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MARRS JOINS 9/11 DISSENTING CHORUS
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men: George Orwell
Leading investigative journalist Jim Marrs joins the dissenting alternative press chorus that the official 9/11 story is a farce that demands a much deeper investigative probe.
This exclusive preview article by publisher Byron Belitsos ( Origin Press ) is eye opening . You will find quoted within it the most important section from Marrs new book -- the 23 findings that depart from the "official" story of 9/11.
Allen L Roland
Burgeoning Citizens' Movement: "Official 9/11 Story Is Dead."
Diverse outpouring of books, websites, films, citizens' inquiries, and lawsuits is making its mark .
By Byron Belitsos
6/22/04
Bush White House scandals often bring together strange bedfellows as critics--but almost nothing matches the multifaceted coalition that has formed around today's 9/11 truth campaign. Already heroes to the alternative media, some among this wildly diverse group of citizens who challenge the prevailing "incompetence theory" promulgated by the White House and the 9/11 Commission are now surfacing in mainstream media coverage. Michael Moore’s new film on the subject, premiering later this week across the nation, will open millions of eyes to the deception. Another prominent new voice challenging the official line is one of this country’s leading investigative journalists and conspiracy theorists, Jim Marrs. His new book, Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies (Origin Press) also becomes available later this week. A key excerpt from this book is included in this article.
Marrs’ presence adds a great deal of weight to the many other independent researchers from across the political spectrum--along with dissatisfied families of 9/11 victims—who point to a massive number of anomalies from the official story that have not been adequately addressed by the 9/11 Commission or the mainstream press. Especially notable are the 23 Questions that were formally presented to the government's 9/11 Commission by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee; almost all of them still remain unasked and unanswered, even after twelve sessions of the US government's official 9/11 Commission, whose final report is due on July 26, 2004.
Dissenters from the Bush administration account say the official story falls apart on the prima facie evidence--especially regarding (1) Saudi, Israeli, and Pakistani involvement, (2) the apparent "stand-down" of America's air defenses, (3) stark factual anomalies from the official stories about the hijackings and the collapses of the towers, (4) removal or withholding of evidence, and (5) President Bush's bizarre behavior on the day of the tragedy, along with his administration's overt resistance to a thorough inquiry.
These and numerous other disturbing issues have become salient for all researchers, no matter what their political lens. The result is today's 9/11 truth movement that joins together a wide array of voices from the right to the left, including:
• David Ray Griffin, a distinguished professor of philosophy of religion at Claremont School of Theology, and author of The New Pearl Harbor, an underground bestseller that eviscerates the official story about 9/11.
• Michael Moore, the left-liberal winner of the 2004 Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or and writer/director of Farenheit 9/11.
• Michael Ruppert, a crusading former Los Angeles police detective whose worldwide speeches to huge audiences and Truth & Lies about 9/11 video brings out the criminal dimensions of alleged US complicity.
• Andreas Von Buelow, Social Democrat and former Defense Minister of Germany who alleges in a European bestselling book that the CIA was involved in perpetrating 9/11.
• Jim Marrs himself, Texas libertarian and bestselling conspiracy theorist whose 9/11 exposé book Inside Job cogently summarizes the key evidence and points to an overlap of political agendas of conspiring parties.
Excepting Michael Moore, many of these voices can be found just below the surface of mainstream coverage. Even Moore's own film distributor, Disney/Miramax, backed out after he won the Cannes prize rather than face the rising heat of the 9/11 controversy.
A similar scenario beset Jim Marrs. Inside Job was originally commissioned by HarperCollins, a major New York publisher for whom Marrs has written two previous bestsellers. Accepted by the editors, and vetted by a Harper attorney, the firm backed out just before printing the book, even allowing the author to keep his six-figure advance. The book is now being brought out by a small press in Northern California. It’s little wonder that HarperCollins was shy about publishing the Marrs work. This list of his shocking findings is excerpted from the introduction to his book:
• A wide variety of standard defense mechanisms designed to prevent such an attack systematically failed on 9/11. Especially notable are the atypical failures which occurred simultaneously within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Military Command Center (NMCC), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), all charged with protecting US airspace.
• Interceptor jets were not scrambled for more than thirty minutes after it was obvious that four airliners had gone off course and were presumably hijacked. In the case of Flight 77, which reportedly slammed into the Pentagon, an hour and forty-five minutes elapsed with no interception.
• Missile batteries designed to protect Washington, DC, failed to stop the strike on the Pentagon, one of the world's most protected structures, and fighter jets on constant alert at Andrews Air Force Base just twelve miles away were never scrambled.
• By a "bizarre coincidence," two government homeland defense agencies (NORAD and the NRO) were practicing war games on the morning of 9/11. The games simulated responses to a scenario in which hijacked planes were crashed into buildings. This fact could explain the government's lack of rapid response to the real hijackings, yet this plausible alibi has never been brought to public attention. One also wonders: How did the hijackers know the time and date of these war games in order to time their attacks to coincide with them?
• President Bush proceeded with a photo op at a Florida elementary school even after he and his aides knew that three planes had been hijacked. He lingered in the classroom for nearly twenty minutes after being informed that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center (WTC).
• Not one steel-framed high-rise building in history has collapsed solely due to fire. The free-fall speed collapse of the Trade Center towers, with attendant melted steel and powdery dust, exhibited all the characteristics of a controlled demolition.
• Just such a controlled demolition apparently occurred about 5 p.m. that same day when, according to the leaseholder of the WTC complex, the 47-story Building 7 was "pulled," i.e., intentionally demolished.
• Vital evidence, including the buildings' structural steel, was destroyed through rapid removal and destruction by US government officials with no investigation. This is only one of the many reasons why Fire Engineering magazine called the official investigation "a half-baked farce."
• An eight-mile-long debris trail indicated that Flight 93 was destroyed in the air rather than in the Pennsylvania crash reportedly caused by an onboard struggle between the hijackers and passengers.
• More than a dozen countries firmly warned US authorities that an attack on American soil was imminent, some only days before the events.
• Strong evidence points to complicity in the attacks by senior intelligence operatives from Israel and Pakistan who are closely aligned with American intelligence agencies.
• A classified Congressional report incriminates senior officials in the Saudi Arabian government, showing that they had close ties to the hijackers. The Saudis enjoy long-term business and social ties to the Bush family and close political ties to the US government.
• The US government expedited the swift departure of over 100 Saudis from the country, even as the American public had been denied the right to fly. Two dozen members of bin Laden's own family, presumably potential witnesses, were allowed to leave the country without interrogation.
• Insiders with foreknowledge of the events to come engaged in massive and highly profitable short-selling of shares in American Airlines and United Airlines, as well as other stocks readily affected by the disaster. The public has still not been presented with the final results of official investigations into these transactions-if there are any.
• A growing number of whistleblowers from within the federal government have pointed to evidence that various agencies were well aware of the possibility of attack, and were prevented by seniors officials from mounting full investigations.
• Far from being a mere reaction to 9/11, evidence now proves that the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were the culmination of long-standing plans which only awaited a provocation such as 9/11.
• The official explanations for the invasion of Iraq, such as the need to capture weapons of mass destruction, and to "bring democracy" to the country, have proven false.
• Within a few hours, the FBI released names and photos of the suspected hijackers although later many of those named turned up alive in the Middle East.
• Also within hours of the attacks, FBI agents were scouring the houses, restaurants, and flight schools they frequented. If no one had foreknowledge of the hijackers or their activities, how did they know where to look?
• Far from ordering a full and objective investigation to determine who was responsible for the 9/11 tragedies, the Bush administration dragged its feet and actually took actions to impede a swift and truthful probe into the events of that day. It was nearly two years after the events that mounting pressure from the public, led by families of 9/11 victims, finally forced the creation of an "independent" investigatory commission.
• No one in government has been reprimanded or even scolded for what we are told was the greatest intelligence and homeland-defense failure in US history. In fact, the very agencies which failed the nation watched their budgets increase dramatically, and some of the officials ostensibly at fault were actually promoted.
• No person in government, other than former National Security Council counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke, has felt the need to apologize to the American people for the 9/11 security failure.
• President Bush himself declined to apologize for the 9/11 tragedy to either the American public or to victims' families during an April 2004 press conference, despite being presented with the opportunity to do so at least three times.
As if all this weren’t enough, whistleblowers from diverse quarters are also still coming forth to provide even more evidence. These men and women go further than mainstream dissenters like Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar, in their accusations of wrongdoing. They include:
• Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler, former vice chancellor at the Navy's Monterey Defense Language Institute, who was relieved of duty after telling the press that he believed President Bush knew about the impending attacks.
• Bill Manning, editor of the 125-year old Fire Engineering magazine, who in a 2002 editorial called the official investigation into the alleged destruction of the towers by fire a "half-baked farce."
• Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, who challenged Condoleezza Rice's 9/11 Commission testimony on every point, only to be gagged by a court order obtained by the White House.
• 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani, a housewife who along with a former attorney general of Pennsylvania is suing key officials under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corruption Organizations) Act.
• Catherine Austin Fitts, one-time Republican and former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bush I, who has gone public with evidence about 9/11 insider profiteering.
Americans who seriously doubt the "incompetence theory" promulgated by the government's 9/11 Commission probably number in the millions. The evidence concentrated in books like Jim Marrs' Inside Job, they believe, leads far beyond the claim of a "chance occurrence" of multiple simultaneous failures of America's homeland defense and intelligence agencies. They suspect that the cumulative evidence points to the likelihood that the Bush White House, at a minimum, permitted 9/11 to occur as a pretext for its political agenda. This is the grim conclusion forced upon many.
Large independent conferences based on this premise have been held in the US and Europe, notably the International Citizens' 9/11 Inquiry, attended by nearly 1000 people in San Francisco in March 2004. Arising from the latter event was a coalition organization named 911Truth.org, which is now leading the movement through its portal website and many public initiatives.
We are fortunate in that the myriad findings of the 9/11 truth movement are now succinctly covered in the acclaimed new book by Jim Marrs. In addition to his original journalistic research, Marrs summarizes the work of scores of other researchers and uses extant mainstream sources. His book also features in its appendices the 23 Questions of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and an excerpt from Ellen Mariani's RICO Act lawsuit filing. His book can be obtained at http://www.insidejob-911.com, or by calling Origin Press at 888/267-4446.
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