The substance of those revelations were stunning in the extreme.

First there was the leaked memo of a top-level August 6, 2001, intelligence briefing between the CIA director, George Tenet, President Bush and his cabinet, which "carried the headline, 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,' and "suggested that bin Laden followers might aim to hijack U.S. airliners."

A few days after this story appeared, it was revealed that "When FBI agent Kenneth Williams wrote a memo last July warning that Osama bin Laden's foot soldiers might be training in American flight schools, no one listened."

Then FBI agent Colleen Rowley's 13-page letter to Director Mueller, (in which she outlined investigative "obstruction," "roadblocks," and "altering of reports" by her superiors) became front-page news.

Soon after that came FBI agent Robert Wright's similar charges of interference,

For those of us following this story closely from the beginning, such reports of upper level "obstruction" and "interference" were nothing new.

Greg Palast of the BBC had reported interviews with FBI agents making similar claims back in Nov. of 2001.

These, of course, are only the reports that received the most attention. There are others,

So while we can clearly see that the CIA/FBI leadership is utterly insincere in its earlier claim of having had NO advance warning, the fact remains that it took them only a few days to discover the identities of all sixteen hijackers, their backgrounds, where they traveled, trained to fly, etc.

Let's look at "the terrorists" more-closely.

The FBI says that a number of the terrorist/pilots were trained at certain small-engine flight schools in Florida.

Second, while even the most seasoned military strategists were shocked at the sophistication and precision of the Sept 11^th operation, the clumsiness of the terrorists -in leaving evidence behind, in hotel rooms, suitcases, and loud public behavior, etc.- was impressive in turn.

There’s the crop dusting manuals, maps, diagrams -that we’ve all heard about.

"In one case, we’re told that two of these super devout Moslems spent the night before their suicidal act drinking in strip bars -a double blasphemy." (whatreallyhappened.com)

Early in the morning of Sept 11^th, there was reported to be a "road rage" incident at Boston’s Logan Airport -involving four Arabic-looking people. A witness to this later led police to the vehicle, in the airport parking lot.

They found there: Arabic flight training manuals, and a Koran packed away in a suitcase, (something not done by devout Moslems).

Then we find out that the FBI doesn’t really have a firm handle on who most of the hijackers were. Of the sixteen originally identified, two are now known to be still alive, (and living in the middle east); at least one has been dead for two years, and the possibility of forged documents has not been ruled out in all but a few cases.

we find that the passenger-count for each plane is short four or five of the listed total; and none of the names listed are Arabic-sounding. We may assume from this that because the identities used by the hijackers may not have been their real ones, the FBI may have asked the airlines to keep those names secret; but it remains a mystery.

Yet the pictures of these various "hijackers" are plastered across every major newspaper in the country -as if it’s a fact- for months after most of their identities are proven to be uncertain.

There were apparently seven phone calls made from the various hijacked planes; only one of them, (Flight 93) mentions the hijackers being of middle-eastern origin. This may be particularly significant because one of the callers was Barbara Olsen, the wife of the U.S. Solicitor General, (who argued before the Supreme Court in Bush vs. Gore). She was, herself, a noted author, journalist. Are we to believe she simply neglected to mention an important identifying characteristic?

Then we find that five of the suspects appeared to have lived at and/or "got some training at American military bases." (Newsweek, Sept 15) Does this mean that the terrorists had inside help? Or that the identities had been stolen?

We are not likely to hear.

There's the "chilling" final letter of instruction to the terrorists which conveniently connects the three different flights: one in the baggage that "accidentally" got left behind, one in an airport parking-lot garbage-can; and one, intact, at the Pennsylvania crash site where "everything [was] all but obliterated."

A veteran Middle East reporter, Robert Fisk, described the authors of the letter as being "surprisingly unfamiliar with their religion" -due to numerous expressions in the letter, foreign to practicing Moslems, (The Independent, Sept 29, 2001)

Yet the effect of this "chilling" disclosure, (mouthed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on national TV) is instrumental in helping to pull the strings of assumed guilt closed around the "terrorists" -in the minds of many.

Then we have the question of the so-called "black boxes": the flight data recorder, and the cockpit voice recorder, designed to withstand a crash of great intensity. Each plane had both, an FDR and CVR.

Only the boxes from the crash in Pennsylvania have been recovered: one unusable, the other blank. All of these occurrences are exceptionally rare.

Yet while none of the eight flight recorders have been found intact, it seems investigators were fortunate enough to find one of the terrorists’ passports in good shape, a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center had been.

Apparently, the passport must have fallen into the air just as the crash occurred, survived the almost 1,000 degree heat of the fire, then come across a strong wind to blow it several blocks away -according to New York Police Commissione Bernard Kerik, and Deputy Chief Barry Mawn.

How stupid do they think we are?

The fact that much of the information on "the perpetrators" came out within a week of the attacks, and has been soundly forgotten by the mainstream press, suggests that it was designed to quickly close the books on the case, and move on to other, less-contentious matters.

That few cries of protest have arisen amongst the general public is no vindication that we are stupid -or that there is nothing to protest against: it's simply a reflection of the fact that most citizens are so pre-occupied with trying to earn a living, raise a family, and maintain some sense of normalcy in the wake of a traumatic attack, that the thought of powerful forces in government fabricating evidence was too much to bear.

Nor have we all swallowed the story.

Both President Bush, (at the U.N. General Assembly)

and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, (ABC News, AP, Dec.9)

This is of no small significance; for men of power know that the best way to discredit something is to ignore it; they only speak of things which threaten to temporarily take the freshed-buffed sheen off their face when they feel they can no longer afford to ignore them.

For many observers, it was the ridiculous nature of the FBI investigation which told them that their initial doubts about American civil air defense on Sept 11th were justified.

This poor excuse for a case clearly implicates the FBI in the cover-up of the criminal negligence which occurred within the ranks of civilian air defence on Sept 11th.

Whether Attorney-General John Ashcroft himself, (nominal head of the FBI) was directly involved in this cover-up, (or whether he was just "fed" -and then blindly delivered- information convenient to closing the case) remains to be seen.

The N.Y. Police commissioner's participation in the passport charade, (noted above) is an indictaion of how the various local police and investigative forces were likely subordinated to the FBI's authority; and, as in the case of civilian air defense, the network of influence within the police services is a complex one: it may take us some time to discover exactly who did what, when, and by what authority.

The significance of this FBI fabrication, for us, is clear: it strongly affirms the probability that the criminal negligence in civilian air-defence must have occurred at a very high level: higher than the FBI; that is, in the Department of Defense/Pentagon, and/or the Executive Branch.

The Executive has already been implicated in the negligence, by the President's refusal to act during a critical thirty minutes of the attack; and if the military was directly involved in an act of intentional treason, it's possible that that this was done under the direction of the White House.

In terms of immediate, concrete fact, however, the decision or inability of the Air Force to put fighter-intercepts into the air must have come through the military.

In comparison to the absence of fighter-intercepts, the documented negligence of George W. Bush pales. His inaction would only have been recognized by citizens as serious if the fighter-intercepts had been scrambled, (as they were supposed to have been); then Bush's refusal to leave the children's classroom, (to authorize the shoot-downs) would have clearly been the deciding factor in why the hijacked-planes "got through."

The military controls daily operations. In terms of a "spontaneous" event, where unintended criminal negligence prevails, the lead agency would have to be the military. The Executive could only be considered as a possible lead agency if a planned, treasonous negligence had been undertaken.

Other areas relevant to airspace/national security still remain to be explored, (airports, the CIA); yet sufficient evidence now lies before us, that we may be justified in attempting to zero in on elements within the Defense Dept. and the Pentagon -as prime suspects in the negligence and/or treason surrounding 9/11.

For such a secretive, tightly-controlled organization as the military, practically the only source of information we have on it's Sept. 11th behavior is through its' "official" explanations of how the tragedy occurred -as revealed in the mainstream media.

So it is there to which we now turn.