The possibility that 19 Muslim men accused of being the Sept. 11 hijackers were not, in fact, the hijackers, is not so extraordinary an idea as it might seem.

Exclusive To American Free Press

By Michael Collins Piper

After seven months of non-stop declarations by U.S. government spokesmen that there exists solid proof tying 19 Muslim men to plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has now admitted quite the opposite.

That 19 Muslim men who have apparently disappeared have been named as the hijackers is not in doubt.

What is in doubt is whether those 19 men were actually plotting anything, either individually or together.

The amazing possibility remains that others carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, using the identities of the 19 Muslims who have been assigned guilt in the tragedy.

In an April 19 speech delivered to the Common wealth Club in San Francisco, Mueller said that the purported hijackers, in his words, “left no paper trial.” The FBI director stated flatly:

In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper—either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere—that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.

In describing Mueller’s evidence fiasco, Los Angeles Times reporters Erich Lichtblau and Josh Meyer, whose article was reprinted in The Washington Post on April 30, note that:

Law enforcement officials say that while they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers before the attacks—all legal except for a few speeding tickets—they have found no evidence of their actual plotting.

The Times reporters acknowledge that Mueller’s comments “offer the FBI’s most comprehensive and detailed assessment to date of its investigation, remarkable as much for what investigators have not found as for what they have.”

The FBI director explained away the absence of evidence by making the disingenuous assertion that the hijackers used “meticulous planning, extraordinary secrecy and extensive knowledge of how America works” to conceal their scheme.

Mueller made this claim despite the fact that in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, a variety of U.S. officials and media sources speciously announced, almost instantaneously, that there was firm evidence not only that these 19 Muslim men were agents of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda “network” but that they were indeed the individuals who hijacked the doomed flights on Sept. 11.

Mueller seems to forget that early government and media reports loudly hyped “discoveries”—letters and other documents—in the luggage and personal belongings of the presumed hijackers which “proved” that they were on a “mission for Allah,” etc etc.

Now Mueller’s comments seem to contradict everything that’s been said.