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A Guide to the 9/11 Whistleblowers | ||
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James Corbett The Corbett Report 5 March, 2010
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When losing a discussion on the facts of 9/11, a so-called 9/11 "debunker" will often rely on an old canard to "prove" that 9/11 could not have been an inside job: "So many people want their quarter hour of fame that even the Men in Black couldn't squelch the squealers from spilling the beans," write self-satisfied defenders of the government story. According to the logic of this argument, if there are no 9/11 whistleblowers then 9/11 was not an inside job. So what if there are 9/11 whistleblowers? What if these whistleblowers come from every level of government and private industry, individuals who have even had their cases vindicated by internal government reports? As you are about to see, there are numerous such whistleblowers and each one is a thorn in the side of those who want to pretend that the 9/11 Commission represents the sum total of knowledge on the 9/11 attacks. That is precisely why these whistleblowers are not lauded by legislators or trumpeted by the media, but actively suppressed by government officials and the corporate media alike. These courageous insiders have been sidelined, gagged, hounded from their positions and ignored to the point where their stories are virtually unknown among the general public. And that is exactly why it is vital for the alternative media to make these stories known by bypassing the filters and control of the establishment media. In an effort to draw more attention to the critical issues and troubling questions raised by the testimony of these insiders, The Corbett Report has just released a documentary exploration of key government and corporate whistleblowers, including a discussion of whistleblower protection and what the public can do to facilitate a wider distribution and awareness of this information. Download an mp3 audio file of the documentary or listen to it in the player below: The 9/11 Whistleblowers The 9/11 Commission - The myth that the 9/11 commission report represents an adequate investigation into the events of 9/11 is perhaps best exposed by the commissioners themselves, 6 out of 10 of whom have questioned the commission and its conclusions personally (namely Kean and Hamilton, Kerrey, Roemer, Lehman and Cleland). Commission co-chairman Thomas Kean once famously remarked that the Commission was "set up to fail." Commission members considered bringing criminal charges against Pentagon officials who had deliberately lied to them about the military's complete lack of response on that day. One of the commissioners, Max Cleland, even resigned because the commission had been "deliberately compromised by the president of the United States." 911 Commissioner Bob Kerrey claims 911 was a 30 year conspiracy: Richard Andrew Grove - In 2000, Richard Andrew Grove was working for Silverstream Software, a software development company specializing in enterprise architecture software. By October of that year he had landed the firm their largest client in the company's history: Marsh & McLennan. After finding evidence that Silverstream was overbilling Marsh by nearly $7 million and being told to keep quiet by both his own management and those he confided to at Marsh, he was fired. After his termination, he was invited to present his evidence at a staff meeting in Marsh's offices where Marsh employees who were suspicious of such transactions themselves were gathered. That meeting was on the 98th floor of the World Trade Center. It was the 11th of September, 2001. And everyone who was in attendance at the meeting died there that day. Grove, who had been late for the meeting, survived. His remarkable story, as well as subsequent events, led him to start piecing together how 9/11 helped financial institutions and insurance companies cover up billions of dollars in fraud by eliminating those who were asking questions about it. Richard Grove, Wall Street Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds - In the wake of 9/11, Sibel Edmonds heeded the FBI's call for Middle Eastern language experts to support their counterterrorism unit. Fluent in Turkish and Azerbaijani and conversational in Farsi, she joined the FBI as a translator on September 15, 2001. She soon discovered gross negligence and criminal conspiracy in the FBI and State Department, including deliberately mistranslated documents in the Bureau's possession before 9/11 that contained information about the attacks, nuclear spies being facilitated by top government officials and foreign operatives who were taken in for questioning after 9/11 being released because they were connected to those spy rings. A 2005 report from the Office of the Inspector General determined that none of Edmonds' allegations can be refuted. In 2009, Edmonds revealed that Osama Bin Laden had been working for U.S. intelligence right up to the day of 9/11. Sibel Edmonds: Bin Laden Worked for U.S. Right Up Until 9/11 PT1 William Bergman - In August 2001 the Federal Reserve Board of Governors issued a non-routine supervisory letter warning Fed banks to be vigilant in monitoring suspicious activity reports. At the same time, the United States' economy was experiencing its largest June-August spike in M1 money supply since 1947, with more than $5 billion being added to the currency in circulation over that period. Piecing this information together at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago two years later, economist Bill Bergman wondered if the sudden infusion of currency might have been an indicator of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, as those with assets in danger of being frozen in the wake of such an attack would naturally want to liquidate their holdings before an investigation could occur. When Bergman wrote to the Board of Governors to ask for clarification as to why they had issued their supervisory letter, he was told that he had committed "an egregious breach of protocol in calling the Board staff and asking the question." Coleen Rowley - When the so-called "20th hijacker" Zaccharias Moussaoui was detained on August 15th, 2001, agents in the Minneapolis FBI field office immediately sought a criminal warrant to search his belongings. Management at the FBI dealing with the request threw up numerous obstacles to the agents, and even withheld information from them, including the now-infamous Phoenix Memo written by an agent in Arizona warning of terrorists training in flight schools for a possible upcoming attack. The request was denied and agents were prevented from searching Moussaoui's laptop, which contained information that would have tipped the FBI off to the 9/11 plot. The Minneapolis field office Chief Counsel, Coleen Rowley, has been very public with her disgust at the conduct of FBI management during the case and its subsequent review, and she has supported causes like NYC CAN which seek to re-open the 9/11 investigation. J. Michael Springmann - A 20-year veteran of the State Department's Foreign service, J. Michael Springmann served 18 months as the head of the visa section at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1988-89. During that time he repeatedly rejected visa applications from unqualified individuals only to have his decisions overturned by the head of the consulate. When he returned to Washington, he discovered that the Jeddah consulate was being used as a place for funnelling Afghan mujahedeen into the U.S. for training, facilitated by the CIA on behalf of their asset, Osama bin Laden. The Jeddah consulate would be the very office that issued 15 of the alleged 9/11 hijackers' visas to enter the United States. After numerous complaints up the chain of command, Springmann's contract with the State Department was not renewed. Jeddah, Visa Express & J. Michael Springmann Robert Wright - In the 1990s, Special Agent Robert Wright of the FBI's Chicago field office spearheaded an investigation into terrorist financing codenamed Vulgar Betrayal. The investigation uncovered information about Yassin Al-Qadi, a terrorist financier who would go on to be designated a global terrorist financier by the U.S. treasury in the wake of 9/11. Vulgar Betrayal led to information about the African embassy bombings in 1998 and resulted in the seizure of $1.4 million of terrorist financing. Despite the investigation's remarkable success, however, Wright was taken off of Vulgar Betrayal in 1999 and reduced to a paper pusher. In 2002, Wright went public with information about how his investigations had been systematically starved for funds, hindered and obstructed by FBI management and revealed that he believes 9/11 could have been prevented if he had been allowed to continue his investigation. The Bureau prevented him from releasing a book about his experience. He was threatened with legal action if he revealed any details about what he had been investigating. < Indira Singh - As a risk management consultant for J.P. Morgan in 2001, Indira Singh was tasked with implementing the next generation of risk management software for the firm. Working for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, Singh wanted to choose a reputable software vendor for the task, one with a proven track record of working with the sensitive information of important clients. She solicited a presentation from Ptech, an enterprise architecture software firm whose clients included some of the most sensitive departments in the U.S. government, including the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Treasury, the IRS, the US Navy and the White House. After performing due diligence on the company, Singh discovered that it had been started in part by funds from Yassin Al-Qadi (the same Specially Designated Global Terrorist that Robert Wright's investigation had been focused on). She discovered many other disturbing links between Ptech officers and suspected terrorist organizations. Ptech had been conducting tests on the interoperability of FAA and NORAD computer systems in the event of an emergency on the morning of 9/11. When she tried to bring this information to the FBI in Boston she was told by one agent that she was in a better position to investigate the case than the Bureau was. Barry Jennings - Barry Jennings was the Deputy Director of Emergency Services for the New York City Housing Department. On the morning of 9/11, he received a phone call informing him that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and asking him to go to the Office of Emergency Management in World Trade Center Building 7. Arriving at the office with New York City Corporation Counsel Michael Hess, the men discovered that the OEM had been abandoned. When they attempted to leave there was a series of explosions inside the building, trapping them in the stairwell. Eventually Jennings and Hess were rescued by firefighters, and as they were leaving World Trade Center 7, they had to step over a number of bodies. Jennings' account contradicts the official government explanation of the collapse of World Trade Center 7 at 5:20 p.m. that day, which stated there were no explosions or casualties in the collapse. Jennings died on August 19, 2008 under extremely suspicious circumstances. Protecting the Whistleblowers - New Legislation Threatens Whistleblower Protections in the U.S. All of the 9/11 whistleblowers have faced intimidation or even prosecution for going public with their stories and the establishment media has played along by failing to publicize their information. But as incredible as it sounds, things are going to get even tougher for national security whistleblowers if draconian new legislation in the Senate gets signed into law. According to Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, the bill (S.372) actually started off as whistleblower protection legislation, but "poison pills" have been inserted at the last minute that will repeal already-existing protections for national security whistleblowers. "[This legislation] gives the FBI director the authority to summarily fire any whistleblower with no judicial review" Kohn told The Corbett Report in a recent interview. "These[...]consitutional thugs—administrators who have no respect for the public right to know, no respect for freedom of speech—they want more power. And they're going to get it if this law passes." Even worse, the bill is being passed through the senate via a special legislative process known as "hotlining." This means that it will be automatically passed by the senate unless a senator steps forward to object to the bill. No vote will even be held unless such an objection takes place. The good news is that this process requires unanimous consent, meaning that if even a single senator raises an objection to the bill it will have to be re-worked and/or brought to a vote on the senate floor. The really good news is that there is no excuse for any senator to duck political pressure on this issue: there is no 60-vote supermajority needed here, and a senator doesn't have to be on any specific committee to voice opposition to the bill. This means that average U.S. citizens have a very good chance of stopping the bill in its tracks. All that is required is for people to make their senators aware just how important this legislation is to them and that they won't stand by while the courageous national security whistleblowers are railroaded and stripped of their protections. If this becomes a significant issue, it is almost guaranteed that a single senator could be persuaded to raise an objection. All U.S. citizens are strongly advised to contact their senator about the bill and to get others to do the same by passing this information around. The 9/11 whistleblowers and many others like them have risked everything including their careers, their reputations and even their lives to bring the inside truth to the public. Now it's time for the public to give something back by opposing S.372 and showing their solidarity with the whistleblowers.
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