A Facebook post suggested that I read  The Eleventh Day:The Full story of 9/11 by respected conspiracy reality author Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.  I am one of the 35% of Americans who believe that, at a minimum, Vice President Cheney and other neocons in the United States Government allowed a long planned terrorist attack to succeed on 9/11/2001.  So I was hopeful that this book would disavow me of that uncomfortable notion, as the FB post suggested.

The first point I should make is that the book did not even try to disavow me of my views. The conclusion is soft with respect to the treatment of conspiracy realities as it is soft on support of the official version.

Part I “Attack” is composed of 9 chapters which describe what happened that day. The book does discredit the ridiculous theories (government disinformation intended to discredit conspiracy “theory”?) such as the notion that planes did not strike the buildings but was instead a carefully planned mirage. It is told in the voices of the eventual victims, their loved ones, government and FAA employees, and the first responders. The only issue not addressed is the science around cell phone technology in 2001. Conspiracy researchers have serious doubts about the ability of so many people to communicate by cell phone from a moving jet (try it, next time you are in the air!), the authors do not mention this as a controversy and accept all the calls as fact. Despite this one point, this part of the book is excellent and accurate.

Part II, Distrust and Deceit, begins with “...countless citizens do not believe the story of September 11 as we have just told it”. (Note “countless” instead of “billions”) It is here that the authors make quick mention of the suspicion held by many of us that the buildings were brought down by explosives; that there is no explanation for the collapse of WTC 7, and that many believe a missile, not a Boeing 757, struck the Pentagon. To the credit of the authors, they go into the conspiracy related controversy in detail, quoting rather than omitting comments from academics, scientists, and those on the ground that day. There were three official inquiries into 9/11, which are discussed at length. In addition, they discuss the Project for the New American Century, the neocon lead group that presciently suggested that the Empire's goals in the Middle East could not be achieved “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Chapter 12 of this section is particularly illuminating, as it goes into the difficulty in creating the 9/11 report, and begins by repeating a question the Commission had to face, which was “How should the Commission handle evidence of possible false statements by U.S. Officials?” How indeed? This chapter goes into the myriad of lies and--well, more lies--told for public consumption by our government and government controlled mainstream media.  It is this chapter, more than any other, that convinces me that my view--that Cheney allowed this to happen--is correct. It is a worthy read even if this is the only chapter a person reads.

Almost as important is chapter 12, which covers the still existing confusion over whether a shoot down order was ever given by President Bush or VP Dick Cheney, and why that supposed shoot down order was never received by the commanders on the ground who desperately needed guidance. It takes very little reading between the lines to understand that Vice President Darth Cheney was in control of events that day.

Part III, “America Responds” explains in great detail how Cheney and others turned the attack into an unprovoked war against Iraq.  Without going into great detail, again one does not need to read between the lines to see the influence of Vice President Cheney and the neocons on the response to 9/11. This is common knowledge today.

Part IV “The Plotters” goes into great detail on the hijackers and their support groups. The history of the plotters goes back long before the stolen election which put Cheney in office, which essentially eliminates the idea that the Bush/Cheney government created the attack out of whole cloth. Instead, this chapter makes it obvious that the plan was a very long time in the making.

Interestingly, Part V is titled “The Perpetrators”, which is a very long and detailed history of Osama Bin Laden, his government and non-government supporters, and his interactions with the governments of the American Empire, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. This section, entitled “The Perpetrators” is NOT about the 19 hijackers. The efforts of the CIA to prevent the FBI from accessing the information that could have prevented the attack is left to another chapter of the book, thus excluding Cheney and the neocons from the label of “Perpetrator”.

Part IV is entitled “Twenty-Four Hours, which tells the tale of the day before, September 10, 2001,  and the opportunities to prevent the attack. At this point, I will digress and mention another excellent book, The Other Nineteen by Kevin Ryan, which describes the many people within the United States government (CIA, FBI, others) who worked to allow the event to happen, in a few cases possibly unknowingly. The authors of The Eleventh Day do touch upon his work, mostly in this chapter. It is a superficial examination to be sure, but that part of the historical controversy does not go unmentioned, to the credit of the authors.

The book concludes with Part VII, 84 pages long, entitled “Unanswered Questions”. Yes, eighty four pages.

But before I address this part of the book, I will discuss what I would call “omissions.” I would point out two omissions of many. The first glaring omission is any serious discussion of the scientific evidence which points to controlled demolition. There is discussion (beginning on page 99) of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, but without coming to a conclusion the story morphs into the questions about whether a plane or a missile struck the Pentagon. The authors finally got around to a weak attempt to refute thousands of experts, relying on the testimony of one person who initially thought he witnessed demolition, and then changed his story 10 days late.  And of course, they pointed to the worst of the “theorists”, Jim Fetzer, while ignoring so much expert testimony such as the comments made by Susan Lindauer that three or more white truck vans, marked with “janitorial” or other markings, were captured on security tape between 8/23/2001 and  9/3 or 9/4/2001.  These vans were present from approximately 2 AM to 5 AM, suspicious itself. In other words, explosives could have been planted throughout the buildings. The FBI was not able to establish that these vans were from existing legitimate business.

Another omission is the fact that rescue workers had to work around vast pools of molten iron, sometimes referred to as “lava”, which was still being reported in the Wall Street Journal in January 2002. This is mentioned in one paragraph on page 88. To my knowledge, no official investigation has even attempted to explain this scientific impossibility, nor do they mention that this could be definitive evidence of thermite explosives. The authors certainly do not.

Length prevents me from commenting on the all of the “Unanswered Questions” referred to in Part VII. One very important one is the evidence of financing from Saudi Arabia's government, and individually from the Sheiks and Kings and other beneficiaries of Saudi Oil Wealth. Senator Bob Graham is working diligently even today to release the classified 28 pages of the congressional inquiry which he himself wrote, and which was redacted in full by President George Bush. It is perfectly obvious at this point that the several members of Saudi royalty did, in fact, finance 9/11.

The second important unanswered question is how 9/11 was used to implicate Iraq and thus be used to justify war.  Politically aware Americans already know these lies were orchestrated from the Vice President's office. It is clear that 9/11 was used to justify the catastrophic invasion of the Middle East by the American Empire.

Michael Moore, in his movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” shown the spotlight on our government's complicity in allowing large numbers of Saudi citizens to fly home during the national ground stop which was implemented by the FAA. The authors provide chilling details of the backgrounds of many of these people, who were issued a free pass out of the country, most without even a cursory FBI interview.

Of course, there are many more unanswered questions discussed over 84 pages.

I believe this book supports rather than refutes my belief that the neoconservative administration of George Bush, directed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was well aware of the continuing efforts of Al Qaeda to attack American targets. The book makes it clear that the CIA made every effort to prevent the FBI from knowing important details about at least two of the soon-to-be hijackers. The fact that Saudi financing of the hijackers has been poorly covered up supports my belief. The inability of Bush and Cheney to get their stories straight with respect to a shoot-down order (or not) supports my belief. The book fails to seriously refute questions about the physics of the event--the possibility of controlled demolition, the molten pools of lava, and the collapse of World Trade Center #7.

The authors provide great detail with respect to much of the 9/11 story, but fail to go deep into the scientific evidence of the crime. They provide the outline of what should be obvious, but fail to include the obvious in their conclusion. What is obvious is that the 9/11 could have been prevented, but was not. It is obvious that we were lied to immediately, continually, and often. Torture was then used to create a link between 9/11 and Iraq, thus justifying a war of aggression that killed 2 to 3 million Iraqi's, a war that continues to this day. This happened because a catastrophic and catalyzing event....a new Pearl Harbor....was allowed to occur.