Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War On Terror – Perter Lance
Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War On Terror – Perter Lance, Regan Books/Harper Collins (2004) 360pp. (S) ***
Sometimes when an author has success with a book, a follow-up isn’t necessarily necessary. 1,000 Years For Revenge happens to be one of the most comprehensive books on the years preceding the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and is a work that stands alone as Lance’s best. However, “the War On Terror,” an expression that I’m sure most Americans are sick of by now, is forever mutating as more information is found and discovered that either refutes or confirms earlier theses. In Cover Up, Lance is building upon the case he made in 1,000 Years For Revenge, that the U.S. government knew much more than it was letting on pre-9/11 about the prospective hijackers and their aims, and that if the government had just gotten out of the way of itself, the 9/11 plot may very well have been disrupted.
Central to one of the main themes in Cover Up is the assertion that TWA 800 went down as a result of an onboard bomb (not, as was determined by the NTSB, an electrical failure in the main fuel tank). In Lance’s words, “this book [Cover Up] further provides evidence that even while [1993 WTC bomber, Ramzi] Yousef was in federal jail he planned and triggered the downing of TWA flight 800 in order to effect a mistrial in the Bojinka case.”(p.210) Lance’s evidence is bomb residue similar to that used by Yousef in an earlier bombing, found in the plane’s midsection over the central fuel tank. It is further Lance’s contention that information regarding bomb making was leaked out of his prison cell via an adjacent cellmate, with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI. (Yousef also made phone calls, which the reader must assume, were fully monitored.) So the big disconnect in Lance’s argument becomes how would Yousef articulate his plans to have TWA 800 bombed without the Feds knowing about it, and thus intervening? A more plausible theory, if one is to believe multiple eye-witness accounts, is that TWA 800 was shot out of the sky by a surface to air missile, either from a Naval ship that was in the area conducting “exercises” at the time, or by other means, such as a shoulder launched mechanism. (Another instance where eye-witness accounts are quite revealing, is in the instance of the shoot-down of United flight 93 over Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Again, while not discounting that UAL # 93 may very well have been shot down, Lance, for whatever reasons, does not refer to the eye-witness accounts that attested to seeing a low flying military aircraft, absent any markings, in the vicinity of flight 93’s wreckage.)
While focusing on some of the hijackers, Lance states that a program run by the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, called “Visa Express,” expedited visa applications by Saudi citizens, while greatly reducing oversight measures. How the State Department ever reconciled such a program with a country well known for its terrorism links is beyond this reviewer’s comprehension and credulity. In the same vein, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds claimed that indeed the FBI had enough information to prevent 9/11. Combine this with the “war games” known as “Vigilant Guardian” and “Northern Vigilance” that were scheduled for the morning of 9/11/01, as cited by Lance, and a fuller picture comes into view as to how the 9/11 attacks could have been so successful.
Overall, though, if one must make a choice between reading Cover Up and 1,000 Years For Revenge, the better bet would be for the latter.
Sometimes when an author has success with a book, a follow-up isn’t necessarily necessary. 1,000 Years For Revenge happens to be one of the most comprehensive books on the years preceding the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and is a work that stands alone as Lance’s best. However, “the War On Terror,” an expression that I’m sure most Americans are sick of by now, is forever mutating as more information is found and discovered that either refutes or confirms earlier theses. In Cover Up, Lance is building upon the case he made in 1,000 Years For Revenge, that the U.S. government knew much more than it was letting on pre-9/11 about the prospective hijackers and their aims, and that if the government had just gotten out of the way of itself, the 9/11 plot may very well have been disrupted.
Central to one of the main themes in Cover Up is the assertion that TWA 800 went down as a result of an onboard bomb (not, as was determined by the NTSB, an electrical failure in the main fuel tank). In Lance’s words, “this book [Cover Up] further provides evidence that even while [1993 WTC bomber, Ramzi] Yousef was in federal jail he planned and triggered the downing of TWA flight 800 in order to effect a mistrial in the Bojinka case.”(p.210) Lance’s evidence is bomb residue similar to that used by Yousef in an earlier bombing, found in the plane’s midsection over the central fuel tank. It is further Lance’s contention that information regarding bomb making was leaked out of his prison cell via an adjacent cellmate, with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI. (Yousef also made phone calls, which the reader must assume, were fully monitored.) So the big disconnect in Lance’s argument becomes how would Yousef articulate his plans to have TWA 800 bombed without the Feds knowing about it, and thus intervening? A more plausible theory, if one is to believe multiple eye-witness accounts, is that TWA 800 was shot out of the sky by a surface to air missile, either from a Naval ship that was in the area conducting “exercises” at the time, or by other means, such as a shoulder launched mechanism. (Another instance where eye-witness accounts are quite revealing, is in the instance of the shoot-down of United flight 93 over Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Again, while not discounting that UAL # 93 may very well have been shot down, Lance, for whatever reasons, does not refer to the eye-witness accounts that attested to seeing a low flying military aircraft, absent any markings, in the vicinity of flight 93’s wreckage.)
While focusing on some of the hijackers, Lance states that a program run by the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, called “Visa Express,” expedited visa applications by Saudi citizens, while greatly reducing oversight measures. How the State Department ever reconciled such a program with a country well known for its terrorism links is beyond this reviewer’s comprehension and credulity. In the same vein, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds claimed that indeed the FBI had enough information to prevent 9/11. Combine this with the “war games” known as “Vigilant Guardian” and “Northern Vigilance” that were scheduled for the morning of 9/11/01, as cited by Lance, and a fuller picture comes into view as to how the 9/11 attacks could have been so successful.
Overall, though, if one must make a choice between reading Cover Up and 1,000 Years For Revenge, the better bet would be for the latter.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home