Connecting The Dots After 9/11 - CBS

[dArKeR]

Of all the big "What Ifs" surrounding 9/11, the biggest by far is "What if our lawmen had connected all those dots?" Dots like the fact that some of the hijackers reserved their plane tickets with the same credit card; shared the same frequent flier numbers, lived in the same house and got their visas at the same place. Some dots practically screamed to be connected, say analysts.

"The really distressing thing about 9/11 is that we had the names of two of the hijackers, and they made those reservations and flew on those planes using their true names," said Jim Dempsey, Center for Democracy and Technology.

Well now there is such a dot connector and it's in a non-descript Florida office building inside a bank of computers. Essentially it combines criminal, public and commercial information into a single database that cops used to only dream of.

Dubbed the "Matrix"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/29/eveningnews/main575752.shtml

[Cappurr]

1. Yeah....and What If our President

had been on duty instead of reading to kids and ordered planes in the air. And what if our President had paid attention to the Aug 6 briefing that said we were going to be attacked? And what if our president had paid attent to the briefing given by the outgoing Clinton security people who told them Bin Laden was the problem. And what if our president hadn't threatened the Taliban in May because they wouldn't play ball with him and Unocal.

There are a lot of dots missing from that matrix.

[kid_nz]

2. the Big Brother component...

...is somewhat disturbing...

[7th_Sephiroth]

3. and it will all lead back to

the saudi's, but oh, no, we cant have that, bush is practically a member of the saudi royal family himself, cand go embarassing the family now, can he?

[dbt]

4. A bit late, innit?

Where the FUCK was CBS around two years ago?!?!? Rather was about to sign up, in Patriotic Tears, if memory serves.

:argh:
dbt

[fizzana]

5. Some overlooked dots that should have been connected.

On Aug. 6 the CIA gives the administration a dire warning about an imminent terrorist threat. We still have no idea what the nature of the warning was nor what actions the administration took because all references to the briefing were redacted out of the 9/11 report.

On Aug. 6 the FBI had no Director. Louis Freeh had already retired and Robert Mueller only took over in the first week in September. The person ultimately responsible for running the FBI was and still is John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Considering the FBI had no head, Ashcroft should have immediately gone to the FBI and made sure that no stone was unturned in gathering all the information that the FBI had on terrorist investigations.

Instead Ashcroft didn’t cancel his fishing vacation but did change his travel plans by switching from a commercial airliner to a private jet to take him on his vacation.

If he had cancelled the vacation and instead made sure the FBI checked all its investigations they would have found out that a plot to hijack planes was a distinct possibility. We know this from FBI field investigations in Phoenix and Minnesota where Moussouai had already been detained.

In addition, the FBI had been given the names of a couple of the hijackers by the CIA in late August. If the FBI was on the case, they would have probably forwarded these names to the airlines. This is a fairly common procedure for high profile drug dealers and other wanted criminals.

If the airlines had these names they would have picked up the fact that one of the hijackers bought 5 tickets for the flight that eventually flew into the Pentagon a few days before 9/11.

This never happened because Ashcroft, as best we can tell, never bothered to get the FBI involved. Remember that Ashcroft also sent a proposed budget to Congress a couple of days before 9/11 requesting budget increases for 22 different areas but conspicuously absent was any increased spending in the fight against terrorism.

In all the recriminations about 9/11 I’ve never seen any fingers pointed at Ashcroft. They should be.

[leesa]

6. Wrong Dots. Wrong Terrorists.

Check out the terrorists in the White House for many of the unanswered myteries of 9-11. How can anyone still believe this half-assed BS the White House tried to dupe us with???

Right, international terrorists using frequent flyer miles!

How stupid do they think we are??

Bush and his henchmen KNOW what happened that day. Who ordered the stand down of the air defense jets for an hour and a half? Who ordered them to fly at reduced speed? Why has the investigation been actively blocked by the White House...specifically by Cheney and Bush?

Who has the answers to the 100's of peculiarities surrounding 9-11?

[this_side_up]

7. Sept issue of

Vanity Fair has article: The Bushes and the Bin Ladens. He goes into the fact that no one else was allowed to fly
except the Ladens and the govt denies that they were flying.

Gets into the Bush/laden history a bit

[AndyTiedye]

8. Ashcroft was using planes that were supposed to intercept terrorists...

...to hunt for pot smugglers.

LIHOPing bastards!