There is nothing like personal experience to inform a person. During my time in the Air Force during the Vietnam war, while stationed at Travis AFB here in northern California, I was exposed to the peace movement for the first time. I had come from a career military family and had been the Vice-chair of the Okaloosa County, Florida Young Republican Club at 16 while working on the Nixon campaign. My first roommate at Travis AFB turned out to be a leading GI-resistance movement organizer in the barracks and at night there were meetings of anti-war GI’s or Black Panthers from the cities talking about racism. I was to get the education of my life.

When the Pentagon Papers came out, thanks to the courage of Daniel Ellsberg, all my patriotic illusions were shattered. Here was the government’s own account of how it had fabricated the pretext to drag our nation into the Vietnam war and how it was literally sold to the American people by manipulating the media and Congress. My life was never the same after that and I’ve been a professional organizer since 1978, first trained by the United Farmworkers Union and then leading peace and justice organizations ever since. In 1992, I and a couple of others created the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space in order to try to prevent the next round of the arms race from moving into the heavens. Today I live in Maine and travel all over the U.S. and around the world talking about how space technology now allows the U.S. to militarily control the entire planet. With space satellites now in place, the U.S. can see everything on the earth, hear everything on the earth, and ultimately target anyone or anyplace on the earth below.

The day after 9-11, I went to my world atlas to look up the Central Asian countries that I admittedly knew very little about. What I found is common knowledge these days. They have some of the largest deposits of oil and natural gas in the world in this region. Uzbekistan has the world’s largest goldmine.

My Pentagon Papers experience had taught me to always ask the next question. Who? What? Why? When? How? For me, 9-11 unleashed a slew of new questions about U.S. foreign and military policy.

Five days after 9-11, I boarded a very empty airplane in Gainesville, Florida to fly to Cleveland in order to speak about space to a Rotary Club in a Republican neighborhood. While reading the Gainesville Sun newspaper on the plane, an AP story jumped out at me. The piece quoted an “unidentified” Pentagon spokesman who said, “We’ve been planning this war for the last three years.” Of course the Pentagon spokesman was referring to the almost immediate discussion that the U.S. had to respond to 9-11 by bombing and invading Afghanistan. Memories of reading the Pentagon Papers flashed through my mind.

I have another personal experience that gives an indication why I am here today. A few years ago I was sitting in my office, then in Gainesville, watching CNN and they interrupted programming to say that a private plane carrying the golfer Payne Stewart had taken off from Florida and had lost contact with ground control. CNN reported that the military had immediately scrambled two jets, as they routinely do in circumstances where planes lose contact with the control tower they informed us, and that the military pilots had seen Stewart and his pilot slumped over the cockpit controls. It was theorized that their on-board oxygen had malfunctioned and they had died. The plane would now crash, and the military jets were to escort the plane to its final crash site and only shoot it down if it was to pose any threat to a population center. CNN stayed with the story and tracked the progress of the declining plane until it crashed into an open field somewhere in the empty countryside of a southern state.

On 9-11, for some reason that defies logic and standard operating procedure, three big American airliners filled with people lost contact with the control tower, dramatically changed course, and no fighter planes were scrambled until history had been made.

We know that the Chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers was meeting with then Sen. Max Cleland on capitol hill the morning of 9-11. Planes were crashing into the World Trade center towers and the Pentagon and they went right on with their meeting. It was not until after the tragic episodes had occurred that Gen. Myers and NORAD commander, Gen. Ralph Eberhart made the decision to scramble jets. By then it was all over. This clearly suggests that the two generals knowingly violated mandatory procedures that call for direct military intervention when such an instance of hijacking occurs. Why did they not take action that fateful day? Who ordered them to stand down? Surely they would not have made such a monumental decision on their own. The Pentagon does not have to seek permission to scramble jets during hijackings, they are required to do so.

Just days ago, on March 23, I was listening to NPR coverage of the 9-11 commission hearings in Washington and Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld was being questioned. One woman on the panel (I didn’t catch her name) asked Rumsfeld why Pentagon jets were not scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes. He did not answer the question. He droned on about some other nonsense. No attempt to follow-up was made. I was not totally surprised.

In 2000 a report was written by the now well known right-wing think tank called the Project for a New American Century. This is an organization which Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Bolton, Abrams, Woolsey, Libby, and William Kristol, among others, belong to. The report called Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century asked “Does the U.S. have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?”

What are the principles and interests that PNAC refers to? Could they be corporate “control and domination” of the world? Could they be the advancement of conditions that creates more of a market for the number one industrial export of the U.S. today – namely weapons? Could it be control of the oil and natural gas fields not only in the Middle East but also throughout Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America?

PNAC answers these questions by saying this: “The U.S. is the world’s only superpower, combining preeminent military power, global technological leadership, and the world’s largest economy…America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”

But to undertake such a grand and sweeping strategy would be an enormously expensive and highly controversial undertaking– not only at home but all over the world. And PNAC knows that. So they threw this bit into the report saying that accomplishing this transformation of the world was “likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

We now hear from Bush administration insiders, like former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neil and Richard Clark, the former counter terrorism chief under Clinton and Bush, that the Bush team was preparing for war with Iraq from their first days in office. Once selected, George W. Bush began to implement the PNAC strategy – withdrawing from the 1972 ABM treaty that outlawed testing and deployment of “missile defense,” dramatically increasing military spending and plans for military transformation. In fact, the first trip that Donald Rumsfeld took in his new job as Secretary of War was to go to Berlin for a NATO Defense ministers meeting. Along with him he took Henry Kissinger, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman stood beside Rumsfeld and told the NATO military leaders that “We have bipartisan support for “missile defense” in the U.S. so your countries had better get on-board or get left behind.”

Then came 9-11 and the gloves came off. In his State of the Union speech in 2002 Bush declared that “Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun.” By June of that same year he signaled his support for pre-emptive war saying that the U.S. was “ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”

Everything, thanks to 9-11, was now in place. Who could have imagined that using conventional democratic means – such as holding national debates that involved the taxpayers and Congressional hearings and voting – an administration could have successfully committed so much money and so many lives to such a radical new foreign and military policy? But the debate was never heard. It was all done ipso-facto by claiming to be a response to 9-11.

I am reminded of another Bush administration and another invasion. Following the demise of the former Soviet Union there was much debate in the U.S. about the “peace dividend.” People were saying we would not have to keep these incredible high levels of military spending any longer, we could stop spending billions a year on NATO. We could take care of things back at home. But all that was lost in a minute as George Bush I terrorized Panama, killing several thousand innocent civilians in the El Chorrillo neighborhood as U.S. troops burned it to the ground. Manuel Noriega was apprehended in “Operation Just Cause” and talk of a peace dividend was put to rest.

And there is much more to come. Because of computerization, mechanization, and robotics we now have superfluous populations around the world. Rather than share the great wealth and the diminishing resources on earth (like oil and water) the corporate power structure intends to impose a new 21st century form of feudalism that will insure maximum corporate profits and minimum social progress for the people. In order to “control and dominate” the growing legions of “have-nots,” predicted by the Pentagon in the U.S. Space Command document called Vision for 2020, new high-tech space technologies will be utilized and a fast moving military will be forward deployed to new, smaller, “lily pad” bases in global hot spots. The U.S. now rents or owns more than 700 bases in about 130 countries, in addition to the hundreds of bases in North America.

Key regions like Africa, Central Asia, South America, and the Middle East that have scarce natural resources, though not yet under corporate control, will see a string of new bases established, all presumably to fight the war on terrorism. Deputy Secretary of War and PNAC member Paul Wolfowitz told the New York Times in 2002 that the function of the new outposts “may be more political than actually military.” The new bases he insisted would “send a message to everybody, including strategically important countries like Uzbekistan, that we have a capacity to come back in and will come back in – we’re not just going to forget about them.”

So kind and gentle Mr. Wolfowitz is. So thoughtful. The real message here is “You’d better be good or we will take you out. Do as you are told or else!”

China and Russia will be militarily surrounded and contained. In order to pay for this perpetual war, cut backs in human needs spending will be necessary in all the “industrial” or “first world” societies as the allies are brought in at some level or another to help pay for and implement this new global vision.

The Democrats argue around the edges of the policy but essentially agree with U.S. corporate empire – the new Rome. They only disagree on the way the policy is implemented – they’d rather see a “friendly sheriff” than the macho tin-horn cowboy style presented by Bush and his posse. But the good cop – bad cop debate that goes on now at the 9-11 Commission is red meat for the corporate dominated media and good entertainment for the masses who struggle to understand what happened and why on 9-11.

Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on Star Wars research and development and both parties will support this spending. Bush will say let’s deploy right away and the Democrats will say let’s test a bit more before we deploy. Both are hostage to the weapons corporations who generously donate to the political campaigns of compliant politicians. Gen Richard Myers, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was previously the commander of the U.S. Space Command, which has been put in charge of giving the U.S. “full spectrum dominance” of the earth and space battlefield. His promotion to head the Joint Chiefs shows the ascendancy of Star Wars within the military hierarchy.

Permanent bases, 14 of them, are now being established in Iraq where U.S. troops will be deployed for years to come – remembering George W.’s words that “The American people had better be patient, it’s going to be a long, long war.”

We live in a violent society that is addicted to war and military spending. And like any addict we must have our regular fix to keep us going. We must always have an enemy and if necessary they can be created. And most importantly, we must remain in denial about our addiction. We cannot look at ourselves in the mirror for fear of what we might find standing there. But there are people who are clamoring for treatment. They want to acknowledge the reality of our disease. And these voices will not go away.

I can assure you that for a year or more, after 9-11, every place I spoke, someone in the audience during the Q & A would ask me what really happened on 9-11. The entire story of 9-11 might not ever be fully known but people are thinking about it and have begun to develop their own thoughts on what happened and why. Legions of people in this country are highly suspicious of “official explanations” and the demand for the truth will only grow. The 9-11 families are leaders in the citizen movement that seeks real answers to serious questions. Events like this International Inquiry are the real democracy in this country.

People often ask me what we can do about the corporate controlled media today. I tell them we have to become the media. And when we have a corporate controlled Congress and a 9-11 Commission who is replaying the Warren Commission theme, we the people have to become the body that explores the issue and asks the tough questions.

Could it be that one important purpose of the notorious Patriot Act is to help create the climate of fear and intimidation in the country that will make the public reluctant to become involved in events like we see this weekend here in San Francisco? Is the message to the public, stay away, don’t get involved, keep your nose to the grind stone?

My congratulations to the organizers of this historic event. And my high regards to those citizen activists who have come in search of the truth. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are joining the “conspiracy theorists.” The only conspiracy is deception and silence. The only conspiracy is one that creates the lack of courage to participate in real democracy.

Thank you.

Bruce K. Gagnon
PO Box 652
Brunwick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517

Return to- Final Program of the International Inquiry into 9-11