By Christopher Bollyn - American Free Press
When Fox News asked to interview me on Sept. 25 about 9/11, I suspected an ulterior motive. Within minutes the ulterior motive was revealed when Alan Colmes switched the subject from 9/11 to the Holocaust – and asked me what I believed. What Fox News and the Establishment media are clearly trying to do is marginalize independent research on 9/11.
The Alan Colmes show is produced by Joel Kaufman for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News radio network and reaches a large listening audience across the United States. Lisa Magalnick Jacknow, an assistant producer, contacted me and said they were interested in evidence that officials of the U.S. government were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Familiar with the attack-style “journalism” of Fox News and knowing that Rupert Murdoch is an ardent supporter of the “war on terrorism,” I found it hard to believe that Fox News was seriously looking for evidence of high-level complicity. After all, it is said to be the favorite channel at the Bush White House.
Colmes was more interested in labeling me and American Free Press as anti-semitic, than in hearing what I had to say about 9/11. An outraged listener called in to protest the “bait-and-switch” tactic and Colmes’ attempt to smear me as an anti-semite.
Colmes told the caller, “You have an agenda too.”
Colmes asked what evidence I had that senior officials had prior knowledge of the attacks. I said that the fact that President George W. Bush calmly read a book about a goat to school children in Florida for a half-hour after hearing that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center was suspicious behavior for the chief executive of a nation in the middle of the worst terror attack in history.
However, while Bush read the story about the goat, Vice President Dick Cheney was “in charge” in the president’s emergency control bunker, according to Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta.
Mineta’s testimony before a congressional investigative panel of what he witnessed in the president’s bunker on 9/11 is essential reading to understanding the allegations of official complicity.
On May 23, Mineta testified about Cheney’s actions in the bunker. Mineta said he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operating Center (PEOC) at 9:20 a.m. where he observed the Vice President in charge:
Mineta: 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 said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?”
Cheny 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…
Hamilton: The flight you’re referring to is the…
Mineta: The flight that came into the Pentagon.
Whether Cheney’s orders meant to shoot down the hijacked aircraft or not was raised. Mineta said there were no such orders to do so, which raises the question of what “the orders” were:
Hamilton: And so there was no specific order there to shoot that plane down.
Mineta: No, sir.
This is some 20 minutes after the second plane struck the World Trade Center and shortly before the Pentagon was hit. The aircraft being tracked is the one that hit the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was at the Pentagon was apparently “out of the loop,” unaware of the approaching aircraft, which Cheney was tracking.
Rumsfeld told ABC News’ Sam Donaldson shortly after 9-11 that he had been completely unaware of the approaching plane:
Donaldson: On Tuesday I am told the FAA notified someone in the Pentagon that there was a rogue plane apparently headed toward Washington. But you didn't know it, am I correct? - until it hit?
Rumsfeld: I was in the Pentagon and felt the shock of the attack, and…
Donaldson: What did you think it was?
Rumsfeld: A bomb? I had no idea.
When I presented this to Colmes, he said that Mineta’s testimony was “hearsay”.
Colmes asked about evidence of prior knowledge, but was not interested in the fact that 11 foreign intelligence agencies warned the responsible U.S. government agencies of an imminent attack prior to 9/11. He was clearly more interested in smearing me as an “anti-semite.”
When I said that Rupert Murdoch had financed and produced a television show called “The Lone Gunman,” in which the March 4, 2001 pilot episode depicted the exact scenario of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Colmes had nothing to say.
Finis
Via Rumor Mill News Agents Forum
Last updated 30/09/2003
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