I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our
44th President of the United States of
America, Barack Hussein Obama, while he was out
promoting his health care reform initiative. I
requested 30 minutes given the scope and detail of
my inquiry; they said I could have 20. Twenty
minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to question
the President about one of the most important events
in our nation’s history. The following is a
transcript of our remarkable discussion.
————————————————————————————————————————
Charlie Sheen
– Good afternoon Mr. President, thank you so much
for taking time out of your demanding schedule.
President Barack Obama
– My pleasure, the content of your request seemed
like something I should carve out a few minutes for.
CS
– I should point out that I voted for you, as your
promises of hope and change, transparency and
accountability, as well as putting government back
into the hands of the American people, struck an
emotional chord in me that I hadn’t felt in quite
some time, perhaps ever.
PBO
– And I appreciate that Charlie. Big fan of the
show, by the way.
CS
– Sir, I can’t imagine when you might find the time
to actually watch my show given the measure of what
you inherited.
PBO
– I have it Tivo’d on Air Force One. Nice break from
the traveling press corps. (He glances at his watch)
not to be abrupt or to rush you, but you have 19
minutes left.
CS
– I’ll take that as an invitation to cut to the
chase.
PBO
– I’m all ears. Or so I’ve been told.
CS
– Sir, in the very near future we will be
experiencing our first 9/11 anniversary with you as
Commander in Chief.
PBO
– Yes. A very solemn day for our Nation. A day of
reflection and yet a day of historical consciousness
as well.
CS
– Very much so sir, very much so indeed…. Now; In
researching your position regarding the events of
9/11 and the subsequent investigation that followed,
am I correct to understand that you fully support
and endorse the findings of the commission report
otherwise known as the ‘official story’?
PBO
– Do I have any reason not to? Given that most of us
are presumably in touch with similar evidence.
CS
– I really wish that were the case, sir. Are you
aware, Mr. President, of the recent stunning
revelations that sixty percent of the
9/11 commissioners have publicly stated that the
government agreed not to tell the truth about
9/11 and that
the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception
about their response to the attack?
PBO
– I am aware of certain “in fighting” during
the course of their very thorough and tireless
investigative process.
CS
– Mr. President, it’s hard to label this type of
friction as “in fighting” or make the irresponsible
leap to “thorough,” when the evidence I insist you
examine regarding 6 of the 10 members are statements
of fact.
(At this point one of Obama’s senior aides
approaches the President and whispers into his ear.
Obama glances quickly at his watch and nods as the
aide resumes his post at the doorway, directly
behind me.)
PBO
– No disrespect Mr. Sheen, but I have to ask; what
is it that you seem to be implying with the initial
direction of this discussion?
CS
– I am not implying anything Mr. President. I am
here to present the facts and see what you plan to
do with them.
PBO
– Let me guess; your ‘facts,’ allegedly supporting
these claims are in the folders you brought with
you?
CS
– Good guess Mr. President.
(I hand the first folder of documents to the
President)
CS
– Again sir, these are not my opinions or
assumptions, this is all a matter of public record,
reported through mainstream media, painstakingly
fact checked and verified.
(the President glances into the folder I handed
him)
CS
– You’ll notice sir on page one of the dossier
dated August of ‘06 from the Washington Post,
the statements of John Farmer, senior council to the
9/11 commission, his quote stating,
“I was shocked how different the truth was from the
way it was described.”
PBO
– (as he glances down at the report, almost
inaudible) …. um hmm….
CS
– He goes on to further state “The [NORAD Air
Defense] tapes told a radically different story from
what had been told to us and the public for two
years….”
(the President continues to view the documents)
CS
– On pages two and three, sir, are the statements,
as well, from commission co-chairmen Thomas Kean and
Lee Hamilton, commissioners
Bob Kerrey,
Timothy Roemer and John Lehman, as well
as the statements of commissioner Max Cleland, an
ex-Senator from Georgia ,
who
resigned, stating:
“It is a national scandal. This investigation is now
compromised. One of these days we will have to get
the full story because the 9/11 issue is so
important to America. But this White House wants to
cover it up.”
He also described President Bush’s desire to delay
the process as not to damage the ‘04 re-election
bid. They suspected deception to the point where
they considered referring the matter to the Justice
Department for criminal investigation. Mr.
President, this information alone is unequivocally
grounds for a new investigation!
PBO
– Mistakes were clearly made but we as a people and
as a country need to move forward. It is obviously
in our best interest as a democratic society to
focus our efforts and our resources on the future of
this great nation and our ability to protect the
American people and our allies from this type of
terrorism in the coming years.
CS
– Sir, how can we focus on the future when THE
COMMISSION ITSELF is on record stating that they
still do not know the truth??
PBO
– Even if what you state, might in some capacity,
begin to approach an open discussion or balanced
debate, I can’t speak for, or about the
decisions certain commission members made during an
extremely difficult period. Perhaps you should be
interviewing them instead of me. Wait,
don’t tell me; I was easier to track down than they
were?
CS
– Not exactly sir, but let’s be honest. You’re the
President of the United States, the leader of the
free world, the buck stops with you.
9/11 has been the pretext for the systematic
dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Your administration is reading from the same
playbook that the Bush administration foisted on
America through documented secrecy and deception.
PBO
– Mr. Sheen, I’m having a difficult time sitting
here and listening to you draw distorted parallels
between the Bush/Cheney regime and mine.
CS
– Mr. President the parallels are not distorted just
because you say they are. Let’s stick to the facts.
You promised to abolish the Patriot Act and then
voted to re-authorize it. You pledged to end
warrantless wire tapping against the American people
and now energetically defend it. You decried the
practice of rendition and now continue it. You
promised over and over again on the campaign trail,
that you would end the practice of indefinite
detention and instead, you have expanded it to
permanent detention of “detainees” without
trial. This far exceeds the outrages of the former
administration.
Call me crazy Mr. President, but is this not your
record?
PBO
– Mr. Sheen, my staff and I authorized this
interview based on your request to discuss 9/11 and
deliver some additional information you’re convinced
I’d not previously reviewed. Call me crazy,
But it appears as though you’ve blindly wandered off
topic.
CS
– Sir, the examples I just illustrated are a direct
result of 9/11.
PBO
– And I’m telling you that we must move forward, we
must endure through these dangerous and politically
challenging years ahead.
CS
– Mr. President,
we cannot move forward with a bottomless
warren of unanswered questions surrounding that day
and its aftermath.
PBO
– I read the official report. Every word every page.
Perhaps you should do the same.
CS
– I have sir, and so have thousands of family
members of the victims, and guess what;
they have the same questions I do and probably a lot
more. I didn’t lose a loved one on that
horrific day Mr. President and neither did you. But
since then I, along with millions of other Americans
lost something we held true and dear for most of our
lives in this great country of ours; we lost our
hope.
PBO
– And I’d like to believe that I am here to restore
that hope. To restore confidence in your leaders, in
the system that the voting public chose through a
peaceful transfer of power.
(An odd moment of silence between us. Precious
time ticking away).
CS
– Mr. President, are you aware of the number of days
it took to begin the investigation into JFK’s
assassination?
PBO
– If memory serves I believe it was two weeks.
CS
– Close. Seventeen days to be exact. Are you aware
sir, how long it took to begin the investigation
into Pearl Harbor?
PBO
– I would say again about….two weeks.
CS
– Close again sir, eleven days to be exact. Are you
aware Mr. President how long it took to begin the
investigation into 9/11?
PBO
– I know it must have seemed like a very long time
for all the grieving families.
CS
– It was a very long time Mr. President – four
hundred and forty days.
Roughly 14 months.
Does it bother you Mr. President that it only took
FIVE HOURS for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
after the initial attack to recommend and endorse
a full scale offensive against Iraq?
PBO
– I am not aware of any such purported claim.
CS
– I have the proof Mr. President, along with scores
of documents and facts I’d like you to take a look
at.
Here.
(I hand him another file – much thicker than the
first)
PBO
– I see you came prepared Charlie.
CS
– No other way to show up Mr. President. When in
doubt over prepare I always say.
PBO
– Now you sound like the First Lady.
CS
– That’s quite a compliment sir.
PBO
– As you wish. Please continue.
CS
– Sir, I’d like to direct your attention to the
stack of documents in the folder I just handed you.
The first in from the top is entitled “ Operation
Northwoods“, a declassified Pentagon plan
to stage terror attacks on US soil, to be blamed on
Cuba as a pretext for war.
PBO
– And I’d like to direct your attention to
the fact that the principle draftsman of this
improbable blueprint was quickly denied a second
term as Joint Chiefs chairman and sent packing to a
European NATO garrison. Thank God his otherworldly
ambitions never saw the light of day.
CS
– I wouldn’t be so certain about that Mr. President.
PBO
– I could easily say the same to you Charlie.
(the President checks his watch)
CS
– The next document reads “Declassified staged
provocations.”
Now, Honestly Mr. President I wish I was making this
stuff up. I’m certain you are familiar with the USS
Maine Incident, the sinking of the Lusitania, which
we all now know brought us into WW1, and of course
the most famous, the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
PBO
– Of course I am familiar with these historical
events and I’m aware that there’s a measure of
controversy surrounding them. But to be quite frank
with you, this is all ancient history.
CS
– Mr. President, it has been often said; “Those
who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”
And I concede to you sir, these events are the past.
PBO
– A vastly different world young man, shouldering a
radically disparate state of universal affairs.
CS
– No argument sir, I’m merely inviting you to
acknowledge some credibility to the pattern or the
theme. Case in point; the next document in your
folder. It was published by the think-tank,
Project For a New American Century
and it’s entitled “ Rebuilding
Americas Defenses“,
and was written by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush. To
quote from the document sir – (the President
interrupts)
PBO
– “Further,
the process of transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one,
absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like
a new Pearl Harbor.”
CS
– Touche, sir. Your thoughts on this statement Mr.
President?
PBO
– I would call this a blatant case of misjudgment
fueled by an unfortunate milieu of assumption. For
some, the uninformed denial of coincidence.
CS
– Interesting angle sir. Nevertheless, Vice
President Cheney didn’t stop there. In early 2008,
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour
Hersh and MSNBC,
both reported that
Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon an outrageous
plan to have the U.S. Navy create fake Iranian
patrol boats, to be manned by Navy Seals, who would
then stage an attack on US destroyers in the Strait
of Hormuz. This event was to be blamed on Iran and
used as a pretext for war.
Does any of this information worry you Mr.
President? Should we just ignore it, until these
realities can be dismissed years from now by our
children, as ancient history as well?
PBO
– Of course this information worries me, yet it’s
not nearly as worrisome as you sitting here
today suspiciously implying that 9/11 was somehow
allowed to happen or even orchestrated from the
inside.
CS
– Mr. President I am not suspiciously implying
anything.
I am merely exposing the documents and asking the
questions that nobody in power will even look
at or acknowledge.
And as I stated earlier, I voted for you, I believed
in your message of hope and change. Mr. President I
have come to you specifically hoping for a change. A
change in the perception that our government
has not yet made itself open and accountable to the
people. These are your words Mr. President not mine.
The lives of thousands were brutally cut short and
those left behind to suffer their infinite pain are
with me today Mr. President. They are with me in
spirit and flesh, and the message we carry will not
be silenced anymore by media fueled mantras
insisting how they are supposed to feel. Deciding
for them, for 8 long years, what can be thought,
what can be said, what can be asked.
PBO
– And I appreciate your passion, I appreciate your
conviction. In spite of your concerns, in spite of
what your data might or might not reveal, what you
and the families must understand and accept is that
we are doing everything we can to protect you.
CS
– Mr. President , I realize were very short on time,
so please allow me to run down a list of bullet
points that might illuminate some reasons why we
don’t embrace the warm hug of Federal protection.
PBO
– We’ve come this far. Fire away.
CS
– Please keep in mind Mr. President everything I’m
about to say is documented as fact and part of the
public record. The information you are holding in
your hands chronicles and verifies each and every
point.
PBO
– You have five minutes left. The floor is yours.
Brief me.
CS
– Thank you Mr. President.
Okay, first; On the FBI’s most wanted list
Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of
911.
When I called the FBI to ask them why this was the
case, they replied: “There’s not enough evidence to
link Bin Laden to the crime scene,” I later
discovered he had never even been indicted by the
D.O.J.
CS
–
Number 2;
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and
gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the
government had foreknowledge of plans to attack
American cities using planes as bombs as early as
April 2001.
In July of ‘09, Mrs. Edmonds broke the Federal gag
order and went public to reveal that Osama Bin
Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were all working for
and with the C.I.A. up until the day of 9/11.
CS
–
Number 3; The following is a quote from
Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with
Peter Jennings for ABC News.
“I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters
at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the
Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head
of Emergency Management, and we were operating out
of there when we were told that the World Trade
Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse
before we could actually get out of the building, so
we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes,
and finally found an exit and got out, walked north,
and took a lot of people with us.”
WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this
question remains unanswered, completely ignored and
emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several
public occasions.
CS
–
Number 4; In April 2004, USA Today
reported,
“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 targets was the World Trade
Center.
CS
–
Number 5;
On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360′,
reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted
and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in
restricted airspace over the White House shortly
before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the
Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747
with a communications pod behind the cockpit;
otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”.
Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission
did not deem the appearance of the military plane to
be of any interest and did not include it in the
final 9/11 Commission report.
CS
–
Number 6; Three F-16s assigned to Andrews
Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are
conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207
miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC.
Even at significantly less than their top speed of
1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies
over Washington well before 9am, more than 37
minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon,
however, they did not return until after 9:55am.
Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready
to take off on the morning of 9/11.
CS
–
Number 7;
WTC Building 7. Watch the video of its collapse.
CS
–
Number 8; Flight 93 is fourth plane to
crash on 9/11 at 10:03am.
V.P. Cheney only gives shoot down order at
10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD
until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.
Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact
that three months before the attacks of 9/11,
Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore
he, and no one else on planet Earth,
had the power to call for military sorties on the
hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that
power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished
command of NORAD and returned it to military
operation.
CS
–
Number 9;
Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the
F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE
of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military
flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed
and need to be declassified.
CS
–
Number 10; In 2004,
New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas
DeMasi went public to say they had found the black
boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to
keep their mouths shut by FBI agents.
Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents
on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped
them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue
volunteer Mike Bellone.
As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time,
“Their story raises the question of whether there
was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”
CS
–
Number 11 –
Hundreds of eye witnesses including first
responders, fire captains, news reporters, and
police, all described multiple explosions in both
towers before and during the collapse.
CS
–
Number 12;
An astounding video uncovered from the archives
shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting
on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty
minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of
9/11.
Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors
discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26
minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed
that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before
admitting that they made the “error” of reporting
the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without
adequately explaining how they could have obtained
advance knowledge of the event.
In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC
7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the
building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”
CS
–
Number 13; Solicitor General Ted Olson’s
claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice
from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box
cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11
story.
However,
the credibility of the story was completely
undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about
whether his wife used her cell phone or the airplane
phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls
from high-altitude airline flights was not created
until 2004.
American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a
Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane
phones on board.
According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to
call her husband only once and the call failed to
connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying
when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from
Flight 77.
CS
–
Number 14;
The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in
width and yet images of the impact zone at the
Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show
a hole no more than 16ft in diameter.
The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole
bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images
before the partial collapse of the impact zone show
little real impact damage and a sparse debris field
completely inconsistent with the crash of a large
jetliner, especially when contrasted with other
images showing airplane crashes into buildings.
CS
–
Number 15; What is the meaning behind the
following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came
to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The
passage is taken from testimony given by then
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.
During the time that the airplane was coming in to
the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come
in and say to the Vice President,
“The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles
out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles
out,” the young man also said to the Vice President,
“Do the orders still stand?”
And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck
around and said, “Of course the orders still stand.
Have you heard anything to the contrary?”
As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the
fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the
plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not
activated,
are we to take it that the orders were to let the
plane find its target?
CS
–
Number 16; In May 2003, the Miami Herald
reported how the
Bush administration was refusing to release a
900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it
wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in
the report,”
particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as
the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S.
flight schools.
CS
–
Number 17; Top Pentagon officials
cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11th
on September 10th. San
Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security
warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was
scheduled for the morning of 9/11.
CS
–
Number 18; The technology to enable cell
phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was
not created until 2004, and even by that point it
was only in the trial phase. Calls from cell phones
which formed an integral part of the official
government version of events were technologically
impossible at the time.
CS
–
Number 19: On April 29, 2004, President
Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the
commission under specific clandestine conditions.
They insisted on testifying together and not under
oath. They also demanded that their testimony be
treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date,
nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public
domain.
CS
– And finally Mr. President –
Number 20; A few days after the attack,
several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that
a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the
WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker
Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of
Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville,
Pennsylvania.
At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were
vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon
incident were burned beyond recognition.
And yet visas and paper passports which identify the
perpetrators and back up the official version of
events miraculously survive explosions and fires
that we are told melted steel buildings.
(The Senior aide appears again beside the
President whispering in his ear. He then quickly
moves off).
PBO
– Well Charlie I can’t say this hasn’t been
interesting. As I said earlier you’ve showed up
today focused and organized. Regardless how I feel
about the material you’ve presented, I must commend
your dedication and zeal. However, our time here is
up.
(the President rises from his chair , I do the
same).
CS
– Mr. President! One more second!
(The President starts towards the door – I follow
him quickly step for step).
CS
– Mr. President, I implore you based on the
evidence you now possess, to use your Executive
Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact,
care. Create a truly comprehensive and open
Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its
aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the
American people and the rest of the free world
deserve the truth. Mr. President -
(He pauses. We shake hands).
CS
– Make sure you’re on the right side of history.
(The President breaks the handshake).
PBO
– I am on the right side of history. Thank
you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch.
(I watch as he strides gracefully out of the
room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his
side; in the hand of providence.)
