by
Gregory Greene
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana
On February 27, 1933, a mentally deranged Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, lit a few small fires in the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in Berlin--not enough to set the building alight, but sufficient to get him hanged as the sole perpetrator afterward. The happenings prior to that fateful evening, and the events following it, carry some lessons for those wanting to understand September 11, 2001, and the subsequent developments.
van der Lubbe, a petty criminal and arsonist, hated the Nazis, and had bragged about intending to set the Reichstag on fire while having a beer in a pub. The Nazi SA, with ears everywhere, found out, and, unbeknownst to van der Lubbe, an SA detachment entered the building through a disused central heating tunnel. While the Dutchman was busy lighting insignificant fires, using his shirt as tinder, the SA planted gasoline and incendiaries <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/reic-j05.shtml>, and within minutes, the Reichstag was burning out of control. Why did the Nazis do this?
At the time, Hitler had a problem. Based on the success of the Nazi party in the previous election, Hitler had become Reichskanzler, or Prime Minister, but he lacked a majority in both the government and the parliament. Having no intention of playing second fiddle to his rivals, a coalition of moderate parties, he needed a decisive victory in the March 5 election. He also was uncomfortable with the democratic process, and wanted to proceed directly to Nazi supremacy and dictatorship.
Hitler's solution was to eliminate the Communist party and its 100 deputies, which would give his Nazis a majority in the remaining parliament. By ensuring that van der Lubbe succeeded in destroying the Reichstag, he could pronounce the fire a Communist conspiracy. By the next morning he had secured the signature of the aging President, von Hindenburg, on legislation that changed Germany from a democracy to a tyranny. The one hundred Communist deputies were arrested, civil rights were abrogated, and the country embraced Hitler as its Leader.
In mid 2001, the Republican government in the United States was having a problem. It was seen as merely presiding over a recession, having accomplished nothing of significance, and it faced an uphill battle in getting the largest peacetime defense budget increase approved in Congress. The corporate sponsors of the Bush administration were, no doubt, getting impatient: the stocks of the defense industry were still losing their value, and, lacking a credible enemy, there were serious reservations in Congress against spending more on defense.
During the weeks prior to September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists made it known that they were going to hit some notable landmarks in America, and hit them hard. These boasts surfaced on the Internet, much the same as van der Lubbe's bragging in the Berlin beer hall. Much as in Germany in the '30s, help was forthcoming, and for the same reasons.
Fully aware of the threat to the nation's aviation from slipshod security in US airports, the government did nothing to improve it; in fact, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) top management intentionally hid <http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/02/25/usat-whistleblower.htm> reported security weaknesses.
On the morning of September 11, four large passenger jets with full fuel tanks--powerful "poor man's cruise missiles"--went off course over the US Northeast, and ceased communicating with Air Traffic Control. Flight controllers overheard sounds of a struggle from the cockpit of one plane. Passengers made cellular phone calls from two of the flights, reporting that the planes had been hijacked. Normally, when something like this happens, the US Air Force, which has fighter jets ready to intercept troubled or suspicious civilian aircraft on short notice, begins escorting the offending plane, and, if necessary, forcing it to land, within ten minutes of being alerted by the FAA.
But that day, each of the four planes was allowed to continue off-course for as long as half an hour or more. Finally, after the first one had hit the World Trade Center in New York, a couple of fighter jets were scrambled from Boston, which ensured that they couldn't reach New York before the second impact. No sorties <http://www.rense.com/general18/atcd.htm > were flown from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, charged with protecting New York, or Andrews AFB, responsible for protecting the DC area. But, according to the Arlington, VA fire department, by the time the fourth passenger plane hit the Pentagon, the FBI was already on the bridge over the Potomac, headed for the target.
In March 2002, this writer interviewed the man who on 9-11-2001 was chief of security for the Federal Aviation Administration, overseeing all Air Traffic Control in the USA. When asked why the four planes were allowed to continue off course rather than being escorted in normal order, the gentleman became visibly agitated and embarked on a convoluted explanation that included at least two blatant lies. He wasn't used to lying, but he gallantly did his best for his President and his country, and, hopefully, one day he'll get a medal for it.
The two clear inconsistencies were as follows:
The hijackers had shut off the transponders of the planes, and ATC, as a consequence, lost the indication of identity, height, speed, and course for all four planes. In the morning rush, the fact that the radar blips continued off the expected course wasn't noticed in any of the four cases. (Comment: When a plane's transponder fails or is switched off, visible and audible alarms go off at ATC, and the pilot is immediately contacted and told to switch to the backup transponder.)
ATC was too busy diverting planes that were no longer allowed to land in the US to notice the four planes that had gone off course. (Comment: The ban on landing in the US was issued after the four planes had impacted.)
Interestingly, interviewed by Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20 on December 4, 2001, Laura Bush let it slip that already back in July, the White House had decided that the 2001 Christmas card needed a more somber text (see note <http://gregorygreene.50megs.com/note.html>).
So far, the parallels with what happened in Germany in February 1933 are evident. They become clearer still when we look at the results of the attacks. Just as in Germany in 1933, the text of the new US legislation abrogating constitutionally guaranteed civil rights was ready <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12032> at the time of the WTC and Pentagon attacks.
Cont ...