Is MITRE the Trojan Horse of 9-11?

by Christopher Bollyn 

April 1, 2005 

Did a central controller with "super user" privileges of the command and control systems of the Department of Defense, NORAD, the Air Force, and the FAA, control the aerial attacks of 9-11? There is only one agency that has that capability - a little-known private company known as MITRE Corp. 

There are basically two versions of events surrounding the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. There is the government version, propagated by the controlled media, which claims that 19 Arab terrorists, organized by Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, hijacked 4 passenger aircraft and used them to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This version, used to launch the "war on terror" and two invasions in the Middle East, is challenged by a lack of evidence.  On the other hand, a host of unofficial explanations, based on available evidence, make up what can be called the "inside job" or anti-government version. This version basically claims that agents embedded within the U.S. military and intelligence organizations conspired to carry out the terror attacks.  The two foreign nations most often implicated in the unofficial explanations of 9-11 are Israel and Britain. Both countries are supporters and beneficiaries of the Bush administration's "war on terror." 

For the Israelis, a major threat, Iraq, was drastically reduced in power and put under military occupation. For the British, a oil-rich territory, Iraq's southern region of Basra, which it originally occupied in 1914, was re-occupied and its immense oil assets put under control of the Crown.

Royal Dutch Shell and BP, formerly named British Petroleum, are two companies said to be controlled by the Crown, which have posted record profits since 9-11. 

While both Britain and Israel have substantial assets and powerful organizations in the United States, proponents of the un-official version have not explained how a foreign power could manipulate the computer systems of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and the U.S. Air Force, and thereby control the aerial attacks of 9-11. 

When I interviewed Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, in December 2001, he said "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the 9-11 attacks would have required "years of planning."  Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta.  Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation, Werthebach said. He pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions." 

Andreas von Bülow, who served on Germany's parliamentary commission and oversaw the three branches of the German secret service, told me that he believed that Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, was behind the terror attacks. The attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending.  "You don't get the higher echelons," von Bülow said, referring to the "architectural structure" which masterminds such terror attacks. At this level, he said, the organization doing the planning, such as Mossad or British intelligence, is primarily interested in affecting public opinion. 

In a recent article, "The Perfect Terrorist Plan To Level the Twin Towers Created In 1976" by Greg Szymanski, it was reported that the U.S. Army devised a plan in 1976 to bring down the towers using commercial airliners and box cutters as weapons.  At the time, George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA and Martin R. Hoffmann was Secretary of the Army. Hoffmann told me that he did not recall being involved in this planning reportedly done by the U.S. Army.

An architect, even of destruction, needs a contractor. Proponents of the un-official versions of 9-11 provide evidence to support their claims, but do not explain how the U.S. military and civil aviation control systems could have been hijacked to allow the aerial attacks to occur.  Because the attacks involved computer systems used by the FAA, NORAD, and the U.S. Air Force, the conspirators would have needed "superuser" access to the command and control centers of these three separate organizations. Superuser, or root, means the most privileged user on a computerized data system. The superuser has complete access to all files on the system. For the previously mentioned agencies, and virtually all other U.S. defense and intelligence organizations, there is one such possible superuser:  a little-known private not-for-profit organization, based in Bedford, Mass., known as MITRE Corp. MITRE also has a headquarters in McLean, Va., on a campus it shares with Northrop Grumman. 

The MITRE Corp. is a major defense contracting organization headed by the former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Dr. James Rodney Schlesinger. Schlesinger, who was reportedly made DCI at the request of Henry Kissinger in 1973, later served as Secretary of Defense. Schlesinger, a former director of strategic studies at the RAND Corp., was described in a 1973 biography as a "devout Lutheran," although he was born in New York in 1929 to immigrant Jewish parents from Austria and Russia. Schlesinger earned three degrees from Harvard University. 

Schlesinger's father, an accountant, founded the accounting firm Schlesinger & Haas, and was a trustee and chairman of the budget of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. His father was also a member of the New York State Grand Lodge of Masons. 

The MITRE Corp., of which Schlesinger is chairman of the board of trustees, is connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and Mitretek Systems of Falls Church, Va. Schlesinger is a senior advisor for the Lehman Brothers investment firm and a member of the Defense Policy Board and advisory council for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

The MITRE Corp. has provided computer and information technology to the FAA and the U.S. Air Force since the late 1950's. MITRE is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) for the Dept. of Defense, the FAA, and the Internal Revenue Service.  The chairman of the board of trustees of Mitretek Systems, a spin-off of MITRE Corp., is Martin R. Hoffmann, who served as Secretary of the Army when the "perfect terrorist plan" was reportedly prepared in 1976. 

MITRE's Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) FFRDC for the Dept. of Defense was established in 1958. The C3I "supports a broad and diverse set of sponsors within the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. These include the military departments, defense and intelligence agencies, the combatant commands, and elements of both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," according to MITRE's website. "Information systems technology," it says, "coupled with domain knowledge, underpin the work of the C3I FFRDC." 

The U.S. Air Force maintains its Electronic Systems Center (ESC) at the Hanscom AFB in Bedford, Mass. The ESC manages the development and acquisition of electronic command and control (C2) systems used by the Air Force.  The ESC is the Air Force's "brain for information, command and control systems," according to Charles Paone, a civilian employee of the ESC. It is the "product center" for the Air Force's Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (J-STARS), Paone said.  Asked about MITRE's role at the ESC, Paone said, "MITRE does the front-end engineering. It's basically our in-house engineer." MITRE employees operate the computer systems at Hanscom AFB, Paone said.  MIT's Lincoln Laboratories, the parent of MITRE, is located on the Hanscom AFB. 

A second FFRDC, the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) provides computer engineering and technology to the FAA. MITRE's support of the FAA began in 1958, when the company was created.  The FAA's Airspace Management Handbook of May 2004, for example, was written and published by the MITRE Corp. 

Jennifer Shearman, MITRE's public relations manager for "corporate identity" in Bedford, said that MITRE is a "trusted mentor" for the FAA and is a "unique" provider of "objective and independent" information for the U.S. civil aviation authority.  MITRE's Bedford headquarters are located near Boston's Logan airport where the two planes that struck the World Trade Center supposedly originated. Bedford lies directly under the flight path of westbound flights leaving Logan. 

MITRE developed the technology "to aid controllers in solving problems while keeping aircraft close to their route, altitude, and speed preferences." Shearman was unable to say why the MITRE technology apparently failed on 9-11.  Indira Singh, an "IT consultant" who previously worked on a Defense Advanced Research Project, and who was employed by J.P. Morgan on 9-11, in risk management, pointed to MITRE's role at the FAA during the 9-11 Citizens' Commission hearings in New York last September. 

"Ptech was with MITRE Corporation in the basement of the FAA for two years prior to 9-11," Singh said. "Their specific job is to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force in the case of an emergency. If anyone was in a position to know that the FAA - that there was a window of opportunity or to insert software or to change anything - it would have been Ptech along with MITRE." 

A representative of Ptech could not be reached. [Ptech appears to have been a Mossad front company created to provide insecure software to the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Ptech was meant to appear Moslem-owned and had Arab owners and financiers, but Mossad controllers.]