“Stand down” evidence on the “Emperor’s Clothes” site, including FAA web pages

The website Emperor’s Clothes contains a fairly good, though outdated and incomplete, presentation of evidence for a NORAD stand down on 9/11 (or at least a de facto stand down, even if there wasn’t an explicit stand down order). It’s outdated because it does not take into account the 9/11 Commission Report, which put all the blame on the FAA for not contacting NORAD soon enough about all four planes. It’s also lacking some other pieces of information I still haven’t seen anywhere, but which would be needed in order to prove that either the FAA or NORAD was indeed responding slower than normal on 9/11.

But the “Emperor’s Clothes” website does contain quite a few relevant links to the FAA site, useful in analyzing whether the newest version of the official story is credible, and also very useful (though not sufficient) on the more general issue of whether Flight 77 could have been intercepted (and then either forced down or shot down) before it hit the Pentagon. These links are all broken, but I was able to find all the referenced pages on the Internet Archive site. Links to the archived FAA pages, and some other relevant archived pages, will be provided further down on this page. These pages are a vital piece of evidence, filling one of the gaps I complained about in War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11.

The FAA pages confirm what David Ray Griffin said in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, namely that the FAA had two relevant protocols: the “hijack” protocol and the “emergency” protocol. The “hijack” protocol was the slower of the two. However, a loss of radio contact and/or transponder signal should have triggered the faster emergency protocal, especially after the second plane hit WTC 2, by which time it should have been clear to everyone in the FAA that any subsequent hijacking should be regarded as an emergency. I’ll add that interceptions are discussed in something called the “Official Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures,” which suggests that interceptions are routine enough to be considered “basic.”

The timeline in the 9/11 Commission report is based on NORAD’s tapes, which David Ray Griffin suspects may have been doctored, because they let NORAD off the hook to a far greater degree than earlier timelines even from NORAD officials.

I’ll now discuss briefly the Emperor’s Clothes Articles on 9-11, section 1, Evidence of High-Level Government Complicity in the Events Of 9-11.

A. Failure to Scramble Planes

The first article here is Guilty for 9-11, Part 1: What Happened to the Air Force on September 11th? by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel. It starts off as follows:

Andrews Air Force Base is a huge military installation just 10 miles from the Pentagon.

On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C. They failed to do their job. Despite over one hour’s advance warning of a terrorist attack in progress, not a single Andrews fighter took off (or scrambled) to protect the city.

Then there are links to two news stories showing that people at the Pentagon were aware of what was going on by the time the second plane hit WTC 2.

In response to Lie #1, ‘No Combat Ready Fighters Were Stationed Near The Pentagon,’ Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel describe the two combat-ready squadrons at Andrews Air Force Base, citing a page on the DC Military site (a private website authorized by the military to provide information for members of the armed forces). The link is dead, but I found an archived copy here on the Internet Archive site.

Bykov and Israel also cite several news stories stating that there were indeed fighter planes at Andrews Air Force Base, but that they weren’t scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit.

A parenthetical note refers us to Powerful Evidence that Air Force Was Made to Stand Down on 9-11, which observes (as various “debunkers” have pointed out, e.g. on the 9/11 Myths site) that “combat ready” doesn’t necessarily mean “scramble ready,” but then also points out some much stronger language on the DC Air National Guard (DCANG) Website, “combat units in the highest possible state of readiness,” which surely should imply “scramble ready.” That statement was removed from the DCANG website at some point during 2001, but can be found on a version of the DCANG website that was archived on April 19, 2001 on the Internet Archive site. Did these combat units cease to be “in the highest possible state of readiness” sometime before 9/11/2001? If so, why? Reducing the readiness of these particular combat units would not have made any sense at all, given the warnings of an impending terrorist attack. Further discussion can be found on the page Update to “Guilty For 9-11: Bush, Rumsfeld, Myers: Section 1”.

Back to Guilty for 9-11, Part 1: What Happened to the Air Force on September 11th?. Cheney is quoted as claiming, “Well, the–I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft.” Bykov and Israel point out that this is a lie, because “Publicly available FAA documents prove that fighter jets routinely intercept commercial aircraft under certain designated circumstances without requiring or asking for approval from the White House.” Perhaps Cheney actually meant to refer to a decision to shoot down “incoming commercial aircraft,” not merely to intercept them?

Let’s look now at Guilty for 9-11, Part 2: Mr. Cheney’s Cover Story, also by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel. It discusses “Lie # 2: Presidential Authorization Was Needed To Scramble Jets To Intercept Flight 77.” First is a detailed discussion of Cheney’s apparent confusion of mere “interception” with the shooting down of a passenger jet. Bykov and Israel believe that this confusion was a deliberate evasion.

Mr. Cheney attempted to hide the jump from “intercept” to “shoot down” by means of the following connecting sentence:

“It doesn’t do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don’t give them instructions to act, if, in fact, they feel it’s appropriate.”

This is disinformation. Mr. Cheney was treating his viewers like fools.

First, as anyone with a computer and basic knowledge of the Internet can find out, Air Traffic Controllers request military jets to intercept commercial aircraft on a routine basis. Sometimes the purpose is to tell a commercial pilot that his plane has gone off course; other times the interceptor goes up in order to observe the situation directly – for instance, to see who is flying the plane. None of this requires presidential approval.

Second, military interceptors (or ‘escorts’) already have clear “instructions to act.” These instructions can be read online in detailed manuals from the FAA and the Department of Defense. The instructions cover everything from minor emergencies to hijackings. If a problem is serious, high-ranking military officers from the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon can take charge.

[…]

An Air Traffic Controller (ATC) may request military jets to intercept (or ‘escort’) a commercial aircraft in response to any serious problem which the Air Traffic Controller cannot solve through radio contact. Perhaps the most common problem is that a commercial jet has deviated from its authorized flight path.

[…]

If a plane deviates from its flight plan, for example if it makes the wrong turn at one of its ‘fixes,’ an Air Traffic Controller (ATC) contacts the pilot. If the ATC cannot make contact, he or she will request an escort – that is, a military jet – to scramble and check out the situation. This is called ‘interception.’

As you can see, interception is not necessarily an aggressive act. Usually it is requested because routine communication has become impossible.

An example cited is the Lear jet chartered by golf pro Payne Stewart, in the CNN news story Pentagon never considered downing Stewart’s Learjet, October 26, 1999. This story implies that the FAA did contact the military, and that fighter jets were launched: “Several Air Force and Air National Guard fighter jets, plus an AWACS radar control plane, helped the Federal Aviation Administration track the runaway Learjet and estimate when it would run out of fuel. And officers on the Joint Chiefs were monitoring the Learjet on radar screens inside the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center.”

Note that the NMCC was able to monitor the Learjet on radar screens, in contrast to the official claim that, on 9/11/2001, there was no military radar coverage within U.S. borders, or at least that there were allegedly huge holes in said coverage.

But one could object here that there’s also the question of how quickly the Payne Stewart intercept took place – with possible implications for the more general question of how long intercepts in general typically took place before 9/11, and hence whether Flight 77 could have even been intercepted, let alone also forced down or shot down, before it hit the Pentagon. Apparently Payne Stewart’s plane was intercepted later than an hour after the problem was first noticed by an air traffic controller. See, for example, the following two pages on the “debunking” site 9/11 Myths: Payne Stewart and Intercepts, NORAD and the FAA.

However, the latter page mentions a 2006 lecture by David Ray Griffin, in which Griffin says:

But an Air Traffic Control document put out in 1998 warned pilots that any airplanes persisting in unusual behavior “will likely find two [jet fighters] on their tail within 10 or so minutes.”

Unfortunately, the footnote here points us to p.141 of Griffin’s book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, and not to Griffin’s primary source. I don’t yet have that particular book of Griffin’s, so I guess I’ll have to check this out sometime later.

It would also be helpful to have more news stories about typical intercepts – especially, if we can find any, stories of intercepts of passenger jets flying toward major cities, which would obviously be more urgent than intercepts of small private planes flying toward sparsely populated areas, as was the case with Payne Stewart’s plane.

Anyhow, back to Bykov and Israel’s page on Cheney’s coverup. It goes on to explain the FAA’s standard operating procedures, with numerous citations from the FAA website. For example:

“Consider that an aircraft emergency exists … when: …There is unexpected loss of radar contact and radio communications with any …aircraft.”
–FAA Order 7110.65M 10-2-5

The page on Mr. Cheney’s Cover-up contains a bunch of broken links to the FAA website. I was able to track these down, plus one other broken link, on the Internet Archive site. First, here’s an archived copy for the non-FAA link:

• Footnote 3: For a clear and detailed description of flight plans, fixes, and Air Traffic Control, see: ‘Direct-To Requirements‘ by Gregory Dennis and Emina Torlak

And here are archived copies for all the FAA links:

• Footnote 2: Regarding rules governing IFR requirements, see sub-section 14-1-2 in Chapter 14: Designation of Airspace Classes, in Part 4: Terminal and En Route Airspace, in FAA Order 7400.2E: Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters (Effective Date: December 7, 2000; Includes Change 1, effective July 7, 2001)
• Footnote 5: Sub-section 5-6-4: “Interception Signals” (see also section 5-6-2, “Interception Procedures”) in Section 6: National Security and Interception Procedures, of Chapter 5: Air Traffic Procedures, in FAA ‘Aeronautical Information Manual: Official Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures,‘ (Includes Change 3, Effective: July 12, 2001). (See also Chapter 6: Emergency Procedures.)
• Footnote 6: sub-section 10-2-5 “Emergency Situations,” in Section 2: Emergency Assistance, in Chapter 10: Emergencies of FAA Order 7110.65M: Air Traffic Control (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001)
• Footnote 7: Sub-section 10-1-1 “Emergency Determinations,” in Chapter 10: Emergencies of FAA Order 7110.65M: Air Traffic Control (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001)
• Footnote 8: Section 5: Air Defense Liaison Officers (ADLO’s) in Chapter 4: FAA/NORAD/PACAF Procedures for Control of Air Defense Aircraft, of FAA Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001)
• Footnote 9: Sub-section 1-2, “Escort of Hijacked Aircraft: Requests for Service,” in Chapter 7: Escort of Hijacked Aircraft, of FAA Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001)

Together, the above links include probably all the documentation we could possibly ever need or want regarding the FAA’s standard operating procedures as of 9/11/2001 – as those procedures existed on paper, at least.

But it would also be helpful to have more news stories, complete with timelines, about pre-9/11 intercepts as they took place in practice. Various “debunking” sites such as 9/11 Myths include a few news stories about pre-9/11 intercepts (and even at least one post-9/11 intercept) that took a doggone awfully long time, suggesting that those cases were typical and hence that Flight 77 could not have been intercepted in time. But were those cases indeed typical? Only with other news stories of pre-9/11 intercepts (preferably including intercepts of some passenger jets heading toward major cities) could we find out for sure.

However, even if it should turn out that it’s at best iffy whether Flight 77 could have been intercepted in time even if there had been scramble-ready planes at Andrews Air Force Base, the failure to have scramble-ready planes there in the first place is suspicious. One would think that, of all the Air Force bases in the country, Andrews, being the base nearest to Washington DC, would be the one place where it would be most essential to have scramble-ready planes at all times, especially in view of all the warnings about an impending terrorist attack.

Back to Bykov and Israel’s page on Cheney’s coverup:

Mr. Cheney is attempting to misinform by pretending that intercept pilots need ‘instructions’ from the President, when he knows perfectly well that clear instructions and a whole organizational network exist to handle intercept emergencies.

Moreover, Mr. Cheney’s implicit argument – that there is no point in sending up an escort unless the pilot has clearance to shoot down a commercial jet – is absurd. Why would such a decision have to be made in advance of scrambling the escort? Even if an airliner has been taken over by a terrorist with a suicide mission, how could Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush or anyone else other than God Himself possibly predict how the hijacker would respond to an intercept by military jets? Even if a hijacker were ready to die for the glory of crashing into the Pentagon, does that mean he would also be ready to die for the glory of ignoring a military pilot’s order to land?

B. George Bush’s behavior during visit to Booker School

Let’s now look at Guilty for 9-11, Part 3: Bush in the Open by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel.

They quote a transcript of an ABC News special report indicating that, before Bush arrived at Booker Elementary School, he already knew that a plane had crashed into WTC 1.

Bykov and Israel then quote a transcript of Cheney’s appearance on Meet the Press on September 16, 2001, in which Cheney reveals that the Secret Service was in communication with the FAA on the morning of 9/11, after the WTC was hit. It’s not clear to me whether this communication would have occurred after the first tower was hit or after the second tower was hit, but Bykov and Israel conclude that Cheney must have meant the first tower. In any case, by the time the first plane crashed, the FAA certainly knew about the hijacking of Flights 11, and would most likely have told the Secret Service about that too. From this, Bykof and Israel conclude that “at 8:46 the Secret Service knew a hijacked plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.” I wouldn’t draw this conclusion as definitely as Bykof and Israel do, but it does seem likely. At the very least, surely they would have known, once the second plane hit, that it was a terrorist attack via hijacked planes.

Bykov and Israel conclude, further, that “before the President entered the Booker School, and possibly before he left his hotel, the Secret Service knew that, for the first time in US history, the country had been attacked by terrorists from the air.”

They then quote a Time magazine article showing that the Secret Service had long known that one of the trickiest security dangers to the President would be posed by a suicide attack from a hijacked airplane from a nearby airport. That being the case, according to Bykov and Israel, “On a day when planes were being hijacked from different airports and crashing into buildings, a top security precaution would be to keep the President away from a publicly announced appointment at a building near an airport. The Booker School is fewer than 5 miles from the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.” So, why on Earth did the Secret Service allow the President even to to go there in the first place? Or, if they honestly didn’t know about the terrorist hijackings until the second plane hit, why did the let Bush stay at the Booker school for another full half hour? He should have been whisked off to an undisclosed location ASAP.

Bykof and Israel conclude:

There is only one explanation for the Secret Service allowing President Bush to take the deadly risk of going to the Booker School on the morning of September 11th.

George Walker Bush knew the plans for 9-11. And because he knew those plans, he knew that nobody was going to attack the Booker School.

I’m not sure I agree that that this is the only possible explanation, but it is indeed a reason to be suspicious.

After Guilty for 9-11, Part 3: Bush in the Open, the Emperor’s Clothes Articles on 9-11 page lists four articles showing that Bush lied about what he did that morning. I’ll list them below in forward chronological order (earliest first):

• Bush Betrayed Consciousness of Guilt On 9-11 by Jared Israel
• The President as Incompetent Liar: Bush’s Claim that he Saw TV Footage of 1st Plane Hitting WTC by Jared Israel
• Bush Gets Tangled in his 9-11 Lies, Part 1: A Strange White House Press Conference by Jared Israel
• Bush Gets Tangled in his 9-11 Lies, Part 2: White House Cover-up Creates more Problems than it Solves by Jared Israel

I should point out here that evidence of a cover-up does not, in itself, constitute evidence of MIHOP or even LIHOP. Evidence of a cover-up does not, in itself, prove anything about the nature of what is being covered up (MIHOP, LIHOP, incompetence, or just plain negligence). But it most certainly is a reason why we need a new and truly independent investigation of 9/11.

(P.S., 12/22/2007: For some further elaboration, see my subsequent post about Bush at Booker School on the morning of 9/11, in which I respond to an attempted rebuttal of Jared Israel’s points on Mike Williams’s page about Bush at Booker School.)

C. General overviews of officials’ actions

Next is Criminal Negligence or Treason? by Jared Israel in consultation with Emperor’s Clothes writer Illarion Bykov and Canadian Attorney Tiphaine Dickson, written way back on 15 September 2001. This page was, apparently, one of the very first articles on the web to ask why Flight 77 was not intercepted, even though it had been under the control of hijackers for almost an hour before it hit the Pentagon, and even though the WTC towers had already been hit. This article quotes a September 15 New York Times story in which it was claimed that the problem, essentially, was that officials didn’t know what to do. But surely they did know what to do, at least up to the point of intercepting the plane. Beyond that they might have needed the approval of the President to shoot down the plane, but they certainly didn’t need anyone’s permission to intercept it. In any case it was, at the very least, criminally negligent for the President to be sitting in a classroom reading about a pet goat, rather than in teleconference making a decision on whether to shoot the plane down.

Next is Frequently Asked Questions on 9-11, exploring two questions: FAQ #1 – Nobody was prepared for 9-11 and FAQ #2 – Dan Rather Discovers Planes *were* Scrambled After All!. FAQ #1 summarizes the arguments made above.

FAQ #2 documents a change in the official story as of the evening of 9/14/2002. Until then, it was said that no planes were scrambled to protect Washington, DC until after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. But the new story said that:

… Jets were scrambled from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod to intercept Flight 11, the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center. Also, supposedly, jets were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to intercept American Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. In both cases, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) supposedly called for the interceptors too late. Also, Otis AFB is about 185 miles from New York and Langley AFB is 129 miles from Washington, DC. So the interceptors supposedly had too far to travel.

Earlier:

General Richard B. Myers, Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9-11, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 13th. He testified at great length. The Senators asked him three times about the failure to scramble planes on 9-11. But Myers said nothing about planes scrambling from Langley Air Force base ….

Jared Israel then remarks that Myers changed his story during the confirmation hearing itself, putting forward three different versions of what happened on September 11th. But, on this page, he does not spell out these changes. Jared Israel then says:

The CBS/NORAD cover story did not successfully answer Nelson’s questions.

That is, since planes were flying into buildings, and since Washington, DC was the city most likely to be the next target, why would planes be scrambled all the way from Langley Air Force Base, 129 miles from Washington, as late as 9:30? Why wouldn’t they be scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base, 10 miles from the Pentagon, at around 8:50, when the military knew that a hijacked plane had hit the World Trade Center? Or at 9:06, when, we are told, the FAA ordered all planes grounded, from Washington, DC to Cleveland!

The next article is Canadian TV Airs Emperor’s Clothes ‘Guilty For 9-11’ Evidence! by John Flaherty, about the TV program “The Great Deception,” which was hosted by Barrie Zwicker and aired January 28, 2002, on the Insight Mediafile at Vision TV.

Among other things, Zwicker is quoted as saying:

Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the “Incompetence Theory.” Incompetence usually earns reprimands.

Then Zwicker talks about the Payne Stewart case, alleging the total time from an air traffic controller noticing the problem until the plane was intercepted was only 16 minutes. However, as the 9/11 Myths site has noted, apparently correctly, this seems to be an error. Judging by this Washington Post story and by the National Transporation Safety Board’s Aircraft Accident Brief, it seems that the actual time elapsed was closer to 76 minutes, which some people have misread as 16 minutes due to a confusion of time zones.

John Flaherty also notices an error here, pointing out that the National Transportation Safety Board’s report does not state when the military was contacted, and that there were other reports indicating that it took half an hour for the FAA to notify the military. Flaherty also notices the switch from Eastern Time to Central Time. Flaherty then goes on to say:

In any case, the question of how quickly the FAA contacted the Military about the Payne Stewart jet is not worth a lot of research time. Regarding 9-11, the important thing is that the Payne Stewart case shows that, contrary to Vice President Cheney’s assertions on Meet the Press, intercepting planes does not means shooting them down. And as Barrie Zwicker pointed out, it does not require presidential approval to intercept a plane, again contrary to Mr. Cheney. These are the key points.

The question of how long it took the military to respond has to be put in context. This was a small business jet plane flying on autopilot towards a low-population area. It was not a hijacked jumbo jet, one of four airliners hijacked on 9-11, of which two had already crashed into the biggest buildings in New York. And it was not the third hijacked airliner, which turned around in Ohio and was flying back to Washington, DC.

Clearly on 9-11 the FAA went on emergency footing. Vice President Cheney says that after the World Trade Center was hit the FAA had open lines to the Secret Service. Newsday reports that by 9:06 the FAA had ordered the entire air corridor from Cleveland to Washington, DC shut down. That is, the FAA shut down the route which, we are told, American Flight 77 took heading back to the Pentagon. (10)

It is one thing if the FAA or the military was slow responding to a small business jet on autopilot flying away from populated areas, and it is another thing for those in charge of Andrews Air Force Base not to scramble fighter jets when it became obvious that a terrorist attack was under way with hijacked airplanes crashing into buildings. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Washington DC would be the prime target, inhabited as it is by several [sic – he must have meant several million?] human beings and also by the US government.

The next article is 9-ll: Ho-Hum, Nothing Urgent by George Szamuely, with research & documentation by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel. This page begins by quoting an American Forces Press Service article (23 October 2001) in which the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, claims not to have been informed about the second plane hitting the WTC towers until just around the same time that the third plane hit the Pentagon. Supposedly he had heard, earlier, about the first plane hitting the WTC, but assumed that that had been just an accidental crash of a small plane, hence nothing important.

George Szamuely then revisits George Bush’s lackadaisicalness, reminding us of some of the evidence that Bush knew what was going on. He then revisits some of the FAA’s procedures regarding hijackings, and then talks about the changes to the official story on September 14. Regarding the new story, in which fighter jets were launched but did not reach their targets in time:

This story, which has now, with slight modifications, become the “official” NORAD version, raises more questions than it answers.

F-15s have a cruising speed of 577-mph, (9) while F-16s have a cruising speed of 570-mph. (10) . Both planes can fly much faster, though there is a rapid drop in fuel economy.

According to CBS, three F-16s scrambled from Langley at 9:30 and arrived in Washington at 10:00. The distance from Langley Air Force Base to the Pentagon is 129 miles – not 150, as CBS stated. If these F-16s took half an hour to get to Washington they were flying at 4.4 miles per minute, 258 mph. That’s less than half their cruising speed. It’s a fifth of the maximum speed for these F-16s, 1500-mph.

Talk about a lack of urgency!

And since Washington, D.C. is little more than 200 miles from New York, the two F-15 fighters from Otis would have had time to get to DC, intercept Flight 77 and grab a breakfast on the way.

And then of course, there is the small matter of Andrews Air Force Base. It is, after all, but ten miles from the Pentagon.

[…]

Why didn’t they order planes from Andrews put in the air to protect Washington D.C. and to intercept American Flight 77 long before it reached the U.S. capital?

D. Technical references (maps, timetables)

Here are listed a Map & Timetable for American Airlines Flight 77 and a Map of Andrews Air Force Base

E. Background & related information

• Operation Northwoods: Plan for Terror to Justify War’ – includes complete copies of the original “Operation Northwoods” document, as released under the Freedom of Information Act.
• Reader Says Emperor’s Clothes Wrong on bin Laden, 9-11 – discussion about The creation called Osama by Shamsul Islam, Reprinted from ‘The Hindu’ (India) September 27, 2001
• Russian Air Force Chief Says Official 9-11 Story Impossible
• Battle: An Expert Recants on Why WTC Towers Collapsed by John Flaherty and Jared Israel

The above articles are at the end of Part 1, “Evidence of High-Level Government Complicity in the Events Of 9-11, on the page” Emperor’s Clothes Articles on 9-11: A Guide. The remaining parts contain very interesting articles too, though I will not discuss them here for now. The remaining parts are:

• 2. Interviews related to 9-11 & Afghanistan.
• 3. Evidence Osama Bin Laden never severed ties with the CIA. Documentation of his involvement in NATO attacks on Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Balkans during the last decade.
• 4. US/West European links to Islamic Fundamentalism.
• 5. Evidence that “Strategic Racism” is the method of the US/Euro Empire.
• 6. What is the US/Euro Strategy in Central Asia? Is it geared to immediate corporate profits or other interests? Is it “all about oil”? Or is this strategy based on an attempt to create a neocolonial New World Order in which a) powerful nations that could potentially resist the US/European Empire are broken up; b) the opposition to the New World Order is led by neo-fascists who foment and appeal to racism and c) fascistic junior partners rule various regions, with some of these fascists even posing as opponents of the empire?

I may discuss some of the articles in these sections later.

Looking around on the web for some pages referencing the “Emperor’s Clothes” people’s research, I found the following, among others:

• Guilty for 9-11 Attacks Stories on Andrews AFB and Availability of Fighters Produce Controversy: Additional Investigation Corroborates Story, Reveals Pentagon Lies by Mike Ruppert
• Air Force Stand-down page on 9/11 Review (not to be confused with Jim Hoffman’s site 9-11 Review). Lists various resources on the “Stand Down” issue

P.S., 11/4/2007: I posted the thread FAA regs, in effect 9/11/2001, found on Internet Archive in the TruthAction forum, asking if anyone knows of any pre-9/11 examples of intercepts of passenger jets approaching major cities.

Further P.S., 11/4/2007: Some very interesting information has been posted to the above thread. I started posting it here as a series of P.S.’s, but I’ll move it to a separate post soon.