- There is still the wound.
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- A deep, earthly imprint which remains, almost three years
after the World Trade Center towers toppled.
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- But, slowly emerging from that hole, the new 541-metre
Freedom Tower will rise in New York. Its height in feet -- 1,776 -- is
more than a passing reference to the year of the signing of the U.S. Declaration
of Independence. It is the height of symbolism.
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- This past week, U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking
at his party's national convention, pointed out that, as long as there
is an America, "people will look at the resurrection of New York City
and they will say: 'Here buildings fell and here a nation rose.'"
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- Rose up, but according to some, still without all the
true answers of how they came to be there.
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- After three years of constant analysis and probing, and
the fact findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon
the United States (the 9/11 commission), critics charge there remains a
long list of omissions concerning terrorists in the U.S.A.
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- "If you have a wound, and just pick at it, it continues
to ... become infected," says investigative journalist and author,
Peter Lance, who on Tuesday -- five days before the third anniversary of
the terrorist attacks on his country -- will release his latest book, Cover
Up -- What the Government is still Hiding About the War on Terror. "What's
still needed is a full (cleansing) of all the facts. We haven't got that
yet."
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- On the Web site for the Family Steering Committee for
the 9/11 Independent Report, which includes influential family members
of victims of the attack, there still are 200 questions they want answered
-- from time-lines to who dropped the ball.
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- Some questions have been answered by the commission's
final report, but others linger.
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- Failed To Assign Blame
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- Pushing for all the recommendations to be adopted by
the Bush administration, members of that Family Steering Committee have
been gently critical of the committee's final report because it never assigned
blame to those who could have prevented 9/11.
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- In Cover Up (Regan Books), Lance -- a former correspondent
for ABC News who began to chronicle 9/11 national security blunders in
his previous best-seller, 1,000 Years for Revenge -- has no reservations
about pointing fingers. In doing so, he takes the possible conspiracy to
disturbing new heights. And stunning lows.
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- Lance makes a case that the U.S. government has been
covering up counter-terrorism blunders dating back to the mid-1990s --
before the commission's limited scope.
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- And he paints a twisted picture of another plane crash
he believes should be classed as a terrorist attack -- an event that could
have put American agents in a position to save countless lives.
-
- In Cover Up, Lance draws a compelling line from terror
mastermind Ramzi Yousef to the 1996 downing of TWA Flight 800 south of
Long Island. All 230 people on board were killed. From the night it went
into the ocean, some have believed a missile was responsible.
-
- Although the official U.S. justice department investigative
line has pointed to an electrical arc in the centre fuel tank, Lance asserts
that terror mastermind Ramzi Yousef ordered the plane bombed from his prison
cell.
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- The convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing -- a true evil genius of his craft -- Yousef also had a plan to
blow up 11 U.S. commercial aircraft in one day of terrorism.
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- Lance says, thanks to underworld ties which stretch back
generations -- a tight kinship between organized crime and U.S. lawmen
-- the FBI was alerted to Yousef's plans for TWA 800 in advance. An informant
even passed on a sketch of the terrorist's bomb. But thanks to personal
motives, says Lance, the incident was dismissed. They ignored an opportunity
to penetrate the cell that was planning 9/11.
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- FBI Squandered Chance
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- It is only slightly more disquieting than his assertion
that the FBI -- thanks to the work of an ill-equipped manager -- squandered
the chance to keep an important al-Qaida operative in the game. As they
failed, says Lance in Cover Up, to keep tabs on men who made up bin Laden's
first U.S. terror cell -- members who were known to, even photographed
by, the FBI 15 years ago.
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- Although they would go on to murder U.S. citizens, and
train others to do the same, U.S. officials let them drop from sight. In
a number of different ways, concludes Lance, U.S. officials have turned
a blind eye to faults, which continue today.
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- "On Tuesday I talked with a senior FBI investigator
... who says things are even worse today," says Lance. "There
is a climate of fear. No one wants to take a chance and screw up."
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- Lance, who testified before the 9/11 commission, spends
the last half of Cover Up pointing out the flaws in the national inquiry
-- that, once again, personalities and agendas have gotten in the way.
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- "Unanswered questions led me to this," he says.
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- And they linger. While the sister of one 9/11 victim
-- and a member of the Family Steering Committee -- tells me she doesn't
even stop to consider the "conspiracy books" on the market anymore,
others believe it will be easier to raise Freedom Tower from the gaping
hole than get to the entire truth.
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- "I give (the answers we have now) a D," says
Monica Gabrielle, whose husband, Richard, died in Tower 2 of the trade
centre.
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- A woman I admire greatly, because of her strength and
heart, she says Lance's book -- and others to come -- may hold vital clues
to the whole story.
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- "We've got some nuggets," she says. "But
not the whole picture."
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- Filling in the gaping hole of facts may well be beyond
all our lifetimes.
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- http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/
Toronto/Thane_Burnett/2004/09/05/616438.html
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