9/11 Truth Comes Home; Pols Back New Investigation

By Frank Morales
thevillager.com

It’s spring 2009 in New York City and an unannounced U.S. government plane streaks across town. Recollecting the horrors of 9/11, the incident scares the heebie-jeebies out of the citizenry. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, while attending an April 18 “Tour of the Battenkill” annual bicycle race in Cambridge, N.Y., responds to a question regarding efforts here to establish a new 9/11 investigation. Lending his qualified support to such an inquiry, he says that he’s positively disposed toward a new investigation into the events of 9/11, though his support for such a probe would depend on the form it would take. “I think it’s not a bad idea,” he said. “You know, you’ve got to do it in a good way, but, yes, I’d be for it.”

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for her part, recently joined her colleague and also recommended a fresh look at the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Commenting on May 27 to a young reporter who had suffered the loss of a loved one during 9/11, she responded to the question of a new investigation by suggesting that “another review, or a fuller hearing” is warranted, especially given the number of questions put forward by victims’ families that remain unanswered. “I think those questions should be answered,” Gillibrand stated. She went on to affirm that, “It’s important that every family member have every question answered.”

Schumer and Gillibrand are not the first to call for a new (real) investigation of into the crimes 9/11. The list is long and it’s growing. A small sampling of some of the more notable adherents to this call include former President Jimmy Carter, who when asked if he’d support family members who want a new investigation into 9/11, stated, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with it, but I certainly would. It would be nice.” Former Senator Mike Gravel, who brought the Pentagon Papers to the U.S. Congress long ago, supports the idea as well. As does his friend Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee wants to see a new investigation, as does former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. Ventura and other members of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (including Curt Weldon and Cynthia McKinney) are “calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media.”

On the international front, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, U.K. Member of Parliament Michael Meacher, Japanese Diet member Fujita Yukihisa and former German Defense Secretary Andreas von Buelow have all expressed support for a new inquiry into the Sept. 2001 attacks. So has British M.P. George Galloway, who put it this way: “The failure of the Bush administration to properly investigate, maybe for self-serving reasons, because it would have shown them to be monumentally incompetent, or something more sinister than that, is another argument that is beginning to be established.

“We don’t know everything,” Galloway said, and because “there are lots of questions,” there is “definitely the need for more investigation.”

The noted author Gore Vidal, prior to the last elections, stated, “I think one advantage of having a Democratic House of Representatives after the coming election will be that we can have a new commission investigate 9/11 and the events leading up to our attacks on two innocent countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s about time that we begun to clean up our own house before we find that an international tribunal has summoned our leaders to The Hague in chains to put them on trial.”

Why, even Lee Hamilton, ostensible co-chairperson of the federal 9/11 Commission, the body tasked with getting to the truth of what happened — which many now feel was set up only to concoct and rationalize the official story in the first place — even he admitted that their own commission was “set up to fail.”

Finally, let’s not forget, as Ralph Nader has reminded us, that the Bush “government didn’t even want to have an inquiry” at all. And let’s not forget that the inquiry the 9/11 Commission did eventually carry out — with ground rules set up by its executive director, Philip Zelikow, a Condi Rice confidant — insured, according to Nader, that “they weren’t going to name names, or hold anybody responsible.” “So right from the get,” said Nader, the government-sponsored investigation of 9/11 “was flawed” and, consequently, “there needs to be another one, and the best place to have it is New York City.”

Well, apparently there are many who live and work here in New York City who think the same thing. In fact, 45,000 of them and counting! An organization called NYC CAN, or the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (nyccan.org), composed of family members, first-responders and survivors, has gathered some 45,000 signatures toward a ballot initiative for this coming November 2009. The initiative would allow the voters of New York City to sanction a new investigation of 9/11, an investigation with teeth, with subpoena power and with a scope of inquiry that promises to leave no stone unturned.

In a sense, although NYC CAN takes no position regarding the facts of the case, calling only for a new inquiry, it appears to represent the global “9/11 Truth Movement” come home. Having spread its critical spirit and zeal for an honest rendering of this most heinous crime, its truth has comes marching home, home to New York City, to the scene of the crime, come home in the form of a movement for a new investigation. Given the energy and support behind its efforts, NYC CAN just may succeed in putting the matter of an authentic investigation of 9/11 on this November’s ballot, and in the process, open up the mother of all cans of worms.

Morales is a member of 9/11 Truth

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_319/talkingpoint.html