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January 4, 2008
Eight U.S. State Department Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11
By Alan Miller
| Official Account of 9/11: “Flawed”, “Absurd”, “Totally Inadequate”, “a Cover-up”
January 5, 2008 –
Eight U.S. State Department veterans have severely criticized the
official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation.
“There is no question in my mind, that there is enough evidence to
justify a very comprehensive and hard hitting investigation of the kind
we have not seen, with subpoenas, general questioning of people,
releasing a lot of documents,” said Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, in a 2006 interview with Jack Blood. [1] |
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD
Col. Ann Wright
Fred Burks
Melvin Goodman, PhD
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Dr. Ellsberg is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11. [2] Best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times
in 1971, Dr. Ellsberg is a former U.S. State Department envoy to Viet
Nam and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Another State Department critic of the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ann Wright,
who said in a 2007 interview with Richard Greene on the Air America
Radio Network, “It's incredible some of these things that still are
unanswered. The 9/11 Report -- that was totally inadequate.
I mean the questions that anybody has after reading that.” [3]
Col. Wright is one of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly
resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003.
She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served for 16 years as a
U.S. Diplomat, including assignments as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S.
Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. She helped
reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001. She also
served for 13 years on active duty and 16 additional years on reserve
duty with the U.S. Army. She continued in her interview with Greene: “How could our
national intelligence and defense operations be so inept that they
could not communicate; that they could not scramble jets; that they
could not take defensive action? And I totally agree, I
always thought the Pentagon had all sorts of air defense equipment
around it; that they could take out anything that was coming at
it. And for a plane to be able to just fly low right over
Washington and slam into that thing is just -- I mean, you still just
shake your head. How in the world could that happen?”
Fred Burks,
former Presidential interpreter, is another State Department veteran
who questions the official account of 9/11 and who signed the petition
to reinvestigate. “How is it possible that
our military's highly touted missile detection systems could
not locate Flight 77 in the 42 minutes it was known to
be lost before it crashed into the heart of the defense system of the
U.S.?,” he asked in an essay. [4]
During his 18-year State Department career, Mr. Burks served as
interpreter for Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Vice
Presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore, Secretaries of State Colin Powell
and Madeleine Albright and many others.
Mr. Burks continued, “An even bigger question is why isn't our media
asking these questions? Why isn't our military spending many
millions of dollars to find out why military defense systems
failed on 9/11? Why is it that the 9/11 commission budget
was far less than the budget allotted to the Challenger Disaster or
even the Monika Lewinsky affair? Why aren't we, the public,
asking these questions and demanding answers?”
Melvin Goodman, PhD, is another former State
Department employee who signed the petition to reinvestigate
9/11. He served as a Senior Analyst at the State Department’s
Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Dr. Goodman also later
served as Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs and as
Professor of International Security at the National War College, 1986 -
2004.
In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing on the 9/11
Commission Report, Dr. Goodman said, “I want to talk about the [9/11]
Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and
finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is
extremely important to understand the failure of the Commission. … The
final report is ultimately a coverup. I don't know how else to
describe it.” [5]
Dr. Goodman is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for International
Policy and Adjunct Professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University. |
Another former career Foreign Service Officer who questions the official account of 9/11 is Michael Springmann. He is also one of many signers of the petition to reinvestigate 9/11.
In a speech at the National Press Club, Mr. Springmann said, “I used to
be in charge of the visa section at the CIA's Consulate in Jeddah. ...
There for a year and a half I issued visas to terrorists recruited by
the CIA and its asset Osama Bin Laden. ... Fifteen of the nineteen
people who allegedly flew airplanes into buildings in the United States
got their visas from the same CIA Consulate at Jeddah.” [6] |
Michael Springmann
George Kenney |
During
his more than 20 years of U.S. government service, Mr. Springmann
worked at both the State Department and the Foreign Commercial Service
of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Among his many assignments,
Mr. Springman served as Consular Officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where
he supervised the issuance of visas.
In a later interview with the BBC, Mr. Springmann said, “In Saudi
Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to
issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially,
people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own
country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I
returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General
Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the
Inspector General's office. I was met with silence. ... What I
was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up
by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA.
They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the
then-Soviets.” [7]
Another State Department veteran publicly questioning the official account of 9/11 is former career Foreign Service Officer, George Kenney,
who served as Yugoslav desk officer at the State Department
headquarters in Washington, D.C. He resigned his commission
in 1991 over U.S. policy towards the Yugoslav conflict. He then
served as consultant in residence at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Currently he’s a consultant and commentator
on foreign affairs and current events.
In a commentary after a 2007 interview of David Ray Griffin, PhD, Mr.
Kenney said, “We should strive to clearly separate what we know from
things we don't. Thus, we have a reasonably high level of confidence
that the Establishment conspiracy narrative is absurd. The
World Trade Center structures came down through controlled
demolition. Flight 93 was shot down over rural Pennsylvania.
And whatever it was that hit the Pentagon could not have been
Flight 77. Further, whatever his peripheral involvement, the
planning and implementation of 9/11 did not originate with Osama bin
Laden.” [8] |
Michael Mennard, PhD,
is another U.S. State Department veteran who questions the official
account of 9/11 and calls for a new investigation. Among his
assignments as a career Foreign Service Officer, Dr. Mennard served as
Regional Public Affairs Officer in India.
In a statement to this author, Dr. Mennard wrote, “I am concerned about
the numerous inconsistencies in the official account of 9/11. I
support a new investigation regarding the tragic events of that day,
the events leading up to it, and subsequent efforts to ignore the whole
matter.” |
Edward Peck |
Shortly after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, a group of over 100 prominent Americans signed a petition [9] urging Congress to immediately reinvestigate 9/11. In addition to six former CIA officials, [10] the signers included Daniel Ellsberg, Melvin Goodman, Fred Burks, Michael Springman (all mentioned above), and Edward Peck.
Edward Peck
served as Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs at the State
Department. He later served as Deputy Director of the White House
Task Force on Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Peck,
a 32-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, also served as U.S.
Ambassador and Chief of Mission in Iraq (1977 - 1980). |
The petition stated, in part, “We want truthful answers to questions such as:
1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?
2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly
deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?
3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary
school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the
schoolchildren?
4. Why hasn't a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?
5. Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results
of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested
foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in
tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?”
These questions and many others still remain unanswered three years
after the petition was submitted and six years after the terrible
events of 9/11. As the statements of these eight U.S. State
Department veterans show, the need for a new thorough and independent
investigation of 9/11 is not a matter of partisan politics, nor the
demand of irresponsible, deranged, or disloyal Americans. It is
instead a matter of the utmost importance for America’s security and
the future of the entire world.
Statements questioning the official account of 9/11 and calls for a new
investigation by more than 800 credible individuals can be found at http://PatriotsQuestion911.com
Additional information about prominent skeptics of the official account
of 9/11 can be found in the author's other articles on this subject,
listed below.
Dec. 13, 2007 - Seven
Senior Federal Engineers and Scientists Call for New 9/11 Investigation
- Official Account of 9/11: “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”,
“Fatally Flawed” featured statements by:
- Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, Director of
Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter. Former Head of the Department of Aeronautical
Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of
Technology
- David Griscom, PhD, Retired Research Physicist. Served 33 years at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
- Joel Hirschhorn, PhD,
Former Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment. Former Director of Environment, Energy and Natural
Resources for the National Governors Association
- Enver Masud, MS, PE, Former Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch, U.S. Department of Energy
- James Quintiere, PhD, Former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
- Dwain Deets, MS, Former Director, Aerospace Projects at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center
- Edward S. Munyak, MS, PE,
Former Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of
Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs. Contributing Subject
Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection
Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear
Facilities
Dec. 4, 2007 - Eight Senior Republican Appointees Challenge Official Account of 9/11 - “Not Possible”, “a Whitewash”, “False” featured statements by
- Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan
- Catherine Austin Fitts, Assistant Secretary of Housing under President George H.W. Bush
- Morgan Reynolds, PhD, Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor under current President George W. Bush
- Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan
- Mary Schiavo, JD, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation under Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Clinton
- Barbara Honegger, Special Assistant to the Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to President Ronald Reagan and White House Policy Analyst
- Edward Peck,
Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under
President Ronald Reagan. Former Deputy Coordinator, Covert
Intelligence Programs at the U.S. State Department. Former U.S.
Ambassador and Chief of Mission in Iraq
- Morton Goulder,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Warning
under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter
Sept. 23, 2007 - Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report - Official Account of 9/11 a “Joke” and a “Cover-up”
featured statements by CIA veterans Raymond McGovern, William
Christison, Melvin Goodman, Robert Baer, Robert David Steele, Lynne
Larkin, and David MacMichael.
Sept. 5, 2007 - U.S. Navy 'Top Gun' Pilot Questions 9/11, featured the statement of Commander Ralph Kolstad, U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot.
Sept. 4, 2007 - Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11
featured the statement of Joel S. Hirschhorn, Ph.D., who served for 12
years as a Senior Staff Member of the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment and later as Director of Environment, Energy and
Natural Resources for the National Governors Association.
Aug. 27, 2007 - National Academy of Sciences Member Calls for New 9/11 Investigation featured the statement of Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., world renowned scientist.
Aug. 21, 2007 - Former Chief of NIST's Fire Science Division Calls for Independent Review of World Trade Center Investigation featured the statement of James Quintiere, Ph.D., one of the world's leading fire science researchers.
July 16, 2007 - Former California Seismic Safety Commissioner Endorses 9/11 Truth Movement
featured the statement of J. Marx Ayres, former member of the National
Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council and former member of the
California Seismic Safety Commission.
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Endnotes
[1] Interview of Daniel Ellsberg by Jack Blood on the Deadline Live radio show July 14, 2006 http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/pentagon_papers_author_gov_maybe_did_911.htm
[2] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11 Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633
[3] Interview
of Col. Ann Wright and Laurie Van Auken by Richard Greene on the Air
America Radio Network Sept. 11, 2007 http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/aacl091107.mp3
[4] 9/11 and Star Wars: Billions on Missile Defense Can't Stop Four Airliners on 9/11 by Fred Burks http://www.wanttoknow.info/911starwars
[5] The 911 Commission Report – One Year Later, a Congressional Briefing July 22, 2005 http://www.vt911.org/McKinneyReport20050722transcript.pdf
[6] Video of Speech by J. Michael Springmann at the National Press Club June 10, 2002 http://youtube.com/watch?v=zgYFo79q1Ek&mode=related&search=
[7] Interview of J. Michael Springmann by the BBC News Nov. 6, 2001 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm
[8] Audio interview of David Ray Griffin, PhD, by George Kenney on Electric Politics May 11, 2007
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2007/05/911_truth.html
[9] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11 Signed by Over 100 Prominent Americans Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633
[10] Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report by Alan Miller, Sept. 23, 2007 on OpEdNews http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm
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Authors Website: www.PatriotsQuestion911.com
Authors Bio: Alan Miller is author of the website http://www.PatriotsQuestion911.com
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