This story certainly adds to the mountain of evidence showing that at the very minimum the U.S. Gov't has participated in a massive cover up of what really happened on 9/11. However, to me, the bigger smoking guns relate to insider trading and the war games.
The 9/11 Commission basically ignored the entire subject of insider trading just before the attacks. What possible explanation could there be for this ommission? Anyone who participated in this insider trading had to have had advance knowledge of the attacks. So why would Congress and the Commission decide to ignore this major issue?
Second, the war games issue was also ignored by the 9/11 Commission. How can they pretend to a full accounting of what happened on 9/11 without discussing the war games? Obviously, it was never their intent to make a full investigation.
1. Insider Trading
News stories on insider trading in the days before the attacks:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/main311834.shtml<snip>
Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.
An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.
The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.
http://www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-unusualtrading.html<snip>
U.S., Germany, Japan Investigate Unusual Trading Before Attack
By Judy Mathewson and Michael Nol, Bloomberg Financial News, 18 September 2001
Washington, Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Trading skyrocketed in options that bet on a drop in UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. stock in the days before terrorists crashed hijacked United and American airlines jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the 110-story 2 World Trade Center, and Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the destroyed twin towers, also experienced pre- attack trading of 12 times to more than 25 times the usual volume in so-called put options that profit when stock prices fall, according to Bloomberg data.
www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP204A.html
<snip>
The documented pre-Sept. 11 insider trading that occurred before the attacks involved only companies hit hard by the attacks. They include United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Axa Reinsurance, Marsh & McLennan, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance, and Citigroup.
In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence agencies, then it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general counsel. And also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL412B.html<snip>
A transparent and thorough investigation of suspicious trades before Sept. 11 could expose the masterminds behind the attacks by revealing who knew and profited from advance knowledge—if only the government wanted to.
Manipulators with inside information made huge profits on sophisticated trades as the stocks of the airline and insurance companies plummeted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 disaster. The inside information was so precise that experts have concluded that it could have only come from those who masterminded the terror attacks.
This money trail is the closest investigators have come to “a smoking gun” and could lead directly to those who planned the attacks. But with the notable exception of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.), Congress has yet to demand a thorough and open investigation.
In the days following the terror attacks, suspicious and unusual stock trading activity indicated that people used inside information to make huge profits. The money made from the trades done with apparent inside information has been estimated at up to $15 billion worldwide.
2. War Games
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KAN403A.html<snip>
Officials at NORAD have stated when the hijackings first occurred they initially thought it was part of the Vigilant Guardian drills running that morning. Despite some confusion, once Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m., everyone should have known this was not a test. However, this is still an assumption because we do not know what the fighter jocks in the air at the time did and did not know, we do not know the full extent of the orders they received, and it has never been explained why scrambled fighters were unable to intercept any of the hijacked airliners.
Scrambling aircraft simply means providing an Air Force escort to survey the situation. This has nothing to do with shooting down an aircraft. Such scrambling procedures had occurred 67 times in the year prior to 9-11. The concept of this simple standard operating procedure failing from 8:28 a.m. when Flight 11 made an unplanned 100 degree turn to the south, until 9:38 a.m. when the Pentagon was struck, is inconceivable without a military order. Such an order, or multiple orders causing ‘confusion’, may have been scripted into the war game scenarios that morning. We do not know if this is the case, and it seems the 9-11 Commission doesn’t want to know.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=9%2F11+Commission&events=on&entities=off&articles=off&topics=off&timelines=off&projects=off&titles=on&descriptions=on&dosearch=on&search=+Go+&timeline=complete_911_timelineSept.11 8:37 a.m.
According to the 9/11 Commission, Boston flight control contacts NEADS (NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector) at this time. This is apparently the first successful notification of the military about the crisis that morning. Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Powell, a member of the Air National Guard at NEADS, initially takes the call from Boston Center.
Boston flight control says, “Hi. Boston Center TMU, we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.” Powell replies, “Is this real-world or exercise?” Boston answers, “No, this is not an exercise, not a test.” <8:37:52, 9/11 Commission Report, 6/17/04, BBC, 9/1/02> Powell gives the phone to Lt. Colonel Dawne Deskins, regional Mission Crew Chief for the Vigilant Guardian exercise (see (6:30 a.m.)). Deskins later says that initially she and “everybody” else at NEADS thinks the call is part of Vigilant Guardian. After the phone call she has to clarify to everyone that it is not a drill. NORAD commander Major General Larry Arnold in Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, also says that when he hears of the hijacking at this time, “The first thing that went through my mind was, is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?” Deskins recalls, “I picked up the line and I identified myself to the Boston Center controller, and he said, we have a hijacked aircraft and I need to get you some sort of fighters out here to help us out.” However, the timing of this vital notification is in some dispute. Deskins herself claimed the call occurred at 8:31. Another report later states, “Shortly after 8:30 a.m., behind the scenes, word of a possible hijacking various stations of NORAD.” FAA Administrator Jane Garvey testified in 2003 that the FAA notified NORAD at 8:34. NORAD on the other hand, originally claimed they were first notified at 8:40, and this was widely reported in the media prior to the 9/11 Commission's report. <8:40, NORAD, 9/18/01, 8:40, AP, 8/19/02, 8:40, BBC, 9/1/02, 8:40, Newsday, 9/10/02> If the 8:37 time is accurate, this means flight controllers don't notify NORAD until 24 minutes after radio contact is lost (see (8:13 a.m.)), about 17 minutes after the transponder signal is lost and the flight goes far off course (see (Between 8:13- 8:21 a.m.)and(8:20 a.m.), and 13 minutes after voices of the hijackers in the cockpit remove any doubt the plane has been hijacked (see (8:24 a.m.)).
(after 8:37 a.m.)
NORAD gives the command to scramble fighters after Flight 11 after being notified (see (8:37 a.m.)). Lt. Colonel Dawne Deskins at NEADS tells Colonel Robert Marr, head of NEADS, “I have FAA on the phone, the shout line, Boston Center. They said they have a hijacked aircraft.” Marr then calls Major General Larry Arnold at NORAD's command Center in Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, and says, “Boss, I need to scramble Otis .” Arnold recalls, “I said go ahead and scramble them, and we'll get the authorities later.” Arnold then calls NORAD headquarters to report. Then, seeing the proper authorization, NEADS calls Canadian Captain Mike Jellinek at NORAD's Colorado headquarters. Jellinek is sitting near Canadian Air Force Major General Rick Findley, director of combat operations there. Findley's staff is “already on high alert” because of a joint US-Canada exercise known as Vigilant Guardian (see (6:30 a.m.)), and another joint exercise known as Operation Northern Vigilance (see (9:00 a.m.)). Jellinek gets the thumbs up authorization from Findley to send fighters after Flight 11. Findley later states, “At that point all we thought was we've got an airplane hijacked and we were going to provide an escort as requested. We certainly didn't know it was going to play out as it did.” Findley remains in charge of NORAD headquarters while his staff feeds information to NORAD commander-in-chief Ralph Eberhart stationed in Florida.