Omissions
The Report fails to acknowledge that no steel-framed high-rise building has ever collapsed due to fires.
The Report fails to mention the total collapse of 47-story steel-framed skyscraper Building 7 at 5:20 on the day of the attack.
The Report contains no mention of the interview in which the owner of Building 7 states that he and the Fire Department decided to "pull" Building 7 -- an apparent admission of a conspiracy to destroy the building and its contents.
The Report fails to mention the rapid removal and recycling of the structural steel from the collapsed World Trade Center buildings, even to make excuses for it.
The Report makes no mention of a statement by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to Peter Jennings indicating he had foreknowledge of the collapses: "We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse, and it did collapse before we could get out of the building."
The Report contains no mentions of eyewitness accounts of explosions preceding the collapse of South Towers.
The Report fails to mention that George W. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, and his cousin, Wirt Walker III, were principals in the company that had the contract to provide security for the World Trade Center, Stratesec, nor does it mention the company.
The Report makes no mention of the fact that a new lessor took control of the World Trade Center complex just six weeks before the attack, obtained an insurance policy covering terrorist attacks, and successfully sued the insurance companies to obtain twice the multi-billion-dollar value of the policy.
The Report repeats the list of 19 suspects identified by the FBI within days of the attack, while failing to mention that six of them reported themselves alive after the attack.
The Report fails to mention any of the reports of behavior by the alleged hijackers before the attack that belie the official story that they were devout Muslims on a suicide mission for Allah.
The Report fails to mention that the published passenger lists contained no Arab names -- a fact publicized by skeptics of the official story.
The Report fails to ask why the plane that crashed into the Pentagon was not stopped by anti-aircraft missile batteries that presumably ring the building.
The Report fails to mention that no credible footage of the Pentagon attack has been made public, despite public knowledge that the FBI seized footage of the attack from nearby businesses.
The Report does not ask why the Secret Service did not obtain air cover for the President's motorcade from the Sarasota school to the airport, nor for Air Force One, which took off at about 9:54, until about 11:10.
The Report avoids mentioning several reports that government officials and business leaders received warnings and avoided targets of the attacks, including:
A warning by the FBI advising Attorney General John Ashcroft to avoid flying on commercial airlines.
The report that Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans the evening before the attack.
The cancellation of plans by Ariel Sharon to attend an event in New York City on 9/11/01.
A warning to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to avoid flying.
The grounding of Salman Rushdie by Scotland Yard.
The Report avoids mentioning a warning received by employees of Odigo hours before the attack.
The Report does not mention that letters with weaponized anthrax were sent to the two most powerful senators attempting to slow the passage of the 9/11/01 attack-predicated USA PATRIOT Act.
The Report states that the Commission was "chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks," but fails to mention that it makes no attempt to meet its charter.
Falsehoods
The Report's Notes state: "the interior core of the [Twin Towers] was a hollow steel shaft, in which the elevators and stairwells were grouped." In fact, the core structures were composed of bundles of steel columns numbering 47 and having outside dimensions, in most cases, of 36 by 16 inches and 54 by 22 inches.
The Report states that the "South Tower collapsed in ten seconds," when it actually took about 15 seconds. While one might expect that the Commission would overstate rather than understate the collapse time, the fact that the Commission did not even consider a collapse time within one second of the vacuum free-fall time of 9.2 seconds a problem for the official explanation is evidence that the Commission would endorse that explanation no matter what the facts.
Regarding the failure to promptly move George W. Bush from the known location of the Sarasota classroom, the Report states that "No one in the traveling party had any information during this time that other aircraft were hijacked or missing." Yet, according to evidence assembled by David Griffin, the Secret Service has open lines to the FAA, whose top operations people in the northeast corridor thought that as many as 11 planes had been hijacked.
The Report states: "The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States -- and using them as guided missiles -- was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11." (The Report repeats the assertion three times.) Yet media reports, such as the USA Today article entitled "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons" describe pre-9/11 NORAD drills involving hijacked jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The Report states: "The protocols did not contemplate an intercept. They assumed the fighter escort would be discreet, 'vectored to a position five miles directly behind the hijacked aircraft,' where it could perform its mission to monitor the aircraft's flight path." Yet the order referenced by the footnote for this statement (Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations), states: 7-2-1. FACILITY NOTIFICATION
The FAA hijack coordinator will advise the appropriate center/control tower of the identification of the military unit and location tasked to provide the hijack escort. The center/control tower shall coordinate with the designated NORAD SOCC/ROCC/military unit advising of the hijack aircraft's location, direction of flight, altitude, type aircraft and recommended flight plan to intercept the hijack aircraft. The center/control tower shall file the coordinated flight plan.
To address the charge that Saudi nationals were flown out of the country before the post-9/11 flight ban was lifted, the Report states: "we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001." In fact national airspace was only open to commercial airliners on a case-by-case basis on September 13, 2001. It was not until September 15th that the skies were opened to general aviation (privately owned aircraft). 5 Â Yet the Lear Jet that flew Saudi nationals from Tampa, FL to Lexington, KY on September 13th was a private plane.
Contradictions
The Report notes that Hani Hanjour's pilot application was rejected, and that he was a "terrible pilot," on the one hand, but asserts that he was "operation's most experienced pilot," and piloted Flight 77 through a 330-degree spiral dive maneuver, on the other.
The Report explains that the suicide terrorists chose not to target a nuclear power plant because they "thought a nuclear target would be difficult because the airspace around it was restricted, making reconnaissance flights impossible and increasing the likelihood that any plane would be shot down before impact." (p 245) It fails to apply the same logic to their targeting of the Pentagon, which, being the heart of the US military, is presumably even better defended than a nuclear power plant.
The Report addresses the question of why George W. Bush remained in the publicly known location of the Sarasota school until 9:35 AM -- a half hour after the second Tower strike -- by relating that Bush "told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis," (p38) and that the Secret service "told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door." (p39) The Report implicitly accepts these explanations as satisfactory, thereby implying that for Bush to have taken any less than a half hour to leave the school would have required him to display an excited reaction and to "run out the door."
