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.