UQ Wire: 9/11 Unanswered Questions Remain

Since the 9/11 report was released on 22nd July it has been poured over my more than a few reporters. While some have reported what they were supposed to report, namely that 9/11 was nobodies fault, nothing to see here, move along please…. Others, including the following two reporters from the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, still have unanswered questions. – UQ Wire Editor

Questions Persist Despite 9/11 Investigations
By Terry McDermott
From: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-unanswered26jul26,1,769572.story_
Los Angeles Times
Monday 26 July 2004

With countless police, intelligence and journalistic examinations and two special congressional inquiries, the Sept. 11 attacks have been among the most investigated criminal acts in history.

The release last week of the final report of the independent 9/11 commission offered the nation a comprehensive overview of the origin and execution of the attacks. What the nation does not have are answers to all the outstanding questions, some of them fundamental:

Who provided the nearly half a million dollars it cost to carry out the attacks? How could the man who is alleged to have recruited several of the hijack pilots have done this while under investigation by at least three intelligence services - those of the United States, Germany and Morocco? Who, if anyone, assisted the hijackers during their time in the United States?

Some unanswered questions fall more in the category of perplexing curiosities:

(Note the full text of this article contains a great deal more detail than just these questions. See….
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/072704A.shtml
or
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-unanswered26jul26,1,769572.story_

Why did Mohamed Atta and another hijacker drive from Boston to Portland, Me., the day before the attacks, then fly back to Boston the next morning, almost missing the flight they intended to hijack?

How did it happen that a single family of Pakistani expatriates in Kuwait, by most accounts an ordinary, pious family devoted to good works, produce five men - the plot mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four of his nephews - who played roles in the attacks?

Who provided the nearly half a million dollars the attacks cost?

How could Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a Syrian-born citizen of Germany, have safely recruited the Hamburg pilots when he was under investigation as a possible Al Qaeda operative?

The question about Zammar raises a larger issue on the role of a network of Syrian expatriates across Europe, particularly in Germany and Spain, who had frequent contact with the Hamburg hijackers and with Al Qaeda over many years. Many of the Syrians had been members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has had great influence on the evolution of radical Islamist theory in the last half a century. Were they witting helpers of the hijackers or, as many of them claim, simply Muslims trying to serve the dictates of their religion by assisting their brothers?

Also in Hamburg, what role if any was played by an associate of the hijack pilots named Mohammed bin Nasser Belfas?

What were the relationships, if any, of the hijackers to other Al Qaeda cells in the United States?

What was the role, if any, of Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman originally accused in U.S. courts of being the so-called 20th hijacker?

If Moussaoui was intended to be part of a second wave, what happened to it?

When did the Germany-based pilots first go to Afghanistan?

How did Marwan Al-Shehhi, one of the Germany-based pilots, meet the others?

Why did Al-Shehhi fly to Morocco in January 2001, and to Egypt in April?

Were Binalshibh and hijacker Khalid Almihdhar involved in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen?

Why do officials of the United Arab Emirates continue to insist that they questioned hijacker Ziad Samir Jarrah at U.S. request in January 2001, when he was en route from Pakistan to Germany immediately after meeting with Bin Laden?

What were the roles of Essabar and fellow Hamburg resident Said Bahaji, both of whom fled Hamburg to Afghanistan in the days prior to Sept. 11 and are presumed alive and at large?

Why on the morning of Sept. 11 did the State Department watch list have 61,000 names on it and the Federal Aviation Administration's no-fly list have 12 names?

(Note the full text of this article contains a great deal more detail than just these questions. See….
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/072704A.shtml
or
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-unanswered26jul26,1,769572.story

Failures of the Sept. 11 Commission
By William Raspberry
Washington Post
Monday 26 July 2004

For all its somber-faced seriousness, the report of the Sept. 11 commission turns out to be a childlike explanation of what went so tragically wrong nearly three years ago.

It acknowledges the obvious, but it manages to avoid any semblance of individual responsibility. "The lamp broke," a child might say. Or, as the report would have it, the "system" failed.

Which surprises Ray McGovern not a whit.

"The whole name of the game is to exculpate anyone in the establishment," says McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a member of a group of former agents called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. " 'Mistakes were made,' but no one is to blame. Why is it that after all this evidence and months and months of testimony, the commission found itself unable even to say if the attacks could have been prevented?"

For full article see:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/072704A.shtml#1
or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14225-2004Jul25.html

STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us.

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