Customer Reviews

The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Volume 23 (Research in Political Economy) (Research in Political Economy)

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There is so much crucial information that the 9/11 Commission did not explore, that it is hard to believe it has taken so long for a serious piece of academic criticism like this volume to appear.

Within "Hidden History" you will learn about insider trading that the Commission chose to gloss over. You will learn about multiple War Games, "Terror Drills" and military exercises that preceded and took place on 9/11. You will learn about the history of state sponsored terrorism. You will gain new insight into the true nature of al-Qaeda and how it has continued to interface with Western intelligence agencies well after the end of the Cold War.

You will learn about geopolitical strategy that could have been dictated by Machiavelli himself, but instead comes from American think-tanks and intellectuals, like Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Project for a New American Century. You will learn how fundamentally flawed the 9/11 Commission was, riddled with conflicts of interest and guided by partisan considerations.

There could be 10 books like this, replete with extensive footnotes, endnotes and impeccable research. However, roadblocks remain, fueled by misguided skepticism, ideological bias, and agendas that overlap, fusing imperial ambitions with regional desires and corporate deviance.

This is the first serious volley from the academic community upon the "official story" of 9/11.

There will be more to come.

I am a professional medical librarian with 25 years experience and must point out that Elsevier Science Press, and other publishers in the same league, including Karger, Oxford University Press, Academic Press, and Wiley Interscience, are ALL expensive because 1) the peer-reviewed research work which advances new knowledge is costly, and 2) they are not mass market publications and must depend upon cost per volume, rather than volume of sales, to survive. As original contributions they are published in durable hardbacks for libraries. When demand warrants they are published as paperbacks, and then, being somewhat less costly, they achieve wider distribution.

As original contributions to human knowledge, these publications are invariably, routinely reviewed. Of particular note is the fact that this volume has NEVER BEEN REVIEWED IN THE US. To fill this gap, I have submitted a review of this compendium to at least a dozen newspapers, but without success. The continuing absence of a review is enormously significant with regard to the psychological denial of scientifically-based 9/11 research.

Here, therefore, is my review:

*****************

On September 11, 2001 at 5:20 pm, World Trade Center Building No. 7, a 47-storey steel structure one block from the Twin Towers, suddenly collapsed at freefall speed into its own footprint. It had not been hit by an airplane, and its collapse was not reported in the national news.

The implosion of WTC-7 is just one of a host of strangely unreported events which have finally seen the light of day in the impeccably researched Hidden History of September-11-2001, from Elsevier Science Press, the first prestigious academic publisher to question the extraordinary coincidences and pervasive incompetence which the U.S. government blamed for the success of the attacks.

Having named the hijackers the following day, the Bush administration fought against an investigation, and only struck a Commission of Inquiry 451 days later, under pressure from impacted families. However, Jay Kolar, an expert in film analysis, offers detailed proof that 11 of the 19 FBI-named hijackers could not have been on the aeroplanes, and that the Dulles airport surveillance video which identified the men was undated, and showed evidence of tampering--through multiple camera locations, times of day, splicing, and panning.

Citing the recently released "Oral Histories" from the New York Fire Department, Professor emeritus Dr. David Ray Griffin challenges the official conclusion that fire destroyed the buildings. Historically, no steel skyscraper has ever collapsed from fire, yet all three buildings showed 11 features unique to controlled demolitions: sudden onset, straight-down descent, freefall speed, sliced steel, pulverized concrete, dust clouds, horizontal ejections, demolition rings, audible explosions, molten steel, and total collapse.

Six military drills conducted the morning of 9/11, described by Four Arrows (aka Don Jacobs) of Northern Arizona University, were so similar to the actual attacks that they confounded the response effort and raised serious questions about possible complicity by the U.S. command. The Commission's report barely dealt with this extraordinary coincidence, raising questions as to who was in charge and why the drills were covered up.

Flawed processes in the Commission's inquiry are exposed by Bryan Sacks of Drexel University, Philadelphia. Executive Director Philip Zelikow, who was closely tied, personally and professionally, to the Bush White House, structured the investigation to allow a trusted group of insiders to intervene between the Commissioners and the sensitive information which might have brought closure to the issues.

Though materials supporting the official story were readily available, information contradicting it was withheld, omitted, or distorted. In short, the Commission failed to present a rigorous set of findings to lay dark questions to rest.

Statistical analysis of insider trading before the attacks is presented by Elsevier's Series editor Paul Zarembka, Economics Professor, State University of New York. Based on a study in the Journal of Business, he demonstrates unusual market activity against American and United Air Lines shortly before September 11, suggesting advance investor knowledge of the attacks.

In Part III, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed's "Terrorism as Statecraft: Al-Qaeda and Western Covert Operations After the Cold War" exposes U.S. and British involvements with the Afghan mujahideen after the Soviet Union collapse. These "Afghan Arabs" were used in covert operations throughout the 1990s, while American agencies supported, manipulated, and infiltrated the Taliban and mujahideen to gain access to oil and gas. Ahmed concludes that al-Qaeda has been gradually transformed into a complex, covert instrument of Western imperialism.

Supporting this claim is Canadian Diana Ralph's (Carleton University) "Islamophobia and the "War On Terror": The Continuing Pretext for U.S. Imperial Conquest". Ralph argues that the Cheney-led Project for the New American Century developed the image of the radical Muslim terrorist to foster "Islamophobia" as a basis to pursue its American imperialistic agenda abroad, while diluting constitutional rights at home.

Though these alarming claims run contrary to our perception of a free and open society, Canadian David McGregor (University of Western Ontario) illustrates, through the history of "Machiavellian State Terror", how rulers have historically perpetrated violations on their own states to advance the goals of the ruling elite. While an outside threat is fashioned to gain public support for aggression, a masked agenda unfolds. McGregor, like Eisenhower before him in 1961, stresses the urgency of vigilant surveillance of the military-industrial complex by an alert and informed citizenry.

If 9/11 was a false-flag operation, both US foreign policy and the domestic withdrawal of civil rights since that day have been based on a massive deception. It is now long overdue for a truly independent investigation to probe the realities of 9/11, and if necessary, to begin the process of reversing the appalling damage that has been done in the name of an outside attack upon the United States.

E. Woodworth
Victoria, Canada

This is the most complete and scientific rebuttal to the government conspiracy theory that 'terrorist hijackers' destroyed the three WTC buildings and part of the Pentagon with paltry aircraft.

It contains irrefutable eye-witness accounts and scientific evidence of what REALLY happened on 9-11-2001.

Anyone who reads this book will know more than 75% of other citizens, because they will finally know the TRUTH.

Strong words, indeed. But this collection of essays would make an excellent starting point for a truly unbiased congressional investigation that must inevitably lead to Bush being impeached, if not for his direct responsibility for the tragedy of 9-11, then at the very least for his cover-up and lying. Forget about the 9-11 Congressional report; as this book describes, the Commission was hand picked to ignore embarrassing details and minimize very suspicious behavior on the part of the CIA, FBI, White House and Pentagon. They succeeded in publishing a document that would make the Warren Commission Report look like the Gospel.
Some interesting details: 1) Ten of the 19 suicide "hijackers" identified by the FBI are, according to our good ally Saudi Arabia, alive and well in their native land, 2) Mohammed Atta, so-called Islamic fundamentalist, drank like a fish, partied like Hefner and had a stripper girlfriend, 3) World Trade Center tower 7, adjacent to the Twin towers, collapsed that same day, without being hit by a plane and despite the relatively minor fires that mysteriously broke out on its upper floors, 3) Eyewitnesses who were in the Towers prior to their collapse heard multiple internal explosions, 4) the Pentagon had Atta under surveillance before 9-11, 5) the Minneapolis branch of the FBI was denied authorization by the Washington HQ to hack into Zacarias Moussouai's laptop before 9-11, 6) a military exercise conducted that day simulated a hijacked plane being tracked by the Pentagon (a remarkable coincidence??) 7) Bush had plans on the board to attack Iraq in early 2001, 8) In the 1990s, Cheney and the neo-cons drew up a plan for US world domination that required a new "Pearl Harbor" in order to get ther American public to get on board the necessary imperialist wars, 9) the head of the Pakistani ISI (secret police) sent Atta $100,000 just before 9-11, 10) the CIA and Malaysian police monitored an Al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in 2000 where the 9-11 plot was discussed but claim they didn't eavesdrop so they had no clue about 9-11 (just how stupid do they think we are? Oops. We elected Bush twice. Guess they knew what they were doing.)
All in all, this scholarly condemnation of the massive fraud should be just the start of an unending series of indictments and prosecutions against this gang of traitors sqautting illegally in the White House, yet the media blackout of these revelations continues. Heck, even the families of the 9-11 dead don't buy this cacophony of lies that the American public has swallowed whole. They have a website where they have 400 questions the White House has refused to answer and that the 9-11 Commission refused to address. No wonder. Just a few of these would damn Bush as the greatest traitor in world history.

At 344 pages, I can produce this book in hardcover, with a color jacket and flags, for $3.44 a copy. Amazon pays publishers 40% of the retail price, so I propose to publish this book for $34.40, should the author desire to actually have people buy the book.

I regard this over-pricing as both unnecessary and unprofessional. It is certainly NOT going to increase the chances of this important knowledge actually reaching all those who might wish to avail themselves of an honestly-priced book.

Am wondering if the price might be a type. See first comment for how to get the book from the publisher for $15 (fiteen).
This kind of pricing directly invites copyright violation by incentivizing the placement of a copy of the book on the Internet, anonymously, never to be eradicated.

I have reviewed most of the books on 9-11 and its aftermaths, and if you visit my lists, you can find over ten books and some DVDs there that can all be bought for the outrageous and completely unjustifiable cost of this book. As I write this, the Senate is hearing testimony on the thermite found in the rubble pile. The Senate will probably hush this up. The is ample evidence to suggest that Dick Cheney "let it happen" and that Larry Silverman, owner of the complex, was tipped off in time to implant controlled demolitions and take care of his "unaffordable" asbestor problem--receiving $7 billion in insurance [one wonder how much he kicked back to the insurance companies to avoid their serious investigation, and to Guliani for scooping and dumping to destroy the crime scene).

Although I support the 9/11 Truth movement, this book is not going help spread the word for two very important reasons: 1) The price is beyond ridiculous and 2) The scholarship is shoddy and unfocused. The book contained nothing that wasn't already more clearly presented in THE NEW PEARL HARBOR by Professor David Ray Griffin - a book less than one-sixth the price of HIDDEN HISTORY. However, if you want a thorough, up-to-date exploration of the arguments and counter-arguments for 9/11 being an inside job, I highly recommend Griffin's DEBUNKING 9/11 DEBUNKING. Others books of note include 9/11 AND AMERICAN EMPIRE: INTELLECTUALS SPEAK OUT, VOL. 1, which among other things contains a highly detailed scientific discussion of the controlled demolitions hypothesis by physics professor Steven Jones. For it's history of Western state-sponsored terrorism, I also recommend VOL 2 of the same series. And finally, you might also want to check out the latest version of the acclaimed documentary, LOOSE CHANGE: FINAL CUT, which is due out on 11 September 2007. The film makers have no doubt benefited from criticism surrounding the first two editions while including a wealth of new information.

JWK

Save your time and money this book isn't worth either As "J.W.K" from Nagano, Japan wrote, "The scholarship is shoddy and unfocused. The book contained nothing that wasn't already more clearly presented in THE NEW PEARL HARBOR by Professor David Ray Griffin"

J.W.K it should be noted is a "Top 1000 reviewer" and has given several other "truther" books and videos 5 stars. I however am a "debunker" but agree with him (or her) on both accounts. In fact very little in the book hasn't been presented ad infinium elsewhere and the scholarship is poor. Though the book's supporters like to point out the advanced degrees of the contributors said degrees are in subjects far removed from the subjects of their essays. My dad has a PhD in chemistry, does this make his views on 9/11 anymore authoritative than those of "Joe the plumber"?

As I have noted elsewhere there is something about conspiracy theories in general and 9/11 "truth" in particular that transforms otherwise rational and intelligent people into fools. Normally this foolishness is in a subject matter distant from their areas of specialty. Though not related to 9/11 Arthur Butz is a perfect example, he teaches electrical engineering at Northwestern, one of the best universities in the US, but he is a Holocaust denier. The most obvious examples relating to 9/11 are Griffen and Fetzer, respected professors emeritus of theology and philosophy who have spewed so much rubbish about events that morning that many in the movement no longer take them seriously. Though claims that the material of the book have been made none of the authors are wrote about subjects related to their areas of specialty.

++++ POORLY RESEARCHED 1ST CHAPTER +++++

The first chapter is a case in point, I only skimmed through it but that was enough to discover numerous errors including long debunked canards. Jay Kolar, the author, is supposedly a film analyst but little if anything in his essay had anything to do with his supposed area of expertise.

He claimed that, the "passenger lists" "released by the airlines" didn't have any Arab names.

But the lists on CNN and other media outlets were clearly labeled VICTIMS lists which obviously would preclude the perpetrators. He cited the CNN lists which even have the word "victims" in their urls,

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html

If that didn't make it obvious enough the page the lists were linked from is clearly labeled a "memorial".

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/index.html

Nothing on the CNN pages or similar ones indicates the source of the names was the airlines, CNN only cited AP, the pages contained personal information the airlines would not have. They were based on MEDIA reports not info from the airlines as the CNN Memorial "about this site" page made clear:

This memorial lists those who died in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania when terrorists hijacked four U.S. planes on September 11, 2001. The list includes those listed as "confirmed dead" and "reported dead" by the Associated Press which defines the terms as follows:

======Quote on======
* CONFIRMED DEAD Includes victims who have been confirmed dead by a coroner's office or the Defense Department. It also includes those a court has declared legally dead, even if no body has been recovered. Once the court has made such a finding, a death certificate can be issued.

* REPORTED DEAD Includes those whose deaths have been reported by family, employers, mortuaries, places of worship or by the airlines that listed them as aboard one of the four flights. Includes people for whom memorial services have been held, even if their bodies have not been recovered or positively identified. (Those identified by federal authorities as the hijackers are not included).

Personal information accompanying the individual records comes from CNN reports, newspaper obituaries and information submitted by friends and family. The photos were submitted to CNN by friends or family of the victims or used with permission from media partners as noted on each photo. The site was archived in August 2004.
======Quote off======

He claimed that the passenger manifests were never released but the Boston Globe released those of the two flights that originated in their city two days after the attacks.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/14/national/main311268.shtml
http://graphics.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/images/aa_flight_11_manifest.gif

And all four lists were released by the government for the Moussui trial either before or just after press time for the first edition but well before the supposedly revised paperback edition.

http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/OG00010.html

He wrote:

======Quote on======
"In an early, September 12, 2001 disclosure, CNN reported being provided with a list of 19 hijackers from the flight manifests which the FBI presumably possessed.(15) This particular list of 19 is instructive for the kinds of errors it contains and for the four names the FBI had quickly changed. Two of these corrections involved the deletion of Adnan and Ameer Bukhari who were called brothers in most press releases (for example, Allison, 2001). (16)"
======Quote off======

Adnan and Ameer Bukari it turns out weren't brothers and weren't on either flight, one died earlier and the other was questioned by the FBI and eventually cleared but neither of the cited sources (articles in CNN and the St. Petersburg Times) said the Bukharis were suspected hijackers let alone they were on the flight manifests. They were just two of many Arabs who had pilot training in Florida 2000 - 2001 that the FBI looked into. The CNN article did say:

"We would like to correct a report that appeared on CNN. Based on information from multiple law enforcement sources, CNN reported that Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari of Vero Beach Florida, were suspected to be two of the pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center."

But there is no indication their names came from the flight manifests or any "press releases" or that CNN claimed to have been "provided with a list of 19 hijackers from the flight manifests"

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/investigation.terrorism/
http://www.sptimes.com/News/091401/State/Attack_suspects_blend.shtml

An earlier CNN article which said the Bukaris were suspects because they were tied to a car found at the Portland (Maine) airport. CNN said its source for the names was the Portland police not the FBI so it doesn't seem to have come from the flight manifests.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200109/13/eng20010913_80131.html

According to Wikipedia (no citation) "later reports continued to suggest that Adnan Bukhari fell under suspicion because of documents found within the car" that would fit with the Portland police being the source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1n4dl01d81c212547

Further undermining Kolar's claim is the fact that 2 "truther" esays on the Bukhari discrepancy, one by David Ray Griffin and the other on What Really Happened.com make no mention of such a list with their names on it. But cite several news reports from the day following the attacks, neither claims that the FBI said they were among the hijackers or that they or anyone said they were on the manifests. The sources seem to be local law enforcement as the CNN story linked below indicates. The supposed FBI list including the two Saudis seems to be a figment of Kolar's imagination and poor scholarship.

Griffin - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8937
WRH - http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/atta_9-11.html
CNN - http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/13/ltm.01.html


++++ NONSENSE FROM THE EDITOR +++++

Paul Zarembka, the book's editor, is another example of a "truther" spouting drivel re:9/11 when he ventures outside his area of expertise. He is an economic professor at o but tries to play video analyst. On page 59 he wrote

======Quote on======
The second piece of video evidence only appeared a day before the Commission would present its report. It is purported to be a video of Dulles airport hijackers going through security check. It was reported on July 21, 2004, as obtained by the Associated Press from a law firm representing some victims' families. We have not located the full video (some news reports which linked to the video are now broken), but a 57-second version is available from the news report at http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/hijackers_video.html . The existence of such evidence is affirmed by the Commission (2004, p. 3). In the available clip, note the cars arriving with short shadowing on the sunny day. This shadowing does not match the alleged 7:18 am time of the video, being only one-half hour after DC sunrise on 9-11 and a time of long shadowing.
======Quote off======

Sounds like a tremendous smoking gun. He is right, short shadows would indicate the video was not short early in the morning. But the claim seemed odd, I`d seen the clip several times and never noticed any cars, why would cars appear in an airport terminal security checkpoint?


When one goes to the good professor's supplied link one indeed finds a video clip of an AP TV news story with cars driving by a terminal at Dulles for the first 3 - 4 seconds and Zarembka was correct the shadows are quiet short, too short to have been filmed at 7:18 AM on 9/11/01. But there is no reason to assume the opening shot of the news story was short at the same time as the surveillance video. My best guess is that it was shot July 21, 2001 (when the story was aired) at around midday. The same news broadcast cuts between the surveillance tape and pages from the 9/11 Commission Report, applying the same "logic" the former must have been shot in 2004.

Still from the opening shot: http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l281/lenbrazil/Dullesterminal.jpg
Still from the survellence video:
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l281/lenbrazil/Dullesvideo.jpg

Zarembka seems to have assumed the opening clip came from the surveillance video. This is obviously not the case the former has sound, good contrast and is fairly high resolution the latter is silent (except for the voice over) suffers from reduced contrast and is quite grainy. The idea that a surveillance video would switch from a road in from of a terminal to a security checkpoint inside it is frankly bizarre. Indeed if one watches longer versions of the video the external shot does not appear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLEqjpHVPhM

But I'm glad he brought up the subject of shadow length because shadows appear in the video. While best seen in more complete better quality versions of the video this can be seen in the `What Really Happened' video. There are some widows just before the security checkpoint and when people walk by they, as we'd, expect cast long shadows. Of course this doesn't prove that it was taken at the purported time but the lighting at least fits.

Detail from still above: http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l281/lenbrazil/dullesvideodetail.jpg

If you want to confirm the adage about 'fools and their money' then by all means by this book.