Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [92]
There were brass at the Pentagon, according to MSNBC reporters, who were forewarned not to fly on 9/11, along with other prominent figures. The Pentagon had actually prepared for such an attack, since it was revealed as a target for a plane back in 1995. By 1999, they had cameras and radar on the roof to detect something like that, according to the Pentagon’s security director. They had an exercise for first responders in Arlington, Virginia, based on a plane crashing into the building. The breakdown in standard operating procedure on 9/11 was unprecedented, uninvestigated, and unaccountable.
Here’s what The Washington Post reported on August 3, 2006, which is about as close as we’ve come to knowing something is being covered up: “For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances.... Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial account of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public.... Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the ten-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.” The compromise they reached instead was for the 9/11 Commission to send unresolved questions on to the inspector generals of both FAA and NORAD, and let them investigate the discrepancies. In 2005 they released their reports—and created a whole new set of excuses and yet another timeline of response events.
I need to mention my reaction when I saw Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Looking at President Bush’s face reading the Pet Goat storybook to the school kids that morning in Florida, he either froze—or he knew something. The question is, what did Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, tell him when he leaned over to whisper in his ear? Maybe that Cheney was in control of the situation, so not to worry? I couldn’t get over the fact that, after he was told about the planes hitting the Twin Towers, he would just sit there for seven minutes. In a nuclear age, seven minutes is an eternity.
I’ve had some Republicans say to me, “Well, what would you have done?” I told them, “Simple. If my chief of staff had walked up to me and said, ‘Sir, the United States is under attack,’ I would have turned to the children very calmly and said, ‘Children, you know my job is very, very important. And you know that emergencies sometimes happen that a president must attend to. There’s an emergency I have to take care of right now. You don’t have to worry about it, we’ll get it under control. And I promise you that on another day, I will come back here and read to you. Okay?’ Then out the door I go.”
My doubts about the official story have grown steadily over the last couple of years. My son kept telling me about things he was finding on the Internet about 9/11, so I started doing some reading. Often I’d question myself—what am I, a conspiracy nut? as some people get labeled. But I couldn’t shake off the pattern I saw emerging. I wondered, why did President Bush put up roadblocks for two years to any type of investigation? If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t care whether or not a commission looks into what happened. Naturally, some things need to remain secret from our potential enemies. But why stonewall like Bush did? It seemed our government wasn’t reacting like an innocent victim, but like they