TWA Flight 800 and the 9/11 Commission Cover Up: An Interview With Peter Lance
Fitzgerald Involved In TWA Flight 800 Coverup
Fitzgerald Involved In TWA Flight 800 Coverup
by Claire E. White (September, 2004)
Was the 9/11 Commission Report a cover up? Were we lied to when we were told that 9/11 was the first time that Al-Qaeda hijacked and destroyed an American jetliner? Five time Emmy® award-winning investigative journalist
and bestselling author Peter Lance asserts just that in his blockbuster new book Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror (HarperCollins). In his 2003 bestselling nonfiction work, 1000 Years for Revenge (HarperCollins), Lance laid bare the plotting and events that led to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. After reading 1000 Years for Revenge, Governor Kean, Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, asked Peter Lance to testify in front of the Commission. His story of his experiences with the Commission and the 9/11 widows is absolutely fascinating.
So far, Lance's new book, Cover Up: What The Government Is Still Hiding About The War On Terror, a meticulously researched and entertainingly written expose, has been embraced by the right, the left and the middle. Partisan interests seem to see the facts that Lance has brought to light through the lens of their beliefs. Lance has already appeared on Fox News, CNN and many other major news programs to discuss his insights. Lance lays out the amazing blunders and cover ups which began in the Clinton Administration and which continue to this day with officials in the current Department of Justice. As a journalist, Lance says he is just following the trail of facts regardless of where they lead. He is adamant that "If we are truly to be safe, we have to de-politicize the debate over terrorism." But his trail of incendiary facts would seem to have some major political implications -- especially in an election year. Lance provides evidence that Ramzi Yousef, the Al-Qaeda perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was likely responsible for the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, with the help of his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed --
the originator of the 9/11 plot. Lance also raises some disurbing questions about the events of 9/11 itself. For instance, it is not common knowledge that the morning of September 11, 2001, there were three war games simulations was taking place. One was being conducted near Dulles Airport in Washington to test the response of the National Reconnaissance Office in case a plane was flown into the NRO building. At the time of the attacks, two F-16s were actually in the air practicing bombing runs, within eight minutes flying time, yet they were never called by NORAD to intercept the attackers. The 9/11 Commission heard sworn testimony about these and many other facts, but failed to mention them in its Final Report which, generally speaking, did not place blame. In fact, much of the most important testimony was never made public, much to the anger of the "Jersey Girls," the 9/11 widows who lobbied for the creation of the 9/11 Commission.
Peter spoke with us about testifying in front of the 9/11 Commission and discusses some of the immensely disturbing facts he uncovered while writing Cover Up. He also addresses the growing threat of terrorism and why Americans need to be informed about the facts before the upcoming presidential election.
What was it like to testify in front of the 9/11 Commission?
This is a short question that will require a long answer. As one who had set out to do a book on the Commissions work, my testimony before the Commission on March 15th was an eye opener.
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For one, it took place in a closed door session at the Commissions New York office inside 26 Federal Plaza; the FBIs building in Lower Manhattan. A source inside the Commission had warned me that more than 90% of the witness intake was anecdotal, i.e., not on the record or under oath, so I prepared my testimony ahead of time.
You can read it as an Appendix to Cover Up and get it via my website at peterlance.com.
I had sent my book to Governor Kean (the chairman) over Christmas and he had responded, saying that he wanted to hear my findings. I had only two conditions: first that I not be forced to reveal confidential sources and second, that my information be made a part of the permanent Commission record.
When Gov Kean referred me to Philip Zelikow, the staff director, who had co-written a book with Condi Rice and served on the Bush transition team, Zelikow wrote via email in January that I would be contacted by Dietrich Dieter Snell, one of the Team Leaders and a senior counsel to the Commission.
As soon as I heard Snells name I suspected that what my source had been telling me was true: that the Commission staff was limiting the scope of the investigation and cherry picking evidence.
Snell had been the Assistant U.S. attorney who co-prosecuted Ramzi Yousef for the Bojinka case in 1996. In my first book 1000 Years For Revenge I recounted how the Justice Department, during Snells tenure, had limited the scope of the Bojinka case.
In April, 2002 I went to the Philippines where I interviewed Colonel Rodolfo B. Mendoza, the Richard Clarke of the Philippines, an expert on al Qaeda and its reach in Southeast Asia.
Colonel Mendoza, aka Boogie, had interrogated the lifelong friend and cohort of Yousef: Abdul Hakim Murad. A pilot trained in four U.S. flight schools in the early 1990s Murad had confessed to Boogie three plots that had been set into motion by Yousefs cell in Manila as early as 1994.
The first plot was a scheme to kill the Pope due to arrive in mid January, 1995. The second plot was the hijack airliners-fly-them-into-buildings scenario that was fulfilled on 9/11 and plot three was Bojinka; reportedly named by Yousef after the Serbo Croation word for Big Noise.
This was a non-suicide plot in which Yousef and his three cohorts, Murad, Wali Khan Amin Shah (a confident of bin Ladens) and Ramzis uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would board the first leg of a series of U.S. bound flights heading from Asia. On the initial leg of each flight they would smuggle on the innocuous components of an ingenious bomb trigger Yousef had designed. Powered by a Casio watch and utilizing diluted nitroglycerine to be ignited via a broken bulb initiator, the IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were to be placed under seats (in the lifejacket pouches) located above the center fuel tanks of 747s.
The plotters would then exit after the planes touched down and the IEDs would blow hours later as the planes jetted back across the Pacific. Yousef had intended this to happen on 11 flights and he even wet tested one of the Casio-nitro devices on Philippines Airlines Flight 434 on the first leg of a flight from Manila to Cebu in the Southern Philippines on December 11, 1994.
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