Ben @benjaminbbenson

Last week, a comedian podcaster asked me if 9/11 was an “inside job or exactly as the government tells us?” I answered truthfully: I do not believe everything the government has told us about that day. I wasn’t referring to the baseless theories about controlled demolitions at buildings around the World Trade Center, but the very real possibility supported by recently declassified documents that al-Qaida’s attack was undertaken with support from Saudi intelligence officials. Apparently, that breached a third rail of American politics. Democrat Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut tweeted: 'If you want to be the GOP presidential nominee, you need to believe the government blew up the Twin Towers, and Osama bin Laden is an innocent man who’s living under an alias in Miami.' Former Vice President Pence said he was 'deeply offended' that I don’t trust that the government told us the full truth in the 9/11 Commission Report. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board pages mocked me for wading into “fever swamps” and were appalled that a presidential candidate 'really just said that,' quipping that “back on planet Earth, the 9/11 Commission was one of the better efforts at government accountability in recent memory and its findings have never been discredited by anyone credible.” Hold on there. Back on the real planet Earth, the FBI declassified documents in 2021 which reveal that the 9/11 Commission flatly lied about potential Saudi government involvement in the attacks. Yes, it’s in our national interest to move on from 9/11 and to preserve a stable relationship with Saudi Arabia – but our best chance of rebuilding public trust is to acknowledge the truth about one of the defining events in our nation’s history. A key question confronted by the 9/11 Commission was whether the Saudi government was involved in planning the attacks. The report concluded there was neither Saudi government nor royal family involvement. At the time, questions swirled around a 42-year-old graduate student who welcomed, housed, set-up bank accounts, and gave rent money to the first two Qaida hijackers after they landed in Los Angeles in January 2000 – concerns which the FBI and 9/11 Commission flatly dismissed. The Saudi student, Omar al-Bayoumi, claimed to have met the two terrorists entirely by chance; The 9/11 Commission report verified that Bayoumi’s altruism was in the name of hospitality as he claimed. And FBI official, Jacqueline Maguire, testified to the 9/11 Commission in 2004 that Bayoumi’s first meeting at a café with the hijackers appeared to be “a random encounter.” This is all against the backdrop of a 1998 FBI investigation revealing that rather than attend graduate school as he purported, Bayoumi frequented local mosques, doling out money for various causes and frequently and conspicuously videotaped visitors. The “graduate student” reportedly put up $400,000 to start a mosque in San Diego and all the while was paid a stipend and other expenses as a ghost employee of a Saudi contracting company, the FBI reported. Notwithstanding these facts, both the FBI and the 9/11 Commission emphatically supported Bayoumi’s account. Now over 20 years later, the FBI has changed its story. In documents declassified last year, the bureau affirmed that Bayoumi was in fact an agent of the Saudi intelligence service who worked with Saudi religious officials and reported to the kingdom’s powerful ambassador in Washington. These revelations are now the focal point in a long-running federal lawsuit in New York, where 9/11 survivors and relatives of the 2,977 people who were killed are seeking to hold the Saudi government responsible for the attacks. Even if the media doesn’t want to litigate the case against the Saudi government, these survivors and family members are – and understandably so. There are reasons to believe that successive U.S. administrations hid the Bayoumi revelations to provide public cover to the CIA for critical failures in the lead-up to 9/11. The two Saudis, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were known to the CIA as al-Qaida operatives. The CIA was watching as they joined an al-Qaida planning meeting in Malaysia in early January 2000. But the agency reportedly lost track of the two when they flew on to Bangkok and then to Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000. Embarrassingly, the CIA did not alert the FBI for more than a year after it learned the terrorists had entered the United States using their real names and Saudi passports. Given the enduring mystery over how the CIA lost track of Hazmi and Mihdhar in Malaysia, former FBI investigators have speculated that Bayoumi might have been asked to approach the hijackers as part of a U.S. or Saudi intelligence operation to recruit them. At the time, former officials have said, the CIA was trying desperately to develop sources inside al-Qaida. The CIA has consistently denied that it allowed the hijackers to come into the United States as part of a failed recruitment effort. Former White House counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, cited this as a plausible explanation for the CIA’s failure to track the first two hijackers and its abiding refusal to alert the FBI to their presence in the United States. The government hasn’t done itself any favors since then to build public trust around 9/11 or the U.S. response to it. The Pentagon’s prevarications about celebrity soldier Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan – initially claiming he was shot by enemy forces, but later forced to admit that he was killed by friendly fire – is one undisputed case among many. These events are important foremost because U.S. government officials continue to lie about other matters of public importance – the origin of Covid-19, knowledge about UAPs, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and so on – with a complicit media that just accepts the prevailing narrative without question. This fuels rampant public distrust. There is no credible evidence that 9/11 was an 'inside job,' but ironically when the government systematically lies about Saudi involvement and the media runs interference, that lends plausibility to an otherwise nonsensical claim. There’s no such thing as a noble lie. The reason the people don’t trust the government is because the government doesn’t trust the people. And yes, a Republican candidate for President really just said that.

@ItsAJWillingham your recent article on Mormonism sounds like paid propaganda. Disgusting. How about doing real research about the cult and talk to more >1 shill. Head over to r/exmormon and take a peak; call up @johndehlin or @ProtectLDSkids and see what they have to say.

@CollinRugg Yes

@going_concern Well... he’s not wrong...

@RepLoudermilk @RepBryanSteil @SpeakerPelosi Seriously? This is how you spend your time @RepLoudermilk is it really any wonder that the American people don’t trust politicians to do anything for us? This isn’t even a left vs right issue - it’s petty.

@chamath would love to have your support to get a Super Bowl ad buy to counter the one that Robinhood is doing! gofund.me/b8a0437a

@ParikPatelCFA would love to have you support the ad buy against RH for the Super Bowl! gofund.me/b8a0437a

@navigator_nick You know they’re buying a super bowl ad? Some of us are working to buy a counter ad - gofund.me/b8a0437a

@ifyoucan_icantu They’re also doing a Super Bowl ad, and WSB folks are raising $$$ to do a counter gofund.me/b8a0437a

@tramlaw301 We’re trying to get a WSB Super Bowl ad agains RH - see here: gofund.me/b8a0437a

@vladtenev Fuck you

@RepLoudermilk I’m one of your constituents. What are you going to do about @RobinhoodApp and their illegal market manipulation and collusion

What’s happening in the markets is not only an example of free market it’s a movement to permanently change the way it functions and balance out the leverage. Power struggles lead to conflict and conflict can lead to a winner and a loser.

Marcus Lemonis @marcuslemonis

6 years ago

For those wanting regulators to moderate stock trading even more is like asking regulators to control a street bazaar. Buyers and sellers have a choice and the are consequences to those choices in both directions. A free market is key. If you disagree, what’s your solution?

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Worth reading

Marcus Lemonis @marcuslemonis

6 years ago

For those wanting regulators to moderate stock trading even more is like asking regulators to control a street bazaar. Buyers and sellers have a choice and the are consequences to those choices in both directions. A free market is key. If you disagree, what’s your solution?

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@WomenForCohen @RiskyBobby26 @vladtenev @bprafulkumar @RobinhoodApp @SEC_Enforcement @FINRA @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris @SpeakerPelosi @AOC @Citadel This was insightful - thanks for sharing!!

@RiskyBobby26 @SEC_Enforcement @RobinhoodApp And also the $115 1/29c. If they only let us sell, but not buy, they as the MM get to demand whatever bid ask spread they want and screw is because it won’t be liquid

@olboyryan What’s worse (IMO) is that people that have them are going to be stuck holding the bag. It will let me sell, but if they don’t let anyone buy, how will it be liquid? The act as MM and demand a huge bidask spread to profit from me?

@RiskyBobby26 @vladtenev @bprafulkumar @RobinhoodApp Yeah that explanation doesn’t add up. Luckily mine option is still there and they didn’t take any money. I’m most concerned about the liquidity of the options tomorrow