Peter Lance has followed-up his book, 1000 Years for Revenge (reviewed at lewrockwell.com on Saturday, 9/11/04), with a new blockbuster, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War On Terror. Out of necessity, Lance restates the details outlined in his first book at the beginning of Cover Up.
In 1000 Years for Revenge Lance demonstrated that culpability for what happened on 9-11 ran through the three presidential administrations of Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. The FBI infiltrated a terrorist cell operating within a Brooklyn mosque in 1991 but then drove off their "mole" prior to Ramzi Yousef joining the cell in 1992. Yousef went on to mastermind the plot and build the explosive device used in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Yousef escaped New York after the bombing and set up another terrorist cell in the Philippines with his uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). In the early 1990's Yousef and KSM planned three terrorist plots together: the assassination of the Pope, the simultaneous bombing of eleven commercial airliners and the "crashing of airplanes into buildings" tactic used on 9-11.
All three of these plots were uncovered in 1994 when a man associated with Yousef and KSM was captured and successfully interrogated by Philippine authorities. Their findings were forwarded on to the U.S. embassy in Manila which passed them on to the FBI in 1995.
Around this time Yousef was captured in an Osama bin Laden–sponsored boarding house in Pakistan and handed over to FBI officials in that country. Incredibly, KSM was staying in the same compound but went undiscovered by the FBI. A TIME magazine reporter, however, found KSM while the FBI was taking over the arrest of Yousef and interviewed him (using KSM's real name) for an article about how Yousef was captured.
Yousef went on to plan and communicate the plot that ultimately led to the bombing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 from his jail cell. The FBI was made aware of this plot through an informant that they had working as an asset for them in the same jail.
The work to cover up these unpleasant facts was begun by the 9-11 Commission coincident with its formation. As one commissioner, Jamie Gorelick, admitted in April of 2004, the "vast preponderance of our work, including with regard to the Department of Justice, focuses on the period of 1998 forward."
How convenient and how telling! What's the point of looking into the FBI's infiltration of the Brooklyn terrorist cell during the administration of George H. W. Bush? Why bother noting the ties established in 1992 between this cell and Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing that took place just after the first Bush administration transferred power to the Clinton administration in February of 2003?
What about the information obtained by Philippine authorities regarding the Manila terrorist cell established by Yousef and KSM in the early 1990s? How about the information regarding the three terrorist plots uncovered in the Philippines and turned over to the FBI in 1995?
What about the failure of Clinton's FBI to capture KSM at the same time as Pakistani officials handed Yousef over to them in 1995? Why did the FBI under both Clinton and George W. Bush keep the hunt for KSM such a secret until after 9-11? Why was the 1996 federal indictment against KSM kept sealed until 1998?
Doesn't the FBI ultimately answer to the Attorney General at the Department of Justice? Wasn't Commissioner Gorelick a high ranking Justice Department official during the Clinton years? And with such an obvious conflict, why was Gorelick named to the 9-11 Commission in the first place?
This last question is a relatively easy one to answer. Gorelick was probably put on the 9-11 Commission to counterbalance the appointment of Phillip Zelikow to be the commission's staff director. Beginning in October of 2001, Zelikow had been appointed to President Bush's Intelligence Advisory Board. This meant that if he reviewed the work of the NSC on behalf of the 9-11 Commission, he would effectively be investigating himself.
Zelikow had also previously co-authored a book with NSC Director Condi Rice. Mindy Kleinberg (one of the "Jersey Girls") summarized the situation in this way, "What an incredible conflict! The evidence was pointing to a series of key memos issued in the summer of 2001 and included the August 6th Presidential Daily Briefing. Condi Rice was at the heart of all of that. How could we expect Zelikow to fairly investigate his own friend and colleague?"
The role of the Zelikow-Gorelick axis became more prominent as the 9-11 Commission pursued its work. The only commissioners ever allowed by the White House to personally review classified NSC documents were Zelikow and Gorelick. As Patty Casazza (another of the "Jersey Girls") summarized things, "We called it the two-to-four-to-ten deal."
Casazza went on to explain that, "instead of allowing all ten Commissioners to go in and examine key documents like the President Daily Briefing of August 6th, they set up this system in which Zelikow and Gorelick would go in and then Kean and Hamilton would review their report, which could be edited by the White House. Then this final version would get seen by everybody."
But what if the 9-11 Commission had been made aware of Peter Lance's investigative work that was completed in 2003? Well, they were made aware of it and largely ignored Lance's findings.
In late 2003 a copy of Lance's 1000 Years For Revenge was made available to the Chairman of the 9-11 Commission, Thomas Kean. In January of 2004, Kean wrote a letter to Lance indicating that Kean had read the book and was forwarding Lance's findings to Phillip Zelikow.
Zelikow also wrote Lance a letter that same month indicating that Zelikow wanted Lance to be interviewed by a 9-11 Commission staff member, Dietrich Snell. This former Assistant U.S. Attorney had successfully prosecuted Yousef in the case that involved the plot to simultaneously bomb eleven commercial airlines flying from Asia to the United States. KSM was a key co-conspirator in this plot but was never mentioned by the prosecution in the case. Snell would have made an excellent witness for the 9-11 Commission to question about Yousef and KSM. He was, instead, one of the investigators. Peter Lance's findings were mentioned once in a footnote to the 9-11 Commission's report.
After the Watergate scandals resulted in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, the saying "it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover up" became popular. Because of Peter Lance's new book, Cover Up, regarding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the work of the 9-11 Commission, it will (hopefully) be both that ultimately leads to the punishment of all parties involved in the crime and the cover up.
September 14, 2004
