The Omission Report

Brief analysis of The 9/11 Commission Report

by Rodger Herbst

According to the official story, our government was completely surprised by the attacks of 9/11, but within hours had identified 19 alleged hijackers and within days the global mastermind, Osama Bin Laden. Although the 9/11 Commission Report has shed some light on the issues, it also has ignored many of the most glaring inconsistencies. Below are some of the key problems with the report, chapter by chapter.

Chapter 1: "We have a few planes":

The report notes the names of the 19 alleged hijackers and their seat assignment in the aircraft. Detailed descriptions of the alleged hijackers activities are provided, including specific interactions with airport personnel, such as difficulty in understanding questions from security workers.(p2f) It is interesting that such interactions could be reconstructed after the fact, considering the thousands of passengers per day that are processed by international airports. This is supported by the report's words on the screening of American 77: "When the local civil aviation security office of the FAA later investigated the screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary."(p3) It is also interesting that passenger manifests for the four flights, widely available on the internet, include only American names; no foreign, and specifically neither Arabic nor Islamic names.

According to the Sun Sentinel, two weeks after the terrorist attacks, investigators still were not sure who all the hijackers really were. The 19 terrorism suspects apparently used stolen identities, multiple identities and fake names, obfuscating their trail so successfully that even thousands of federal agents are having difficulty sorting it out. This could explain why as many as seven of the alleged hijackers were found to be alive subsequent to the attacks. The significance of this will become clear in the analysis of the "Visa Express" in Chapter 2.

The report notes that "passengers and flight crew (of United flight 93) began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones." (p12) Other report references state "airphones", while a number of additional references merely state "calls", from all flights were made, or "callers" provided information, without documenting the type of call.

Shortly after the attacks, media reported that calls originated from cellphones. Later, the narrative became fuzzy; and it was suggested that $10-a-minute airphones were involved. Some of the alleged calls, including one made from flight 93, were made from inside locked lavatories, which are not supplied with airphones, and therefore must have been by "cellphone." (www.nypress.com/17/30/news&columns/AlanCabal.cfm)

Technical arguments were initially provided which questioned the authenticity of the cellphone calls. For example, Jim Heikkila reported on August 17, 2002 that the electronic handshake required to place a cell phone call takes approximately 45 seconds. At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone's five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. (www.prisonplanet.com/planes_of_911_exceeded_their_software_limits.htm)

The information from Heikkila was corroborated by an article in the August 2004 issue of USA Today, which states that cellphone connection was impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph before the development of the "pico" cell, which was only recently tested.

The authenticity of alleged phone calls is critical, for these calls supply all of our knowledge of the events inside the hijacked aircraft. Yet the Commission report does not attempt to sort out spurious "cellphone" calls from possibly legitimate airphone calls. Neither the Commission nor its report address why there should be any documented instances of spurious cellphone calls, such as those reportedly made inside locked lavatories.

The report paints the picture that scrambling jets was really complicated; "As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government" (p17).

But the fact is that this type of interception is routine. According to spokespersons from NORAD, from the time the FAA senses something is wrong, "it take about one minute" for it to contact NORAD, and then NORAD can scramble fighters "within a matter of minutes" to anywhere in the United States. According to Global Outlook magazine, between September 2000 and June 2001, fighter jets were scrambled at least 67 times. (www.globalresearch.ca) According to an Air Force timeline, military jets provided an emergency escort to golfer Payne Stewart's stricken Learjet starting about 20 minutes after contact with his plane was lost. (http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad)

The report notes a dearth of interceptors on official alert, and stated that other facilities, not on alert, would need time to arm fighters and organize crews (p17) This statement is contradicted by an article in Aviation Week and Space Technology (AWST), which reported that minutes after the second WTC crash at 9:03, military base commanders from all over the US were calling NORAD and volunteering to scramble planes. The Commander at Syracuse NY said he could get a plane in the air armed with cannon in 10 minutes. Yet none of these planes were put into the air until after the last hijacked plane had crashed (about 9:40) (AWST 6/3/02)

The report claims numerous severe inaccuracies in NORAD testimony, and notes fighters were scrambled for spurious reasons; for example the report claims "The notice NEADS (NORAD's North East Air Defense Sector) received at 9:24 was that American 11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington D.C." and "The aircraft were scrambled because of the report that American 11 was heading South."(p34) So far this issue appears only in the Star Tribune, in which Senator Dayton accused NORAD officials of lying. A spokesman for Colorado Springs-based NORAD said, "We stand on our testimony to the commission." (www.startribune.com/stories/484/4904237.html).

Yet the entire history of the reported NORAD/FAA air defense response timeline has been filled with changes, inconsistencies and contradictions. The timeline provided in the first eight pages of Richard Clark's book Against All Enemies also conflicts with that of the Commission. (see www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040731213239607) The report notes that "at 9:05, Andrew Card whispered to [Bush], 'A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.' The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. ... The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening. ... He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15."(p38) The commission was exceedingly supportive of Bush's account of his actions. Bill Sammon, White House correspondent for the Washington Times, and generally supportive of the administration, in a book called Fighting Back, describes Bush as smiling and chatting with the children "as if he didn't have a care in the world" and "in the most relaxed manner imaginable." Sammon in fact referred to the president as "the dawdler in chief." The White House put out a different account a year later when Andrew Card was quoted as saying that after he told the president of the second attack, Bush excused himself...."within a matter of seconds," contradicting the video tape evidence. (The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin. P61) The commission did not address the issue of the changed story.

The report notes "On the morning of September 11, Secretary Rumsfeld was having breakfast at the Pentagon with a group of members of Congress. He then returned to his office for his daily intelligence briefing. The Secretary was informed of the second strike in New York during the briefing; he resumed the briefing. After the Pentagon was struck, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist in rescue efforts. (p37) Gail Sheehy of the Los Angeles Times quoted Mindy Kleinberg, one of the victim family members who helped to force the 9-11 commission into existence: "Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" The lead military officer that day, Brigadier General Montague Winfield, told the Commission that the Pentagon's command center had been essentially leaderless: "For 30 minutes we couldn't find" Rumsfeld. For more than two hours after the Federal Aviation Administration became aware that the first plane had been violently overtaken by Middle Eastern men, the man whose job it was to order air cover over Washington did not show up in the Pentagon's command center. It took him almost two hours to "gain situational awareness," he told the Commission. (Los Angeles Times Friday 13 August 2004)

Chapter 2, "The Foundation of the New Terrorism"; 2.3: "The Rise of Bin Laden and Alqaeda (1988-1992)

The report states: "The international environment for Bin Laden's efforts was ideal. Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funneled through Pakistan: The Pakistani military intelligence service (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISID), helped train the rebels and distribute the arms.

But Bin Laden and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the Unite States. Note 23 stated "CIA officials involved in aiding the Afghan resistance regard Bin Laden and his 'Arab Afghans' as having been militarily insignificant in the war and recall having little to do with them." Typically CIA officials have poor recall. Michael Springman worked for the federal government for slightly more than 20 years.

First, with the Commerce Department International Foreign Trade Administration and then with the Dept. of State. Among other things, he was a Consulate officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a BBC interview, he was repeatedly ordered by high level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. He complained bitterly, both in Jeddah, and the US, but was met with silence.

He found that what he was seeing was an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. The intention was that they would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the "Soviets". Neither the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, nor the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later shook the State Department's faith in the Saudis. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm) In a longer interview on the Alex Jones Show, Springman states "According to the Los Angeles Times, fifteen of the nineteen people, the Saudis who were allegedly responsible for flying planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, ... got their visas from the Consulate at Jeddah. Now, according to a journalist I know in Florida, this was done through a new wrinkle in the visa procedures there. At the time I was running the visa section, I personally interviewed at least one member of the family or just about everyone who wanted to travel to the States. They had switched things so that the visas would be submitted, in many instances, through travel agencies, that were approved by the Consulate. [Someone] would go to the travel agency and say I want to go to the United States - ... get me a visa, I have to visit relatives there, etc. And they would simply send a package of passports and visa applications over to the Consular's section. And because they came from a reputable source, people didn't look too closely at it..." (www.infowars.com/transcripts/springman2.htm) This process is now sometimes called "Visa Express" by 9/11 researchers.

Chapter 3, "Counterterrorism Evolves":

Chapter 3.7 ...and in the Congress" discusses the issue of power of the legislative branch versus power of the executive branch, including the congressional intelligence committees. The highly regarded Asia Times wrote: "If the 9-11 Commission is really looking for a smoking gun, it should look no further than at Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time.". The Asia Times notes that the general was breakfasting with Congressman Porter Gross and Democratic Senator Bob Graham on the morning of September 11. Goss and Graham happen to be the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, who would eventually head up the "Joint Intelligence Committee Investigation" of 9/11. Goss is the named replacement of former CIA Director George Tenet. According to the Asia Times, In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh - the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida. "...the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story: Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed's cellular-phone numbers." www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html. No mention is made in the report of the breakfast with General Mahmoud.

Chapter 7, "The Attack Looms" :

The report suggests a 9/11 plot was evolving. Section 7.3 "Assembling the Teams" states that "During the summer and early autumn of 2000, bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan started selecting the muscle hijackers--the operatives who would storm the cockpits and control the passengers."(p231) Although this sentence is footnoted, the assertion is not backed up by any documentation. In the section "Recruitment and Selection for 9/11"; terms such as "recruits", "targeted for recruitment", "chosen for the 9/11 operations", etc., appear sprinkled through a commentary generally only describing the alleged terrorists' backgrounds. Very little information is actually provided about the details of any "plot".

This is consistent with the fact that seven months after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller stated "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper--either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere--that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot." Law enforcement officials say that while they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers in the months before the attacks--all legal except for a few speeding tickets--they have found no evidence of their actual plotting." (www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/3163998.htm?1c)

Chapter 9, "Heroism and Horror":

The report related events at the WTC complex and the Pentagon. A large part of Chapter 9 concerned the response of emergency services at the WTC complex on 9/11/01. The City of New York refused to release hundreds of original tapes, because they contained "opinions and recommendations" of the responders, "since such opinions and recommendations are to be distinguished from factual material."(New York Times 12/21/03) The 9/11 Commission agreed to accept tapes redacted of this information. Why would the Commission not be concerned with our first responder's recommendations?

The report attributes severe damage to the 77th floor, 22nd (security office) floor, the lobby, and B4 level of the North Tower to a fireball from airplane impact.(p285) The report references in a note video footage taken by a team of two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were accompanying emergency responders from Enginehouse 7. The report does not reference the content of the footage, which is as follows: "To their surprise, the firefighters of engine 7 found widespread damage to the entire lobby area. Over and over, these professional firefighters expressed their complete puzzlement over the damage in this area. As one firefighter put it: "The lobby looked like the plane hit the lobby!" Although the narrator claimed that fire officials were "informed... by certain federal officials" that the lobby damage occurred because "burning jet fuel" had poured eighty stories down the elevator shafts and then exploded in the lobby, there was no indication of an incendiary-type explosion or fire in this area." ( www.thepowerhour.com/postings/911-oddities-revealed.htm Reference at indymedia website: http://sdimc.org/webcast/front.php3?article_id=912) Stationary Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sub-basement level of the North Tower, gives numerous harrowing eyewitness accounts of ground and sub-basement-level explosions in the on-line publication Chief Engineer. For example, "The two [WTC workers] decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone. There was nothing there but rubble.... The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can't see anything." (www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029)

A diagram of the "sky-lobby" elevator configuration for the towers shows that at most two of the 99 elevator shafts could have shunted jet fuel or fireball to the lobby. Also, the basement elevator system is independent of the upper elevator system, so how did the fuel or flame reach the basement levels?

The report notes that at 9:03 flight 175 hit the South tower, crashing through the 77th to 85th floors. "The plane banked as it hit..., leaving portions of the building undamaged on impact floors. As a consequence--and in contrast to the... North Tower--stairwell A Initially remained passable from at least the 91st floor down, and likely from top to bottom.(p293) The report notes that by 9:58. the battalion chief had reached the 78th floor on stairwell A; he reported that it looked open to the 79th floor, well into the impact zone.(p301) This is a reference to the so called "lost tape" which verified that members of the fire department reached the scene of the crash zone of South tower, and thought they had things under control. The report fails to ask why the DOJ required family members to sign a statement that they would not discuss the contents of the tape in order to hear it. The report does not question why the South Tower, receiving less damage from aircraft impact, was the first tower to collapse.

The report notes: "the North tower began its pancake collapse." The report does not discuss what a "pancake collapse" is supposed to be, nor why the cause of the collapses, according to FEMA in it's "Building Performance Assessment" final report, has never been determined. The report does not state that members of the engineering and fire engineering community, as well the Science Committee of the House of Representatives all concur that the cause of collapse has not been adequately addressed.

The report notes the incredible survival of a dozen people descending Stairwell B as the North tower collapsed. One of the amazing survivals was Genelle Guzman McMillan, the last person pulled alive from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. She was discovered on Sept 12, 2001, 27 hours after the towers had fallen. During her descent, on the 13th-floor landing, McMillan "heard a rumble. 'A big explosion,' she now calls it. 'The wall I was facing just opened up, and it threw me on the other side,' she says. She was struggling to reach a friend 'when the rubble just kept coming down.... Everything just kept coming harder and harder.'" ( www.azcentral.com/news/sept11/sept11survivor.html)

Chapter 10, "Wartime":

The commission had been aware of, and reported on six charter flights that carried 142 Saudi passengers out of the US between September 14 and 24, 2001.(p329) However, documents obtained from the government by Judicial Watch show that commercial airline flights that left between September 11, when US airspace was closed, and September 15, 2001 carried 160 Saudi passengers out of the US. Judicial Watch stated that this information had been provided to the commission (August 2004 issue of Judicial Watch Verdict), however this information was not included in the report.