman Paul: Well, I think he was asking about, you know, who ultimately is to blame and whether or not it deserves more investigation. There was one investigation. They spent a lot of money and very extensive and I think he indicated that they didn't even mention the third building that went down (WTC Building 7).

Government investigations, as a general rule, aren't very good because when the government does it, they generally protect the government. And whether it's investigating 9/11, or, you know, Ruby Ridge, or Waco, they tend more to be coverups than anything else.

The truth is I don't know exactly all that transpired. I don't know if anybody knows the absolute truth, but there's reason to be very suspect of what's happened. And I am convinced that the 9/11 Commission Report did ignore some very, very important things like the third building, as well as why did those numerous Arabs from Saudi Arabia with the name of bin Laden get to go home when none of us were allowed on airplanes. That always amazed me, as well, especially since the 15 out of 19 came from Saudi Arabia. And then they turn around and they use this as an excuse to go into Iraq. So, you know the whole thing, whether it's strictly 9/11 but it's the repercussions from 9/11 that led to the useless and needless war, that all needs looked into just for the sake of the future of our country. ...

Pat Gorman: It seems that we've got this propaganda machine that has just started to really blow up and being out of control. Like, you know, tell them whatever we want them to hear. Don't tell them the truth. ...

Congressman Paul: Yeah and I think that's true. The only way that can work is you have to terrorize the people, our people, in a different way than, you know, what terrorism is really is all about, but we terrorize them by building up tremendous fear. You know, "If you don't do something, if you don't give up your liberties and if you don't invade this country, we're all going to be blown up." You know, so they have to terrorize us and build great fear that something terrible is going to happen to our country unless we sacrifice our liberties and go to war." http://media.putfile.com

* Editor's note: WTC Building 7 was 610 feet tall, 47 stories. It would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11, seven hours after the collapses of the Twin Towers. However, no mention of its collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." Watch the collapse video here. And six years after 9/11, the Federal government has yet to publish its promised final report that explains the cause of its collapse.

* Website: http://ronpaul2008.com/

* Bio: http://www.house.gov/paul/bio.shtml

Dennis Kucinich

Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Congressman Dennis Kucinich . 6-term Congressman from Ohio. Former mayor of Cleveland. Candidate for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Member, Committee on Education and Labor. 2003 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award.

* Video 6/10/07: "Some time in September, at a date that will be as appropriate as possible, we're going to be holding what will be the first hearing in the Congress on two discrete issues relating to 9/11. They have to do with financial issues." http://www.youtube.com/

* Video interview with Justin A. Martell of Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth 4/5/07:

Justin A. Martell: Would you in any way maybe address the 9/11 Truth Movement?

Congressman Kucinich: First of all, you have to understand that all over the country people are concerned about whether or not they've been told the truth about 9/11. And the way that the administration handled 9/11, taking us into a war against Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11, deepened people's suspicions about the possibility there may have been a cover-up. Because, why would the government lie about a cause for war? And so, what I'm saying is that I respect the concerns people have about whether they've been told the truth or not.

Because I want to be President of the United States, I know that unless you address that lack of trust, you're not going to be able to successfully lead a nation. And I want to be quite specific about this. It's my intention as Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee to focus in on two areas that I've -- there are a number of areas, probably dozens of areas that haven't been appropriately probed -- but I know of two, that I'm looking at. I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what they are, but our committee will hold hearings on two discreet areas that have major implications with respect to the story that Americans have been told about 9/11." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIS6UJ8kRlY

* Article Times Union 3/26/07: "Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich predicted Sunday that by the time the New Hampshire primary arrives early next year, so many Americans will have tired of the war in Iraq that his peace platform will make him the choice for the Democratic nomination. ...

He also said that as chairman of a House subcommittee on domestic policy, he plans to launch an investigation of "a narrow portion" of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He offered few details, but said his subcommittee would be looking at "a few, specific discrepancies in the public record." The 9/11 Commission that published its final report in 2004 never resolved some conflicting facts, Kucinich said. He announced his own look at 9/11 in answer to a question from an audience member. The man complained that the 9/11 Commission was too tied to the Bush administration to offer an unbiased report, and Kucinich agreed." http://timesunion.com

* Bio: http://kucinich.house.gov/Biography/

Curt Weldon

Congressman Curt Weldon

Congressman Curt Weldon . Former 10-term Congressman from Pennsylvania 1987 - 2006. Former Vice Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Former Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

* Article Fox News 8/28/05: Regarding the 9/11 Commission "There's something very sinister going on here that really troubles me," Weldon told FOX News on Thursday, blasting the Sept. 11 commission for not taking the claims more seriously. He said some panel members were trying to smear [Lt. Col. Anthony] Shaffer and Able Danger. "What's the Sept. 11 commission got to hide?" Weldon asked." http://www.foxnews.com

* Press conference transcript 9/17/05: Regarding the 9/11 Commission Report "There's something wrong here, something tragically wrong. The American people, the families, the country and the Congress need to know the truth, the whole truth, the complete truth. And so far we haven't gotten it. . Somebody's got to connect the dots and answer the questions. If the 9/11 Commission won't do it, then Congress has to do it." http://www.gl

* Speech on the floor of Congress 10/19/05: "I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is something desperately wrong, Mr. Speaker. There is something outrageous at work here. This is not a third-rate burglary of a political campaign headquarters. This involved what is right now the covering up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people, changed the course of history, led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disrupted our country, our economy and people's lives." http://frwebgate

* Editor's note: The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that only three of the alleged hijackers were known to U.S. intelligence agencies prior to 9/11; Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdar. There is no mention in the Report that the names and photographs of alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and alleged ring-leader Mohamed Atta had been identified by the Department of Defense antiterrorist program known as Able Danger more than a year prior to 9/11 and that they were known to be affiliates of al-Qaida. Able Danger also identified Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar. http://www.foxnews.com. See also Louis Freeh, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Cap. Scott J. Phillpott, Major Erik Kleinsmith, and James D. Smith.

* Bio: http://www.montcogop.org

Cynthia McKinney

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney . Former 6-term Congresswoman from Georgia 1993 - 2002, 2005 - 2006. Member of the House Armed Services Committee and Member of the International Relations Committee. Georgia state legislator 1988 - 1992.

* Member: Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Association Statement:

"Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots---have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official .investigations. have really been cover-up operations.

Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response.

We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed.

We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media."

* Congressional Briefing 7/22/05: "Within days of the attacks, we were told that the perpetrators were from a terrorist network known as al-Qaeda. When reporters and members of the public asked for details, then Secretary of State Colin Powell promised that it would be made all clear to the world in a White Paper.

Nearly 4 years, and 2 wars later, we still have no official statement from the Bush administration on the specifics of who did it, who aided and financed them or what their origins are.

For the families who suffered so much loss this surely feels like adding insult to injury. They deserve to know everything that there is to be known about how their loved ones died. They fought for an investigation that would be non-partisan, independent, and that would get to the bottom of things. But, as work got underway, not only did the Commission run up against obstruction by the administration and non-cooperation from government agencies, many, if not most of the commissioners themselves had conflicts of interest.

And several commissioners spoke out about problems in the process; the lack of investigative rigor and heavy reliance on previous work; the Joint-Commission Report, the drafting of recommendations before the investigative process got rolling, the failure to take testimony under oath or in many cases to even take transcripts. ...

Then last year, we got the final report. An extensive, prosaically impressive report. But as some of us sat down to read it, the errors and omissions immediately jumped out at us.

How was it that it took over an hour after the first transponder went off before planes were scrambled to meet the threat? All of them too late.

What happened to those reports that surfaced within months of September 11th stating that 7 or more of the alleged hijackers had come forward and claimed that they were victims of stolen identities ...? Why did the Commission choose not even to address this?

What about the terrorist Omar Said Sheikh? ... According to Indian intelligence, this man received orders from a Pakistani General to transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. People all over the world are talking about this story. But not a word about it in the Report.

What about Osama bin Laden and his role in the Mujahadin backed by the CIA in the 1980.s to fight the Soviets? The Commission didn't go there." http://www.911readingroom.org

* Editor's note: Despite the finding of the Joint House-Senate Select Intelligence Committee's 2002 Report (p.415) of "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers", the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 172) states, "Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government -- or government official -- supplied any funding." For more information on Omar Said Sheikh and foreign support of the 9/11 hijackers, see Senator Bob Graham, Major John Newman, William Bergman, and Michael Meacher.

* Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. . As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
o An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
o Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
o Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
o The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." http://www.911truth.org/article

* Bio: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/CynthiaMcKinney

Dan Hamburg

Rep. Dan Hamburg, MA

Rep. Dan Hamburg, MA . Former Congressman from California, 1993 - 1995. Author, Headwaters Forest Act. Green Party candidate for Governor of California 1998. Currently Executive Director, Voice of the Environment.

* Member: Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Association Statement:

"Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots---have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official .investigations. have really been cover-up operations.

Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response.

We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration.s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed.

We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media."

* Member: Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice Association Statement: "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice is a non-partisan organization consisting of independent researchers and activists engaged in uncovering the true nature of the September 11, 2001 attacks."

* Bio: http://www.voiceoftheenvironment.org/about/#hamburg

Norm Mineta

Norm Mineta

Norm Mineta . U.S. Secretary of Transportation 2001 - 2006. U.S. Secretary of Commerce 2000 - 2001. Senior Vice President, Lockheed Martin 1995 - 2000. Former 12-term Congressman from California 1971 - 1995. Currently, Vice Chairman of the Board, Hill & Knowlton.

* 9/11 Commission testimony 5/23/03:

Lee Hamilton: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center [PEOC]. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

Norm Mineta: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --

Lee Hamilton: The flight you're referring to is the --

Norm Mineta: The flight that came into the Pentagon. ...
http://www.youtube.com

Norm Mineta: I didn't know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.

Tim Roemer: So when you arrived at 9:20 [at the Presidential Emergency Operating Center in the White House], how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still stand?"

Norm Mineta: Probably about five or six minutes.

Tim Roemer: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference
was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, "Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down? http://www.youtube.com

* Editor's note: Secretary Mineta's testimony directly contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report on two key points and it is entirely omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report.

1. Mr. Mineta testified he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) in the White House at 9:20 a.m. and observed Vice President Dick Cheney discussing with an aide that the incoming Flight 77 was 50 miles out at 9:25 or 9:26. The 9/11 Commission Report maintains Vice President Cheney did not arrive at the PEOC until 9:58, over one-half hour later. Mr. Mineta's testimony is further supported by the fact that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37, which is the correct time it would have taken Flight 77 to arrive at the Pentagon, if it had been about 50 miles out at 9:26.

2. The Commission Report maintains the government did not know the whereabouts of Flight 77 prior to 9:32, when Dulles Tower air controllers "observed a primary radar target tracking eastbound at a high rate of speed". Mr. Mineta's testimony reveals Vice President Cheney was being informed of the plane's position for several minutes before that, and perhaps considerably longer.

Also of interest, is that the first approximately 15 minutes of Mr. Mineta's testimony before the Commission during which he discusses the points mentioned above, have been edited out of the official 9/11 Commission video archives (Panel 1, Friday, May 23. 2003). However, his full testimony does appear in the written transcript.

* Bio: http://www.nndb.com/people/649/000024577/

Joseph Wilson

Joseph C. Wilson IV

Joseph C. Wilson IV . Retired diplomat of the U.S. Foreign Service, specializing in Africa. Rose to the position of Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council. Former Political Adviser to Commander in Chief, U.S. Armed Forces, Europe. Former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe. Acting ambassador to Baghdad when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. 22-year Foreign Service career 1976 - 1998. In February 2002, he investigated reports of Iraq.s attempt to buy uranium from Niger for the George W. Bush administration. Husband of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, specializing in weapons of mass destruction, whose identity was revealed to reporters by members of the Bush administration. In October 2003, Wilson received the Ron Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling from the Fertel Foundation and the Nation Institute.

* Interview with Citizens for Legitimate Government 7/6/05:

CLG: I can't let this moment pass without asking you about 9/11 and the Bush Administration. Do you notice any oddities about how the Bush Administration handled the events, the aftermath or the investigation of 9/11? Do you see any holes in the government's explanation of events?

Joseph Wilson: I have obviously followed the inquiries into 9/11 and I know Dick Clarke and Rand Beers very well but I am not an expert. I look to the "Jersey Girls" [Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken, and Mindy Kleinberg] who have so assiduously pushed the case in the memory of their late husbands, for real understanding. I have great admiration for them and for what they have done. They are not satisfied, so neither am I. http://www.legitgov.org

* Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson

Morgan Reynolds

Morgan Reynolds, PhD

Morgan Reynolds, PhD . Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush 2001 - 2002. Former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Professor Emeritus, Economics, Texas A&M University. Contributing author to 9/11 and American Empire (Vol I) . Intellectuals Speak Out (2006).

* Video interview with Alex Jones 6/2/06: "I first began to suspect that 9/11 was in inside job when the Bush-Cheney Administration invaded Iraq. . We can prove that the government.s story is false." http://video.goo

* Essay 6/9/05: "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers [each 1300+ feet tall, 110 stories] and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely [to] prove to be sound." http://www.l...

* Editor's note: WTC Building 7 was 610 feet tall, 47 stories. It would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11, seven hours after the collapses of the Twin Towers. However, no mention of its collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." Watch the collapse video here. And six years after 9/11, the Federal government has yet to publish its promised final report that explains the cause of its collapse.

* Bio: http://nomoregames.net/index.php?page=bio

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts, PhD

Paul Craig Roberts, PhD . Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan, "Father of Reaganomics". Former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Currently Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. Former William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. Former Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Author or co-author of several books on economics and politics, including; The Supply-Side Revolution (1985), Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era (1990), The Soviet Union After Perestroika (1991), The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America (2003).

* Interview Alex Jones Show 1/9/08:

"There's no accountability now, because the government got away with 9/11 and so any kind of violence is justified in terms of protecting us from terrorists or people who might have been a terrorist ...

Well, I've never tried to hide anything. I just try to say what the evidence supports. I never believed 9/11, because I had engineering training at Georgia Tech and I could tell when a building is being blown up by explosives. Any fool can look at those films and see the buildings aren't falling down, they're blowing up." At 9:25 of the segment at http://www.youtube.com

* Endorsement of 9/11 and American Empire (Vol I) . Intellectuals Speak Out: "This is the most important book of our time. Distinguished national and international scientists and scholars present massive evidence that the 9/11 Commission Report is a hoax and that the 9/11 "terrorist attack" has been manipulated to serve a hegemonic agenda in the Middle East. The book's call for a truly independent panel of experts to be empowered to bring out the true facts must be heeded or Americans will never again live under accountable government." http://www.interlinkbooks.com

* Essay 8/16/06: "We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to "pancake" at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

* Essay 2/6/06: "There are not many editors eager for writers to explore the glaring defects of the 9/11 Commission Report. One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." http://www.counterpunc

* Bio: http://www.vdare.com/roberts/bio.htm

Catherine Austin Fitts

Catherine Austin Fitts

Catherine Austin Fitts . Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush. Former Managing Director and Member of the Board of Wall Street investment bank, Dillon, Read & Co

* Audio interview with Dennis Bernstein Flashpoints Pacifica Radio Network 9/9/04: Regarding 9/11 "The official story could not possibly have happened. In other words, what the administration has put forward is essentially a conspiracy theory that does not conform to the facts. It.s not possible. It.s not operationally feasible... The Commission was a whitewash." (About 45 minutes into the file.) http://www.kpfa.org

* Essay 3/22/04: "The first category of people who benefited were those who are guilty and complicit in designing, implementing and financing the 9-11 operation. On such a sophisticated and successful covert operation, the people responsible would have had budgets and financing and would have organized the operation to maximize their political and financial benefits." http://globalresearch.ca

* Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. . As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
o An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
o Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
o Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
o The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." http://www.911truth.org/article

* Bio: http://www.solari.com/about/ca_fitts.html

Harry Ballantyne

Harry C. Ballantyne, ASA

Harry C. Ballantyne, ASA . Chief Actuary, U.S. Social Security Administration, 1982 - 2000, responsible for monitoring the financial status of the Social Security system and estimating the effects of proposals to modify the program, reporting directly to the Commissioner of Social Security. Prior to this appoin

AND SO ON... full list:
http://patriotsquestion911.com/