The New Pearl Harbor

So i went out and got David Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor - Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. It's a summary of various other works which, as the title suggests, indeed raises disturbing questions about etc.

I've resisted looking into the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 for a couple years now. The reasons are i think fairly simple and obvious: a distaste for the hysterical voice. So Griffin's book seemed approachable, non-hysterical, and by repute, well-put together.

I'll cut to the chase. Basically i've become convinced that there are indeed several questions which are more than niggling points such as analysing the president's face as he sat with the schoolchildren. (eg Farenheit 911)

Here are what i consider the main points which The New Pearl Harbor raises.

Why weren't the planes shot down.

The FAA and the various branches of the military have extremely well established proceedures which are followed when a commercial jet liner goes off course, as the 9/11 planes did. It's important to emphasize that these proceedures are followed when a plane goes off course, not if a plane should ever go off course. These proceedures are actually invoked relatively often; they are routine, not exceptional. These proceedures include the immediate scrambling (launching) of fighters from the nearest air force base, who intercept the off-course plane, signalling it etc, etc, and with standing orders to shoot the plane down if it doesn't cooperate. Jet fighters are typically scrambled within minutes of an airplane going off-course. On 9/11 however, nearly half an hour passed before fighters were scrambled. When the fighters were scrambled, they were not called from the nearest air-force base, (which had planes in readiness) but from a much more distant base, some several hundred miles farther away than neccessary. And even then, the fighters which were now allegedly chasing after airplanes who had been confirmed as hijacked and were currently heading towards New York and the Capital flew at approximately one quarter their maximum speed. The fighters did. Fly at one quarter their maximum speed. After planes which had been confirmed hijacked and were headed towards New York and the Capital.
In the case of the alleged plane which crashed into the Pentagon, these discrepencies between standard operating proceedure and proceedure on 9/11 are even more marked, due to the 30-or-so minute lead which the WTC crashes had on the Pentagon crash.

There's significant evidence the WTC towers collapsed due to controlled demolition

The evidence is eyewitness accounts of firefighters in the building reporting hearing explosions, an abundance of fine concrete dust classically indicative of explosives, the rapidity with which the buildings fell, and the infeasability of the crashes causing a structural collapse.

Furthermore, what everyone knows but noone really thinks about (at least i didn't) is that Three, not Two WTC towers collapsed, all in pretty much the same fashion, but airplanes only crashed into two. Even the official FEMA report on WTC-7 (this third tower) concludes "the best hypothesis [of the tower's collapse] has only a low probability of occurance".

Furthermore, the structural iron from the rubble was extracted and sold overseas for scrap with unprecedented speed, and in the case of forensic evidence, illegal speed.

That is, the iron which could provide conclusive physical evidence of the use of explosives in collapsing the towers was hustled out of the scene.

There's no shortage of evidence that what hit the Pentagon was not a Boeing 737, but something much more like a cruise missile without a warhead.

For example, photos of the Pentagon facade before it collapsed showing a tiny little hole thru which a great big 737 (and its wings!) are alleged to have passed.
For example eyewitness testimony that there was no airplane wreckage inside the pentagon - "some small pieces... but not large sections... [T]here's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

Lots of misdirection, changing stories, and clear lies on the part of the government

I won't go into these. They're there.

Lots of evidence of foreknowledge, repression of investigations of Al Queda, etc

Eyes on the prize - who benefits ?

This one answers itself.


So, that's about it.
My opinion: yes, there's definitely stuff which deserves full and well-funded official investigation.