Head of the committee:
We will now begin the first session of the defense and foreign affairs
committee. We will now start discussing the special anti-terror law. .We now
call on Mr. Yukihisa Fujita
Fujita standing in front of microphone:
This will be the last televised broadcast of this committee for so I would
like to talk about the origin of the war on terrorism which was the attacks
of 911. On September 11 of 2002 I went to a theater house for a charity
concert to help build a school in Afghanistan.
They chose to have the
charity concert on that day as a gesture of respect for the dead. Normally
911 commemorative events are for the people who died in New York but the
people who held this event decided that more innocent people died as a
result of 911 in Afghanistan than in New York.
So they built a grade school
near where the statue of Buddha was destroyed in Bamiyan. The name of the
school is "the school of hope." They also lit candles to commemorate the
dead both in Afghanistan and in New York in the year 2002, one year after
the attacks. So, when discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask
ourselves, what was 911, what is terrorism? So today, I would like to talk
about the beginning of the
war on terror.
So, I would like to ask the people who call this law an anti-terror law to
realize that the biggest victim of the war on terrorism has been Afghanistan
so I believe helping the people of Afghanistan should be our biggest
priority. I would like to ask Mr. Inuzuka about this.
Tadashi Inuzuka walking to the microphone:
As Mr. Fujita says the main purpose of this law is to provide peace and
security to Afghanistan. And, as he says, the biggest sufferers have been
the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has 1.7 times the land area of Japan
and 20 some million people live there. Also, because of a drought on the
Eurasian continent close to 5 million have died due to water shortages. Even
now 1 million people live close to the main battlegrounds.
So, the main
purpose is to provide stability to those war zones so in that context what
should Japan do? However, instead of providing support by providing fuel to
the U.S. forces we at the Democratic Party have decided that providing water
is more important. The philosophy behind our anti-terror law is to get the
ruling party to help deal with this problem.
Head of the committee:
Mr. Fujita
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to talk about the origins of this war on terrorism. You may
recall that in November I asked you if terrorism was war or if it was a
crime. And the whole start of this war on terrorism was 911. What I want to
know is if this event was caused by Al Qaeda or not.
So far the only thing
the government has said is that we think it was caused by Al Qaeda because
President Bush told us so.
We have not seen any real proof that it was Al
Qaeda. I would like to know why the Prime Minister thinks it was the Taliban
who was responsible for 911. Committee Chief, I want to ask the Prime
Minister because he was chief cabinet officer at the time.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
Since the attacks we have communicated with the U.S. government and other
governments at different levels and exchanged information. According to
secret information obtained by our government and reports put together by
foreign governments the 911 attacks were carried out by the international
terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda.
Mr. Fujita:
So, you are talking about both secret and
disclosed information. My question
is has the Japanese government carried out its own investigation using the
police and other resources? It is a crime so surely an investigation needs
to be carried out. When a Japanese journalist was shot in Myanmar you
carried out an investigation. In the same way over 20 Japanese people died
on 911 so surely the government carried out its own investigation and
decided that Al Qaeda was responsible.
So, what kind of investigation did
you carry out? At the time you were Chief Cabinet Secretary so surely you
would know better than anybody so I want to ask you about your
investigation.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
After the 911 attacks the National Police Agency sent an emergency
anti-terror team to New York. They met with U.S. government officials and
gathered information about missing Japanese.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying over 20 people died as a result of a crime and most of
those people were working in New York. Also there were some Japanese who
died in the four airplanes that were hijacked. I would like to know exactly
how many people died in the buildings and how many died in the airplanes. I
also want to know how you confirmed this. I would like the Foreign Minister
to answer for me.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura standing at right in front of microphone:
We found the bodies of over a dozen Japanese following the simultaneous
terror attacks carried out on September 11 2001. We were also informed about
the death of 11 more people by the U.S. authorities. In total 24 Japanese
died in those attacks. Of those 2 were in the airplanes.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask what flights the two Japanese who died in the airplanes
were on and how you determined who they were. If the foreign minister does
not know it is OK to get a bureaucrat to answer:
Foreign Ministry division chief Ryoji Tanizaki:
Since this a question of fact, I will answer. As the Foreign Minister said,
of the 24 people who died two were on the airplanes. One of them was on
United Flight 93 and the other was on American airlines flight 111. As for how
we know this, well I do not have the information in front of me but we were
told by U.S. authorities and, in general, they use DNA testing. So we
believe that is how we know about those two people.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying you do not know because you do not have the documents.
Also, you say you believe there was DNA testing but you do not know. So what
I want to say today is that this was a crime and crimes are supposed to be
investigated. So the government needs to inform the victims families of the
results of their investigation.
Also, instead of just observing the
anniversary of 911 every year you must be gathering information and reacting
to it. So, during the past six years have you been supplying the families of
the deceased with information? I would like to ask the Foreign Minister to
answer.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura:
So you do not want to ask any more about how we confirmed the deaths of
Japanese but want to know about reports to the victims families? We provided
the families with information about the bodies and about compensation funds.
Also, for the 13 Japanese whose remains we found, we helped the families
deal with the bodies. We also finance support visits to the World Trade
Center site for the families on every anniversary.
Mr. Fujita:
Since I do not have much time I would like to ask about the suspicious
information being uncovered and the doubts people world wide are having
about the events of 911. Many of these doubters are very influential people.
In such circumstances I believe the Japanese government, which claims the
attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda, should be providing the victims
families with this new information. In that context I would like to ask
several questions.
First of all I would like to get all members of the committee to look at
this panel and look at the pictures I have provided you with. This is
concrete evidence in the form of photographs and other types of information.
The first photograph has computer graphics attached to show
how large the
plane that hit the Pentagon was. A 757 is quite a large airplane with a
width of 38 meters. So as you can see even though such a large plane hit the
pentagon there is only a hole that is too small for the airplane.
This is a
photograph taken of firemen at work and you can also see there is no damage
of the sort an airplane that large should make.
I would also like you to
look at the lawn in front and notice that
there are no airplane parts on it.
Let us now look at the third picture, which is also of the pentagon taken
from a U.S. TV news report has captions that show
the roof of the Pentagon
is still intact. Again even though a huge airplane is supposed to have hit,
there is not enough corresponding damage. Now let us move to the next
photograph.
Here is a photograph of a hole, as Minister
Komura knows the
Pentagon is a very strong building with many walls. Yet the airplane has
pierced them. But as you know, airplanes are made of the lightest possible
material.
An airplane made of such light material could not make a hole like
that.
Next I would like to show a photograph of how the airplane hit the
building. The airplane made a U-turn, avoiding the Defense Secretary's
office and hitting the only part of the Pentagon that had been specially
reinforced to withstand a bomb attack.
Also, in the middle of page five we have a comment from a U.S. air-force
official.
He says 'I have flown the two types of airplane used on 911 and I
cannot believe it would be possible for someone who is flying one for the
first time to be able to carry out such a maneuver.'
Also, as you know, they
have not recovered the flight recorders from most of these 4 airplanes.
Also, there were more than 80 security cameras at the Pentagon but they have
refused to release almost all of the footage. In any case, as you have just
seen there is no picture of the airplane or of its wreckage in any of these
photographs. It is very strange that no such pictures have been shown to us.
As you know Japan's self-defense forces have their headquarters in Ichigaya.
Can you imagine if an airplane hit a major city, if an hour and a half after
an airplane hit New York that an airplane could hit the Pentagon? In such a
situation how could our allies allow such an attack to take place. I would
like the Defense Minister to answer this.
Defense Minister Fuyushiba Ishiba:
I have not prepared so I will have to answer ad-lib. If such a situation
took place then the air-force would send fighters up to shoot down any
airplanes. This is what happened with an attack on the German constitutional
court. In the case of Japan our reaction would depend on what kind of
airplane it was, who was flying it and what their purpose was. However,
according to our laws it might be hard to order an airplane to be shot down
just because it was flying at a low level.
We would probably have
self-defense forces fly with it and ask for a cabinet decision. Since an
airplane would have many people on board we would have do discuss what to
do. This happened a long time ago but a Cessna airplane was flown into the
house of a person called Yoshio Kodama. There was also an All Japan Airways
flight bound for Hakodate that was hijacked and had the pilot killed. It
would be best if such a thing never happened but we need to prepare new laws
for such situations and discuss them in Parliament.
Mr. Fujita:
Since we are running out of time I would like to present a new piece of
evidence. Please look at this panel. The first picture is one you see often
of the two towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes. I could understand if
this happened right after the airplanes hit but here we can see large piece
of material flying a large distance through the air. Some flew 150 meters.
You can objects flying in this picture as if there was an explosion. Here is
a picture I took from a book.
This lets you see how far the objects flew.
The third picture is of a fireman who was involved in the rescue talking
about a series of explosions in the building that sounded like a
professional demolition. We cannot present video today so I have written a
translation of what the fireman said.
Here he is saying "it went boom boom
boom like explosions were going off."
Here is something said by a Japanese research team of officials from the
fire department and the construction ministry. The interviewed a Japanese
survivor who said that while she was fleeing there were explosions. This
testimony appears in a report prepared with the aid of the construction
ministry and the fire department. Now I would like you to see the following
picture. Normally it is said that the twin towers collapsed because they
were hit by airplanes. However, one block away from the twin towers is
building number 7. It can be seen in the following map a block away from the
WTC.
This building collapsed 7 hours after the WTC buildings were attacked.
If I could show you a video it would be easy to understand but take a look
at this photograph. This is a 47 story building that fell in this manner (He
drops and object to demonstrate). The building falls in five or six seconds.
It is about the same speed as an object would fall in a vacuum. This
building falls like something you would see in a Kabuki show. Also if falls
while keeping its shape. Remember it was not hit by an airplane. You have to
ask yourself if a building could fall in that manner due to a fire after 7
hours.
Here we have a copy of the 911 commission report. This is a report
put out by the U.S. government in July of 2004 but this report does not
mention the collapse of the building I just described. It is not mentioned
at all in here (he waves the book). FEMA also issued a report but they also
fail to mention this building. Many people believe, especially after seeing
the story about building number 7, that something is strange. Since this is
an incident where many people died people think is should be investigated.
We are running out of time but I would also like to mention the put options.
Just before the 911 attacks, i.e. on September 6th, 7th and 8th there were
put
options put out on the stocks of the two airlines United and American that
were hit by hijackers. There were also put options on Merril Lynch, one of
the biggest WTC tenants. In other words somebody had insider information and
made a fortune selling put options of these stocks.
The head of Germany's Bundesbank at the time, who is equivalent to the Governor of the Bank of
Japan, said there are lots of facts to prove the people involved in the
terror attacks profited from insider information. He said there was lots of
suspicious trading involving financial companies etc prior to the attacks.
The head of the Bundesbank was willing to say this much. I would like to ask
the Finance Minster about these put options.
Did the government of Japan
know about this, and what do you think about this? I would like to ask
Finance Minister Nukaga about this.
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga:
I was in Burkina Fasso in Africa when I heard about this incident. I decided
to fly immediately to the U.S. but when I got to Paris I was told there were
no flights to America. So I only heard what was reported later about the
facts. I know there have been reports about the points you raise.
So we made
it obligatory that people provide ID for securities transactions and for
suspicious transactions to be reported and we made it a crime to provide
money to terrorist organizations. We believe the international financial
system should not be abused. In any case, terrorism is a horrible thing and
must be condemned. This type of terrorism cannot be stopped by one country
but needs to be stopped by international society.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask finance specialist Mr. Asao to tell me about
put
options. A group of people with large amounts of money, clear insider
information and financial expertise would have been necessary for such a
thing to take place. Could a few terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan
carry out such a sophisticated and large scale set of transactions? I would
like to ask Mr. Asao to respond.
Keiichiro Asao:
I understand put options are a deal to sell stocks at a fixed price. In this
case somebody must have had insider information to carry out such
transactions because nobody could normally predict these airlines would have
their planes hijacked. So, I believe this was certainly a case of insider
trading.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister, you were Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time and as somebody
has already noted, this was an incident of the sort that humanity had never
previously experienced. Also, there appears to be a lot more information
about this incident coming out now than came out in the months after the
attacks. Now that we are an internet and visual society, this information is
being made public so if we look at the situation now, the whole starting
point for these two laws , the start of the war on terror itself, as you
have seen from the information I have presented, has not been properly
investigated or analyzed.
So I do not believe the government has acted
properly by investigating this incident or asking the U.S. government for an
explanation. So far we have not started refueling U.S. ships yet so I think
we need to go back to the beginning and not just simply and blindly trust
the U.S. government explanation and indirect information provided by them.
There were too many victims so I think we need to start again from the
beginning. We need to ask who the real victims of this war on terrorism are.
I think the citizens of the world are its victims.
Here in Japan we have
disappearing pensions and disappearing records about victims of Hepatitis C
contaminated blood but everything I have presented on facts and confirmable
evidence. Let us talk about the vanishing black boxes, vanishing airplanes
and vanishing remains. Also lots of the remains of these buildings have
disappeared. Even
FEMA says that prevented it from carrying out a proper
investigation. We need to look at this evidence and ask ourselves what the
war on terrorism really is.
I can see the ministers nodding in agreement but
I would like to ask Prime Minister Fukuda. Please look at me. I have heard
that when you were Chief Cabinet Minister at the time you felt many strange
things about these attacks. Do you not think it was strange?
Prime Minister Fukuda:
I never said I thought it was strange.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister what about the origin of the war on terror and the idea of
whether it is right or wrong to participate in it? Is there really a reason
to participate in this war on terror? Do we really need to participate? I
would also like to ask about how to really stop terrorism.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
We believe based on evidence provided to us by the U.S. government that the
attacks of 911 were carried out by Al Qaeda. We need to put an end to Al
Qaeda terrorism. That is why international society is united in the fight
against terrorism.
Here, concerning a law passed by the Democratic Party
last year and based on UN resolution 16595. This is a resolution passed in
response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. So you passed the law agreeing
with the UN didn't you?
Mr Fujita:
Did you confirm about the bodies and the facts behind the resolution because
that is why you claim to be participating in this war on terrorism. So I
believe to end terrorism we need to pass a law that actually helps the
people of Afghanistan. I would like Mr. Inuzuka to talk about the law and
about the fight against terrorism.
Tadashi Inuzuka:
Among the many problems raised by MP Fujita the thing we need to worry most
about is that the people in Afghanistan can live in peace and without
worries. That is the core of the issue of ending terrorism. Without
discussing this but just operating behind the back lines by supplying oil
and not thinking about the entire situation or the people involved it is
nonsense to debate this law. This law should be made for peace and security
in Afghanistan.
Our country needs to pass a real anti-terror law.
