Amazon has problems with new book critical of 9/11 official narrative

A new book critical of the official version of the events on the 11th of September 2001 by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth was to be released on September 11 this year.

Amazon's troubles

An article by Edward Curtin who wrote a review of "9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation" by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth provided a link to the Amazon page of the book. This page indicated the book would be available on September 11.

Readers responded to the review and no doubt others in great numbers but the Amazon site was reporting the book was "out of print" after it had just been published. The "out of print" notice lasted until the evening of September 13 when the notice was changed to saying it would be in stock on September 30. However the following morning the notice said that it would be in stock by September 21 only to be changed again to September 24. As of noon on Saturday the 15th it was still listed as available this date.

I checked as I was writing this and the date has changed again to being available of October 6. I just checked back and it now says that it is temporarily out of stock. This is all very strange. Amazon already sells another book on 9/11 by Griffin.

Curtin notes:" It is unheard of for a book that has an official release date and that is available straight from the publisher to be listed as “out of print.” Amazon Canada continues to report that the book “has not yet been released.” And obviously, all the date changes that push the book’s availability back by weeks suggest a clear-cut effort by Amazon to make sure readers cannot obtain the book quickly and in a timely manner from the most popular source, if ever."

This explanation might seem plausible were it not for the fact that Amazon handles oodles of books by David Griffin including two earlier works on 9/11. The book publisher Interlink Publishing is selling the book now and claims Amazon has the books. The author does not mention that he has contacted Amazon to find out their explanation to what is happening. It can't be that the book is not released yet as Curtin claims Amazon Canada says.

Curtin is certainly correct that something very weird is happening and Amazon needs to correct it immediately.

About the book

The book is described together with many reviews at the InterLink books website.

Reviews

Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism writes: “9/11 ushered in a generation of war and destruction. And yet, despite its importance, much of the event remains poorly understood. 9/11 Unmasked provides an authoritative and carefully argued exposition of key problems with the official narrative. Nearly 20 years on, it is high time mainstream journalists and academics addressed these issues.”

Peter Phillips, Professor of Political Sociology, Sonoma State University says: “9/11 Unmasked by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth is a solid factual review of the veracity of the US Government’s 9/11 Commission report. Griffin and Woodworth expose the many errors and omissions of the official story leaving no doubt that a cover-up of massive proportions was likely undertaken after 9/11/2001. This is a highly recommended source for those questioning what is happening to America today."

The authors

According to Interlink: "David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University and Claremont School of Theology and also a director of the Center for Process Studies. He has published 40-some books, including Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? And, most recently Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World. Elizabeth Woodworth is a professional sciences librarian who has written books and articles in the fields of nuclear disarmament, climate change, and the events of 9/11."

Griffin is featured in the appended video. Woodworth can be heard in a talk on 9/11 here.

Previosly published in Digital Journal

"28 pages" about Saudi involvement in 9/11 finally released

The US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has at least released the secret "28 pages" from the 9/11 report which deal almost entirely with the relationship of the Saudi Arabian government to the attacks.

The White House claims even after the release that these pages prove that Saudis had nothing to with the attack. While there is, one might say, no smoking gun, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that there were contacts between hijackers and individuals who were associated with the Saudi government. The full redacted text of the 28 pages can be read here.

Many political figures such as former Sen. Bob Graham and Congressman Rick Nolan have long been calling for release of the pages.Graham claimed the pages point a "very strong finger at Saudi Arabia."

The report admits: “While in the United States, some of the September 11th hijackers were in contact with or received assistance from, individuals who may be connected with the Saudi government.” FBI sources also believed that at least two of those individuals were Saudi intelligence agents. TheIntercept reports:One of the most notable figures mentioned is Omar al-Bayoumi, alleged by the report to have likely been a Saudi intelligence agent. Al-Bayoumi was in close contact with hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, providing them financial assistance during their time in the United States and even helping them find an apartment. Bayoumi in turn is believed to have been on the payroll of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and was regularly in receipt of large lump sums of money from the Saudi Ministry of Finance and other undisclosed arms of the government.

Bayouni was supposedly an employee of Ercan, a subsidiary of a company with substantial ties to the Saudi Defense Ministry. He was only confirmed to have gone to Ercan once. Nevertheless he received a $465 per month "allowance" from the company. After he met with the hijackers this was increased to $3,700 a month. Bayouni's wife also received $1200 a month from the wife of the former ambassador to the US. The two kept receiving the money until they left the US in July or early August of 2001.

Another important figure is Osama Bassnan a Saudi-citizen and associate of al-Bayoumi who lived in an apartment close by al-Hazmi and al-Midhar. He is reported to have said to the FBI that he did more for the hijackers than al-Bayoumi did. Bassnan and his wife received regular payments from the wife of former Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar bin Sultan. On one occasion Bassnan was said to have received a check directly from the prince's account. Bassnan said he was introduced to the hijackers by Bayouni. The CIA says they believe Bassman got a fake passport from the Saudi government. He was a known supporter of Al Qaeda, and had spoken of bin Laden as being like a god as far back as 1992. The money given to his wife by the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan totalling $74,000 dollars was supposedly for nursing services but there was no evidence such services were ever provided.

Saleh al-Hussayen, described as a Saudi Interior Ministry employee or official, stayed in the same hotel as one of the hijackers in the days before the attack. When interviewed by FBI officials, he kept passing out or feigning a seizure, terminating the interview. He later fled the US. Much of the material in the pages is not new but confirms statements already made.The Saudi government said that it welcomed the release of the pages claiming that they exonerate Saudi Arabia of any direct role in the attacks. However, it certainly does point to persons associated with the Saudi Government as having helped some of the hijackers. The report notes that Saudi authorities consistently refused to cooperate with investigators who were trying to discover more information about the hijackers. FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the 9/11 inquiry that the Saudis often failed to cooperate both before and after the 9/11 attack.

The report also mentions that several Saudi Naval officers had contact with the hijackers before the attack, but the entire section on this is mostly redacted so the details are not known. The Joint Inquiry tended to make light of the considerable evidence of Saudi involvement presented by the FBI and CIA claiming that the reports were not independently confirmed and that there could be "innocent explanations" for the aid provided to the hijackers. In spite of the spin put on what is in the pages by the US government and the Saudis, the pages contain plenty of circumstantial evidence supporting those who claim that the Saudis played a significant role in helping out at least some of the hijackers.

U.S. bill to allow Saudis to be sued meets resistance

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act introduced in the U.S. Senate would allow the possibility of lawsuits against any foreign nations found to be involved in funding a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The text of the act explicitly mentioned the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The bill appears to target Saudi Arabia in particular, a feature that has angered the Saudis. Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel Jubeir is said to have told the U.S. administration that if the bill was passed, Saudi Arabia would immediately sell $750 billion in US treasuries. This could cause interest rates to spike, damaging the US dollar and the U.S.economy.

Almost immediately, the White House was threatening to veto the bill and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina a co-sponsor of the bi-partisan bill put a hold on the bill saying that it could come back to bite us. The president arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday April 20 for a meeting with King Salman and officials.

The State Department and the White House warned that U.S. citizens abroad could face retaliatory lawsuits.The bill has brought Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer, into conflict with the Obama administration. Schumer said: "If Saudi Arabia participated in terrorism, of course they should be able to be sued. This bill would allow a suit to go forward and victims of terrorism to go to court to determine if the Saudi government participated in terrorist acts. If the Saudis did, they should pay a price."Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, claimed the bill would jeopardize "international sovereignty" and would put the U.S. at risk should other countries adopt a similar law. He said it was difficult to imagine a scenario in which President Obama would sign the bill. The bill would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries from invoking their sovereign immunity in federal courts.

The House is awaiting Senate action before it goes ahead with its own bill introduced by Peter King, a New York Republican. Paul Callan, a CNN legal analyst pointed out that the law could result in countries retaliating against U.S. drone attacks. Callan said: "Which is why for almost 200 years, international law has recognized this concept of sovereign immunity that countries shouldn't really allow individual courts to sue other countries. It shall be worked down as a matter of foreign relations."While Saudi Arabia has not been implicated in the 9/11 attacks, there have long been suspicions that the Saudi royal family were involved. These suspicions have even been increased by the failure so far for the Obama administration to release 28 pages of an investigation into foreign involvement in the attacks.

There is no similar resistance to allowing a suit against Iran to go forward for a terror attack on marine barracks in Beirut. The US Supreme court ruled that Iran must pay nearly $2 billion from frozen assets to more than 1,000 Americans. The ruling relates to a 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks that killed 241 Marines, as well as other attacks. In 2012 Congress passed a law that directed assets of Iran's Markazi bank be turned over to the families who were suing. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the Obama administration as well supported the families in this case.

Obama breaks promise to declassify pages of 9/11 report on foreign involvement

In 2002 a report was issued that gave details of support for the hijackers behind the 2001 attacks. Twelve years later the pages dealing with the support still remain classified in spite of many promises to have them released.

The pages are part of a US House-Senate Intelligence Committee's Joint Inquiry. The section classified was on "specific sources of foreign support". George W. Bush classified the pages for national security reasons. Bush himself was criticized by many for not declassifying the material. Critics say that the American public and especially family members of victims of the attacks deserve to know the contents of the report. The attack, involved four hijacked airlines. Two crashed into the New York World Trade Center's Twin Towers. One crashed into the Pentagon, and a third crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The attack killed almost 3,000 people.
 Attempts to declassify the documents are not new with 46 Senators urging release of the section back in 2003, an attempt that failed. The pages can actually be read by members of Congress if given permission from leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Members are accompanied by intelligence officials who ensure that no notes are taken and those who read the notes must not release specific details about the report.
  Stephen Lynch, a congressman who has read the material, said:"I think the 28 pages are stunning in their clarity in terms of how demonstrative they are in showing the planning beforehand, the financing, and the eventual attacks on that day." However, he also cautioned that questions remained whether individuals "were acting as part of a government, or acting as rogue agents".
  Bob Graham, a former senator, was co-chair of the committee that oversaw the writing of the document containing the 28 pages in 2002. . Graham has been asking for years that the White House release the material. He has also claimed that Saudi Arabia was linked to the 9/11 attacks. Graham accuses Omar al-Bayoumi a Saudi citizen who helped two of the hijackers find an apartment in San Diego, and also paid their security deposit and signed their lease, of being a Saudi agent. Those accusations were rejected by a 9/11 Commission Report in 2004. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US at the time of 9/11 denies that the Saudi government had any role in the attacks.
 There were not just rumors of foreign involvement but of the FBI being involved. This article reports that an FBI informant had rented a room to two hijackers. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.
 Another link to Saudi Arabia involved the house of the father of a Saudi millionaire Abdullaz al-Hiji in Sarasota Florida. The al-Hijii's moved out of their house abruptly and left the country abruptly just weeks before the 9/11 attacks: "..leaving behind three luxury cars, and personal belongings including clothing, furniture, and fresh food. They also left the swimming pool water circulating." An FBI investigation found no connection of the family to the attacks.
However, Bob Graham begs to differ: Graham says he recently gained access to two secret documents regarding the FBI’s investigation of al-Hijji’s family, and says one of the documents “completely contradicts” the bureau’s public statements that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the al-Hijjis. However, Graham said he could not provide further details because the documents were classified. As the appended video indicates Obama promised 9/11 families that he would declassify the pages. He has not kept his promise and the White House has not even bothered to answer recent letters from the 9/11 family group.

Lawyer for Khalid Mohammed resigns and accuses US of a "show trial" at Guantanamo

Major Jason Wright resigned last week from the defense team of Khalid Mohammed. Mohammed claims to be the mastermind for the 9/11 attacks.

On August 26, Wright, a US military lawyer also resigned from the Army in protest at what he called the “show trial” of Mohammed being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay. Wright also accused the US of not providing due process and of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights at the Guantanamo facility.
Wright has been in the US army since 2005 and served over a year in Iraq. He has been on Mohammed's defense team for three years. Wright resigned after he was given a choice between leaving the army and leaving the defense team in order to complete a graduate course so he would qualify for promotion from Captain to Major. Wright claims it would be unethical to follow the order.
 Mohammed was captured over a decade ago in 2003 and is said to have been waterboarded 183 times during the time he spent in CIA "black site" prisons around the world. Mohammed along with other defendants are facing charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Wright told National Public Radio: "All six of these men have been tortured by the U.S. government," Wright told NPR, saying that his client was subject to abuse undisclosed to the public that was “beyond comprehension.” He said Mohammed faced sleep deprivation and threats that his family would be killed."And those are just the declassified facts that I'm able to actually speak about."
 He said that it was extremely difficult to develop any sort of trust with his client since he is from the same US government that tortured him. "You show up several years later and you say, 'I'm from the U.S. government and I'm here to help you' ... and you add on the complexity that I wear the same uniform as the guards," he said. "It's very challenging in any situation to develop trust and confidence with a client. But when you add on that torture paradigm, it's all the more difficult."
 Wright notes that the US Congress has passed legislation that makes it impossible for information about the torture program to come out:"The 'original sin' being the fact that the CIA tortured these men and that they've gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep that completely hidden from public view.So the statute that Congress passed has a number of protections to ensure that no information about the U.S. torture program will ever come out. So not only do you have statutory design, but you actually have, in practice, a very large effort to try to ensure that no ensure that no information about torture is ever made known in public."
 Wright says that the US government is calling the trial fair while stacking the deck against the defense and the accused as well. Wright claims it would not be held a fair trial in any system in the world and that it is simply a "show trial." Surely there are many places in the world such as Egypt where there is even less due process when it comes to anyone accused of terrorism who also claim to have fair trials.
 There were other issues that have plagued the trials. Hundreds of thousands of defense emails were turned over to the prosecution. In April it was revealed that one of the defense security officers had been approached to sign an agreement to act as a spy. In 2013 it was revealed that a meeting room where defense lawyers met with clients was bugged. In January 2013 it was discovered that the CIA monitored trial proceedings and had a secret kill switch which muted the audio. It was discovered when a lawyer was giving testimony about CIA torture and the testimony was cut out. There is still a security officer in the court room who has the power to do this.
 On February 26 the Army sent a letter to Wright notifying him he was being taken off the case to attend a nine-month graduate program in military law. Wright had requested a deferral. He received one the year before. Wright also found that upon completion of his program he would not be reassigned to the case. The letter gave him two choices: to quit the defense team and take the graduate course or resign from the Army. Wright put the interests of his client, an accused terrorist, ahead of his own career interest.With that type of attitude he should not find it difficult to find clients even though he defended the alleged master-mind of the 9/11 attacks.
 US government actions make it difficult tor this trial to be seen as anything other than as Wright describes it "a show trial." The case of Mohammed is particularly ironic since he appeared on Al Jazeera TV claiming responsibility for 9/11. His subsequent torture appears to be aimed at revenge and makes the prosecution's case more difficult.

Doris Lessing on 9/11 etc.

The over-reaction was actually very useful to Bush et al. The reaction is exactly what the Bush administration wanted to advance the agenda of the PNAC. (Lessing certainly didn't win the Nobel Prize for being overly diplomatic!) The fear of Americans is the foundation upon which the War on Terror and all its attendant foreign policy missions is built. The reaction was quite fortunate for policymakers and in particular the neo-cons. In fact the PNAC group said that something like Pearl Harbor was needed to galvanise the US public into action. The result was even better since the world reaction was to join the Americans. Canada, for example, joined the US in Afghanistan and is still there.

Lessing angers America by saying September 11 'was not that terrible'
By Emily Dugan
Published: 24 October 2007
Doris Lessing, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, has risked incurring the wrath of Americans by accusing them of overreacting to the 11 September attacks on the Twin Towers, which she said were really "not that terrible".

Comparing the al-Qa'ida attacks – which killed almost 3,000 people – to the IRA's late 20th-century campaign – in which an estimated 2,000 were killed over three decades – the outspoken British author said that Americans were "naive" in thinking that the tragedy was unique.

"11 September was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," she told the Spanish newspaper, El Pais. "Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think." Lessing, whose 57-year career was praised this month by Nobel judges for the "scepticism, fire and visionary power" of her work, also said of the Americans: "They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be."

The author, who celebrated her 88th birthday on Tuesday, recalled the seriousness of the Provisional IRA's Brighton bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher's government during the 1984 Conservative Party conference. It narrowly missed the Prime Minister, killed five others and injured 34.

"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government," said Lessing. "It killed several people while a Conservative conference was being held and which the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was [attending]. People forget."

The prize-winning author, who has always taken a strong stance against political injustice, also lashed out at the leaderships of Tony Blair and George Bush. "I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," she said. "Many of us hated Tony Blair. I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years. I said it when he was elected: 'This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems.' And he did."

Lessing, whose book The Golden Notebook inspired a generation of feminists, did not have much kinder words for the present occupant of the White House.

"As for Bush, he's a world calamity," she said. "Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

Her criticisms were not limited to the West. Born in 1919 in the city of Kermanshah, in what is now western Iran, she said of the current regime in Tehran: "I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government. Look what happened to its president in New York. They called him evil and cruel in Columbia University. Marvellous! They should have said more to him. Nobody criticises him, because of oil."

Lessing has always been highly political – she was an avowed communist after the Second World War. Among her 15 novels are The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing, which deal with political and sexual taboos, weaving them into complex narratives.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in June this year, she said that freedom to write and say what you thought was very important for an author. "We are free... I can say what I think. We are lucky, privileged, so why not make use of it?"

Counterpunch on Israel and 9/11

The story is at Counterpunch.
I had always wondered about the incident where Israelis in a moving van were in Liberty Park photographing and celebrating as the planes hit the towers. THere is also the issue of the Israeli art students who just happened to be in areas where the terrorists were staying in preparation for the attacks. It seems that investigations were just shut down. The moving van incident apparently is not even mentioned in 9/11 report but it is hardly a conspiracist's dream since the Israelis were arrested and incarcerated for weeks! Anyway it is a fascinating story resurrecting what it seems has long been buried except in those circles that continue to explore 9/11 unsolved mysteries.