Letter sent to Mr. Shenon via NYT website.
Dear Mr. Shenon.
I just finished reading your book The Commission The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. I hope you will take a few minutes to consider some of the issues I have with your narrative.
On page 116 you give a brief summary of Transportation Secretary Mineta’s testimony. Unfortunately, like the 9/11 Commission, you left out some of his most revealing comments. The following is from David Ray Griffin’s book, The 9/11 Commission Omissions and Distortions pg 22.
“As we saw earlier, Mineta said, in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003, that he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, where Vice President Cheny was in charge, at 9:20. During Meneta’s testimony, he described the following episode:
During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out,†“The plane is 30 miles out.†And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,†the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?†And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?â€
This omission leads to perhaps the most tortured paragraphs later in your book on page 266 where you discuss the timing of the shoot-down order:
Farmer’s team discovered that the timing of the shoot-down order — and Bolten’s recommendation to Cheney to call the president — was memorialized in Libby’s notes, which referred to Bolten by his initials.
Libby’s entry from 10:15 a.m. to 10:18a.m. read: “Aircraft 60 miles out, confirmed as hijack — engage? VP? Yes. JB: Get President and confirm engage order.â€
Mr Shenon, what confirmed hijack aircraft was 60 miles out at the time sighted? What exactly has Mr. Libby “memorialized†in his notes? That there is no possible way that Cheney could have issued a shoot-down order prior to 10:15 a.m. and that, of course, he got the President’s confirmation for engagement? Mr. Libby is not a very credible witness when it comes to documenting the actions of Vice President Cheny and the fact that he made the notes around 10:15 a.m. is not proof of the actual time that the discussion occurred.
Your assertion on page 118 makes your bias clear:
But by the time the 9/11 commission opened its doors in 2003, many of the most outrageous, if well circulated, of the theories — that the attacks were an inside job by the Bush administration, that the Twin Towers were brought down by preplaced explosives, that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not a plane — had been well debunked.
You are entitled to your opinion, but there are many people who would disagree. When you use the word “History†in your title, one is inclined to believe that we will in fact be reading an accurate historical narrative backed up by documented sources. But this, like so many of the other mere assertions in your book is not documented. Have you read Debunking 9/11 Debunking by David Ray Griffin? The idea that that the alternative explanations to 9/11 had or have been “well debunked†is preposterous and wishful thinking.
On page 270 you discuss the talented FBI investigators and say:
The honors list began with the Minneapolis agents who were rebuffed when they tried to warn FBI headquarters about Moussaoui in August 2001...â€
“Rebuffed†is hardly an appropriate term to use to describe how Colen Rowely’s request for a search warrant was thwarted. See page 92 in The 9/11 Commission Omissions and Distortions:
At FBI headquarters, however, the request was given to the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU).... The Minneapolis request was then given to the RFU agent Marion “Spike†Bowman, who lived up to his nickname by proceeding to remove the evidence that Moussaoui was connected to al-Qaeda through a rebel group in Chechnya. Then the FBI Deputy General Counsel, on the basis of this edited request, said that there was insufficient connection to al-Qaeda for a search warrant and did not even forward the request to FISA. Minneapolis FBI legal officer Coleen Rowley asked: “Why would an FBI agent deliberately sabotage a case?â€
Given the serious nature of Ms. Rowely’s assertion, it is a total mischaracterization of the incident to say that the Minneapolis agents were simply rebuffed.
On page 307 you describe the battle to access the emergency tapes and transcripts from the police and fire departments. Then you reveal that the contents were indeed horrific. Unfortunately, again, you fail to tell the whole story. You do not mention the hundreds of testimonies of explosions going off throughout the buildings prior to their collapse. The 9/11 commission doesn’t mention them. The NIST report doesn’t mention them. How can you assert that the idea that preplaced explosives were used to bring down the Twin Towers has been “well debunked� Apparently, only by ignoring the evidence.
Your treatment of WTC on page 347 is probably the most egregious example of substituting your opinion for historical fact:
In a final bit of irony, it was determined that a fire that later destroyed WTC 7 on September 11 was probably caused by the rupture of the building’s special diesel fuel tanks...
What evidence do you site to back this up? The FEMA report on WTC 7 admitted that their scenario for the collapse of WTC 7 had “only a low probability of occurrence.†NIST has repeatedly delayed its report on WTC 7 (now scheduled for July, 2008). How can you state as fact that fire destroyed WTC 7 without backing it up? This substitution of mere assertions and opinions as “historical†fact seriously undermines the credibility of your work.
Sincerely
Paul Mozina
paulmozina@wi.rr.com