I have long
been an admirer of the work of Anthony Summers, one of the world’s great
investigative journalists.
His
biographical notes on J. Edgar Hoover, Official
and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover are required reading
for an understanding of how the center of American power operated for a major
portion of the 20th century.
His first
book on the Kennedy assassination, Conspiracy,
is the greatest book ever written on that event, and it has never been
surpassed for the depth of its analysis and gripping nature of its writing.
Indeed, because so little new evidence of any importance has emerged since that
time, it remains the definitive study.
When I read
that he was publishing a book on 9/11 - an event around which swirl clouds of
doubt and mystery as great as the ferocious storm of dust which swept through
lower Manhattan when the World Trade
Center collapsed - I was
ready to devour it.
And while
there is a good deal to admire in the new book, my lasting impression is one of
disappointment. It simply does not measure up to what I think of as the
standard of excellence set previously by Mr. Summers.
There are
assumptions here I cannot accept without better evidence, much of the main
thread of detailed facts contained come ultimately from American torture of
countless people in the CIA’s “rendition program,” a bureaucratic euphemism for
an international torture gulag, and there are important facts not even touched
on.
I have
never accepted notions like insider plots and false flag operations pertaining
to this event, but anyone who has followed matters over the last decade knows
that a great deal remains obscured and unexplained, almost certainly
deliberately so by the American government.
Mr. Summers
believes it is essentially for several reasons: one is to cover up the close to
utter incompetence of the CIA and other agencies leading up to the event.
Another is to cover up the almost criminal incompetence of the Bush
administration both before and after the event. And another is to guard the
long and deep and fairly secret intimate relationship America has with Saudi Arabia.
I accept
all of these, but none of them comes as news to critical observers over the
years and I do not believe they add up to an explanation of what happened on 9/11.
The CIA has
flopped countless times – failing to correctly read the Soviet Union’s economic
and military power, failing even to predict its collapse, failing completely in
either preventing or investigating Kennedy’s assassination, and being the author
of countless lunatic plots like the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The agency has
squandered vast amounts of money in often counterproductive schemes since its
creation following World War II, so its failure with regard to 9/11 was for me
the expected norm.
The same
Bush administration, which gave us a world record limp and pathetic performance
for a government during Hurricane Katrina, could not be expected to operate in
an entirely different mode around 9/11, and it most certainly did not.
The
relationship with Saudi Arabia
is one of those not-much-discussed matters in America,
but it is a necessity so long as America keeps building three-car
garages out into the desert of the Southwest.
New facts
Summers presents us with are interesting and not contemptible, but they are
inadequate to our curiosity. Some of those involved in 9/11 from Saudi Arabia
may well have been double or triple agents for Saudi intelligence. Osama bin
Laden was paid handsomely by Saudi princes to keep his various operations off
Saudi soil, thus indirectly funding 9/11. After dumbly dawdling at a
school-reading photo-op, Bush was finally whisked away in Air Force One where
the commander-in-chief was virtually out of the loop with remarkably faulty
communications. His Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the number two man
in a wartime chain of command, was for some time wondering around the Pentagon
unavailable to military commanders needing his authority.
Summers
pretty well accepts the official version of 9/11, with the important proviso
that the official version, the commission report, includes such matters as the
fact that there was little cooperation from Bush officials during the
investigation, and the CIA certainly did not explain itself adequately.
The
collapse of building 7, which was not hit by an airplane and which occurred
after the collapse of the North and South
Towers of the World Trade
Center, is attributed to
debris falling from the other towers. I just don’t know, but it did bother me
that Mr. Summers seemed to go out of his way to poke fun at some of the
scientists or engineers who doubt that.
The large
effort of Israeli spies around 9/11 is not even mentioned in the book, and I
found that a disturbing omission.
There was a
group of five Israeli spies who were seen on the roof of their truck taking
pictures of the explosions and then behaving in a raucous congratulatory
manner, yelling and high-fiving. The police were called and they were arrested,
but we know nothing of their purpose or achievements. There was another large
group of Mossad agents posing as art students who travelled around the country
apparently following some or all of the 9/11 plotters. They, too, were arrested
and later deported, but we know nothing of them.
Summers
accepts the “let’s roll” scenario for the fourth high-jacked plane which
crashed in Pennsylvania,
but I have always doubted it. First, the photos of the debris field certainly
suggest to a non-technical person that it may have been shot down. Second,
after three deliberate crashes into buildings, it seems almost unbelievable
that the huge air defenses of the United States had not finally taken
action. Third, on at least one occasion, Donald Rumsfeld spoke to the press
inadvertently using the expression “shooting down” the plane over Pennsylvania in
discussing the high-jackings. Fourth, only naturally, the United States’
government would not publicize the shooting-down of a civilian airliner because
the resulting lawsuits would be colossal. I am willing to be convinced
otherwise, but Mr. Summers does not succeed in doing it for me.
Another,
important fact is not mentioned in the book. An American consular official at
the time was complaining in public about all the visas they were issuing in the
Middle East owing to pressure from the CIA. It
was not a headline story, but it was an important clue to something unusual
going on.
I have
always regarded it as a strong hypothesis that the high-jackers were part of a
secret CIA operation which badly backfired, an operation which saw many questionable
people receiving visas and being allowed to do some pilot training. Risky CIA
operations have a number of times backfired, and they even have nickname for
that happening, blowback.
Of course,
we could see the entire matter also as blowback from the CIA’s secret war
against the Soviets in Afghanistan
in the 1980s. Fundamentalist Muslims in Afghanistan, Mujahideen, were
recruited, provided training and money and sophisticated weapons to fight the
Soviets. Several billion dollars were poured in. Osama bin Laden was himself
part of the business, but, as Mr. Summers agrees, he later did not see the United States as any different to the Soviets
when they sent troops onto the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Summers
is trying to place a good deal of blame on the Saudis for their funding and
secret operations, and while I regard it as an interesting observation that
certain members of the royal family paid him, I do not regard that as a
stunning fact. After all, Saudi Arabia’s countless billions come in good part
either directly or indirectly from the United States and Osama bin Laden’s
family was a very successful wealthy contractor there, so you could say in the
same sense that the United States subsidized Osama’s operations. And it goes
deeper than that, for Saudi business connections in the United States,
including connections directly with the Bush family, go back many years.
This reader
for one would like to see some hard proof of some things that Mr. Summers takes
as fact. First, that bin Laden even was responsible for 9/11: the public has
never been provided a shred of good evidence. Second, that bin Laden was not in
fact killed in the unbelievable bombardment at Tora Bora, his death being kept
hidden to prevent martyrdom. Third, that the recent assassination in Pakistan was
genuine, not the effort of a president down in the polls and feeling that after
ten years he could afford to make the claim.
Fourth,
that there ever was an organization called al Qaeda. I know that sounds odd to
people who assume everything they hear on television is true, but there are
good reasons for doubting it. While Mr. Summers gives one translation for the
Arabic word, people who speak Arabic have said it commonly means toilet, and surely no one running a
terror organization would use such a name. Indeed, we have several very
prominent people quoted in the past, including former British Foreign Minister
Robin Cook, saying that al Qaeda was just a derogatory catch-all term used for
various “bad guys” out there. That is a tremendously meaningful difference
between the two things, but Mr. Summers does not touch the issue.
Again, I
cannot stress how important it is for all decent-minded people holding to
democratic values to accept neither the CIA’s international torture gulag nor
the results of its dark work. Yet the bulk of Mr. Summers’ idea of events is
based on evidence deriving ultimately from torture, the people being tortured
never receiving the benefits of counsel, fair trial, or even opportunity to
rebut.
In summary,
a book worth reading, if only to get mad at, but it hardly represents a definitive
effort on its subject.
