 |
 |
| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| World Trade Center Revisited By Antonio C. Abaya May 30, 2002 I was going to write this article last January. But I was prevailed upon by an Internet viewer not to do so on the grounds that the �Americans have suffered enough.� I had written in my posting of December 18, 2001 titled �2002: What�s in Store, Perhaps,� (archived in the website www.tapatt.org and published in the January 14, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic) that: �My final estimate (of the World Trade Center casualties) was 16,590 dead. US Government estimate, however, has gone down from 6,000+ in October to 5,000+, to 3,100+, to last week�s 3,001, and will no doubt go down even lower before the end of the year. I think it has to do with preserving public confidence in institutional icons. In a future article, I will try to explain why.� ***** I was right. That casualty figure from the US Government went down to 2,980 by December 31, to 2,890 by January 15, and finally to 2,832 on February 10. I was going to write in January that there was a deliberate effort to understate the casualty figures and that the reason for this was �to preserve public confidence in institutional icons.� And the icon that needed propping up the most was none other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which has to be blamed for a catastrophic failure to properly assess and act on information gathered weeks and months, even years, before September 11. I was going to write in January that the FBI had failed to act on information gathered on a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, Zacarias Massaoui, who had been arrested on a visa violation in August and was found a) to have a manual on crop-dusting in his back pack; and b) to have tried to enroll in two flying schools, one in Oklahoma, the other in Minnesota, arousing suspicion with his expressed interest only in steering an airborne plane, not in taking off or in landing. In addition, I was going to write in January that French police had told the Americans in August that Massaoui was connected with al-Qaeda. His own mother had admitted to reporters that he was involved with Islamic fundamentalists. Incredibly, the FBI failed to search Massaoui�s apartment or computer. He has subsequently been suspected of being the 20th bomber of September 11, foiled from his mission because he was under detention for a visa violation, and he has since been accused as an accomplice in that spectacular bombing attack, the only one so charged. ***** It has now been revealed that an FBI agent in Phoenix (Arizona) did inform FBI headquarters last July that several Middle Eastern men were training at an Arizona flight school and recommended that this be discussed by the higher-ups. It wasn�t. It has also been revealed now that President Bush was briefed by the CIA in August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking US airliners and that they were �determined to bring the fight to America.� And the Americans should not forget that as early as 1995 Philippine police had arrested a foreign Muslim terrorist named Murad (I can�t recall his full name), an associate of Ramsey Youssef (who has since been captured, convicted and jailed as the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center). Under questioning, Murad revealed plans of their group to bomb 12 US airliners flying routes across the Pacific and to hijack other airliners to crash them against tall buildings in the US mainland. Philippine police passed this on to the FBI/CIA, but apparently it was not given much weight. The mass of information that the FBI/CIA had collected from the Philippine police, the French police and their own agents prior to September 11 should have rung bells at headquarters that Massaoui was a prime catch and should have been pumped for information. He wasn�t. His apartment was not even searched and his computer was not impounded. Incredibly, they saw him only as a visa violator, nothing more. ***** There is no space here to detail how I arrived at my estimate of 16,000 dead. Just see my postings of September 14 and December 18 in the website www.tapatt.org. But I will just add there that a) two days after the attack, when CNN crews went from hospital to hospital to try to arrive at a total casualty figure, they were told that only the Chief Medical Officer of New York City was authorized to give that information. There may have been valid administrative reasons for this restriction, but it also set the stage for massaging the data; b) in early October, US authorities announced that there were only 10,000 to 20,000 people in the building at the time of attack, not the 50,000 previously announced. But how did they know that? The fact that there is a 100% difference between the low and the high of that estimate suggests an attempt to create elbow room for massaging the information. Now that the highest levels of the American government are investigating the events prior to September 11, I no longer feel bound by concerns that �the American people have already suffered so much.� Why deliberately scale down the casualty figures, as I believe the US authorities did? To help preserve public confidence in institutional icons, especially the FBI. A much higher toll than the 2,832 officially admitted would have caused massive disenchantment not only with the FBI but with the entire Bush administration, leading to widespread vigilante lynching of resident Arabs and Muslims in the US, a massive breakdown of law and order, and a consequent failure to muster an anti-terrorism coalition with moderate Muslim states on board. And no re-election to a second term for George W. in 2004. Osama bin Laden would have been laughing all the way to Mecca. And why 2,832? It is a death toll for a day that Americans have historically learned to live with. Some 2,300 Americans died on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. Another 2,500 died on June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy invasion. So 2,800 is an acceptable price to pay �in the fight for freedom,� as George W. would say. Sixteen thousand dead, or even �only� 6,000, would have caused chaos. ***** The bulk of this article appeared in the June 17, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �World Trade Center Revisited� July 16, 2002 You seem to believe in the official version of WTC. I don�t. I believe that these buildings were deliberately exploded and that the hijacked planes only served as alibi. And I have a clip from CNN to prove that building #7 (one of the surrounding buildings also destroyed) �exploded� too early even before the first tower came down. That is clearly visible in the live CNN clip. The Internet is full (of) so-called conspiracy stories. Some of them far out. But facts are facts, as one famous book says. Your analysis about reduced casualties is not at all surprising. (Name and address withheld on request). MY REPLY. If I understand you correctly, you believe that someone or some group (which you have not identified) planted explosives that blew up the WTC towers only seconds before the two hijacked airliners were deliberately crashed into them, thus providing the cover for the real demolition job. You say the Internet is full of conspiracy theories, some of them far out. Well, I think YOUR theory is one of those farthest out. Just the other month, I had a conversation with an American, obviously a redneck, who claimed, without presenting an iota of evidence, that the Oklahoma bombing blamed on Timothy McVeigh, was actually the handiwork of Osama bin Laden. To each his own monsters, and never mind the evidence or the absence thereof. ***** Thanks for your latest article. I read each one with interest. For your information, Murad�s name is Abdul Hakim Murad. Regards. Bart W. Edes. [email protected]. MY REPLY. Thank you. ***** Don�t worry, Tony. In an open society such as the USA nothing can be kept secret for long. The truth will out eventually and your estimate will have been confirmed. Gras Reyes. [email protected]. ***** Mr. Abaya. It would be very difficult for the US government to manufacture numbers of dead civilians. For it to accomplish this feat, the US government would have to distort data collected by the rescuers from the field. Not only that, the US government will have to silence thousands of victims� relatives who are certain that their kin were among the WTC casualties. Since many of these relatives are in all probability filing life insurance claims that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars, a government cover-up would entail convincing them to forego receiving such substantial life insurance benefits. It is difficult to imagine how something of this scale could ever be covered up. Noel. machiavelli30200. MY REPLY. It does sound too big to cover up. But keep in mind that tens of thousands of undocumented aliens, TNTs of many nationalities, work in Manhattan and their families may not be too eager to divulge their existence by filing insurance claims. Moreover, many insurance policies, including one that I hold with a US company, do not accept liability for death or injuries suffered in an act of war or force majeure, which the WTC certainly was. ***** Noel wrote: �It would be very difficult for the US government to manufacture numbers of dead civilians�.� I would agree. It may be �theoretically� possible for such a cover-up to have taken place, but as you pointed out, the difficulties involved in keeping such a cover-up would seem to be insurmountable. Let me also add that the political consequences of such an act, considering that it involves possibly the largest loss of life in a single day in the US in the 20th century, would be disastrous for any political party. It simply would not be worth it, even if one�s aim were to protect the reputation of the FBI. I think most people understand that there were gaps in US security and intelligence. The same thing happened at Pearl Harbor but Americans did not lose faith in their government and military. God bless! Manny Amador. [email protected]. MY REPLY. In 1941, America was still an innocent nation, the people were generally morally upright (except for grabbing Indian lands and lynching occasional Negroes), and their government was usually thought to be forthright with the people. America lost its innocence during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, during which clean-cut young American soldiers in the mold of Tom Cruise managed to slaughter thousands of innocent gooks, almost against their will, and their government lied to their people on a massive scale. For better or for worse, the America of the new millennium is closer to the America of the late 1960s than to the America of 1941. ***** Dear Mr.Abaya. As an experienced journalist, you should be on guard against the Monday morning quarterbacking that goes on after a major defeat � Pearl Harbor comes to mind, and now comes the World Trade Center outrage. No sooner has the dust settled than hundreds emerge from the woodwork, saying, �I told you so!� �I knew it in advance!� �The warning signs were ignored!� In retrospect, of course, everything is obvious, but in prospect all the indicators pointing to one thing � that which eventually happens � are buried in a mass of indicators pointing to other things, and an even larger mass that means nothing at all. As difficult as it is to predict an attack by a known adversary, predicting terrorist acts is an order of magnitude MORE difficult because of the diffuse nature of the intelligence target. Recrimination directed at those who �:failed� to predict a terror attack is therefore, in the long run, even more harmful than the attack itself, because it misdirects efforts to counter the threat. Sadly, the delusion that you are perpetuating � that these monstrous attacks are capable of prediction � plays into the hands of those seeking to destroy privacy and liberty in the name of security. Data-gathering, and incorporating those data into monstrous databases, is all the rage. The abuses of trust and privacy that this will engender boggle the mind, but the greatest horror of all is that all this effort (directed at alienating the very people whose rights we should be protecting) will only make us more vulnerable, by flooding security services with data that they cannot collate or analyze. In short, it will worsen the very problem that made the WTC attack unpredictable in the first place. As for accusing US authorities of minimizing published casualty figures to �preserve confidence� or some such nonsense, well, I can�t imagine anybody�s confidence improving because �only�3000 people were killed. My confidence is improved by effective counteraction, and I don�t think I am unusual in that respect. More likely the figures are improving as estimates give way to hard numbers � that is the usual progression. Furthermore, there is confusion, even among members of our profession, in reporting �casualties.� Sometimes we say �casualties� when in fact we mean fatalities only. I would not be surprised to learn that there were, counting dust-inhalation injuries on the ground, 16,000 CASUALTIES resulting from the WTC attack. But I am also prepared to believe the revised DEATH toll, and I see nothing suspect in the revision. If there had been no change in the numbers originally published, THAT would have been grounds for suspicion. Feel free to offer any nonzero figure you like � it doesn�t matter. What is significant is that the attacks were possible, not exactly how many people ended up maimed or killed. What matters now is taking the fight to the people responsible and keeping them so busy preserving their own lives that they won�t have the leisure to molest others. Terrorism is theater, Mr. Abaya � not bookkeeping. Very sincerely, Marc de Piolenc, Iligan City. [email protected]. ***** MY REPLY.I did not claim that terrorist attacks are predictable, only that the FBI/CIA failed to act professionally on several leads that were staring them in the face. Whether acting on those leads would have prevented the WTC attack is another matter. The debate on casualty figures will no doubt come to a head in the next few months when the authorities begin to subject to DNA analysis the 20,000 body parts said to be in refrigerated storage. Of the 2,832 officially tallied fatalities, only some 800 have been identified from remains recovered at the site. That means 2,000 are only missing and presumed dead. It is reasonable to assume that some of those 20,000 body parts belong to some of the 2,000 missing persons. But it is also reasonable to assume that some of those 20,000 body parts may not belong to any of those 2,000 missing, in which case the casualty figures will have to be revised again, this time upwards. True, terrorism is theater. But cleaning up the mess is still bookkeeping. ***** OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |