FBI and Department of Justice Sued for Failure To Perform Duties To Report Known 9/11 Attack Evidence To Congress
Editor's Note: The announcement below is from the press releases of two 9/11 research groups endorsed by the Justice Integrity Project.
The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and 9/11 victim family members Robert McIlvaine and Barbara Krukowski-Rastelli announced on March 25 a joint federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI for their failure to perform a congressionally mandated assessment of any evidence known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
A news conference about these filings was held on March 25, 2019 in Washington, DC near the federal courthouse. The conference locale was 555 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, outside the Newseum, helping underscore the news value of the topic.
The complaint can be read here. More details are below.
The action for declaratory and injunctive relief is under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 702, 706, and the federal mandamus statute, 28 U.S.C. 1361, because of federal agency failures to comply with the mandate from Congress.
The complaint cites the failure of the FBI and its 2014-2015 9/11 Review Commission to assess key 9/11-related evidence that the FBI can be shown to have had, or been aware of, regarding:
1) the use of pre-placed explosives to destroy World Trade Center buildings, 1, 2 and 7; 2) arrest and investigation of the “High Fivers” observed photographing and celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11; 3) terrorist financing regarding the reported Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers; 4) recovered plane parts, including serial numbers from all three crash locations; 5) video from cameras mounted inside and outside the Pentagon; and 6) cell phone communications from passengers aboard airplanes.
This is evidence relevant to the 9/11 Review Commission’s and the FBI’s compliance with the mandate from Congress, which should have been assessed by the FBI and the 2014-2015 9/11 Review Commission and reported to Congress. The complaint also cites the destruction by the FBI of evidence related to the “High Fivers.”
The Lawyers' Committee filmed the press conference. An excerpt is below.
Shown above (from left to right) are Richard Gage, president of Architects and Engineers for 9/11Truth.org, 9/11 victim family member Robert McIlvaine (father of victim Bobby McIlvaine), Mick Harrison and David R. Meiswinkle, litigation director and president, respectively, of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, as they held a press conference on March 25, 2019 in front of the Newseum in Washington, DC to discuss the Lawyers’ Committee lawsuit against the FBI. The Newseum, a museum for the news industry, was holding an exhibit inside on the 9/11 attacks.
An extended version of this film with commentary from the Lawyers Committee, Richard Gage and Robert McIlvaine can be found on our Youtube channel at this link on the site of the Lawyers' Committee.
Another view of the event was by Jason Goodman, producer and editor of Crowdsource the Truth. His film, which includes extensive, exclusive interview and compelling comments by the experts featured at the press conference, is available via YouTube at
.be" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Join Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry for FBI Lawsuit (99:38 mins). Some of his footage was included in the Lawyers' Committee' video.
Regarding the press conference:
What: News Conference on historic suit against FBI and DoJ regarding 9/11 evidence. Who: Mick Harrison, Litigation Director, Lawyers Committee for 911 Truth, shown at right in photo, (LCfor911.org) David Meiswinkle, President, Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry (LCfor911.org) Richard Gage, President, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, shown at left in photo (AE911Truth.org) Robert McIlvaine (shown right, with microphone), 9/11 victim family member, father of Bobby McIlvaine When: 1 p.m. Monday, March 25, 2019 Where: Pennsylvania Avenue at Sixth Street, NW in front of the Newseum, Washington, DC.
Help support the efforts of this lawsuit! Please send a contribution to:
• The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry: www.LCfor911.org and / or • Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth: www.ae911truth.org
The Lawyers’ Committee is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization: www.lcfor911.org.
Editor's Note: This article was updated from a preview of the press conference to reflect its completion. Contact the editor with any questions or comments: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Related News
Updates
May 10
9/11 Truth Advocacy
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Advocacy: Project Due Diligence One Year In: Educating Engineers Across the U.S. About 9/11, Laurie Sihvonen, May 10, 2019. The relentless push by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth for a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers has opened a promising new front over the past year thanks to the volunteer efforts of more than 40 engineers.
In May of 2018, AE911Truth launched a bold initiative called Project Due Diligence (PDD) aimed at engaging and educating the nation's civil and structural engineers. The project is spearheaded by AE911Truth board member Roland Angle, CE, who has made it his mission to galvanize America's engineering community to restore the professional and scientific credibility it lost after 9/11.
Civil engineer Roland Angle speaks at the first presentation of Project Due Diligence in April 2018 at the Marines’ Memorial Association in San Francisco.Angle is a civil engineer who was trained in the use of explosives while in the U.S. Army Special Forces (see his bio with those of other key volunteers below). He has joined other AE911Truth members to create a PowerPoint presentation called, “A Critique of the NIST WTC Building Failure Reports and the Progressive Collapse Theory.” The presentation outlines the many errors, omissions, and false premises contained in the official reports, which were published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and endorsed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
The PDD presentation also cites major errors in Zdeněk Bažant's “Progressive Collapse Theory,” which he submitted to the ASCE just two days after 9/11 and was published in their Journal of Engineering Mechanics just a few months later. AE911Truth takes the position that the ASCE leadership performed unethically from the start of the official investigations. In addition to failing to protest the illegal removal of debris (i.e., physical evidence) from the WTC crime scene, the ASCE continues to suppress scientific challenges to the data and methodology used by both the Bažant and NIST analyses, which misrepresent the building collapse mechanisms.
Angle and his team maintain that it is the professional duty of engineers to become familiar with the official reports endorsed by the profession’s most publicly visible organization (ASCE) and to assess the merit of any challenges to those reports. It is incumbent upon engineers, they argue, to carefully review all discourse on these catastrophic building failures in order to ensure public safety and uphold U.S. engineering standards.
PDD's outreach constitutes a novel attempt to build a self-expanding contact network. The program currently has 42 volunteers (who are civil, structural or mechanical engineers recruited from among AE911Truth petition signers). Their immediate goal is to reach out to the 160 local branches of the ASCE. They have already begun to expand the effort to include other engineering organizations and the general public.
April 22
Lawyers Committee & AE911Truth.org, DOJ, FBI failed to fully comply with congressional 9/11 mandate, lawsuit alleges, John Suayan, April 22, 2019. The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc. and Architects & Engineers (AE) for 9/11 Truth are suing federal officials in an effort to have the defendants fully comply with a five-year-old mandate from Congress pertaining to 9/11.
U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray are the defendants in a lawsuit filed on March 25 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging the four federal government respondents failed to adhere to a 2014 mandate implemented by Congress.
The mandate, according to the suit, required the FBI and an external review body it created to implement what “ultimately became known” as the 9/11 Review Commission to “assess any evidence known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” according to the lawsuit.
“The defendants failed to comply with this mandate from Congress in several ways, as reflected in the FBI 9/11 Review Commission’s Report, completed and released March 25, 2015,” the 44-page original petition says.
The mandate in question was a result of the 9/11 Commission’s acknowledgement that “additional evidence relating to the attacks would likely be brought forward after their report was issued."
“Over the 10 years that followed, significant additional evidence regarding the 9/11 attacks was in fact publicly reported, in some cases as a result of ongoing federal government inquiries, and in some cases as a result of ongoing inquiries by concerned citizens and nonprofit organizations,” the suit says.
Court documents explain that the 9/11 Review Commission noted in its report on page 100 that the FBI’s New York and San Diego field offices “have continued to investigate 9/11."
“The FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission in its Report at page 100 significantly notes that ‘The Review Commission found that the FBI, to its credit, still has the 9/11 attacks and any potential conspiracy surrounding them, under active investigation,’” the suit says.
The complaint additionally argues that “the FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission, and the FBI itself, failed to assess and report to Congress, as mandated, several other categories of significant 9/11-related evidence known to the FBI via reports in the press, via the web, and via public events and/or reflected in the FBI’s own records.”
The Lawyers’ Committee, a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization, says in the suit that it “believes that the family members of the victims of the tragic crimes of 9/11 have a compelling right to know the full truth of what happened to their loved ones on 9/11, and that Congress and the Department of Justice, in order to do their jobs, have a compelling need to know.”
AE echoes the Lawyers’ Committee’s sentiments by stating that the “investigation and education of the public as to the true reasons these [World Trade Center] buildings collapsed on 9/11 [is] an important organizational interest distinct from the general public interest in seeing government agencies comply with the law.”
The nonprofits are joined in the litigation by Robert McIlvaine. McIlvaine’s son, Bobby, was killed in the attacks on New York.
Mark G. Harrison, of Bloomington, Ind., and John M. Clifford with the law firm Clifford & Garde, LLP, of Washington, D.C., are representing the complainants.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Case No. 1-19-CV-0824
April 14
9/11 Litigation Fund-Raising Update
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, FBI Lawsuit Fund Drive: $55,000 Raised, $5,000 to Go! Staff report, April 14, 2019. Lawsuit Seeks Answers on Five Men Arrested on 9/11 With two days left to go in the fundraising drive for our historic FBI Lawsuit, we are just $5,000 shy of raising the funds needed to cover the early phases of litigation. We are so grateful to those who’ve made this bold legal action possible by donating.
If you haven’t chipped in yet and you believe in this effort to force the FBI to report all of the evidence detailed in our 44-page complaint, please help us reach our goal by this Monday, April 15. Your gift will ensure that we and the Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry have all the resources required to litigate this case.
Today, we wanted to share more about the second count that AE911Truth has joined in the lawsuit, which calls for the FBI to assess and report the evidence it gathered regarding the five men who were seen celebrating the World Trade Center attacks and arrested later that day. You can learn more about this count and read the full text of it in our just-published article “Lawsuit Seeks Answers on Five Men Arrested on 9/11."
April 8
Guns & Butter,
.be" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI Sued for Failure to Provide 9/11 Evidence to Congress, Host: Bonnie Fuller, April 8, 2019. Guests: David Meiswinkle, Mick Harrison, Barbara Honegger, Richard Gage from the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc. The Lawyers Committee, along with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and 9/11 victim family members have filed a joint federal lawsuit against the US Department of Justice and the FBI for their failure to perform a congressionally mandated assessment of any evidence known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The guests provide a broad overview of both the lawsuit and the filing of a grand jury petition; the seven counts of relevant evidence included in the complaint which also cites the destruction by the FBI of evidence related to the "High Fivers."
March 31
Shown above (from left to right) are Richard Gage, Robert McIlvaine (father of victim Bobby McIlvaine), Mick Harrison and David R. Meiswinkle.
AE911Truth.org, Lawsuit to Force FBI Assessment of WTC Evidence: Interview with Gage, Meiswinkle, and Harrison, Staff report, March 31, 2019. FBI Lawsuit Fund Drive: $42,000 Raised, $18,000 to Go. On our most recent episode of 9/11 Free Fall, host Andy Steele is joined by the leaders of AE911Truth and the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry to discuss our lawsuit filed this week against the FBI, which takes aim at the Bureau’s failure to include certain key evidence in its congressionally mandated 9/11 Review Commission Report from 2015.
This show is recommended listening for all those who wish to have a deeper understanding of this historic litigation and how it may play out in the next one to two years. Listen now on AE911Truth.org >
Since last Saturday, together we have raised more than $42,000 for this bold legal action — quickly surpassing the first milestone of $30,000 and setting us on a path to reaching $60,000 by April 15!
If you haven’t chipped in yet and you want to see the FBI have to report the evidence of the World Trade Center’s explosive demolition to Congress and the American people, please take a moment to donate today. By providing the funds needed to cover the legal fees and investigative work involved in this litigation, your contribution could make the difference in the success of this unprecedented lawsuit.
Thank you to the nearly 800 dedicated activists who’ve already contributed to make this lawsuit possible!
Thomas Wilson rarely left Ground Zero in the dizzying month following the attacks of September 11, 2001.A New York City police sergeant at the time, Wilson spent his days sifting through the tangled, charred rubble of the World Trade Centre. When night came, he slept for a few hours in one of the makeshift dormitories that sprung up around the site — a fierce sense of duty prevented him from being anywhere else.
"A job had to be done," he said. "It was the right thing to do."
Wilson counted himself lucky for escaping that day when so many others didn't. But seven years later, 9/11 caught up with him. He was diagnosed with a rare tongue, and later, skin cancer — both of which doctors said were linked to his time spent at Ground Zero. Wilson, a father of five, was shocked but not entirely surprised. He remembered the lack of proper protective gear and the metallic odour of the toxic brew of carcinogens that hovered over what he, and other first responders, dubbed "The Pile."
"It just perforated everything," he said.
Wilson is one of more than 11,000 first responders and survivors who've been diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer, according to the World Trade Centre Health program, part of the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2011, about 60,000 people were registered as having 9/11-related illnesses. By December 2018, that number was higher than 93,000, according to WTC Health Program.
The growing number has put crippling pressure on the September 11 Victim Compensation fund, set up by the U.S. government to provide financial aid for the sick and the families of those who've died from their illnesses. The fund is running out of money faster than expected and, to ration what's left, future payments are set to be cut by up to 70 per cent — a decrease that could mean undue financial stress, in addition to life-changing health challenges, for people impacted by that awful day.
9-11 Researchers-Family Suit Against DoJ
Bob McIlvaine, father of 9/11 victim Bobby McIlvaine, from a 2017 poster seeking records and justice.
March 25
Crowdsource the Truth,
.be" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Join Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry for FBI Lawsuit, Jason Goodman, March 25, 2019 (99:38 mins). History unfolds before our eyes as the Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry joins with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth to bring a lawsuit against the FBI in an effort to compel the embattled Bureau to conduct a proper investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.
AE911Truth.org, Opinion: Courthouse News yanks article for its woefully fair and accurate coverage of 9/11 lawsuit, Ted Walter, March 28, 2019. If you had to pick one example to best encapsulate the mainstream media bias and censorship that have contributed significantly to suppressing the truth about 9/11 for nearly two decades, it would have to be the extraordinary actions of Courthouse News Service earlier this week.
The first extraordinary action came on March 26, 2019, when Courthouse News published the article “FBI Accused of Omitting Evidence From 9/11 Report,” which — to the astonishment of many — offered fair coverage of the lawsuit filed one day earlier by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and 9/11 family member Bob McIlvaine.
New York Times, Editorial: Texas Is Silencing the Will of Millions of Voters, Editorial Board, June 4, 2023 (print ed.). Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, is expected to sign a bill in the next few days that would make it immeasurably more difficult for cities in the state to govern themselves. The bill would strip cities of the ability to set standards for local workplaces, to ensure civil rights, and to improve their environments, trampling on the rights of voters who elected local officials to do just that.
The bill, recently approved by the Texas House and Senate, would nullify any city ordinance or regulation that conflicts with existing state policy in those crucial areas, and would give private citizens or businesses the right to sue and seek damages if they believe there is a discrepancy between city and state. That means no city could prohibit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees, as several Texas cities have done. No city could adopt new rules to limit predatory payday-lending practices. No city could restrict overgrown lots, or unsafe festivals, or inadequate waste storage. Cities would even be banned from enacting local worker protections, including requiring water breaks for laborers in the Texas heat, as Dallas, Austin and other cities have done following multiple deaths and injuries.
Business lobbyists and Republican legislators who have pushed the bill said its purpose was to rid the state of a patchwork of conflicting regulations. In fact, that patchwork largely exists only in three or four mostly Democratic cities in an overwhelmingly red state, and the bill is the latest effort by Republicans to rid the state of any policies that conflict with their hard-right agenda — even if those policies are fully supported by voters in those cities, who elect representatives to serve their interests.
Already the state won’t let cities ban discrimination against low-income renters, and it prohibits them from cutting their police budgets. Dozens of other bills have been introduced to restrict election reforms by Texas cities and counties, including one that would let an official, most likely a Republican, overturn election results in a single place: largely Democratic Harris County, which includes Houston. “The bill is undemocratic,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio told The Texas Tribune. “It is probably the most undemocratic thing the Legislature has done, and that list is getting very long.
New York Times, Vigilante Justice Rises in Haiti and Crime Plummets, Frances Robles and Andre Paultre, June 5, 2023 (print ed.). Civilians have killed at least 160 gang members in recent weeks. Residents say they feel safer, but some worry that it will lead to even more violence.
The 14 presumed gang members under arrest were arriving at a police station in Haiti’s capital, when a group of people overpowered the police, rounded up the suspects outside and used gasoline to burn them alive.
The gruesome executions on April 24 marked the start of a brutal vigilante campaign to reclaim the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, from gangs that have inflicted terror on Haitians for nearly two years.
In a nation wracked by extreme poverty and violence, civilians have taken up arms and killed at least 160 people believed to be gang members in the six weeks since a citizens “self-defense” movement known as “bwa kale” kicked off its vigilantism with the brazen police station attack, according to data gathered in a new report by a prominent Haitian human rights group.
The result: a sharp drop in kidnappings and killings attributed to gangs in neighborhoods where people told The New York Times they had been afraid to leave their homes.
“Before the 24th, every day someone passed by and demanded that I give him money because of my little business,” said Marie, 62, who sells shoes on the streets of Port-au-Prince. The Times is withholding her full name and those of other residents quoted in this article for their safety.
“When I had no money, they took whatever they wanted from my table, and this happened at any time of the day,” she said.
But two weeks ago, members of the “bwa kale” — crude slang for erection — burned a man believed to be a gang member alive in front of her shoe stall.
Though she sees the revenge movement as “God beginning to make things right,” Marie has misgivings.
“I support vigilance groups, but I don’t like the way they do it,” she said. “He could have been punished in another way. He could have been arrested and put in jail.”
The outbreak of mob justice is worrisome, Haiti experts say, because it could easily be used to target people who have nothing to do with gangs, and could lead to an explosion of even worse violence if the gangs seek retribution.
That it took a movement of self-appointed vigilantes to bring some semblance of calm to parts of Port-au-Prince underscores the chaos engulfing a country where no president has been elected in two years, and underpaid and outgunned police have fled in large numbers.
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Krukowski-Rastelli announced on March 25 a joint federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI for their failure to perform a congressionally mandated assessment of any evidence known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 702, 706, and the federal mandamus statute, 28 U.S.C. 1361, because of federal agency failures to comply with the mandate from Congress.
been assessed by the FBI and the 2014-2015 9/11 Review Commission and reported to Congress. The complaint also cites the destruction by the FBI of evidence related to the “High Fivers.”
News Conference on historic suit against FBI and DoJ regarding 9/11 evidence.
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