The following is David Ray Griffin’s affidavit:This affidavit is written in support of the claim by John Boncore that former Vice President Dick Cheney should be required to testify under oath in a court of law about his activities in relation to 9/11.In my various books on the subject, I have shown that there are many good reasons to conclude that the official story about 9/11 false; that the 9/11 attacks were, at least in part, an inside job; and that Dick Cheney was at the center of this criminal and treasonous operation.
I.In “The New Pearl Harbor : Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11” (2004), I provided a summary of the various forms of evidence that the 9/11 Truth Movement had discovered at that time. I presented this summary as a prima facie argument that the 9/11 attacks had been orchestrated by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other members of the Bush-Cheney administration.
II. In “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions” (2005), I showed that “The 9/11 Commission Report,” which appeared in the summer of 2004, had either distorted or simply omitted the evidence summarized in my previous book. In a follow-up essay entitled “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie” (available on the Internet), I summarized 115 lies of omission or commission in the Commission’s report that I had identified.
Some of these omissions and distortions involved Cheney in particular. For example:
The Commission’s report omitted “Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s testimony, given to the Commission itself, that Vice-President Cheney and others in the underground shelter were aware by 9:26 that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon.”
The Commission’s report even claimed “that Cheney did not reach the underground shelter (the PEOC [Presidential Emergency Operations Center]) until 9:58”---which was about 45 minutes later than others, such as Mineta, Richard Clarke, and Cheney’s own photographer, said that he had gone down there.
The Commission’s report claimed that “Cheney did not give the shoot-down authorization until after 10:10 (several minutes after Flight 93 had crashed)” while omitting “Clarke’s own testimony, which suggests that he received the shoot-down authorization by 9:50 .”
III. In “Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory” (2007)---which was awarded a Bronze Medal in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards---I responded to four publications of 2006 intended to bolster the official theory.
One of those publications was a Vanity Fair article, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,” which claimed that tapes released by NORAD in 2006 verified the claim of “The 9/11 Commission Report” about why the military was unable to intercept the four hijacked airliners. It claimed, for example, that the military was not even notified about American 77’s troubles until after it had struck the Pentagon---thereby contradicting the military’s earlier report, according to which it had been notified about this flight at 9:24 .
I reported, however, what I was told by Laura Brown, the Deputy in Public Affairs for the FAA. She had sent a memo to the 9/11 Commission explaining that the FAA had the FAA and the military had been in conversation about this flight even long before 9:24 . This memo was read into the 9/11 Commission’s record by Richard Ben-Veniste on May 23, 2003 (where it can still be read). And yet the Commission’s report, in rejecting the 9:24 time in favor of its own claim, simply ignored this memo.
IV. In my 2008 book, “9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press,” I laid out 25 internal contradictions within the official story (in which one supporter of the official story contradicted another).
In some of the chapters, I treated in greater detail than before the above-noted contradictions involving Dick Cheney.
Another chapter deals with a contradiction involving Cheney’s long-time friend, Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense in 2001. Whereas the 9/11 Commission report supports Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that he was in his office with a CIA briefer until the Pentagon was struck (so that he had no “situational awareness” until almost 10:00), Richard Clarke had reported in his best-selling book, “Against All Enemies,” that Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon’s teleconferencing studio, participating in the teleconference Clarke was running from the White House, from about 9:15 until the Pentagon was struck.
Still another chapter deals with a similar contradiction involving General Richard Myers, who on 9/11 was the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 9/11 Commission supported his claim that he was up on Capitol Hill that morning, and that he had no idea what was going on until shortly before the Pentagon was struck. But Richard Clarke had reported that Myers, like Rumsfeld, was in the Pentagon’s teleconferencing studio, where he had ongoing conversations with Clarke about what was going on.
V. In my second 2008 book, “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, The Cover-Up, and the Exposé” (which was named “Pick of the Week” by Publisher’s Weekly in the third week of November 2008), I provided an overview of the cumulative case against the official story. Many of the points made in this book are summarized in the following article (available on the Internet):
21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11
by David Ray Griffin
Note: Although the points are stated briefly, I give in each case the pages in my most recent book---“The New Pearl Harbor Revisited”---where the issue is documented and discussed more extensively.)
(1) Although the official account of 9/11 claims that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which he is wanted and has admitted that it “has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11” (NPHR 206-11).
(2) Although the official story holds that the four airliners were hijacked by devout Muslims ready to die as martyrs to earn a heavenly reward, Mohamed Atta and the other alleged hijackers regularly drank heavily, went to strip clubs, and paid for sex (NPHR 153-55).
(3) Many people reported having received cell phone calls from loved ones or flight attendants on the airliners, during which they were told that Middle Eastern hijackers had taken over the planes. One recipient, Deena Burnett, was certain that her husband had called her several times on his cell phone because she had recognized his number on her Caller ID. But the calls to Burnett and most of the other reported calls were made when the planes were above 30,000 feet, and evidence presented by the 9/11 truth movement showed that, given the technology of the time, cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners had been impossible. By the time the FBI presented a report on phone calls from the planes at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006, it had changed its story, saying that there were only two cell phone calls from the flights, both from United 93 after it had descended to 5,000 feet (NPHR 111-17).
(4) US Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife, Barbara Olson, phoned him twice from AA 77, reporting that hijackers had taken it over, was also contradicted by this FBI report, which says that the only call attempted by her was “unconnected” and hence lasted “0 seconds” (NPRH 60-62).
(5) Although decisive evidence that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks was reportedly found in Mohamed Atta’s luggage---which allegedly failed to get loaded onto Flight 11 from a commuter flight that Atta took to Boston from Portland, Maine, that morning---this story was made up after the FBI’s previous story had collapsed. According to that story, the evidence had been found in a Mitsubishi that Atta had left in the Logan Airport parking lot and the trip to Portland was taken by Adnan and Ameer Bukhari. After the FBI learned that neither of the Bukharis had died on September 11, it simply declared that the trip to Portland was made by Atta and another al-Qaeda operative (NPHR 155-62).
(6) The other types of reputed evidence for Muslim hijackers---such as videos of al-Qaeda operatives at airports, passports discovered at the crash sites, and a headband discovered at the crash site of United 93---also show clear signs of having been fabricated (NPHR 170-73).
(7) In addition to the absence of evidence for hijackers on the planes, there is also evidence of their absence: If hijackers had broken into the cockpits, the pilots would have “squawked” the universal hijack code, an act that takes only a couple of seconds. But not one of the eight pilots on the four airliners did this (NPHR 175-79).
(8) Given standard operating procedures between the FAA and the military, according to which planes showing signs of an in-flight emergency are normally intercepted within about 10 minutes, the military’s failure to intercept any of the flights implies that something, such as a stand-down order, prevented standard procedures from being carried out (NPHR 1-10, 81-84).
(9) Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta reported an episode in which Vice President Cheney, while in the bunker under the White House, apparently confirmed a stand-down order at about 9:25 AM, which was prior to the strike on the Pentagon. Another man has reported hearing members of LAX Security learn that a stand-down order had come from the “highest level of the White House” (NPHR 94-96).
(10) The 9/11 Commission did not mention Mineta’s report, removed it from the Commission’s video record of its hearings, and claimed that Cheney did not enter the shelter conference room until almost 10:00, which was at least 40 minutes later than he was really there, according to Mineta and several other witnesses, including Cheney’s photographer (NPHR 91-94).
(11) The 9/11 Commission’s timeline for Cheney that morning even contradicted what Cheney himself had told Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” September 16, just five days after 9/11 (NPHR 93).
(12) Hani Hanjour, known as a terrible pilot who could not safely fly even a single-engine airplane, could not possibly have executed the amazing trajectory reportedly taken by American Flight 77 in order to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon (NPHR 78-80).
(13) Wedge 1 would have been the least likely part of the Pentagon to be targeted by foreign terrorists, for several reasons: It was as far as possible from the offices of Rumsfeld and the top brass, whom Muslim terrorists presumably would have wanted to kill; it was the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced; the reconstruction was not finished, so there were relatively few people there; and it was the only part of the Pentagon that would have presented obstacles to a plane’s flight path (NPHR 76-78).
(14) Contrary to the claim of Pentagon officials that they did not have the Pentagon evacuated because they had no way of knowing that an aircraft was approaching, a military E-4B---the Air Force’s most advanced communications, command, and control airplane---was flying over the White House at the time. Also, although there can be no doubt about the identity of the plane, which was captured on video by CNN and others, the military has denied that it belonged to them (NPHR 96-98).
(15) The Secret Service, after learning that a second World Trade Center building had been attacked---which would have meant that terrorists were going after high-value targets---and that still other planes had apparently been hijacked, allowed President Bush to remain at the school in Sarasota, Florida, for another 30 minutes. It thereby revealed its foreknowledge that Bush would not be a target: If these had really been surprise attacks, the agents, fearing that a hijacked airliner was bearing down on the school, would have hustled Bush away. On the first anniversary of 9/11, the White House started telling a new story, according to which Bush, rather than remaining in the classroom several minutes after Andrew Card whispered in his ear that a second WTC building had been hit, immediately got up and left the room. This lie was told in major newspapers and on MSNBC and ABC television (NPHR 129-31).
(16) Given the fact that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 had steel columns running from their basements to their roofs, they simply could not have come down as they did---straight down at virtually free-fall speed---unless these columns had been sliced by means of explosives. Therefore, the official theory, according to which the buildings came down because of fire plus (in the case of the Twin Towers ) the impact of the planes, is scientifically impossible (NPHR 12-25).
(17) The destruction of the Twin Towers had many other features---such as the horizontal ejections of steel beams, the melting of steel, and the sulfidation and thinning of steel---that can be explained only in terms of powerful explosives. For example, the fires could not have come within 1000 degrees Fahrenheit of the temperature needed to melt steel (30-36).
(18) Members of the FDNY (Fire Department of New York ) provided oral histories shortly after 9/11 in which one fourth of them testified to having witnessed explosions in the Twin Towers . Explosions in the WTC 7 as well as the towers were also reported by city officials, WTC employees, and journalists (NPHR 27-30, 45-48, 51).
(19) Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News that day: “we set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street . . . , and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it [the South Tower] did collapse before we could actually get out of the building.” However, there was no objective basis for expecting the towers to collapse; even the 9/11 Commission admitted that none of the fire chiefs expected them to come down. The FDNY oral histories show that the information that they were going to collapse came from the Office of Emergency Management---Giuliani’s own office. How could Giuliani’s people have known that the towers were going to come down, unless they knew that the buildings had been laced with explosives? (NPH 40)
(20) NIST, which produced the official reports on the Twin Towers and (recently) WTC 7, has been “fully hijacked from the scientific to the political realm,” so that its scientists are little more than “hired guns,” a former employee has reported, and the 9/11 Commission was no more independent, being run by Philip Zelikow, who was essentially a member of the Bush White House (NPHR 11, 238-51).
(21) The official story about 9/11 is now rejected by constantly growing numbers of physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, former military officers, and former intelligence officials (NPHR xi).
VI. To expand on the final point of that essay: During recent years, the official story has been publicly rejected by various organizations of scientists and professionals.
These organizations include Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (which has over 700 licensed members), Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice (which has hundreds of scientists), Scientific Panel for the Investigation of Nine-Eleven, Veterans for 9/11 Truth (which includes several former military officers), and Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (which includes past or present members of the parliaments of Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Sweden, the UK, the United States, and Europe).
As these organizations show, among independent scientists and professionals in the relevant fields who have studied the evidence, the weight of scientific and professional opinion is now overwhelmingly on the side of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
VII. The quality and breadth of the 9/11 Truth Movement’s support is also illustrated by the list of people who have endorsed my books, which includes:
Physicists Steven Jones, John Wyndham, and David Griscom (a fellow of the American Physical Society, now retired from the Naval Research Laboratory).
National Medal of Science winner Lynn Margulis.
AIA architect Richard Gage.
Engineer Jack Keller (who had been given special recognition by Scientific American for his contributions to American society).
Attorney Gerry Spence.
Professors of international law Richard Falk and Burns Weston.
Retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford.
Theologians John B. Cobb, Jr., Harvey Cox, Joseph C. Hough, Rosemary Ruether, and the late William Sloane Coffin, Jr.
Economists Michel Chossudovsky and Paul Craig Roberts,
Former intelligence officers Robert Baer, William Christison, Ray McGovern, and Robert David Steele.
9/11 widows Lorie Van Auken and Monica Gabrielle.
Authors Peter Dale Scott, Jim Hightower, Mark Crispin Miller, Marcus Raskin, and Howard Zinn.
Several political leaders, including Yukihisa Fujita of the Japanese Senate; Michael Meacher of the British Parliament; former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura; Terrell Arnold (former deputy director of the US State Department Office of Counterterrorism); and Catherine Austin Fitts (former assistant secretary of housing).
VIII. There is, in sum, more than enough evidence to subpoena former Vice President Dick Cheney in order to force him to testify under oath about what really happened on 9/11, beginning with contradictions involving his own activities.
If Mineta's testimony is to be taken into account, and there is no apparent reason why it should not be, questions about the timing of events the morning of 9/11 come into focus. Most obvious is, if the standing order given by the Vice President prior to the aircraft hitting the Pentagon was not a shoot down order, then what was it? Perhaps it was the danger of this question, and the danger that Cheney would have had to commit perjury to uphold the timeline reported in the mainstream press, that caused the Vice President to testify to the Commission along with the President in closed session, with no transcript, no witnesses, and no public accountability.
Today, multiple serious investigations are underway as to the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq (Plame/Wilson incident), and when the administration actually decided to invade Iraq (Downing Street Memos). In fact, it is widely known that Bush declared his desire to invade Iraq to an official biographer in 1999, even before he was appointed President by the Supreme Court. Given what is known today about the deceiving of the American public in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, and given what is known about the 9/11 Commission Report and the unanswered questions surrounding the attacks of 9/11. Is there not sufficient reason to include 9/11 in the overall inquiry into possible criminal actions of the Bush-Cheney administration?
Posts
