Saturday, September 13, 2008

Questions can be more damning than facts.

Statement of Robin Hordon
Former FAA Air Traffic Controller
April 10, 2007


Robin Hordon - Former FAA Air Traffic Controller at the Boston Air
Route Traffic Control Center, located in Nashua, NH, 1970 - 1981.
Former Certified Commercial Pilot for light aircraft holding multiple
category ratings. Former Certified Flight Instructor and Certified
Ground Instructor. After leaving the FAA, he had a 12-year career in
the field of comedy ending up as artistic coordinator for "Catch A
Rising Star" in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. In that capacity,
he chose to support comic talent that spoke truth to power, truth to
hatred, truth to racism, truth to sexism, truth to xenophobia, and
truth to militarism, not knowing where the young talent would go, but
knowing that they would say something somewhere for the good of the
country and for the good of the world. When Air America Radio
launched in 2004, a "Catch" vet was on air or writing for four of the
five shows making up the daytime schedule. Currently he lives in
Kingston, WA, where he continues his four decades of activism on
behalf of peace and justice in the world.


Statement to this website 4/10/07: "I was an FAA Air Traffic
Controller from 1970 - 1981. In 1981, I was one of 15,000 FAA air
traffic controllers who went on strike and one of the 12,000 fired
for going on strike, a strike that was primarily based on our
complaints about safety and working conditions within the FAA, which
are still seen today.

During my time as an Air Traffic Controller, I worked at the Boston
Air Route Traffic Control Center in Nashua, NH, and I was certified
in the air traffic sector where American Airlines Flight 11 became
an "IN-FLIGHT-EMERGENCY" before being declared a "hijack" on 9/11.

In my 11-year FAA career, I worked in the development of "procedures
and airspace design", including some military operations, and was
part of the team which trained other Air Traffic Controllers and
transitioned the FAA from its old broadband radar and simple flight
data processors into the RDP (Radar Data Processing) and computerized
radar displays.

I was a Facility Training Instructor and was certified to create
transcripts from audio tapes, to interpret radar data in tracking
aircraft from computer files, and to analyze computer tracking data,
all of which would combine to "tell the story" of air traffic
incidents. I was also the main creator of the Boston Center Profile
Descent and Metering Program for Boston Logan airport.

And while "on the boards", I personally worked one commercial
airliner hijacking and assisted on another.

I received several Letters of Commendation for my work, including one
where my piloting experience was instrumental in saving the lives of
two people on board an aircraft suffering an "IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCY" in
which the aircraft had a total loss of electrical power while in the
clouds. Our air traffic controller team ordered the scrambling of
suitable military aircraft and directed the intercept which
successfully led the helpless and lost aircraft down to a safe
landing in "socked in" weather conditions.

Several times each year, practice exercises were conducted on how to
handle high speed scrambles and group departures called "flushes" all
in conjunction with military exercises and NORAD (North American
Aerospace Defense Command). Out of Otis Air Force Base alone, twenty
to thirty jet fighters would scramble and then later return.

In addition to my career as an Air Traffic Controller, I have a great
deal of other experience in aviation. I was a Certified Commercial
Pilot and accumulated 1600 hours total time in light aircraft;
qualified in Single-Engine Land, Multi-Engine Land, Single-Engine
Sea, and Glider. I was also a Certified Flight Instructor and
Certified Ground Instructor. And prior to my becoming an Air
Traffic Controller, I passed the Flight Engineer Basic exam focused
on the Boeing 727 and accumulated over 2000 hours of aircraft
maintenance, repair and rebuilding time.

I knew within hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 that it was an inside
job. Based on my 11-year experience as an FAA Air Traffic Controller
in the busy Northeast corridor, including hundreds of hours of
training, briefings, air refuelings, low altitude bombing drills,
being part of huge military exercises, daily military training
exercises, interacting on a routine basis directly with NORAD radar
personnel, and based on my own direct experience dealing with in-
flight emergency situations, including two instances of hijacked
commercial airliners, I state unequivocally; There is absolutely no
way that four large commercial airliners could have flown around off
course for 30 to 60 minutes on 9/11 without being intercepted and
shot completely out of the sky by our jet fighters unless very highly
placed people in our government and our military wanted it to happen.

It is important for people to understand that scrambling jet fighters
to intercept aircraft showing the signs of experiencing "IN-FLIGHT
EMERGENCIES" such as going off course without authorization, losing a
transponder signal and/or losing radio contact is a common and
routine task executed jointly between the FAA and NORAD controllers.
The entire "national defense-first responder" intercept system has
many highly-trained civilian and military personnel who are committed
and well-trained to this task. FAA and NORAD continuously monitor
our skies and fighter planes and pilots are on the ready 24/7 to
handle these situations. Jet fighters typically intercept any
suspect plane over the United States within 10 - 15 minutes of
notification of a problem.

This type of "immediate, high speed, high priority and emergency"
scramble had been happening regularly approximately 75 - 150 times
per year for ten years. In the same ten years, there were ZERO "low
speed, delayed reaction, and low priority" hijacking scrambles
reported, which means that the only time interceptors were ever
scrambled for ten years before 9/11, they were using the high speed
immediate scrambles. The system was well tuned and ready before June
2001. However, the "emergency scramble" is NOT what was used on
9/11/2001...it was the "laissez fair" scramble for a hijacking that
had to get Pentagon approval before departing.and there was none
forthcoming.

I have the deepest and most sincere respect and sadness at the loss
of so many lives on 9/11. With no disrespect towards the surviving
family members still feeling the horrors surrounding the attacks on
9/11, I see the events of September 11th as being a symptom of a far
bigger problem. A problem that Dwight David Eisenhower had brought
to our attention as he left office in the 1950's where he warned this
country about two significant elements of our economy looming above
us: The Military Industrial Complex, and the Military Industrial
Congress. 9/11 served the goals of both of those elements but our
government and military failed to serve and protect its citizens.

In my fourth decade within the Peace Movement and now the first
decade in the 9/11 Truth Movement, I can now clearly see that General
Eisenhower was absolutely correct and that the military-corporation-
political-economical cabal has indeed gone out of control.

I believe that 9/11 was what is known as a "False Flag Operation" in
which a country inflicts casualties upon itself, and then blames it
on an enemy that they want to go to war against. It is one more
instance in the United States' long history of using "False Flag
Operations" and blatant propaganda to ramp-up hostile emotions
towards an enemy in a population otherwise resistant to going to
war. The destruction of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor,
which led to the Spanish-American War, allowing the attack on Pearl
Harbor to occur, the declassified 1960's plan Operation Northwoods,
which was going to be used as a pretext for going to war with Cuba,
the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which justified the war in Viet Nam, the
planted story about babies being taken from incubators and killed by
Iraqi soldiers to help justify the first Gulf War, and now, the
attacks on 9/11/2001 being used to justify the current war in Iraq,
were all used to manipulate the "warring emotions" within U.S.
citizens so that they would come to support this country going to war
against this "new enemy". And in all of these wars, everyone in this
decadent cabal shares in the financial profits associated with war,
and, of course, share in none of the pain and deaths associated with
war. Bob Dylan says it best in his unheralded, yet seminal
song "Masters of War".

Four decades of experiencing the John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam lies, the Watergate
saga, the Iran-Contra scandals, stolen elections and the
conglomerization and ensuing control of the mainstream media,
instructed me that this was going to be a long battle to uncover the
truth about who was behind the attacks on 9/11/2001. That I can show
how Rumsfeld's Military reshaped interceptor protocols so that 9/11
could happen without the airliners being shot from the sky, is but a
small bit of evidence that is flooding past the Bush regime, the U.S.
Military and the mainstream media's best efforts to continue the
cover-up of their callous and deathly malfeasances.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Awkward questions about 9/11

Russian TV interviews Giuletto Chiesa of the EU Parliament about 9/11 and his Documentary Zero

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7_pqXokZvQ

Remembering 9/11 and Moving Towards a Re-United States of America

Dennis J Kucinich
September11, 2008
We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda... It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed... As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.
9/11 Op-Ed article by Dennis Kucinich:
America must move from the errant, retributive justice of 9/11 to a healing, restorative process of truth and reconciliation.
Before the Congress adjourns, I will bring forth a new proposal for the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.
We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise of pre-emptive military strength.
It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.
Our government's external response to 9/11 was to attack a nation which did not attack us. Indeed on the first anniversary of 9/11, the Bush administration issued a well-publicized stern warning to Iraq which was part of a campaign to induce people to believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11.
The deliberate, systematic connection of Iraq with 9/11 has led America into a philosophical and moral cul-de-sac as over one million Iraqis and over 4155 US soldiers have died in a war which will cost over $3 trillion. Additionally, soldiers from 23 other countries have died in the Iraq war.
We attempt to unite Iraq by further dividing it. We talk about restoring Iraq while taking steps to place control of its vast oil wealth in the hands of US oil giants. And we intend to impose upon the Iraqi people the cost of rebuilding a country which our government ruined, keeping a once prosperous nation lashed to debt and poverty for a long, long time. Iraq has paid for 9/11. We all continue to pay for 9/11.
The heartbreaking loss of the lives and injuries to America troops further binds us to the Administration's illogic of the Iraq war: We remember our troops' sacrifice by demanding more sacrifice; we support our troops by continuing the war.
The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is neither red, white nor blue. Everyday is orange. Everyday reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal.. Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.
There is a powerful desire across America for change, not necessarily from control by one political party to another, but a change from living with lies to living with truth.
Over two dozen nations, facing peril within and without, deeply divided by politics and war have travelled down a path of restoring civil society through a formal process of reconciliation. At some point within each of those countries it was understood that the way forward is shown through the light of truth. This process is not without pain because it requires a willingness to study evidence to which eyes had been averted and ears had been closed. But in the process of truth and reconciliation, nations found new strength, new resolve, new commitment.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation enabled that nation to come to grips with its past through a public confessional, bringing forward those who committed crimes and having the power to grant amnesty for full disclosure of crimes against the people. Of course, our path may necessarily be different: High US government officials stand accused in Impeachment petitions of violating national and international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America people to join me in supporting this effort.
The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed. It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to embrace peace.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) says he won't cease his efforts to hold the president and his administration accountable for their alleged abuses of power just because George W. Bush will be returning to his Texas ranch come January.

Kucinich says he wants Congress to create a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" to examine what really went on within the Bush White House in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead up to the Iraq war. He says only an independent body with truth-seeking as its goal -- rather than "fake political unity" -- can repair divisions that have emerged in an increasingly polarized nation. During a brief press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday, and in an interview with RAW STORY afterward, Kucinich said he would...

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