Here's last week's column. I got a long letter for this one.

One year later, many people still have strong feelings over September 11, I among them. I, at first, felt extreme rage, which, as directed, I focused on the terrorist, and then the Taliban. But today, one year later, that same rage that was once so focused on our enemy is now directed within. I am angry with the government of the United States of America. There are two reasons: one present and one past. I’ll deal with the present first.
The War on Terror began almost flawlessly. Nearly every world government felt our pain; nearly every world government committed resources. Terrorist cells were broken up. Funds were frozen. Future attacks were foiled.
The belligerent Taliban, hiding the enemy Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cronies were wiped out by a global coalition. Al Qaeda lost its safe haven.
But then: things went decidedly south. The US withdrew from the ABM treaty that has slowed the proliferation of our most deadly foe, nuclear weapons. The US attempted to block the International Court by threatening to pull peacekeepers out of the volatile Balkans. Afghanistan remains a mess. US forces did not capture Osama Bin Laden, and it’s rumored that he escaped to Pakistan. The Bush administration began its hostile and bellicose rhetoric on Iraq that may lead to an unprecedented preemptive strike on that country. In addition, as Israel escalated its conflict against the oppressed Palestinians, the US did very little to stop the horror.
At home, an anti-terror bill that many Congressional leaders did not read was passed in haste. The Patriot Act redefines terrorism with very vague and broad terms. Under the new definition, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, even simple acts of civil disobedience could be defined as terrorism. Also at home, the government rounded up thousands of people and deported many of them in secret. We still do not know who these people were, and what happened to them. The government has blocked all attempts to find out this information. A number of people are being held because of ties to Al Qaeda. One man, Jose Padilla, has not been charged with anything- a clear violation of his constitutional rights. Yet he is still being held. Att. General John Ashcroft proposed internment camps for “enemy combatants.” The prisoners being held at Guantanamo have been denied their rights under the Geneva Convention’s provisions for prisoners of war, which they clearly are. On top of all of this, the administration has attempted to block a Congressional investigation into the attacks that killed 3000 people. I won’t even discuss Operation TIPS, which would have had Americans spying on each other much like the Secret Police in 1984. I’ll save that for next week.
All of this left me bewildered and angry. Why all the subterfuge? I got an inkling this May, when it was reported that in August 2001, the Bush administration received some kind of warning that Al Qaeda was ready to strike. Wait. Wait, wait…AUGUST? Until last May, we had been led to believe that no one could have known what was to come. I had to learn more. I did extensive research this summer, and what I found infuriated me.
During the summer of 2001 beginning just after Memorial Day of that year and continuing into mid-August, there were many State Department warning of an impending attack. Some were very vague and some were deadly specific. One threat against the life of President Bush during the G8 Economic Summit in Genoa, Italy was so specific that all flights were rerouted and antiaircraft guns were deployed around the city. What was this threat? Someone was planning on flying an airliner into the summit.
It has also been reported that the intelligence services of no less than seven countries knew something was up and warned us. What did we do? Nothing.
It has been reported that FBI agents tried to warn headquarters and the CIA about the suspicious flight school activities and no one did anything. Also, the suspicious insider trading and put options on 38 stocks that stood to lose during August and early September, 2001 has never been investigated. In addition, vast sums of transactions flowed through the trade center during the hours before the attacks, as shown in hard drives recovered from the rubble. Salman Rushdie, the controversial writer, was banned from flying domestically within the US in early September 2001. The mayor of San Francisco was asked not to fly on September 11. Top military leaders, it was reported in Newsweek, received some type of warning not to fly. The NSA intercepted two messages on September 10, 2001 but never translated them. The messages stated: Tomorrow is Zero Hour. An instant-messaging firm named Odigo confirmed that two of its employees received some type of warning not to come to work two hours before the first plane hit. Odigo was based in the WTC. The weirdest thing of all: two kids, one of Pakistani descent, in two different cities made cryptic comments about the World Trade Center. What does this suggest to me? Someone, perhaps even the government, had some foreknowledge of what was to come and may have even known when. Someone let this happen. Someone was complicit. Perhaps that is why the administration has attempted to block a Congressional Hearing.
I am very angry over these developments and dismayed. I feel that the dead of September 11 are not correctly honored, as they should be. The first proper thing to do would be to hold an investigation…a public investigation. They did it in WWII with Pearl Harbor while mobilizing on two fronts. They can do it now. The families of the 3000 dead deserve to know what went wrong and why. They deserve to know who knew what and when they knew it. Another way to honor the dead would be more global cooperation. Here’s my proposal: We should give the administration one full year to fix our global coalition and to hold open and full investigations on September 11. If not, on September 11, 2003, Americans should crowd the mall in DC and “redress their greviences.” That is the way to honor the dead.


Sources available upon request.