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Obviously it has been proven that there were lies covered up here. The only question now is not if they lied, but why they lied. Were they trying to cover up who was responsible for 9-11?

9-11 panel suspected deception by Pentagon
Commission debated referring matter to Justice Department for criminal investigation.

By Dan Eggen
THE WASHINGTON POST
Wednesday, August 02, 2006

WASHINGTON — Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 commission concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the terrorist attacks might have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources.

Staff members and some commissioners thought e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to think military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to turn over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they think they are warranted, officials said.

“We, to this day, don’t know why (the North American Aerospace Command) told us what they told us,” said former Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey, who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”

John Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said recently that he thought the panel might have been lied to but that he did not think the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.

…

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances.

Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft — American Airlines Flight 11 — long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

SOURCE: Statesman.com

Also published on Progressive Blog Wire and unspunblog.com