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Press Coverage of 9-11 Inquiry in San Francisco
Tue Mar 30 18:41:24 2004
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Press Coverage of 9-11 Inquiry in San Francisco
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:48:14 -0800 (PST)
From: webmaster@septembereleventh.org

Below are three articles that appeared in Bay Area
newspapers on Saturday morning, March 27th. They
include:

San Francisco Chronicle (included a statement by a
White House spokesman!)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/27/BAG525SD161.DTL

San Jose San Jose Mercury News (included information on
getting tickets)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/8291466.htm

San Mateo County Times Tri-Valley Herald
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2045588,00.html

-----------------------------

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

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Harriet Chiang, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer
Saturday, March 27, 2004

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

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Skeptics examine Sept. 11
By Dana Hull

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.911sharethetruth.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.

Contact Dana Hull at dhull@mercurynews.com  or (408)
920-2706.

------------------

TRI-VALLEY HERALD
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

Theorists share their views of 9/11
Alternative press and activists discuss conspiracy in
the World Trade Center attacks

By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER

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
http://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."

Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com  .