Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional hero Sherlock Holmes once solved a case because a dog that would have been expected to bark didn’t. Something is missing from the numerous allegations about the government’s foreknowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attack. That thing is any mention of "Project Bojinka" by government officials and most of the national media.

Those members of the media who do mention the project carefully avoid giving a full description of the plot with one exception, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. But this was after the 9/11 disaster. Before that terrorist attack, even the alternative media had no information on the diabolical plot; it was a closely held secret by the government, first in the Clinton administration and then the Bush administration that followed (with mostly Clinton holdovers).

In the Philippines in January of 1995, a fire broke out in an apartment 200 yards from the Vatican’s embassy in Manila. This was two weeks before a scheduled visit of the Pope to the Philippines. When police investigated they found bomb making material and other items suggesting a plot to assassinate the Pontiff. They also found computer disks containing the details of Project Bojinka (big bang).

The Philippines police determined that at least three operatives were involved in the plots with ties to Al Queda, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. Abdul Hakim Murad was arrested when he returned to the apartment, apparently to retrieve the computer disks. Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghani, was arrested in Malaysia. Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of Bojinka, was arrested in Pakistan and returned to New York by FBI agent John O’Neill (then FBI counter-terrorism chief whose main focus was on Osama bin Laden and Al Queda). More about O’Neill later.

The terrorist actions detailed on the computer disks comprised three separate elements. The first, for which the three were tried and convicted in 1996, was a plot to leave bombs on 11 U.S. commercial flights departing from various cities in the far East to be destroyed simultaneously on the same day.

The FBI said Yousef staged a trial run in 1994 leaving a bomb on a Philippine flight that killed a Japanese businessman. Yousef was also charged as the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and was later tried and convicted of that terrorist strike in which four others were already serving life sentences.

The second element was a plan to load a small plane with explosives and fly it into CIA headquarters in Virginia. Abdul Murad admitted he had trained as a pilot in North Carolina and was slated to be the suicide pilot on that mission. This element of Bojinka has received some exposure in the national media.

The third element of Bojinka had by far the most potential for catastrophic casualties and impact on the American public. It involved the simultaneous hijacking of several commercial domestic flights and crashing them into selected targets that included the Pentagon, the Sears Tower and the World Trade Center. Obviously, the plot required a member of each hijacking team to be capable of flying the big jets. No commercial pilot could be expected to deliberately fly his plane into such targets even with a pistol at his head or a knife (box cutter) at his throat.

The details of Project Bojinka were furnished by Philippine police to the American Embassy in Manila and to the CIA and FBI. Yet, to this day, high government officials in the administration and congress maintain they had no idea that such a plot was contemplated, much less possible. But Project Bojinka was not the first red flag raised on the 9/11 scenario.

In a 1993 book, "Target America: Terrorism in the U.S." author and terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky detailed the training of suicide pilots in Iran for just such missions beginning in the early 1980’s. A terrorist training school had been set up at an airfield in Wakilabad, Iran for the training. Iran Air (the national airline) maintained a Boeing 707 and 727 at the airfield (built by western companies) and occasionally furnished a Boeing 747 for that training. Bodansky says the main support for the operation came from Iran and Syria although the volunteers were from a broad spectrum of Islamic terrorist groups. Many were Afghani mujahideen trained in Pakistan (by the CIA). Some had fought in Afghanistan.

An obscure company, Shapolsky Publishers with close ties to organizations supporting Israel, distributed the book. Indeed, some speculate that Bodansky’s information may come from Mossad, the highly efficient Israeli intelligence agency. Nevertheless, the information contained was what the spooks call "open source intelligence." There is another reason Bodansky’s warning in that book and a subsequent offering in 1996 entitled, "Terrorism: The inside story of the Terrorist Conspiracy in America" should have been heeded.

Yossef Bodansky is the director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for the U.S. Congress. He is also a former consultant to the Department of Defense and the State Department. He has testified in many closed sessions of the congress’ intelligence committees. He most certainly would have elaborated on his public description in his second book on the terrorist network already established in the U.S. This includes safe houses in major cities, weapons, ammunition, money, systems to provide medical and legal aid, false identity papers, and intelligence for the operatives. Bodansky warned that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was, "but a prelude to an escalation of Islamic terror in the United States."

While top officials in Washington continue to deny they had any inkling of the 9/11 targets or tactics to be used, we now know that lower levels in the CIA and FBI were actively monitoring suspects at flight schools in at least four states for at least the two years preceding 9/11. Daniel Hopsicker, author and brilliant investigative journalist, has written a series of articles on the sinister activities at the Huffman flight school in Venice, Florida. He calls it the "Venice Flying Circus." Needless to say, the major media has not picked them up.

If the recent revelations of suspicious characters taking flight training by a Phoenix FBI agent and the highly sensationalized story of Coleen Rowley, a Minnesota FBI legal operative, are not part of the "it’s just incompetence and the culture spin" they might prove another point. If Rowley had linked her request for a search warrant to look at the contents of Zacarias Moussaoui"s computer with Project Bojinka, denying the request would have been political suicide. Either Rowley did not know about Bojinka (along with a lot of other field agents) or she chose not to invoke it.

So who in the government was in a position where they knew, or should have known about Bojinka? Certainly the heads of the FBI and CIA should have known. FBI Director Louis Freeh resigned just two months before 9/11 two years before the end of his ten-year term. Congressional investigators seem to have no interest in hearing testimony from him.

CIA Director John Deutch also resigned earlier. He had been accused of having unauthorized classified information on his home computer. He was cleared of any wrong doing by a woman in the CIA IG office who then resigned to take a position as a vice president at CitiBank. Deutch followed and was awarded a professorship at MIT and a seat on the CitiGroup board of directors as well as CMS energy, currently enmeshed in the energy company trading scandals. Deutch has not been called on to testify either.

Surely FBI terrorism expert John O’Neill would have known the details of Bojinka having investigated the 1993 WTC bombing and the plot to blow up 11 airliners. O’Neill’s departure from the FBI was started when he tangled with the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen over the investigation of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. She banned him from Yemen. O’Neill’s reputation was further stained when his briefcase containing classified documents went missing for several hours when he was called away to the telephone during a conference in Tampa, Florida. As a result of that unexplained incident, he was told he would not get a position in the National Security Agency (NSA) that he believed he had earned.

O’Neill became the Director of Public Safety at the WTC after he resigned and died mysteriously during the 9/11 attack. He had phoned his wife after the first tower was hit to inform her he was safe. 

There is no direct evidence (so far) that Bush officials had knowledge of Project Bojinka before or after the 9/11 attack. However, the administration’s actions (and lack thereof) have raised serious questions that have yet to be answered.

Perhaps the best example of this is the pathetic performance of General Richard B. Myers at his confirmation hearing to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff held two days after the attack. Myers was asked when Air Force planes were first scrambled during the emergency. He said he wasn’t sure but confirmed it was after the Pentagon was hit, more than an hour after the first hit on the WTC and well after the FAA had reported four planes had been hijacked.

Myers, as much as anyone, is familiar with the standard operating procedure for the immediate scrambling of air force fighters as soon as an airplane is reported to have lost contact with the tower or the hijack signal has been given. Myers, from August 1998 to February 2000 was Commander in Chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command that has integrated procedures with the FAA. For 18 months prior to his nomination as Chief, he was Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding his apparent ignorance on the most important event of his adult career, Myers was easily confirmed.

These and other unanswered questions have led to several theories that Bush let the attack happen. One being as an excuse to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan which was considered an obstacle to exploitation of Caspian Sea oil. Another may have been to grease the path for draconian measures through the congress. Some, including this writer, believe it to be a combination of the two.

That there is a huge cover-up in progress by the government and the media is obvious. However, there are two words that have not come from the lips of even Bush’s most virulent critics, the left-wing Democrats. Those two words are Project Bojinka.