Book Review: 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions

As we approach the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, a new book seems to want to highlight the low-points of the 9/11 commission report and the official story on what happened that day - before and after. The book, 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions by Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall, does an admirable job of stirring controversy. Don't get me wrong, my conspiracy leanings go way back. Anyone who has seen my book collection can attest to that. While The Texas Connection is my favorite JFK assassination book, I bought Nafeez Ahmed's The War on Freedom with almost wet ink in 2002. Lone gunman are rare - people working together is definitely what makes the world go 'round. The biggest question 9/11 Revealed asks is "Who are these people working together."

The book really highlights the three possibilities of "What Happened." It could be, as the official story says: Al-Qaeda was lucky and slipped under the watchful FBI, FAA, NORAD and CIA whose job it is to secure the sky and keep Americans safe. After that explanation, the other two are quite disturbing. The book talks about LIHOP (Let it Happen on Purpose) and MIHOP (Make it Happen on Purpose.) Using examples of sys-ops and unused operations of the past, the book then presents a long litany of unanswered questions that question the official story and try to ask whether the terrorists succeeded because they were allowed to succeed or whether they were helped.

All 9/11 books start with a timeline approach. Plane takes off - beacon is shut off - so many minutes later plane does x - then y takes off. We have all heard this before. There are better timelines that graph the odd time lapses, most notable on the web. 9/11 Revealed adds a few pieces that seem to be slowly entering into the discussion:

NORAD was possibly running some practice scenario that day in September. The scenario involved hijacked planes (so some surmise.) This simulation is put forward as an example of why the air traffic controllers were a little flaky.

Operation Northwoods was an plan to justify an invasion of Cuba in the early sixties. It involves a complicated switch of an airliner with an empty drone that blows up over Cuba. All the fake passengers are operatives who land before the switch. Next step - retaliate and invade Cuba.

No structures built like the WTC towers have collapsed. The heat of diesel-like jet fuel is not that hot. Some people put forward that the towers were demolished by charges. WTC 7 - the building that held New York City's command center - fell to the ground 8 hours later with little explanation.

Most of these newer tib-bits (and there are many others) have been floating around the web for some time. What the book also does it debunk those pieces of information that are believed, but false. The Palestinians shown on T.V. were not cheering for America's demise, but protesting a killing by Israelis. This was often used to show Arab hatred for America. The toppling of the Saddam statue and the Jessica Lynch story are now known to be fabricated myth. The anthrax story was first promoted as a continuation of the 9/11 attacks, but is now known to be domestic. Six billion dollars went into an industry directly related to that anthrax incident an was a very opportune misdirection for the Bush administration.

The book points out that the official story is full of holes. There are no plane parts to prove that the planes that left Logan were the ones that crashed into the towers. None of the pilots ever signaled a hijack. None of the data recorders were ever found. We wont even talk about Attas girlfriend in Florida and the fact that all the hijackers used their real names! Video tapes have no time/date/location stamps.

The book is 250 pages and, while not perfectly written, is compelling. This is more of a starting off point for all the information that surrounds this tragedy. If you want to believe that we have a new "war on terrorism" and the government does not allow events to happen that kill innocent Americans, you will not get far in this book. You might also be the kind of person who believes that the WMD hunt in Iraq was also just a mistake. What this book does point out is that official story requires that you believe that the smartest, most powerful, and richest leaders in the world made simple mistakes that allowed 18 hijackers to change our world forever.

Read the book and decide for yourself who is living in fantasy land.