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Pentagon 'lied over 9/11'
02/08/2006 14:13 - (SA)
Washington - The 10-member commission that investigated the US response to the September 11 attacks considered seeking a criminal probe of the Pentagon, believing it had deliberately misled the panel and the public, The Washington Post said on Wednesday.
The panel found discrepancies between statements officials of the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made about their response to the hijackings and audiotapes and e-mails later made available.
The panel, in a secret meeting at the close of its investigation in 2004, decided there was probable cause to believe the officials had broken the law by making false statements in the hope of hiding their bungled response, sources knowledgeable of the debate told the newspaper.
The commission, however, decided to refer the matter not to the justice department but to the inspectors general for the defence and transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they see fit.
The inspectors general report is complete and is being drafted, an FAA spokesperson told the daily without divulging any aspect of the report.
Pentagon claimed jets were scrambled
Originally, vague and at times contradictory statements about how the Pentagon tracked one or more of the four hijacked airliners were attributed to the confusion prevalent on the day of the attacks.
The Pentagon for the first two years after the attacks maintained that its response had been quick and that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings.
But after analysing the audiotapes and other material the commission subpoenaed from NORAD and FAA, panel members found that the air force never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights.
'This is not spin. This is not true'
"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on September 11, told the daily in a recent interview.
"The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years ... This is not spin. This is not true."
- AFP
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