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Mark H. Gaffney's Profile
Customer Reviews: 40
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Reviews Written by
Mark H. Gaffney (Chiloquin, OR USA)
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why I never finished Whirlwind, December 14, 2009
I am a fan of James Clavell. His book Kind Rat was a great first novel, and Shogun is a classic. That said, I made a subjective decision not to finish his last novel, Whirlwind. I quit about half way through the 1200 page book.
Parts of the book show Clavel's workmanlike skills as a storyteller and make for a compelling read. However, as a whole, IMO the novel suffers from too many characters or -- put differently -- from the lack of a unifying hero.
But there are other deeper issues. In the end Clavell's writing was limited not by his own lack of literary skill, but by his own limitations as a man. I was troubled by this same issue in Noble House, but it is even more pronounced in Whirlwind.
True, Whirlwind is fiction and never claims to be historically accurate. Nonetheless, I suspect that it falls far short of presenting an accurate picture of the period. Why? Well, in part, because Clavell chooses to see the events of that tumultuous time primarily through the eyes of non Iranian ex-patriots from the west But even when the author tells the Iranian point of view, the people he portrays are almost always shallow, crass, sadistically cruel, venal, corrupt, etc.
I suspect that most Iranians would disagree with this view, and would prefer to see their own country rather differently. I look forward to reading a novel about the same events as told by a native son -- not a westerner.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
hard won lessons from an "outside agitator", November 16, 2009
I became acquainted with Mike Roselle more than 20 years ago. But it seems like only yesterday. At the time I had just moved to Oregon and was doing volunteer work for National Audubon. We had begun the first old growth inventory and mapping project on the National Forests, an essential task the feds somehow had neglected -- even as they proceeded to liquidate the last 5-10% of the ancient forests.
I needed some seed money -- at the start of that project -- and Mike stepped up and delivered big time. Soon we were deep into the stand exam data and ortho photos, and within three years had completed the project. The maps we developed were digitalized, and have since become an essential part of the GIS data base. They are used every day by wildlife biologists and conservationists. I want to extend a personal thank you to Mike for being there -- and for answering the call. I would bet that many others have similar stories to tell about him.
I recommend Mike's memoir to everyone who cares about our fragile and increasingly endangered planet. Mike's adventures on behalf of the earth make for excellent reading. It's a rich book, and a page turner. The book fills in many gaps. Mike was personally involved in many of the big battles, from Redwood Summer to the fight to save Cove-Mallard (Idaho's last big roadless area), to the current campaign to stop the mountaintop strip mining in West Virginia. I really like Mike's discussion of tactics versus strategy, and his thoughts about civil disobedience. We are entering desperate times, and as Mike writes, this very desperation can make us very powerful, that is, IF we have the guts to embrace it.
TREE SPIKER is all about courage. My only regret is that the book is too short. Hopefully Mike will add some additional chapters to the next edition.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Amerikkka -- graveyard of rainbows, October 16, 2009
First, some prefatory remarks...
For years I studied the ancient Egyptian religion, Isis/Osiris, the rest of the strange pantheon, the primordial waters, etc. But I never felt I had a handle on any of it. There is no resemblance to, and no obvious connection with, Christianity, Buddhism and/or Hinduism. Egyptian religion was something other -- apart. All my study left me back where I started, in the dark. As stumped a ever.
Then, in 2005 I discovered Paul LaViolette's amazing book, THE GENESIS OF THE COSMOS, and the veil fell. I was blown away, and now regard LaViolette as the Champollion of our time -- the decoder of the ancient Egyptian religion that was not. Not a religion, that is. According to LaViolette the so called religion of ancient Egypt was a technical language embodying an ancients physics, a physics so advanced -- according to LaViolette -- that we moderns did not even have a conceptual framework for understanding it until the 1970s, when LaViolette himself developed what he calls subquantum kinetics, a whole new field which explains the movement of energy/mass back and forth from the unmanifested (or subquantum) realm to the manifested, and vice versa.
BTW, if anyone doubts LaViolette's assessment they should check out Thomas Brophy's amazing research about the megaliths of Nabta Playa, in the southern Egyptian desert. Brophy's book THE ORIGIN MAP will force you to revisit everything you thought you knew about ancient Egypt. If he is right, they also had an advanced astronomy to match the physics. Robert Bauval presented more evidence for the same in his better known THE ORION MYSTERY.
So how did the ancients (Egyptians and Mayans) know that there is no black hole -- but rather, its opposite, a white hole -- at the heart of the Milky Way? Where did they get their physics, which is still so advanced it leaves most of our big bang physicists eating dust? I have no doubt that the arrogant bastards who rule science today (including the nuclear priests) will one day be viewed with laughter like some flat earth society, that is, if we survive.
Then, lo and behold, just weeks ago, I acquired a copy of Garett Lambrev's masterpiece, Dogstar/Godstar, which anticipated in a poetic vision the work of LaViolette, Brophy and Bauval, yet, was written way way back in 1978. I was blown away all over again. On the first reading -- on about page 6 -- I asked myself -- is Lambrev actually going to sustain this amazing poetic vision for 100+ pages? To sustain it even for 9 pages was an amazing achievement.
By the third reading I realized the same themes also run through many of his other poems. So, in fact, he does sustain it for 100+ pages.
Dogstar is unique in my experience. I can't think of another contemporary poet working in the same sphere as Lambrev. He resembles no one. The only names that come to mind are W. Blake and W. Whitman. Yet, in my opinion, the sweep of Lambrev's net is bigger than even Whitman's and Blake's. I am surprised that his Dogstar has not received more attention.
I lost count of the memorable lines. I especially love the one about "Amerikkka the graveyard of rainbows." Wow. IMO the poem about the discovery of Eurasia -- Assback Land, and also Such Strange Sirens, Song of Haight Street, Recurring Dream Motif, Please, Mother, Mother of Destruction, Listen, Leave Yourself Behind, Hammering, For My Motherland Amerikka, Fine Tuning, Dead End, and Dangerous are masterpieces every one.
Incredible to me that most of the poems were written in the 1960s and 1970s -- and a few in the 1980s. The most recent date I saw was -- I think -- 1989. This makes me wonder WTF Lambrev's been up to these last 20 years. Hopefully there will be another follow on collection - and soon.
We owe Garrett Lambrev a debt of thanks for sharing his Dogstar vision. This poet writes (and barks) for the ages. I predict his poems will have a long shelf life. By now, it ought to be clear: No one killed Osiris. He'll be back.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Bamford's new book comes up short on 9/11, March 12, 2009
THE SHADOW FACTORY tells the story of warrantless wipetapping -- how the Bush administration trampled on the US Constitution. The story is a shocker. The further revelations in the second half of the book that the NSA and the telecoms outsourced the actual eavesdropping chores to two Israeli high tech firms, Narus and Verint, is over the top. Both firms are little more than subsidiaries of Israel's intelligence community. Because the Israelis retained the source codes for their proprietary surveillance technology, we must assume they have a back door and are listening to every word of every phone conversation and email in America that is of interest to them. Shocking indeed. Yet, how many Americans have a clue that Israel engages in wholesale spying on America?
I have no doubt that insiders leaked the details to the author because they were so apalled by what is happening. For all of these reasons, the Shadow Factory is a must read. The book should have received five stars. Unfortunately, Bamford came up short on 9/11.
The author's depiction of Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker pilot of AA Flight 77, as a capable and determined terrorist is sharply at odds with a multitude of open-sourced press accounts, which consistently portray Hanjour as a rather inept and borderline personality. Nor was he ambitious. According to one account, as a young man Hanjour did not even aspire to fly planes but was satisfied merely to become a flight attendant; that is, until his older brother pushed him to aim higher. [1]
Even then, Hanjour's flight training was spasmodic and ineffectual. His pattern of behavior was on-again off-again, and this played out everywhere he went. Rather than persist in one flight training program through to the end Hanjour would quit after a few weeks, then move on to a different school. One instructor, Duncan Hastie, who trained Hanjour at Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) in Scottsdale, Arizona, refused to readmit him a second time when Hanjour sought to return. Hastie described him as "a weak student" who was "wasting our resources." [2]
Bamford's willingness to believe that Hanjour was skilled enough to fly a Boeing 757 was apparently based on a set of documents (see note #1, p. 353) submitted as evidence in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui. [3] The documents include the written evaluation of Hanjour's flight skills prepared by the Jet Tech instructor who tested him. The evaluation does mention that Hanjour was intelligent, but it also states---and Bamford ignored this---that Hanjour "made numerous errors during his performance and displayed a lack of understanding of some basic concepts. The same was true during review of systems knowledge....I doubt his ability to pass an FAA [Boeing 737] oral at this time or in the near future." Later, the instructor made a final entry, concluding his evaluation: "He will need much more experience flying smaller A/C [aircraft] before he is ready to master large jets." [4]
Another Jet Tech employee who knew Hanjour later expressed amazement "that he [Hanjour] could have flown into the Pentagon. [Since] He could not fly at all." [5] As reported by FOX News, Hanjour's atrocious English and general ineptitude prompted an administrator at Jet Tech, Peggy Chevrette, to question the authenticity of his pilot's license. Chevrette told FOX "I couldn't believe that he had a license of any kind, with the skills that he had." [6] Hanjour's English was so bad it took him five hours to complete the exam mentioned above that normally should have taken only about two. Fluency in English is required by law to hold a US pilot's license. We now understand that Hanjour acquired his license to fly small planes by exploiting a legal loophole. He hired a private contractor. [7]
It is important to realize that even if Hani Hanjour had some training in a Boeing 737 simulator this would not have prepared him to accomplish a series of top-gun maneuvers in a Boeing 757, which is a significantly larger and less maneuverable aircraft.
Apparently Bamford is also unaware that Hanjour flunked a flight test just three weeks before 9/11 while attempting to rent---not a jet aircraft---but a single engine Cessna. This happened at Freeway Airport near Bowie, Maryland, about twenty miles from Washington. [8] Although Hanjour presented his FAA license the airport manager insisted for safety reasons that an instructor first accompany him on a test flight to confirm his flying skills. When Hanjour had trouble controlling and landing the aircraft Marcel Bernard, the chief instructor at Freeway, flatly refused to rent him the plane. Yet, just three weeks later, this flunky supposedly performed like an ace. After completing a remarkable 330 degree downward spiraling turn and some other daredevil maneuvers that would have challenged a commercial pilot, Hanjour plowed Flight 77 into the west wing of the Pentagon at more than 500 mph. What is even more incredible, he accomplished all of this on the first attempt.
Sure, and turtles have wings and elephants can fly.
There are other problems. For example, Bamford mentions (p. 90) the two calls that Barbara Olson supposedly made from AA Flight 77 to her husband Ted, who served as Bush's solicitor general. Apparently the author is unaware that these calls have since been discredited. For the details see David Ray Griffin's latest book THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED (pp. 60-62).
Were it possible to speak with James Bamford I would congratulate him for his fine work on the NSA. In the next breath I would encourage him to probe 9/11 more deeply.
Notes:
[1] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun and George Lardner, Jr., "Hanjour an Unlikely Terrorist," The Cape Cod Times, October 21, 2001.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The set of documents is posted at: [...]
[4] Ibid.
[5] "Report: 9/11 Hijacker Bypassed FAA," AP story, June 13, 2002.
[6] "FAA Probed, Cleared Sept. 11 Hijacker in Early 2001," FOX News, May 10, 2002; also see Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence," New York Times, May 4, 2002.
[7] Kellie Lunney, "FAA contractors approved flight licenses for Sept. 11 suspect," GovernmentExecutive[...], June 13, 2002.
[8] Thomas Frank, "Tracing Trail of Hijackers," Newsday, September 23, 2001.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
out of date almost from the time of its release, January 15, 2009
The One Percent Doctrine tells an important story: about the Bush defense doctrine invented by VP Cheney. However, it's apparent that author Ron Suskind was wholly dependent on un named sources for his narrative about the war on terror. His book is extremely thin on documentation and for this reason it fails to persuade at various points
I can't help but wonder if the author's sources were making it up as they went along, feeding Suskind a lot of baloney. Why would they do that? Well, possibly because they have plenty to hide themselves.
Suskind takes it as a given that the London 7-7 subway bombings were an al Qaeda operation. He ignores compelling evidence that those attacks may have been staged by British intelligence. MI-5/MI-6 certainly had a motive: to put the fear of G-d into British voters and help re-elect Tony Blair, who at the time was in a close race. As it happened, Blair squeaked through in the next election, but only just. Did the "terror" attack make the difference by rallying voters around their PM? Possibly.
You will look in vain for the term "false flag operation" in the index.
Almost as soon as the One Percent Doctrine was released the book was seriously undermined by the Able Danger affair, which exploded in 2005. Able Danger raises very troubling questions about 9/11, and points to a very different perspective than what is presented in Suskind's book. The author should have been more cautious regarding his sources in the US government and intelligence community.
Suskind is also much too kind to CIA chief George Tenet who, as we now know, lied incessantly to the 9/11 Commission. All in all, the One Percent Doctrine is nowhere near as strong as Suskind's earlier book about Paul O'Neill's tenure as Treasury Secretary during Bush's first term. Now that was a memorable book.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
not to be missed, October 28, 2008
Some of Philip Marshall's ideas are clearly incorrect. The author is wrong that the Boeing 767s and fires brought down the World Trade Center. Even if the planes/fires had been sufficient to weaken the columns in the upper floors, the resulting collapse would have been partial and asymmetric -- not the perfect implosion we all witnessed. In 2008 there is overwhelming evidence that explosives were used.
The author is also wrong that the alleged hijackers piloted the planes. True, Marshall compiles an impressive amount of evidence pointing to Saudi involvement. He believes that Mohamed Atta and the other three alleged pilots received advanced pilot training by Arab-speaking Boeing instructors in the months before 9/11. Yet, we know that as late as August, 2001 Hani Hanjour was still incompetent as a pilot. Three weeks before 9/11 Hanjour couldn't even fly a Cessna -- so there is no possiblity that he flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon. I believe the available evidence points to use of remote control. See my book THE 9/11 MYSTERY PLANE (chapters 8 & 9) for a summary of this evidence.
Still, Marshall does the cause of 9/11 truth an important service by drawing attention to the Saudi connections, which the 9/11 Commission covered up. It is quite possible that the Saudis were involved in the covert planning for the attack, especially the recruitment of the patsies, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia.
Another weakness is the absence of footnotes -- which makes it impossible to check the author's sources.
Despite these serious flaws, I give Marshall's book 5 stars because the author is a commercial pilot and offers many insights into various aspects of 9/11. Marshall also claims to have flown with cocaine smuggler Barry Seal -- and I tend to believe him. His book offers what appears to be an insider's look at the Mena cocaine pipeline. The author has much to say about Iran-Contra Gate and the Bush crime family. His well written account is not to be missed.
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11 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
9/11 radar data disputes author on key points, July 15, 2008
I studied Lynn Spencer's book through the lens of the RADES radar data from 9/11, now freely available thanks to a FOIA release in 2007. Radar is an equal opportunity employer. It has no agenda and does not discriminate. For this reason it is a powerful tool and could have been used as a "fact check" to confirm the testimony of Spencer's witnesses. Unfortunately, the author did not make use of it.
I exchanged several emails with Lynn Spencer, all of them cordial, that is, until cognitive dissonance set in. I was interested to learn if Spencer had interviewed Laura Brown, the FAA official who in 2003 told the 9/11 Commission that the FAA set up phone bridges to the Department of Defense shortly after the first WTC impact. The Brown memo flatly contradicts the official story that the DoD was out of the loop. The memo was even read into the official record, but does not appear in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Spencer informed me that she did NOT interview Brown. Then she volunteered the following editorial commentary: "it seems that two years after the fact, she [Brown] remembered the bits and pieces but not in a cohesive way. Sometimes in such circumstances, they blend (like Mineta's inadventant [sic] comments regarding AAL 77 - he was actually referring to UAL 93)."
It is well known that as time passes, memory fades. There is a tendency for eyewitnesses to embellish or exaggerate what happened, and there is no reason to expect 9/11 eyewitnesses to be any different. In short, Spencer discounted the testimony of Brown and Mineta for this reason. Which is ironic, because Spencer informed me that she conducted her own interviews with the pilots and NEADS staffers in 2006, that is, FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11.
Well, what does the radar data show? It shows that at least some of Spencer's own witnesses embellished and/or confused the facts---the very thing for which she cited Brown and Mineta. From the 9/11 radar data it is possible to calculate the flight speed of the NORAD fighters. The radar data shows that the flight speed of the Langley F-16s as they approached Washington was about 630 knots/hr -- NOT 700 knots as Spencer states in her book (p. 182). While the difference is not huge, the data does show the tendency to embellish. With the passage of time the speed crept higher.
In another case, Spencer writes that one of the Otis pilots broke the sound barrier shortly after leaving Otis AFB (p. 43). But the radar data indicates this happened later, after the Otis pilot left the holding pen off Long Island. Another case of fuzzy memory.
By Spencer's own reasoning the testimony of Laura Brown and Norman Mineta, given only two years after 9/11, is more credible than the testimony she collected five years down the road. We are left to ponder how different Spencer's narrative might have been had she applied the same standard to all witnesses.
Finally, I need to respond to the negative responses to this review (see the comments below), which was never intended as a "hit piece" as some charge. I agree with much of the praise for Spencer's book. The author is a fine writer. Spencer's narrative is gripping and captures the intensity of the moment, including the shock and full range of emotions experienced by the NEADS staffers, pilots and FAA offiials on duty that dreadful day. Moreover, the fact that she is a pilot herself was a huge asset in preparing her book. I actually agree with 90-95% of her account. But here's the problem: the remaining 5-10% is absolutely vital to understanding what happened on 9/11.
The weakness of Spencer's book is her uncritical acceptance of the official story. Indeed, this probably explains why she was "blessed" with exclusive access to government witnesses and historical records unavailable to other researchers. Why was her book facilitated by the the powers-that-be? In my opinion, because they are desperate to shore-up a politically correct view of 9/11 that is disintegrating more every day.
Thinking individuals owe it to themselves to follow the trail of evidence, no matter where it leads. Spencer's problem is that she fails to go there. For a full critique of Touching History see my just-released book, THE 9/11 MYSTERY PLANE AND THE VANISHING OF AMERICA. My alternative account presents a full spectrum of evidence that is absolutely fatal to the official story. Among other disclosures, it features the first published analysis of the RADES radar data from 9/11.
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19 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Orwellian disinfo -- readers beware!, June 25, 2008
AMERICA'S SECRET WAR is a blow by blow account of the Bush regime's "war on terrorism." And while several chapters do offer valuable insights -- particularly the author's discussion of the war in Afghanistan -- overall, the book is a mine field. I cannot recommend it because the author, George Friedman, is either incredibly stupid in believing that a rag tag bunch of 19 jihadists using cell phones outsmarted the most sophisticated security establishment in the world on 9/11 -- or he is just downright devious.
In the intelligence world deception is a finely honed art. The game is played by subtly spicing truth with falsehood -- and there are enough examples in AMERICA'S SECRET WAR for us to suspect that George Friedman is spinning yarns. Allow me to be blunt: He is quite skillful in the art of lying.
Here are some examples:
Friedman mentions the US-Iran discussions that followed 9/11 -- but he fails to acknowledge that in 2003 Iran made a bona fide peace offer to the US that could have resulted in a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement -- IF the US had responded. Iran offered to cooperate in the Gulf, to disarm Hezbollah, to accept stringent IAEA oversight of its nuclear program, and even signed onto the 2002 Arab peace offer, indicating that Tehran was willing to live in peace with Israel -- provided the Palestinians received a measure of justice -- in the form of a state.
As we know, the National Intelligence Estimate in November 2007 provides strong evidence that the 2003 Iranian offer was genuine. The NIE concluded that Iran abandoned work on its BOMB program in 2003, which -- notice -- coincides with the date of the peace offer. The real question, which Friedman never mentions, is why the US rejected the Iranian peace offer out of hand.
Friedman also poo-poohs the 2002 Saudi peace offer, characterizing it as nothing but political posturing. He writes: "The Saudis had consulted nobody about the idea. which meant that this radical proposal didn't even have the backing of [prince] Abdullah's own government." (p. 244)
This is total BS. In fact, the 2002 Arab peace offer had the backing of every member of the Arab League -- and again -- could have become the basis for an Isareli-Palestinian peace settlement -- IF Israel and the US had responded favorably. Both, however, simply ignored it.
The Saudi Prince Abdullah actually went so far as to personally confront Bush about the Palestinian issue during his June 2002 visit to Crawford Texas. At that meeting Bush promised Abdullah that he would take steps to solve the Palestinian question. Of course, as we know, Bush did nothing of the kind -- because his idol Ariel Sharon opposed a peace settlement.
Friedman is also dishonest when he writes about an Iranian BOMB --as if Iran already had nuclear weapons. When in fact they did not -- and do not. There is no excuse for his getting this wrong. As a self-described intelligence expert Friedman should have known this. We must interpret this "error" as a case of calculated deception on his part.
Friedman's confused analysis of why the neo cons invaded Iraq fails to persuade -- and again -- we must conclude that the author is simply fibbing to us. Friedman fails to mention the obvious: that the war was largely about controlling Iraq's oil -- and had nothing to do with fighting terrorism. I would argue: It was also about destroying Iraq as a nation -- leaving Iraq prostrate so that it could never again challenge Israeli hegemony in the region. Now why couldn't an expert like Friedman simply tell the truth and state the obvious? Clearly, he has an agenda.
Friedman gives a really bizarre justification for the US policy of arming BOTH Iran and Iraq during the bloody war which raged between these two nations between 1980-1986. He states that if either Iran or Iraq gained "the upper hand in the region it would try to sieze part or all of Saudi Arabia." (p 253) Which, again, is total nonsense. Why couldn't the author simply state the obvious: The US pursued a wicked policy of bleeding and weakening both nations for its own selfish reasons -- and also to divert attention from Israel's continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. It had nothing to do with protecting Saudi Arabia.
Friedman also repeats the lie that Saddam Hussein kicked out the UNSCOM inspectors in 1998. This lie has been told so frequently that it has taken on a life of its own. But Scott Ritter, the chief UNSCOM weapons inspector, knows what actually happened because he was there. According to Ritter it was Bill Clinton who ordered out the UN inspection team, on the eve of a major US bombing campaign in late 1998, Operation Desert Fox, which was an attempt by the US to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Indeed, this is why the Iraqi leader then refused to allow the inspectors to return. He correctly accused the US of using the UN inspection effort to gather intel about Saddam's whereabouts in an attempt to take him out. Ritter affirms this is what actually happened. Now, why couldn't Friedman get this right?
What is Friedman's agenda? We get a clue from the author's discussion about the Madrid bombings in March 2004, which he attributes to al Qaeda. Yet, today, we know al Qaeda had nothing whatever to do with that attack, which ocurred shortly before major elections in Spain. The bombing was almost certainly staged by operatives of the ultraconservative Spanish government then in power -- as a way of terrorizing the Spanish people into re-electing that same government. They blamed it on Basque separatists. Fortunately, the false flag attack failed. The Spanish people saw through it -- and voted out Bush's allies -- in the process, electing a new populist government that immediately fulfilled its promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq -- consistent with the strongly anti war sentiment in Spain. Here, again, by misfiring, the author shows his true colors.
Friedman is the founder and chairman of STRATFOR -- which claims to be an independent intelligence agency. However, I suspect he has links to the Israeli Mossad and maybe even to the CIA. The reader should beware: Read the book with a discerning eye -- because the author weaves many falsehoods between the lines. He is a liar.
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33 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
Savage's book founders on 911 issue, March 27, 2008
This Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Charlie Savage should have received five stars. I give it only two. To learn why -- read on.
Savage is a good writer and his trenchant analysis of how the neocons have nearly destroyed our Constitutional system is basically correct. His story is also important and needs to be told.
The problem is Savage's naive acceptance of the official yarn about 9/11. In the very first chapter Savage displays his personal ignorance when he reviews the events in the White House bunker -- and gets it wrong. What is incredible is that Savage didn't bother to research this himself. It appears that he simply accepted as bible the version of events reported by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post.
There is no excuse for this lapse of critical thought.
The problem is that the version of 911 reported by Woodward in his 2002 series was largely fabricated -- a lie. It does not reflect what actually happened. It was fabricated for a reason: because Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta just happened to be present in the bunker with Cheney on 911 and witnessed what transpired.
Check out Mineta's testimony before the 911 Commission in May 2003 -- and you will discover what I am referring to. Mineta places Cheney in the bunker as early as 9:20 am. What is more, he actually overheard Cheney give the treasonous order to stand down -- as Flight 77 was approaching Washington. Mineta told how a young man, probably a Secret service staffer, came in and warned of the approaching plane. "It's 50 miles out" the young man said. Then it was "thirry miles out" -- then "ten miles out." The young man asked Cheney if the orders still stand. Cheney shouted: "Of course they still stand...Have you heard any different?" Mineta told the commission this was Flight 77 -- no mistake about the ID of the plane. In short, his testimony was incredibly incriminating. No doubt, is why there is not one word about it in the 911 Commission Report.
For this reason -- it was obvious in the immediate aftermath of 911, long before Mineta testified before the commission, that his presence in the bunker posed a grave problem for Cheney. The White House had little reason to think it could count on Mineta's loyalty. He was a civil servant, after all, not a neocon---the only Democrat in Bush's cabinet. It is now clear that the White House responded to this "threat" by proactively attempting to head off trouble. How? By rewriting history. What else?
Late in 2001 the well-known journalist Bob Woodward was invited to conduct a series of interviews about September 11, as seen through the eyes of the president and his staff. Woodward (a glory hound) was only too eager to oblige. As we know, he thereafter served as court historian. The result, beginning in January 2002, was a series of retrospective articles in the Washington Post about 9/11.
This is the version of 911 history that Savage relied on for the first chapter of his book.
How could Savage be so naive? In fact, Woodward simply wrote what he was told. His series in the Post presented a White House-friendly version of events. No surprise that one of the stories Woodward recounted was the famous episode in the bunker. In Woodward's redacted version, however, Cheney is the man of the hour who rises to the press of terrible events. The same young man approaches the VP and warns about the incoming airliner. But, of course, in this revised history the timeline has been pushed back: Now it is almost 10 am -- and the plane is Flight 93, not Flight 77. Now the plane is 80 miles out, not 50.
There is another BIG difference. This time instead of a stand down -- it is a shoot down order. When the young man says, "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?" Cheney responds by giving the difficult command to shoot down the plane. But the young man hesitates. As narrated by Woodward the tension in the room mounts. The plane is closing fast and is now only 60 miles out. The young man repeats the question and again Cheney gives the command. But the young man still hesitates. "Does the order still stand?" he blurts out. Cheney finally snaps and says, "Of course it does!"
Woodward's revised version of 911 is more colorful, but there is a problem. It is a fabrication -- a complete lie. In fact, it deviates just as sharply from the official narrative presented in the 9/11 Commission Report as it does from Mineta's account, since at no time on September 11 did Flight 93 approach anywhere near as close as 60 miles to the White House. This crucial detail is the fly on the windowpane that exposes the fraud.
Someone please inform Charlie Savage that he got his 911 history all wrong -- backwards. There is no excuse for this. He is a fine writer. It is simply incomprehensible that Savage -- a strong critic of the neocons -- would swallow hook, line, and sinker their version of the 911 "attack." If half of what Savage reports in his book is true -- and I have no doubt that much more than half is true -- then the neocons are easily capable of murdering 3,000 Americans in a false flag attack on 911 to vastly increase the power of the White House and catapult America into two unnecessary wars.
This is exactly what they did -- and shame on Mr Savage for not figuring it out. He's lucky I didn't give him one star. So readers - please beware. You must view the analysis in TAKEOVER through a critical lens, making allowances for Savage's failure to comprehend who was behind 9/11. There is no question that Cheney and Rumsfeld and others were personally involved in the attack.
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23 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
the unraveling of the official story, February 23, 2008
This book should have received five stars, but I give it only three. To learn why, read on.
Today in America we are witness to a great unraveling, the likes of which we have never seen before. There are no historical precedents. For many months now the official narrative about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America has been disintegrating. Philip Shenon's fine book is certain to fuel this process. Before I discuss the book, however, let us review the unraveling.
It began within weeks of the release of the 9/11 Commission Report (in July 2004) with the shocking revelation that members of the 9/11 commission were convinced that government officials, including NORAD generals, had deceived them during the investigation---in essence, had lied to their faces during the hearings. According to the Washington Post (August 2, 2006), the members of the commission vented their frustrations at a special meeting in the summer of 2004. The panel even considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.
The unraveling continued in 2006 with the release of a follow-up volume, Without Precedent, authored by the two men who had co-chaired the commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. The men had come under increasing fire ever since the release of their final report for presiding over what many now believe was a failed investigation. Stung by so much criticism, Kean and Hamilton felt the need to explain (and defend) themselves. The gist of their 2006 book is easily summarized. They write: "We were set up to fail."
The bleeding continued in May 2007 with the stunning announcement that former BYU physicist Steven Jones had found residues of thermate, a high temperature explosive, in the dust of the collapsed World Trade Center. The discovery has the gravest implications for our nation, and probably for this reason the announcement went reported in the US media.
Yet another startling revelation occurred in December 2007 when we learned that the CIA destroyed evidence, in the form of audio-tapes, deemed vital to the investigation. (New York Times, December 7, 2007) The news prompted 9/11 Commission co-chairs Kean and Hamilton to fire off an angry salvo in the New York Times (January 2, 2008) in which they charged that the CIA had obstructed their investigation. Their blunt accusation was explosive and should have caused every American to sit up and take notice. Unfortunately, the average American probably failed to connect the dots because, as usual, the US media offered nothing in the way of helpful context or analysis. We were fed the standard diet of tidbits and sound bytes: a wealth of minutiae. The big picture remained elusive.
Here is a synopsis of the story: Starting in 2002, the CIA conducted interrogations of captured Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh, at undisclosed CIA prisons outside the US. During these interrogations the CIA resorted to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the CIA's euphemism for torture) to extract information. The methods included "waterboarding," which induces a sensation of drowning in the unlucky individual. Evidently, the CIA decided for its own internal reasons to video-tape these early interrogation sessions. However, years later (in 2005), Jose A, Rodriquez, the CIA's Director of Operations, ordered the tapes destroyed. For what reason? Well, according to current CIA chief Michael V. Hayden, because the tapes posed "a serious security risk." (New York Times, December 7, 2007)
Hayden went on to clarify his rather cryptic remark, and explained to the press that if the tapes had become public they would have exposed CIA officials "and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers." The excuse was flimflam, but the US media hung on Hayden's every word as if he were speaking gospel.
Hayden also claimed that the CIA had notified the appropriate committee heads in Congress in 2005 before destroying the evidence. But according to the Times this was immediately denied by the top two members of the House Intelligence Committee. A spokesman for Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who at the time chaired the oversight committee, said that he was "never briefed or advised" that the tapes even existed, let alone "that they were going to be destroyed."(New York Times, December 7, 2007)
Kean and Hamilton had a similar reaction---outrage. In their January article they state categorically that the CIA never informed them about any taped interrogations, despite their repeated requests for all pertinent information about the captured Al Qaeda operatives, who were then in CIA custody. In fact, as damaging as the news about the CIA's destruction of evidence surely was, the story exposed an even more serious problem. One might naturally assume that the official commission charged to investigate the events of 9/11 would have had unfettered access to all of the evidence pertinent to the case, including government documents and key witnesses. This goes without saying. Yet, it never happened.
In their article Kean and Hamilton summarize their dealings with the CIA.They describe their private meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and how he denied them access to the captured members of Al Qaeda. Which means, of course, that the panel never had a chance to conduct its own interviews. Tenet even denied them permission to conduct second-hand interviews with the CIA interrogators, which Kean and Hamilton felt were needed to "to better judge the credibility of the witnesses and clarify ambiguities in the reporting."Ultimately, the commission was forced to rely on third-hand intelligence reports prepared by the CIA itself. Many of these reports were poorly written and incomplete summaries, which, according to the co-chairs "raised almost as many questions as they answered."
The 9/11 Commission's lack of direct access to the captured members of al Qaeda can only mean that the official 9/11 investigation was fundamentally compromised from the outset. No other conclusion is possible, given the latest disclosures. In their January piece, Kean and Hamilton do not repudiate their own report, but they come close. They insinuate that the CIA's stonewalling now calls into question the veracity of key parts of the official story, especially the plot against America supposedly masterminded by Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and approved by Osama bin Laden. Until now, the nation has assumed that all of this was soundly based on the testimony of the captured al Qaeda operatives, several of whom supposedly confessed. However, when you probe more deeply you discover the devil lurking in the details. Since there has never been any independent confirmation about what the captives actually confessed to, or, indeed, whether they confessed at all, there is absolutely no way for us to know how much of the official story is true and how much was fabricated by the CIA for reasons we can only guess.
If the confessions were extracted under torture, just how reliable are they? For all we know, the entire story is a pack of lies. It comes down to whether the CIA is telling the truth.
Now, in February 2008, along comes a new "tell-all" book by Philip Shenon with much to say about these issues. Shenon covered the 9/11 Commission for the New York Times and over the course of the investigation he personally interviewed many of the commissioners and staff. His book is a well-written expose and affords our best look yet at what went on behind-the-scenes. Instead of burdening us with his personal opinions, Shenon plays the role of reporter and describes what happened through the eyes of the commissioners and staff. The book provides valuable insights into why the investigation failed. Of course, we already knew parts of the story. We knew about National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice's incompetence, for example, and about the serious conflicts of interest on the commission.
Shenon's most important contribution is naming CIA Director George Tenet as one of the government officials who lied during the hearings. Tenet gave testimony on three occasions (in addition to the private meetings with Kean and Hamilton) and in each of these hearings the CIA Director suffered from a faulty memory, frequently responding with "I can't remember." Initially, the commissioners were inclined to be sympathetic and gave the director the benefit of the doubt. But by Tenet's third appearance it was obvious to everyone he was perjuring himself.
Curiously, there no mention of this spectacle in the 9/11 Commission Report. Why not? Kean gave the reason at the panel's first public hearing in New York City, when he said: "Our...purpose will not be to point fingers." The comment was not well received. According to Shenon, it prompted a rumble in the audience, including sneers from the families of the victims who wanted those officials responsible to be held accountable.
Lying, of course, is a time-honored CIA tradition. For the first 25 years of its existence the CIA functioned entirely outside our constitutional framework of government. The state of affairs prevailed until the Watergate era when the Church hearings exposed a laundry list of criminal activities by the CIA, such as domestic spying, the assassination of foreign leaders, the overthrow of governments, plus the nasty habit of deceiving Congress. The Church hearings shocked the nation and led to the creation of House and Senate intelligence committees to provide the democratic oversight that was sorely lacking. Unfortunately, the CIA soon found ways around the oversight process. This is not surprising when you consider that the agency's expertise is clandestine operations. Today, the Intelligence Committees in both houses are widely viewed as a joke, and despite a chorus of denials from the agency and its admirers the perception is undoubtedly correct. To his credit, Shenon touches on the problem. The author mentions that one of the commissioners, former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), once served on the Senate Intelligence Committee but quit in frustration because of the lack of any serious business. Said Gorton: "I felt it was a useless exercise---I never felt I was being told anything that I hadn't learned in the Washington Post." Does such an agency deserve our trust and respect?
I give Shenon's book only three stars because the author supports the official 9/11 narrative. He seems unaware that in 2007 the evidence shifted decisively in favor of the "conspiracy theorists." Ignorance is no excvuse, however. Ironically, whatever Shenon's personal views, his book is sure to speed the unraveling process.
How? By focusing attention on the BIG issue -- the CIA's role. Though long delayed, a showdown now appears to be developing and portends a coming shift in the terms of the debate, away from the previous discussion about the incompetence of officials and "security failures" to more grave issues. But how this important drama will be played out remains unclear. Obviously, a new legally empowered 9/11 investigative body is urgently needed, since the 9/11 Commission no longer exists. While we have entered the most dangerous time in US history, the good news is that, once begun, the unraveling process is irreversible. As in the famous nursery rhyme, Humpty-Dumpty, the official reality is falling apart and the pieces will never be put back together again.
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(Chiloquin, OR USA)
