UQ Wire: Press Coverage of 9-11 Inquiry in SF

The opening press conference Friday of the International Inquiry into 9-11 was the subject of articles in the following Bay Area newspapers this morning:

1. San Francisco Chronicle - includes a statement by a White House spokesman!
2. San Jose Mercury News - included information on getting tickets
3. San Mateo County Times
4. Tri-Valley Herald

The articles are below, used under fair-use provisions for information purposes only.

ADVISORY: Today at 1 p.m., Inquiry Participants will deliver a letter to the front door of City Hall in San Francisco, asking Mayor Gavin Newsom to look into his predecessor Willie Brown's statement that he received an advance warning not to fly on the morning of Sept. 11th. The letter is below, before the articles.

Contact: Carol Brouillet
Tel. 650-857-0927

REQUEST FROM THE INTERNATIONAL INQUIRY INTO 9-11

In San Francisco, March 24-26, 2004
TO GAVIN NEWSOM, MAYOR OF SAN FRANCISCO
Delivered to City Hall by hand, March 25, 2004
Dear Mayor Newsom,

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sept. 12th, 2001, your predecessor in office, Willie Brown, stated that on the evening of Sept. 10th, he received a call from a source he described as his "security people at the airport," advising him not to take his scheduled flight to New York City the next morning. ("Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel," SF Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2001.)

We are concerned at this evidence that may lead back to persons who had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11th attacks on New York and Washington. We request that you investigate whether Mayor Brown's source is known to San Francisco or Bay Area authorities, and that you take up contact with your predecessor to clarify the matter.

Please note the many indications that specific advance warnings and prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks circulated among certain groups, including two Newsweek stories that top officials at the Pentagon cancelled travel plans for Sept. 11 on the evening of Sept. 10; and reports of stock trading in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines and other insider trading indicating advance knowledge in the week prior to Sept. 11 on international stock exchanges, including in San Francisco. For one listing of such warnings with links back to original press reports, please see:

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/AAexactday.html

We await a response care of David Soule, 500 Buchanan #12, San Francisco, 94102.

Thank you.

The Conference Participants

International Inquiry into 9-11, Phase One

http://www.deceptiondollar.com/Inquiry911.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/27/BAG525SD161.DTL

Conspiracy theorists, anti-war activists and those with healthy doses of skepticism about the official version of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks converged in San Francisco on Friday for a three-day conference to try to figure out what really happened in the worst act of terrorism on American soil.

The gathering includes a hodgepodge of writers, filmmakers, and activists peddling their own version of what they claim was a cover-up by the Bush administration. In essence, they believe the administration knew about the attacks ahead of time but failed to act so that they could go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The administration "motivated America into a war to control the last of the world's oil reserves,'' said Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer who has a Web site devoted to what he believes really happened before the attacks.

The conference comes at a time when the public is focused on events surrounding the attacks. In dramatic testimony this week in Washington, D.C., before an independent commission investigating the attacks, former White House official Richard Clarke criticized the Bush administration for not taking al Qaeda threats seriously prior to the attacks and then, afterward, for wasting valuable resources on Iraq that could have been used to fight terrorism.

At this weekend's event at Herbst Theatre, skeptics of the official version of the terrorist attacks -- that the Bush administration didn't have any advance warning and couldn't have prevented the attacks -- are hashing out what they believe happened and who was responsible.

"We don't know precisely what happened,'' said Carol Brouillet, a Palo Alto activist who is organizing the event, International Inquiry into 9/11. "We're trying to provide a safe place for witnesses to come forward.''

"There is a 9/11 truth movement,'' said Nicholas Levis, another event organizer, as he addressed reporters while standing in front of a sign that read "Stop the 9/11 Cover-Up." Accusing the Bush administration of stonewalling,' he echoed the sentiments of other speakers that the White House had known ahead of time of the terrorist attacks, using it as an excuse to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In piecing together strands of evidence, he noted that The Chronicle had reported the day after the attacks that Mayor Willie Brown had been planning to fly to New York on Sept. 11 for a mayors' conference but had received a call the day before from someone in security at San Francisco International Airport advising him that Americans should be careful about air travel.

Brown refused to identify the source of the warning, saying it came from "my security people at the airport.'' Levis said the people attending the conference wanted to know where the warning had come from.

During the conference, participants also are ruminating over theories that the CIA created al Qaeda, that the military saw the planes heading for their targets but chose not to shoot them down and that there were links between Osama bin Laden and high level officials of the Bush administration.

Although organizers have no power to subpoena official documents, they have plenty of material to take offer for consideration. Participants will view a showing of the documentary "Aftermath - Unanswered Questions from 9/11'' as well as other films outlining the events that led to the fateful day.

The speakers include Ellen Mariani, whose husband, Louis, was a passenger on the plane that slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. She has sued President Bush and members of his administration for negligence and has stated publicly she does not trust the commission in Washington to uncover the truth.

As she faced a roomful of reporters and activists Friday, Mariani recalled how her husband was on his way to their daughter's wedding, having taken a flight two hours after hers left, when it crashed. "I had to give her away,'' she recalled as she choked back tears.

"I waited 2 1/2 years for justice, and it never came,'' Mariani said. She accused the government of lying to her and discouraging her from asking questions. "The more I wait,'' she said, "the more determined I get.''

A "dialogue room'' will be available during the conference for those who want to talk to the speakers one-on-one and meeting rooms for those who want to get together in small groups.

Meanwhile, Ken Lisaius, a White House spokesman, said he refused to dignify the organizers' charges of a cover-up with a response.

He said the administration had fully cooperated with the commission, furnishing more than 2.3 million pages of documents and holding more than 100 briefings.

"The president has directed his administration to support efforts to insure an attack like this will never happen to this country again,'' he said. "That's why it's provided unprecedented access to information and documents.''

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/8291466.htm

High-level advisers from the Clinton and Bush administrations testified before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., this week.

Now a growing subculture of skeptics, amateur sleuths and independent researchers of all stripes are questioning the ``official narrative'' of Sept. 11, and about 100 people are gathering in San Francisco this weekend for a three-day inquiry of their own.

It's easy to dismiss the self-proclaimed ``911 Truth Movement'' as little more than conspiracy theorists gone overboard.

But the movement, which until recently largely lived on the Internet, is increasingly holding public forums and attracting attention from the mainstream media.

The weekend event, at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, includes panel discussions about Al-Qaida's links to the CIA, the history of covert operations, and the role of Pakistan in Sept. 11. Some of the more incredible theories say that the planes never hit the World Trade Center towers but that the towers were destroyed by remote control; others insist that some of the hijackers are still alive. The Internet is filled with Web sites like www.911 review.org and www.911 sharethetruth.com, many of which argue that Sept. 11 was an elaborately planned hoax.

Part II of the ``International Inquiry Into 9-11'' will take place in Toronto on Memorial Day weekend.

The conference, which began Friday and continues through Sunday, comes as the events of that day are still fresh in the public's mind. The official inquiry in Washington, D.C., has drawn widespread attention. As it began, Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism expert, published a book saying that President Bush ordered him to look for a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.

The official Sept. 11 commission has largely focused on warning signs that a terrorist attack was in the works and who in the Bush and Clinton administrations was aware of those warnings.

Different theories

But they have stayed far away from questions such as ``What happened to the fifth jetliner and the hijackers on it?'' (The ``fifth jetliner'' theory stems from early news reports on the morning of Sept. 11 that five, not four, planes were unaccounted for.)

The timing of the San Francisco event is no coincidence.

``We want our inquiry to go on before the official inquiry comes to their own conclusions,'' said Carol Brouillet, a Palo Alto mother of three who is organizing this weekend's events. Brouillet, 46, is a longtime local peace activist, and she says that she wants the public to have a chance to hear from a variety of researchers.

Ellen Mariani of New Hampshire, whose husband, Louis Neil Mariani, died when United Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center, is a cult hero to many, in part because her participation in the ``truth'' conferences gives the group some legitimacy.

Mariani has filed a lawsuit against Bush and other White House officials that charges them with complicity in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

``My husband was on his way to our daughter's wedding, and he never made it,'' said a tearful Mariani at Friday's news conference at the Herbst Theatre. ``Mr. Bush, I am ashamed of our government. They have lied.''

Growing doubts

The Internet has allowed Sept. 11 theories to spread like wildfire. And growing public concern about the government's rationale for the war in Iraq has fueled further speculation.

``The Iraq war really increased the interest in Sept. 11 conspiracy theories,'' said Kathryn Olmstead, a history professor at the University of California-Davis who is writing a book called ``Governing Conspiracies.''

``It's morphed into one: The government set up Sept. 11 so they could go into Iraq so they can control the oil. There was a small number of activists who were suspicious from the start, and then once the anti-war movement got going a lot of people who were opposed to the war wondered if there was a link. But there are some serious people who are genuinely concerned that their government is hiding information from them.''

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

For more information about this weekend's conference, go to www.911inquiry.org. Tickets are available through City Box Office at (415) 392-4400.

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2045588,00.html
Same article also at San Mateo County Times:
http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11268~2045624,00.html

SAN FRANCISCO -- Days after current and former government officials testified before the official panel probing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, dozens of activists, independent journalists and others from around the world convened Friday for their own inquiry.

These are people who believe the government is lying on a grand scale, and that the Bush administration at least passively let -- and at most, actively helped -- the attacks happen.

They believe that the independent commission now probing the matter is in no way independent, and that neither it nor the corporate-owned, government-beholden mass media can be trusted to ask the right questions to get at the truth.

"The truth is not going to come out unless we demand it," said Bill Douglas of Kansas, the founder of www.911visibility.org

New York City activist Nicholas Levis said this weekend's International Inquiry into 9-11 is all about "making the connections that the mainstream media refuse to make," lest any real consideration expose "the complicity of the United States government" in the attacks.

Said attorney Phil Berg, representing 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani of New Hampshire in her racketeering lawsuit against the federal government: "The American citizens don't want to believe that our government would do something like this."

Continuing today and Sunday at the Herbst Theater on Van Ness Avenue, the conference features films, seminars, discussion forums and plenary sessions for advancing any and all ideas about the attacks.

Some attendees believe the manner in which the World Trade Center towers collapsed can be explained only by explosives within the buildings, although architectural engineers have said burning jet fuel weakened the towers' supporting steel, finally letting the towers' floors "pancake" to the ground.

Some dispute government accounts that military jets were scrambled but didn't intercept the hijacked airplanes in time, instead believing the jets were intentionally kept grounded.

Some draw dire conclusions from the fact that Marvin P. Bush, the president's brother, from 1993 to 2000 was on the board of directors of a company that provided some electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines; the same company was backed by a Kuwaiti investment firm with links to the Bush family.

Some note the government let relatives of Osama bin Laden fly out of the United States on a chartered jet in the hours after the attacks, even while all other commercial jets remained grounded. FBI officials have said they had access to those people before they departed that day, and were satisfied they had no information about the attacks.

Some liken the Sept. 11 attacks to Operation Northwoods, a plan developed by U.S. military leaders in the early 1960s -- and reported in 2001 by major media including the Baltimore Sun and ABC News -- to attack U.S. civilian and military targets and blame it on Cuba as a pretext to invade that Communist nation. Some say it's more like the January 1933 arson of the German Reichstag, which many historians believe was staged by the Nazi Party and blamed upon Communists in order to consolidate Adolf Hitler's power.

Mike Ruppert of Los Angeles, publisher and editor of the newsletter From The Wilderness, said the attacks are "so straightforward in terms of its criminality that even a 6-year-old could understand what happened."

The "systemic shutdown" of air defenses that day; pre-attack insider trading involving airlines, insurers and banks affected by the attacks; a history of business dealings between the Bush and bin Laden families -- all these and other things paint a clear picture of government complicity, he claimed.

This weekend's conference is a sign, Ruppert said, that regardless of what the government, the media, big business and other forces at play in this matter want, "we will not let 9/11 go."

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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