The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft. The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.
Stahel doubts that a passenger plane into the Pentagon crashed: "For flight novice it is actually impossible to hit the building sufficiently precisely."
Seven hours after the Twin Towers fell next to the World Trade Center 7. The official version: It burned a long time. Stahel: "Nothing is clear."
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
A former Boston Center air traffic controller has gone public on his assertion that 9/11 was an inside job and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets. In an astounding telephone interview, Robin Hordon claims air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced to protect the true perpetrators of 9/11.
In its taxpayer-financed propaganda campaign, the Pentagon quietly courted about 75 flag officers with an expectation that they'd sell the Iraq war to the public in their on-air comments. These officials met regularly with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Joints Chiefs of Staff, had access to classified intelligence, and were flown on Pentagon-financed trips to Iraq and Guantanamo. Because their vested interests as consultants, board members, lobbyists or employees in the defense industry were never disclosed by NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox, viewers had no way to fully judge their often up-beat assessments of the war. The statements often contradicted reports from Baghdad-based journalists.
