{"id":7872,"date":"2010-10-18T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T22:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=7872"},"modified":"2010-10-17T00:55:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T22:55:51","slug":"pentagon-author-exposes-zelikow%e2%80%99s-key-role-in-911-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/10\/pentagon-author-exposes-zelikow%e2%80%99s-key-role-in-911-cover-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Author Exposes Zelikow\u2019s Key Role in 9\/11 Cover-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview on the Fox Business Network<\/em>, a retired U.S. intelligence officer accused the official in charge of the 9\/11 Commission of a cover-up of intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

Appearing on the political talk show Freedom Watch<\/em>, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and the author of Operation Dark Heart<\/a><\/em>, a much-hyped<\/a> <\/strong>new book on the war in Afghanistan, spoke<\/a> about his mid-October 2003 encounter with Dr. Philip Zelikow, then executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.<\/p>\n

During a fact-finding mission to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Zelikow\u2019s team was briefed by Shaffer on Able Danger<\/a>, <\/strong>a DIA data mining project that had allegedly identified Mohammed Atta as a threat to the U.S. a year before 9\/11.<\/p>\n

Parenthetically, the \u201cMohammed Atta\u201d identified by Able Danger may have been an imposter operating under a stolen identity, as occurred<\/a> in the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai. In an interview with a German newspaper, reported<\/a> by the Guardian<\/em>, Mohammed Atta\u2019s father claimed that his son had nothing to do with the attacks and was still alive a year after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

Whichever Mohammed Atta was referred to by Shaffer in Bagram, Zelikow reportedly<\/a> \u201cfell silent with shock at the news.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Shaffer, Zelikow came to him at the end of the meeting, gave him his card, and said: \u201cWhat you said today is critically important, very important. Please come see me when you return to Washington D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his return to Washington in January 2004, Shaffer immediately contacted Zelikow\u2019s office and was told to \u201cstand by.\u201d After a week passed, Shaffer called again, and this time was told by Zelikow\u2019s staff: \u201cWe don\u2019t need you to come in. We have all the information on Able Danger we need. Thank you anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the information provided by Shaffer appeared in the 9\/11 Commission\u2019s<\/p>\n

585-page report<\/a>, however.<\/p>\n

In September 2005, more than a year after the publication of the 9\/11 report, Shaffer said he met with one of the 9\/11 commissioners in Philadelphia. Over lunch, he told the commissioner what he had told Zelikow in Afghanistan. The commissioner said that \u201che had never heard any of this,\u201d adding that, \u201chad he heard of it, it would have been something that was very much of interest to he [sic] and the commission.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s a lot of things that never made it in that 9\/11 report?\u201d asked Judge Andrew Napolitano, the host of Freedom Watch<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings were either by negligence left out, or, and I believe, by purpose left out,\u201d Shaffer replied.<\/p>\n

Another guest on the show, Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA\u2019s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, spoke of a similarly frustrating experience with the 9\/11 Commission staff director.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Describing the 9\/11 Commission Report as \u201ca whitewash, and a lie from top to bottom,\u201d Scheuer said he provided Zelikow with over 400 pages of official government documents detailing intelligence failures before 9\/11.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never heard one word back from Zelikow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all seemed very interested in what you had to say,\u201d the former CIA officer added, referring to meetings he had with Zelikow and his staff, \u201cbut at the end of the day, it didn\u2019t make it into the report.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that questions have been raised about Zelikow\u2019s handling of the 9\/11 Commission.<\/p>\n

In his 2009 book, The Commission<\/a><\/em>, Philip Shenon, an investigative reporter for the New York Times<\/em>, wrote about \u201chow tightly Zelikow was able to control the flow of information on the commission,\u201d and that \u201ceverything\u201d was \u201crun through\u201d him.<\/p>\n

While Zelikow\u2019s tight control of the commission excluded disturbing evidence from national security experts like Shaffer and Scheuer, a dubious scholar<\/a> like Laurie Mylroie was afforded ample opportunity to promote the most spurious justification for the Iraq war. Mylroie, whose major booster in government was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, argued that Iraq had been involved in every major terrorist attack against the United States since the early 1990s, including 9\/11. During commission hearings on al-Qaeda, Zelikow, writes Shenon, \u201cmade sure that she had a prominent place at the witness table.\u201d<\/p>\n

And why wouldn\u2019t he? After all, Zelikow had an important role in, as Shenon puts it, \u201cdeveloping the scholarly underpinnings for the Iraq war.\u201d It was Zelikow who had authored a thirty-one-page \u201cpreemptive war\u201d doctrine which George W. Bush announced to the world in 2002 as \u201cThe National Security Strategy of the United States<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?\u201d Zelikow asked <\/strong>an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. In a rare moment of candour, Zelikow proceeded to explain<\/a> that the real reason for preemptive war against Iraq was \u201cthe threat against Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Napolitano asked Lt. Col. Shaffer if the commissioner in Philadelphia had said whether anyone on the 9\/11 Commission \u201chad an agenda, or was covering up for somebody, or was protecting somebody.\u201d The commissioner\u2019s reply was, according to Shaffer: \u201cEverybody on the commission was covering for someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given the fatal career implications<\/a> of broaching such a taboo<\/a> subject<\/a>, not to mention Rupert Murdoch\u2019s well-known devotion to the State of Israel<\/a>, it\u2019s hardly surprising that the Fox<\/em> presenter didn\u2019t probe too deeply into who Philip Zelikow might have been covering for<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

Maidhc \u00d3 Cathail<\/a> is a widely published writer based in Japan. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview on the Fox Business Network, a retired U.S. intelligence officer accused the official in charge of the 9\/11 Commission of a cover-up of intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}