Ever wonder if the government’s hiding something about 9/11? It’s a question that’s been relegated to the fringes, often dismissed with a condescending pat on the head and a murmur about tinfoil hats. But I remember a time, back in my early twenties, hunched over a clunky desktop monitor, navigating the chaotic forums of Above Top Secret. I’d spend hours slugging it out with internet trolls, debunkers, and fellow conspiracy buffs. I was one of them, sure, but not in the way you might think. My burgeoning theory, even then, wasn’t about lizard people or controlled demolitions. It was something far more mundane, and therefore, far more terrifying: the real, overarching conspiracy was a desperate, frantic scramble by the United States government to bury its own staggering, criminal-level incompetence.

In a twisted way, they probably loved the wilder tales. Holographic planes and secret societies were a perfect smokescreen. While the public was chasing phantoms, the men in suits could quietly shred documents, redact reports, and build a narrative wall around the glaring truth: they had been asleep at the wheel for years, and thousands paid the price. This is the territory explored by investigative journalist Peter Lance in his book, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror. It’s not a book of wild speculation; it’s a meticulously sourced work of journalism that lays out a timeline of failure so profound it borders on the surreal. And now, years after its publication, with the Biden administration finally declassifying a 16-page FBI report in 2021 linking Saudi nationals directly to the hijackers, Lance’s work feels less like a theory and more like a confirmed diagnosis of a rot we were told never existed.

This isn’t just a book review. This is an excavation. We’re going to dig into the core arguments Lance presents, bolstered by the very evidence he and others have unearthed. This is the story of how the dots were not only missed but deliberately ignored.

• The FBI’s Intelligence Fumbles: We’ll go beyond “dropped the ball” and detail the specific, repeated warnings from credible sources that were actively suppressed by the Bureau for years.
• TWA Flight 800 & The Bojinka Plot: This is the heart of the cover-up. We will dissect the 1995 Bojinka plot, explain the sophisticated bomb the FBI knew about, and contrast it with the mountain of eyewitness testimony from the TWA 800 crash that was systematically buried.
• Mob Ties and FBI Lies: We’ll explore the sordid details of the FBI’s corrupt alliance with the Colombo crime family and show how protecting that relationship took precedence over preventing a terrorist attack.
• The 9/11 Commission’s Half-Truths: We’ll expose the official report not as a genuine investigation, but as a masterfully crafted piece of public relations designed to absolve the powerful of any real blame.
• What Lance Brings New to the Table: We’ll highlight the specific, damning documents—the “receipts”—that Lance brought to light, proving this is more than just a compelling narrative.

As a restaurant manager, my life revolves around managing complex, chaotic systems with a hundred moving parts. I deal with inventory, staffing, customer complaints, and the constant threat of a kitchen fire. My job teaches you, very quickly, how to spot when a story doesn’t add up, when an excuse is pure bullshit, and how a series of small, ignored problems can cascade into a full-blown catastrophe. Reading Lance’s book hit me like a splash of hot grease: it’s messy, it’s sharp, and it cuts right through the government’s carefully polished excuses, revealing the ugly truth of negligence underneath.

The FBI’s Intelligence Fumbles: A Puzzle Left Unassembled

To understand the failures that led to 9/11, you have to understand that they didn’t begin in 2001. They began nearly a decade earlier. Lance kicks off his book with a gut punch that sets the tone for the entire investigation: the FBI had concrete, actionable intelligence about the 9/11 plot and its architects as early as 1994, but due to a combination of bureaucratic sclerosis, inter-agency rivalry, and outright corruption, they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—connect the dots.

In Chapter 2, Lance puts the spotlight on Ramzi Yousef, the man he aptly dubs the “Mozart of Terror.” Yousef wasn’t just some random extremist; he was the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After that attack, he wasn’t hiding in a cave. He was in the Philippines, actively plotting his encore. Lance writes, “Ramzi Yousef was the al Qaeda link between both attacks on the Twin Towers” (p. 24). The FBI’s New York office, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), had him in their sights. They knew his name, they knew his methods, yet they let the trail go cold.

The negligence is breathtaking when you look at the specifics. Take the case of the Calverton shooters from Chapter 1. In July 1989, on a public firing range on Long Island, a group of Middle Eastern men were photographed by the FBI’s own surveillance teams practicing with AK-47s. These weren’t weekend hobbyists. The group included El Sayyid Nosair, the man who would go on to assassinate Rabbi Meier Kahane, and other figures who were directly tied to the 1993 WTC bombing. They were training in plain sight. The FBI had the pictures, the names, the location. And they did nothing. Lance notes the catastrophic missed opportunity: “Had they pressed further, the FBI might have discovered that the Alkifah Center [their base of operations in Brooklyn] was the New York outpost for… Osama bin Laden’s ‘Afghan Arabs’” (p. 25).

It’s like watching a line cook consistently undercook chicken, seeing multiple customers get sick, and then promoting him to head chef. The warning signs weren’t just there; they were screaming for attention. The feds had physical evidence, like bomb receipts linking the plotters together. They had the incendiary sermons of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh,” who was openly calling for attacks on American landmarks. Yet, they treated each piece of information as an isolated incident, refusing to see the larger mosaic of a coordinated conspiracy taking shape right under their noses. This wasn’t just hindsight. Lance’s evidence, including internal FBI 302 memos detailed in Chapter 3, shows that informants were explicitly warning their handlers about plots to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings years before 9/11. It’s infuriating. It’s like knowing your restaurant’s fire suppression system is faulty, but you unplug it because the beeping warning is annoying during the dinner rush.

TWA Flight 800: Terrorism, Not a Tall Tale

Here is where the story transitions from simple incompetence to active, deliberate cover-up. On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Paris, exploded in mid-air off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. After a four-year investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officially concluded that the cause was a spontaneous explosion in the center wing fuel tank, likely sparked by faulty wiring.

This official story was immediately problematic. There was the inconvenient matter of explosive residue—traces of RDX and PETN, components of bombs and missiles—found on the wreckage. And then there were the eyewitnesses. Hundreds of them, including pilots and military personnel, reported seeing a streak of light ascending from the ocean’s surface toward the plane before it exploded into a fireball.

Faced with this direct contradiction to their narrative, the government needed a better story. And this is where they went from a questionable investigation to producing goddamn science fiction. The CIA, in support of the NTSB, released an animated video to explain away what hundreds of people swore they saw. Their theory is this: The center wing fuel tank exploded on its own, blowing the nose of the 747 clean off. But instead of plummeting into the ocean, the now-crippled, 300-ton behemoth, missing its entire cockpit and forward fuselage, magically transformed into a rocket ship. It pitched up violently and, trailing burning fuel, executed a “zoom climb,” ascending more than 2,000 feet. This, the CIA claimed, is what the witnesses saw—not a missile going up, but the burning fuselage climbing after it had already exploded.

This explanation is not just wrong; it is an insultingly absurd fabrication that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. It’s cartoon physics presented as forensic analysis. The “zoom climb” is aerodynamically impossible. Aviation experts have stated unequivocally that a 747 that has just suffered a catastrophic structural failure cannot generate the lift to climb thousands of feet. It would stall and fall. Furthermore, the CIA’s theory required the witnesses to have seen the streak of light after the initial explosion, but the vast majority were adamant: they saw the streak ascend first. As detailed in the 2013 documentary TWA Flight 800, many of these witnesses later reported being intimidated by FBI agents, who pressured them to change their stories to align with the government’s theory.

So if the official story is a lie built on impossible physics and intimidated witnesses, what were they trying to hide? The answer, as Peter Lance lays out, was already sitting in an FBI file cabinet. It was called Operation Bojinka.

The official narrative crumbles when confronted with two mountains of evidence: the eyewitnesses and the Bojinka plot. First, the eyewitnesses. The NTSB and FBI systematically dismissed the testimony of over 200 credible people who saw the event unfold. These weren’t hysterics. They included an Air National Guard helicopter pilot, Major Frederick Meyer, who testified he saw “a streak of light” ascend toward the aircraft just before it exploded. Dozens of others on boats and on the shore described the exact same thing. Yet, the official report, led by FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, concluded these hundreds of people were all mistaken, that they had only seen the burning wreckage falling after the initial explosion.

This dismissal of eyewitnesses is suspicious enough, but it becomes downright criminal when placed alongside what the FBI already had in its possession: the complete blueprint for Operation Bojinka.

The Bojinka plot, discovered in a Manila apartment in January 1995, was the brainchild of Ramzi Yousef and his uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), the man who would later be credited as the principal architect of 9/11. The official story is that this “intelligence gold mine” was discovered by pure chance when a small chemical fire broke out in the apartment. That story is a lie. As the Los Angeles Times would later report, and as you provided, Philippine intelligence was already monitoring Yousef. It’s highly likely they started the fire themselves as a pretext to raid the apartment without a warrant.

What they found inside was a terrorist’s dream lab. There were priests’ robes for disguises, pipe bombs, chemicals, and most importantly, Yousef’s laptop. On that computer was the entire, detailed plan for Operation Bojinka. The name itself means “loud bang” in Serbo-Croatian. The plot was chillingly ambitious: first, assassinate Pope John Paul II during his upcoming visit, and then, in a coordinated two-day blitz, have five operatives plant bombs on 11 or 12 US-bound airliners, murdering an estimated 4,000 people over the Pacific. The laptop even contained a chilling declaration: “We will hit all US nuclear targets.”

And then there was the bomb itself. Yousef, an engineering genius, had designed a sophisticated and nearly undetectable device. It was a masterpiece of deadly minimalism. The timer was a cheap, common Casio digital watch. The detonator used filaments so fine they resembled strands of hair. And the explosive charge was liquid nitroglycerin, cleverly disguised in a vial that looked identical to a bottle of contact lens solution. An operative could walk this device through any airport security checkpoint in 1995 without raising the slightest suspicion.

The most damning fact of all? The FBI had been explicitly warned about this exact type of device. Their own informant, a Colombo family mobster named Gregory Scarpa Jr., was Yousef’s confidant in prison. Scarpa had been feeding his FBI handlers detailed reports—known as “kites”—about Yousef’s plans. He told them Yousef was planning to bomb an airliner to force a mistrial in his case. He described the bomb in detail. The FBI had the blueprint. They had the bomb’s design. They had the motive. They had the warning.

Six months after they recovered the Bojinka files from Manila, TWA Flight 800 exploded in a fireball, with over 200 eyewitnesses describing an ascending streak of light consistent with an explosion or missile. The official explanation? Faulty wiring. It’s an insult to the intelligence of the American people and an unforgivable betrayal of the victims.

Mob Ties and FBI Lies: A Tangled Web

Why would the FBI and the Justice Department go to such extraordinary lengths to cover up a terrorist attack? Why push a flimsy mechanical failure theory when they had a mountain of evidence pointing to Yousef’s bomb? Lance’s answer is as cynical as it is believable: to protect the Bureau’s dirty secrets and its corrupt, decades-long relationship with organized crime.

To understand this, you have to understand the role of Gregory Scarpa Sr. and his son. Scarpa Sr., known as “The Grim Reaper,” was a notorious killer and capo in the Colombo crime family. He was also, as Lance documents in Chapter 8, a top-echelon FBI informant for over thirty years. His handler, agent Lin DeVecchio, allegedly gave Scarpa information that helped him murder his rivals, all while Scarpa was feeding the Bureau information. Between 1962 and 1992, Lance notes, Scarpa was paid upwards of$158,000 by the feds for his services. He was a protected asset.

This corrupt relationship created a house of cards. Dozens of major mob convictions were built on the foundation of this tainted informant-handler relationship. Now, enter Scarpa Jr. While in prison, he becomes the confidant of Ramzi Yousef and starts feeding the FBI priceless, direct intelligence about the Bojinka plot and the plan to bomb an airliner. This should have been a massive intelligence victory. Instead, it was a catastrophic threat.

As Lance argues in Chapter 10, for the FBI to use Scarpa Jr.’s intelligence in court, they would have to put him on the stand. The defense attorneys for Yousef would have torn him apart, exposing the entire corrupt history of his father and agent DeVecchio. It would have jeopardized every mob case DeVecchio ever worked on. The Bureau was faced with a choice: use the intel to stop a terrorist plot and risk having their dirty laundry aired in public, or bury the intel and protect their institutional reputation.

They chose to bury the intel. Lance makes the direct, explosive connection in Chapter 11: “The Justice Department suddenly ruled the crash an accident… throwing away its best chance to penetrate the cell that was already planning 9/11” (p. 133). The FBI’s mob mess didn’t just stink; it stank up the entire field of national security, leading directly to the TWA cover-up and leaving the door wide open for the 9/11 plotters to continue their work unimpeded.

The 9/11 Commission’s Half-Truths: A Whitewashed Report

After the 9/11 attacks, the public demanded answers. The result was the 9/11 Commission and its final report. Lance’s beef with the commission, which he details starting in Chapter 12, is that it was never a genuine investigation. It was a carefully managed exercise in damage control. He calls it “the Warren Commission of its era—an official body that purposely limited the scope of its investigation, cherry-picked evidence” (p. 3).

The commission’s first and most telling act of deception was to deliberately limit its own timeline. As they state in their own report, “The vast preponderance of our work… focuses on the period of 1998 forward” (p. 3). This is a jaw-dropping admission. By starting their clock in 1998, they neatly and conveniently excised the entire history we’ve just discussed: the 1993 bombing, the discovery of the Bojinka plot in 1995, the TWA 800 crash in 1996, and the entire Scarpa informant saga. They graded the final exam without ever looking at the homework from the first half of the semester.

The commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, had deep ties to the Bush administration, having co-authored a book with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This is not the profile of an independent investigator; it’s the profile of an insider tasked with protecting the institution.

The report is filled with omissions. It downplays the significance of the Phoenix Memo, where an FBI agent warned of Middle Eastern men training at flight schools. It ignores the desperate pleas from the Minneapolis field office to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop. And it completely whitewashes the catastrophic failure of the nation’s air defenses on the morning of 9/11. Lance’s minute-by-minute breakdown in Chapter 17 is infuriating. He asks the simple, damning question: “Why wasn’t NORAD alerted… until eighteen minutes after air traffic controllers realized a hijacking was in progress?” (p. 229). Standard procedure for a hijacking would have had fighter jets scrambled almost immediately. On 9/11, they were tragically, inexplicably late.

The 9/11 Commission Report is not a document of truth. It is a political document designed to spread the blame so thinly that no single person or agency could be held truly accountable. It’s a report less about what happened and more about saving face.

Final Thoughts: A Call to Keep Digging

Peter Lance’s Cover Up is not a cozy read. It’s a kick in the shins. It’s a dense, sometimes preachy, but ultimately undeniable indictment of systemic failure. Lance isn’t just rehashing old gripes; he’s bringing fresh meat to the table. Chapter 19 introduces Scarpa Jr.’s “kites”—the raw, unfiltered notes from Yousef that predicted TWA 800. Lance publishes them in the appendices for all to see. Chapter 20 unveils a 1996 FBI memo that proves the Bureau knew about the hijack threat years earlier than they admitted. His Afterword adds the final sting: the Justice Department stonewalled his request to interview Scarpa Jr. in 2004, proving the cover-up is an ongoing project.

The book’s central thesis is as compelling as it is disturbing: “This is the story of an extraordinary act of negligence in one presidential administration that was compounded in the next, then ignored by the 9/11 Commission” (p. 7). As a guy who has seen an entire Saturday night dinner service collapse into chaos because one person wasn’t paying attention or tried to cover up a mistake, I get it. Systems fail when people aren’t held accountable.

This book is a plow through the thick, stinking muck of government screw-ups, corruption, and cover-ups. The declassified Saudi report only sharpens Lance’s point: we are still, decades later, being kept in the dark. So, grab Cover Up. Chew on it. Absorb the evidence. Let me know what you think below. The truth, as it turns out, is a stubborn weed. No matter how many times you try to bury it, it keeps finding a way to grow back toward the light.