9/11 remains one of the most misunderstood events in modern history. The first myth is that it came out of the blue on an unsuspecting America. In fact it is known that 11 countries provided advance warnings to the US about the 9/11 attacks, including Russia and Israel which sent 2 senior Mossad experts to Washington in August 2001 with a list of terrorist suspects that included 4 of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. Moussaoui, now thought to be the 20th hijacker, was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners, and Newsweek later revealed (20 May 2002) that an agent had written that month that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers. Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism chief in the White House, has since said that “50 CIA personnel knew that al-Hamzi and al-Mihdhar (2 of the hijackers) were in the US in July-August 2001, including the Director”, but never passed the information to the FBI. And the former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has stated that “the information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence”.

See full article here.

See: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17188564

Video streaming by Ustream

See schedule: http://torontohearings.org/schedule-and-live-coverage/

Megan O’Toole Sep 9, 2011 – 6:00 AM ET, source

As people across Canada and the United States publicly remembered the tenth anniversary of 9/11 this week, a small group at Ryerson University were examining another angle altogether: the “myth” of 9/11. The four-day Toronto Hearings kicked off Thursday with a trio of experts and academics offering their opinions on why the official narrative of 9/11 as a terrorist attack is flawed. The Post’s Megan O’Toole looks at the day’s highlights.

THE LEGAL ANGLE

Though the Toronto Hearings have so far played out more like a conference than a legal hearing, organizers referred to each of the three experts who took to the podium as “witnesses.” No lawyers were there to cross-examine them; instead, a panel of three academics and an Italian judge peppered the speakers with friendly questions. The panel, which will ultimately draft a report on the matter, may address the question of whether another state-sponsored inquiry is needed to help answer all the lingering questions about 9/11. “We know that the official story does not fly,” organizer Graeme MacQueen said. “It’s full of holes.”

CONSPIRACIES ABOUND

Florida State University professor Lance deHaven-Smith, who addressed the panel first, came right out and said it: “Maybe [9/11] was an inside job to advance a war agenda.” He cited evidence that the collapse of New York’s twin towers resulted from controlled demolition, a theory popular among the so-called 9/11 Truth movement. “What is more disconcerting in some ways is that this was not investigated,” Mr. deHaven-Smith told the mostly older crowd of about 100 people. By labelling such views as conspiracy theory, the U.S. political elite “silences and stigmatizes” legitimate questions, Mr. deHaven-Smith said. He drew a parallel between 9/11 and a host of other historical U.S. “state crimes against democracy” — or SCADs, for short — including the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, the 2001 anthrax scare and the disputed presidential elections that put George W. Bush in the White House for two successive terms.

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH, PART I

The official report from the 9/11 commission is replete with glaring omissions, said speaker David Ray Griffin, who wrote the book 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed. “There were continuing signs the Bush administration didn’t want the truth of 9/11 to be discussed,” Mr. Griffin said, pointing to the appointment of Bush crony Philip Zelikow as the commission’s executive director. “The commission was the White House investigating itself.” The resulting report failed to include relevant information about the alleged hijackers, including the revelation that some were still alive after the attacks, he said. In addition, Mr. Griffin questioned the discovery of alleged ringleader Mohamed Atta’s will in a suitcase that was supposed to be on the plane with him. Why put your will in a plane destined to crash, Mr. Griffin asked.

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH, PART II

Kevin Ryan, co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, was similarly critical of a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) into how and why the twin towers, and a third building in the World Trade Center complex that was not hit by any plane, collapsed in the fashion they did. “A steel structure does not collapse suddenly when attacked by fire,” Mr. Ryan said, noting the NIST report “distorted many important facts.” The fires raging in either tower were not hot enough to melt the steel structure, he said, nor would the plane crash have created sufficient force to pull the building’s exterior columns inward, as the NIST report suggested had occurred. “This is the opposite of science,” Mr. Ryan fumed.

THE AUDIENCE

In addition to dozens of guests, speakers and experts, a number of amateur filmmakers were on scene to record the Toronto Hearings, while security posted outside the door ensured anyone entering had an appropriate badge. Critics have questioned the timing of the hearings, coming when so many people are grieving their losses. Mr. MacQueen, however, said the goal was not to delegitimize their mourning, but rather to sift through the “myth and deception” surrounding 9/11.

National Post
• Email: motoole@nationalpost.com

By Megan O’Toole, source, Postmedia News September 8, 2011

TORONTO — As people across Canada and the United States publicly remember the tragedy of 9/11 in the lead-up to its tenth anniversary this weekend, a small group in Toronto began a series of hearings Thursday to examine another angle altogether: the “myth” of 9/11.

Dubbed the Toronto Hearings, the four-day event at Ryerson University — which wraps up Sunday — will hear from a variety of experts and academics on why the official narrative of 9/11 is flawed.

Speakers broached a variety of controversial topics on the conference’s first day, including the now-familiar theory that New York’s Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled demolition, and that the alleged terrorist attack was, in actuality, a high-level plot orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Lance deHaven-Smith, a public policy professor at Florida State University, called 9/11 a “state crime against democracy,” suggesting the destruction of the Twin Towers was staged to advance a war agenda.

“What is more disconcerting in some ways is that this was not investigated,” he told the mostly older crowd of about 100 people. “The evidence of controlled demolition is pretty close to a smoking gun.”

Even the use of the term “9/11″ to reference the tragic event is suspicious, deHaven-Smith said, noting the emotionally charged term, reminiscent of the emergency telephone number, deviates from traditional naming conventions.

“It elevates the historical significance of the event,” he said.

Speaker David Ray Griffin, who authored the book 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed, focused on alleged anomalies in the official report from the 9/11 Commission. The report, which he called a product of “the White House investigating itself,” failed to include relevant information about the alleged hijackers, including the discovery that some were still alive after the attacks.

Kevin Ryan, co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, was similarly critical of a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology into how and why the Twin Towers collapsed in the fashion they did.

“A steel structure does not collapse suddenly when attacked by fire,” Ryan said, noting the institute’s report “distorted many important facts.” The fires raging in either tower were not hot enough to melt the steel structure, he said, nor would the plane crash have created sufficient force to pull the building’s exterior columns inward, as the institute’s report suggested had occurred.

A four-person panel, consisting of three academics and an Italian judge, who each peppered the speakers with questions Thursday, will issue a series of conclusions after the hearings wrap up.

The panellists also may weigh in on whether there should be a state-sponsored inquiry to get to the bottom of all the lingering questions about 9/11, organizer Graeme MacQueen said.

“We know that the official story does not fly,” he said, noting the timing of the controversial hearings on the landmark anniversary was not meant to delegitimize the larger tragedy of 9/11, but rather to encourage critical thinking. “The legitimate mourning is mixed together with myth and deception.”

motoole@nationalpost.com

By Reuters, Raw Story
Thursday, September 8th, 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ten years after al Qaeda’s attack on the United States, the vast majority of the 9/11 Commission’s investigative records remain sealed at the National Archives in Washington, even though the commission had directed the archives to make most of the material public in 2009, Reuters has learned.

The National Archives’ failure to release the material presents a hurdle for historians and others seeking to plumb one of the most dramatic events in modern American history.

The 575 cubic feet of records were in large part the basis for the commission’s public report, issued July 22, 2004. The commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was established by Congress in late 2002 to investigate the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the pre-attack effectiveness of intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the government’s emergency response.

In a Reuters interview this week, Matt Fulgham, assistant director of the archives’ center for legislative affairs which has oversight of the commission documents, said that more than a third of the material has been reviewed for possible release. But many of those documents have been withheld or heavily redacted, and the released material includes documents that already were in the public domain, such as press articles.

Commission items still not public include a 30-page summary of an April 29, 2004 interview by all 10 commissioners with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted in the White House’s Oval Office. This was the only time the two were formally questioned about the events surrounding the attacks. The information could shed light on public accounts the two men have given in recent weeks of their actions around the time of the attacks.

Several former commission staff members said that because there is no comprehensive effort to unseal the remaining material, portions of the records the commission had hoped would be available by now to scholars and the public instead will remain sealed indefinitely.

In 2004 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said publicly that he was eager for most of the records to be released as quickly as possible. In a Reuters interview last week, Kean said he was not aware until told by Reuters that only a small portion of the records have since been unsealed, and he saw no justification for withholding most of the unreleased material.

Kean said the commissioners had agreed on the January 2, 2009 date for release so that the material would not come out until after the 2008 elections. “We didn’t want it to become a political football,” he said.

But he added: “It should all be available now… We (commissioners) all felt that there’s nothing in the records that that shouldn’t be available” once the election had passed.

Continued here.

The following two links will allow you to view the Hearings live:

(1)  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/thetorontohearings

(2) liveonlocation

TORONTO HEARINGS: SCHEDULE
(Subject to Changes)

Thursday, September 8, 2011
9:00 – 9:30 Moderators: Opening Remarks
9:30 – 9:45 James Gourley: Introduction to the Hearings and the Panel
9:45 – 10:15 Lorie Van Auken (Video): Statement by a Jersey Widow
10:30 – 12:00 Lance deHaven-Smith: 9/11 & State Crimes Against Democracy
1:00 – 2:30 David Ray Griffin: Inadequacies of the 9/11 Commission’s Report
2:45 – 4:15 Kevin Ryan: Inadequacies of the Reports by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology
4:15 – 5:00 Audience Question and Answer

Introduction

The legal and political implications of 9/11 have turned scientific research in this area into a high stakes competition for the minds of the public. Pertinent information has been kept secret, the corporate media has systematically kept “damaging” information (such as video images of the World Trade Center Building 7) out of public view, 9/11 research has been marginalized, and the official investigations have failed to answer, or in many cases even address, the most troubling questions. One development that appears to be a tactic in the ongoing cover-up is the high profile promotion of transparently false theories, “straw men,” the only purpose of which appears to be to allow the 9/11 Truth Movement to be ridiculed.

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 upon us, the battle for public perceptions has intensified and there is a heightened campaign to undermine the scientific basis of the truth movement. Dr Judy Wood has published a book asserting that the World Trade Center (WTC) towers were felled by “dustification” of the steel, which she claims is achieved by the use of “directed free energy”. ¹ It is, however, obvious that the steel was severed and fell in normal lengths, otherwise intact, as seen in conventional demolitions. The similarly foolish idea that the WTC towers were demolished by nuclear explosives, long ago refuted, ² has also been recently revived, with a new claimant appearing, Jeff Prager, ³ but this appears to be having little influence so far. No explanation involving “directed free energy” or nuclear devices could account for the way separate explosions appeared in the Twin Towers, layer by layer, descending at a precise rate, as the towers came down. ⁴

It is important to distinguish between devious false claims, intended to weaken the truth movement, and false claims which result from accidental errors. There can be errors of interpretation of evidence, calculation errors and misleading testimonies from witnesses who fail to correctly remember the event they observed and describe.

An example of an unfortunate calculation error is found in the work of Pilots for 9/11 Truth (PFT). This group has a long-held position that the topography near the Pentagon would rule out impact by American Airlines Flight 77 (AA77). This position was based on a calculation that the plane would necessarily experience an unsurvivable force of 10.14g if it attempted to pull up from the dive on approach to the Pentagon. ⁵

PFT based its calculation on a path that was somewhat different from the path of the plane as shown in the files initially provided by the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), reportedly from the flight data recorder (FDR). The NTSB data appeared to show that the flight terminated at a point too high to have hit the Pentagon. Instead, to make the possibility of impact more feasible, the PFT calculation was based on the assumption that the plane actually came in much lower, level with the top of the VDOT antenna tower near the Navy Annex. It was shown by several researchers that this calculation was incorrect due to a substantial error in determining the radius of the pull-up arc.

This error in turn produced an excessive value for the required g-force. The error was increased by assuming, without evidence, that the plane traveled in a straight line at a constant descent angle from the top of the antenna to the first light pole hit. If this artificial restriction is removed, and the plane is allowed to follow a curved approach, the pull-up can be spread over a wider arc, increasing the radius of curvature and reducing the wing load. Calculation shows that paths can be found such that the force generated would place no undue stress on the aircraft, being well below the design limit of 2.5g. ⁶

Read full paper here.

See also:

Flight AA77 on 9/11: New FDR Analysis Supports the Official Flight Path Leading to Impact with the Pentagon
Frank Legge and Warren Stutt

What Hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on the Credibility of 9/11 Truth
Frank Legge

Google Earth Exposes Pentagon Flyover Farce or Critiquing PentaCon
Jim Hoffman

“Debating” What Hit the Pentagon by Exaggeration, Namecalling, and Threats
Gregg Roberts

Dawn Vignola’s Account vs. CIT’s Methods
Erik Larson