The History Commons Needs Your Support

Historycommons.org (fka cooperativeresearch.org) is a unique and useful web-based tool for documenting facts that are suppressed or spun in Establishment narratives, for researching complex events and sometimes murky relationships between entities and events, and for educating the public (thus increasing transparency and facilitating accountability). The principal feature is the ‘timeline’, which is composed of written entries based on events and facts from mainstream or otherwise credible sources. These facts and events may or may not be well-known; often important details, which may have been buried in a document release, court filing, congressional testimony, the end notes of a government publication, or in a mainstream news report, can be discovered by skimming or searching a timeline. Also, the significance of certain facts, events and relationships generally becomes clearer in the contexts provided by the entry and through association with other entries; the timelines also reveal the bigger picture. Members of the public are welcome to contribute information or edits to historycommons.org, but, unlike Wikipedia, each new entry or edit undergoes at least two levels of editorial review, to help ensure accuracy and stylistic consistency.

The History Commons has received praise from a number of respected independent journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald, Craig Unger, Philip Shenon, James Ridgeway and Peter Lance.

If you’re unfamiliar with historycommons.org, or are mainly familiar with the Complete 9/11 Timeline that it has primarily become known for, please explore the site. In the last several years, the 9/11 coverage has been improved and expanded, and the site has grown to include more than 30 timelines covering a diverse range of topics, including health care, climate change, elections, foreign interventions and civil liberties: http://www.historycommons.org/timelines.jsp. Many more have been proposed: http://www.iraqtimeline.com/hctopics/index.html.

This website, first as cooperativeresearch.org, and then as historycommons.org, has existed continuously since 2002, but it is now in dire need of financial assistance; if funding does not significantly increase, the site may go offline by the end of this summer. The History Commons does not accept advertising and has never received funding from government, corporations or foundations. It has relied on the support of the grassroots, and needs to in order to remain independent. More information, including links for donating, is available here: https://hcgroups.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/fundraising-alert-2/

If you can’t offer financial support but do believe in the work the History Commons is doing, you can still help by letting others know about historycommons.org. And if you’d like to contribute research, writing or editing on any timeline topic, that would be welcomed. Also, any feedback or ideas you have would also be appreciated.

Erik Larson aka paxvector
Volunteer History Commons admin, editor, contributor

Fundraising Alert #2

This is the second of a small number of fundraising alerts. The History Commons needs your financial support like never before.

“Your timeline has been invaluable to me over the years.” — New York Times reporter, and 9/11 researcher and author Philip Shenon

Donate via credit card
Donate via check
Donate via PayPal

The History Commons is facing a financial emergency and we need your financial support like never before. While we have been working to upgrade the Web site and web application, we have been struggling financially with the costs to keep the site up and running. Without a strong influx of support, the History Commons may disappear from the Internet entirely before the end of the summer. That would be a tragedy, as the History Commons and its predecessor, CooperativeResearch.org, has been providing well-researched and timely information for citizen researchers, academics, and investigators for eleven years.

HistoryCommons.org receives thousands of visitors per month, but receives a relatively small amount of contributions. The History Commons and its parent organization, the Center for Grassroots Oversight, does not receive money from foundations, corporations, or governments. We accept no advertising whatsoever. We are 100% grassroots-supported.

Our initial target goal for donations is $10,000. That will allow us to keep the History Commons alive on the Internet, continue to post new material, and perform critical maintenance on the current application. Currently we are making regular and frequent additions to the Complete 9/11 Timeline (including the Day of 9/11, which is about to receive a large number of new entries), Civil Liberties, Domestic Propaganda, Domestic Terrorism, and the 2012 Elections projects, to name a few. We anticipate beginning an LGBT civil liberties project in the very near future, and we dearly want to expand our coverage of other issues, such as the global economic and environmental crises.

In the long(er) term, we have set a target goal of $100,000 in donations. That will allow us to begin the critical process of upgrading the application and the Web site, a goal we have worked towards for years but have continually lacked the funds to implement.

We have received some donations already. To those contributors, we would like to extend our thanks. The money helps to keep the History Commons functioning, and demonstrates a tangible interest in and concern for this project. Unfortunately, our financial need continues to be great, and our situation continues to be precarious.

Please make your tax-deductible donation today and help us remain a viable informational resource for the 21st century. We would also ask that you repost this request or a link to it on Twitter, Facebook, your own blog, or in emails to your contacts. Thank you for what you do to make the History Commons a viable resource for information and citizen activism.

Donate via credit card
Donate via check
Donate via PayPal

Thank you so much for your support!

“For serious research, it’s hard to think of a more valuable resource than the timelines assembled by History Commons. The material they provide is a welcome antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that has been coming out of Washington in recent years and they are essential tools in assembling a counter-narrative that more honestly addresses the crises we face.” — author Craig Unger

The History Commons provides “a richly documented summary of [the Watergate] events.” — Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald

“Any researcher, reporter or scholar with an interest in the war on terror would consider the [History Commons] timelines a bonanza of open source information.” — Peter Lance

“The [History Commons] researchers are in many ways similar to the team Scott Armstrong, the former Washington Post reporter, recruited in the mid-1980s to uncover the roots of Reagan’s secret Iran-Contra deals.” — columnist James Ridgway

“The History Commons is one of the most important and technologically advanced projects of civil journalism there is today.” — Daniel Erlacher, founder of Austria’s Elevate Festival

“Endlessly informative.” — reporter Steve Perry

Fundraising Appeal for Spring/Summer 2012

The History Commons is facing a financial emergency. While we have been working to upgrade the Web site and web application, we have been struggling to keep the site up and running. We may not have the money to keep the site hosted for the rest of the summer – which would mean the History Commons could disappear from the Internet. Now we need your financial support like never before. We accept donations through PayPal, credit cards, and personal checks. We sincerely appreciate all you do to make the History Commons a viable resource for information and citizen activism. Please make your tax-deductible donation today and help us remain a viable informational resource for the 21st century.

Donate via PayPal

Donate via check (ignore the error message, there’s a glitch in the code that generates it)

Donate via credit card

Thank you so much for your support!

New 9/11 Timeline Entries: Fighters on Training Mission, Special Ops Exercise, Intercepts over the Atlantic, and More

Entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, which, in particular, reveal new details about events from the day of September 11.

Several entries describe how a group of fighter jets from Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts were taking part in a training mission when the terrorist attacks began. Although the pilots of these jets had seen two other fighters taking off from their base in response to the hijacked Flight 11, they were unaware of the reason for the scramble. They therefore continued with their training mission–described as a “mock war scenario”–over the Atlantic Ocean.

The fighters were recalled to Otis Air Base after the base started preparing all of its fighters for takeoff. At least one of the pilots involved in the training mission soon took off again. Along with another pilot, his first task was to intercept a military cargo plane over the Atlantic. The two fighters were subsequently sent to New York, where they helped patrol the airspace over the city. Before returning to their base, they were directed to inspect a supposedly suspicious aircraft that turned out to be just a tanker plane that had been providing them with fuel.

Military personnel were also concerned about a convoy of aircraft approaching America across the Atlantic, which repeatedly failed to respond to radio communications. But when fighters intercepted the convoy, they found it was just some military planes coming back from Europe.

One timeline entry describes how the military contacted a tanker plane from Bangor, Maine, just after 9:00 a.m. and arranged for it to provide fuel to the fighters launched in response to Flight 11, and yet the tanker appears to have inexplicably been unavailable to support those fighters for the next half hour. Another tanker from Bangor was flying off the coast of North Carolina when the attacks began, in order to participate in a training mission.

Thomas McGuinness is revealed to have only been assigned as the co-pilot of Flight 11 on the afternoon before 9/11, pushing from the flight another pilot who’d signed up for the position minutes earlier. Another entry describes how the control tower at Boston’s Logan Airport was called about Flight 11 when contact with it was lost; a tower employee immediately wondered if the plane had been hijacked.

And on September 11, a new entry reveals, the US military’s elite counterterrorism force was making its final preparations for a forthcoming major exercise based on the scenario of terrorists threatening to attack the US with a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon.

Stepping Up for 2012

With the New Year starting in just a few hours, here’s some of what we want to do with the History Commons in 2012. We literally cannot do this without your support. Here’s how you can help:

• Donate your research and writing, and/or your financial support, to the History Commons.
• Spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and other social outreach venues.
• Let your friends and colleagues know about the resource of information available at HC.
• Post your comments on the History Commons Groups blog.

You can go to the newly redesigned History Commons New Topics Listing for information on what we’d like to begin (or continue) covering in 2012. You can comment on these topics, or propose your own, at the HC Groups Blog, on the Facebook page, in a tweet, or by emailing us. We cannot cover all of this on our own. If it’s to be done, it will only get done with your help. Some of the topics we’re interested in covering include:

• 2012 elections and earlier
• the Abramoff lobbying scandal
• Blackwater and the rise of private mercenary forces
• the Citizens United decision
• Guantanamo violations and depredations
• History of the CIA
• the Murdoch/News of the World hacking scandal
• Operation Gladio and NATO’s secret armies in Western Europe
• Political assassinations in the US
• Social movements
• SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act)
• the US Attorney scandal and resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
• Violence against women in the military
• Wikileaks and Bradley Manning

Naturally, some of our best and most penetrating coverage comes from our community, in the form of suggestions and contributions. Many of our projects began with user suggestions.

And none of our currently active projects are “complete” by any stretch. Every project needs more information for a broader and more in-depth examination of the issues those projects cover. If you’re not interested in a new project, an older project could often use some attention. Here are some of the current projects we’d dearly love to see get some new attention:

• War in Afghanistan
• Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere
• Global Financial and Economic Crisis 2007-Present
• US Electoral Politics
• US Health Care System
• Global Warming
• US Environmental Issues
• US International Relations

We appreciate your interest and your support. Let’s make this a banner year.

New 9/11 Timeline Entries: Nuclear War Exercise on 9/11, NORAD Commanders’ Delayed Response to Attacks, Increase in Military Alert Status, and More

Numerous new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, many of which deal with the US military’s actions around the time of–and in response to–the 9/11 attacks, while other new entries provide important information about the military’s responses to suspicious aircraft prior to 9/11.

New timeline entries describe how NORAD–the military organization responsible for defending US airspace–regularly launched fighter jets in response to suspicious aircraft in the years before 9/11, with fighters able to take off within minutes of a scramble order.

Other new entries describe a large Russian military exercise that began the day before 9/11 and was monitored by NORAD fighters that were deployed to Alaska and Northern Canada. The Russians promptly called off their exercise in response to the attacks in the US on September 11. As well as monitoring this Russian exercise, on September 11, personnel at the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were participating in the annual training exercise Vigilant Guardian, which has been described as a “full-blown nuclear war” exercise.

New timeline entries also examine in detail the actions on September 11 of two key NORAD officials: Robert Marr, the battle commander at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), and Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR). After these two men spoke over the phone about the day’s exercise, Arnold joined a teleconference with other NORAD officials. This, however, meant he was unavailable when Marr tried calling him to get authorization to launch fighters in response to the hijacked Flight 11. After leaving the teleconference, Arnold learned of Marr’s call but wondered if the report of a hijacking was part of the exercise. Arnold soon called Marr back and told him to go ahead and launch fighters in response to the hijacking.

Arnold then called the NORAD operations center about the hijacking and the request for fighters. However, when operations center personnel saw television reports about the first crash at the World Trade Center, minutes later, they did not realize it involved the hijacked plane they’d just been alerted to. The operations center was in fact in an “information void” during the course of the attacks, according to officers there that day. It was also receiving many reports of hijackings from the FAA that turned out to be incorrect.

Other timeline entries describe how the US military was placed on an increased state of alert on September 11. Following the terrorist attacks, installations around the world were placed on the highest state of alert, known as Force Protection Condition Delta (FPCON Delta). Soon after that, the defense readiness condition was raised to Defcon 3, the highest level since 1973. News of the increased defense readiness condition was soon communicated within NORAD, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld notified President Bush of the raised threat level. The military stayed at Defcon 3 until September 14, when the defense readiness condition was lowered one notch, to Defcon 4.

Proposing New Research Topics

New Topic Listing

There’s a new page for History Commons contributors, users, and friends. Check it out and see if any of the proposed new topics interests you. If you have an idea for something not on this list, post it here!

Disconnecting the Dots Review by Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye of Truthout has reviewed Disconnecting the Dots at Amazon. Here is the full text:

If you are thinking that so much has been written on 9/11 and putative conspiracies surrounding the event, that it’s almost superfluous to add yet another, think again.

Kevin Fenton has honed in on one of the weakest, most vulnerable aspects of the mainstream narrative about 9/11, and with the tenacity of a pit bull does not let go. Disconnecting the Dots is a convincing, extraordinarily researched and footnoted examination of the circumstances surrounding the pre-9/11 activities of two of the nineteen hijackers. In January 2000, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended an Al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and then flew via Thailand on to Los Angeles a few weeks later. It is not disputed that the National Security Agency knew that at least Al-Mihdhar had a visa that indicated he was to enter the U.S. after the Malaysia conference. The information was passed on to the CIA’s Alec Station, the special joint CIA-FBI task force organized to get Osama bin Laden.

What happened next is thoroughly examined by Fenton in his book. An FBI agent who sees the NSA cable asks to forward this information back to FBI HQ, but he is told to hold off by a female CIA officer known to us only as “Michael,” and Alec Station’s CIA Deputy Chief, Tom Wilshire. Later, “Michael” will draft a cable only days later claiming the Al-Mihdhar information was passed on to the FBI. But this was untrue.

These purported “mistakes” by the CIA’s CounterTerrorism component and Alec Station — at the behest of the CIA’s Tom Wilshire, an FBI agent on the scene was forestalled in warning FBI superiors of Al-Mihdhar’s U.S. itinerary — are compounded again and again over the next 18 months by other CIA personnel, by the FBI, by the NSA, by Wilshire himself yet again (this time tasked to the FBI in the spring/summer of 2001), that the idea that these two Al Qaeda operatives slipped into the U.S. due to “errors” or poor coordination between intelligence and police agencies is debunked once and for all. Fenton obliterates the argument, and leaves us asking “why”?

Fenton, a researcher with HistoryCommons.org, has written a book that will haunt you and keep you up at nights. Utilizing public source material only, he uses unassailable logic and irrefutable evidence to demonstrate his hypothesis that CIA and other intelligence personnel deliberately let the 9/11 terror act take place, for reasons that one can make reasonable assumptions, but which to date lack sufficient documentary evidence. The personnel include former DCI George Tenet, Richard Blee (the CIA manager in charge of Alec Station, and Wilshire’s boss), Tom Wilshire and others, who wittingly or not, contributed to the 9/11 outcome.

Whatever you think about such hypotheses, Fenton has made a major contribution to the examination of what really happened around the 9/11 terror attack, whose consequences have been so dire for the U.S. and the population of the world, who have experienced a major escalation in U.S. armed intervention, not to mention torture and assassinations, throughout Northern and Eastern Africa, and throughout the Middle East and West and Southwestern Asia.

Read this book, and then buy a copy for your friends.

New 9/11 Timeline Entries: Training Exercises, False Hijack Reports, Bush on 9/11, and More

A large number of new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons describing important events that took place on the day of 9/11, while other new entries add to the growing body of information about 9/11-related training exercises.

One new entry describes how, from 1998, the US Secret Service included computer simulations of planes crashing into the White House in its training exercises. Another notable exercise was held early on the morning of September 11 in the White House Situation Room, based on the scenario of a terrorist bombing in the Middle East.

Also relating to training exercises, new details have emerged about an FBI anti-terrorist unit that was stranded away from Washington at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The Critical Incident Response Group arrived in San Francisco the day before 9/11 for a week of training. Such was the unit’s importance that the White House made getting it back to Washington a priority in the hours after the attacks.

New entries describe two mistaken reports of hijacked aircraft on the morning of September 11. One of these aircraft was thought to be targeting NORAD’s operations center in Colorado. This incorrect information may have caused NORAD to close the massive blast doors to the operations center. The other aircraft was thought to be heading toward Air Force One as it flew President Bush away from Sarasota, and this may have been one reason why Air Force One suddenly increased its altitude.

Details of the two phone calls made by Flight 175 passenger Brian Sweeney are described, the first call to his wife and the second to his mother, in which Sweeney described a possible passenger fight back against the hijackers.

An entry describes how an air traffic controller changed the flight plan of the hijacked Flight 93, thereby apparently causing mistaken reports that the plane was still airborne after it crashed. Also, a special plane operated by NASA was flying over New York State at the time of the attacks, and at one point Flight 93 flew less than 1,000 feet below it.

A number of new entries detail President Bush’s time at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where he recorded a short statement to the nation that was later broadcast on television. Base commanders only learned of the imminent arrival of the president shortly in advance. Yet despite the intended secrecy, a local TV crew was waiting near the base and filmed Air Force One when it landed there.

President Bush was provided with a high level of security after he got off his plane, and two A-10 jets were put on alert to protect the base. But the false alarms continued, with officials at Barksdale receiving reports of unidentified aircraft flying toward the base. While at Barksdale, Bush spent much of his time in the office of Lieutenant General Thomas Keck.

For security reasons, the number of people traveling on Air Force One was significantly reduced after Bush landed at Barksdale. But those remaining behind after Air Force One took off from the base were able to return to Washington later in the afternoon on a specially arranged flight.

Finally, an interesting new entry reveals how a novel by a popular thriller writer, published in 2000, predicted the possibility of a terrorist attack involving a jumbo jet crashing into the World Trade Center.

Presentations w/Elevate’s Daniel Erlacher

Just finished a Skype presentation with Daniel Erlacher in Graz, Austria. Daniel runs the annual Elevate Festival in that lovely town, and is a huge HC supporter. I spoke for about 15 minutes on HC in general and our 9/11 coverage in specific. Kevin Fenton also did a presentation a bit earlier. I’ll let him discuss that.

What I’d really like to see is a more “international” presence for HC. We are very US-oriented, with the vast majority of our coverage focusing on events that primarily impact the US in one sense or another. (Two exceptions that come to mind are the Kosovar Albanian and European Football projects.)

We need more international coverage. I’d also like to see a version of HC in, say, German, either using our information in a translated form, and/or a version incorporating German-language original research.

Cross-posted at the History Commons blog.