The Bulletin deserves praise for publishing a front page article (Aug. 23) on Scott Philpott, the second military official who has revealed military foreknowledge of ”lead 9/11 hijacker” Mohammed Atta. Philpott’s revelations are one piece of an increasingly coherent puzzle indicating U.S. foreknowledge of the attacks.

Additional evidence of U.S. foreknowledge can be found in the books ”The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11,” ”The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions,” and ”The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism.” In the limited space here, I will describe a few citations in these books that elucidate the curious case of Mohammed Atta.

The London Observer (Sept. 30, 2001) and various German media have noted that U.S. intelligence trailed Atta buying chemicals in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2000. According to the San Francisco Chronicle (Sept. 16, 2001), Atta traveled in and out of the United States three times in 2001 on an expired tourist visa, despite being on a terrorist watch list for a bus bombing in Israel. The Miami Herald (June 7, 2002) reports that Atta stood indicted in a 1995 plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners flying over the Pacific Ocean, and that the National Security Administration monitored telephone conversations between Atta and the alleged 9/11 mastermind, including, according to the London Independent (Sept. 15, 2002), a conversation on the day before the attacks.

The New York Times (Sept. 16, 2001) reports that Atta received training at International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. The military claims that this was a different Mohammed Atta, but when pressed by Daniel Hopsicker, a former executive producer and investigative reporter for NBC, they declined to present the ”other” Atta.

A similar pattern applies to other 9/11 hijackers. The Washington Post (Sept. 16, 2001) and Newsweek (Sept. 15, 2001) reported that up to five of the alleged hijackers may have received U.S. military training. Newsweek (July 28, 2003) reports that two hijackers were living with an FBI informant in San Diego beginning in early 2000. ABC News (May 23, 2002) reports that one hijacker had been tracked by the FBI for three years before 9/11, and they knew his ”exact address, his phone number, and even what car he drove.”

Foreknowledge of the hijackers, failure to apprehend them, and their possible U.S.-sponsored training is understandable in light of the roots of al- Qaida. In the 1980s, the CIA fostered a group of Muslim militants, the Mujahideen, to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. U.S. relations with the Muslim militants did not end when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. The London Spectator (Sept. 13, 2003) notes: ”If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the Mujahideen, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalized it.” ”The War on Truth” (full title above) contains over 100 pages of densely cited case studies that show how Western sponsorship of Islamic militants – across both Democrat and Republican administrations – has morphed into what we now call al-Qaida. Moreover, these case studies support the book’s assertion that al-Qaida was not ”an ‘enemy’ to be fought and eliminated, but rather an unpredictable intelligence asset to be controlled, manipulated, and co-opted to secure covert strategic ends.”

Additional red flags about the 9/11 attacks are impossible to detail in limited space. Some include the Air Force failure to intercept any of the hijacked planes during the 90-minute duration of the attacks; warnings of the attacks from 11 countries; avoidance of commercial airliners by John Aschroft and top Pentagon officials prior to 9/11; troubling allegations of at least five different FBI whistleblowers; and incontrovertible evidence that the 9/11 commission was a whitewash. These observations, detailed in the books above, raise the disturbing question of whether 9/11 was facilitated by U.S. officials, perhaps to foster public support of overseas military activity in Eurasia. The theater of the so-called war on terrorism coincides perfectly with the location of strategic energy reserves and pipeline conduits.

At least two precedents exist for this otherwise unthinkable idea. In 1962, all U.S. joint chiefs of staff signed a plan, ”Operation Northwoods,” designed to stimulate public support for an invasion of Cuba. It involved attacks against civilians in Florida and Washington, D.C., by U.S.-controlled agents posing as Cuban terrorists. The plan is detailed at abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662, and is archived at the U.S. Archives and Records Administration, via wanttoknow.info/operationnorthwoods. A second possible precedent occurred in 1993 under the watch of the Clinton administration; you can read about it in ”The War on Truth.”

We appear to have a bipartisan problem here that all Americans should take seriously.