A note to readers: Normally, I post my book reviews only on another site of mine, Chuckman's Miscellanea of Words, but because of the nature of this book and its being the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I am also posting on this site.
I have long been an admirer of the work of Anthony Summers, one of the world’s great investigative journalists.
His biographical notes on J. Edgar Hoover, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover are required reading for an understanding of how the center of American power operated for a major portion of the 20th century.
His first book on the Kennedy assassination, Conspiracy,
is the greatest book ever written on that event, and it has never been
surpassed for the depth of its analysis and gripping nature of its
writing. Indeed, because so little new evidence of any importance has
emerged since that time, it remains the definitive study.
When
I read that he was publishing a book on 9/11 - an event around which
swirl clouds of doubt and mystery as great as the ferocious storm of
dust which swept through lower Manhattan when the World Trade Center
collapsed - I was ready to devour it.
And while there
is a good deal to admire in the new book, my lasting impression is one
of disappointment. It simply does not measure up to what I think of as
the standard of excellence set previously by Mr. Summers.
There
are assumptions here I cannot accept without better evidence, much of
the main thread of detailed facts contained come ultimately from
American torture of countless people in the CIA’s “rendition program,” a
bureaucratic euphemism for an international torture gulag, and there
are important facts not even touched on.
I have never
accepted notions like insider plots and false flag operations pertaining
to this event, but anyone who has followed matters over the last decade
knows that a great deal remains obscured and unexplained, almost
certainly deliberately so by the American government.
Mr.
Summers believes it is essentially for several reasons: one is to cover
up the close to utter incompetence of the CIA and other agencies
leading up to the event. Another is to cover up the almost criminal
incompetence of the Bush administration both before and after the event.
And another is to guard the long and deep and fairly secret intimate
relationship America has with Saudi Arabia.
I accept
all of these, but none of them comes as news to critical observers over
the years, and I do not believe they add up to an explanation of what
happened on 9/11.
The CIA has flopped countless times –
failing to correctly read the Soviet Union’s economic and military
power, failing even to predict its collapse, failing completely in
either preventing or investigating Kennedy’s assassination, and being
the author of countless lunatic plots like the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The
agency has squandered vast amounts of money in often counterproductive
schemes since its creation following World War II, so its failure with
regard to 9/11 was for me the expected norm.
The same
Bush administration, which gave us a world record limp and pathetic
performance for a government during Hurricane Katrina, could not be
expected to operate in an entirely different mode around 9/11, and it
most certainly did not.
The relationship with Saudi
Arabia is one of those not-much-discussed matters in America, but it is a
necessity so long as America keeps building three-car garages out into
the desert of the Southwest.
New facts Summers presents
us with are interesting and not contemptible, but they are inadequate
to our curiosity. Some of those involved in 9/11 from Saudi Arabia may
well have been double or triple agents for Saudi intelligence. Osama bin
Laden was paid handsomely by Saudi princes to keep his various
operations off Saudi soil, thus indirectly funding 9/11. After dumbly
dawdling at a school-reading photo-op, Bush was finally whisked away in
Air Force One where the commander-in-chief was virtually out of the loop
with remarkably faulty communications. His Secretary of Defense, Donald
Rumsfeld, the number two man in a wartime chain of command, was for
some time wondering around the Pentagon unavailable to military
commanders needing his authority.
Summers pretty well
accepts the official version of 9/11, with the important proviso that
the official version, the commission report, includes such matters as
the fact that there was little cooperation from Bush officials during
the investigation, and the CIA certainly did not explain itself
adequately.
The collapse of building 7, which was not
hit by an airplane and which occurred after the collapse of the North
and South Towers of the World Trade Center, is attributed to debris
falling from the other towers. I just don’t know, but it did bother me
that Mr. Summers seemed to go out of his way to poke fun at some of the
scientists or engineers who doubt that.
The large effort of Israeli spies around 9/11 is not even mentioned in the book, and I found that a disturbing omission.
There
was a group of five Israeli spies who were seen on the roof of their
truck taking pictures of the explosions and then behaving in a raucous
congratulatory manner, yelling and high-fiving. The police were called
and they were arrested, but we know nothing of their purpose or
achievements. There was another large group of Mossad agents posing as
art students who travelled around the country apparently following some
or all of the 9/11 plotters. They, too, were arrested and later
deported, but we know nothing of them.
Summers accepts
the “let’s roll” scenario for the fourth high-jacked plane which crashed
in Pennsylvania, but I have always doubted it. First, the photos of the
debris field certainly suggest to a non-technical person that it may
have been shot down. Second, after three deliberate crashes into
buildings, it seems almost unbelievable that the huge air defenses of
the United States had not finally taken action. Third, on at least one
occasion, Donald Rumsfeld spoke to the press inadvertently using the
expression “shooting down” the plane over Pennsylvania in discussing the
high-jackings. Fourth, only naturally, the United States’ government
would not publicize the shooting-down of a civilian airliner because the
resulting lawsuits would be colossal. I am willing to be convinced
otherwise, but Mr. Summers does not succeed in doing it for me.
Another
important fact is not mentioned in the book. An American consular
official at the time was complaining in public about all the visas they
were issuing in the Middle East owing to pressure from the CIA. It was
not a headline story, but it was an important clue to something unusual
going on.
I have always regarded it as a strong
hypothesis that the high-jackers were part of a secret CIA operation
which badly backfired, an operation which saw many questionable people
receiving visas and being allowed to do some pilot training. Risky CIA
operations have a number of times backfired, and they even have nickname
for that happening, blowback.
Of course, we
could see the entire matter also as blowback from the CIA’s secret war
against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Fundamentalist Muslims
in Afghanistan, Mujahideen, were recruited, provided training and money
and sophisticated weapons to fight the Soviets. Several billion dollars
were poured in. Osama bin Laden was himself part of the business, but,
as Mr. Summers agrees, he later did not see the United States as any
different to the Soviets when they sent troops onto the sacred soil of
Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Summers is trying to place a good
deal of blame on the Saudis for their funding and secret operations, and
while I regard it as an interesting observation that certain members of
the royal family paid Osama, I do not regard that as a stunning fact.
After all, Saudi Arabia’s countless billions come in good part either
directly or indirectly from the United States and Osama bin Laden’s
family was a very successful wealthy contractor there, so you could say
in the same sense that the United States subsidized Osama’s operations.
And it goes deeper than that, for Saudi business connections in the
United States, including connections directly with the Bush family, go
back many years.
This reader for one would like to see
some hard proof of some things that Mr. Summers takes as fact. First,
that bin Laden even was responsible for 9/11: the public has never been
provided a shred of good evidence. Second, that bin Laden was not in
fact killed in the unbelievable bombardment at Tora Bora, his death
being kept hidden to prevent martyrdom. Third, that the recent
assassination in Pakistan was genuine, not the effort of a president
down in the polls and feeling that after ten years he could afford to
make the claim.
Fourth, that there ever was an
organization called al Qaeda. I know that sounds odd to people who
assume everything they hear on television is true, but there are good
reasons for doubting it. While Mr. Summers gives one translation for the
Arabic word, people who speak Arabic have said it commonly means toilet, and
surely no one running a terror organization would use such a name.
Indeed, we have several very prominent people quoted in the past,
including former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook, saying that al
Qaeda was just a derogatory catch-all term used for various “bad guys”
out there. That is a tremendously meaningful difference between the two
things, but Mr. Summers does not touch the issue.
Again,
I cannot stress how important it is for all decent-minded people
holding to democratic values to accept neither the CIA’s international
torture gulag nor the results of its dark work. Yet the bulk of Mr.
Summers’ idea of events is based on evidence deriving ultimately from
torture, the people being tortured never receiving the benefits of
counsel, fair trial, or even opportunity to rebut.
In summary, a book worth reading, if only to get mad at, but it hardly represents a definitive effort on its subject.
