By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower and Former U.S. Asset covering Iraq and Libya

9/11 denialists like to swear smugly that the official 9/11 story must be true, because the government could never keep such an important secret without getting caught.

Somebody would spill the beans, right? In fact, a number of us tried. Media watchers should savvy up, as the air waves get blitzed this weekend with 9/11 emorials. If the corporate media had done its job as a watch dog, the world would have got an earful reliable intelligence sources debunking the official 9/11 story.

Unhappily, the corporate media has been a co-conspirator in the 9/11 Cover Up from day one. They have actively abetted the government with its dirty work. Say a truth teller got arrested on the Patriot Act—like me— and locked in prison on a military base, while the public debate raged over 9/11 and Iraq without access to knowledgeable sources. The government could rely on corporate media to squash the story, while the Justice Department fought my demands for a trial, playing every dirty trick in the book to stop a New York jury from hearing testimony about 9/11 and Iraq.

My nightmare is described in Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq. It was a frightening ordeal with secret charges, secret evidence, secret grand jury testimony, and threats of indefinite detention on a Texas military base.

However the Patriot Act by itself was not enough to silence facts about the command failure before 9/11 or Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. Over and over, friends and colleagues reached out to the corporate media, delivering independent confirmations about my 9/11 warnings, the Iraqi peace framework and my work on the Lockerbie case, which proved my status as an Asset. Supporters pleaded for the media's help to expose the government's manipulations, so I could get my day in court, and bring that truth to the people.

Over and over again, the corporate media in New York itself mounted a wall of silence to buttress America's leaders.

Most New Yorkers and New Jersey residents would be appalled to discover that the worst media whore in the 9/11 Cover Up turned out to be the New York Times.

By May, 2004, the New York Times received no fewer than four confirmations of our Intelligence team's 9/11 warnings to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department. Confirmation was made six months before release of the 9/11 Commission report, when public discussion could have impacted the findings. Most importantly, a discourse of the facts about 9/11 would have educated voters before the November 2004 elections, holding leaders in Washington accountable to the people. For this reason, I offered to waive my Fifth Amendment rights under indictment, so the 9/11 Commission could take my testimony under oath.

Most critically, the New York Times gained two of those all important confirmations about the 9/11 warnings from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Both of my handlers, Dr. Richard Fuisz and Paul Hoven men freely volunteered our 9/11 warnings and the Iraqi Peace option to the New York Times. They also explained my work as a U.S. intelligence Asset engaged in the Lockerbie negotiations with Libya, and my role spearheading talks to resume weapons inspections with Iraqi Ambassador Dr. Saeed Hasan. The journalist, David Samuels, called me excitedly, after the interviews.

You read that correctly. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency both gave information about the 9/11 warnings to the New York Times, expecting the newspaper to alert its readers of the command negligence before the attack. The New York Times' readership was most personally impacted by the tragedy, after all. They made an effort to inspire discussion while the 9/11 Commission was hearing testimony. The New York Times acquired two more confirmations of our 9/11 warnings from Dr. Parke Godfrey, a highly respected computer science professor of York University in Toronto, and my brother, John Lindauer of Los Angeles.

That took guts for the Intelligence Community. By this time, writing was on the wall that Republican Leaders would punish anyone who spoke against them.

One would expect the New York Times to rush to press with such a hot story. Think about it: a long-time U.S. Intelligence Asset, second cousin to President Bush's Chief of Staff, Andrew Card warns about 9/11 and has full knowledge of Iraq's cooperation with the 9/11 Investigation--- then gets arrested on the Patriot Act, after requesting to testify before Congress.

Wasn't that newsworthy? Not according to the editors of the New York Times. Instead of objectively reporting independent confirmations of the 9/11 warnings and properly identifying me as an Asset, the New York Times engaged in gross public fraud. They abetted the government in concealing information of critical significance to the paper's home town. They manipulated the people of New York City into believing the CIA gave no advance warnings of 9/11 at all. While the American public screamed for impeachment, the New York Times blocked information that showed President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez engaged in active public deception. The people were left believing the government had simply made mistakes before 9/11 and the Iraq War.

In other words, the New York Times acted like an old whore, clinging to GOP leaders like a last client, seeking assurances of her waning attractiveness to the public.

When one of Washington's most stellar attorneys, Brian Shaughnessy, forced the Court to grant my request for a single, pre-trial hearing—four years after my arrest— Parke Godfrey delivered shocking testimony about my 9/11 warnings less than a thousand feet from where the World Trade Center once graced the New York skyline.

Yet again, New York Times reporter, Alan Feuer, fraudulently and libelously invented a phony lead sentence: "She stuck her tongue out at the prosecutor." And the New York Times parroted the Justice Department's line that "half a dozen psychiatrists" had declared me incompetent to stand trial—a blatant deception. Ignoring a morning's worth of testimony, Feuer suggested that I was a "religious maniac," something hysterically funny to everyone who knows me. There's no reality contact in the one and only psychiatric report that postulated such claims. (That single evaluation was presented by the Justice Department's psychiatrist and tossed by the Bureau of Prisons in the first hour of my arrival at Carswell).

If the New York Times had scratched the surface in its reporting, journalists would have recognized the Justice Department was running what's called "a psy-op" designed to hide a major government deceptions from voters. A quick examination of the record would have revealed that half a dozen psychiatrists had challenged the Justice Department, and declared me fully competent in all areas of life. Even psychiatrists at Carswell Prison acknowledged I suffered "no evidence of hallucinations," "no depression." They said I socialized well, posed "zero behavioral problems." Weekly reports stated consistently that I was "cooperative, smiling, with good eye contact."

Notably, psychiatrists at Carswell Prison ruled out delusional disorder, citing first-hand observation, witness interviews, and diagnostic testing.

The slightest attention to witness testimonials would have exposed the whole public fraud. Yet the New York media carefully ignored evidentiary testimony that exposed the 9/11 warnings and denied symptoms of mental instability. While my attorney, Brian Shaughnessy protested for my right to a trial, the New York media assured the public that the Court finding was "gift wrapped for my defense."

Casting journalists as "controlled opposition--" might be overly generous given these circumstances, since it implies they have any backbone at all. Alas, most of them don't. They whine for pity for their low ratings. Then they let government officials write their news scripts in exchange for political access.

Hey, it's a tough job defending the official story of 9/11. You have to overcome janitorial crews, fire fighters and emergency rescue teams who all reported hearing explosions pop through the towers. They had to ignore damage to the front lobby— windows that exploded before the first plane hit the building.

You have to ignore what your own eyes see—a neat, clean controlled demolition of the Towers, which dropped free-fall into a pile of thermatic dust--- and fires that burned under the Towers until December, months after jet fuel would have gasped its last flame.

Airplanes crashed into the Towers that day, sure enough. However I can testify myself the U.S. had significant advance warnings about the airplane hijackings, back to April and May, 2001. The decision to go to War with Iraq, in the aftermath of the terrorist strike, was already made "at the highest levels of government above the CIA Director and Secretary of State." I know that firsthand, because I was instructed to deliver that message, precisely worded, to Iraqi diplomats, and to demand "any fragment of actionable intelligence that would pinpoint the attack." And I did so.

Iraq had no intelligence. However, the CIA's advance knowledge of the conspiracy and advance threats against Iraq created powerful motivation and opportunity for a separate orphan team, domestic or foreign, to wire the Towers with military grade explosives.

The New York media never investigated reports that security cameras in the parking garage had photographed mysterious trucks/vans arriving at the World Trade Center at about 3 a.m and departing at 5 a.m, before Type AAA personalities arrived to start their days on Wall Street. The vans were different than the janitorial trucks, in make, model and decal. They arrived at the World Trade Center from August 23 to September 3.

Those are important missing pieces of how the 9/11 tragedy unfolded. Myself, I have concluded that airplane hijackings were used as a public cover for a controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and Building 7. From that point, it's up to explosives experts to determine the sorts materials applied to the detonation.

I won my freedom when the blogs and alternative radio took up my cause. In a practical sense, 9/11 marked the changing of the media guard. And it proved the internet boasts some fine journalists of its own, like Michael Collins and radio host Bob Tuskin at The Intel Hub.

No thanks to the government's top dogs at the New York Times. But perhaps that's not fair. A dog would have shown more loyalty to the people of Manhattan and New Jersey.

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Susan Lindauer is the author of "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq," which describes her work as an Asset covering Iraq and Libya, and her arrest on the Patriot Act shortly after requesting to testify before Congress about the CIA's advance warnings about 9/11 and a peace option in Iraq. | Audio interview | Book review