The two articles reproduced below discuss different aspects of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. The first article is important because the author, Don Radlauer, is an employee of the Israeli-based Institute for Counter Terrorism(ICT), and he presents himself as an experienced pilot authoritatively describing the alleged nature and alleged feasibility of the official conspiracy theory(OCT) version of the attacks. In the second article Christopher Bollyn cites a report by "Don Radlauer, an expert in stock options and derivatives" on 9/11-related insider trading.
The Hijackings: A Pilot's View
Don Radlauer
ICT Consultant
September 13, 2001
http://ntwebweaver.com/flights.htm
In order to try to unravel the events leading up to Tuesday's catastrophic terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC, we give here a summary of the flight paths of the four doomed flights. The analysis is by a pilot who has accumulated many hours of flight over the Eastern United States.
Flight Summaries
United Airlines Flight 175
UAL Flight 175 took off from Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:58. Its planned route was south-west to northwestern New Jersey, then a gentle right turn to follow a more westerly course towards Los Angeles International Airport. The plane followed this route until the point where it was to bear right; instead, it turned left about 45 degrees to travel southwards towards central New Jersey, then made a sharp left over Middlesex County to approach New York Harbor from the south. This plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at about 9:05 AM.
Note that Flight 175's legitimate pilots must have been in control until about the time the plane crossed the northern New Jersey border; up to this time the plane had followed its planned route, including turns that the hijackers would not have had the navigational skills to make (and which were not essential in order to fulfill their mission). Also, note that the hijack did not occur until a point at which a passenger on the left side of the plane would have had a clear view of the Twin Towers. From this point on, it was easy to navigate the airplane by this obvious landmark – and target.
The hijackers of this flight clearly knew that its route would take it within about 50 miles of Manhattan – close enough to use the Twin Towers as a visual landmark. Thus, they could sit back and wait until they had a clear view of their target. One obvious conclusion is that the hijackers had taken the flight before and knew the visual characteristics of the flight path.
American Airlines Flight 11
American Flight 11 took off from Logan just after UAL 175, at 7:59. Its planned route was almost straight west through Massachusetts and New York, proceeding on to Los Angeles International. About 60-70 miles west of Boston, the plane began to deviate to the north of its planned route. About 50 miles into New York State, the plane turned sharply left and followed the Hudson River valley down to New York City, impacting the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45 AM.
The planned route of this flight would bypass Lower Manhattan at a distance of at least 100 miles; in even slightly hazy conditions the hijackers knew that they couldn't count on a view of their target. Instead, they planned in advance to use the Hudson River as their landmark and fly right down its valley to their target. As this valley is easy to find and follow, the hijackers didn't need to keep the legitimate pilots around beyond the climbout period – and thus they took control of the plane at an earlier stage than the hijackers of UAL 175 did.
Again, the hijackers would have needed to have taken this flight before, since familiarity with the route normally taken would be essential in order to know when to take control of the plane and how to find their target. The Hudson River Valley is an obvious landmark, requiring no particular navigational skills to find and follow towards New York City. This is probably one reason why the hijackers apparently took control of Flight 11 much earlier than was the case with UAL 175 – there was no significant risk of getting lost without a 'real' pilot. I would hazard a guess that the take-over occurred fairly soon after takeoff, shortly before the point were the plane began to drift northward from its planned route. The minor deviation would not have been of any concern to the hijackers; they knew that they had only to continue in a generally westerly direction and they would pass over the Hudson River valley.
United Airlines Flight 93
UAL 93 left Newark International Airport at 8:01, enroute to San Francisco. Its planned route was basically west across northern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio, and on to the West Coast. Just before reaching Cleveland, Ohio, the plane made a 180-degree turn to the left and proceeded east-southeast to fly just south of Pittsburgh and past it towards Pennsylvania's southern border with Maryland. The plane had evidently already been flying erratically and at a low altitude for some time before it crashed, nose first, in Stony Creek Township eighty miles from Pittsburgh, at 10:10 AM.
The route this flight took after it turned away from Cleveland strongly suggests that its hijackers were intending to attack a target in or near Washington, D.C. There is convincing evidence that there was a struggle between the hijackers and a small group of passengers (and possibly crew). This may account for some of the erratic flying that was reported, as well as the plane's eventual crash in an area well clear of anything that might have been the hijackers' intended target. Had this plane been flown successfully to Washington, D.C., it would have arrived there at around 10:30.
Assuming this hijacking was planned as meticulously as the ones directed at New York targets, the hijackers were presumably using Cleveland and/or the shore of Lake Erie as their indicator that it was time to make their move.
American Airlines Flight 77
American Flight 77 left Dulles International Airport at 8:10. Its planned route would take it over northern Virginia and West Virginia, towards Los Angeles International. Just after turning south and crossing the Ohio-Kentucky border, the plane's transponder (which makes it more visible and identifiable on radar, as well as reporting its altitude to controllers) was turned off; so its exact flight path is not known. At 9:40 AM, the plane crashed into the ground next to the west side of the Pentagon.
A pilot on the ground was quoted as saying that the plane was in a power-dive when it hit the ground. In other words, the hijacker-pilot had spotted his target and was accelerating toward it. In the case of a plane of this size, it is a great deal easier to navigate a plane straight and level into a tall building, as happened at the World Trade Center, than it is to crash precisely into a target close to the ground. The hijacker guiding AL 77 was more than likely intending to bring the plane down onto the Pentagon itself, which would have resulted in far greater devastation. There has been some speculation in the media that the Pentagon was not the intended target of this plane. From the air, the Pentagon is a very visible landmark, which the hijackers could be certain of finding and targeting quite easily. Given the ease of targeting the Pentagon and its role as the center of the United States military, I don’t think there is any reason to assume that it was not the target. If the plane was indeed accelerating as it hit, this would tend to support the contention that the Pentagon was the intended target.
General Conclusions
All the hijacked flights took off within a twelve-minute span, and all were fully fueled for a transcontinental flight. Clearly the terrorists carefully selected a set of flights that met these two requirements. It is also clear that, at least in the case of the two flights targeted at New York, the hijackers must have taken the same flights at least once before, in order to familiarize themselves with the routes that would be taken and the landmarks they would use to decide when to attack, and to navigate towards their target.
In the case of UAL 175, at least one of the hijackers was probably sitting on the left side of the plane to act as a "spotter"; when s/he got a clear view of the Twin Towers, it was time to take over the airplane.
Thus a study of previous flight manifests would be advisable; it is likely that at least some of the hijackers' names - assuming that they had registered under their own names – appear as passengers on the same flights on previous dates. It is also likely that some of the hijackers will be found to have been among the passengers sitting on the left-hand, southward facing, side of United Flight 175.
Revealing 9-11 Stock Trades Could Expose The Terrorist Masterminds
by Christopher Bollyn
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL412B.html
A transparent and thorough investigation of suspicious trades before Sept. 11 could expose the masterminds behind the attacks by revealing who knew and profited from advance knowledge—if only the government wanted to.
Manipulators with inside information made huge profits on sophisticated trades as the stocks of the airline and insurance companies plummeted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 disaster. The inside information was so precise that experts have concluded that it could have only come from those who masterminded the terror attacks.
This money trail is the closest investigators have come to “a smoking gun” and could lead directly to those who planned the attacks. But with the notable exception of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.), Congress has yet to demand a thorough and open investigation.
In the days following the terror attacks, suspicious and unusual stock trading activity indicated that people used inside information to make huge profits. The money made from the trades done with apparent inside information has been estimated at up to $15 billion worldwide.
The Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT), located in Herzliya, Israel, published an article, “Black Tuesday: World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” on Sept. 19, 2001.
Author Don Radlauer, an expert in stock options and derivatives, provided details of the types and volumes of the suspicious trades and said: “Obviously, anyone who had detailed knowledge of the attacks before they happened was, at the very least, an accessory to their planning; and the overwhelming probability is that the trades could have been made only by the same people who masterminded the attacks themselves.”
Radlauer pointed to the timing, specificity, size and unusual nature as indicative that the trades had been done with inside information.
Tracing the transactions to their real source, Radlauer said, would be difficult because “the trading is sure to have been done under false names, behind shell corporations, and in general to have been thoroughly obfuscated.”
Radlauer concluded: “This doesn’t mean that unraveling the threads of these transactions will be impossible, but it probably won’t be quick or easy.”
The American exchanges that handle options and derivatives trades, primarily the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the NYSE, know on a daily basis what levels of put options are purchased.
“Put options” are highly leveraged bets that a given stock’s share price will fall.
Conspicuous spikes
Among the most conspicuous spikes in trading activity were the huge increases in “put options” placed on the two airlines involved in the hijackings of Sept. 11, United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines.
There was a 9,000 percent jump in United Air Lines (UAL) put options between Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, with a huge spike 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack.
American Airlines saw a 6,000 percent jump in put options above normal the day before the attacks. However, there was no similar trading activity on any other airlines, according to market reports.
The brokerage houses that had offices in the WTC, Morgan Stanley and Merrill-Lynch, saw 27-fold and 12-fold increases in the purchases of put options on their respective shares between Sept. 7 and Sept. 10.
“The afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market,” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported on Sept. 19. As investigator Michael C. Ruppert of From the Wilderness, an Internet news site, says: “These trades were certainly noticed after the attacks.”
There was also an unusually high volume of five-year U.S. Treasury note purchases prior to the attacks, including one $5 billion trade, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 2. “Five-year Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the U.S.,” the report said.
“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life . . . this would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,” Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News said Sept. 20.
No U.S. or foreign agency has announced arrests or developments in the investigation of these trades, the most telling evidence of foreknowledge, Ruppert wrote April 22. The former chief of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, William Mc Lucas, said regulators would “certainly be able to track down every trade, where the trade cleared, where the trade was directed from.”
Experts from the Convar Company in Pirmasens, Germany, are using their “blue laser scanning” technology to retrieve data from the damaged computers of banks, telecommunication companies, and other tenants from the WTC. This technology can even retrieve the original data from hard discs that have been deleted and written over five times.
Peter Henschel, director of Convar, said: “not only the volume, but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.”
Henschel told AFP that “up to the last moment,” between the time that the first tower was hit until the second tower collapsed, there was an “unusual” increase in trading volume of “between 5 and 10 times the normal volume.”
One data recovery expert, Richard Wagner, has estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed through the WTC computers before and during the disaster.
