New Article Published in The Sovereign

Thanks to The Sovereign newspaper, to Phil C. and Phil S., for publishing this article, and giving the Conference a huge full color ad on the back cover! Pick up your copy of The Sov today, and spread the word about this exciting new journal for peace, punk rock, and truth.

Here's the article they ran. This is the latest from my work as a researcher:










Aegis of Federal Protection:
The U.S. Government’s Shepherding of the 9/11 Hijackers.


By Sander Hicks

In 2007, this reporter and a friend dropped in on the Shreveport, Louisiana FBI office. The receptionist tried to get rid of us. We insisted it was a matter of national security. Dr. David Graham, their town’s lone 9/11 researcher and unpublished author, had been murdered. We knew the Shreveport FBI’s Stephen Hayes had been involved.

Over the course of a ten minute discussion, Hayes’ shoulders tensed up. He glared and snapped at us through the plexi-glass. But we already knew much about Hayes from Graham’s “9/11 Graham Report,” which documented how Graham met two of the nineteen “9/11 hijackers,” ten months before 9/11. Multiple sources in Shreveport said the FBI warned Graham not to publish the book. But Graham went forward, and was poisoned in a small Texas town in 2005.

Graham may be the first American 9/11 researcher to die for the 9/11 cover-up. His death rejuvenates these gnawing questions:

Who were the “9/11 hijackers?” Who helped them in the US?

The system used to care about this line of inquiry. After 9/11, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft crowed that the Department of Justice had detained “nearly 1000 individuals” for helping the 9/11 hijackers. Yet eventually, most were quietly released. 9/11 Victims Families waited in vain for the “9/11 trials” of these accomplices. Graham’s death is a vibrant, direct path to the truth about these “9/11 accomplices,” and the truth about 9/11.

Dr. Graham was a natural fit to meet two of the 9/11 hijackers. An evangelical Christian, he had been a medical volunteer in Vietnam. When the local DA in his hometown framed a young Air Force soldier for murder, Dr. Graham championed the accused on his AM radio show. Charges were eventually over-turned.

When Graham met Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Fayed Banihammad in Shreveport ten months before 9/11, he warned the FBI he found two young Saudi “medical students” suspicious. But Graham was verbally abused and threatened by FBI on the phone, after making his report. When 9/11 happened, this same Nawaf Al-Hazmi was accused of being one of Bin Laden’s right-hand men. Graham’s case fits an odious pattern: Al-Hazmi and his cohort Khalid Al-Mihdhar were protected ferociously by FBI, CIA and Pentagon, in the years leading up to 9/11/01.

Study 9/11, and these two Saudi names keep on coming up: “Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar.” They were closest to ex-CIA asset Osama Bin Laden, and they enjoyed an aegis of Federal protection.

In Shreveport, they were taken care of by the mysterious Mohammed Jamal Khan. A slick, blond, albino Saudi/Pakistani, Khan had special access to Barksdale U.S. Air Force base. He dated U.S. military women, while giving money and shelter to the young Saudis. His young “medical students” would be presented as “the ringleaders” of the 9/11 attacks.

With his research background, dentist Dr. Graham kept records with a tight, laboratory-standard rigor. After 9/11, he secretly videotaped himself speaking about the terrorist meetings, with M. J. Khan. The videotapes, made available online by this reporter, prove Graham’s credibility, and foresight. [See “Collateral News” online.]

When Graham was poisoned, the FBI showed up at the small town Texas hospital and intimidated doctors. FBI claimed to doctors, and implied to the media, that Graham had just tried to kill himself.

In the wake of his death, the FBI denied meeting with Graham before 9/11. But that day in the FBI’s tiny white lobby, Agent Hayes contradicted the FBI’s previous statements. He admitted to us that he had in fact met with Graham before the attacks. He even let slip that M.J. Khan was likely an FBI informant.

Hayes talked too much. He stammered. This story is big, his body language seemed to scream. It’s bigger than me, and it’s bigger than you. Locking eyes with Hayes, there was a tremor, deep inside him, and a tick in one eye. It was as if he said, Help me. We killed this guy, it was not right. This is not what I signed up for.

Hayes ended our conversation. He snapped at his receptionist, “CALL SECURITY.” We took off.

San Diego

Before Shreveport, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar lived with a well-paid FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, earlier in the Fall of 2000. (See Michael Isikoff’s Newsweek piece.)

Abdussattar Shaikh was also protected by FBI. Senator Bob Graham (FL-D), was part of the Senate/House Joint Inquiry investigating 9/11. The Senator (no relation to David) was keen to interview Shaikh. But the FBI refused to produce Shaikh. Senator Graham even prepared a subpoena, but the FBI refused to accept it, and, according to Senator Graham’s book, practically ran out of the Senator’s office.

A 2005 story by Josh Meyer in the Los Angeles Times, documents that Shaikh received $100,000 from FBI for staying out of the reaches of Senator Graham and the Joint Congressional Inquiry in 2003.


Able Danger

Before San Diego, Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar were closely monitored by the Pentagon’s Able Danger operation.

Able Danger used “data-mining” of databases to put together a financial picture of who was supported Al Qaeda. But in 1999, Pentagon top brass forced Able Danger to destroy that massive database.

Able Danger’s Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer spoke out in Congressional testimony in little-known hearings on Capitol Hill. He revealed how his superiors at Pentagon protected the identity of Nawaf Al-Hazmi, Khalid Al-Mihdhar, and Mohamed Atta, from Shaffer and his operation, back in February 2000. Pentagon top brass prevented FBI from being briefed on Able Danger’s findings. Pentagon superiors covered up faces of Al Qaeda terrorist charts with “yellow stickies” at crucial internal meetings.

For speaking to the 9/11 Commission, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer had his security clearance revoked. He was attacked in Washington Post. The 9/11 Commission called Able Danger, “not historically relevant.” But Shaffer, before Congress in 2006, showed how the truth about Able Danger someday “will rewrite the history of 9-11.”

CIA Protection

In 2000, the CIA closely monitored Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar at a “terrorism summit” in Malaysia. But CIA did not put their names on the Terrorism Watch List. DC author Joe Trento, and his intelligence sources, claim that Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar were agents of the Saudi G.I.D., the CIA of the Saudi Royals.

FBI, Pentagon, CIA: Like an aegis of divine strength, the leaders of the nineteen “9/11 hijackers” were covered and protected by thick layers of official Federal U.S. power, before 9/11.

We have an unfair economic system. It has to manipulate the people to keep going. It tricks people into supporting war. 9/11 was stage-managed by the upper echelons of an out-of-control military/industrial complex. The 9/11 Truth Movement is fired up and enraged by the failures of our government and media to investigate 9/11. We are about peace, truth and a new economics.

The aegis of Federal power over the key 9/11 hijackers shows another reason why we need a real investigation of 9/11. There’s a cancer in our country, a cancer of death-worship, violence, secrecy, and clandestine operations. We need a new ideal of transparency to end the 9/11 cover-up. Let us take courage from the sacrifice of good men like Dr. David Graham.