The time is now to pressure Senate and House members who are suppressing the joint Senate-House government report that in 2002 identified funders of the 9/11 attacks.

New momentum to dispel the secrecy stems from this month’s 9/11 memorials and research conferences.

Congress has returned to work after summer recess amid alarming war-escalation rhetoric, especially from 2016 GOP presidential candidates.

As indicated by the Sept. 16 GOP debate, nearly all candidates cite the 2001 tragedies as a rationale to fatten the coffers of their defense industry donors by seeking new battles against entities like ISIS and Syria that had no involvement in 9/11 attacks, whatever their other appalling conduct.

From a constitutional standpoint, no legal basis exists for war against either entity even under the modern reduced standard. The 2001 congressional authorization for military action in the Middle East authorized it only against alleged 9/11 perpetrators and accomplices. Congress cannot agree on a new definition that limits a president's power to start endless wars on all parts of the earth against unnamed, unorganized opponents described simply as terrorists.

Also, the Obama administration announced this week vast new spending for war and refugee aid in Syria with minimal safeguards against abuses by terrorists seeking either to confiscate modern U.S. weapons or to infiltrate refugee arrivals into defenseless U.S. communities. Localities have scant power against illegal immigrants in the face of federal amnesties.

Within days, new developments showed the incompetence of the administration and war-mongers in Congress. First, a leader of the brand-new U.S. trained and equipped "moderate" Syrians fighting force announced that they promptly delivered their U.S. equipment to al-Qaeda, as reported by the United Kingdom's Telegraph in US-trained Division 30 rebels 'betrayed US and hand weapons over to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.'Then the Washington Post reported regarded refugees Among the ersatz Syrians are Algerian drug dealers and ISIS sympathizers.

Little wonder that the U.S. voting public holds elected leaders in such disdain: Three non-politicians led by Donald Trump hold well over 50 percent support in the latest 15-person GOP presidential polling.

Busy voters have scant way to learn the facts about 9/11 or about most other sensitive matters obscured by national security rhetoric and hidden agendas.

The U.S. government, for example, promptly destroyed evidence from the 9/11 crime scenes and otherwise thwarted standard criminal investigations, trials, and most other normal investigation.

Specifically, the FBI, U.S. Customs Service, Federal Aviation Agency and New York City's Office of Emergency Management immediately seized airplane parts, computers, and other crime scene evidence. They helped supervise the shipment of World Trade Center structural steel out of the United States for meltdown in Asia smelters before the evidence could be analyzed by experts who could confirm the official story about the causes and perpetrators of the mass murder.

Authorities have been reluctant to conduct public trials, including for alleged masterminds Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. Avoidance of trial, a basic feature of due process in Anglo-American law for hundreds of years, prompts suspicion that a defense would expose inconvenient matters — possibly including torture and other manufactured or omitted evidence.

Even elected federal officials are forbidden under penalty of imprisonment from disclosing to voters the identities of those who funded the attacks.

Fighting this conspiracy of silence have been a few voices in Congress for transparency and accountability. One is conservative Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky (shown at left). He earned a master's degree in engineering from MIT, founded a successful high-tech business while still in school, lives on a cattle farm in his rural district, and was elected in 2012 on a tea party platform.

He has stated that the 28 pages are “shocking” and that “I had to stop every couple pages and…try to rearrange my understanding of history. It challenges you to rethink everything.”

Meanwhile, the vast majority of politicians and media — who should be demanding answers — are not interested in the topic.

To oppose such corrupt, immoral, and counter-productive policies, the Justice Integrity Project has participated in strategy and research conferences this month in both New York City and Washington, DC.

This work builds on our previous reporting, including that of the 1963 Kennedy assassination and our recommendation that no federal Democratic or Republican candidate merits support in 2016 unless he or she has at least read the suppressed 28 pages of the 2002 joint Senate-House report.

The report itself is secret, except to members of Congress who can look at the materials under guard and without pencil, paper, cellphone or staff. But the word is getting out, in part because independent investigators for years have unearthed evidence implicating the Saudi Arabian government, a much-honored supposed ally of the United States, in heavily funding the suspects.

9/11 Overview

Some researchers also believe the Saudis worked under current King Salman bin Abdulaziz in de facto alliance with their supposed adversaries from Israel, as well as with supporters of the Saudi and Israeli governments who are embedded into key U.S. government and business positions. The suspected motives? War and cybersecurity contractors can profit along with their financial and political partners. Another might be so that the United States in a "Global War on Terror" could keep propping up the Middle East monarchies and increasingly expansionist Israel, which has been swelling with settlers seeking nearby lands.

Salman, shown in a file photo, visited the White House this month and was accorded great honor with his retinue of a thousand who rented one of the region's fanciest hotels in its entirety to adorn with red carpets and golden fixtures, as described in Four Seasons rolls out the red carpet for King Salman.

This track record regarding a national tragedy underscores how no honor, kow-tow, or other deference by presidents and lawmakers is too great to confer upon those who have money.

To be clear, disclosure of the 28 pages would merely a step in the right direction of documenting allegations, albeit an essential step. Some 9/11 researchers even argue, as in 28 pages of misdirection, that the campaign for release is to misdirect guilt to the Saudis and away from others linked to Western and Israeli organizations.

The best way to start is by reading the 28 pages while understanding that no one government report can answer all important questions about the attacks. These were purportedly by 19 hijackers of four airplanes that crashed into two buildings at the World Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, and in a rural area near Shanksville, PA. Any examination of the attacks should include also the five anthrax killings in the weeks after the airplane crashes leading to rushed passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001.

In sum, any job description of elected officials, particularly of the U.S. senators running for president, should logically include their commitment to examine all reasonable evidence and possibilities, and then declare their conclusions to voters.

The possibilities include scenarios even more frightening than the conventional story that 19 hijackers, 15 of Saudi nationality, commandeered four airplanes at the behest of Osama bin Laden, a cave-dweller living on borrowed time on a dialysis machine. Yet the Bush and Obama administrations have blocked effective criminal investigations or even full civil litigation with full discovery.

The remainder of this column identifies what is known about the terrorism funders — and why a growing number of 9/11 researchers ask that elected representatives fulfill their duty to their constituents, the 9/11 victim families, military forces that have been deployed in reaction to 9/11, and other Americans.

By contrast, the track record shows that most elected officials devote their primary allegiance, despite their rhetoric, to the war industry that profits from protecting the wealthy and powerful backers of terrorism. That reality contributes to the public's scorn for Congress and majority support in recent GOP presidential polling for the three candidates who have never held elective office.

Looking ahead, the litmus test dividing defense industry lackeys from patriots should be whether the official has actually read the 28 pages and taken a position on whether the public is entitled to know.

As an overview, we draw on a column published Sept. 11 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts 9/11 Fourteen Years Later. Roberts (shown in a file photo) is a conservative scholar, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, and former assistant Treasury secretary under President Reagan.

"Millions of refugees from Washington's wars," he wrote on his website, "are currently over-running Europe. Washington's 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government's official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst. Factual evidence and science do not support Washington's conspiracy theory."

"The 9/11 Commission did not conduct an investigation," he continued. "It was not permitted to investigate. The Commission sat and listened to the government's story and wrote it down. Afterwards, the chairman and co-chairman of the Commission said that the Commission 'was set up to fail.' For a factual explanation of 9/11, watch

is an extensive examination of many of the aspects of 9/11."

The mainstream media have not covered this story, and cannot be expected to do so without bottom-up pressure from the public. All major media outlets, including many in the new media secretly funded as propaganda outlets, are highly dependent on the war profiteers and political ideologues who find 9/11 a useful rationale for empire-building in the Middle East. The Project for New American Century, for example, announced in 1996 its goal of a new war against Iraq. The manifesto carried the support of, among others, Jeb Bush and leading members of the Kagan family that have been prominent in Clinton-Bush-Obama foreign affairs decision-making. The include war advocates Donald, Frederick, Kimberly, and Robert Kagan, and the latter's wife Victoria Nuland, the current U.S. Ambassador to the European Union.

This column continues our series tackling sensitive issues largely ignored by the mainstream media but explored in expert conferences that we have attended. The series includes our "Readers Guide to President Kennedy's 1963 Assassination" and more recently included on Sept. 15 Watchdogs Decry 'Corrupt' DC Actions On Hillary, Immigration, IRS Issues. Our examination continues in coming days with analysis of new evidence in the JFK murder and, separately, how the National Security Agency wasted billions of dollars while creating a system that fails to find terrorists, including 9/11 criminals.

28 Pages

Senate and House leaders are keeping the 28 pages firmly suppressed, with penalties of imprisonment for any elected representative who discloses the content. Members of the Senate and House are permitted to look at the report. But very few have done so, according to media reports and the advocacy group www.28pages.org.

The 28 Pages group says no current list of readers is available in the secret process, but its list of declassification co-sponsors includes just 19 House members. The bipartisan leaders along with Massie are Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, and Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts. Jones, once a fervent advocate of the Iraq War (and shown in an official photo), represents a district that includes Fort Bragg and many military families. That representation has prompted him to become a leader in examining 9/11 and similar issues relating to the well-being of armed forces families.

The three Senate members are Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kirsten Gillebrand (D-NY). Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, a Democrat from Florida, is shown with Lynch and Jones in a photo at right calling for release of the documents earlier this year.

“We still don’t have the complete story on the weeks and months of preparation by the hijackers,” Lynch told the Boston Herald this month. “We owe it to the families.”

The South Boston Democrat said he has read every redacted page but is forbidden to divulge the contents. But, he added, “the documents speak for themselves” and he’s urging his colleagues to read them. “It’s an embarrassment it’s not been made public, especially with their impact on (9/11) families,” he continued to the Herald in a story headlined, Lynch: Release 9/11 documents, Rep backs families’ lawsuit. President Obama has reportedly told 9/11 families that he wants the documents released, but Lynch said he has not heard from the White House on the matter.

The Herald continued:

Lynch is making his push as victims’ families continue their crusade for truth and compensation. Their suit alleges that Saudi Arabia bankrolled the terror plot that killed nearly 3,000 and says the Middle East power should compensate families for their loss. “The Saudis provided the key financial support through charities, and then Saudi officials met a couple of the hijackers and got them their apartments, some English classes, flight school and made sure they could sit tight and not get caught before 9/11,” said James Kreindler, a lead attorney in the lawsuit since 2002.

The case took a dramatic turn recently after Zacarias Moussaoui, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the attacks, testified that al-Qaeda received donations from Saudi Arabian royalty, The Associated Press reported. Saudi officials rejected those claims. An attorney representing the Saudi Arabian government did not return multiple requests for comment yesterday.

High Stakes

We now provide more specifics about the potential stakes involved in the mystery and reasons for the officials to refrain from reading evidence that may implicate U.S. "allies" and their influential contacts in U.S. business and government.

Bob Graham is the three-term Florida senator and two-term governor who co-authored with Florida House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R) the Joint Senate-House report that includes the 28 pages.

He could hardly be more of an establishment figure. Among other credentials, he is a highly successful businessman, a graduate of Harvard Law School, uncle of the Washington Post's longtime (and now former) publisher Donald Graham. The former senator has written two books about the importance of the suppressed investigation: Intelligence Matters and Keys to the Kingdom. As I know from exclusive interviews over the years with him, he has taken a leading role in additional ways to argue that the U.S. national interest demands that the public be allowed to know the report's findings about alleged hijackers' patrons.

Graham, choosing his words carefully so he will not be indicted for failure to abide by the secrecy imposed by the Bush and Obama administrations and current congressional leaders, has pointed to evidence that at least some of the accused hijackers in Florida and California were apparently funded by entities affiliated with the Saudi government's royal family.

For the record, Saudi Arabia has said in court filings that it is immune from suit in the United States from families. U.S. judges and politicians have tended to agree, thereby frustrating victimized families but keeping state secrets intact.

With elected and former leaders forbidden to say what they know, investigative reporters Daniel Hopsicker, Webster Tarpley, Dan Christianson and Wayne Madsen are among those who extensively documented such ties.

Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida, Hopsicker's 2004 book (updated in 2007) is particularly detailed and indeed shocking in its allegations that the "hijackers" like Atta (shown in a file photo) were well-funded and debauched while attending flight school, and highly unlikely to have been able to leverage their superficial flight school training into piloting huge commercial airliners like experts. In the 2008 book 9/11 Synthetic Terror, Tarpley argued that the airplanes were most likely directed by Flight Control Systems and similar technology long used to thwart hijackers and guide drones. He suggested several scenarios, including access by hackers to such technology via a "backdoor" to the airplanes' computer systems. The alternative, he said, was "The insuperable problems posed by the notion that four misfits and patsies of the official version actually flew the planes."

Hitting the first floor of the Pentagon without disturbing the lawn is one of the many near-incredible accomplishments for "hijackers" with so little training. So was outwitting the trillion-dollar U.S. air defense system and collapsing three World Trade Center buildings with two airplanes just as if the buildings had been seeded with thermite.

Many books and articles have argued more specifically how such improbabilities may have been accomplished. That research — such the proven viability of remote electronic control of airplane navigation and of thermite to cut structural steel "like a hot knife through warm butter" — are beyond the scope of this column. The topics are better suited for books, official reports, scientific conferences and federal grand juries. But they require mention at least here.

Our research indicates hundreds of story leads never pursued by the corporate-controlled press. Here are two we have examined:

First, the U.S. company Doss Aviation Inc. trained a "Mohammad Atta" at its flight school at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Alabama. U.S. authorities have said without amplification that it was a different Atta than the notorious one portrayed in the photo.

The largest shareholder of Doss, whose services included training U.S. and Saudi pilots, was the now disgraced former Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller of Montgomery. who lost his lifetime appointment last month via various scandals whose details are mostly secret, as reported by blogger Roger Shuler in By focusing on Mark Fuller's private misconduct, are judicial elites covering for his actions on the bench? Regular readers here have seen many revelations since 2009 about Fuller, who owned 43 percent of Doss while it received $300 million in Bush administration defense contracts.

As a judge, he was busy helping frame former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges, as we reported in our 2009 Huffington Post column $300 Million in Bush Military Contracts Awarded to Judge’s Private Company.

Fuller is shown in his 2014 mug shot after being arrested in Atlanta on the wife-beating charge that led to his resignation in August. No indication exists that Fuller has ever had to answer questions about his bizarre dual roles as a major defense contractor and government legal potentate.

Siegelman remains imprisoned for the frame-up based on a 2006 jury conviction for 1999 and 2000 donations by a businessman's company to Democratic causes Siegelman had supported. Details.

Let's connect the dots for busy readers without time to pursue these links:

Fuller was CEO of Doss until 2002 while concurrently serving as the elected district attorney, a full-time job, for Alabama's 12th judicial circuit. A member of Alabama's Republican Party Executive Committee for years, he was thus a politically promoted and protected member of America's military-intelligence whose career specialty became manipulating federal court decisions.

In 2002, the U.S. Senate confirmed Fuller for a lifetime appointment. Not one senator, including Judiciary Committee Pat Leahy, asking Fuller a single question during the confirmation process about how he could run Doss as a defense contracting company based in Colorado while holding his Alabama district attorney job. To be clear, Doss was virtually a global branch of the U.S. Air Force. It refueled Air Force planes, including the president's Air Force One, and trained U.S. Air Force and other pilots on a large scale.

Meanwhile, Fuller made enormously important (and controversial) federal court decisions as chief judge while conducting affairs with court staff and beating both of his wives. He thus operated with inpunity despite many whistleblowers seeking press attention and the opportunity to provide sworn testimony to Congress. Neither Democrats nor Republicans had the slightest interest in hearing any of it.

Then, a year ago in August, an honest policeman in Atlanta answered a 911 call from Fuller's second wife from a luxury hotel room, and arrested the judge on a misdemeanor wife-beating charge. That happenstance brought down the house of cards, at least for Fuller -- but with no accountability for the other major players, including those in Congress who ignored public demands to impeach Fuller that began shortly after his appointment.

Second, few have dared report in-depth on the special treatment accorded Saudi and Israeli nationals undertaking prominent or suspicious activities during the time period surrounding 9/11.

Federal authorities gave special permission for well-connected Saudis to fly home on Sept. 11, 2001 when Americans were grounded. One such group included members of the bin Laden family convened at a conference by the Carlyle Group, a major defense contractor, for a speaking program that included Carlyle advisor and former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

Also, a variety of credible reports have surfaced regarding Israeli nationals engaged in surveillance of federal personnel and otherwise suspicious behavior. In one instance reported by the Bergen Record, five Urban Moving Systems employees (including two men later identified by the Forward newspaper as members of Israel's Mossad spy agency) were arrested at Liberty Park in New Jersey after reports they had been seen celebrating in Arab garb destruction of the World Trade Center towers directly across the river. No official explanation has been forthcoming on why they were allowed after 10 weeks to return to Israel, where two of them told local reporters they were affiliated with the spy agency.

Last week, reporter and former Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen reported exclusively a bizarre incident in Indiana on Sept. 12, the day after 9/11. The police department in the small town of Marion responded to a nationwide FBI alert of a stolen van driven by "Middle Eastern" men by capturing the occupants at a local gas station. The capture was considered so important that 13 police and other emergency vehicles (including a HAZMAT truck) convened on the scene. But supposedly federal authorities ordered local police to let the men go without asking any questions, and not to speak of the matter and also to destroy records.

I participated with Madsen in hearing first-hand about the matter in Marion last month from police sourcing. Madsen's account, based primarily on whistleblowing, is excerpted below in he 9/11 incident you've never heard about. The excerpt is with permission from his subscription website, the Wayne Madsen Report (WMR):

As the emergency radio frequencies chattered with news of the truck, the Marion police department received a call from an individual claiming to be from Grissom Air Force Base, some 30 miles from Marion. The purported Air Force official asked the police dispatcher, "Do you have a stolen box truck out of Texas?" The answer was, "Yes, we have it pulled over." A second Air Force official on the line was emphatic in his demands, "I'm with the Air Force at Grissom. We want you to have your officers stand off. Do not approach. Do not detain. We have someone coming to the scene in a few minutes."

What happened in the aftermath of the incident was even more troubling. Six months after the incident, the recording machine containing all the "911" calls was taken to the aptly-named Dynamite Cleaning Services in Marion and placed inside an incinerator. Also incinerated were all the tapes. The tapes contained 20 years of 911 emergency call data, including missing persons and theft reports.

The fate of the Marion police department's "911" tapes is similar to that of the Jersey City Police Department. After ISI Systems took over the operation of the Jersey City Police Department's 911 emergency call system, all the recorded phone calls from September 11, 2001 were deleted. Earlier, Information Spectrum, Inc. (ISI) of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a subsidiary of the Fairfax, Virginia-based defense contractor, Anteon, took over the operation of the Jersey City police computer system that handled all incoming emergency phone calls. In addition to the September 11, 2001 calls, archives dating back to 1989, including those dealing with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, were also deleted.

It was later determined that the two individuals who arrived at the scene in Marion and claimed to be from Grissom never worked at the base. Some Marion police officers said it would have been impossible for the two men to have traveled in less than 10 minutes from the base, which was 30 miles away, after the truck was detained by the Marion police at the convenience store. There continues to be the belief that the two men who claimed to be from Grissom were actually traveling with the box truck in the dark vehicle.

The Marion police captain who escorted the box truck and the purported Air Force vehicle to the interstate highway said the two Air Force officials showed him badges and federal credentials. He said he believed them to be authentic.

Madsen, a featured speaker Sept. 12 at the major conference for 9/11 researchers this year (held at the West Presbyterian Church in New York City), is an author and former defense contracting executive with Computer Sciences Corp. For the Navy, his investigative duties included probing damage caused to the Navy by the notorious Mossad spy Michael Pollard. Madsen also erved a year on a Navy detail to the National Security Agency. In recent years, he has embarked on a patriotic but little-paid and oft-controversial path of freelance investigative reporting. His column continued:

In 2002, a year after the destruction of the 911 recorder and tapes, the Marion police department received a new "toy" from the federal government. It was a system that is used to mine databases for information on individuals who are subjects of "high value warrants."

The system mines phone numbers, credit cards, and travel, as well as manufacturing "call trees," the latter a favorite method used by the National Security Agency to map out a target's family, friends, and associates. The new system was originally presented to the Marion police department on a "test basis." Sources have told WMR that the federal government's "Big Brother" system provided to local police departments can be routinely used to violate an individual's constitutional rights.

The disclosures in Marion were particularly interesting to me because of my family history. The highway to Marion passed just three miles or so from Adams County, where my great-grandfather and middle-name namesake, Thomas Baltzell, had presided in the once-important post of county auditor. This was a conservative America largely opposed to empire building, foreign wars, and intrigues. A family photo shows him at left presiding circa 1913.

Whatever the true nature that 9/11 incident in Marion, it illustrated a disturbing reach of national if not global intelligence authority into the operations of a small town police department. It is hard for me to imagine that local officials until recently would kow-tow to federal authority, much less to foreign suspects being sought in a nationwide alert.

Among other mysterious strands remaining from 2001 are the anthrax attacks against the staffs of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT). The anonymously mailed anthrax, which killed five persons and infected 17 others in mailings beginning Sept. 18, frightened the top Senate Democrats and the rest of their colleagues into prompt passage of the Bush-advocated Patriot Act that in effect voids many of the nation's constitutional protections.

Leahy, shown in an official photo, is not a co-sponsor of the effort to reveal the 28-pages even though his own staff was targeted by U.S.-made deadly anthrax virus in 2001 attacks beginning with a Sept 18 mailing. We have requested a response on his current position regarding whether he has read the secret report and/or believes it should be public.

Recent books on the topic include last year's The 2001 Anthrax Deception by Canadian professor Graeme MacQueen. He documents fears fanned by the media and their government sources as anthrax mailings, some with crudely written cover notes suggesting Middle Eastern origins, went to high-profile targets like Leahy. The mailings occurred as lawmakers weighed provisions of the Patriotic Act intended to counter terrorism threats tied to al-Qaeda.

That perceived need for lawmaker action in 2001 is at least as great now from the conspiracy of silence exemplified by Leahy and 96 of the rest of his Senate colleagues.

First Steps

Returning to the 28 pages:

From what we now know and can infer, the report reveals the funding of the alleged hijackers and not with other issues. But common sense tells us that the goals and identities of funders could lead to extremely embarrassing evidence regarding negligence at best, if not mass murder and cover-up.'

Expert and honest FBI agents and other official investigators start by collecting evidence and develop theories later.

Thus, agents gathered some evidence but relatively little of it has been made public except in reports that often parroted official stories announced immediately in 2001 after the attacks. Graham, co-hair of the first major probe, has complained that the Bush administration tried to delay and otherwise thwart his investigation, mandated to end in 2002 before it could accumulate basic evidence.

Advocacy by the 9/11 Families Steering Committee, which is defunct, led to the creation of the 9/11 Commission over the objections of the Bush Administration and many members of congress who quietly worried about losing turf even as they more publicly objected to an investigation of intelligence and military topics during the ramp-up of the Afghan and Iraq wars.

In November 2002, President Bush appointed Henry Kissinger to chair this new commission." But Kissinger, a former U.S. secretary of state, withdrew after a committee of victims' families asked him to name the clients of his powerful global consulting firm, which he refused to do amid widespread suspicion that they included Saudis and other powerful entities from the Middle East.

9/11 widow Kristen Breitweisser, a leader of the "Jersey Girls" of victim family members active in seeking answers, tells the story in her compelling 2006 memoir Wake-up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow.

Hers is one of a number of books, articles and press conferences, including several this year that we at JIP covered, showing how government has failed the most immediate victims of the disaster, including rescue and construction workers falsely assured by the EPA and others that explosive dust they were breathing was not carcinogenic.

After Kissinger's withdrawal following his refusal to disclose relevant clients, Bush appointed former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean as chairman. Kean, a Republican, is shown in a recent photo with commission deputy chair, Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana for 34 years until 1999.

The commission was meagerly funded with just $3 million, and ended most of its formal operations after its report in 2004.

Both Kean and Hamilton have held numerous posts related to civic leadership, which often encompasses less obviously intelligence, foreign affairs and business. Kean, for example, has been a board member of the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, and many corporate boards. Also, Kean was a paid consultant and executive co-producer for a controversial ABC two-part series in September 2006, "The Path To 9/11." ABC's 9/11 project cost $40 million, an extraordinary sum raising many questions beyond Kean's involvement and going to the project's larger purpose since $40 million could not be recouped by advertising.

As we have previously reported here based in part on Philip Shenon's book The Commission, some commissioners were astonished to learn in the fall of 2003 about remarkable conflicts of interest involving the executive director, Philip Zelikow, who tightly controlled the investigation.

A former White House national security aide, Zelikow was a University of Virginia-based presidential historian with a background also in law and national security. Zelikow had been also a member of the Bush-Cheney Transition Team in 2000 and a close friend of Bush National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (shown in an official photo), with whom he had worked in George H.W. Bush White House.

Zelikow's conflicts included co-authorship of a book with Rice and his post-commission work. Zelikow, shown below left in a file photo, worked for Rice as counselor from 2005 to 2007 when she became Bush's secretary of state.

The commission would interview Rice for just three hours and follow ground rules imposed by the Bush White House. Rice was a central witness because of allegations that she and others in his administration had ignored specific warnings about terrorists for months before the attack occurred.

The commission report failed to explore many important leads. Former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA), a multiple-amputee Vietnam War veteran, became so frustrated that he quit the commission, thereby removing an internal critic before its report.

A decade later, those former commissioners — now well-rewarded by the defense industry directly or indirectly, as we reported in 9/11 Commission's Forum Shows How DC 'Works' — argued that it is pointless now to look back at causes of the attacks.

Even currently, some 9/11 researchers have repeatedly pointed with suspicion to Zelikow's co-authorship of a 1998 Foreign Affairs Magazine article Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger. The article speculated about the likely political, social, and psychological consequences of a new terrorist event such as the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Such an article co-authored with former CIA Director John Deutch and current Defense Secretary Ashton Carter might suggest merely expertise. But others reasonably fear that elite insider ties compromise the post-9/11 investigative process, particularly when the experts failed to prevent the attack or investigate them adequately afterwards.

In the face of such gaps, we sample some of the astonishing results found by independent news reporters, authors, and whistleblowers.

Hopsicker drew on his exclusive three-hour taped interview with Atta's American former girlfriend to describe their lifestyle of drinking, drugs, sex, and mysterious meetings with Atta's European business colleagues. Hopsicker's riveting account clashes with the conventional view that the hijackers were devout Muslims seeking to make a political statement. More likely, they were for the most part amoral and unwitting patsies assigned certain tasks but not apprised of their ultimate fate.

Much more important, Hopsicker and others also portray a nether-world of flight schools of dubious purpose, competence, and ownership seemingly linked to global intelligence, drug trade and high-level political operations.

For those examining parallel developments in New York, California and the nation's capital, the evidence suggests also high-level involvement in cover-up, which is precisely why relevant reports such as the 28-pages are provide a litmus test for honest versus dishonest members of the Senate and House.

The drama is particularly relevant to the Senate because of its greater clout than the House over foreign affairs and other Executive Branch decision-making via the Senate's power to confirm Executive Branch nominees.

Among the 2016 Presidential candidates from the Senate, only Rand Paul has said he has read the 28 pages. None of the other candidates from either party apparently have even been questioned on the record by the mainstream media (and if so not much) whether they support release of the information to the public.

To be clear, most reasonable voters could appreciate that an elected representative who read the materials might then differ with their conclusions. One of our next JIP columns will explore how an important CIA report released this month on the Kennedy assassination prompts widely different interpretations, several of them quite reasonable. These are complicated matters and so one should not assume in the case of the 28 pages, or anything else, that one document is the complete truth.

Many can also appreciate that a reasonably honest and diligent politician might conclude after reading the 28 pages that the material should remain suppressed even from 9/11 families and the rest of the public.

What's not reasonable is for officials neither to read the report nor permit others to do so. Yet such an Orwellian "Ignorance is Strength" mantra is the norm for the controlled national media, not just officials. From our widespread contacts in the industry, we know that many reporters and editors realize that their jobs are at risk in raising the issue.

Your Challenge

In sum, the situation is yet another illustration of the themes we documented in the 2013 book The Puppet Masters: Obama, Romney and Their Masters. Sadly, the saga continues, as we shall explore in additional meetings with leaders of the 9/11 research community and in our forthcoming book Puppet Masters 2016: The Candidate Charade Continues.

Some reading this are likely to find the information and approach here disturbing if not offensive. This is particularly likely for those without time to read books and documents on the topic or listen first-hand to independent scientists and law enforcement personnel, including whistleblowers.

But the disconnect is because that's supposed to be the job for elected representatives and investigating commissions, not just voters.

Fortunately, every citizen has a relatively easy solution.

During the ongoing 2016 federal election campaign now underway, write your representatives and, if possible, schedule a meeting with a staffer at an office near your home, or at least a phone call.

Your first question can be quite simple. Has he or she read the 28 pages and formed an opinion on whether the public has a right to know?

That response then answers the real question: Is "your" representative a puppet or a patriot?

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Universal Themes: Papal Address Sept. 24 At U.S. Capitol

Pope Francis addresses the crowd assembled on the mall below the Speaker's Balcony of the U.S. Capitol following a Joint Meeting of Congress, Sept. 24, 2015. Standing with him are from left, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other dignitaries. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

The Vatican, Pontifical Address to Joint Session of Congress, Pope Francis, Sept. 24, 2015. I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility.

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility.

Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

Yours is a work which makes me reflect in two ways on the figure of Moses. On the one hand, the patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation. On the other, the figure of Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.

Today I would like not only to address you, but through you the entire people of the United States. Here, together with their representatives, I would like to take this opportunity to dialogue with the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and –one step at a time – to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society.

Justice Integrity Project 9/11 Coverage

Justice Integrity Project, Rand Paul, 2 Other Senators: Expose Financers Of 9/11 Hijackers, Andrew Kreig, June 9, 2015. The campaign to expose the financiers of the 9/11 attacks has heated up as GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul and two other senators co-sponsored legislation to require release of a 2002 joint House-Senate report that has remained secret. Paul, shown in an official photo, spoke at a June 2 press conference on Capitol Hill with representatives of 9/11 families to urge his senate colleagues and President Obama to release the report, which reputedly states that Saudi Arabia funded several of the accused 9/11 hijackers in Florida and California. “Information revealed over the years does raise questions about [Saudi Arabia’s] support, or whether their support might have been supportive to these Al Qaeda terrorists,” said Paul, whose legislation co-sponsors are Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Justice Integrity Project, 9/11 Commission's Forum Shows How DC 'Works,' Andrew Kreig, July 24, 2014. Members of 9/11 Commission this week leveraged the 10th anniversary of their report to announce a dozen recommendations focused primarily on improving the nation's security against terrorists. The former commissioners called for strong spending on counter-terrorism intelligence and more centralized oversight by fewer congressional committees. Speakers minimized divisive issues regarding past mysteries, and presented the proposals as reforms. News coverage reflected that positive interpretation. "Many Americans think that the terrorist threat is waning -- that, as a country, we can begin turning back to other concerns. They are wrong," said the commissioners' new report, which was unveiled during a July 22 forum at the Newseum in downtown Washington, DC organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center. "The threat remains grave and the trend lines in many parts of the world are pointing in the wrong direction." The eloquent, personable and well-credentialed experts from the top ranks of both major parties stressed at the forum and in congressional statements later in the week that the public should fear terrorism and support the recommendations for vigorous counter-terrorism measures.

Upcoming Events:

McClendon News Service, New Developments, Barry Kissin on Anthrax Attacks of September/October 2001, No-host (Dutch-treat) dinner at National Press Club, McClendon Group Chairman John Hurley, Washington, DC, Oct. 7, 2015.

WHO: Barry Kissin, attorney and journalist based in Frederick, MD, home of Fort Detrick, the supposed source of the anthrax attacks of Sept./Oct. 2001.

WHAT: Ultimately the U.S. Government had to acknowledge that the mailing of the anthrax letters in September and October of 2001 was an inside job, thus also conceding that these were false flag attacks. The source must have been anthrax weaponization projects then being conducted by the DOD, the CIA, and the DIA. The evidence is also clear that the original plan that fell apart was to make it appear that the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks were a one-two punch orchestrated by the same Muslim "terrorists" (with help from Iraq). Indeed the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks were a one-two punch-orchestrated by the same powerful insiders.

WHEN: Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Come at 6 PM for dinner with the speaker or at 7 PM for the beginning of the presentation.

WHERE: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, 13th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20045

Recent Developments:

In Dec., 2014, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its overdue report that further debunked the FBI's version of the anthrax attacks, but completely avoided the critical evidence of how the attack anthrax was processed/ weaponized

In April, 2015, Richard Lambert, director of the FBI's anthrax investigation from 2002 to 2006, filed suit against the FBI in which he stated that the FBI concealed a "wealth" of evidence contrary to its version of the attacks.

In May, 2015, Newsweek published an article about Matt DeHart, now in a Federal prison inconnection with discovering official documents said to "show that the FBI looked into whether the CIA tried to frame Jihadis for the anthrax attacks and that the White House quashed that part of the investigation."

Related News Coverage

Campaign To Declassify Suppressed 9/11 Report on Funders

Florida Bulldog, A stonewall of secrecy hides many 9-11 records on 14th anniversary of terrorist attacks, Dan Christianson (shown in file photo), Sept. 10, 2015. Seven weeks after the end of the massive cleanup at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan in 2002, a legal investigator for the families of 9/11 victims requested a copy of an arrest warrant issued by Interpol for fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Here’s the reply she got from the Justice Department’s Interpol-U.S. National Central Bureau: “Release of information about a living person without that person’s consent generally constitutes an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy in violation of the Freedom of Information Act.”

The Justice Department’s assertion of privacy rights for bin Laden is a small rock in the stonewall of official secrecy that continues to hide 9/11 documents held by the FBI, CIA and other government entities on the 14th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Lately, the public focus has been on the 28 blanked-out pages in Congress’s 2002 Joint Inquiry into the attacks regarding “foreign support for the hijackers” – read Saudi Arabia. The pages, withheld by President George W. Bush and kept hidden by President Obama, have been the subject of recent stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times and others. On Capitol Hill, pending bills in the House and Senate seek to open those pages to the public. Yet hundreds, likely thousands, of significant records about what the 9/11 Commission called “a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States” remain off limits in whole or significant part. The result: an incomplete public understanding of events behind the attacks, and a denial of evidence to 9/11 victims still seeking a measure of justice in the courts.

Judicial Watch, 9/11 Comm. Chair “Embarrassed” That U.S. Still Keeps Most Records Secret, Sept. 11, 2015. Fourteen years after 9/11, the U.S. government maintains a robust “stonewall of official secrecy” to hide droves of documents that would likely expose incompetence inside the nation’s intelligence agencies and deceptive relations with foreign governments. A key portion of the information that was withheld by President George W. Bush has been kept hidden by President Obama so this is not a partisan issue, but rather an ongoing effort by the government to keep the truth from the public.

The alarming details are provided in a hard-hitting news article published by a nonprofit journalism watchdog, Florida Bulldog, on the 14th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Among the information that long ago should have been made public are 28 blanked-out pages in Congress’s 2002 inquiry into the attacks regarding “foreign support for the hijackers” – read Saudi Arabia. Additionally thousands of significant records that should be available to the public after all these years remain off limits, including information that was provided to the 9/11 Commission for its 585-page report on the attacks that killed thousands.

The Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, was quoted in the story saying that he was “surprised and disappointed” that the documents remain hidden. “I assumed, incorrectly, that our records would be public,” Hamilton said. “All of them, everything. I want those documents declassified. I’m embarrassed to be associated with a work product that is secret.”

Boston Herald, Lynch: Release 9/11 documents, Rep backs families’ lawsuit, Joe Dwinell and Bob McGovern, Sept. 11, 2015. U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch said it’s “an embarrassment” the full story of 9/11 has not been told all these years later — including possible terrorist links to Saudi Arabia, as a lingering federal lawsuit brought by the victims’ families alleges.

Washington's Blog, Why Saudi Ties to 9/11 Mean U.S. Ties to 9/11, Kevin Ryan, Sept. 27, 2015. Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples.

Truth and Shadows, 28 pages of misdirection, Dick Atlee, Ken Freeland, and Cheryl Curtiss, Sept. 18, 2015. Former Senator Bob Graham has been pushing for the declassification of the 28 pages.

For years the 9/11 Truth movement has been vainly pleading with mainstream media – and the “alternative” 9/11-Truth-rejecting media (which we’ll include for our purposes as mainstream) to cover any of the endless, obvious problems with any of the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (OCT) tales we’ve been told. Now, all of a sudden, these same mainstream media, echoing prestigious players like former US Senator Bob Graham, are on the rampage about a “9/11 cover-up,” and are pushing for the release of 28 redacted pages from the 2002 Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee 9/11 Inquiry’s report! So…let’s all of us 9/11 Truthers jump aboard this fast moving train with both feet, right? Why is this particular issue suddenly headline news? Why at this particular juncture? Blaming the Saudis only amplifies the assumption of “international Islamic terrorism,” still omitting all reference to Western players.

Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, left, fields a question Jan. 7 as a press conference on Capitol Hill. U.S. Reps. Steven Lynch, center, and Walter Jones joined Graham and 9/11 family members in advocating for a resolution demanding that President Obama release a congressional study in 2002 identifying funders for 9/11 hijackers (Photo courtesy of LaRouche PAC).

Politico, Rand Paul: Declassify 9/11 report pages on Saudi Arabia, Burgess Everett, June 2, 2015. Rand Paul is already zeroing in on his next national security battle: urging the declassification of a 28-page document many believe implicates Saudi Arabia as a financier in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Kentucky senator and GOP presidential candidate said on Tuesday that he will seek to force a vote that would make it the sense of Congress that President Barack Obama should reveal the redacted pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001. Paul said he will push to vote on his legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Paul acknowledged that he also has the ability as a senator to read the classified documents into the congressional record on the Senate floor, a technique that former Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) threatened to use in December to force the release of the executive summary of an internal report on CIA interrogation techniques. But Paul indicated he is not currently entertaining that as an option. “We’re going to try the normal legislative procedure first and see how it goes. But I will bring it up with the president and ask him directly to do this,” Paul said.

Newsweek, FBI Agent: The CIA Could Have Stopped 9/11, Jeff Stein, June 19, 2015. Mark Rossini, a former FBI special agent at the center of an enduring mystery related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, says he is “appalled” by the newly declassified statements by former CIA Director George Tenet defending the spy agency’s efforts to detect and stop the plot. Rossini, who was assigned to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at the time of the attacks, has long maintained that the U.S. government has covered up secret relations between the spy agency and Saudi individuals who may have abetted the plot. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a failed effort to crash into the U.S. Capitol, were Saudis. A heavily redacted 2005 CIA inspector general’s report, parts of which had previously been released, was further declassified earlier this month. It found that agency investigators "encountered no evidence" that the government of Saudi Arabia "knowingly and willingly supported" Al-Qaeda terrorists. It added that some CIA officers had “speculated” that “dissident sympathizers within the government” may have supported Osama bin Laden but that “the reporting was too sparse to determine with any accuracy such support.”

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Rand Paul Offers Amendment to NDAA to Declassify 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, Staff report, June 5, 2015. U.S. Senator Rand Paul this week introduced Amendment No. 1680 to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would require President Obama to declassify and make available to the public the redacted 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001. Similarly, Sen. Paul introduced the Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act of 2015 earlier this week, co-sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). “For over 13 years, the family members of the victims of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have been deprived of the details surrounding the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry. I firmly believe the American people deserve a government that instills trust and a restoration of their sense of security, and think my amendment is a step in the right direction,” Sen. Paul said.

Executive Intelligence Review, Bill to Declassify 28 Pages Now in the U.S. Senate, Staff report, June 3, 2015. For more than two years, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has been fighting in Congress to get the release of the classified 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry Report on 9/11. LaRouchePAC and EIR have strongly supported Jones’s efforts, based on its in-depth study of the Saudi-British role in fomenting international terror. Jones’ resolution (H. Res 428) in the 113th Congress to get President Obama to declassify the pages gained a small number of sponsors, as many Congressmen claimed that the resolution could get nowhere without a companion bill in the U.S. Senate. Now that situation has changed. At a packed press conference on Capitol Hill June 2, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) announced that he and Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Kristin Gillibrand (shown in an official photo) have introduced S. 1471, which calls for the declassification of the 28 pages.

28 Pages.org, Christie: Members of Congress Should Read 28 Pages on 9/11 Only “If They’re Interested,” June 10, 2015. Prospective presidential contender Chris Christie routinely accuses rivals of having “9/11 amnesia,” but is at peace with the fact that the vast majority of Congress is in a state of willful ignorance about indications of foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers found in 28 classified pages of a 2002 congressional report. At a Monday town hall in Goffstown, New Hampshire, a member of the audience provided a detailed overview of the 28 pages and why there’s a growing movement to declassify them. She concluded by noting the fact that very few members of Congress have read them and asked the New Jersey governor if he felt people making life-and-death decisions should spend a half hour reading what Congressman Thomas Massie recently called “some of the best intelligence we have” in the war on terror. “Different people in Congress are interested in different things,” said Christie, shown in a file photo. “If they have an interest, they should go and they should read it. I don’t know why they wouldn’t have an interest, but I’m not going to sit here and dictate to people what they spend their time on.” (Watch the full exchange on the embedded video below.) It was quite a display of casual ambivalence from a politician who — like any other — routinely prescribes actions that others in government should take on countless issues, including many where human lives don’t hang in the balance.

Washington Post, Rand Paul calls for release of 9/11 documents, Katie Zezima, June 2, 2015. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), fresh off a fight over the Patriot Act, has turned his attention to another national security battle: declassifying 28 pages of a 2002 Senate inquiry into the cause of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Paul is sponsoring the "Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims and Survivors Act," which would require President Obama to declassify and make public the pages. The GOP presidential candidate said that he does not yet intend to exercise his ability to read the pages on the Senate floor yet, saying he will try "normal legislative procedure" first and personally bring up the issue with Obama. The issue is a politically charged one, with some claiming the pages will show that Saudi Arabia financed the attacks.

Daily Beast, Rand Paul’s New Crusade: The Secret 9/11 Docs, Eleanor Clift, June 2, 2015. Coming off the Patriot Act fight, the presidential hopeful is sponsoring a bill to declassify 28 pages of a 9/11 report that may blame Saudi Arabia. Senator Rand Paul, the man of the hour when it comes to pushing back against government secrecy, is throwing his weight behind a fresh push to declassify 28 pages from a 2002 Senate inquiry into the causes of 9/11. The Kentucky Republican (shown in a photo from the news conference) is sponsoring legislation called the “Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Act,” which would force the release of the disputed pages. With his support, an important issue that has languished far too long may be finally gaining traction. Paul is a big catch for the 28 pages movement, as advocates describe their effort. Former Florida senator Bob Graham, who has been banging the drum on the classified pages for years, will appear alongside Paul at a press conference at the Capitol on Tuesday morning to lend his gravitas to the occasion.

28pages.org, Rand Paul, Ron Wyden to Introduce 28 Pages Resolution in Senate, Brian McGlinchey, May 28, 2015. The growing, nonpartisan drive to declassify a 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers is about to take an enormous step forward with the introduction of a Senate resolution urging the president to release the material to the public. Dramatically compounding the issue’s visibility, the resolution is being introduced by high-profile Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul of Kentucky. A spokesperson for Senator Paul told 28Pages.org that Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden will cosponsor the resolution, which will serve as the upper chamber’s companion to House Resolution 14. Paul will unveil the Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Victims Act at an outdoor Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday, June 2 at 10 am, joined by Representatives Walter Jones (R,NC), Stephen Lynch (D, MA), Thomas Massie (R, KY) and former Democratic Senator Bob Graham.

Fox News, Saudi connection? Lawmakers up pressure on Obama to release secret 9/11 documents, Joseph Weber, Jan. 7, 2015. Congressional lawmakers on Wednesday ramped up efforts to get President Obama to release 28 top-secret pages from a 9/11 report that allegedly detail Saudi Arabia's involvement in the terror attacks. Lawmakers and advocacy groups have pushed for the declassification for years. The effort already had bipartisan House support but now has the backing of retired Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman whom supporters hope will help garner enough congressional backing to pressure Obama into releasing the confidential information. “The American people have been denied enough,” North Carolina GOP Rep. Walter Jones said on Capitol Hill. “It’s time for the truth to come out.”

28Pages.org, The 46 Senators Who Urged Bush to Declassify the 28 Pages, Staff report, Dec. 30, 2014. What a difference eleven years makes: Today, Congressmen Walter Jones and Stephen Lynch are laboring to win a Senate ally or two to join them in pressing for the release of the classified, 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers. In 2003, no fewer than 46 senators signed a letter to President George W. Bush urging him to reverse his decision to classify those pages, which constituted an entire section of the report of the joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11. The 2003 letter-signing effort was led by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who persuaded 43 of fellow Democrats to join him, along with Republican Sam Brownback and independent Jim Jeffords. If just five more senators had stood up for 9/11 transparency, the Senate would have had the 51 votes needed to declassify the 28 pages by itself, even over Bush’s objection.

New York Post, Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup, Paul Sperry, Dec. 15, 2013. Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.” After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors. But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. It was kept secret and remains so today. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks. Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally. The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war. The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast.

Background Video

Academic Freedom Conference via YouTube, 9/11 Miracles, 2011: Are there Limits to Inquiry? David Ray Griffin, May 28, 2011 (57:40 min.). Why do Bill Moyers and Robert Parry Accept Miracles? Dr. David Ray Griffin, Emeritus Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion (retired) at Claremont School of Theology and author of 11 books on 9/11, returns to Town Hall in Seattle to explore why some of the best independent journalists in America accept without question the official conspiracy theories put forth by the 9/11 Commission and NIST (National Institute of Standard and Technology) in their investigations of the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Using Bill Moyers and Robert Parry as examples of journalists who have previously demonstrated notable courage, objectivity and a willingness to examine crucial events in depth, rather than simply accepting a single-minded source, Dr. Griffin challenges their current disregard of the overwhelming scientific evidence uncovered by the growing number of professionals openly supporting the 9/11 Truth Movement and calling for a proper investigation. Dr. Griffin explains how careful examination of the "official" conspiracy theories regarding the unprecedented collapse of the three tallest World Trade Center buildings reveals contradictions and violations of the laws of physics, which he rightly points out as being impossible, and therefore would require "miracles" to achieve, unless carried out by the use of explosives, controlled demolition techniques.

A New Vantage Point On 9/11

WMR, The 9/11 incident you've never heard about, Wayne Madsen (shown above), Sept. 17, 2015. Subscription required. Excerpt below used with permission for JIP, whose editor participated in the reporting.

On the morning of September 12, 2001, the day after America suffered its worst terrorist attack in history, the FBI's headquarters in Washington sent out a "be on the lookout" or "BOLO" message to police and other law enforcement agencies around the United States. The BOLO alerted police to "two Middle Eastern-looking" individuals, driving a stolen truck and driving toward the East Coast.

The FBI BOLO also provided details about the truck's appearance. It was a white "box truck," had Texas license plates, and bore specific identification stickers.

Perhaps no place in the country was as far away from the bedlam in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania the day after 9/11 than was Marion, Indiana, a quiet town best known as the birthplace of actor James Dean and the site of the 1993 wedding of celebs Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett.

Informed sources in Marion recalled what happened a few hours after the Marion police department sent to its officers on patrol a "signal 15," otherwise known as a stolen vehicle alert.

At about 1:30 pm, [an] officer radioed police headquarters telling the dispatcher, "I think we've got that truck out of Texas out here at Market Place." WMR photo of Market Place at right.

....

A Timeless Response To 'Conspiracy Theory' Canard

NBC News via WDSU-TV (New Orleans),

Catching Our Attention on other Justice, Media & Integrity Issues

(27:05 min.). On July 15, 1967, NBC allowed New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to respond (under the then-operative Fairness Act) to an NBC program that was highly critical of Garrison's pursuit of alleged Kennedy assassination conspirators in New Orleans.

Reuters via Review-Journal, Judge dismisses 9/11 claims against Saudi Arabia, Nate Raymond, A U.S. judge on Tuesday dismissed claims against Saudi Arabia by families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who accused the country of providing material support to al Qaeda. U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said Saudi Arabia had sovereign immunity from damage claims by families of nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, and from insurers that covered losses suffered by building owners and businesses. The victims had sought to supplement their case with new allegations to avoid that result, including based on testimony they secured from Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al Qaeda operative imprisoned for his role in the attacks. Daniels said even if he allowed the plaintiffs to assert those new claims, doing so would be "futile, however, because the additional allegations do not strip defendants of sovereign immunity." The ruling came just over 14 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which airliners hijacked by al Qaeda militants brought death and destruction upon the United States.

Telegraph (UK), US-trained Division 30 rebels 'betrayed US and hand weapons over to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria,' Nabih Bulos, Sept. 22, 2015. Pentagon-trained rebels in Syria are reported to have betrayed their American backers and handed their weapons over to al-Qaeda in Syria immediately after re-entering the country. Fighters with Division 30, the “moderate” rebel division favored by the United States, surrendered to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a raft of sources claimed on Monday night. Division 30 was the first faction whose fighters graduated from a US-led training program in Turkey which aims to forge a force on the ground in Syria to fight against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A statement on Twitter by a man calling himself Abu Fahd al-Tunisi, a member of al-Qaeda’s local affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, read: "A strong slap for America....the new group from Division 30 that entered yesterday hands over all of its weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra after being granted safe passage.

The latest disaster, if true, will be the second to befall the program. Last month, after the first group of fighters re-entered, the militia was attacked and routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, which stormed its headquarters and kidnapped a number of its members. At the weekend, the group’s chief of staff also resigned, saying the training program was “not serious.” The latest developments have only added to the scorn heaped on the much-criticized $500 million (£320m) program, which aimed to forge a 5,400-strong force of “moderate” rebels to combat ISIL.

Voice of America, 70 More 'New Syrian Force' Fighters Enter Syria, Carla Babb, Sept. 22, 2015. Approximately 70 more active fighters for the New Syrian Force, the rebel paramilitary group sanctioned by the United States, have entered Syria to fight Islamic State militants. That brings the total number of NSF fighters in Syria to about 80. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which overseas U.S. operations in the Middle East, told VOA Tuesday the fighters entered Syria from its northern border with Turkey. All of the new fighters successfully completed the counter-Islamic State train and equip program before entering Syria.

Washington Post, Among the ersatz Syrians are Algerian drug dealers and ISIS sympathizers, Souad Mekhennet and William Booth, Sept. 22, 2015. Migrants are disguising themselves as Syrians to enter Europe.

Justice Integrity Project, Watchdogs Decry 'Corrupt' DC Actions On Hillary, Immigration, IRS Issues, Andrew Kreig, Sept. 15, 2015. U.S. capital leaders operate with unprecedented bipartisan corruption that threatens the American way of life, according to a Sept. 14 address several blocks from the Capitol Building by best-selling legal commentator and former New Jersey judge Andrew Napolitano. “Expose Congress for the weaklings they are and the president for the tyrant he is,” Napolitano told a Leadership Summit on Washington, DC Corruption and the Transparency Crisis. The Fox News commentator and former New Jersey judge drew from his most recent book, Suicide Watch, and two of his WND (World Net Daily) columns, What if Hillary doesn't care? and Will deceptive Hillary get a pass? The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch sponsored the one-day conference, which primarily documented misconduct allegations against Democrats. But many speakers like Napolitano, shown in our JIP photo of his luncheon keynote, also condemned Republican leaders for lack of integrity and effectiveness in exposing scandals involving Hillary Clinton, immigration, 9/11, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Associated Press via YNet News, Putin defends Russia's military assistance to Syrian regime, Sept. 15, 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday strongly defended Moscow's military assistance to the Syrian government, saying it's impossible to defeat the Islamic State group without cooperating with Damascus. Putin's statement comes amid the signs of an ongoing Russian military buildup in Syria, which the US says signals Moscow's intention to set up an air base there. Speaking at a meeting of heads of states at a Moscow-dominated security alliance of ex-Soviet nations in Tajikistan, Putin urged other nations to follow Russia's example and offer military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

Let’s try democracy, What if Americans Had Known in 2013 that U.S. rejected Syria Deal in 2012? David, Swanson, Sept. 15, 2015. In the United States it is considered fashionable to maintain a steadfast ignorance of rejected peace offers, and to believe that all the wars launched by the U.S. government are matters of "last resort." The Guardian reported on Tuesday that the former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who had been involved in negotiations in 2012, said that in 2012 Russia had proposed a process of peace settlement between the Syrian government and its opponents that would have included President Bashar al-Assad stepping down. But, according to Ahtisaari, the United States was so confident that Assad would soon be violently overthrown that it rejected the proposal.

The catastrophic Syrian civil war since 2012 has followed U.S. adherence to actual U.S. policy in which peaceful compromise is usually the last resort. Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000 Wesley Clark claims that in 2001, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld put out a memo proposing to take over seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. The basic outline of this plan was confirmed by none other than former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who in 2010 pinned it on former Vice President Dick Cheney.