Five Unanswered Questions About 9-11

by Robert Scheer, Robert Scheer

A Copublication from Seven Stories Press and Akashic BooksWhy was Osama bin Laden's Saudi family whisked out of the country immediately after 9/11, while our nation's commercial fleet was grounded? Why was Iraq the immediate focus of the U.S. National Security team, rather than Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, both nations with documented ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Why did our President try to block a bipartisan commission to investigate the tragedy? Why don't we know more about the Administration's stance toward anti-American terror in the months before 9/11, and why was so little done in response to the bloody attack the previous year on the USS Cole? Why is so little known about the hijackers, including who trained and financed them?

As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an absence of critical analysis from the government has left a void quickly filled by conspiracy theories. Set for release simultaneous with the conclusion of Congress' 9/11 commission report, "The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11" comes from the same team that produced "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq"-a bestseller praised by Democrats, Republicans and Independents, including members of Congress.

Bolstered by new interviews with senior intelligence experts and government officials, "Five Unanswered Questions" presents an election-year challenge to our President's "War on Terror," providing the most lucid and comprehensive analysis to date of our government's actions before, during and after 9/11.

Christopher Scheer is an independent journalist who writes for "The Nation," "AlterNet.org" and the "Los Angeles Times," Robert Scheer is the author of seven books and is currently aclinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He is a nationally syndicated columnist at the "Los Angeles Times," a contributing editor of "The Nation," and a host of NPR affiliate KCRW's "Left, Right and Center,"

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Robert Scheer is an American journalist who writes a column for Truthdig which is nationally syndicated in publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle and The Nation. He teaches communications as a professor at the University of Southern California and is Editor in Chief for the online magazine Truthdig.

Scheer was born to immigrant parents. His mother, a Russian Jew, and his father, a German, both worked in the garment industry. After graduating from City College of New York with a degree in economics, he studied as a fellow at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and then did further economics graduate work at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale University, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford, the same post once held by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book, Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. He reported from Cambodia, China, North Korea, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East (including the Six-Day War), as well as on national security matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of Che Guevara — which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in Ramparts and by Bantam Books.

During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-Vietnam War candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of New Left Sixties radicalism.

In July 1970, Scheer accompanied as a journalist a Black Panther Party delegation, led by Eldridge Cleaver, to North Korea, China, and Vietnam. The delegation also contained people from the San Francisco Red Guard, the women's liberation movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military. The purpose of the delegation was to "express solidarity with the struggles of the Koreans" and to "bring back to Babylon information about their communist society and their fight against U.S. imperialism," according to the Black Panthers' publication.

After several years freelancing for magazines, including New Times and Playboy, Scheer joined the Los Angeles Times in 1976 as a reporter. There he met Narda Zacchino, a reporter whom he later wed in the paper's news room. As a national correspondent for 17 years at the Times, he wrote articles and series on such diverse topics as the Soviet Union during glasnost, the Jews of Los Angeles, arms control, urban crises, national politics and the military, as well as covering several presidential elections. The Times entered Scheer's work for the Pulitzer Prize 11 times, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer national reporting award for a series on the television industry.

After Scheer left the Times in 1993, the paper granted him a weekly op-ed column which ran every Tuesday for the next 12 years until it was canceled in 2005. The column now appears in the San Francisco Chronicle and is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. He is also a contributing editor for the Nation magazine.

Scheer can be heard weekly on the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program "Left, Right & Center" produced at KCRW in Santa Monica and syndicated by Public Radio International.