By Kevin
Ryan
March 26,
2012
The U.S. Secret Service failed to do
its job on September 11, 2001 in several important ways.
These failures could be explained if
the Secret Service had foreknowledge of the 9/11 events as they were
proceeding. That possibility leads to difficult questions about how the
behavior of Secret Service employees might have contributed to the success of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Answering those questions will require
the release of existing interview transcripts as well as follow-up questioning,
under oath, of a few key people within the agency.
The most glaring example of Secret
Service failure on 9/11 was the lack of protection for the President of the
United States after it was well known that the country was facing terrorist
attacks on multiple fronts. The interesting thing about this was that it was
not a consistent approach. That is, the president was protected by the Secret
Service in many ways that day but he was not protected from the most obvious,
and apparently the most imminent, danger.
President Bush had been at risk earlier
that morning when Middle-Eastern looking journalists appeared at his hotel in
Sarasota, Florida claiming to have an appointment for an interview. A Secret
Service agent turned them away in a move that might have saved Bush from an
assassination attempt. [1]
Bush then traveled to an elementary
school for a community outreach photo opportunity which had been
well-publicized for several days. It was reported that “Police and Secret
Service Agents were on the roof, on horseback and in every hallway” at the school.
[2]
Every visitor at the school was
required to attend a preparation meeting two days before, and all the phone
lines had been tapped. The school’s principal stated ~ “It was the safest place
in the world. If you blew your nose and it wasn’t time for you to blow your
nose, they knew it.” [3]
The agency was protecting Bush very
well, but not from terrorists in hijacked airplanes. Bush entered the classroom
at 9:03 am that day, after it was widely known that the country was under attack.
As stated by authors Allan Wood and Paul Thompson:
“By that time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and Canada’s Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They knew that one plane had been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center’s North Tower; a second plane was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan; and a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying back toward Washington, DC.” [4]
Given the widespread knowledge that
terrorists were hijacking planes and that planes were crashing into buildings,
the Secret Service should never have let the president enter the building where
he was scheduled to be located. The situation got worse, however, because
shortly after Bush sat down, he was informed by his Chief of Staff that the
World Trade Center had been hit again, by a second plane. Still there was no
intervention by the Secret Service to remove the president from this
well-publicized location.
EITHER
FAILURE TO PROTECT THE PRESIDENT, OR KNOWLEDGE THAT HE WAS NOT A TARGET
Bush remained at the school until 9:35
am, more than 35 minutes after he arrived. He even gave a televised speech
during that time, letting the world know he was still there. The actions of
Bush and his Secret Service detail indicate that they were not worried at all
about a terrorist attack against the school. Philip Melanson, author of a book
on the Secret Service, described how odd this was by writing that, in an
“unfolding terrorist attack, the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible.” [5]
This failure to follow Secret Service
standard procedures is a glaring discrepancy to this day and it leads to a
number of important questions.
Who was responsible for making the
decision to leave the president and everyone in the building at risk?
Were the Secret Service agents
traveling with the president in contact with the agency’s offices in Washington
or New York?
The largest Secret Service field office
in the country was located in WTC Building 7, which was evacuated by the time
Bush was entering the classroom.
The Secret Service supervisor traveling
with the president, who was in charge of the president’s movements that day,
was Edward Marinzel. It was Marinzel who should have been in charge of the
execution (or non-execution) of the emergency action protocols carried out as
the attacks were proceeding. [6]
In an attempt to explain the failure to
follow Secret Service procedures, the 9/11 Commission said in its report that
Bush “told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an
excited reaction at a moment of crisis,” and that the Secret Service “told us
they were anxious to move the president to a safer location, but did not think
it imperative for him to run out the door.”These official responses from the
Secret Service, given in the 9/11 Commission Report (911CR), were taken
from an as-yet unreleased 2004 interview with Edward Marinzel. [7]
However, the Commission said nothing
about why Bush entered the classroom in the first place, when everyone in
government knew that the country was under attack.
It seems possible that Marinzel’s
authority was somehow overridden, because reporters noticed that it was White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer who appeared to be calling the shots while Bush
sat there doing nothing. As Bush’s Secret Service detail failed to protect him,
Fleischer maneuvered to get his attention without alerting the press. Several
reporters noticed that Fleischer had written the words “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET”
in big block letters on a paper sign and was mouthing these words to Bush as he
sat there. [8]
Another apparent failure of the Secret
Service was that it did not immediately request air cover for either the
president’s motorcade as it traveled to the airport, or for Air Force One,
which took off at about 9:54. This seems to be another indication that the
Secret Service knew that Bush was not in danger.
The lack of immediate request for air
cover for the president’s escort becomes more difficult to understand
considering the 911CR’s claims of “unnerving false alarm” which was a “threat
against Air Force One itself.” This threat was later “run down to a
misunderstood communication in the hectic White House Situation Room” (p 325).
The 911CR did not cover the failure to
request immediate air cover, but it did attempt to address the circuitous
travels of Air Force One after it left Sarasota. Air Force One was redirected
throughout the day, first to Barksdale Air Force Base (AFB) in Louisiana and
then on to Nebraska.
The 911CR states that the reason for
this wandering about the country was that the “Lead Secret Service agent…felt
strongly that the situation in Washington was too unstable for the President to
return there,” and although the Bush “strongly wanted to return to Washington,”
the Secret Service won the argument. Again, the 9/11 Commission got its
information on this subject from the unreleased 2004 interview with Edward
Marinzel.
Exactly why Edward Marinzel’s interview
has not been made publicly available is not clear. Given that it was the
primary basis for the official account with regard to the failure to protect the
president, it seems that the public has a right to see it. Did the Secret
Service know that the president was not in danger and, if so, how did it know
that?
Whatever the case might be, Marinzel’s
actions or lack thereof were considered appropriate because his role in
protecting the president continued. On Thanksgiving in 2003, Marinzel led the
team that planned and executed President Bush’s covert visit to Baghdad which,
at the time, “was the first operation in history that took a President of the
United States into an active war zone.” [9]
Today, Marinzel works at a consulting
company with Ralph Basham, the former Director of the Secret Service
(2003-2006), as well as another person who played a critical role in George W.
Bush’s travel, communications and protection. This was Joseph W. Hagin, who was
Bush’s deputy White House Chief of Staff for Operations (2001-2008). Mr. Hagin
had previously been an assistant to Vice President George H.W. Bush, from 1981
to 1985, and then Assistant to President Bush from 1989 to 1991.
Hagin came to the George W. Bush
administration after eight years as a vice president for Chiquita Brands International.
Formerly called United Fruit Company, the company was mired in scandal at the
time of Hagin’s departure, due to an expose by the Cincinnati Enquirer
which claimed that it mistreated the workers on its Central American
plantations, polluted the environment, allowed cocaine to be brought to the
United States on its ships, and bribed foreign officials.
On 9/11, Mr. Hagin had oversight
responsibility for Air Force One, the White House Communications Agency, and
the Secret Service PPD. Despite these far reaching responsibilities, his name
does not appear in the 911CR.Hagin was later “one of the principals responsible
for planning the formation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” [10]
When Hurricane Katrina occurred, Hagin
was the White House point person in terms of overseeing response efforts.
EITHER
FAILURE TO PROTECT THE VICE PRESIDENT, OR RECONSTRUCTION OF THE TIMELINE
The 911CR states that when the Secret
Service first learned of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, it
immediately initiated a number of precautionary “security enhancements around
the White House complex.” [11]
This would have begun at 9:03, when the
entire nation witnessed Flight 175 hit the south tower on live television.
This information was obtained from the
interview of Carl Truscott, who served as the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of
the Presidential Protective Division (PPD).Truscott had primary responsibility
for supervising all protective matters relating to the president, the first
family and the White House. Although Truscott’s interview was not released in
transcript form, a summary of the interview was made available as part of several
random documents released via FOIA request to 9/11 researcher Aidan Monaghan. [12]
When the second plane hit the WTC, the
Secret Service agent responsible for coordinating with the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), Nelson Garabito, called his FAA counterpart, Terry Van
Steenbergen. At the time, Garabito was at the Secret Service Joint Operations
Center (JOC), located in the White House.
It was reported that Van Steenbergen
told Garabito that two other planes were possibly hijacked, which caused Garabito
to ask someone to run upstairs and pass the information on to other Secret
Service agents. The 911CR states that this information was “either not passed
on or was passed on but not disseminated.”
This failure relates to the question of
when the vice president was evacuated from his office. If Van Steenbergen’s
information, given to Garabito just after 9:03 am, was passed on to those
protecting the vice president, then it would become important to know why the
vice president was not moved to a safer location until 9:36, as stated by the
911CR.If the information was passed on immediately, and the vice president was
moved to a secure location just after 9:00 as several witnesses have suggested,
then his early presence at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)
would substantiate the important testimony of Transportation Secretary Norman
Mineta. According to Mineta, Cheney was being given regular updates on the
progress of the hijacked Flight 77 as it came toward Washington. [13]
The documents released by FOIA request
include a timeline of “Actions of TSD” on 9/11.TSD is the Secret Service’s
Technical Services Division which, among other things, operates the Secret
Service’s Tigerwall air surveillance system. The TSD timeline states that at
9:18 am “SAIC Truscott learned that an aircraft had been identified en-route to
the Washington area.”
Therefore, we have officially prepared
documentation that indicates Truscott was aware of a hijacked plane heading for
Washington at least 18 minutes before the official account says the vice
president was moved from his office. If this is true, the public deserves to
know why the vice president not moved to safety immediately. On the other hand
if he was moved earlier, that fact supports Mineta’s astonishing and important
testimony.
FAILURE
TO REQUEST INTERCEPTOR JETS IN A TIMELY MANNER
As described by author Michael Ruppert,
the Secret Service was getting information about the ongoing hijacking events
at the same time, or before, the FAA was. This was because there was a
“parallel command system in play.” [14]
This parallel command system was also
described by Richard Clarke, who was leading one of the response teams in the
White House Situation Room (WHSR).Clarke later wrote that Brian Stafford, the
Director of the Secret Service, was in the WHSR with him and was passing him information.
That information, according to Clarke, came from the fact that the Secret
Service had “a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.”
The authoritative command system
appeared to be below ground in the PEOC, where Dick Cheney was leading the activities.
The TSD document released by FOIA shows that when Assistant Division Chief
Spriggs arrived in the PEOC, at 9:30 am, Cheney and Rice were already there
along with ten other “Presidential and Vice Presidential staff.” [15]
Carl Truscott was the lead Secret
Service agent in the PEOC, the one who was in coordination with Garabito, and
the one who was most closely coordinating with Dick Cheney.
The FOIA-released 9/11 Commission
summary of Truscott’s interview says that he escorted NSA Rice from the
Situation Room to the “White House Shelter Area” where they met Cheney, who was
on the phone, and Mrs. Cheney. [16]
Interestingly, the official account
gives a contradictory account, stating that Mrs. Cheney did not arrive at the
White House for another 30 minutes or more. The FOIA documents say that
Truscott led the Cheneys and Rice to the PEOC sometime before 9:30 am. SAIC
Anthony Zotto, who was specifically responsible for the vice president’s
safety, was in the PEOC at the time. This means that Cheney was in the PEOC at
least 8 minutes before Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
The documents released by the Secret
Service via FOIA indicate that the Secret Service had knowledge of Flight 77
and Flight 93 and that those flights were headed toward Washington, Cone of
these documents, not well identified but apparently a timeline created by one
agent to relate his experiences, indicates that the Secret Service had
knowledge of “two more outstanding aircraft, not responding to the Tower,
considered suspect and at least one was headed toward DC.”This was several
minutes before the agent arrived at “Room 552 en route to the JOC” where the
agent learned that “one of the two planes, believed to be hijacked, was
approximately 5 minutes out from DC.”
These documents confirm that the Secret
Service knew that two hijacked planes were headed toward Washington during the
time that Cheney and SAIC Truscott were in the PEOC, and well before Flight 77
was reported to have crashed into the Pentagon. Cheney seemed to confirm the
same when he later said, on NBC’s Meet the Press ~ “The Secret Service has an
arrangement with the FAA. They had open lines after the World Trade Center
was…” ~ and then cut himself off.
There remains some confusion over
whether the Secret Service ordered, or had the authority to order, the
scrambling of interceptor jets from Andrews AFB in response to the knowledge
about the incoming hijacked aircraft. Author Lynn Spencer, who NORAD Commander
General Ralph Eberhart says “tells it all and tells it well,” wrote that “the
Secret Service also has certain authority over the military and, in this case,
the DC Guard.” [17]
That is, the Secret Service had the
authority to order the scrambling of interceptor jets on 9/11. And of course,
with the president indisposed for a brief period, the vice president was the
commander in chief of the military.
Official reports now suggest that the
Secret Service made such a request, although very late in the chain of events,
but that Andrews commander General David Wherley did not respond rapidly enough.
The reason given is that Wherley did not recognize the Secret Service as having
the authority to order jets to scramble and therefore he waited until someone
in the military chain of command gave him the order. Unfortunately, General
Wherley is no longer available for comment as he died in a freak train accident
which was “the most deadly train crash in the history of the Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.” [18]
However, it is clear that Andrews AFB
staff reached out to the Secret Service well before Wherley ever got involved. [19]
Just after 9:05, Major Daniel Caine,
the supervisor of flying at Andrews AFB, called his Secret Service contact,
Kenneth Beachamp. Caine asked “Are you guys going to need some help?”Agent
Beauchamp replied “No, but I’ll call you back if that changes.”
Beauchamp, whose 9/11-related interview
is still “national security classified,” never called back.
Nearly 30 minutes later, when Flight 77
was coming into Washington, someone else from the Secret Service finally
returned Caine’s call to accept the offer of assistance. Upon answering the
phone, Caine stated that he “could hear plain as day the vice president talking
in the background.” [20]
That was when Caine’s newly arrived
superior, General Wherley, began spending another 80 minutes or more being
confused about the chain of command, according to the official account.
Interceptor jets did not launch from
Andrews AFB, which was only ten miles from the Pentagon, until 10:38 am (and
those were not armed).This was more than an hour after the Pentagon was hit,
almost two and a half hours after the first plane was known to be hijacked, and
approximately 90 minutes after Major Caine had first offered assistance to the
Secret Service.
SAIC Truscott continued as the leader
of the Secret Service PPD through 2005, during the times when a gay prostitute
came to the White House for overnight visits, and during the period when Jack
Abramoff was visiting the White House. The White House later tried to hide the
records for these visits. Truscott was also at the White House during the
period when the Secret Service adopted its secretive processes for records
management with regard to visitor records.
Like Marinzel, Truscott’s performance
on 9/11 was apparently well received as he was later promoted to Director of
the ATF, another major agency of the U.S. Department of Treasury. In the end he
was forced to resign in a scandal related to multiple abuses of power including
sexist orders given to female employees. Truscott had friends in high places,
however, and he was protected from prosecution by order of the White House. [21]
Truscott went on to join ASERO Worldwide,
an international security and risk management firm run by Doron
Bergerbest-Eilon, who was formerly the most senior ranking security official at
the Israeli Security Agency. [22]
Overall, the response of the Secret
Service to the 9/11 attacks suggests foreknowledge of the events in that the
agency failed to protect the president from the obvious danger posed by
terrorists. That foreknowledge, combined with the failure of the Secret Service
to follow-up on the offer of air support from Andrews AFB, leads to the
suspicion that the agency was complicit in the attacks. Revealing the truth
behind these suspicions will require that the central role players from the
Secret Service and the White House, including Edward Marinzel, Ari Fleischer,
Joseph Hagin, Carl Truscott, Anthony Zotto, and Kenneth Beauchamp, be examined
under oath by prosecutors with subpoena power.
Kevin Ryan is a former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters laboratories (UL). Kevin Ryan, a chemist and laboratory manager was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the national Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the World Trade center investigation. Kevin Ryan has since completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remained unanswered by UL or NIST.
REFERENCES:
[1] Allan Wood and Paul
Thompson, An Interesting Day: President Bush’s Movements and Actions on 9/11,
History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline,
[2] Shoestring 9/11 Blog,
The 90-Minute Stand Down on 9/11: Why Was the Secret Service’s Early Request
for Fighter Jets Ignored?, December 20, 2009,
[3] Tom Bayles, The Day
Before Everything Changed, President Bush Touched Locals’ Lives, The Sarasota
Herald-Tribune, September 10, 2002,
[4] Allan Wood and Paul
Thompson
[5] Philip H. Melanson,
Secret Service: The Hiddine History of an Enigmatic Agency, Carroll & Graf,
2002
[6] Command Consulting,
Bio for Edward Marrnizel,
[7] For references to
the 2004 Edward Marinzel interview, see The 9/11 Commission Report,
footnotes 204 and 207 from Chapter 1, and footnotes 1 to 3 from Chapter 10
[8]
911Research.wtc7.net, George W. Bush: Cover Stories of the People in Charge, http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/bush.html
[9] Command Consulting,
Bio for Edward Marrnizel
[10] Command Consulting,
Bio for Joseph Hagin,
[11] The 9/11 Commission
Report, page 36
[12] FOIA documents
released by the U.S. Secret Service to Aidan Monaghan on April 23, 2010
[13] George Washington’s
Blog, Mineta’s testimony CONFIRMED, March 04, 2007
[14] Michael C. Ruppert,
Crossing the Rubicon (chapter 24), New Society Publishers, 2004
[15] FOIA documents
released by the U.S. Secret Service
[16] 9/11 Commission
summary of “USSS Statement and interview reports,” dated July 28, 2003, http://www.scribd.com/doc/14353654/DH-B5-Secret-Service-Requests-Fdr-Entire-Contents-5-Withdrawal-Notice-Doc-Req-Notes-Garabito-Shortly-After-9am-FAA-Van-Steenbergen-Said-4-Planes
[17] Lynn Spencer,
Touching History: The untold story of the drama that unfolded in the skies over
America on 9/11, Free Press, 2008, 24, 2009,
[19] Shoestring 9/11
Blog, The 90-Minute Stand Down on 9/11: Why Was the Secret Service’s Early
Request for Fighter Jets Ignored?, December 20, 2009,
[20] History Commons
Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile: Daniel Caine,
[21] Empty Wheel, Who Is
Carl Truscott and Why Did Bush’s DOJ Protect Him?, March 5, 2008, http://www.emptywheel.net/2008/03/05/who-is-carl-truscott-and-why-did-bushs-doj-protect-him/
[22] Bloomberg
Businessweek profile for ASERO Worldwide,
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