The Unfinished Inquiry: Captured Congress, 9/11, the USS Liberty, and What a Real Investigation Would Take

A continuation of The Loving Observer, The Faithful Mirror, The Witness to Creation, The Curated Mind, and The Drainage Lines

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Why I'm Asking

When Congress goes into session and votes, we'd like to believe the vote is a sign the system is working. We'd like to believe that the House and the Senate are carrying the will of the people, thought through and voted on in good faith. But it's been brought to my attention that there may be influences on individual votes that aren't consistent with organic thought. If that's true, it's a problem at the root.

Then I think of events like September 11th and the USS Liberty. In both cases, many Americans feel there was never a real investigation. That's my word, and I stress it. I've seen interviews with people from both incidents, and their stories never seem to reach a courtroom. Put all of that together and you start to feel your government is captured.

That's a feeling, though, and a feeling is not a foundation. So I asked for something hard. I asked for an article that gets to the truth of the matter regardless of my opinions. If the record proves me wrong, I want to know. If it proves me right, I want to know that too. And where the record simply runs out, I want to see exactly where.

Here is how I'll keep myself honest. Throughout this piece I'll separate four kinds of things. Documented means it's on the public record: laws, court filings, data, sworn statements. An official finding is a conclusion reached by a government body. An allegation is a claim people have made that hasn't been proven. Disputed means credible people on both sides still disagree. I'll try never to let one wear the clothes of another.

The Framework: Broken Feedback Loops

In The Loving Observer, I said truth is the only foundation. A lie has nothing underneath it, so holding one up takes constant energy, and that drain is entropy. I also said that honest observation has to go both ways, a feedback loop, with enough looks from enough angles to see what's really there.

A republic is a feedback loop. Citizens observe their government, and they speak through votes, the press, the courts, and investigations. The government is supposed to respond. When money, pressure, or secrecy gets between the observation and the response, the loop breaks. The system keeps running, but it's running on a partial picture, just like the machine in The Curated Mind. And a system running on a partial picture loses energy until something gives.

So my question isn't really "Who's guilty?" It's this: Where is the loop broken, and how badly?

Part One: Is Congress Captured?

What the money shows

Let's start with what's documented, because there's plenty of it.

In 2014, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern published a study called Testing Theories of American Politics. They looked at 1,779 policy questions over about two decades. They found that economic elites and organized business groups had substantial independent influence on what became policy, while the preferences of average citizens had, in their words, little or no independent influence. That's a striking finding from a mainstream academic journal.

To be fair, other scholars pushed back. Peter Enns and others pointed out that what middle-class and wealthy Americans want overlaps most of the time, so the gap may be smaller than it looks. That's a legitimate counterpoint. Even the critics, though, don't say ordinary people are in the driver's seat.

The money itself is not in dispute. According to OpenSecrets, which tracks the federal disclosure reports, spending on federal lobbying hit a record $5.08 billion in 2025. That's up 14 percent from the year before. OpenSecrets also tracks what's called the revolving door: hundreds of former members of Congress and thousands of former staffers now work as lobbyists, selling the access they once held in trust. And since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, corporations and unions can spend without limit on independent political ads, which gave rise to super PACs.

Here's the honest observation. Nearly all of this is legal. That's what bothers me most. You don't need a crime to bend a vote when the system lets money do the bending in the open. That's not organic thought. It's a feedback loop with a thumb on the scale.

Foreign influence: what's proven

Sometimes it does cross into crime, and we have proof. In July 2024, a federal jury convicted Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on all sixteen counts, including bribery and acting as an agent of the government of Egypt. In January 2025 he was sentenced to eleven years in prison. The Justice Department laid it out. FBI agents found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed in envelopes and clothing, plus gold bars in his home. Prosecutors showed he had secretly ghostwritten a letter for Egypt and passed it to his own Senate colleagues. That's a documented case of a sitting senator's official acts being bought for a foreign power.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act exists for exactly this reason. Anyone working for a foreign government is supposed to register so the public can see who's speaking for whom.

The AIPAC question

Many people, me included, have wondered about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Here's what's documented. AIPAC and its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, spent heavily in the 2024 primaries, including millions to defeat members of Congress who criticized Israel's war in Gaza. AIPAC is registered as a domestic lobby. It is not registered as a foreign agent.

What's alleged is that it should be registered as one, and that its money amounts to foreign influence over American votes. Scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued in their book The Israel Lobby that its influence pulls U.S. policy away from American interests. AIPAC and its supporters answer that it's funded by American citizens and lobbies like any other group. No court and no Justice Department finding has ruled it a foreign agent. That question is still open, and I'll leave it that way. For perspective, the largest domestic industries, like pharmaceuticals, finance, and defense, spend far more on federal lobbying overall.

The Epstein files: record versus rumor

This is where I have to be most careful, because this is where rumor runs fastest.

Here's what's documented. In November 2025 the President signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. By January 30, 2026, the Justice Department said it had released nearly 3.5 million pages, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. About 200,000 pages were redacted or held back to protect victims, to exclude child-abuse material, and for active investigations and legal privilege. In August 2026, the Department published in the Federal Register a report to Congress listing the government officials and politically exposed persons named or referenced in the files.

Being named in those files is not proof of wrongdoing. A name can appear in a flight log, an address book, an email, or a news clipping. We can't let a list become a verdict. That would be building on sand, the very thing this series warns against.

Here's the official finding. In July 2025, the Justice Department and the FBI issued a memo saying their review found no incriminating "client list," and "no credible evidence" that Epstein blackmailed prominent people. They found no evidence to open investigations into third parties who hadn't been charged. They also confirmed Epstein harmed more than a thousand victims. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021, so there's no question that crimes happened on a massive scale.

What's alleged is that Epstein's operation was a blackmail machine, perhaps tied to intelligence services, built to gain leverage over powerful people, including members of Congress. Journalists and writers have made this case. To date, though, no court document and no official release has shown that any member of Congress was blackmailed, or that any vote changed because of it. That's the line where the record stops.

Some will say the official finding is itself part of the cover. I understand that suspicion. Honest observation, though, means I can't treat a missing document as a found one. What I can say is that the public trusts the process so little that millions of pages haven't been enough to settle it. That itself is a broken loop.

Part Two: September 11th

The investigations that happened

First, let's be accurate. September 11th was investigated, more than once.

The Joint Congressional Inquiry of 2002 found serious failures across the intelligence agencies. But one chapter, the famous 28 pages on possible foreign support for the hijackers, was classified and kept from the public for fourteen years, until 2016. When it came out, it described FBI and CIA leads on contacts between Saudi officials and the hijackers, while noting that much of it was unverified.

The 9/11 Commission issued its report in 2004. Its official finding was that it found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" al-Qaeda.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, studied the collapses of the Twin Towers and of World Trade Center Building 7. In 2008 it concluded that Building 7 fell because fire caused thermal expansion that led to the failure of a key column, column 79. It called this the first known case of a tall building collapsing mainly from fire.

The limits the investigators admitted

Here's where my word, "real," comes in. Some of the strongest doubts about the 9/11 Commission came from the commissioners themselves.

The Commission's own records show it started with just $3 million, later raised to a total of about $15 million. In their 2006 book Without Precedent, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the Commission was "set up to fail." They described a late start, delays in security clearances, a tight deadline, and fights over access to documents and witnesses right up to the end. They also wrote that they were so frustrated by repeated misstatements from Pentagon and FAA officials that the Commission considered a separate investigation into whether officials had obstructed justice. Commissioner Max Cleland resigned in December 2003, charging that the White House had "played cover-up."

None of that proves the conclusions were wrong. But it's documented that the people in charge said they didn't get everything they needed. When the investigators themselves say the deck was stacked, the citizen has a right to ask what wasn't seen.

The Saudi thread

Later releases deepened the questions. In September 2021, under an executive order from President Biden, the FBI released a 2016 document from its long-running investigation called Operation Encore. It described what it called "significant logistic support" given to two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, after they arrived in San Diego. It focused on Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped them find an apartment and open a bank account, and on Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam and accredited Saudi consular official in Los Angeles. The 9/11 Commission had called Bayoumi's first meeting with the hijackers apparently random. The FBI document suggests otherwise. Even so, the document did not conclude that the Saudi government directed the attacks.

The families of the victims have pressed this in court for more than twenty years. In 2016 Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act so they could sue a foreign state. In August 2025, Federal Judge George Daniels refused Saudi Arabia's request to dismiss the case. That's a ruling that the case can proceed, not a ruling on guilt. Saudi Arabia appealed, and on October 7, 2026, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments before a courtroom packed with family members. As of this writing, there's no decision. Saudi Arabia has always denied any involvement. So the claim that Saudi officials knowingly supported the hijackers remains an allegation being tested in court.

For the record, my own personal view, and it's only my view, is that the Saudi line of investigation was a decoy to draw attention away from what really happened. I offer it as opinion, not as a finding.

Building 7 and the alternative claims

No subject in this article is more disputed than Building 7. It wasn't hit by a plane, and it came down late in the afternoon.

NIST says fire did it. NIST also acknowledged that for about 2.25 seconds the building fell at free-fall speed. A group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth argues that free fall points to controlled demolition, and it funded a study at the University of Alaska Fairbanks led by Professor Leroy Hulsey. That study, finished in 2020, concluded that fire did not bring down the building and that the collapse involved "the near-simultaneous failure of every column." Its critics note that it was funded by an advocacy group and was not published in a major peer-reviewed engineering journal. NIST stands by its findings.

When the group and some families asked NIST to correct its report and NIST refused, they went to court. In 2023 the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., dismissed the case for lack of standing. In plain words, the court said the plaintiffs didn't have the legal right to force NIST to change its explanation. The court never weighed the engineering. So the science question was never decided in a courtroom. It was shut out at the door.

That speaks to my point about testimony that never reaches court. Shortly after 9/11, the New York Fire Department recorded oral histories from more than 500 firefighters and emergency workers. They were released only in 2005, after the New York Times sued for them. Some of those first responders described hearing what sounded like explosions. Officials attribute those sounds to the fire and the collapse, and critics say they were never seriously examined. I can't tell you what those sounds were. I can tell you the accounts exist, and that no court has heard them in a trial on the cause of the collapse.

Part Three: The USS Liberty

On June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship in international waters off the Sinai. That much is documented. Thirty-four Americans were killed and more than 170 were wounded.

The official finding of the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry was that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Israel's position, from its own inquiries, is that its forces mistook the ship for an Egyptian vessel. Israel apologized and paid compensation. The United States government accepted the explanation, though some officials, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, privately doubted it.

Now hear the other side. In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, the Navy lawyer who served as senior counsel to that very Court of Inquiry, signed a sworn declaration. It was later read into the Congressional Record. He wrote that he and the Court's president, Admiral Isaac Kidd, were given only one week to gather evidence for an inquiry they estimated should take six months. He wrote that both men believed "with certainty" the attack was deliberate. He said Admiral Kidd was told not to travel to Israel or interview the Israelis involved. He said more than sixty written statements from wounded sailors who couldn't testify in person were never taken into evidence. Most serious of all, he stated that Admiral Kidd told him President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered the Court to conclude it was mistaken identity.

That declaration is documented as a sworn statement. What it describes is an allegation, because Admiral Kidd had died and his account comes to us secondhand. It has never been tested under cross-examination. Survivors like James Ennes, in his book Assault on the Liberty, have long said the American flag was flying and visible, and that life rafts were fired upon. An independent panel in 2003 led by retired Admiral Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, concluded the attack was deliberate and covered up. That panel was not a government body, so its conclusion is an allegation, however distinguished its members.

The strongest counterpoint comes from the record too. The National Security Agency released intercepted Israeli helicopter radio recordings in 2003, and its own history concluded there was no proof the attack was deliberate. Defenders of the accident account, like Judge A. Jay Cristol, point to wartime confusion. The question remains disputed, and fifty-nine years later it has never been put before Congress in open, sworn hearings.

Executive Orders: A Stopgap at Best

If Congress is captured, shouldn't the President simply act? I'll be honest. I've felt that pull, and I said so in my rambles. I've come to agree it isn't the answer. At most it's a Hail Mary to stall for time.

Here's why. An executive order can't make law. The Supreme Court set the rule back in 1952, in the steel seizure case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer: a president's power is weakest when he acts against the will of Congress. We saw that principle again on February 20, 2026, when the Court ruled six to three that the emergency tariffs exceeded the President's authority, because the Constitution gives the taxing power to Congress alone.

There's a deeper problem too. If the trouble is capture, moving power into one office creates a single point that's even easier to capture. The next president can undo an order with the stroke of a pen, so nothing lasting gets fixed. And orders skip the open debate and public record that make influence visible in the first place. An executive order might buy time. It can't repair the feedback loop.

Should These Cases Be Closed?

So here's the question I asked. Of these three, do the findings justify closing the case?

Let me answer as honestly as the record lets me.

On Congress, the influence of money is proven and mostly legal, and foreign corruption has been proven in at least one senator's conviction. Blackmail-based capture is not proven. This isn't a case to close. It's a system to reform, through lobbying and foreign-agent enforcement, campaign finance rules, and limits on the revolving door. On Epstein, millions of pages are out, but the public still doesn't trust the redactions, so independent review of what was withheld would serve the truth.

On 9/11, the core facts of the hijacking are well established. But the commissioners said they were set up to fail. The Saudi question is still before a federal appeals court, and new FBI material surfaced two decades later. The engineering challenge to Building 7 was dismissed on standing, never heard on its merits. Based on the evidence, this case is not closed. It's unfinished.

On the USS Liberty, the inquiry lasted one week, its own senior counsel later swore it was ordered to a conclusion, and it never interviewed the attackers. Whatever the truth turns out to be, an inquiry like that can't be called complete. It warrants reopening.

What would a real investigation need? Not opinions, mine included. It would need:

• Sworn testimony in public, under oath and subject to cross-examination, from surviving witnesses, officials, and first responders.
• Subpoena power that can reach every agency, along with the time and money to use it, which the 9/11 Commission said it lacked.
• Full declassification, with independent review of anything still withheld and a public explanation for every redaction.
• Independence, meaning investigators with no stake in the outcome, answering to the public rather than to the agencies under examination.
• A day in court for evidence that has been shut out on procedural grounds, so that the merits are finally weighed.

The Foundation

I started this wanting to know whether my feeling was right. The answer is more humbling, and more useful. Some of what I suspected is documented. Some is still only alleged. Some will stay disputed until someone with subpoena power and the courage to use it takes a real look.

What I'm sure of is this. A lie has no foundation, and keeping one standing costs a nation dearly. If the official accounts are true, full openness will only make them stronger. If they aren't, openness is the only way back to solid ground. Either way, the answer is the same: open the record, hear the witnesses, and let the truth carry its own weight.

In all thy getting, get understanding.

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Sources

1. Gilens, M. & Page, B. (2014). "Testing Theories of American Politics." Perspectives on Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595 2. OpenSecrets. "Lobbying firms took in a record $5 billion in 2025." https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/01/lobbying-firms-took-in-a-record-5-billion-in-2025/ 3. OpenSecrets. Revolving Door database. https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving 4. Citizens United v. FEC (2010). Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205 5. U.S. Attorney's Office, SDNY. "Former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison For Bribery, Foreign Agent, And Obstruction Offenses" (Jan 29, 2025). https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-senator-robert-menendez-sentenced-11-years-prison-bribery-foreign-agent-and 6. OpenSecrets. United Democracy Project, 2024 cycle. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/united-democracy-project/C00799031/summary/2024 7. U.S. Department of Justice. "Department of Justice Publishes 3.5 Million Responsive Pages in Compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-publishes-35-million-responsive-pages-compliance-epstein-files 8. Federal Register. DOJ Report Under Public Law 119-38 (Aug 27, 2026). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-08-27/html/2026-17533.htm 9. DOJ/FBI memorandum on the Epstein review (July 2025). https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1407001/dl 10. Joint Congressional Inquiry report, including the declassified 28 pages. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/CRPT-107srpt351-5.pdf 11. The 9/11 Commission Report (2004). https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/ 12. 9/11 Commission, FAQ (budget). https://www.9-11commission.gov/about/faq.htm 13. Kean, T. & Hamilton, L. Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (2006). Summary of claims and the Cleland resignation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission 14. NIST World Trade Center Investigation. https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation 15. CBS News. "FBI's investigation into 9/11: First document released following Biden's promise to declassify materials" (Sept 12, 2021). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-september-11-hijackers-record-declassified/ 16. FBI Vault. Materials released under Executive Order 14040. https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related-materials/9-11-material-released-in-response-to-executive-order-14040/documents-responsive-to-executive-order-14040-2-c-release-note-1 17. AP News. "Judge rejects Saudi Arabia's bid to dismiss claims it supported 9/11 hijackers" (Aug 28, 2025). https://apnews.com/article/911-attacks-lawsuits-saudi-arabia-51f3692499ade7b1e320bc54b8d218eb 18. AP News. "Judges weigh arguments in the Saudi effort to end Sept. 11 litigation" (Oct 7, 2026). https://apnews.com/article/saudi-arabia-appeals-court-911-6ec5ba63e714ef210145e1452ff1c4bb 19. University of Alaska Fairbanks, WTC 7 study (Hulsey, 2020). https://ine.uaf.edu/wtc7 20. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth v. Raimondo, D.C. Circuit (Oct 2023). https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/judgments/docs/2023/10/22-5267-2020133.pdf 21. New York Times. FDNY World Trade Center oral histories (2005). https://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html 22. Declaration of Capt. Ward Boston, Jr., in the Congressional Record (Oct 11, 2004). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2004-10-11/html/CREC-2004-10-11-pt1-PgE1886-3.htm 23. NSA release of USS Liberty intercept transcripts (2003), via the Federation of American Scientists. https://irp.fas.org/nsa/liberty.html 24. NSA/CSS. Release of documents on the 8 June 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/1632655/nsacss-releases-documents-relating-to-the-8-june-1967-attack-on-the-uss-liberty/ 25. U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry records, 1967 (Hoover Institution finding aid). https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4p30341f/ 26. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/343us579 27. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Feb 20, 2026). Supreme Court opinion. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf

Listen to the audio version in the Rock U song list

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This article was written with AI assistance and reviewed by Ronnie Patterson. Figures come from the sources listed above.

By Ronnie Patterson. Narrated with AI assistance.