Did a Plane Hit the Pentagon?

• many eyewitnesses saw a plane crash into the Pentagon
• the passenger and crew remains from American Airlines flight 77 were recovered at the Pentagon crash site
• eyewitness reports and photographs show plane debris at the Pentagon crash site
• passengers on American Airlines flight 77 made phone calls, reporting their aircraft had been hijacked
• senior Al Qaeda leaders have admitted they conducted the September 11 attacks.

• Boeing commercial aircraft can not be remotely controlled
• passengers on both flights that attacked the World Trade Center made phone calls, reporting that their aircraft had been hijacked
• senior Al Qaeda leaders have admitted they conducted the September 11 attacks.

• numerous eyewitness accounts of an American Airlines passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon
• phone calls from passengers on American Airlines flight 77 reporting that it had been hijacked
• eyewitness accounts of airplane parts and the bodies of airline passengers still strapped in their seats found at the Pentagon crash site, as well as photographs of airplane parts
• the remains of bodies recovered at the Pentagon crash site positively identified as matching those of the passengers and crew on American Airlines flight 77
• acknowledgements by high-ranking al Qaeda members that they carried out the September 11 attacks.

No Boeing commercial jet transport can be controlled from outside the airplane. No Boeing commercial jet transport can be "commanded" or have its flight controlled other than from within the flight deck by the pilots. Pilots can program the airplane to take off, fly to a destination and land automatically, but Boeing design philosophy keeps pilots in control and in the decision-making loop at all times.

At 8:19, Ong reported: "The cockpit is not answering, somebody's stabbed in business class -- and I think there's Mace -- that we can't breathe -- I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked." She then told of the stabbings of the two flight attendants.

... At 8:26, Ong reported that the plane was "flying erratically." A minute later, Flight 11 turned south. ...

Sweeney calmly reported on her line that the plane had been hijacked; a man in first class had his throast slashed; two flight attendants had been stabbed -- one was seriously hurt and was on oxygen while the other's wounds seemed minor ....

At 8:52, in Easton, Connecticut, a man named Lee Hanson received a phone call from his son Peter, a passenger on United 175. His son told him, "I think they've taken over the cockpit -- An attendant has been stabbed -- and someone else up front may have been killed." ...

Also at 8:52, a male flight attendant called a United office in San Francisco .... The flight attendant reported that the flight had been hijacked, both pilots had been killed, a flight attendant had been stabbed, and the hijackers were probably flying the plane.

... At 8:59, Flight 175 passenger Brian David Sweeney ... called his mother, Louise Sweeney, told her the flight had been hijacked, and added that the passengers were thinking about storming the cockpit to take control of the plane away from the hijackers.

At 9:00, Lee Hanson received a second call from his son Peter:

"It's getting bad, Dad -- A stewardess was stabbed -- They seem to have knives and Mace -- They said they have a bomb -- ... The plane is making jerky movements -- I don't think the pilot is flying the plane -- I think we are going down -- Don't worry, Dad -- If it happens, it'll be very fast -- My God, my God."

The call ended abruptly. Lee Hanson heard a woman scream just before it cut off. He turned on a television, and in her home so did Louise Sweeney. Both of them saw the second aircraft hit the World Trade Center.

• Richard Benedetto: "It was an American Airlines airplane, I could see it very clearly."
• Omar Campo, a Salvadorean" "It was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane. I was cutting grass and it came in screaming over my head."
• Joseph Candelario: "I noticed a large aircraft flying low towards the White House. This aircraft then made a sharp turn and flew towards the Pentagon and seconds later crashed into it."
• James Cissell: "I saw this plane coming in and it was low - and getting lower. ... Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board."
• Dennis Clem: "There was a commercial airliner that said American Airliners over the side of it flying at just above treetop height at full speed headed for the Pentagon."
• Michael Dobbs: "It was an American airlines airliner. I was looking out the window and saw it come right over the Navy annex at a slow angle."
• Penny Elgas: "... the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car .... I remember recognizing it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the color stripes."
• Cheryl Hammond: "We saw the big American Airlines plane and started running."
• Joe Harrington: "... one of my guys pointed to an American Airlines airplane 20 feet high over Washington Blvd."
• Albert Hemphill: "The aircraft, look[ed] to be either a 757 or Airbus."
• Terrance Kean: "I saw this very, very large passenger jet. It just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon."
• William Lagasse: "It was close enough that I could see the windows and the blinds had been pulled down. I read American Airlines on it. ... I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground."
• Robert Leonard: "I ... saw a large commercial aircraft aiming for the Pentagon."
• Lincoln Liebner: "I saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low."
• Elaine McCusker: "I saw a very low-flying American Airlines plane that seemed to be accelerating."
• Mitch Mitchell: "I ... saw, coming straight down the road at us, a huge jet plane clearly with American Airlines written on it .... It crossed about 100 feet in front of us and at about 20 feet altitude and we watched it go in. It struck the Pentagon."
• Terry Morin: "The plane had a silver body with red and blue stripes down the fuselage. I believed at the time that it belonged to American Airlines."
• Christopher Munsey: "I couldn't believe what I was now seeing to my right: a silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the Pentagon ...."
• Vin Narayanan: "I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me. The jet roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25 feet."
• John O'Keefe: "I don't know whether I saw or heard it first -- this silver plane; I immediately recognized it as an American Airlines jet ...."
• Steve Riskus: "I was close enough (about 100 feet or so) that I could see the ‘American Airlines' logo on the tail as it headed towards the building .... I clearly saw the ‘AA' logo with the eagle in the middle."
• James Ryan: "I see an American Airlines plane, silver plane, I could see AA on the tail. ... The plane was low enough that I could see the windows of the plane. I could see every detail of the plane. In my head I have ingrained forever this image of every detail of that plane. It was a silver plane, American Airlines plane, and I recognized it immediately as a passenger plane."
• Joel Sucherman: "... looking straight ahead there was a jet, what looked to be an American Airlines jet, probably a 757, and it came screaming across the highway ... [and] hit the west side of the Pentagon."
• Donald "Tim" Timmerman, a pilot: "I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon ... and so I have quite a panorama. ... It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question."
  Mike Walter: "I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. ... It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon. I saw the big ‘AA' on the side."
• Ian Wyatt: "I duck, I look up, it looks like a silver American Airlines, twin-engine plane and then boom."

9/11 Revealed?

World Trade Center, September 11, 2001. (AP)

The two aircraft hit the towers at high speed and did considerable damage to principal structural components: core columns, perimeter columns, and floors.  However, the towers withstood the impacts and would have remained standing were it not for the dislodged insulation and the subsequent multifloor fires.  …

In WTC 1, the fires weakened the core columns and caused the floors on the south side of the building to sag.  The floors pulled the heated south perimeter columns inward, reducing their capacity to support the building above.  Their neighboring columns quickly became overloaded as the south wall buckled.  The top section of the building titled to the south and began its descent.  …

In WTC 2, the core was damaged severely at the southeast corner ….  The steady burning fires on the east side of the building caused the floors there to sag.  The floors pulled the heated east perimeter columns inward, reducing their capacity to support the building above.  Their neighboring columns quickly became overloaded as the east wall buckled.  The top section of the building tilted to the east and to the south and began its descent.  …

The WTC towers would likely not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact and the extensive, multifloor fires if the thermal insulation had not been widely dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged by aircraft impact.

NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001.  NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers.  Instead, photos and videos from several angles clearly showed that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward, until the dust clouds obscured the view.

The structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass .... The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that ....

Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall .... As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass.

The falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it, much like the action of a piston, forcing material, such as smoke and debris, out the windows ....

Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings.  The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1.

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center.  The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires.  Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed.  No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks.  Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation.  For example, the volume of put options – investments that pay off only when a stock drops in price – surged in the parent companies of United Airlines [UAL] on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10 – highly suspicious trading on its face.  Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11.  A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10.  Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades.  These examples typify the evidence examined by the investigation.  The SEC [Security and Exchange Commission] and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments.  These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous.

According to the Kean Commission [9/11 Commission] Report (p. 168), in March 2000, [Mohammed Atta] “emailed 31 different U.S. flight schools on behalf of a small group of men from various Arab countries studying in Germany who, while lacking prior training, were interested in learning to fly in the United States.”  Why would a terrorist openly approach flying schools in the USA this way?

Clouds of smoke billow out of the Pentagon.

• 911research.wtc7.net claims this is unusual considering the Pentagon's close proximity to Andrews Air Force Base and the well-established standard operating procedures for intercepting aircraft which go off course or lose communication, [77] i.e., between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. [78] Thus, 911research.wtc7.net suggests that routine interception procedures were not followed on September 11th. Officials state that only two airfields in the north sector of the U.S. had aircraft available for scramble: Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia.
• Meyssan claims that anti-missile batteries at the Pentagon should have intercepted Flight 77.^[7]
• The website  put forth a theory that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon because it considers photographic evidence of plane wreckage lying on the grounds of the Pentagon to be ambiguous. They claim that they cannot find burnt metal, human remains, passenger's luggage or seats.
• As a response to this claim, 911research.wtc7.net points to similar crashes where the entire aircraft was converted to small, unrecognizable confetti-like debris. This crash is an example of such a case. Furthermore, some  do show aircraft debris.
• Most of the photographic evidence of the plane was taken inside the building [79] by search teams and investigators. (Images)
  

  

  CNN released frame of the explosion at the Pentagon as captured by a surveillance camera.

• 911research.wtc7.net says that the resolution of the image is less than desirable to determine with any degree of accuracy what caused the explosion and the images were not released officially, but were leaked, and the incorrect time and date have added to the speculation. [80]
• An article on earth-citizens.net with a 3D analysis of the scene shot by the cctv camera shows the trajectory of an alleged smoke trail in the images. The article claims that this means it is impossible for it to have been made by any kind of flying object, and further claim that this demonstrates these five frames have been doctored. [81]

• Many 9/11 researchers [83],[84],[85],[86],[87] including Kristen Breitweiser[88], member of theon, call for the release of all information regarding the crash and suggest that the withholding such information is government secrecy.[89] Two videos [90] of the crash were released on May 16th, 2006 by the Pentagon.

• Wedge 1, as the area is referred to, began renovation in 1998. A phased move-in of tenants began in February 2000, with the last tenant move-in completed February 6, 2003.
• The aircraft struck the northern edge of Wedge 1, and some speculate this location to be indicative of insider involvement, noting it as a possible attempt to reduce casualties.

• Others argue that given the reinforced strength of the building in comparison to the relative light weight material that made up the aircraft, considerable damage was made. The impact point did fit the dimensions of the 757 flight-deck and fuselage -- minus the jet engines, tail, and wings.[92]

So the AMA feels that it's a violation of "the ethical obligations of physicians" which prohibit involvment in a "legally authorized execution." 

But its not an ethical violation to have physicians involve themselves in about four million abortions a year.  I realize that if doctors have religious or other problems they don't have to do abortions.  The AMA has no problem with doctors performing abortions [which will-I feel-end an
innocent life] but a "legally authorized execution" after trial and appeals that is a no-no for doctors.

American Medical Association President Dr. William G. Plested said Monday that medical professionals should not participate in executions of prisoner

"The American Medical Association is troubled by continuous refusal of many state courts and legislatures to acknowledge the ethical obligations of physicians, which strictly prohibit physician involvement in a legally authorized execution," he said in a statement. "The AMA's policy is clear and unambiguous - requiring physicians to participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession.

"A physician is a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so. The use of a physician's clinical skill and judgment for purposes other than promoting an individual's health and welfare undermines a basic ethical foundation of medicine - first, do no harm.

"The guidelines in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics address physician participation in executions involving lethal injection. The ethical opinion explicitly prohibits selecting injection sites for executions by lethal injection, starting intravenous lines, prescribing, administering, or supervising the use of lethal drugs, monitoring vital signs, on site or remotely, and declaring death.

"As the voice of American medicine, the AMA urges all physicians to remain dedicated to our ethical obligations that prohibit involvement in capital punishment."

REVISIONIST POLITICS

Though he continued his ultimately successful fight to win the Cold War, Reagan achieved nothing new--practically nothing--after the Iran-contra scandal broke in 1986. His presidency was crippled. The Republicans had lost the Senate. His nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 was defeated, partly because of feeble White House support. His veto of a transportation bill was overridden.

The question was innocent enough, but it reflected a broader pattern of misrepresentation of Ronald Reagan's record in the White House that has become not only widespread but widely accepted. Reagan was, I believe, one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century, but many of the things that both liberals and conservatives now credit to his presidency simply never were. And there's a political purpose behind this Reagan revisionism. He is cited mostly to criticize Mr. Bush and congressional Republicans for falling short of some mythical Reagan standard.

Of course, that wasn't Mr. Kerry's take on Reagan during his presidency: In 1988, he condemned the "moral darkness of the Reagan-Bush administration." A chief complaint of liberals and the media in those days was that Mr. Reagan was a "detached" president, not one easily accessible to Democratic members of Congress or anyone outside his inner circle of aides. But Reagan had to talk to Democrats on occasion since they controlled at least half of Congress. Mr. Bush rarely consults them for the simple reason that Republicans run all of Capitol Hill; so he talks frequently with Republican congressional leaders.

Liberals today talk about Reagan as if the hallmark of his administration was a lack of partisanship--again in contrast with Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry noted in 2004 that Mr. Reagan "taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship." Mr. Bush, naturally, is the bitter partisan. Of course that's what liberals then thought of Reagan--and they were partially right: While never bitter, Reagan was in fact a partisan Republican.

On foreign policy, some liberals peddle the notion that Reagan wasn't the hardliner he might have seemed. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, has argued that Reagan, having won the Cold War, was ready to rely on international organizations to police the world. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is impugned as the enemy of the U.N. and multilateralism.

Reagan a moderate in foreign affairs? It strains credulity to imagine the president--who supported wars of national liberation in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan, who bombed Libya to punish Gadhafi, who defiantly installed Pershing missiles in Europe, who invaded Grenada--as anything but a hardliner. He was a hawk for whom defeating the Soviet Union was the essential priority.

It's on foreign policy that liberals and conservatives find common cause. Patrick Buchanan, rehearsing the pieties of the political left, argues that Mr. Bush has turned the world against America. The "endless bellicosity" of Mr. Bush and his neoconservative advisers, he recently argued, "has produced nothing but ill will against us. This was surely not the way of the tough but gracious and genial Ronald Reagan."

Of all people, Mr. Buchanan ought to know better, having served as Reagan's communications director from 1984 to 1986. Reagan generated massive antiwar and anti-American demonstrations around the world, far larger and more numerous protests than those Mr. Bush has occasioned. He famously denounced the Soviet "evil empire" headed for "the ash-heap of history." He was treated by the press as a cowboy warmonger, just as Mr. Bush has been. Ill will? Reagan produced plenty--all in a noble cause.

Conservatives attack Mr. Bush most vehemently on excessive government spending, and there they have a point. He could have been more frugal, despite the exigent circumstances, especially in his first term. But it's also on the spending issue that the Reagan myth--Reagan as the relentless swashbuckler against spending--is most pronounced. He won an estimated $35 billion in spending cuts in 1981, his first year in office. After that, spending soared, so much so that his budget director David Stockman, who found himself on the losing end of spending arguments, wrote a White House memoir with the subtitle, "Why the Reagan Revolution Failed."

With Reagan in the White House, spending reached 23.5% of GDP in 1984, the peak year of the military buildup. Under Mr. Bush, the top spending year is 2005 at 20.1% of GDP, though it is expected to rise as high as 20.7% this year, driven upward by Iraq and hurricane relief.

This speech by the DNC Chairman Howard Dean makes the most absurd comments about a wartime American President [notably George W. Bush].  The comment that Bush is absent on the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and the assumption that if a Democrat were President there would not be these problems makes no sense.  U.S. leaders for years have been trying to make peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, but there are elements in this area that do not want peace with Israel they want the elemination of Israel because they are Jews plain and simple.  Comments by Dean that a Democrat could work some magic and end decades of violence just shows another reason why Democrats [the liberal leftist kind] should not ever be trusted with being responsible for our national security again.   Osama still at large, I've never heard  any secret method that the Democrats have let us know how they can get him if they  would ever [I hope not] get back in power.  Dean does not mention the Clinton Administration deal worked out that put North Korea on the path to nuclear weapons, we are using methods to stop Iran [its diplomacy that "they" wanted us to use against Iraq].  Now do they want us to attack Iran?  This is an example of what we would have if the 2006 elections bring the Democrats back in control of one or both houses of Congress, so remember that when you vote in November.  Look at the alternative.

Democratic chairman speaks at conference

July 16, 2006

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean accused President Bush last night of being weak on national defense and absent in the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

In remarks at San Diego State University, Dean urged activists to fan across the nation – including deep into the heart of Republican-rich “red” states – to tell voters that Bush has failed as president – including in national defense, which Republicans tout as their core strength.

“There are a lot of things we can say when we knock on the door (of voters),” Dean told hundreds at San Diego State's Open Air Theater.

“You know, people say the Republicans are tough on defense. How can you be tough on defense if five years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still at large, the Iranians are about to get nuclear weapons, North Korea's quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash. . . .

“Explain to me how it is that this president is tough on defense? I think this president is weak on defense and he's hurt America because he hasn't done the right thing,” Dean said.

Dean was the keynote speaker on the second day of a three-day conference called DemocracyFest, billed as part conference, part festival for progressive activists.

Dean waged a rollicking bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, which fizzled en route to the nomination battle in Iowa. He built on the strength of his grassroots network, expert at raising money on the Internet. He promised to apply that knowledge when he became chairman of the Democratic Party last year.

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Dean's attack on Bush's national security policies.

“Howard Dean is the chief spokesman of a party that has highlighted obstruction and hasn't provided real answers that matter to the American people,” Bounds said.

“He's not going to be able to come into San Diego and disguise the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't have real answers for the issues that are important to the American people.”

Introduced by comedian and radio host Al Franken, Dean touched on various high points of the Democratic Party's national agenda, including a higher minimum wage, environmental protection and voting initiatives.

Dean was especially pointed in an area the Bush administration has long claimed as its home turf – a muscular national defense.

Dean said the Bush administration's decision to go to war against Iraq and its overall foreign policy have hurt America's standing in the world.

“This country is in the worst shape since Richard Nixon, and probably before that,” Dean said.

“We've lost the high moral high ground everywhere in the world. We want to be respected around the world again.

“We want our moral authority to be restored, because part of defending America is not just well-armed troops; it's having the high moral ground.”

In an apparent reference to Israeli military action deep inside Lebanon, Dean said:

“If you think what's going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn't, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn't get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Dean also focused on the battle this fall in the midterm election in the 50th Congressional District, where Democrat Francine Busby hopes to unseat incumbent Republican Brian Bilbray. Dean predicted victory for Busby.

Bilbray defeated Busby last month in the contest to fill out the remaining term of disgraced former Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in federal prison after taking more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors.

The outcome of the November Busby-Bilbray rematch will determine who holds the seat for the next two-year term.

The Washington Post on July 9 published an article, "When in Doubt, Publish," which began by saying that, "It is the business--and the responsibility--of the press to reveal secrets." It was signed by five major figures involved in the field of journalism education. In fact, however, it attempted to justify the publication of some--but not all--"secret" information. In the process of trying to sound like guardians of the public's right to know, they disclosed their preference for keeping the American people in the dark about what the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says is a major faction of the CIA that is deliberately subverting the foreign policy of the Bush Administration.

While the New York Times' violation of the law barring publication of classified communications intelligence information was justified by these titans of modern-day American journalism, there was said to be "no justification" at all for conservative columnist Bob Novak to have written a column identifying Valerie Plame as a "covert CIA officer." Claiming she had been "unmasked" by Novak, they implied that her employment status in the agency was a closely held secret and that revealing this information about her was a major threat to the national security of the U.S.

The Times is being excused for compromising secret programs to apprehend terrorists, while Novak is excoriated for writing about a CIA employee working a desk job and running a "front" company. This attitude helps explain why the media went into a feeding frenzy over the Novak column about Plame but defend the New York Times for publishing stories that facilitate the murder of Americans.

In contrast to the conduct of the Times, which disclosed a highly classified NSA program in clear violation of Section 798 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Novak's publication of Valerie Plame's name and affiliation with the CIA was not a violation of the law. The law which drove the investigation of the case did not apply to Novak, who was simply passing on information from administration officials about her role in getting her husband Joseph Wilson sent on a CIA mission to Africa. The law covered those who deliberately exposed a CIA officer's secret identity for the purpose of damaging U.S. intelligence. That was not the case here, and no charges in that regard have been filed.

Novak should be praised, not criticized, for bringing forth information that is still critically important to understanding the nature of the Wilson mission and the rogue CIA elements behind it. It is a story that we still need to know if U.S. intelligence agencies are to remain under the clear control of elected officials.

The signers of this Post column were Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California; John Lavine, dean, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University; Nicholas Lemann, dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University; Orville Schell, dean, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley; and Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center, Harvard University.

As strange as it may seem, their erroneous claim about Plame's status at the CIA appears to have been taken from transcripts of the Chris Matthews MSNBC Hardball show, whose correspondent, David Shuster, had erroneously predicted that White House aide Karl Rove would be indicted for his role in talking to Novak and allegedly "outing" Plame. Shuster was also responsible for the completely unsubstantiated claim that Plame was a top agency operative on the trail of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Her supposed intelligence "cover," like the Rove indictment predicted by Shuster, was a figment of the liberal imagination. Some of those who met with Wilson during his many TV appearances have said that he used to introduce her as his CIA wife. There was at least one thing truly secret about her, however. Wilson had desperately wanted her role in getting him on that trip kept confidential. That's why he raised it in his book, The Politics of Truth, saying it would be a violation of federal nepotism laws if she had played such a role, and then categorically denied that she had done so. This preemptive strike was his way of discouraging the press from unraveling the pretense that he was an objective observer who simply uncovered the facts about the Bush Iraq policy and was retaliated against for innocently providing them to the Times. Unfortunately for Wilson and his CIA backers, the Senate Intelligence Committee found documents proving that Plame did play a role in the Wilson junket. Wisely, some reporters then started backing away from Wilson, noting his lack of credibility. But not the Matthews crowd at MSNBC.

Rather than being "covert" in any real sense, we can now say with confidence that Plame was an anti-Bush operative from the get-go, working with other like-minded agency personnel on an agenda designed to sabotage the President's 2004 re-election bid and foreign policy. This is a story that has serious implications for the ability of the American people to affect the course of our nation and its foreign policy through free and democratic elections. If there is a rogue element in the CIA that is manipulating the press and the government behind the scenes, is this not a story that should be told? Those who run our journalism schools don't seem to think so.

On the same day the Post article attacking Novak's public-service journalism was published, the New York Times inadvertently revealed the thinking of a top member of Congress, with access to the most sensitive information about U.S. intelligence activities, on the significance of the Wilson/Plame affair.

The Times reported that Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had sent a private letter to President Bush about a range of intelligence issues. Predictably, The Times focused on a vague reference in the letter to secret programs that Hoekstra had wanted Congress to be briefed on. The Times thought this was proof that the administration was running illegal programs, a favorite theme of the liberal media in their zeal to discredit Bush.

But the Hoekstra letter was quite specific about what is going on in the CIA. The Times article, however, did not highlight that part of the letter in which Hoekstra referred to events in the Valerie Plame affair as the result of "a strong and well-positioned group" within the CIA that "intentionally undermined the Administration and its policies." Readers of the on-line Times were able to read the whole letter, which was posted on the paper's website.

The Hoekstra letter also refers to Stephen Kappes returning to the CIA as Deputy Director when it is believed that he "may have been part" of the group that was determined to sabotage the Bush Administration.

The real story, suggested by Hoekstra, is that some administration officials talked to Novak and other journalists about Wilson and Plame precisely because they knew that she and other CIA officials were behind Wilson's visit to Africa, and that the purpose of his trip was to come back and discredit the President's well-documented claim that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium there. Wilson placed his broadside in a friendly outlet, the New York Times. Once Plame's alleged "cover" was blown by Novak, this powerful group inside the agency, of which Plame was a member or collaborator, demanded and got (with the support of the New York Times) the appointment of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. The purpose was to find out who named Plame to Novak. It backfired in one key respect, however, because Fitzgerald turned his attention back to the role of Times reporter Judith Miller, who ended up spending 85 days in jail rather than reveal whom she had talked to in the administration about Wilson and Plame. Miller eventually agreed to testify and was paid a substantial but still secret severance package to leave the Times. The paper just could not forgive her for considering giving the administration some space and attention for its views on the Wilson affair, as well as her pre-Iraq War reporting. Tragically, Miller never wrote that story, which could have exposed and possibly derailed the CIA plot against Bush. Now we know why. In a May 16 Wall Street Journal column, Miller praised Kappes and hailed his return to the CIA. He had left in a dispute with agency director Porter Goss, who was eventually forced out.

For her part, Plame had contributed to the Al Gore-for-president campaign through her CIA "front" company and would surface as a financial contributor to the Kerry-for-President campaign through a group called America Coming Together. Her husband would sign up as a Kerry adviser. All of these developments would confirm what had been suspected by the Bush Administration all along. The Africa trip and Times op-ed were part of an obvious plan by partisan political forces in the CIA to use the agency to sabotage the President's Iraq policy.

One of the victims and one of Miller's sources, former Vice Presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, was eventually indicted, but not for revealing anything about Plame's alleged "covert" status. Instead, the questionable case against Libby rests almost exclusively on the recollections of journalists like NBC's Tim Russert about what Libby said, or didn't say, to them about the case. The conflicting accounts and bad memories are said to constitute lying on the part of Libby, rather than our trustworthy journalists. NBC's Andrea Mitchell claimed it was common knowledge among some reporters that Plame was Wilson's wife and in the CIA. Later, she backed away from that statement.

Fitzgerald, of course, was not given a mandate to investigate those in the CIA who produced the "scandal" in the first place. Does anybody have the courage to take this project on?

The Hoekstra letter is terribly important if we are going to begin to have any understanding of how our democratic republic has been subverted by intelligence officials operating outside of our elected government. The added significance of the letter is that Hoekstra clearly fears that the Bush Administration, battered and bruised by a hostile CIA and a hostile press, has given up the fight. Perhaps Hoekstra has not.

There are lots of things "everybody knows" these days. "Everybody knows," for instance, that radiation is deadly, especially when food is exposed to it. "Everybody knows" that public school teachers are underpaid, and public schools underfunded. "Everybody knows" that outsourcing puts Americans out of work. The trouble is, in these and so many other cases, what "everybody knows" is flat wrong. Now, in Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, John Stossel exposes the errors behind hundreds of media-generated myths -- and reveals that the truth is often the opposite of what we've been taught to believe. Just as important, he also reveals who benefits from the deception -- whether it's big government, greedy lawyers, or special-interest groups looking for political advantage at taxpayers' expense.

Running parallel to his investigative reports for ABC's 20/20, Stossel's book covers everything from consumer cons and health myths to environmental scare-mongering and big-government propaganda.

• MYTH: Radioactivity is deadly. Keep it away from food! FACT: Food irradiation saves lives.

• MYTH: "Outsourcing" takes jobs away from Americans. FACT: "Outsourcing" creates American jobs.

• MYTH: Overpopulation causes poverty. FACT: Population has nothing to do with poverty.

• MYTH: A higher minimum wage helps poor workers. FACT: A higher minimum wage puts more poor workers out of work.

• MYTH: Farm subsidies help save family farms. FACT: Most farm subsidy money goes to giant agri-businesses.

• MYTH: "Sweatshops" exploit workers in poor countries. FACT: "Sweatshops" help workers escape poverty.

• MYTH: The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) helps make America less sexist and racist. FACT: The EEOC fans the flames of sexism and racism.

• MYTH: Aside from the obvious physical differences, men and women are pretty much the same. FACT: Science reveals that there are many differences -- mental, emotional, behavioral, and more.

• MYTH: Women earn less than men because of sexism. FACT: Women earn less for sound economic reasons.

• MYTH: Government regulation is necessary to protect consumers from unethical businesses. FACT: Competition protects us -- if government stays out of the way.

• MYTH: Government should put price controls on prescription drugs to protect the poor and sick. FACT: Price controls will harm the poor and the sick.

• MYTH: Business believes in free markets. FACT: Most businesspeople will use government regulation to stifle competition if it serves their interests.

• MYTH: Education is too important to be left to the private sector. FACT: Education is too important to be left to a government monopoly.

• MYTH: Private schools enable segregation. FACT: Public schools are more segregated the private schools.

• MYTH: Vouchers will hurt public schools. FACT: Vouchers will force public schools to compete -- and make them better.

• MYTH: Premium gas is better for your car. FACT: For 90 percent of cars sold today, high-octane is no better.

• MYTH: Malpractice lawsuits protect patients. FACT: Malpractice lawsuits encourage doctors to perform unnecessary procedures, endangering patients.

• MYTH: To invest in stocks, follow the experts. FACT: Stock "experts" get it wrong more often than right.

• MYTH: Global warming is a catastrophe in the making. FACT: Global warming is just a gradual trend coming out of what scientists call the "Little Ice Age."

• MYTH: Cracking your knuckles is bad for you. FACT: Crack away.

• Stossel on education: "Americans spend much more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on international tests."

• On "underpaid" teachers: "K-12 teachers average $45,081 a year. But most teachers only work nine months a year. If you look at the average hourly K-12 teacher wage ($30.91), it's more than chemists ($30.64), computer programmers ($28.98), registered nurses ($26.87), and psychologists ($28.49) make."

• On "overpopulation": "[Famine-struck] Niger's population density is nine person per square kilometer, miniscule compared to population densities in wealthy countries like the USA (28), Japan (340), the Netherlands (484), and Hong Kong (6,621). The number of people isn't the problem. Famine is cause by things like civil wars and government corruption. . . ."

• On gas prices: "If the price of a barrel of oil stays high, lots of entrepreneurs will scramble for ways to supply cheaper energy. . . . At fifty dollars a barrel, it's even profitable to recover oil that's stuck in the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, [which] alone contain enough oil to meet our needs for a hundred years."

• On "sweatshops": "In poor countries, the factories the well-fed American protesters revile routinely pay twice what local factories pay, and triple what people can earn doing much harder and more dangerous work in the fields."

• On farm subsidies: "In 1984, New Zealand eliminated farm subsidies cold turkey. Farm productivity, profitability, and output have soared since the reforms. The Federated Farmers of New Zealand say that the experience 'thoroughly debunked the myth that the farming sector cannot prosper without government subsidies."

• On drug prices: "Less than a third of marketed drugs have enough commercial success to recover the cost of their research and development. The hated pharmaceutical companies make big profits, but I want them to make big profits because they have to make huge investments, suffer lots of failures, and go through ten to fifteen years of testing before they can bring me the drugs that might save my life or alleviate my pain."

• On stock "experts": "Over the years ending October 31, 2005, only 5.72 percent of actively managed mutual funds had beaten the 500 stocks that make up the Standard & Poor's Index. In other words, 94 percent did worse. Over that fifteen-year period, you had a 94 percent better chance of making money if you ignored the advice from those well-paid professional stock pickers."

• On PBS: "PBS is welfare for the well-off. . . . Compared to other Americans, PBS viewers are 44 percent more likely to make more than $150,000 a year. . . . The free market serves its customers, and in the TV business, the customers are viewers. PBS, on the other hand, is broadcasting by bureaucracy. This is a bad idea. We need separation of news and state."

• On bottled water: "Many people believe that bottled water is cleaner. So we sent bottled and tap water samples to microbiologist Aaron Margolin, of the University of New Hampshire, to test for the bacteria, like E. coli, that can make you sick. 'No difference,' he said."