9/11

How the Bureau’s “Terrorist Screening Center” fails to screen terrorists.

Presidents regularly mount the podium but FBI directors have kept rather quiet on September 11. Last year, Christopher Wray delivered remarks that prove enlightening.

“It’s fitting that we mark this anniversary here, at the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC),” Wray said, “because the TSC is a prime example of the strides we made following the attacks—developing new capabilities and working in concert with our partners to keep people safe. It demonstrates the ingenuity, the dedication, and the spirit of collaboration we’ve brought—as a collective law enforcement and intelligence community—to the fight against terrorism.”

The freedom that the 9/11 hijackers hated is slipping away from us with terrifying speed.

“Only days after 9/11, Norwegian author Gert Nygårdshaug sneered at the idea that there might soon be an attack on ‘Oslo or Rome or Copenhagen.’ He was far from alone in his mockery. Then came Madrid, London, Bali, Beslan, Mumbai….The Western European elite played down, even denied, any connection among these events. Yet year by year the truth has become increasingly clear: though the U.S. was the target on 9/11, the front line of the war with Islamism is Europe.”

Last night, 60 Minutes broadcast a moving story of firefighters in the World Trade Center 22 years ago. Scott Pelley carefully used that word, “firefighter,” throughout the elongated feature.

60 Minutes, choosing diversity when it clashes with truth, highlighted several female firefighters (both among the more eloquent talking heads, so one cannot really gainsay their inclusion) on the program. But 343 of 343 who perished were firemen. So, cannot we safely, in this one instance, drop the 21st-century gender-neutral term?

We remember. Kathy and the Westboro Baptist Church – 10 year anniversary.

On August 17, Vivek Ramaswamy was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. At the very beginning, Ramaswamy spoke candidly about 9/11: “I didn’t suggest it. I explicitly said that the government absolutely lied to us. The 9/11 Commission lied. The FBI lied to us.”

After dropping that bombshell, Ramaswamy went on to describe a scenario that he says “doesn’t make much sense on the face of it.” He explained how a 42-year-old Saudi Arabian graduate student went to Los Angeles International Airport and, while there, met up with two Saudi nationals who went on to hijack a plane on 9/11, which they then crashed into the Pentagon.

Twenty years after the Sept. 11 attacks, declassified FBI documents have changed a big piece of the story about possible Saudi government help to the hijackers. Families of the victims want more information.

From the first weeks after the 9/11 attacks, suspicions about a possible Saudi government role in the plot have focused on a mysterious, 42-year-old graduate student who welcomed the first two Qaida hijackers after they landed in Los Angeles in January 2000.

The Saudi student, Omar al-Bayoumi, claimed to have met the two terrorists entirely by chance; he said he was just being hospitable when he helped them settle in San Diego. Both the FBI and the 9/11 Commission supported Bayoumi’s account, dismissing the suspicions of agents who thought he might be a Saudi spy.

After nearly 20 years, however, the FBI has changed its story. In documents declassified last year, the bureau affirmed that Bayoumi was in fact an agent of the Saudi intelligence service who worked with Saudi religious officials and reported to the kingdom’s powerful ambassador in Washington.

So the FBI has been lying all these years? Hoodathunkit!

The 9/11 terrorists whose evil machinations left thousands dead in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania targeted a fifth jet but were foiled, a new report reveals.

And the captain of United Airlines Flight 23 has broken his long silence.

Twenty-one years later, how many Americans still don’t know our enemy?

When the U.S. entered World War II, the director Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life) left Hollywood and, at the age of 44, enlisted in the Army, where General George C. Marshall put him to work making pictures for the war effort. The films, several of which were released under the umbrella title Why We Fight, sought to explain why America was at war with Germany and Japan. They outlined the ideologies of Nazism and Shintoism, examined both enemies’ militarism, fanatical obedience, master-race mentality, and lust for conquest, and noted the reverence with which Hitler was held in Germany and Hirohito in Japan.

Our credentialed mavens can’t break free of their institutional orthodoxy and narratives.

Twenty-one years have passed since the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil, and our foreign policy establishment and ruling elite still have not learned the lessons of that horrendous carnage. The Romans thought even fools could learn from experience, but our credentialed mavens can’t break free of their institutional orthodoxy and narratives. As a consequence, our foreign policy and international relations continue to put our national security at risk.