Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror

by Peter Lance

ReganBooks, October, 2004.
Hardcover, 360 pages.
ISBN: 0060543558

Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror by Peter Lance

With the recent shocking revelations of the Duelfor Report and the CIA and State Departments both leaking to reporters in unprecedented numbers, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong with the intelligence gathering system of the United States. Now award-winning investigative journalist Peter Lance, author of the bestelling 1000 Years for Revenge (HarperCollins) drops another bombshell: The 9/11 Commission Report was a cover up, a snow job of monumental proportions. And what is worse, the American people were lied to when we were told that 9/11 was the first time that Al-Qaeda hijacked and destroyed an American jetliner.

Governor Kean, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission read Lance's last book 1000 Years for Revenge and asked Lance to testify in front of the Commission about his investigation. His experiences with the Commission make for fascinating reading, to say the least. Persons who should have been witnesses were doing the interrogating. People on the staff had massive conflicts of interest. And much of the evidence collected by the Commision was either glossed over, or simply left out of the Report, which failed to assign blame for 9/11 to anyone at all. For instance, it is not common knowledge that the morning of September 11, 2001, there were three war games simulations was taking place. One was being conducted near Dulles Airport in Washington to test the response of the National Reconnaissance Office in case a plane was flown into the NRO building. At the time of the attacks, two F-16s were actually in the air practicing bombing runs, within eight minutes flying time, yet they were never called by NORAD to intercept the attackers.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in the book relates to the crash of TWA Flight 600. With the assistance of his numerous FBI contacts and the "Jersey Girls," the 9/11 widows who lobbied for the creation of the 9/11 Commission, Lance was able to piece together the evidence that clearly indicates that Ramzi Yousef, the Al-Qaeda perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was likely responsible for the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, with the help of his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the originator of the 9/11 plot.

With numerous footnotes, appendices and a helpful index, Cover Up is also supplemented by fascinating documentation and a timeline at the author's website. As a journalist, Lance steers clear of the political implications of his book -- he says he follows the trail to the truth and lets the chips fall where they may. But make no mistake, the facts laid out signal massive incompetence in our intelligence systems -- at the very least. Certainly other, more sinister, implications could be drawn from both this work and from 1000 Years for Revenge, in which Lance shows how agent after agent in the FBI who was close to unraveling the 9/11 plot before it happened, was either reassigned to another department, reprimanded or ignored.

Lance's writing style is clear, concise and compelling, with the fast pacing of an action thriller. This is an absolute must-read in this election year. Highly recommended.

--Claire E. White

Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror is available for purchase on Amazon.com

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This review was published in the September-October, 2004 of The Internet Writing Journal.