Site operators say they plan to start rolling out the texts beginning at 3:00 a.m. New York time, paced to display as they were broadcast at the corresponding time on September 11, 2001. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m., and United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower 17 minutes later.

“Text pagers are mostly carried by persons operating in an official capacity,” reads the description on the site. “Messages in the archive range from Pentagon and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults to their operators as the World Trade Center collapsed.”

[...]

Wikileaks didn’t identify the source of the messages, but the site has a solid track record for releasing authentic information.

Where on Earth did it all come from?

This unusual glimpse into the events of 9/11 comes from messages sent to alphanumeric pagers that were anonymously published on the Internet on Wednesday. The pager transcripts, which total about 573,000 lines and 6.4 million words, include numeric and text messages also sent to private sector and unclassified military pagers.

It’s impossible to tell whether the logs have been faithfully reproduced in their entirety. But there’s evidence they have been: I spoke to three journalists working on September 11, 2001 whose correspondence appeared in the logs or who were familiar with the messages circulated in their newsrooms that day. All three say the logs appear to be legitimate.

[...]

The pager logs seem to represent messages transmitted on September 11, 2001 through the networks of Arch Wireless, Metrocall, Skytel, and Weblink Wireless.

It’s not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks.

The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a gentlemen’s agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers politely ignore what’s not addressed to them.

But an electronic snoop lacking that same sense of etiquette might hook up a sufficiently sophisticated scanner to a Windows computer with lots of disk space — and record, without much effort, gobs and gobs of over-the-air conversations.

But who? And why? Why now? And whose had them all this time?

Regardless, they are a fascinating (and troubling) window into a day of terror and heroism, and an invaluable contribution to history. The messages, which began rolling out today, can be found here.

UPDATE: I should note that this is what Wikileaks itself says about the source of the texts:

“While we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11.”

Who has that capability? That’s a rhetorical question, of course.

Tax relief had become, in the wink of an eye, America’s most potent political creed. Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation’s political discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.

And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping? Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a useful assessment.

The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the wealth of American families. That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again once taxpayers yanked “big government” out of our pockets.

The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes. After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local level? Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?

The answer: The rich have benefited the most. The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after state, let the affluent off the tax hook.

In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy.”
In the entire United States, the analysis adds, “only two states require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than middle-income families have to pay.”

America’s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes. But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill. The state and local tax burden on America’s rich, after taking this offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.

Middle-income families — to be precise, those families who make up the middle fifth of America’s income distribution — pay, after the federal offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.
America’s poorest families pay even more. Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the nation’s bottom 20 percent, more than double the share they take from the incomes of the nation’s top 1 percent.

Now you’ll frequently hear anti-tax zealots pointing to the higher rates of taxes that the wealthy generally pay, but that’s not the argument here (and that’s irrelevant in states like Texas, where much of the tax revenue is collected in the form of regressive sales taxes.) But as Nat-Wu aptly demonstrated in what I regard as one of his best and most informative posts, the wealthy are left with vastly more disposable income than you and I even if they are taxed at substantially higher rates. All it really comes down to is a matter of what you’ve got left to eat with at the end of the day, and while the wealthy are dining on caviar the middle and lower-classes are hoofing it to the pizza buffet. But that will always be the case. Never will the rich be taxed to a degree that would leave them with as much disposable income as a guy making $45,000 a year (nor would anyone other than a communist argue for such a thing.) No, the real travesty is the direction that the tax burden has taken; the only thing that’s trickled down as a result of the conservative obsession with tax cuts is the burden of paying for functioning governments.

Friends, this is the country we live in: the wealthy horde more of their money than ever before, investing it foolishly in things like securitized home mortgages. When those investment crash, their businesses are rescued by the federal government with the money you and I made doing what some of us might call “real” work, which is in turn converted into billions of dollars in profits and bonuses, much of which is in turn funneled to other wealthy and successful men and women in the form of campaign contributions so as to stave off anything approaching reform for this travesty. Would it be hyperbole to call the United States the largest and richest banana republic in the history of mankind? Well, what do you think?

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald isn’t afraid to speculate, but he’s probably right. Anyone with any ounce of principal is going to have difficulty hanging with Obama on Gitmo and the “government always wins” approach to detainee trials.

A RAY of sunlight broke through the Washington fog last week when Neil M. Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, published his office’s report on the government bailout last year of the American International Group.

It’s must reading for any taxpayer hoping to understand why the $182 billion “rescue” of what was once the world’s largest insurer still ranks as the most troubling episode of the financial disaster. And it couldn’t have come at a more pivotal moment.

[...]

The report takes the Fed to task as refusing to use its power and prestige to wrestle concessions from A.I.G.’s big, sophisticated and well-heeled trading partners when the government itself had to pay off the contracts.

The Fed, under Mr. Geithner’s direction, caved in to A.I.G.’s counterparties, giving them 100 cents on the dollar for positions that would have been worth far less if A.I.G. had defaulted. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.

On the question of whether this payout was what the report describes as a “backdoor bailout” of A.I.G.’s counterparties, Mr. Barofsky concluded: “The very design of the federal assistance to A.I.G. was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” The report noted that this was money the banks might not otherwise have received had A.I.G. gone belly-up.

The report said that while bailing out Goldman and other investment banks might not have been the intent behind the Fed’s A.I.G. rescue, it certainly was its effect. “By providing A.I.G. with the capital to make these payments, Federal Reserve officials provided A.I.G.’s counterparties with tens of billions of dollars they likely would have not otherwise received had A.I.G. gone into bankruptcy,” the report stated.

As Goldman prepares to pay out nearly $17 billion in bonuses to its employees in one of its most profitable years ever, it is important that an authoritative, independent voice like Mr. Barofsky’s reminds us how the taxpayer bailout of A.I.G. benefited Goldman.

And in the meantime:

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Did you catch that? Hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on debt for us, billions of dollars of bonuses for executives at Goldman Sachs as a result of one of its most profitable years ever. Matt Taibbi was right; we’ve been robbed blind and as our nation sinks under a mountain of debt and rising unemployment, Goldman Sachs executives will be buying their own islands.

2. Perhaps you heard about the “Hand of Frog” that secured France a berth in the World Cup over poor Ireland. Ireland’s petition to FIFA for a replay has been denied, proving that FIFA is an organization mired in the past, both rejecting modern instant replay technology and favoring the world’s powerhouses (particularly the Western ones) over the rest of the world.

3. No one sitting on death row in Texas can expect any sort of clemency from Gov. Perry right now…the man has a primary to win!

4. Short-term lenders in Texas are getting what they pay for with their campaign contributions: zero regulation. As I have said before and will say again, our democracy will forever be corrupted by money until the Supreme Court wises up and decides that money is not the exact equivalent of speech, or political campaigns become publicly funded.

…45 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

They say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.

“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”

Don’t forget kids, millions may live in poverty or die of hunger, the global economy is a wreck, climate change threatens all of nations, but the real issues of consequence are the sexual practices of a minority of Americans!

Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, said it was “fear-mongering” to suggest that religious institutions would be forced to do any of those things. He said they are protected by the First Amendment, and by conscience clauses that allow medical professionals and hospitals to opt out of performing certain procedures, and religious exemptions written into same-sex marriage bills.

Well right, but you can’t get anybody’s attention or sympathy (or votes) be moralizing at them, at least not openly. Far better to pretend you are the oppressed minority, so as to shield your bigory and more grand-standing in the guise of religious tolerance! A technique which, by the way, only works when most people actually agree with your intolerance.