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As I previously pointed out, the Gulf oil spill is very similar to 9/11, because - in both cases - the responders helping with rescue and clean up were getting sick ... but were told they don't need any safety gear. And see this.

In addition, the government is keeping scientists away from "ground zero" of the oil spill and - for that reason - scientists cannot accurately measure the size of the oil spill.

BP has also tried to cover up its blunders by lowballing spill estimates, keeping reporters out of areas hardest hit by the oil (and see this, this, this and this) and threatening to arrest them if they try to take pictures (and see this), hiding dead birds and other sealife, and using dispersants to hide the amount of spilled oil (the dispersants are only worsening the damage caused by the spill).

The government is complicit in all of these cover-ups. Indeed, the Obama administration has made it a felony to get near enough to oiled wildlife and beaches to film them.

Similarly, the official 9/11 investigators were themselves largely denied funding, access to the site and the evidence contained there, or even access to such basic information as the blueprints for the world trade center.



Indeed, just as the government and BP have consistently underestimated the amount of oil gushing out of the Gulf, the blueprints for the World Trade Center are still to this day being withheld from reporters and the public, and the government agency in charge of the investigation has grossly mischaracterized the structure of the buildings.

How are we supposed to improve building safety regulations if the blueprints are still being hidden from engineers and scientists investigating the collapse of world trade center buildings 1, 2 and 7 on September 11th?

Moreover, as I previously pointed out:

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote: Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation. [Moreover]:

The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11 said that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses

The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . .

* * * The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

Of course, the government's response to the economic crisis, torture, the anthrax attacks, and just about every other crisis has been the same: try to sweep it under the rug.

It almost seems as if the main activity of government these days is trying to cover up criminal negligence and fraud ... instead of actually solving problems, firing - let alone convicting - the folks who caused the problems, or changing things enough to prevent future crises.