Kristen Breitweiser: "I think 25 years out, there's absolutely no complete understanding of what really happened" She says the families of 9-11 victims have never been given the opportunity to use the rule of law to give us a sense of accountability and justice for the murder of our loved ones . She says anyone who questioned anything about the attacks and how they could have happened and who could be behind them, you were silenced .
00:01:10.060We live in the United States of America.
00:01:11.980And to think that 3,000 people were massacred in broad daylight in lower Manhattan, and that there's not been a full accounting that is credible.
00:01:23.240There's not been the ability for the widows and kids to avail themselves of the judicial system, of the legal system.
00:01:30.760I just think it's a stain on the country.
00:01:35.520I'm someone that believes that we are a nation based upon the rule of law.
00:01:40.040And the reality is this nation's worst terrorist attack, the families left behind, have never been given the opportunity to use the rule of law to give us a sense of accountability and justice for the murder of our loved ones.
00:02:52.620Um, we lived in New Jersey, right across the water from where the attacks took place.
00:02:57.340We could smell the air, um, which was horrible.
00:03:01.100Um, and then we had the anthrax attacks and, um, that happened in near, you know, in New Jersey and near Princeton.
00:03:07.700Um, and so it was a really scary time.
00:03:10.920Um, and then subsequent to that, when things started to maybe subside, where people sort of regained their, um, sense of reality, um, we had the queue up to the war in Iraq.
00:03:22.220And anyone who questioned anything about the attacks and how they could have happened and who could be behind them, you were silenced because we were a nation at war and it was unpatriotic, um, to raise any questions, to, to question anything and to demand answers, certainly not allowed.
00:03:40.580Um, and so that sort of took, I think, quite a bit of years.
00:03:44.580Um, and now, believe it or not, I think for many of us, it's 25 years moving into the 25th year and I do not think that we've been told the truth.
00:03:53.780I think as hard as we fought for a commission to try to learn the lessons, to try to understand better why and how the attacks happened, um, I think that commission was a whitewash.
00:04:05.640I think, um, it told a story, not the truth.
00:04:09.540And there's a difference between a story and the truth.
00:04:13.080And I think we're owed the truth as to what happened that day and why the country was attacked and why we did nothing in a defensive posture to even mitigate the damage on the day of 9-11.
00:04:24.280It's bad enough when you look at the facts leading up to the day of 9-11 and you see the many instances of where things were sort of, um, overlooked, facilitated in some situations.
00:04:36.540Um, but the day of 9-11 as well, there were failures, systemic failures that, um, cost lives.
00:04:45.020And so for me, initially in the beginning, I was like, you know what, like we need to do better.
00:04:49.240The country needs to learn lessons, um, so that more lives could be saved if and when another terrorist attack happened.
00:04:56.360And for whatever reason, uh, President Bush wasn't interested in doing that, but he was interested in the war in Iraq.
00:05:03.640Um, and to me, 25 years looking back, 24 years looking back, I do wonder if the attacks, um, were to serve as the premise to allow for preemptive war.
00:05:14.960I think that when you do examine what had happened in the government since then, um, it certainly laid the groundwork for preemptive war.
00:05:25.900I think that, um, as someone who lost a loved one, I know the devastation war brings to a home and a family.
00:05:32.920And it makes me sick to think that no one was really held accountable for the war in Iraq, for the hundreds of thousands of lives, for the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
00:05:43.620Um, and it's, I'm just confounded with the fact that the American public never demanded that.
00:05:51.120And that for all intents and purposes, they got away with 9-11 and they got away with the war in Iraq.
00:05:56.980I agree with every word that you just said and thank, thank you for saying them because they're true.
00:06:01.240The one part where I would ask you to clarify, clearly 9-11 was used as a pretext, as an excuse for the war in Iraq, was used to justify it on, you know, famously false grounds.
00:06:14.280But that's a very different thing from 9-11 was staged or allowed to happen in order to justify the war in Iraq.
00:06:23.980I mean, I think, um, there's certainly, uh, theories out there, but I think when you look at the facts,
00:06:31.240it's, it's, it would be certainly more comforting for, uh, the government to come forward and prove that that's not the case, right?
00:06:40.160Like, it's uncomfortable as an American citizen to think that members of our intelligence apparatus, our intelligence community stood down,
00:06:49.580greased the wheels, facilitated different, um, fact scenarios that enabled the attacks that may or may not have already been underway.
00:06:58.220Um, and so there's a story out there that, that happened, that, you know, the CIA might have allowed certain, um, things to happen and to move forward because they were letting the line out to try to learn more about Al-Qaeda or terrorist groups, um, to learn more to get the big fish, quote unquote.
00:07:19.120Right. Um, you know, I think that that's an interesting, nice way to look at things, certainly a less diabolical way.
00:07:28.360Um, but there's a rule supposedly in the intel community that when you have, um, actionable intelligence, you're supposed to roll up the operation.
00:07:37.080And so one of the biggest questions that I have, uh, centers on the Yemen switchboard, the Al-Hatta house switchboard, um, the CIA apparently learned about that in, I think, 96.
00:07:49.600Um, they officially learned about it in 98 through the embassy bombing.
00:07:53.400And of course my question would be, if the CIA is monitoring the Al-Hatta switchboard, all of the communications that Bin Laden is sending out to his operatives around the world to carry out attacks, um, when the 98 embassy bombing happened, why didn't they go in and shut down the Al-Hatta switchboard?
00:08:11.660They didn't. They, I guess, wanted to leave the line out and continue to learn more information.
00:08:16.460And they didn't want to tip off Al-Qaeda or Bin Laden that they had ears on him and his operations.
00:08:22.220Okay. So the embassy bombing happens, kind of not great. Um, but then the USS Cole happens.
00:08:28.180In, um, 2000, 17 sailors were killed. Again, that information flew through the Al-Hatta switchboard.
00:08:35.000And the CIA still at that point doesn't go in and shut it down and stop it.
00:08:39.340I believe that if the Al-Hatta switchboard was shut down, it would have, at the very least, delayed the 9-11 attacks.
00:08:46.840And perhaps my husband would be alive today.
00:08:49.260Well, Grand Canyon University is not like most American colleges. It focuses on the things that actually matter.
00:08:55.320It is not a ripoff. It is the real thing.
00:08:59.240It's private, affordable, Christian university located in the heart of Phoenix.
00:09:03.900One of the largest universities in the country, actually.
00:09:05.860At Grand Canyon University, education is more than academics.
00:09:08.700It is about opportunity, the chance for every student to live out the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:09:15.400Rights are not given by the government.
00:09:17.080They were bestowed at birth, at conception, by God.
00:11:46.060And I think the explanation that people sympathetic to the CIA would give is that it was just too great having a window into their private communications.
00:11:56.760And like, why would you shut that down?
00:11:58.220Well, because first of all, the embassy bombing happened and I know it was only, you know, like 13 Americans or something like that.
00:12:06.620And mostly it happened in East Africa.
00:12:09.300So most of the casualties were African.
00:12:11.760And maybe they thought like, yeah, you're right.
00:12:13.660The cost benefit analysis, like we'll just, you know, we lost 13 military, whatever.
00:12:17.660But then the coal happens, that's 17 sailors.
00:12:21.860Each one of those lives means everything in the world to their family.
00:12:26.180And then 9-11 happens, 3,000 people are killed.
00:12:30.420At some point, you need to hold the CIA accountable.
00:12:33.080And instead of holding the CIA accountable, people like Kofor Black, George Tenet, we had George Tenet getting a Medal of Freedom.
00:12:42.920But more disturbing to me was that you took the same director of the CIA that had so utterly failed before 9-11, utterly failed with the USS Cole.
00:12:52.380And you relied on him to give you intelligence for the WMD in Iraq.
00:12:59.180And somehow you thought it was going to be credible and worthwhile.
00:13:03.320It's inconceivable to me why President Bush would have done that, right?
00:13:12.200And so what you see is this systemic, long-term carrying out of policy by American leaders, whether it's a president, a vice president, whether it's members of Congress, the intel committees, that are sort of looking past these failures of the intel community.
00:14:35.880But I think that that's something that the American public needs to start considering and start wondering why we have a government that's not willing to hold people that are responsible for this nation's worst terrorist attack accountable for their failures.
00:14:55.580And for their, you know, in some ways, negligence, I believe, criminal negligence and not stopping the attacks.
00:15:05.320What's interesting is that what you said is identical, as far as I know, to what an awful lot of people who are involved in 9-11 think now.
00:15:13.840You know, government officials who are, at whatever level, were around the events, were making decisions based on the events, you know, who are right there.
00:15:23.320They all kind of think what, as far as I know, having asked a lot, because we made this documentary series that you were nice enough to participate in, the view you just expressed is like very common.
00:15:33.760You're not some lone wacko on the internet at all.
00:15:36.240And you've been deeply involved in this for a quarter century.
00:15:39.120But all these other people have reached the same conclusion.
00:15:42.040So why is no one saying this out loud?
00:15:45.440I mean, I think that there's an institutional block on saying it out loud.
00:15:49.840I think it's exceedingly uncomfortable to think that, you know, there's blood on the hands of the United States government and its intelligence community.
00:15:58.380And I think that, you know, there's a long game here where the more time that passes, the less and less interested the American public is, right?
00:16:07.020And not just the U.S. government, by the way.
00:16:08.860I mean, I don't know your views on this, but I can, I don't know the answer.
00:16:12.540I would have put it in the doc series if we'd found out.
00:16:14.920But I just know for a fact that a lot of non-crazy, highly informed people think that the U.S. government, parts of the CIA specifically, which saw its role expand, its funding expand, it won.
00:16:27.980And also, you know, an allied government also got a lot out of this.
00:16:37.400I think that for me personally, my initial focus was on the U.S. government failures.
00:16:43.160I was very interested in what the U.S. government knew, why the attacks weren't prevented.
00:16:47.520And, you know, that was my original focus.
00:16:51.420And then certainly, we were sort of corralled into considering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
00:16:57.420That happened through, you know, a confluence of things.
00:17:00.480The Joint Inquiry of Congress did an investigation.
00:17:02.700They left 28 pages blank, blacked out, redacted.
00:17:05.860And, you know, the Whisper campaign began that it was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that had a strong hand in the attacks.
00:17:12.120They logistically and financially supported the hijackers.
00:17:15.100And, you know, undoubtedly, there's information there that could support that scenario.
00:17:20.620There's also historic facts that show that the U.S. intelligence community and the Saudis work together.
00:17:27.540You know, speaking here about, you know, Iran-Contra, speaking here as well about the years in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen.
00:17:37.460But then as years and years go by, you start to consider about other foreign allies that might have played a role.
00:17:43.900And what I think is most curious is the fact that we not only don't call for an examination, a real examination of our own intelligence community, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, DIA, defense intelligence.
00:18:00.060There's been no clarion call for that.
00:18:02.800There has been somewhat of a drill and focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
00:18:07.120And yet there's been nothing about, you know, the other ally in the region, which is Israel.
00:18:15.700I think that there are facts and circumstances that would warrant asking questions and asking what Israel knew about the hijackers time in the United States for the 18 months before 9-11.
00:18:31.840And I think that there is, you know, some FBI 302s that talk about alleged Mossad agents, you know, filming near Ground Zero.
00:18:40.660There were a series of art students sort of shadowing the hijackers for the year before 9-11, you know, and I don't understand why that information isn't just offered up.
00:18:51.540Like if no one did anything wrong, which is what everyone says, then why is that information not offered to the American public?
00:18:59.420In fact, to the world, to just say, here's everything we did, here's what we knew, and here's why we missed it.
00:19:05.400But instead of that, what you have is like pretty much a cover-up.
00:19:08.720And everything is shrouded in secrecy.
00:22:46.740So when President Bush, two days after 9-11, looks at his terrorism czar and says, I want you to do a look back.
00:22:54.960I want you to get everything out of the files that were connected to this.
00:22:57.980Do you think Richard Clark goes back to December of 1999 when they arrested Rassam, these two hijackers are coming into the country, he, Clinton, Berger, Tennant, are sitting in a room and they're like, what do we do?
00:26:53.160I think it was the operation to try to recruit the very hijackers that ultimately carried out 9-11.
00:26:58.800And I think that that's what they were covering up.
00:27:01.100And what's interesting to me is that Berger got, you know, pinched during the Bush administration.
00:27:08.720It was actually during the commission, the 9-11 commission.
00:27:11.180And Berger said that he was going to look at the documents to refresh his memory.
00:27:15.980What's really interesting is that the Bush administration, who was highly political and,
00:27:20.740you know, run by Karl Rove, the strategist, never really caused a ruckus about it.
00:27:26.120Like, they just sort of, like, looked past it and, like, let Sandy go do his community service.
00:27:30.200And to me, that meant that whatever he took must have protected both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration because the silence and the absolute, you know, vacuum of Karl Rove going after Sandy Berger during, you know, a midterm election year kind of, like, to me, speaks to what he must have taken and whose mess he was really cleaning up.
00:27:53.400So those are two documents that I think need to be released to the American public to shed some light on what could have been done to prevent the attacks.
00:28:01.800Richard Clark's look back two days after 9-11 that President Bush ordered and the Millennium After Action report.
00:28:11.240Now, the NSA had been listening to the El Hada switchboard from, like, 96 on.
00:28:15.500So that's a wealth of information, not only about 9-11, about the embassy bombings in East Africa, about the U.S.'s coal bombing.
00:28:24.400I think that those files that have never been investigated, never been examined fully, Phil Zelikow, the staff director of the 9-11 Commission, just didn't really see the need for it.
00:40:14.840And so what happened is, when the U.S. government doesn't take it upon itself to have a prosecution, to have an investigation, it's left to the victims' families to hire lawyers and do it on their own.
00:40:27.540And you're really hamstrung to do that.
00:40:30.360Like, you're talking about a terrorist attack where all the documents are classified.
00:40:35.840Everything that you need to learn about your case, to build your case, is in the government's hands.
00:40:40.640And the government refuses to give you that information.
00:40:43.440And so we're kind of left in this limbo where the U.S. government didn't do its job to prevent the attacks.
00:40:49.940Then the Department of Justice after 9-11 didn't do its job to prosecute or hold anyone accountable and provide justice to the murdered victims' families.
00:40:59.200And so the murdered victims' families turned to the civil litigation process, which, if everyone remembers O.J., you know, it was what Nicole Simpson's family had to do.
00:41:08.360You know, it's kind of a shitty second.
00:41:26.440Why were they unwilling to sue the U.S. government?
00:41:29.140First, they told us we weren't allowed, which is not true because in the wake of, you know, the last 20 years, you see the Emanuel Church family suing.
00:41:38.460You are allowed to sue the U.S. government.
00:41:41.380Our attorneys initially told us that we couldn't.
00:41:43.380Of course, we were also forced into what the government did, which was the Victims' Compensation Fund, which was retroactively taking away our right to sue by capping liability levels from 9-11.
00:42:48.760So you're going to have to go into this Victims' Compensation Fund run by this special master.
00:42:54.240And you'll be paid an amount of money and it's no fault and go away.
00:43:00.480And, you know, as an American citizen, a lawyer, I was like, wait a minute, you're not allowed to take away someone's right to sue after the murder.
00:51:04.420It was really like five to six minutes.
00:51:06.400And for some bizarre reason, on the morning of September 11th, those F-16s didn't get up in time.
00:51:13.080More to the point, the air bases where there were F-16 squadrons that could have gone and
00:51:18.520intercepted the errant planes on 9-11, they didn't call the F-16s from there.
00:51:24.520They called them from bases that were further away.
00:51:27.160A perfect example, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey had F-16s.
00:51:31.180They brought the planes from Otis, which was like, I think, 200 miles away from the city and away from the planes.
00:51:38.060Down in D.C., instead of running the F-16s out of Andrews, they ran them out of, I can't think of the name of that, but out of Maryland instead.
00:51:48.640And so what happened was the planes were hijacked and just allowed to crash into the buildings with no interception.
00:51:55.220Except for the final plane, Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, a number of eyewitnesses, many eyewitnesses saw military aircraft near that plane.
00:53:24.580That there was no, you know, evidence of the plane seats, of luggage, of, you know, it was just a black hole.
00:53:30.480I read a lot of books, and I'm really good at going to used book sales and finding old books.
00:53:37.340And there's a lot of 9-11 books that you can pick up at used book sales.
00:53:40.680And one of them is a group of reporters that put a book together with their photos and their recollection from the day of 9-11.
00:53:48.280And I read with great interest the two sections of that book, one on the Pentagon and one on Flight 93, because when you read these reporters' information about both crash sites and what they experienced that day, it doesn't really match up to what we've been told.
00:54:33.520The eyewitnesses that were literally there, they came from Pittsburgh, I think, and got to the scene quite early.
00:54:38.800And then suddenly, you know, like, federal agents came and, like, pushed them all back, pushed them all back, took film, took cameras, what have you.
00:54:48.140So that doesn't really, you know, raises questions like what happened.
00:54:52.340And I think the Pentagon is obviously a really good question.
00:54:56.040I think that we've been told that Hani Hanjor, the hijacker that flew that plane, you know, was responsible for what is considered in pilot circles an extraordinary maneuver.
00:55:08.140And Hani Hanjor, a month or two before 9-11, almost got kicked out of flight school because he was that incompetent.
00:55:17.140How someone like that would have been able to pull off that maneuver, putting aside the fact that the air defense that was on top of the Pentagon and at the White House also didn't lock on to the plane and shoot it down.
00:55:31.960Or they weren't even, you know, there's no evidence whatsoever that any of the missiles that were on top of the Pentagon defense missiles that were designed to protect the Pentagon from anything, they didn't go off and neither did the ones at the White House.
00:55:52.680We had a real long conversation with the commission about the lack of radar evidence of Flight 77 from the Kentucky-Ohio border all the way back to the Pentagon.
00:57:35.100So at this one place over the Ohio-Kentucky border, the transponder disconnected and the skin radar for Flight 77 disappeared, which means it was no longer in the sky.
00:57:45.180And then the third thing that is really, really odd is that the ELT went off the pinger.
00:57:53.660And that only ever usually goes off if there's a catastrophic emergency on the plane, right?
00:58:00.000It went off not at the Pentagon, but at the Kentucky-Ohio border.
00:58:28.860Yeah, there are actually police reports that you can read.
00:58:30.740And then at the very same time in the situation room, it was also reported that Flight 77 or a plane that they thought was Flight 77 crashed at the Kentucky-Ohio border.
00:58:42.900And then subsequent to that, the commission came out and said, no, no, no, no, that was just false reporting.
00:58:48.280But that happens to be the last place it was seen on radar.
00:58:51.200And then, of course, if you look at the FBI photos, there's a bunch of, you know, theories out there, conspiracy theories or what have you.
00:58:59.540It doesn't look like a plane hit the Pentagon, right?
00:59:02.920Like you look at, it looks like a punched hole.
00:59:05.420And, you know, Flight 77 was a rather large plane.
00:59:11.920The jet engines weren't on the outside of the Pentagon.
00:59:13.900And the footage shows that whatever pierced the Pentagon sort of, like, leapfrogged and, like, crisscrossed, which kind of defies the rules of physics.
00:59:23.720But, again, if you raise these questions, if you ask these questions, you're immediately shut down as a conspiracy theorist.
00:59:54.820So why 24 years out, why don't we just get all that information?
00:59:59.720Why won't it just be released to the American public to sort of shut down these theories, to clarify what happened, and to give, you know, the families an understanding of how the nation was not only attacked, but how our Department of Defense did nothing in its own defense while under attack?
01:00:19.560Like, I don't understand how that happened and there was no need to, like, really, like, ream some people out, right?
01:00:27.640Like, if you're the president and your Pentagon just got attacked, like, wouldn't you be like, where the fuck were you guys?
01:00:53.840And if it did happen, why didn't heads roll?
01:00:57.640Why wasn't our entire government petrified?
01:01:01.480Here we are for years fighting the great bear, Russia, and they're like, you know, we've got NORAD and fighter jets and we're worried about nukes coming in.
01:01:08.620And somehow some non-English-speaking incompetent al-Qaeda operative who couldn't even fly a Cessna, let alone a jumbo jet, is able to pull off a fighter pilot maneuver and fly, I don't know, 15 feet off the ground into the side of the Pentagon.
01:01:28.500But meanwhile, there's no radar track.
01:02:15.120But they're telling us that these guys who are not pilots who went to flaky flight schools in Florida or Arizona or wherever and didn't do very well, as you noted, infected so badly that they alerted local law enforcement.
01:02:50.620In at least one case, they don't speak English.
01:02:52.460And they somehow turn the planes around and then go to, like, the precise, you know, to the side of the Pentagon, to the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan.
01:03:03.060Was the idea that they programmed that into the computer?
01:03:33.180The official story is that they were decapitated.
01:03:35.060And so then they had to lift those bodies out of those seats, not to be macabre, and then jump into those seats and fly the plane.
01:03:42.160But, like, I don't know how that works.
01:03:43.920Like, I do know that at 30,000 feet, there aren't street signs.
01:03:47.380So, when you take over a plane at 30,000 feet somewhere over the United States of America, I don't know how you know which way to turn.
01:03:54.300I don't know how you know where the Pentagon is.
01:03:57.160I mean, I know it looks like a Pentagon, but when you're 30,000 feet up, you know, and you're over Kentucky, like, how do you know which direction to go to find the Pentagon?
01:04:06.140Because, according to the official story, the hijackers were not communicating with the ground.
01:04:10.160Typically, when planes navigate across the United States, they must communicate with the ground.
01:04:15.380You check in with different, you know, sectors.
01:04:18.900And when you cross over the sector, that's how everyone knows where that particular plane is.
01:04:23.920That didn't happen on 9-11 when the hijackers took over, and somehow the planes were able to navigate exactly to the precise target, coupling that with the fact that the hijackers were just grossly incompetent.
01:04:36.420They didn't speak English, and just sort of, like, the story itself, like, I don't understand.
01:04:45.000These hijackers were, like, little guys.
01:04:47.320How did they get the pilots and co-pilots out of the cockpit area, get in the seats, clean up all the mess from the violence, and then fly the plane?
01:04:58.880Our understanding of what happened, again, comes from the 9-11 commission telling us what happened, and comes from the cell phone calls that gave an awful lot of information about the hijackers.
01:05:09.000And, again, there, there's been a lot of, you know, talk about how that was possible.
01:05:14.260When planes are, you know, flying at 30,000 feet, how, in 2001, was there able to be a connected cell phone call?
01:05:23.060More to the point when the planes are being flown sort of, like, haphazardly and herky-jerky.
01:05:28.440And, you know, the way cell phones work is they connect from towers to the ground.
01:05:32.040Well, when a plane is moving all over the airspace and flying at maximum speed, it's really, really rare for a cell phone to connect at 5,000 feet, let alone 30,000 feet.
01:06:10.800Like, my biggest questions, aside from the cell phones and what have you, and how the hijackers themselves were actually able to, you know, navigate from the middle of nowhere to the precise targets that they went to when they were so grossly incompetent and not speaking to the ground.
01:06:25.920My biggest question is, where was our air defense?
01:06:28.700I know as a fact, because I read all the rules and the procedures and protocols back in the day, those F-16s should have been up within five minutes.
01:06:36.880They should have been flanking those planes, and they should have stopped those planes.
01:06:39.840And at the bare minimum, they should have been communicating down to the ground, the F-16 pilots, to say, we can't get these guys to stop, you know, and put people on alert, right?
01:06:50.700But for some reason, three planes were allowed to be hijacked over the course of almost an hour and a half, and the United States of America did nothing to stop it.
01:07:01.000So, putting aside all the failures to prevent the attacks for the 18 months, two years before 9-11, okay?
01:07:09.200You look at the day of, and we get back to your original question.
01:07:12.540How could the devastation have been mitigated?
01:07:14.680One simple way is that if the F-16s had done their job, had done what they were trained to do, which, by the way, there's also evidence that there was a drill, a military drill, on the day of 9-11 about a plane being hijacked and flown into a building, okay?
01:07:31.860These F-16 pilots are trained to do that.
01:07:35.060That was the procedure and the protocol.
01:07:36.700For some reason, on 9-11, it didn't happen at all.
01:07:42.020You've asked these questions, I assume, to members of Congress.
01:07:45.300We were told that it was the fog of war.
01:09:15.640So I'm, full disclosure, I have always focused my studies and research and expertise, if you want to say that, on the intelligence failures.
01:09:33.280But, and I, I do know Building 7, there's a lot of talk that it doesn't make a lot of sense.
01:09:40.640Um, you know, I think that there needs to be some questions to Special Ops as to whether or not, as way of fact, that any bombs were planted in the couches of that building.
01:09:58.940I, you know, listen, over the years we've had people that came and approached us and tried to give us information, all kinds of different people.
01:11:24.660Just because of your role for those people who weren't around or don't remember, you were-
01:11:29.620No, I mean, like, one of the things that sticks out to me that we had heard, one of the nicer-
01:11:34.620Sometimes you hear information that I believe is sort of like a limited hangout or to try to, like, explain the real story, but, like, soften it.
01:11:41.460And so one of the things that we heard is like, yeah, we were following them, but, you know, you know, we thought it was gonna be November 9th instead of September 11th.
01:11:53.660And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
01:11:56.120You know, so you were following them or you weren't following them or you're on the practice runs or you're not on the practice runs.
01:12:01.140But that was one of the stories that we had heard from, like, a source that, like, yeah, like, they were getting followed.
01:12:06.520We were, you know, but we thought it was gonna be 11-9, not 9-11.
01:12:10.440That doesn't really make a lot of sense because we had the NSA listening into the conversations between bin Laden and the other operatives.
01:12:17.780And as everybody knows now, because Senator Hatch leaked some of the information that, like, tomorrow is zero hour, you know, the big wedding, it's two sticks and an upside down birthday cake.
01:12:30.880I think that there was plenty of information out there to let people know that it was actually 9-11.
01:12:35.820And more to the point, one thing that gets skipped over often, my understanding is that Ramzi Youssef, the 93 bomber, his, the fifth anniversary of his conviction was September 11th, 2001.
01:12:47.900And if you know anything about Al-Qaeda, if you study Al-Qaeda, they like anniversaries.
01:12:53.160And so, to me, I think that for whatever reason, the attacks weren't stopped.
01:12:58.200The American public wasn't properly notified or warned.
01:13:02.120Certainly, there were people inside the government that were probably given warnings.
01:13:09.000Yeah, I just wish that my family had known because when my husband called me, I would have been like, holy shit, this, get the fuck out, like, get out.
01:13:17.860This is not a bad pilot, as the president said.
01:13:21.100This is it, like, get out of that building, you know.
01:13:43.840And I feel like if the public was made more aware over the summer that, you know, Director Tenet's hair was on fire and that we were in the crosshairs and that there was an impending attack because we had warnings from Germany, Russia, Israel, Jordan, our own intel communities, surveillance of these cells.
01:14:03.660I think many, many more lives would have been saved.
01:14:06.580I think, frankly, the attacks would have been 100% prevented.
01:14:11.880So I think it's entirely fair to ask, since they weren't prevented, and since they've been covered up with maximum aggression for 25 years, they're still being covered up.
01:14:30.820I think the cover-up is so big that, like, you couldn't even hold accountable the people that have covered it up.
01:14:35.880And honestly, the other limited hangout answer to that would be like, well, we were told that we couldn't tell you the truth because it was a matter of national security.
01:15:22.420I don't know if that's the right answer.
01:15:23.360I just want people, I want to know the truth.
01:15:25.100Yeah, and I think that that's a truth commission is a great idea.
01:15:29.140I think that I would like it tweaked a little bit.
01:15:31.560I'd like, you know, a special prosecutor with a full-time, fully impaneled grand jury ready to issue indictments.
01:15:40.980I'd like, you know, the offer of immunity to anyone, immunity and anonymity for anyone who comes forward with information on, you know, the failures and the day-to-day of like what happened.
01:16:52.280How about the Department of Government Accountability?
01:16:55.020And why don't you put that together and have the DOGE guys get the access to the information, throw it into AI, whatever they do, and figure out who's responsible and what really happened.
01:17:07.100Because you know exactly what would happen.
01:17:23.820And, you know, 3,000 people were massacred and the families are owed the truth and the families are owed, you know, proper compensation for our losses.
01:17:33.480We have not been properly taken care of.
01:17:55.700Anyone who knows anything about the couches in Building 7 and the planning of explosives should get immediate immunity and anonymity if they come forward with the information.
01:18:04.160Of course, of course, this is all pretty straightforward stuff.
01:18:11.000And if there is no one, then no one gets immunity.
01:18:20.960And there is a certain persistent chorus of the same people, hysterical people, telling you that you're not allowed to ask this or talk about that.
01:18:30.160And it's like, why are you saying that?
01:19:30.540Anyway, you were on the cusp of explaining your, what you described as mistreatment by the Department of Justice and related agencies and law firms.
01:19:41.320Can I just give you the two sentence understanding that I have?
01:19:43.840So the United States has set aside a huge amount of taxpayer money to compensate the victims of terror, all terror attacks.
01:19:51.1409-11 being, of course, the biggest and most famous of all terror attacks in American history.
01:21:05.720But I do like to make the joke, my daughter went to college in upstate New York.
01:21:10.140And when I would go over the bridge and pay the toll, I'd be joking that it should be going to the 9-11 widows and children since the money that went towards the bridge reconstruction came from the Paribas money, as I understand it, from reporting, instead of going to victims of terrorism.
01:21:27.560Well, you know, the Department of Justice runs a lot of their sanctions programs, sort of like a slush fund.
01:21:34.520But at any rate, this fund was created, Bank Paribas put together, like I think $1.8 or $1.9 billion of the first deposit into that fund.
01:21:42.980The widows and children were excluded from joining that fund and being compensated, even though we were given the right to sue the co-conspirators of the hijackers when we were forced into the Victims Compensation Fund back in 2002, when the government took away our right to sue.
01:22:00.440We were allowed to sue the terrorists, the co-conspirators of the hijackers, and we did.
01:22:06.720We were able to get a default judgment, sorry, against Iran, and the widows and kids have Iran judgments.
01:22:14.180And we sought to be compensated for those judgments because it was the only way that we could-
01:22:27.040Right, so the evidence that was presented to the court for Iran's role in the 9-11 attacks is that Iran cleansed some of the passports of a few of the hijackers when they went through Iran after being in Afghanistan.
01:22:47.900Iran doesn't show up in court in the United States.
01:22:50.500So, I think at this point, probably close to 20,000 9-11 victims have been given copycat judgments off that basic evidence that Iran cleansed these passports.
01:23:03.240And this is the only way that the widows and children of the 3,000 killed are in any way able to hold terrorists, quote-unquote, accountable.
01:23:11.140We are supposed to be able to get compensated for our Iran judgments in this government fund, okay?
01:23:19.900But just big picture, not to be ornery about it, but like everything we've talked about for the last hour, which is about the event itself and how it happened and what we don't know and who might have benefited from it and who might have paid for it and facilitated it, Iran didn't make an appearance in that conversation.
01:23:35.960And I've never heard anybody make a case that Iran was actually behind 9-11 in a meaningful way.
01:24:22.040I wanted to go after the U.S. government and their failures because I didn't look to Iran or Saudi Arabia or any other foreign government to protect my husband and my family on the morning of September 11th.
01:24:33.720I looked to the United States government because I'm an American citizen and the attacks happened here.
01:24:38.160So, at any rate, we were able to get these Iran judgments, I think at this point, like 20,000 people.
01:24:43.780You know, that's including the decedent's families, the widows and the kids, and the decedent's siblings, parents, and then all of the inhalation injury people at Ground Zero who breathed the bad air.
01:24:57.920They're also holding Iran accountable.
01:25:00.440That ultimately will be about 70,000 people seeking to be compensated in this government fund.
01:25:06.820Well, the problem with the government fund is that compensating 9-11 victims gets in the way of the other victims that want to be compensated.
01:25:17.980And so, back in 2008 and then a little bit before that in some other legislation, things were rewritten for American military to be able to sue the enemy.
01:25:29.180So, you have victims from the embassy bombings in the late 80s, you have Iran hostages that aren't allowed to have judgments because a part of the Alger Accords was that they weren't allowed to sue Iran, but they're given just a flat number that they're allowed to be paid in this government fund.
01:25:47.460They're a victim of state-sponsored terrorism, the Iran hostages.
01:25:50.580The embassy bombing in Beirut victims, and then the Khobar Tower victims, that was a bombing in Saudi Arabia.
01:26:00.300And then you have the U.S.'s coal families, also victims of state-sponsored terrorism, and the East African embassy bombing families.
01:26:07.480These are all military or foreign service families that, because the law was rewritten, they are allowed to get judgments against Iran for Iran's participation in those attacks.
01:26:19.900And so, those victims have really powerful lawyers.
01:26:23.300They were the ones that reportedly created this government fund that's run by the Department of Justice.
01:26:28.140And they came up with the idea that we're going to fund the fund from terrorist sanctions.
01:26:34.320Well, that means that when the U.S. government gets information that a company, a ship, you know, a tanker is doing business and buying Iranian oil, that tanker or that company gets sanctioned.
01:26:47.780The Department of Justice goes after those entities, and they fine them.
01:26:52.540You know, first they have a case, and then they, you know, usually typically settle the case for billions of dollars.
01:26:58.400And that, some of that money is supposed to go into this fund to pay victims.
01:27:02.300This is why we never pull back sanctions, even when they're counterproductive, because it's a scam that people are getting rich from.
01:27:11.280Well, so, up front, it's being sold as a fund to pay victims.
01:27:15.780Turns out, many of the military families had attorneys who encouraged the families to sell their judgments to third-party investors' hedge funds.
01:27:28.040I know all of this because the SEC happened to investigate one of the hedge funds.
01:27:32.480And so, I read all of the SEC files, thousands of pages.
01:27:37.620And so, that's how I know this information.
01:27:39.620I'm basing it all on these SEC files of this investigation.
01:27:42.760So, at any point, these victims that were supposed to be the ones getting compensated in this fund, run by the Department of Justice, sold their judgments.
01:27:50.920Not all of them, but like a lot of them.
01:27:53.560They're very unsophisticated military families.
01:27:55.860This, you know, hedge fund guy comes in and says, listen, you've got a judgment for $2 million.
01:28:34.640And they, in my opinion, took advantage of the military families, which I think is disgusting, okay?
01:28:42.320But these arrangements, according to the SEC documents, were put together by the lawyers of the people.
01:28:48.420So, the lawyers brought in the hedge funds, okay?
01:28:50.720And so, the same lawyers create, reportedly, from what I can understand, in my opinion, I'm being very careful, created this fund to be run by the Department of Justice, who, you know, treats their, you know, fines and sanctions and prosecutions sort of like as a slush fund.
01:29:05.820You know, the Department of Justice wields power when they send money to local districts, to police departments, to buy vests, what have you.
01:29:51.880Senator Menendez was the person who just, ironically enough, happened to write a lot of pieces of legislation that, you know, maximized the profits to the offshore hedge funds that had purchased these judgments.
01:30:10.200And so what gets really bad is that the widows and kids aren't allowed into the fund because, quote unquote, there's just too many of you and that you'll take all the money, right?
01:30:19.660And the hedge funds won't be enough for the hedge funds.
01:30:21.840Well, the problem is in the actual purchase agreements, again, according to the SEC documents, the underlying purchase agreements of the Iranian judgments of these military families, the second line of collateral security guaranteeing the rate of return between 13 and I think 62 percent is this fund that was created by the Department of Justice.
01:30:49.280The third line of collateral security, according to the SEC documents, is the law firm's receivables.
01:30:56.240So that means if the fund doesn't churn and burn and provide that profit, then the lawyers' receivables get raided so that the hedge fund investors make their return.
01:31:06.000So you can see there that there's an impetus, a drive for the attorneys not to want that third line to get tapped.
01:31:13.360They want the money to come from the fund because then it's not coming out of the attorney's pocket, right?
01:31:17.740So that's why the widows and kids, in my opinion, were not allowed to go into this fund and be compensated for our Iran judgments, even though we are the nation's largest group of victims of terrorism, the 9-11 widows and kids.
01:31:33.440It takes us three years to get the widows and kids in.
01:31:36.240We get into the fund, and the law is written by Senator Menendez with the support of Senator Schumer and others so that the money is split in a way that continues to maximize the profits to the hedge fund, okay?
01:31:50.260Then, two years later, because the widows and kids were wrongfully excluded from being compensated in this fund in 2015, we were owed a catch-up payment.
01:32:23.200It got hijacked by that same group of lawyers and plaintiffs who had sold their judgments to the hedge fund, and out of nowhere, totally unwarranted, they asked to get this lump sum payment for themselves, even though they were never wrongfully excluded from the fund.
01:32:41.980They were never owed back payments from the fund.
01:32:44.260They were allowed to get what's called the Beirut-Kobar catch-up payment, worth $3 billion.
01:32:49.580The $3 billion to pay, ultimately, in my opinion, some of these hedge funds in the Cayman Islands, and also some victims, too, that didn't sell their judgments, right, comes from U.S. taxpayer dollars.
01:33:06.240So, you believe that some of that money actually went to hedge funds in the Cayman Islands?
01:33:09.180I believe that it's definitely possible because the SEC documents talk about this particular group of victims getting, you know, approached to sell their judgments.
01:33:18.880The SEC talks about the contractual agreements of the sale of the judgments.
01:33:22.620And when you look at the numbers, sometimes, like, I'm really good at, like, seeing patterns and then, like, looking at evidence and then undoing it and, like, going back and trying to figure out things.
01:33:33.100It just so happens that the groups that are mentioned in the SEC documents happen to be the highest paid groups of victims of terrorism, which, first off, makes no sense because they're military.
01:33:44.200And military live on kind of, like, humble economic, like, their economic damages are very small as compared to civilians who were working on Wall Street on 9-11.
01:33:53.600Because damages are calculated on the basis of income you didn't receive.
01:33:59.080And so, oddly enough, these military, as compared to the 9-11 civilian widows and children killed on U.S. shores, okay, not serving overseas, not in hostile territory, civilians killed in America at work, innocent civilians, have received less compensation in this fund than these groups who just happen to also have this exposure to these third-party investors and hedge funds.
01:34:27.080They're given $3 billion of U.S. taxpayer money to pay this payment that's totally unwarranted, came out of nowhere, was not justified.
01:34:35.020Senator Menendez wrote the legislation, wrote a loophole in the legislation saying that, quote, successors in interest thereof can be compensated this money from the U.S. taxpayers.
01:34:46.320I believe the successors in interest thereof are the third-party investors slash hedge funds.
01:34:50.820Can you imagine investing in a victims of terrorism fund?
01:34:56.400You're literally profiting from murder and terrorism.
01:34:58.680And you're using a Department of Justice government fund that is being billed and sold to members of Congress as a victims fund to compensate victims of terrorism with restitution, okay?
01:35:11.880And it's being, you know, exploited and it's being used as like a profit model, an investment vehicle for third-party investors and hedge funds.
01:35:23.180Do we have any idea the identity of these hedge fund managers or investors?
01:35:31.520But I will tell you this, I was able to read in the SEC documents some of the investor groups that were approached by the hedge fund guy from New Jersey.
01:35:41.120And I cross-referenced those with open secrets and donations, contributions to members of Congress.
01:35:46.900And I believe there is a pattern there, which is why we asked-
01:35:52.800I'll tell you this, that in the SEC documents, there's a deposition of one of the attorneys and there's a series of depositions and the initials RM are in the documents.
01:36:03.100And Senator Menendez passed legislation in 2012 that was also signed off on by President Obama to make the first round of payments to this group that had sold their judgments, many of whom had sold their judgments to the hedge funds.
01:36:16.500So Senator Menendez's hands are all over this.
01:36:46.260With all of this information, we met with the chief of the money laundering asset recovery section at the Department of Justice, the person who's in charge, really ultimately over this fund.
01:36:58.160And we're having this meeting and we're like, it's really unfair.
01:37:01.320The governing statute says that we're supposed to be treated fairly and equitably.
01:37:05.520It's a United States Victims of Terrorism Fund.
01:37:10.380In the United States of America, everyone's supposed to be treated equally.
01:37:13.880Is there a reason why 9-11 widows and children, this nation's largest group of victims of terrorism, are receiving anywhere from 6 to 66 times less percentage value for our judgments?
01:37:53.820I will tell you this, that some victims of terrorism in 2020 were paid out of the State Department's defense special budget.
01:38:04.100And maybe or maybe not, those guys had some third-party investors that ultimately got that money.
01:38:09.060Who were they, and why were they paid by the State Department?
01:38:11.240That was the East African Embassy bombing victims and the USS Cole victims.
01:38:15.020The same group of lawyers represent, there's like a cross-pollination of the lawyers.
01:38:18.700It's like a little cabal of lawyers that work for these victims groups.
01:38:21.900They're also the same group of lawyers, so they not only created this fund, they've also really played a very strong hand in rewriting anti-terrorism laws in the United States from 1990 on forward.
01:38:33.400And ironically, all of these laws are always billed after 9-11 as 9-11, you know, for the 9-11 families.
01:38:39.820But what's weird is that the 9-11 families never benefit or get anything out of these laws.
01:38:51.860So we met with DOJ, and we really thought maybe, maybe, you know, this chief person of this department doesn't know about these hedge funds.
01:39:03.800And she just got really funny at the end of the meeting.
01:39:06.600We were like, well, we wanted to talk to you about the hedge funds because the statute says that you need to be a natural person to be compensated in the fund.
01:39:14.020And even though Senator Menendez passed legislation that allows successors and interests thereof to get compensated, we think it's kind of unseemly.
01:39:22.240And, you know, we're not being treated fairly, and we shouldn't be penalized because there's so many of us.
01:39:27.780Like, that was one of my talking points.
01:39:28.980I was like, as someone who fought for the 9-11 commission, it's not our fault that there's so many of us.
01:39:34.120It's the United States government's fault because the United States government didn't prevent the attacks and didn't mitigate any of the damage on the day of 9-11.
01:39:42.040So you're punishing us for our government's failure, and there being 3,000 victims.
01:39:47.760That's why we can't be compensated fairly and in alignment with the law and with all of these other victims.
01:39:53.620You can't treat us fairly because there's just too many of us.
01:39:56.540And so we say this to this chief of MLRs, and she just got funny.
01:40:02.220She's like, well, no one briefed me that you were going to bring up the hedge funds.
01:40:29.780I want to know why the ADL is involving itself in anti-terrorism laws.
01:40:35.380I want to know why October 7th victims are in my Congress, lobbying Congress and writing legislation that harms the rights of 9-11 widows and children.
01:40:47.100How does that, I don't know why they're writing legislation in the first place, but since they are.
01:40:52.320I'm saying they don't, Hamas did the October 7th attacks.
01:40:56.700These individuals don't even have Iran judgments and they're writing legislation to change this fund, this government fund that's supposed to be for American victims of terrorism.
01:41:21.080Were the U.S. government is going to pay victims of a terror attack in a foreign country that has nothing to do with, you know, we're not responsible for October 7th that I know of.
01:42:52.640I don't understand why people that go overseas and get killed on buses, even if they're American citizens, why they're over, you know, in the United States.
01:43:01.080And again, if you want to be compensated, that fine, but don't harm the rights of the widows and kids.
01:43:06.800Why is it more important to pay people that are injured overseas on buses or in military installations or as foreign service members to pay them six to 66 times more a percentage when we live in the United States of America and every person is supposed to be treated equal under the law?
01:43:25.760Yeah, well, that's clearly not happening.
01:43:28.240This is, yeah, and yeah, this is why people's attitudes are changing in a way that's.
01:43:33.580And I would like to say that the lawyers that were that third line of collateral security combined, all of the lawyers, the 9-11 and the non-9-11 lawyers, they've made approximately $2 billion.
01:43:51.580Like I know some of that money gets, you know, reshuffled around and made into contributions to members of Congress to reward them for their efforts in writing legislation.
01:44:00.640But I think $2 billion to plaintiff's attorneys is kind of unseemly.
01:44:48.400You know, when you go back and do a study on all of the anti-terrorism laws, what you find is that there's been a whole restructuring and it's a system that doesn't,
01:44:59.280it looks on the outside like it's serving the victims, but what it's really doing is it's broadening a base and allowing for almost innumerable amount of people to sue for a terrorist attack, right?
01:45:14.380And I confronted counsel of one of the more prominent members of the Senate and I said, you know, you guys wrote this law and it opens the courthouse doors to so many people.
01:45:24.960You're harming the rights of the direct heirs, of the actual widows and children of people killed.
01:45:32.060Why didn't you hold a hearing on the ramifications of how you're rewriting this law?
01:45:36.620Why didn't you have widows and kids testify as to how they're being harmed and their rights are being watered down?
01:45:42.380And the guy turned to me and said, you know, we just want to open the courthouse doors to as many people as possibly because that serves anti-terrorism policy.
01:45:51.540And I said, it doesn't really serve anti-terrorism policy.
01:45:55.560And I said, you're not really serving the heirs of the people killed properly.
01:46:00.920And I said, and you're giving an awful lot of deference to judges and you're assuming that judges are going to police a docket and police a case and a system.
01:46:10.800And I said, the judges aren't doing it because the judges in many cases are not really good judges.
01:46:16.000And they're allowing thousands and thousands and thousands of people to enter litigation.
01:46:22.680Number one, it blocks and, you know, log jams the actual case itself and the case can never resolve.
01:46:30.500Where there is one upside when a case doesn't resolve, you're suing a defendant and the case goes on and on and on for two decades, right?
01:46:36.880What happens is, in some people's minds, I read a book on this, is that the actual litigation process itself ties up certain entities that certain other entities believe fund terrorists because they're so busy paying lawyers and being stuck in court, they're not funneling money to terrorists.
01:46:54.940Well, that's a really noble idea, except for the fact that it's a huge disservice to the victims who are entitled to have speedy justice for the harm that they've suffered, right?
01:47:02.900You have litigation that lasts two decades, widows and children are being disserved by that because we're owed immediate justice.
01:47:10.300We're not owed justice a quarter of a century later.
01:47:13.040The second thing that it does is it waters down the rights of the people under the law who are the most prioritized because you're letting in all of these other people.
01:47:22.260What actually ends up happening when you open the door and you let all those people in is that lawyers make more money.
01:47:28.600And so you have a situation where it's not the victims that are being protected by these laws that are getting rewritten.
01:47:36.160It's actually that, you know, lawyers and this sort of scheme that's come out of anti-terrorism laws and these funds that get created and these deals that get struck between lawyers and members of the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the State Department, certain foreign governments.
01:47:58.140It ends up becoming sort of like a scheme and the real victims of terrorism, like the 9-11 widows and kids who are this nation's largest group are re-victimized.
01:48:12.040And all I ask is for there to be a very hard look-see, if you want to call it, into these anti-terrorism laws, into this fund that is being run right now that is, in my opinion, you know, a Ponzi scheme on top of a shell game that's really re-victimizing the 9-11 widows and kids.
01:48:32.200Honestly, if I could send one message to President Trump, I would beg him to give closure and peace to the thousands of widows and kids.
01:48:41.340We've waited 24 years to have a modicum of justice.
01:48:49.080We were abandoned by our Department of Justice.
01:48:51.780Our husbands' lives have been exploited, used to go to war in Iraq based on lies, used to roll in privacy rights, to expand the patriota, all of it.
01:49:04.840We've been exploited and we've been left behind.
01:49:08.000And I would just ask for President Trump to recognize that and appreciate it and just deliver closure and peace to us.
01:49:15.640I think that there's a way forward for that.
01:49:17.600And if there's ever been a president that would be able to stand apart from the intelligence community and to have the courage to do that, I think it would be President Trump.
01:49:27.100And I know he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize or appointed or nominated for his role in the Gaza peace process.
01:49:35.040I think if he resolved 9-11 and provided closure to the widows and kids, he would probably be nominated and win that prize.
01:50:52.880And maybe most amazingly, somebody, an unknown investor, shorted American Airlines and United Airlines, the companies whose planes the attackers used on 9-11, as well as the banks that were inside the Twin Towers just before the attacks.
01:51:07.120They made money on the 9-11 attacks because they knew they were coming.