Farmer’s book, “The Ground Truth: the Untold Story of America under Attack on 9/11” is excellent — read it about three weeks ago. It is very much a companion piece to “The Commission” — an insider versus an outsider’s critique of the Commission’s work product and the working environment. Farmer depends a good deal on research done by Amy Zegart who published an analysis of FBI and CIA failures a couple of years ago. Zegart is a structural/functional political scientist, with a bent for Culture. Called “Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11” it came out about 18 months ago, and is now widely quoted in Journals, Academic papers and all. She used a mix of documentation and insider interviews in her analysis.

The Commission came to seem to me as I read it, something of a diatribe about personalities at war with each other, with the conflicts and hidden agendas the cause of weaknesses in both the process and final report. Farmer’s book is more about structure of departments and agencies, and it is to their weakness Farmer attributes both the cause of 9/11, and the work of the commission as a whole.

In Sociological lingo — Farmer does a structural-functional analysis of Government failure based on the evidence the Commission considered. Lots of people come off as “bad news” not because they are evil people with evil intents, but because they totally fail to comprehend structural functionalism and apply it. Farmer, for instance, takes on Gore’s “reinventing Government” efforts in the Clinton years, and wacks it good for being all about money and budget, with little if any serious consideration for how Government agencies should be structured so as to function as intended. He has a wonderful chapter where he compares response to 9/11 and Katrina in structural/functional terms. Since finishing his work at the Commission, Farmer was promoted to Dean of the Law School at Rutgers.

Anyhow these three books — the Commission, Spying Blind, and The Ground Truth totally compliment each other.

So not only were we lied into war with Iraq, but the very beginnings of our response to 911 was riddled with lies as well.

It is as if Bush & Cheney were completely unable to tell the truth, ever. How well suited these two liars were for one another, and how ill-suited to America!

911 was that pearl harbor event they either made happen or let happen.In all that chaos that preceeded they stole trillions,they spyed on and took down their political enemies,and passed a new constitution called the patriot act to keep the people from getting out of line.

Does anyone other than myself ever wonder why Bernie Madoff never pleaded down his sentence of 150 years?This man was good friends with Cheney and knows where he hid all that money hes gotten from oil companies and those no bid contractors.There is no way Cheney and Friends did all this with no payback but now Im talking crazy again.

There are over 10 compelling 9/11 documentaries, but this one is pretty good:
Fabled Enemies http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2144933190875239407&ei=Svv-SvaXN8qclAe_jt3oCQ&q=fabled+enemies&view=2#

If you still find yourself prone to giving Cheney and our media the benefit of the doubt over 9/11, or think that nobody could be smart enough to pull off such a conspiracy (except cave dwelling Muslims), please watch this documentary, and do your own real research. Nothing Adds Up about the official story, and the 9/11 Commission was set up to fail. Just ask the Chairmen of the Commission, or the Commissioner who resigned.

“There is little hope for change as the people are more set in their ways than even those who are doing it to them.”

I don’t know which is the more enabling trait of the American public:
The vanity that tells them nobody in government is smart enough to plan a conspiracy, or the naive belief that no quantity of people working in government could be capable of shockingly evil beliefs and behaviors.

Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it.

Holy Shit! The Government is not ready big surprise but the lying ARRRRGH! how do they justify it? It gives the American People comfort (false comfort) to know that the military was ready to shoot down planes?
Or perhaps it helps make the Government seem like our Protector and helped enable Bush to get anything he wanted from the American people and Congress?

I suspect it’s not incompetence at all. It’s part of the disinformation and coverup of the crime of the century.

There is no evidence of a plane crashing in Shanksville, PA. The so called crater which is alleged to have been were the planed “disappeared into” is visible on aerial photo graphs taken well before the event. and the debris was scattered over 8 miles which goes against a crash into the ground as we were told.

Architects and Engineers for 911Truth (AE911Truth.org) has studied the public recorded of the three towers destroyed on that day and determined that the buildings did not collapse from fire caused weakening of the steel, but were destroyed by explosives.

This finding alone brings into question the 19 hijacker narrative and a government caught off guard and incompetent. They tried that one with Katrina.

We need a new investigation based on material science, physics, statics and rational analysis and then when that confirms that explosives were involved we need to figure our who put them there, when, how and why.

I hate posts that involve 9/11, because they bring out every f*cking conspiracy theorist in the neighborhood.
When y’all get actual proof of anything, not just your personal theories, write it up and post it – on your own blog, please.

It’s just amazing to me that those of us who said from the beginning that the 9/11 explanations were suspect and that there were too many loose ends were attacked as “truthers.” No matter how many unexplained points were raised we were shouted down; we were not considered “serious” people (where have I heard that before). Nothing that the admin under w said was accepted in good faith, except what happened on 9/11/01. Now this book shows all of the lies and funny “coincidences” that happened and people are saying how Marcy has uncovered new stuff to be examined about 9/11. Now the “serious” people can begin to ask the “real” questions that should have been asked. Perhaps we “truthers” can come out of the shadows to which we have been consigned.

Earlier I had thought to write a more elaborate review of “The Ground Truth” — a book I found fascinating to read (and yep, I have actually read the book), and which I would strongly recommend to those still sorting out in their minds what really happened on 9/11. I think Farmer puts on the table a major offering that moves the ball forward, and I’d recommend that those who still read books consider getting this one, and spending some quality time reading it.

Now, as anyone who has read me here and elsewhere, I have very little tolerance for Conspiracy Theorists. From time to time they do come up with unique pieces of evidence on large complex matters, evidence that has somehow been overlooked, not factored in properly — but in most cases they become fixated on their little hunk of evidence and assumptions about it to the exclusion of the rest of the historical process, which is to examine honestly and without prior assumptions each bit of evidence, and then fit it together into the huge jig-saw puzzle that is history, and only make judgments after you have put together enough puzzle pieces to see the whole picture. Most Conspiracy Theorists don’t proceed like this — they start with assumptions, they find one or several supportive bits of evidence, and then they harp. You all know the songs — Oil Pipelines, aah more Oil Pipelines. Halliburton, Halliburton and KBR, and then the ode to Halliburton. Cheney, stinkin Dick Cheney, Cheney Cheney. Linn and Liz Cheney, evil Dick. All of it may be ultimately useful information, but it has to be evaluated, it has to be tested to see if it fits will all the other seemingly valid evidence — and only then should one take a look at assumptions or assertions about its meaning. So I think virtually all Conspiracy Theorists have it ass backwards, even though from time to time they do discover a significant mite of evidence that in the right hands helps us see the full picture. (end of screed)

John Farmer’s book is anything but a work of conspiracy theory. He doesn’t discredit the work of the whole 9/11 Commission and Report, in fact the core of the book deals with the evidence he examined and organized carefully during his commission work. His group’s work product is right there in the midst of the Commission Report. What he has done in The Ground Truth is to take it to the next step — he asks us to look at the evidence and entertain conclusions based on it that would have never passed muster with the Commission which was determined to issue a bi-partisian unanimous report that did not point fingers at political figures who may have failed to do their job properly. This is not an effort, mind you, to call out people as evil, instead it is an effort to point to poor performance of duty, incompetence, and ultimately cover-up of these failures. Because as I pointed out in my earlier brief review, Farmer is essentially using structural-functional methodological theory as his backbone in this work, understanding where he finds fault requires one to look at both how Government and other institutions are structured, Look at what their intended function as part of a whole really is, and then ask the questions that arise from systems failure — are structures properly designed, is function clear, are functions properly integrated, how do both match up with intended purpose — and finally what do these questions and their answers tell us about the skills and competence of the people who operate the systems? (lots of hard questions.)

Finding out what happened on 9/11 in the context of looking at the national response, and an evaluation of prepardness, requires that the first thing you need to do is collect the base line evidence you need to construct a second by second timeline. What Farmer’s group found as they started to dig into this task was that the White House did NOT order a serious collection of the base data, best possible data, from all the agencies that played that day, and objectively do this task. They found some clear efforts to professionally do the task that were aborted before they were complete. They found other evidence that “best data” had been left unexamined and instead pronouncements were made on less adequate data bases.

Specifically, Farmer’s group found that Lt. General Paul Weaver, Air National Guard, offered the first detailed timeline on September 14th, 2001, speaking from the Pentagon. Weaver’s timeline represented the integration of first reports from DOD, WH, NEADS, NORAD, the Airlines, FAA, key Controllers, much else — collected between 9/11 and 9/13 from their original documents, be these tapes, logs, taped phone contacts, E-Mail — whatever they used during the action on 9/11. He didn’t present it as final, but more as a progress report with citations. That same day Paul Wolfowitz appeared on the Lehrer program and made statements that contridicted Weaver’s timeline — these are about flight 93, and whether or not fighters were scrambled in response to it, with Wolfowitz suggesting that this had indeed happened. This idea was then repeated the following Sunday by Dick Cheney on Meet the Press — yes, the military had scrambled fighters, and then the next bit of “claimed evidence” that the President had issued shoot down orders on flight 93.

The problem was that neither a scramble order vis a vis 93 nor the Presidential Shoot Down order showed up in Weaver’s timeline. What Farmer’s group found was that on September 17th a WH meeting was held to reconcile data, and that from September 18th on, everyone had exactly the same data (even though some didn’t square with original data), and whether they were talking to the Press, to Congress, or anyone else, they all said the same thing. Stories were all matched up neatly. Weaver and his timeline disappeared until Farmer’s group in the 9/11 commission noted the televised press briefing on the 14th, and found Weaver and his original work product.

Having found these incongruities, Farmer’s group finally subpoened all the original date from all relevant agencies. Their requests had all been answered with dribbles and dabs of material, usually late, not organized in a useful fashion, with much missing. Much of what the Commission got to its request was secondary material, not originals. Testimony to the Commission was vague, incompetent, unclear, and in some cases lies and fabrications. Thus they got tough and issued a subpoena, and they also fanned out and found that there were vast collections of data that had not been even initially reviewed, and certainly not supplied to the commission. Best find was that NEADS used old fashioned reel to reel tape recorders from early cold war days, and recorded everything. The got it, got it digitalized, got the timing right using competent techs, and given that the first call on 9/11 had been to NEADS when it was apparent Atta’s plane was a hijack, they actually had a master of the whole event to which all else should match up. No one in the Pentagon apparently knew that NEADS used Reel to Reel’s and taped everything.

So what did they find at the commission? More important, what does Farmer suggest is the larger meaning of what they found?

First — the upper level of the chain of command totally fell apart on 9/11. The chain is President to Sec. of Defense, to various military commands. It isn’t just who commands whom, it is whether a command comes from a recognized competent authority. The President was in Florida, and his staff did not immediately move him to command communications. It was nearly an hour after first reports before he was positioned to assume command. No one made certain that the President was linked to the Sec. of Defense. In fact the Secretary of Defense was also AWOL. After first reports he continued a meeting and did not immediately go to his duty station at the National Command Center, and he was not in communication with the President by other means. When the Pentagon was attacked, he went out to look at the damage and give first aid to the injured. Only after that did he finally get to his duty station which was key because the National Command Center controls all military assets, and control of all of them goes through the Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld was periodically linked with Richard Clarke’s WH Situation Room — but that facility does not control military assets, in an emergency it feeds to and feeds back all other Government (Executive Department) assets. If there needed to be interchange between military and any other executive function, or a civil agency requested military assistance, that would go through Clarke.

So now we come to Dick Cheney who as we know went to the Presidential Bunker, Condi went with him (my guess is to keep her eye on him), and once he was installed after a delay, he took a call from the President who had no background information at all, and who initially issued no orders. He had not yet talked with Rumsfeld — important, because Cheney had no place in the Chain of Command, Rumsfeld did. Cheney as we know issued shoot down orders, and then covered it with a post hoc call to the President, but he did not issue the orders through Rumsfeld, and as a result, those who got them (such as NEADS) ignored them because they did not come through the National Command and Rumsfeld. Good Military Officers don’t take commands unless they come from the proper authority. Moreover, Cheney’s shoot down order came after all the planes had crashed.

Let’s make it worse. The decision to scramble the Otis fighters off Cape Cod was made by NEADS, which also made the eventual call to vector them over NYCity, but only after a delay holding position out over the ocean. Both towers had been hit before the Otis fighters arrived over NYC. The three Langley Fighters were ordered to take off based on a false report that Flight 11, Atta’s hijack, was still in the air and flying south over New Jersey. But the Langley F-16’s were given no directional orders on take off — they flew off to a holding area off the east coast of Virginia, and only after the Pentagon was hit were they ordered back to the DC area, afterburners blazing, but with no rules of engagement, except for the phantom Atta flight, for which they were intended to ID the tail number.

There is a lot more — but this is enough to illustrate Farmer’s point, the whole National Command totally failed on 9/11. The reason the timelines the White House eventually used after Sept 18th were wrong, intentionally, and vague was because they needed to cover this critical fact up. Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld acted like they knew they were command. Cheney, not in the chain of command, issues irrelevant orders outside the proper chain. They are not accepted, because he is not a competent authority.

Farmer doesn’t want us to sit around bashing these dunces — he wants us to think about the relationship between competence and structure. National Command fell apart that day because we had not thought about it, indeed one wonders whether the principals had practiced any part of the routine. (God I hope Obama and Gates have practiced this.) None of these guys had people around them who shoved them into command postures — they thought about personal security and the like, but not command responsibility.

Of course National Command is not the only thing that fell apart that day and ultimately got covered up. Farmer point out that it was a mistaken FAA call that put into the system the phantom flight 11 (Atta’s plane) flying south over New Jersey, that caused Langley to launch the F-16’s, but with no directional orders. He has much to say about FAA’s Radar coverage, FAA’s lack of ability to separate wheat from chafe as far as information management is concerned. He points to incompetent political appointees — and highly competent career staff who made many correct calls in some cases without the knowledge of their politically appointed supervisors. He points to lack of practice operating in crisis mode. He points to lack of communications technology hooking FAA to the Military or even on a secure basis, with the White House. Again it is competence, structure and function.

What is the function of FAA — it is pretty simple, manage everything in the US that flies (except birds). The structure is all the rest that serves these functions, all the controllers, all the radar, all the proceedure, all the communications and computer tracking, and how it is interactively hooked together. Competence — know what assets you own, how they generally work, and have the skill to immediately focus them on problems, and resolve these problems, and collaborate with other agencies in this process. (Instead we select FAA leadership because the individuals are “trusted” by the airline executives and lobbyists.)

Farmer reworks other pieces of the 9/11 evidence, and eventually does the same with Katrina evidence all to the end of focusing us on the need for deep going reforms that get at structures and functions as well as competent management. His contention is that Government is failing because we are not doing this kind of analysis, and asking the right questions.

I appreciate bmaz’s response to BillWalker. I think the Truther business illustrates how difficult it is for some to keep a balanced, evidence-based approach.

There is often a grain of truth in the claims of paranoid people, indeed there usually is. Unfortunately, serious breaches of trust by elements in the intelligence community (usually in the service of economic elites) have occurred in the past, and revelations of that sort are bound to inflame–and provoke poor judgement in–a certain minority. At risk of being labeled one of the paranoid myself, I’d offer CIA involvement in JFK’s murder as perhaps the most egregious example. But imo, a close reading of “Not In Your Lifetime” (Anthony Summers) and “The Last Investigation” (Gaeton Fonzi) leads inexorably to that unhappy conclusion.

In response to bmaz @78

With all due respect to you and the fine people here at EWs, you should cast your net a bit wider.