Guests of the Nation

Chapters 7-15

SEVEN

“I knew within hours of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that it was an inside job.
Based on my eleven-year experience as an FAA air traffic controller in the busy
northeast corridor, including hundreds of hours of training, briefings, air refuel-
ings, low altitude bombing drills, being part of huge military exercises, daily mili-
tary training exercises, interacting on a routine basis directly with NORAD radar
personnel, and based on my own direct experience dealing with in-flight emer-
gency situations, including two instances of hijacked commercial airliners, I state
unequivocally: There is absolutely no way that four large commercial airliners
could have flown around off-course for thirty to sixty minutes on 9/11 without
being intercepted and shot completely out of the sky by our jet fighters unless
very highly placed people in our government and our military wanted it to happen.”

— ROBIN HORDON, former FAA air traffic controller at the Boston Air Route

Traffic Control Center, located in Nashua, New Hampshire, 1970-1981. Former

certified commercial pilot. Former certified flight instructor and certified ground instructor

Flight 11 from Boston’s Logan, with captain John Ogonowski in charge, along with co-pilot Thomas
McGuinness, as well as the now-famous Betty Ong, flight attendant, heads off for Los Angeles.
Takes off west, then veers north into upstate New York, turns sharp left, passes over Albany and
then collides with the north tower.

Flight 175 with Michael Horrocks and Victor Saracini in the front chairs also takes off from Boston,
also intended for Los Angeles, goes off course in northern New Jersey, banks north and crashes into
the south tower.
Flight 77 embarks from Dulles in the nation’s capital also California dreaming, turns around in
West Virginia and hits the Pentagon a bit later.
You believe that?

Meanwhile, we’ve got Flight 93 from Newark on its way to San Francisco with Jason Dahl, 53, from
Denver, the captain, and Leroy Homer, 36, of Marlton, New Jersey, its first officer. Along with future
dead rock stars Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Thomas Barrett and Jeremy Glick on board as passen-
gers.

It turns around just west of Cleveland and crashes southeast of Pittsburgh.
And there we have it.
Each plane was taken over by young Arab men and the Bush government had every right to bomb
Afghanistan and invade Iraq.

“You don’t believe that, do you?” asked Bill.
“Do you?” I said.
They sat in silence.

I daydreamed, which I don’t like to do, anymore than night dream.
I almost don’t like to sleep.
When I was young I could escape from the world by sleeping until noon if I didn’t have a class.
Now there is no place to go.
I swear.

Laura tossed the butt at the ashtray.
In and out.
Ron strode over from his door to take a cigarette from Bill’s pack.
He lit it and sat sidesaddle on the desk, staring down at me, blowing smoke into my face.
I love this Ron.

EIGHT

“The official story of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible. High levels of
our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible.”

— COLONEL BOB BOWMAN (USAF Ret.), Caltech Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and
aeronautics, decorated combat fighter pilot (101 missions in Vietnam), and for-
mer head of Presidents Ford and Carter’s ‘Star Wars’ program

As President George W. Bush pulled up to Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida, Flight 11
plowed nose-first into the north tower of the World Trade Center, in Manhattan, on the edge of the
water.

“Was that Flight 11 though?” said Laura.
I nodded, not yes, but just acknowledging our conundrum.
“And 175,” Bill pushed back into the hard chair and crossed his legs like he was asking his sev-
enteen-year-old son if he knew what fucking time it was.

Michael Paul Miller

NINE

“The U.S. military, not al-Qaeda, had the sustained access weeks before 9/11
to also plant controlled demolition charges throughout the superstructures of
WTC 1 and WTC 2, and in WTC 7, which brought down all three buildings on
9/11 … A U.S. military plane, not one piloted by al-Qaeda, performed the highly
skilled, high-speed, 270-degree dive towards the Pentagon that air traffic con-
trollers on 9/11 were sure was a military plane as they watched it on their
screens. Only a military aircraft, not a civilian plane flown by al-Qaeda, would
have given off the “friendly” signal needed to disable the Pentagon’s anti-air-
craft missile batteries as it approached the building. Only the US military, not al-
Qaeda, had the ability to break all of its Standard Operating Procedures to par-
alyze its own emergency response system.”

— BARBARA HONEGGER, M.S., senior military affairs journalist at the Naval
Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy’s advanced science, technology and nation-
al security affairs university (1995-present). White House policy analyst and
special assistant to the assistant to President Ronald Reagan (1981-1983)

Sooo.

I slapped my legs with my open hands.
You guys kill, right?

Bodies, falling bodies, trying to fly. People cannot fly. They can try. But they cannot fly. They can fall.

Michael Paul Miller

I looked around the room and collected the blank stares, shoved them, wadded up, into my back
pocket.
What?
What’s wrong? What did I say?
For the right reason, right?
Can I get an Amen?

How about a Thou Shalt Not Kilt?
Who believes that these days, not even the churches.
You don’t scratch yourself on the way to the bathroom in the morning and then gag at yourself in
the mirror because you are so evil, not Hitler, not Cheney, not nobody.

You think you are a swell guy and at least you know the good reasons why you do things, even if nobody else does.
It all makes sense, others will know better some day, why you had to do the things you have done.
And in the meantime, you have more shit than God.
You have influence, people return your calls, clap, cheer as you drive by.
Not everyone gets that.

If those around you say it’s not only okay, but a good thing, to kill this person or these people, how
long would you be able to hold a dissenting view in your head and still enjoy your day?
Same with spouses.
They have to come to some sort of agreement, spoken or otherwise, in order to live together, to
make it work, to be able to enjoy pressing their feet together in last year’s Christmas socks during the
onset of fall.

Right?
I’m not getting much feedback here.
Laura got up and walked right up to Ron before he moved aside.
She left, I assume to go to the bathroom, somewhere, a secret FBI bathroom, or more likely the
public one in the hall, pushing past, around people on their way to grandma’s house or an exciting
work week, or talking about the price of Turtle Wax in Alabama, or their grass, or whatever these peo-
ple talk about.

But Laura just looked sad.
Ron wanted to kill me right there.
He could have drawn that handgun from his underarm and shoved it into the side of my head with-
out much trouble.
Bill just stared at me.
Ron would have pulled the trigger twice, just for kicks. So would I.
Bill Cosby. Maybe Denzel Washington.
I needed to pee.

I thought I didn’t dare ask.
Then we’ve got me and Ron and Bill, walking almost hand in hand into the public restroom and I
hate that shit.

And they have to watch me piss, while they are pissing, their dicks in their hands, and they have
to watch me over there, trying to piss, and I see them out of the side of both eyes, and it’s just some-
thing I would rather not go through, if it could be avoided, and ol’ Laura would wonder where we were.

Maybe this will all be over soon anyway.

TEN

“Only secret services and their current chiefs — or those retired but still having
influence inside the state organizations — have the ability to plan, organize and
conduct an operation of such magnitude … Osama bin Laden and ‘Al Qaeda’ can-
not be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do
not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders.”

— GENERAL LEONID IVASHOV, former chief of staff of the Russian armed forces on
Sept. 11, 2001, and department chief for general affairs in the Soviet Union’s
Ministry of Defense

How to get them to do it?
You ever see the movie where that one guy is stuffing the other guy into the wood chipper?
True. Just a flick.
Look at fans and ballplayers standing with their hats over their hearts in the middle of the sev-
enth in the Indians-Yankees playoff series.

They will stand for whatever you want — believe anything you want — as long as it only lasts a short
time and there is promise of sex or beer or comfort or warm fuzzies somewhere in the distance that
they can focus on —that is all they want.
Believe me. They don’t want trouble.

Just get me outa here. I wish this were over. Are we done yet? Are we having fun yet? TGIF. Can
we go now? How many more miles. When will this be over? Let’s go home.
Home. The American Dream.
Think of Nazis.
Think of training young, nice people, to kill, to stab through the heart, to burn, to blow the fuck out
of.

Abu Ghraib, smiling photos of young women with dead guys with their hands and legs tied.
How did we get them to do that?

How about keeping a bank account for a comfortable retirement while thousands starve to death
every freaking day, their last breath a wheezing death rattle gasp.
How’s that for “why would anyone do that?”

Okay, we’ve got the planes hitting the towers, people jumping out from seventy-eighty-ninety sto-
ries, landing on the pavement, shit like that.
Chopin. Military Polonaise, playing in the E-4B, in the Pentagon before it was struck, on Air Force
One, in the bunker, in Tower One and Two, World Trade Center Seven, and probably everywhere else
that had anything connected.

It was a rhythm, a sense of continuity, knowing you are a part of the whole.
Or not knowing.
Still, the band played on.

I know a guy who was locked in a cold, damp cell in fucking Romania for seven months. He was
an agent, too, something like you guys. Navy to your Army.
And when he got out and got back to some fucking Ohio farm, for a whole summer he got up just
before dawn, took his car out to the dirt road and sat on the hood, with that music playing, Cho-fuck-
ing-pan, watching the sun rise, watching the clouds up so close he could almost touch them.
Well.
Anyway.
Splat.

Protoplasm wad of gum on the sidewalk, stuck to the concrete.
Hey! Don’t step over there.
Don’t look.
And because our Alamo demo team and probably a hundred others had all summer to work and ...

Art by Allison Healy

“Robert’s,” said Bill.
Robert’s supervisors.

Somebody who didn’t give a shit about dead Americans, about 3,000 dead Americans, who
thought those rich Americans in those towers working for those wealthy companies while the world
starves had it coming.

And besides, not only did they have it coming, it helps out our side.
Israelis.
The Dancing Israelis in the white van, they were like mid-managers. They had been in the towers,
setting charges, eating matzo soup out of Tupperware at noon on the top of an elevator car, telling
Jose and …
“Darnell.”
To put the fucking thing here, not there.
Like this.

And then it worked. It worked perfectly.
And there would be war and our country gets some fucking help and we get a fucking unleavened
bread party just as soon as we get out of this g.d. heathen country and back to Canaan.
Farm out.
Can we get an Amen? How about a yumpin’ Jehosophat?

_________________

Total number killed in attacks (official figure as of 9/5/02): 2,819
Number of firefighters and paramedics killed: 343
Number of NYPD officers: 23
Number of Port Authority police officers: 37
Number of WTC companies that lost people: 60
Number of employees who died in Tower One: 1,402
Number of employees who died in Tower Two: 614
Number of employees lost at Cantor Fitzgerald: 658
Number of nations whose citizens were killed in attacks: 115
Ratio of men to women who died: 3:1
Age of the greatest number who died: between 35and 39
Bodies found “intact”: 289
Body parts found: 19,858
Number of families who got no remains: 1,717
Estimated units of blood donated to the New York Blood Center: 36,000
Total units of donated blood actually used: 258
Number of people who lost a spouse or partner in the attacks: 1,609
Estimated number of children who lost a parent: 3,051
Percentage of Americans who knew someone hurt or killed in the attacks: 20
— New York Magazine

___________________

ELEVEN

• June 1, 2001—NORAD conducts Amalgam Virgo 01, an exercise involv-
ing a cruise missile attack scenario in which their presentation manual has
a photo of Osama bin Laden on the cover and a picture of an explosion in a skyscraper inside.

The passengers on plane eleven.
I mean, uhh ... shee-it, I stuffed my yawn with a fist ... ninety-three.
How did they get the pilots to land, in order to kill them?
Is it the whole previous-scenario-Amalgam-Virgo exercise thing?

The pilots believe it’s part of an annoying, important, nationwide, mandatory exercise.
Or, they have been told there is an actual bomb on board. That’s what the mayor of Cleveland
said.
That’s what was reported on a local Cleveland TV news website, that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland
because of a bomb scare.

“Please proceed to the ramp, down the yellow tape corridor. The crew will direct you to the hospi-
tality area.
“Take any carry-on luggage with you.
“There should be only a slight delay.”
You believe that, said one of the passengers to her traveling friend.

And as they processed slowly out, they saw beside their plane an identical plane, which they
assumed to be their transfer.

Michael Paul Miller

This happened to be a plane specially fitted with remote control, a drone plane 93.
Right?
As they squirmed in a roped-off isolated waiting area they saw the drone warming up, revving.
They were then directed by the flight crew to a military bus, through a tiny glass door, one by one.
The smokers outside had to wait for everyone else to get past before they went back inside for their
things.
“Where we going?”

“Why is the crew getting on with us?”
The windows were covered with black plastic.
The faces of the soldiers were smeared with war paint. Some wore face shields, Kevlar vests,
fancy, new automatic weapons at their chest. The women soldiers had short hair.
So did the men, but the passengers did not notice that, did they.

Military jeeps and assorted vehicles surrounded the bus.
The armed soldiers made a fuss, getting nervous when they didn’t think all the passengers would
fit on one bus. They didn’t think they had another bus available.

“One bus! One bus! Everyone on one bus!” a large black voice stood above the others.
“Move down the aisle, ma’am. Fill the aisle.”
One of the soldiers pushed one of the crew members when she did not move, sending her to one
knee.

The large black officer, his face shield up, sweat pustules covering his face, stepped in, holding a
black baton high above his head in a large, powerful grip.
His fingernails glowed in the low light of the bus.
The airline captain stepped in, now wondering why this exercise needed to be taken exactly this
seriously.

“Hey! Hey! What the hell is going on here?
“Stand down, soldier.”
He helped the woman up.
“My God, man.”
“Please,” said the large black officer from behind.
He nodded toward the back of the bus.

The aisle filled in.
Some passengers complained about their accommodations.
They sat with luggage on their laps, between their knees and feet and the chair ahead of them,
pressed between their head and the window.
Many worried out loud about things to do.
They asked each other why their cell phones had been taken — and by such unnecessary frisking
as well, as if they were prisoners.

The driver switched on the interior lights and tuned the radio to country.
Passengers tried to see outside, around, through the black plastic.
Two women started to sing.
“We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, yellow submarine.”
They laughed and somehow their own laughter made them a little afraid.
They felt movement and tried to judge which direction.
Backing.

Those standing grabbed for something, a seat, a silver tube, a stranger’s shoulder.
“Sorry.”
They moved away, surrounded by the military vehicles.
“Why the soldiers?”
“The captain says it’s a drill.”
“A drill? What kind of drill?”
“What is this?”
“This is not right. Something is not right.”
They heard the roar of a plane taking off, headed for …
“We’ve got, you’ve got, a problem here,” said Ron.
“Flight 93 was not headed for NYC. It’s the Shanksville aircraft.”
Oh, you’re right. Well, you get the picture anyway. Glad you’re paying attention, Ronald.
You’re a good man.
I do not care what Bill says about you.
The bus pulled up to a lonely grey Quonset hut on a far side of the airport.
An older, white man in full battle dress squeezed on board, climbing up the steps.
He stood at the top step on one leg, the other out in mid-air, and spoke loudly over the chatter and
complaints and scattered epithets.
“Quiet!”

He waited.

“All will disembark at this point.”
“We must be in Frisco,” one of the singing women joked nervously to her traveling friend.
“You will then proceed in orderly fashion into this building.”
“What is this?”
“What’s the meaning of this?” shouted the captain.
“We’ve been taken over,” someone whispered.
The grumbling passengers filed out of the bus and down a gauntlet of silent, stone-faced soldiers,
men, women, in riot gear.
The passengers saw their own reflections in the plastic face shields.

As the captain reached the front of the bus the large black man waited for him as if he had a mes-
sage.
As the captain approached, moving forward hand by hand on each seat back, the soldier took one
step forward with a large black boot.
He took his baton in both hands at his side and swung backward then forward, ramming full force
into the captain’s stomach as if he were trying to put a hole through his back.

“Ooof!”
Every square inch of air whooshed from the captain’s nose and mouth. He sat on his hands and
knees on the hard, ridged floor for a long moment, seeing only flashing red, then the black combat
boots.
The black officer nodded and two soldiers slung their weapons over their backs and picked the
captain up by the underarms.

They dragged him down the steps, his feet bouncing.
They hoisted him up for a better grip and forced him to clumsily walk down the gauntlet and into
the spare, chilled building, which looked like an empty National Guard armory with its grey linoleum
floor and basketball hoops with old-fashioned, round, white backboards.

They set the captain carefully against the tin shed wall at about the mid-court line.
The passengers and crew filled in around the captain.
Some stood, some tried to walk around the building, but were limited by the sentry soldiers.
“What have we done?”
“What should we do?”
“I need to make a phone call?”
“I have to use the restroom!”
“Please. You’ll have to sit down, ma’am, against the wall.”
“We have nothing to eat.”
“There are no chairs.”
“Who is in charge here?”
“Please.
“Now.”

____________________

Bugliosi Would Seek Death Penalty for Bush
by Russell Mokhiber

Published on Saturday, May 31, 2008 by Corporate Crime Reporter

If Vincent Bugliosi were prosecuting George W. Bush for the murder of the
more than 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, he would seek the
death penalty.
“If I were the prosecutor, there is no question I would seek the death penalty
...”
“The least I can do is put that thought in his mind until he goes to his grave,”
Bugliosi said. “That’s the least I can do for the thousands of American soldiers
who came back in an aluminum box or came back as a jar of ashes. And the par-
ents are told — don’t open the box, it is unviewable. They are getting back limbs
and body parts. And this — I don’t want to use a cuss word here — this small, horri-
ble human being — while young men who never had a chance to live out their
dreams, being blown to pieces by roadside bombs — and this guy is having a ball
dancing. I want to put the thought in his mind that in any time in the future, five
years from now, ten years from now, some aide is going to tap him on the shoulder
and say — Mr. President, there is this prosecutor, I don’t know how to pronounce
his name, he’s up in Fargo, and he’s charging you with murder sir, and we are due
for an arraignment next Wednesday in Fargo, sir ...”
“Bush will never know whether that will happen. They went after Pinochet for
murder 33 years later. I want to put that thought in Bush’s mind. This guy has
been enjoying himself throughout this entire war. And the suffering and the horror
and blood is unbelievable. And he has enjoyed himself throughout this whole thing
...”

____________________

TWELVE

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless
one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself
to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

— Joseph Goebbels

Thirty, thirty-five minutes later a string of white vans pulled up outside, accompanied by two cars
and one SUV.
Two men, four men, in suits, six, eight, looks like ten now, and two women, exited the vehicles.
A couple wore sunglasses.

By two’s, passengers were called by name to come to the door.
Each was then asked to come outside, where they were commanded to step over to a white van,
spread their legs and put their hands against the side.
They were frisked again, handcuffed to a tarnished gold chain around their waists, and fitted with
ankle bracelets.

Each van held six passengers, three in each of the two middle seats, with two agents in a cage in
back and two in front, also separated from the passenger prisoners by wire mesh.
The shackles were fastened to worn gold U-bolts in the floor.

Dead children. Dead heads like jujubes. Like a busted bag of marbles across the street. Y’ever
see a dead child? Ever imagined killing a child? Running one over in the street?
The last van for the last four prisoners pulled up outside the Quonset-type building at 11:20 a.m.
By now the towers were down, the Pentagon was smoking, as was the hole in the field near
Shanksville.

The passenger prisoners were unaware. Their thoughts remained on the improbability of getting
to appointments on time.
A helicopter trailed above each vehicle like a kite.

The passengers inhaled the scenery along Interstate 480 to 80, headed southeast to
Youngstown. They saw the signs and tried to interpret the mileage and the exits and the whatever
enters your brain at a time like that.
Who could we ask about that?

The leaves of some of the trees were just starting to turn. Sugar maples, if I remember correctly.
“How would you know?” asked Ron.
I did not deign to answer, only turned my head and told Blacky with my eyes that I shit bigger turds
than him … he.

“He’s from Ohio,” said Laura, annoyed with Ron’s interruption.
As I was saying.   
The trip took about an hour and a half.

One van had to stop for a train, another two stopped for a bathroom break for the agent guards.
One had to return to the air base to double-check the identity of one of the passenger prisoners, who
turned out to be the right one, in any case.
Each van pulled up to the northeast gate of Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, operated by
Corrections Corp.

The white, unmarked vans drove slowly onto the grounds, down a rock drive, between the rec hall
and industry.
The agents took the prisoners inside, into B Unit, down a long, shiny, silent hall.
The crack and snap and suck and squeak of their footsteps echoed.
Each group of prisoners was taken to a white cement block cell, like a holding tank in a city jail,
with a grey metal bench attached to one wall.

“Please, have a seat.”
They sat in a row, asking with wide eyes a hundred questions that they knew by now would go beg-
ging.

An agent appeared at the door and each prisoner longed for the word, the good news, the smile,

that the exercise was over, all was well, the apology, the reprieve, the message that they would now
be quickly returned with all good wishes to home, to children, to routines, to lunch, laundry, life.
I’ve got so much to do today!

The new agent stepped in with a handful of white somethings, sacks, thick, rough, like little laun-
dry bags.

He pulled a bag over the head of each man, woman, or child.
Then each of the agents left the room.

Michael Paul Miller

The prisoners talked to each other in whispers, put their heads down to try to breath, to try to push
their shoulders up and get out of the bag.
They cried.
They prayed.
“Oh, God, please, if only you can …”
“Hey! Let us out of here!”
“Please!”
They hissed.
“This is a prison. We are going to priiison!”

“For what?”
“Why?”
Someone got caught with something … in their bags.
“Why are we all in trouble?”
“How long?”
“I can’t. My husband.”
“Oh my Gooood!”

The door clicked to open, then to shut.
With wide eyes and mouths inside the hoods, they followed the shoe clicks like bear paws outside
the tent.
The person held a pistol at his side, with silencer.

He grabbed the top of the bag and the hair of the first in line, one of the singing women, yellow
submarine.
He shoved the barrel into her temple and fired twice before she drooped and fell to the floor, her
head thumping like a melon.
The silent stalker hurried down the line, letting the bodies fall and flop as they might, then turned
to snap across the hard floor.

The door clicked twice. Open. Closed.
The bodies twitched, bled, kicked and died.
They lay alone for minutes or hours, until another team with gloves and masks and coveralls and
mops and body bags had some time.

___________________

“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.”
— Adolf Hitler

____________________

THIRTEEN

“The official story could not possibly have happened … It’s not possible. It’s not
operationally feasible. The Commission was a whitewash.”

— CATHERINE AUSTIN FITTS, Assistant Secretary of Housing under George
H.W. Bush. Former managing director and member of the board of Wall Street
investment bank Dillon, Read & Co.

At Booker Elementary, one secret service agent, when he heard the news about the towers said,
we’re outa here!

Karl Rove grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside.
Ari Fleischer found a black Magic Marker and white typing paper in the principal’s office and
made a sign for President Bush: Don’t Say Anything Yet.

Andrew Card went out to whisper in the President’s ear, “the second plane has hit.”
That Dan Bartlett dude sat on a grey folding chair in the hall, with his legs crossed, writing notes
on a clipboard.

Why didn’t the secret service agent have his copy of the script?
Why did he get so bent out of shape? Nobody else did.

One can only say that it’s a monumental job of coordination, even with months and years and last-
minute all night sessions and what have you, and the resources of the White House at hand.
One can only guess that this agent acted on impulse, his training, and that he had to be remind-
ed, re-directed, made to focus, stay on-task.

But he still had to wonder, how did everyone else know how the President was not a target.
How did everyone else know that airplanes were not now heading toward Booker Elementary.
How could they be certain they were not putting these children at risk by the presence of the
President.

Surely they cared deeply about these children, like all the children of the world, different colors,
sizes, shapes, personalities — just like all the children of the United States and the world, for these
were basically good men, of course, moral men, Americans.

____________________

• A remote-control model aircraft field in Tewksbury, Massachusetts
is named after Captain John A. Ogonowski, pilot of Flight 11.

___________________

FOURTEEN

“I normally don’t smoke.” — Laura
“Who brought the cigarettes?”— Ron
“I thought we might need them today.” —Bill
“Toss me one. Please.” — John

“How about the soldiers at the airport?”
“Did they kill them?”
“All?”
“God.”

How would they keep them quiet?
Well, tell them they would be fired, no job, no health insurance, their wives would be angry and
their children would not have food.
Stacked like cordwood.
That’s enough for most people.

Or imply they would be killed.
That takes care of a whole bunch more.
And for some more, have them believe in what you are doing.
Tell them the people are dangerous, bad, socialists, communists, evil, irregulars.
Like they told the peasant soldiers in El Salvador and elsewhere to get them to kill their neighbors.
And by the way, the ones who told them that are the same ones. They go all the way back to
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. That era has not ended.

Or maybe the way they told the Chicago policemen to kill Black Panthers or FBI agents and sol-
diers to shoot at American Indians, men, women, children at Wounded Knee I or II.
And then kill the holdouts, dissenters. There won’t be that many, if any.
“Phone calls?”

Excellent question, point, you know.
Well, they were made, but by actors, on the ground.
Remember the bunker in the White House, and Bert and Ernie in our white command plane, cir-
cling, checking up here and there, NORAD, Bush out of the way until we need him for a scripted
speech —— and by the way, isn’t he too stupid to have pulled all this off?
That’s already complicated enough.
Can’t afford to get any crazier.

So the studio is also in the bunker. Well, it’s not a bunker, more like an underground resort, lake
home, with wires, lots of wires.
“Hello, Mom. This is Mark Bingham.”
The mom says something. The signal goes dead.
One line and he blew it. Oh, well.

The show must go on.

FIFTEEN

“The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master
achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within
one hour to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers!
This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the
state and industry.”

— The Hon. Andreas von Buelow, Ph.D., former Minister of Research and
Technology, West Germany, and former State Secretary of the Federal Ministry
of Defense, member of Bundestag 1969-1994

• Marsh & McClennan, North Tower, Tower One, 95th Floor hit at 8:46 – collapsed at 10:28.

You’ve heard, read the survivor stories, how they climbed down the steps, passing the firemen on
their way up, somehow made it outside to the street, found a subway car or bus or some sort of
guardian angel to get home to hugs and handshakes.

Cold beer. My God.
Whiskey.
Well, I’ve got one for you.
How about the people who died up there.
Now, there would be some stories.
Stephen King. Emily Dickinson. Edgar Allan Poe stuff.
The tell tale heart, beating, under the rubble, inside the debris, beating, beating, and it knows
what killed it, even as it still beats.

Boom.
Boom.
Boom.

It beats.
Loud. Louder. Loud enough for all to hear. The beating, like the music to a symphony or whatev-
er you call it, there are no words, but everyone knows what the words are, even though there are no
fucking goddamn words.

I stopped for a moment, and if there would have been a window, I would have been staring out it.
The three FBI agents studied me, let me be me, be all I could be.
Sometimes I just feel depressed. It hits me like a truck. I take Prozac, of course, and I jog.
Sometimes twice a day. I swim when I can, that will give you a good feeling for a while.
I drink, but I don’t want to get fat, because then I would get even more depressed.
I suppose you get the picture.

You can see me now, as clearly as I see the colors of an Ohio fall in that concrete wall.
What I’m a guessin’, it’s those darned ol’ post-9/11, steadily depressin,’ workin’ at the car wash
blues.
Well, actually, there was this young woman, putting on her shoe.
She walked to work in comfortable tennies and then put on these things that she kept under her
desk.

She had graduated from Holyoke College, Mount, in, uh, Massachusetts.
All these people up there had interesting lives, went places, knew people, read, movies, all that
stuff.

Our girl was not a lifer in this job, but it was a pretty good start, she thought. She told her parents
she could see the world from her office window and would find where she really wanted to go from
there.

They were on the cutting edge, shall we say?
Pushing the envelope, huh?

The hope of the world, the best, the brightest, the lightest? I’ll bet there were workout rooms inthose towers.

Anybody know? Laura?

Laura scowled visibly. No, no. Not scowled. She thought I might be crazy. Definitely.

Well, our Lady Guinevere of the North Tower had spent the first week of June with her grand-
mother in Newfoundland, then three weeks with her college roommate in Madrid, Paris, Berlin,
Prague.

She then started to work at Marsh & McClennan on the 95thFloor of One World Trade Center.
She sat at her desk, in her cubical, waiting for her friends to arrive.
Some guys were standing around talking, but she didn’t feel comfortable with them yet, so she
checked her email, her news websites, liberal.

She found out what her little sister was going to have for lunch that day.
Our promising young woman was leaning low, putting on her last shoe while studying the screen,
when without warning the room exploded, erupted, caught fire.
She was thrown against a far wall, tossed like a rag young woman.

The men talking were now flaming or extinguished.
She awakened in seconds. Her eyes burned. She tried to understand if she was dreaming.

Michael Paul Miller

For some reason she stared at the tilted, scorched thing in the office. It was a plane, without win-
dows.
A plane had wandered off course and hit the building.

No one was trying to get off the plane. The cockpit was bursting with flames, but nobody was
inside.
She heard cries and shouts from elsewhere, but on her floor she saw only burning and smoke,
and stupid guys on fire.

Dumb jocks in flames.
This might turn out to be an interesting day, after all

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1,434 die in North Tower
599 in South Tower
North – 78 died per floor
South – 19 died per floor
Two-thirds evacuated from south tower after first hit north tower.
North – at crash level and above – 1,360 died – none survived
Below crash line – 72 died – 4,000 survived
— USA Today

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NEXT WEEK: Chapters 16-21