DAYS OF DECEPTION: GROUND ZERO AND BEYOND WILLIAM THOMAS Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond Copyright © 2006 All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book, either in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, photographic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews. ISBN: 1-893157-18-0 13 digit: 978-1-893157-18-7 Cover Design by Michelle Easterly and William Thomas Cover photos: 1. WTC, September 11, 2001 Civil Engineering Magazine www.pubs.asce.org 2. USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 www.history.navy.mil 3. Budapest Hero’s Square, Bela Szandelsky Published by: Bridger House Publishers P.O. Box 2208, Carson City, NV 89702, USA 1-800-729-4131 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 DEDICATION For the victims of September 11, 2001. Then and now. Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond “The bigger the lie, therefore, the likelier it is to be believed.” — Adolf Hitler TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I Pearl Harbor Prelude.............................................................................1 Chapter 1: NORDO .........................................................................13 Chapter 2: We Have A Problem Here..............................................41 Chapter 3: “I See Buildings” ...........................................................63 Chapter 4: Manhattan ......................................................................85 Chapter 5: Commanders and Chiefs .............................................115 Chapter 6: The Pentagon ...............................................................139 Chapter 7: Shootdown ...................................................................165 Chapter 8: Shanksville...................................................................189 PART II Chapter 9: Qui Bono......................................................................221 Chapter 10: Cover-Up......................................................................255 Chapter 11: Afghan Adventure........................................................287 Chapter 12: Berserkers ....................................................................319 Chapter 13: The Magnificent Four..................................................345 Chapter 14: Wake Up America........................................................385 Chapter 15: Trial and Tribulation ....................................................419 PART III Chapter 16: What Now? ..................................................................449 Chapter 17: What We Can Do.........................................................485 References........................................................................................522 Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond Part I: September 11, 2001 PART I SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond Prelude: Pearl Harbor “Everything that the Japanese were planning to do was known to the United States...” -U.S. Army Board of Inquiry 1944 PRELUDE: PEARL HARBOR Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto returned his yeoman’s salute and scanned the J-19 message without revealing his dread and anticipation. The risky raid on the U.S. Navy’s mighty Pacific Fleet was going ahead! According to the decrypted text, the opening salvo of a coordi- nated naval offensive set to sweep from Hawaii to the Philippines would be signaled by Radio Tokyo weather report forecasting “east rain”.i Swinging at anchor in foggy Hitokappu Bay on November 19, 1941, the remote Kurile Islands afforded Yamamato’s Kido Butai “Striking Fleet” apparent security, as well as a shortened Great-Circle course to Oahu. But Japan’s top admiral would have been less sanguine if he’d known that a Dutch submarine had tracked his fleet here. Fortunately for Yamamoto, a newly elected American administration secretly bent on war never relayed the allied sighting report to the com- mander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.ii Five days later, Yamamoto sent a teletype message from his flag- ship, the battleship Nagato to the commander of his 1st Air Fleet. Admiral Nagumo read it eagerly: The task force, keeping its movement strictly secret and maintain- ing close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow. At least, Yamamoto hoped so. Japan’s most respected admiral had already warned his superiors that tiny Japan could not hope to win a drawn-out war against the United States. The most they could expect to achieve would be to force Washington to negotiate a settlement advan- tageous to Japan after sinking American’s newest carriers and other capitol ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor. But nervous officials in Tokyo were prepared to abort the attack if last-minute diplomacy proved successful in salvaging Japan’s oil 1 Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond lifeline. Even though surprise was essential, maintaining operational radio silence was simply not an option. No one responsible for this desperate gamble suspected that the Americans had recently broken Japan’s obsolete naval codes. facing the open Pacific above Kaneohe Bay, a radio intercept facility dubbed “Station H” immediately intercepted Yamamoto’s sortie order to Admiral Nagumo. U.S. Navy decrypters on Oahu quickly forwarded the decoded message to Washington. The British were also listening in on November 25. At three in the morning Washington time, Winston Churchill cabled urgent word to the White House that a Japanese fleet was steaming east toward Hawaii. iii FDR tersely telexed back: Negotiations off. Services expect action within two weeks. iv FLEET PREPAREDNESS EXERCISE 191 Even though these warnings, and many others were deliberately kept from him, America’s top naval commander in Hawaii was deter- mined to keep the islands’ approaches clear. Acting on a hunch, Admiral Kimmell dispatched two aircraft carriers and a fleet of heavy escorts to a conspicuous seamount northwest of the Big Island, where he correctly assumed that any oncoming Japanese fleet would use to assemble. v The two forces nearly collided. But instead of warning Admiral Kimmell of the Japanese strike force approaching his scouting fleet’s position, the White House complained that Kimmell’s Fleet Preparedness Exercise 191 was “complicating the situation,” and ordered him to return his ships immediately to Pearl Harbor. All U.S. commercial ships transiting the North Pacific were also directed to take the southern route so that, as Admiral Turner later told Congress, “the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic…” that might radio a warning. vi TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT Franklin Delano Roosevelt was about to get the war he wanted. After meeting with the President on November 26, Secretary of War Stimson recounted, “In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who were the aggressors.” Described by a close friend as “a man who never told the truth if 2 Prelude: Pearl Harbor a lie would suffice,” FDR had won the presidency the previous year by promising Americans, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any for- eign wars.” It was a pledge everyone wanted to hear. With memories of the last Great Slaughter in the mud of France seared into the American psy- che, polls showed the nation nearly unanimously opposed to becoming enmeshed in a European war. As retired U.S. Navy Commander Robert Stinnett later docu- mented in Day of Deceit, from which this book deliberately takes its title, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was provoked and facilitated by Washington in accordance to a plan drawn up by Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum in the Office of Naval Intelligence. In naval intelligence memo 0P-16-F-2 sent to Roosevelt on October 7, 1940, McCollum had argued, “once the British Empire is gone the power of Japan-Germany and Italy is to be directed against the United States.” vii But how? In May 1941 Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle had flatly declared, “A naval invasion of the Western Hemisphere is out of the question.” As author Paul Atwood further explained, “neither Germany nor Japan had aircraft carriers that could get within range of the American mainland [and] no long-range bomber existed that could reach the U.S. across either the Pacific or Atlantic.” viii The principle danger to America was economic. The country’s business leaders were already loudly warning that if Hitler’s conquests continued, products produced in Nazi slave-labor camps would drive them out of world markets. The tyrant whose political comeback had been financed by Prescott Bush through his Harriman Brothers bank must now be stopped! By engaging German U-boats while escorting American mer- chant ships across the North Atlantic to Great Britain, the U.S. Navy was already violating the Neutrality Act. As Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark wrote to a subordinate: “The country doesn’t seem to real- ize... we are at war.” ix The challenge facing the Roosevelt administration was how to make that status official in