In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of external menace.–John Foster Dulles secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration.

By Craig McKee

False flag operations are already illegal – aren’t they?

After all, you can’t legally kill people or destroy property, and then falsely implicate someone else in the crime. But Florida lawyer David Petrano, a member of Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, thinks that a false flag operation is a different and more destructive animal altogether. This is why he’s proposing that Congress pass a False Flag Terrorism Prohibition Act.

“People want a line in the sand now,” Petrano said in a phone interview this week.

Petrano, whose work on the wording is in its early stages, acknowledges that it is highly unlikely that a Bill like this would ever be passed. Even getting it considered would require a Congressman or Congresswoman who had “nothing to lose,” he says. But it would draw attention to the fact that these events are crimes and that they happen repeatedly. Anyone who planned them or even knew about them would be criminally liable.

Let’s look at what a false flag operation is:

According to Wikipedia, “False flag (aka Black Flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time.”

In essence, a false flag operation means attacking yourself and then blaming someone else. Sometimes it means pretending you were attacked when there was no attack. Always it involves deception. The truth isn’t the first casualty in a false flag operation, it was never there in the first place. (Anyone interested in learning more about the phenomenon might want to pick up Barrie Zwicker’s excellent book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11.)

False flag operations are a staple of how governments like the United States carry out their foreign and domestic policy. They fabricate a threat to create fear, and then they use that fear to justify an attack against another nation or group under false pretences. Or they pass laws under false pretences – as the U.S. has done with the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the National Defence Authorization Act.

The key to what Petrano is proposing is that it would not only be illegal to carry out these deceptive covert operations, but it would also be illegal to plan them even if the plan is never carried out. It would also be a crime for anyone not to report knowledge of the planning or carrying out of such an operation.

“The purpose of the law is to draw boundaries on that,” Petrano says. “You can’t even plan it.”

As it is now, if the head of the CIA, FBI, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to walk into the president’s office and propose that a crime be committed, there would not likely to be any legal consequences (unless you pull a Richard Nixon and record the conspiracy on tape).

The most glaring and most obvious example of a false flag attack is 9/11. This was a covert operation planned and carried out by elements within the U.S. government (and maybe other governments) and blamed on a supposed terrorist group led by CIA-asset Osama bin Laden.

It’s the best example, but it’s not the only one. In the last 20 years, there was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the London subway bombings of 2005, and numerous others.

You could also call the Kennedy assassination a false flag operation. This coup by the CIA (and maybe other entities) was intended to be blamed on Communists. Lee Harvey Oswald, who was with U.S. military intelligence in the late 1950s, defected to the U.S.S.R. and then came back with no questions asked. They also had him passing out pro-Castro leaflets as a cover.

The most incredibly elaborate plan for a false flag operation in recent decades (at least until 9/11) was a plan that few people have even heard of called Operation Northwoods. This 1962 plan, cooked up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed that fake terrorist events be launched in American cities resulting in the deaths of American citizens.

A plane painted to look like a civilian airliner would be shot out of the sky, a U.S. naval vessel would be sunk near Guantanomo Bay, even the U.S. base there would be bombed. Evidence would be fabricated and the whole thing would be blamed on Cuba and its new leader, Fidel Castro. I wrote three consecutive posts on this in 2010, starting with this link.

If Petrano’s FFTPA had been in place, those who worked on or knew about this plan – including all the members of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, and even President Kennedy – would have been criminally liable for conspiring to commit a false flag operation.

We know that the mainstream media plays an integral part in keeping such operations a secret. If you don’t believe that, just wait until March when the 50^th anniversary of Northwoods comes around. Watch how much media attention the event gets. Next to none would be my guess.

A famous false flag operation occurred in 1933 when the Nazis burned down the Reichstag (the German Parliament) and blamed it on Communists. This was then used as a pretext to pass an emergency decree that allowed for the suspension of civil liberties and the mass arrest of Communists. This, of course, was the beginning of the Hitler-led dictatorship that killed millions. It was a lie, but it worked.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a type of false flag operation even though it was indeed the Japanese who launched the attack. The covert part is that the U.S. not only provoked the attack but knew it was coming months in advance. They let it happen because Roosevelt didn’t have enough public support to enter the war. After Dec. 7 it was smooth sailing.

I don’t know whether this attempt expose treasonous activity will come to anything or not, but I applaud the effort and believe it is worth doing. I can’t think of anything more critical to what’s left of democracy than increasing awareness of how governments deceive their own people with catastrophic consequences.

If we had a media that wasn’t completely corrupt, then it would have been clear long before 9/11 what was going on. People would have recognized this black op for what it was. But our media appear to be working for the other side, and they simply aren’t telling us the truth.

But 9/11 was so massive in scale, that I believe people are starting to become more aware. Not enough of them (how can anyone really believe Navy Seals killed bin Laden?), but more all the time. We have to keep fighting to educate people about these deceptions while at the same time fighting to ensure the survival of the semi-free Internet.

The next time the powers that be try one of these things – and they will sooner than later – we have to be able to see through it. We have to recognize the pattern because it’s ALWAYS THE SAME. And we have to try and spread the word as much as we can. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

By Craig McKee

Myth: Most “conspiracy theorists” thought 9/11 was an inside job from day one, because these types of people always imagine elaborate conspiracies even though the evidence rarely backs them up. Most are paranoid and obsessive.

Reality: Many if not most of the members of the 9/11 Truth movement took months or years to begin doubting what we have been told. Those who have become leaders of the movement tend to be intelligent and well educated, and they were open-minded enough to consider evidence that we hadn’t been told the truth by the government or the media.

I decided to pose a question to some of the most notable members of the movement to find out exactly when they twigged that 9/11 was an inside job and not a terrorist attack perpetrated by fundamentalist Muslims. Here’s the question I sent them:

“When did you come to believe that the 9/11 official story was false and that 9/11 was an inside job – and what piece or pieces of information convinced you?”

For the purpose of this article, I’m defining “truth leaders” as being people who have been active in the movement in some visible way – spreading the word either by organizing activities or by researching and writing about or making films about 9/11 to raise awareness. It does not connote an endorsement of their various positions on 9/11.

I was fortunate to receive responses from the majority of the best known truth activists I wrote to. These included David Ray Griffin, Barrie Zwicker, Barbara Honegger, Mike Gravel, Rob Balsamo, Cynthia McKinney, and 30 others listed below. All responses are original and were sent to me by the respondents with the exception of Balsamo’s, which he offered from a previously posted statement.

As you will read, the respondents’ backgrounds run the gamut. There are academics, authors, pilots, engineers, chemists, architects, journalists, politicians, musicians, filmmakers, lawyers, soldiers, and citizen researchers and activists of all kinds. There is a former U.S. senator, a former congresswoman, a high-level NASA executive, a policy analyst in the Reagan White House, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

It’s an impressive group to say the least. In assembling it, I deliberately did not restrict myself to people I most agree with – or who most agree with each other. I sent the question to as many members of the Truth movement as I could. I’m not interested in entertaining criticism that one person or another should have been excluded. I think it’s much more interesting to read responses from people with disparate views. The length of the answers varies greatly, and cuts were kept to a minimum.

Here are the participants in this order:

David Ray Griffin, Barrie Zwicker, Cynthia McKinney, William Veale, Barbara Honegger, Mike Gravel, Craig Ranke, Rob Balsamo, Cindy Sheehan, Niels Harrit, Shelton Lankford, James Fetzer, James Hufferd, Adam Syed, George Ripley, Adam Ruff, Sheila Casey, Bruce Sinclair, Elizabeth Woodworth, Josh Blakeney, Aldo Marquis, Frances Shure, Maxwell C. Bridges, Anna Yeisley, Mark Gaffney, Giulietto Chiesa, Paul Zarembka, Ken Freeland, Jonathan Mark, Dwain Deets, Jeffrey Orling, Massimo Mazzucco, Nelisse Muga, Matthew Witt, Simon Shack, Graeme MacQueen.

And here’s what they said:

 David Ray Griffin (Retired theology professor; past nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize for his 9/11 work; founder, Consensus 9/11 Panel; author of 10 books on 9/11)

In the fall of 2002, one of my students at the Claremont School of Theology told me that a visiting professor said that 9/11 was an inside job and asked if I wanted to meet him. I said yes, and after talking with him, I told him that his theory certainly seemed plausible, given all the things the U.S. government had done (I was working on a book manuscript on U.S. imperialism), but that I would need to see evidence. I studied the evidence he emailed but concluded that it was not persuasive, so I went back to my work on U.S. imperialism

But early in 2003, another colleague from another institution sent Professor John Cobb the URL for a short version (provided in Paul Burks’ WantToKnow) of Paul Thompson’s “Complete 9/11 Timeline.” It took only a few hours to realize that its reports of stories contradicting the official story that had appeared in the mainstream press – but usually only once – was of utmost importance. I then obtained books on the subject, starting with Gore Vidal’s Dreaming War, which led me to Nafeez Ahmed’s War on Freedom.

Barrie Zwicker (Journalist, filmmaker and author of Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11)

I knew before noon on 9/11, because I realized that for the USAF to fail to turn a wheel until it was too late, during a drama in the sky of almost two hours was, simply, impossible.

So there had to be a USAF stand-down, which means an inside job.

Cynthia McKinney (Former congresswoman and presidential nominee for the Green Party in 2008)

Immediately after the tragedies, I called for an investigation of what happened in an Op-Ed piece that appeared in several newspapers. I noted that airplane crashes, train wrecks, and other accidents always routinely result in exhaustive investigations – why not with the tragedies of 11 September 2001?

Instead, both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney were actively obstructing any investigation with lame-brained excuses that didn’t make any sense. Eventually, a tightly controlled victims’ compensation fund was established that restricted legal inquiry by victims and survivors into the tragedies.

As my last legislative act before being expelled from Congress by the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., I introduced legislation to nullify the rule forcing victims to choose between accepting financial help from the fund and knowing the truth.

We were never told the truth by the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell promised a white paper to the people of the U.S. detailing what happened and who the culprits were; the white paper was never forthcoming. Instead, Tony Blair issued a report with an advisory that the contents could not be construed as evidence in a court of law. So, to this day, we all know what we saw, but we don’t know officially what happened. In the absence of truth from the government, the people must, themselves, find truth.

William Veale (Lawyer for April Gallop, legal spokesman for the Consensus 9/11 Panel)

I was shown A New Pearl Harbor (by David Ray Griffin) in 2004.  As a trial lawyer, it is always the amalgamation of evidence that convinces. It is rarely one piece of evidence, especially not in the face of a strong case for the opposite proposition. The fact that Griffin presented a compelling case over the entire range of possible evidence put me well on the way to being convinced. When I read Omissions and Distortions, and it was clear that the government would not, and could not respond to so many specific assertions, there was virtually no doubt remaining.  It is my experience that people with explanations of damning evidence are hard to shut up.  That is why evidence of silence in the face of an accusation of wrongdoing is admissible in court.

Now that we have the finding of nano-thermite, there is no room for questioning the inside job theory at all. Nano-thermite is the equivalent of DNA in a criminal case.

Barbara Honegger (Journalist, former policy analyst in the Reagan administration, and author of The Pentagon Attack Papers)

On the morning of 9/11, I was watching a split screen on television with Bush sitting in the Florida classroom after Card whispered in his ear (which we were later told was that a second tower had been hit in NYC and the nation was under attack) on one side, and innocent victims jumping to their deaths from those very towers on the other, and knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.  My first thought was that Bush had foreknowledge and was intentionally being seen by the whole world as not being in charge and therefore not ‘responsible’ for what he knew was about to happen.

Mike Gravel (Former U.S. senator who helped leak the “Pentagon Papers”; founder, Citizens 9/11 Commission)

It took me three days to overcome the impact of the consequences of 9/11. My whole public life was a battle against the military Congressional industrial complex. 9/11 was the MCIC’s lock on the world. A book by Seven Story Press A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It details my experiences.

It was only in 2010 that I developed an appreciation of the fine scientific work done by the 9/11 Truth Movement, David Ray Griffin and others, to disprove the government story line. What followed was my suggestion to go to the people via direct democracy at the state or federal level to bring about a new citizens’ investigation commission.

Craig Ranke (Independent journalist; co-founder, Citizen Investigation Team)

I was immediately suspicious that something fishy was going on just because I knew that whatever was happening would be used as a pretext for war. However those suspicions went into hibernation the very next day as reports of cell phone calls started coming out and the barrage of propaganda regarding Bin Laden began.  It seemed believable to me at the time, so I basically went right back to “sleep” so to speak.

I didn’t really question it again until I started researching vote fraud online after the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In the course of doing that, I came across information about 9/11 which made me take a second look. There were a lot of different pieces of information that, when taken together, led me to reject the official story, including information pertaining to the demolition of the WTC.

At the Pentagon, the fact that the damage seemed inconsistent with the impact of a 757 led to serious doubts and questions in my mind, and ultimately inspired our investigation. Needless to say, the evidence we uncovered proved my suspicions (and the suspicions of millions of other people) justified and gave me an even greater level of certainty that 9/11 was a false flag operation.

Rob Balsamo (Co-founder, Pilots for 9/11 Truth)

In May 2006, I was watching Glenn Beck’s show on CNN. The Department of Defense had just released the infamous “5 frames” of stop-action video of the Pentagon attack. Beck showed the frames and commented, “You can see a 757 in 10 seconds flat!  Either that or a naked Michael Moore heading for the buffet!  This should put all those conspiracy theories to rest”.  While watching it, I’m thinking to myself, “I can’t see any 757.”  And I’m asking myself, “Are there still unresolved questions regarding 9/11?”

So I started poking around on the Internet trying to find anything I can to back up the government’s story, because I didn’t want to believe our government might have had something to do with 9/11.

Early on, I came across Operation Northwoods.  It blew me away that elements of our government had seriously planned acts of terrorism inside the United States to justify invading Cuba. Consider that 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean had said, “The greatest failure of 9/11 was a lack of imagination,” yet just under 40 years prior, elements of our own government imagined perpetrating such an event!

In 2006, I co-founded Pilots for 9/11 Truth to more formally conduct research on the aviation-related aspects of 9/11.  In August 2006, Pilots received from the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) a copy of the Flight Data Recorder data of Flight 77, which, according to the official account, hit the Pentagon.

We analyzed the data and announced our conclusion on 3/26/07 that “The information provided by the NTSB does not support the 9/11 Commission Report of American Airlines Flight 77 impact with the Pentagon.” Much more information about this can be found in our video documentary and our press release.

So now, a year after I began looking into the events of 9/11 and having devoted a lot of time and effort researching those events, I’m frustrated because we haven’t been able to find anything to confirm the government’s story. And what’s worse is that the FBI and NTSB refuse to even discuss with us the many obvious problems we found in the Flight 77 FDR.

Cindy Sheehan (Anti-war activist, radio host, author)                  

I came to believe 9/11 wasn’t what it seemed when George Bush said he didn’t want to “hear any crazy conspiracy theories.” I don’t know with 100% certainty which parts are false and which aren’t, but the “official” story comes from a pack of known liars.

Niels Harrit (9/11 researcher; associate chemistry professor, University of Copenhagen)

By accident, I saw Building 7 go down in 2006 on a DVD somebody had sent to my wife. Since that moment, there has been no way back.

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford (U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, retired; member, Pilots for 9/11 Truth)

Even before 9/11/01, I closely followed the actions of the administration and the rhetoric they employed to get the nation and its institutions aligned toward their PNAC (Project For a New American Century) goals. When they began the so-called War on Terror, it smacked too much of exploiting a created opportunity. It was my reading of Michael Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon that turned my initial misgivings about a stolen election (2000) into alarm about what kind of people had hijacked my country, and to what purpose.

David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor took me past the point of no return. I joined Pilots for 9/11 Truth in 2006.  I have devoted several hours a day for the past eight years or so keeping up with newly discovered facts and conversations about the 9/11 events. The actions of the FBI regarding the Moussaoui case, pre-9/11, the unconvincing official story of Flight 77, and finally the CIT evidence of a deliberate murderous deception at the Pentagon removed the last shreds of doubt from my mind.

James Fetzer (9/11 and JFK researcher; founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth)

When I watched the “collapse” of the Twin Towers on 9/11, I was convinced that something was terribly wrong, but I never imagined I would ever be in the position to do anything about it. Not until 2005, when David Ray Griffin wrote to me to suggest we might collaborate on a book on JFK and 9/11, where I wrote the part on JFK and he the one on 9/11, however, did I become drawn into doing serious research on the subject. I founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth in December of that year, where my first study would be, “Thinking about ‘Conspiracy Theories’: 9/11 and JFK,” which would be published in the first book from Scholars, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America (2007).

James Hufferd (Founder, 9/11 Truth of Central Iowa; co-ordinator 9/11 Truth Grassroots Organization)

I had determined by 9/11 or early on 9/12, as soon as the basic OCT (official conspiracy theory) started to appear basically fully articulated, with pics and data about all the “hijackers” and their roles and that Osama bin Laden was at the bottom of it, only a couple of hours after – and maybe before – the collapse of Building 7, that the whole story would have to have been written to release in advance. There just hadn’t been enough time to have more than barely begun to carry out the extensive investigation that would have been required. And I knew they wouldn’t have left it up to a gang of rag-tag little more than teenagers to pull off.

Adam Syed (9/11 Truth activist; member, Cincinnati 9/11 Truth)

Certainly by 2004, and particularly with the release of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, it was painfully clear how corrupt the Bush administration was. While Fahrenheit didn’t go there with inside job evidence, it documented the stolen 2000 election, and how the administration exploited 9/11 in the worst possible ways.  It became clear at that point that even if the administration didn’t orchestrate 9/11, it seemed to be a wet dream come true for them.

2005 was my tipping point though. The revelation of the Downing Street Memos, which were extensively covered in Britain but kept mostly on the hush-hush in the U.S. media, was key. Combine this with DRG’s May 2005 Madison WI lecture, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, along with the release of the documentary 9/11 In Plane Site by Dave von Kleist, and I was a full blown truther by the summer of that year. While many better documentaries have been made since In Plane Site, it was nonetheless the best offering at the time, and one for which it was clear that even if 30% of the film was accurate, 9/11 was certainly an inside job.

George Ripley (Steering committee, Citizens 9/11 Commission campaign)

My first step into the rabbit hole came the day my housemate at the time, Jose Rodriguez, returned from the Chicago 9/11 convention where he had helped his close friend Gabriel Day, one of the conference organizers.

It was important for me to have a close friend present the information to me. Jose brought back papers describing the near free fall collapse and synapses began firing across the breadth and depth of my mind. It became suddenly clear to me. On some level I was a bit dismayed that I hadn’t seen it before because it was suddenly all too obvious that the buildings could not have collapsed in the manner they did without being blown.  Nothing I have ever learned or thought since then has changed my mind in the least. Indeed, it has only strengthened the conviction.  However, it wasn’t until I learned about the thermate that I was able to be open to all my friends and family about the facts of the matter.

Although I had been an ardent activist for social justice and had even been arrested in Philadelphia at the GOP convention before Bush ever stole his first presidential election, it did not really occur to me that a “domestic” enemy might have purposefully orchestrated such a diabolical act. I suddenly realized they had. It was a life changing moment.  The “ton of bricks” had hit home.

Adam Ruff (9/11 truth activist and researcher)

I started to question the official story in early 2002 because of the “Hunt The Boeing” website and the accompanying photos of the pentagon damage. After getting a copy of Thierry Meyssan’s book Pentagate and reading it in one sitting I knew the official story was a lie.

I didn’t start to suspect the demolition of the towers until later when I looked back at the videos and saw the squibs with my own eyes. Shortly after that period 9/11 In Plain Sight came out and confirmed my suspicions about the Pentagon and about the tower demolitions. From 2002 onward I have been doing my own deep research into 9/11 and other state sponsored terror events such as 7/7, Operation Gladio, and the Oklahoma City bombing. My eyes are definitely open now to what is really going on behind the smoke screen put out by the corporate media.

Sheila Casey (Independent journalist, member DC911truth)

In August 2007, I Googled “impeach Cheney” and ended up on Paul Craig Roberts’ website. Reading through his essays, I saw the line “9/11 didn’t happen the way we were told,” and a recommendation for the book A New Pearl Harbor (by David Ray Griffin).

I got on the Internet and soon saw the seven-second collapse of Building 7. That convinced me to look further, so I went to the library that same day and checked out Griffin’s book. I read that book over the next two days, and when I finished, I was full-on MIHOP (made it happen on purpose).

But I was in the peculiar position of still believing that conspiracy theorists were looney tunes nut jobs, even as I had just become one! So it took me five months to go to my first DC911truth meeting – I was apprehensive about meeting “real” conspiracy theorists, believing that I myself must be some kind of anomaly. (Of course I found out that I’m not.)

Bruce Sinclair (Core member, Pilots for 9/11 Truth)

“Hunt the Boeing” got me going (in early 2002)!  Also, it seemed very fishy that the government had it all figured out by the next day…

Elizabeth Woodworth (Co-founder, 9/11 Consensus Panel; collaborator with David Ray Griffin)

I watched a Vision TV program in December, which as I recall had Barrie Zwicker interviewing Michael Ruppert. I found it very persuasive and telephoned my brother to tell him about it. Then I went back to my life, until, in April 2006, a former neighbour, a psychologist, handed me a book called The New Pearl Harbor, by Dr. David Ray Griffin.

The writing was crystal clear and the layout of the evidence was so logically compelling and strongly documented that there was no escaping the conclusion that 9/11 had been permitted to happen by forces within the United States.

The certain knowledge of this through the concrete detail that was presented changed me over a period of about three days, as I adjusted to it. It penetrated my world view of American politics in a new way, such that I was unable to endure hearing the words, so oft repeated within minutes of turning on the radio or television, “Ever since 9/11….”  without doing something about the preposterous fantasy that had descended upon us and was so frequently reiterated.

So I wrote a book review of The New Pearl Harbor for the New York Times, and I contacted its author about a question pertaining to the review, and that led to correspondence in which Dr. Griffin asked me to proof-read a chapter from his then current manuscript, Debunking 9/11 Debunking. That was five years ago, and we have now worked on 7 books and perhaps 20 essays together.

Joshua Blakeney (Freelance journalist, staff writer at Veterans Today, and member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth)

I participated in several anti-war demonstrations in London prior to emigrating to Canada in 2005 and was thus enamoured with the anti-imperialist struggles of those in the Middle East from a relatively young age. By 2006 I was enrolled in post-secondary education at the University of Lethbridge studying Sociology and in 2007 enrolled in Prof. Anthony J. Hall’s Globalization Studies classes. Prof. Hall was at the time I met him revisiting the literature on 9/11, such as David Ray Griffin’s exceptional books on the subject, and was incorporating certain questionable aspects of 9/11 into his Globalization Studies curriculum. He and I befriended each other, discussed 9/11 at length, shared links, exchanged notes, etc., which led us both to conclude that the official story of 9/11 is false. WTC Building 7 is one obvious example of the falsity of the official story. Al-Qaeda, even if it exists as a coherent and autonomous non-state actor, could not possibly have planted explosives in WTC 7.

One of the main political issues I became involved in during my undergraduate years was the Israel/Palestine conflict. In 2008, my Palestinian friend and I founded a chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) at the University of Lethbridge.

Initially, I compartmentalized the Israel-Palestine cause and the 9/11 Truth cause in my mind. But as I explored the subject of 9/11 I began to realize that the Israel-Palestine conflict and the events of 9/11 are not two separate subjects. Rather, it appears that they are tightly interwoven. Thus, my main political objectives in recent years have been to encourage the 9/11 Truth movement not to shy away from dealing with the Israeli dimension of 9/11 whilst concurrently pressuring the pro-Palestinian movement to recognize the reality that Israel’s crimes extend to 9/11.

I often tell my comrades in the pro-Palestinian movement: “Imagine if the Afrikaners had, out of desperation, killed 3,000 Americans and blamed it on the ANC, wouldn’t the anti-apartheid movement have been foolish not to have capitalized on this to demonstrate the rapacity of the ethnic nationalist regime in South Africa?”

It is clear to me that the only way to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict is for the citizens of the United States to empathize with those inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank who are being subjected to Israel’s genocidal policies. If we tell the citizens of the U.S. that Israel killed 3,000, or even 3 million Arabs, many will not give a damn because Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanized by the Western media.

If we inform the people of the United States that nearly 3,000, mostly Caucasian, Americans were slain on 9/11 with the complicity of Zionists, they might begin to pressure their government to end the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Thus, topics like the five Mossad agents arrested on 9/11, the Israeli security companies running the airports implicated on 9/11, Larry Silverstein’s close relationship with Israeli politicians, the role of Israeli citizen Dov Zakheim in the Pentagon, the Israelocentrism of the neoconservative movement, etc., ought to be spoken of widely. This might help to bring an end to the Israel/Palestine conflict which, after all, is a microcosm of the broader “war on terror.”

Aldo Marquis (Independent journalist; co-founder, Citizen Investigation Team)

I first became aware of problems of with 9/11 back in 2002-03 after I watched 9/11: The Road to Tyranny by Alex Jones. I was completely floored by the alternative news stories shedding a whole other light on 9/11. I fully immersed myself in researching these claims and others. In doing so, I learned there was much misinformation and disinformation floating out there, although there were still enough unanswered problems with the official story to keep me digging.

Soon, I turned my attention towards the Pentagon attack, as it was the most controversial and most challenging aspects of 9/11. I realized that the only way I can truly know what happened is to actually go out there and interview witnesses to the event obtaining key details about what they saw and where they saw it.

I went there prepared to be proven wrong about everything I believed about the attack and was open to the official version of events. Once I learned for myself that the plane flew on the north side of the gas station, I absolutely knew that 9/11 was an “inside job” orchestrated by powerful forces within our government, military and intelligence communities. Once I had enough corroboration, there wasn’t a doubt left in my mind. It was an inside job.

Frances Shure (Co-founder of Colorado 9/11 Visibility and a peace and environmental activist)

In the fall of 2001, I viewed Michael Ruppert’s documentary Truth and Lies About 9/11 several times and began the process of shifting my worldview by studying that DVD and conferring with friends about it.  At that point, I was on the borderline of LIHOP and MIHOP.  In the summer of 2002, I read Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s War on Freedom, studied it and wrote a summary, which I hand delivered along with a copy of the book to Representative Diana DeGette’s executive director in the course of an appointment with him, at which time he took this information very seriously.

It was all of the evidence taken as a whole in Ahmed’s well-documented book that gave rise to my great concern, along with Barrie Zwicker’s documentary, The Great Deception, on the air defence failure and other false flag operations in history.

In 2004, I became aware of the near free fall acceleration of the Twin Towers.  That was the coup de grace for any theory but MIHOP. I have also studied theories and documents which advocate for the official account of 9/11 and have found nothing anywhere near as convincing as the evidence which supports the alternative theory.

Maxwell C. Bridges (Blogger and frequent contributor to “Truth and Shadows” under the name Señor El Once)

My detractors will peg me with “a track record of gullibility,” because I had open-minded and tolerant tendencies developed well before 9/11 that allowed me to objectively consider viewpoints and evidence that ran contradictory to “steamrolled” mainstream media views (e.g., punk rock, international news, art & foreign films, world music). I did not actively pursue alternative theories of historical events (e.g., JFK, RFK, MLK, OKC), but would hear them out when presented and was astute enough to see where they supplied a plausible missing piece of the puzzle.

The year 2001 was part of an era when I read the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) daily, listened to NPR, and obtained more and more news from the internet. The political theater of George Bush being appointed president by the Supreme Court in 2000 had my cackles up about the neo-cons and rightfully suspicious of each and every one of their endeavors. As real-time as reputable newspapers can get, the CSM informed me in the summer of 2001 of the coordinated assassinations via diverse covert means but similar global agenda-advancing outcomes of various tribal Taliban leaders.

Before noon (MST) on September 11, 2001, I saw the first Internet versions of the towers’ pulverization. From my education in engineering, I understood that this required a massive and strategically controlled influx of energy in order to account for the thoroughness, symmetry, and speed of their extermination. In fact, these features flagged major flaws in the extremely efficient operation: coincidence and overkill that would be unnecessary for achieving the alleged goals of “outside/foreign terrorists” and would be next to impossible without inside access and extensive preparation time within the towers.

The “bi-partisan” and overwhelming passing without reading of the massive, fully fleshed-out, waiting-in-the-wings, and dubiously named USA PATRIOT Act by Congress in the weeks following 9/11 – weeks that contained D.C. snipers and Anthrax attacks to further heighten the fear to get public submission – were what clued me by November 2001 that the 9/11 official story was false and that 9/11 was an inside job. These were underscored by the persistent “America Under Attack” and “America at War” propaganda slogans of media and by the overly patriotic (and un-Christian) sentiments that blindly and vengefully advocated ruthless bombing and invasion of Afghanistan (and then Iraq). Too many coincidental dots that formed trend lines that later (and unearthed earlier) Bush Administration’s dots also aligned with.

Anna Yeisley (Member Tea Party Patriots for 9/11 Truth and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth)

From the beginning I was confused as to how a bunch Afghani rebels were able to take down two buildings without damaging any other buildings. If you were an Islamic extremist who hated America so much you would commit suicide why wouldn’t you plan to take out as many buildings as possible? It was obvious to me that the attack was planned to create as little damage as possible except to the twin towers, so I was confused. Another early question was the amount of paper littering the streets outside the towers. Why didn’t the paper burn up?

I didn’t question the official story until 2006 or 2007 when I stumbled upon Loose Change on YouTube and heard “nano-thermite” for the first time.

I tried to connect to others who also questioned 9/11 by starting a meet-up group but found few interested. I didn’t become a 9/11 activist until I signed an AE911 petition online and volunteered to organize a press conference in front of Congressman Wittman’s office in Sept 2010 and attended DC Press Conference with Richard Gage.

Mark H. Gaffney (Author of The 9/11 Mystery Plane and Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side)

I became convinced in Dec 2006 after conducting a very exhaustive review of NIST’s 2005 report on the WTC collapse.  I posted a paper on this in, I think it was, January 2006. Then a year later I posted a revised version. Here are the links (below). The only error in my research that came to light was a typo.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15970.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18999.htm

Giulietto Chiesa (Italian journalist, producer of the 9/11 documentary Zero)

Immediately after having seen on TV the events while they were happening…  It seemed to me, at first sight, that it was a huge TV show. And I argued that only a group of Western people, accustomed to the modern TV, could conceive of such a show.

You have to keep in mind that I was visiting Afghanistan in January that year, and I came back and wrote the book Afghanistan Anno Zero (Afghanistan Year Zero), which was in Italian book shops just three days before 9/11.

I was in Genoa in July that year during the tragic G-8 where a young man was killed by Italian police, and I wrote a book about that, which just about to be released with the title Genoa/G-8. In that book the picture of international relations had become a very worrying one.

This means I was, in a certain sense, “psychologically prepared” to consider the possibility of an event of that kind. Frankly speaking I was waiting for something similar. In Afghanistan Anno Zero I had written, quite prophetically, that a war in Afghanistan was really possible in the short term.

In any case I remember that that evening I began looking for more detailed information, and  I was overwhelmed by the contradictory explanations. I believed this was normal during a chaotic situation like this, but I realized something very strange was happening behind the headlines and photos.

Only later, three or four days after the event, my suspicions began to take shape, and I began working systematically on the subject.

Paul Zarembka (Economics professor, State University of New York, editor of The Hidden History of 9-11)

My serious questioning about 9/11 began with Michael Ruppert’s talk at the University of Toronto in January 2002. He showed about 10 times that portion of the Zapruder film of Kennedy’s assassination with the thrust of Kennedy’s head going backwards, so that the fatal shot could only come from his front. Ruppert thus indicated the role of the U.S. state to have us believe otherwise.

Since my Marxist understanding of political economy helps me to perceive that a capitalist state is controlled by that class, I realized that I had an obligation to know from evidence if the 9/11 event was based inside the U.S. state, rather than being a foreign act that we are led to believe.

Since then, it has been an unending process of learning more and more about 9/11 with many issues not fully solved. And there has been an accumulation of evidence pointing to the operatives in the U.S. state, not one or two most telling pieces. The total inadequacy of the 9/11 Commission Report is telling.

Ken Freeland (Citizens 9/11 Commission; member, Houston 9/11 Truth)

It’s hard for me to answer this question because in truth, I think I never fully accepted the government’s account. The question would then be, what piece of information was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, and convinced me that the government was definitely not telling the truth.

I think perhaps it was learning that bin Laden denied involvement in the events of 9/11.  It really makes no sense to go through this much organizational planning and risk taking for a spectacular terrorist act for which you then deny responsibility.  What’s the point?  This never made the slightest sense to me, and is at odds with the track record of great terrorist events (except for those for which our own government is suspected of involvement).

Jonathan Mark (Founder FlybyNews; founder, 9/11 Teleconference Group)

At the time of September 11, 2001, I was involved with a campaign to stop offensive weapons from entering outer space. The twin towers crumbling before my eyes initiated a free-fall on many levels in our civilization. I wasn’t sure of anything at first, and even Osama bin Laden seemed like a candidate. The free fall of our civilization was that 9/11 was used to justify the horrendous “war on terror,” pre-emptive war, loss of justice, habeas corpus, human rights, bill of rights. Everything was going down, fast, and after six months notice, President Bush axed the ABM Treaty and started putting offensive weapons in space.

The campaign to prevent this from happening to help reverse the arms race failed, and 9/11 was used as justification for such extreme measures. So I started reporting articles looking into the events with more depth. The January 17, 2002 issue included an article by William Rivers Pitt, “Hell to Pay.” Slowly the facts built up to a strong case of government abuse and involvement in crimes against humanity. Without the facts of what really happened on 9/11 and beyond, there will be no truth, justice, or peace. 9/11 justice is key. FN’’s archives on this issue is posted from this title: New 9/11 Investigation vs. New World Order.

Dwain Deets (Former senior NASA executive; member, Pilots for 9/11 Truth)

I didn’t suspect anything was amiss the first couple of years. In early 2004, I became quite concerned about limitations on future energy supplies. I started following Michael Ruppert’s “From the Wilderness” website. Based on a recommendation on the site, in Aug. 2004, I attended a financial planning workshop “off shore” in Mazatlan, Mexico. Ruppert was one of the speakers, and that motivated me to read his upcoming book Crossing the Rubicon, published Oct. 2004. That gave me the big picture from a strategic positioning of U.S. military in order to secure energy supplies well into the future.

On the fourth anniversary, I wrote “I’m completely convinced it was a LIHOP.” In early 2006, I found out how difficult it was to speak out in public with this contrarian view. I was the editor of a newsletter for a local “skeptic” group. The group is called San Diego Association for Rational Inquire (SDARI). I found this group would entertain no views about 9/11 other than the official story.

I attempted to publish an article in the newsletter of which I was the editor, a letter which I considered neutral on AAL77, rather than adhering strictly to the official story. When I was unable to publish this article, I sent a letter to the parent organization (Skeptical Inquirer) resigning as editor.

On the sixth anniversary, I wrote “I see that 9/11 was a ‘False Flag’ operation.”  I also wrote, “I’ve become more and more amazed at the sophistication of 9/11. Not just in pulling off the operation, i.e., the mechanics of it, but even more impressive in a sick way, the duping of the American public.”

I went to hear Richard Gage speak when he was in San Diego (Oct. 2007), and joined AE911Truth shortly thereafter.

Jeffrey Orling (New York architect, 9/11 activist)

The first hint that something was wrong was how soon they identified the hijackers and how they managed to take over these planes. WOW, and they weren’t able to prevent these slackers from getting on the planes or intercept them?  We have spent several trillion dollars on defence and spying and surveillance, and four commercial flights were just floating around the skies all morning… something was really fishy.

And as the story emerged told to us by media – the mouthpiece of government – it seemed more and more implausible: found passport… no black boxes… where was the plane wreckage at the pentagon… why were the vids not released immediately?  Everything seemed to be a manufactured story from the get go… the phone calls from the planes.

I was surprised that the three towers fell as they did… but I didn’t suspect controlled demos.  I knew the towers were a very weird erector set design… but I didn’t understand how they collapsed until I drilled into the details of the structure.  Still not sure that they were intended to look like collapses but had some devices planted or delivered by the planes.

By the time the official story came out in the 9/11 Commission Report it was clear that it was a cover up… The more I study the event the less obvious it is what exactly happened… whose idea it was, who engineered the entire think and how they managed to pull it off.

Massimo Mazzucco (Filmmaker, journalist, and 9/11 researcher)

In August 2001 I was watching the news and I heard that in Afghanistan the Taliban had totally frozen poppy production. I remember turning to my wife and saying: “I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we’ll find a very good reason to attack Afghanistan.”

A few weeks later I was watching the twin towers collapse on television, and I simply said. “Here we go.”

At that point obviously I had no idea of how exactly the 9/11 operation had been carried out, but it was already clear to me that it could not have been done by the same people who were about to suffer some major consequences from it.

Then the information on the Pentagon attack and the twin tower demolitions started to circulate, and it all fit perfectly with the original idea of an “inside job.”

Nelisse Muga (Activist and co-founder of San Diegans for 9/11 Truth)

I began my search for 9/11 truth when I had a friend call early on a Sunday  morning in April 2005. She insisted I turn on the TV to C-Span, so reluctantly I did. Someone named Dr. David Ray Griffin was talking about 9/11/01 and questioning the 9/11 Commission Report that had recently been published. He was very convincing and simply asked his audience to look a bit closer into what might have happened. Did the official report really make sense? I quickly realized it did not.

It turned my world upside down. Originally I believed it was “blowback,” – and since that day I have been, I guess you would say obsessed – with finding the truth and living long enough to see justice. Not that we could ever make up for the lives we have destroyed. I have always had empathy for others, especially when I believe that injustice is involved.

It was shortly after this that I began our local group, San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, with Ted (Nelisse’s husband and a retired pilot) and another good friend who I had met in the Kucinich campaign in 2003. Dr. Griffin was the perfect messenger for me to begin my journey. We have read all of his books and have had him as our guest presenter down here on several occasions – lucky us!

It’s funny how Ted and I never discussed 9/11/01 until that day when we saw David on C span. He said he became suspicious in 2002 when KPBS-Nova came out with the Pancake-Theory. Ted’s degree is in structural engineering, and he knew there was no such thing. It’s much like the “domino theory” we all learned about during the Vietnam war. That was another term dreamed up by our propaganda machine to keep the public in their comfort zone. It’s now time for all of us to become very uncomfortable.

Matthew Witt (9/11 author and researcher, associate professor of Public Administration at University of La Verne, CA)

I cannot recall a particular “A ha!” moment, but there were distinctive turning points. One thing is certain: I was not an early adopter. When the towers were hit and for three years or so later I did not question the official story.

But gut level ambivalence started right away, beginning with the PATRIOT Act. It came too quickly, with virtually no debate considering the sweeping consequences of its measures. The PATRIOT Act seriously compromised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1978) and fudged the line in all matters pertaining to search and seizure protections under Constitution. There was something way too convenient about the 9/11 incident for such sweeping, doctrinal shift in civil liberties.

From around spring of 2004 for the next three years, I was working on and off on a piece of my own that would eventually be published in an academic journal after long odyssey of rejection, finally published in the journal Administration & Society as “Conjuring the Holographic State: Scripting Security Doctrine for a (New) World of Disorder.” Lance deHaven-Smith drafted the Coda section of that piece. According to the journal managing editor, it sailed through review and was pushed ahead of queue for publication because the premise really grabbed the editor (former army military and eventually major figure in the public administration academia as one of what is known as “The Blacksburg Group”).

The piece used the Matrix film epic as narrative structure for analyzing the global war on terror. The plot point and characterizations struck me as eerily close to what the PATRIOT Act built up from its premise of “lone wolf terrorism.” Finally published in 2008, the piece suggests but does not go so far as to say 9/11 was an inside job. There is no way, still, to do so in an academic journal. This work forged close association with deHaven-Smith, who had published in 2006 a major statement to the field about elite theory in re-conceptualized under rubric “state crimes against democracy” (SCAD); a really power heuristic for staging new thinking about 9/11.

At some point during 2005 I started poking around Amazon.com for what I could find and came across Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s deeply probing The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. I credit this work with being the first major lifting of weights from my eyes. About the same time I read one of David Ray Griffin’s early books, an edited volume with Peter Dale Scott, 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Volume 1. Steven Jones’s piece in that book was a major turning point for me. How, indeed, could buildings fall nearly at the speed of gravity without being imploded?

By early 2007 I was firmly convinced that 9/11 was an inside job. The spectacular number of coincidences – Bush’s kin (cousin, I believe) owning the security company with contract for the towers, and on and on and on – defied probability of anything other than the deepest state involvement.

Among other conspiracy related work was Jim Marrs’ Rule by Secrecy, which promised to link the very weird and troubling matter of 9/11 with near and ancient esoteric societies. Marrs does a solid job with documentation, and his conjecture is mostly pretty grounded and reasonable.

I have never written anything directly about 9/11 and do not consider myself a 9/11 scholar. I started my academic career wanting to help build greener cities, with bike paths and the like. My odyssey away from that began with my inquiry into how race has shaped public institutions in America. From there onward, I realized that there were too many institutionalized obstacles to even the most basic good ideas for planning cities. Then along came 9/11 and the world we had changed forever in a heartbeat.

Simon Shack (Creator of the 9/11 film September Clues)

Like everyone else, I was shocked on 9/11 2001 by the TV news reports of four commercial airliners being simultaneously hijacked by 19 suicide hijackers armed with box-cutters crashing into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania marshland. Like everyone else, I was shocked to read in the newspapers the next day, that “20,000” people had died (yes, I’ve saved copies of such dramatic newspaper headlines). And like most people I immediately had serious doubts about the veracity of this most outlandish Hollywood-smelling tale.

Within 48 hours of the event, a purported “amateur video” was aired on TV (credited to Michael Hezarkhani). It showed the alleged Flight 175 effortlessly penetrating World Trade Center 2 – without as much as an aileron breaking off… I instantly jumped up from my couch and shouted: “That’s just ridiculous! Physically impossible !!!”

For some reason that I’m quite frankly unable to fathom, I did not act upon that first reaction of mine – and as many as five more years went by before I started analyzing the available imagery of that day. I guess that, like everyone else, my mind was incapable of processing the extent of human wickedness necessary to enact such a massive hoax upon mankind. As I put together my September Clues documentary, I felt almost ashamed that it took me so long to act upon (and expose) the utter absurdity of these planes seen on TV – integrally disappearing into steel frame buildings as if they were made of Jell-O.

Of course, we now know that the news media aired an entirely pre-fabricated  “made-for-TV Hollywood movie “ –  complete with “airplane crashes” and “pyroclastic, top-down tower collapses”. Not only did we see computer-animated images of planes striking the towers – the collapses themselves were as digitally crafted as the Empire State Building seen collapsing (TOP-DOWN!) in the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day.

The collapse imagery – all of it – as well as the images showing people jumping from the towers – has by now been proven fake (digitally animated) in every imaginable way. Unfortunately, the bulk of the 9/11 “truth movement” has been hoodwinked into holding these phony, collapse animations as “proof of controlled demolition.”

In reality, the towers were of course demolished (although most likely behind a smokescreen) – but there simply is no photographic record of those brief events. Electronic jamming devices routinely used in modern warfare were most likely in place as an extra “safety-measure” to impede any private cameras from capturing the morning’s events on film (and yes – I have a few credible testimonies to this effect). This is no science-fiction tech:  For just $790, you can buy a consumer device which de-activates any video camera within a range of 70 meters. (Do a Google search for “Spymodex video jamming”). Now, imagine what the Pentagon might have!

So, once you ensure that no private camera can capture the morning’s events, you just release a smokescreen to obscure the WTC complex from public view – and bring it down with perfectly safe and reliable conventional explosives.

Anyone familiar with our longstanding and ongoing collective research at cluesforum.info (summarized and condensed at septemberclues.info) will also know that the various 9/11 victim memorials are a bunch of laughably phony, absurdly inconsistent and blatantly counterfeit databases – by now divested of any credibility. On the strength of what we know today, there is simply no more rational reason to believe that anyone died under the 9/11 “attacks” (In fact, only 405 people in the entire state of New York are listed as deceased in the official death records of that day).The whole operation was a massive simulation – as is, indeed, the entire “War on terror,” which the mainstream news media (on the payroll of the ruling goons of this world) keep selling, on a daily basis, to the unsuspecting public.

Graeme MacQueen (9/11 researcher; founder, Peace Studies program, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.)

I guess I became aware in 2002 that not everyone bought the official story of 9/11. I had naively assumed it was probably true before that, although I was aware that we’d never been given proof of the truth of this story. (In fact, I was quite troubled by the video of Osama bin Laden supposedly found in Afghanistan: I never accepted the video as genuine, and I wondered why they would find it necessary to produce a fake if OBL was actually guilty of the crime.) Over the next couple of years I got more and more intrigued by the questions being raised but I was too caught up in resisting war to look into the issue properly—of course, I now blame myself for this.

Like most people, I often look to journals, thinkers and groups that I respect when I’m trying to decide whether or not to take a claim seriously. After all, none of us has the time to look into every claim, so we sort of “delegate” investigation and judgment to others.  As a peace activist and as someone on the political left here are a couple of the people I listened to:

Noam Chomsky – Sometime in late 2002 or very early 2003 (it was certainly before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq) two of us brought Chomsky to my university, McMaster. He and his wife Carol stayed for about a week and we had a good time and lots of great discussion. Some of Chomsky’s comments were made into a documentary film, which came out in 2003: Noam Chomsky: Rebel without a Pause. A brief description of the film can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368083/plotsummary The film itself can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv4IBJmzulM

I had long respected Chomsky’s views and had spoken to him several times years earlier (as far back as the 1970s). It became clear during his visit to McMaster that Chomsky did not take very seriously the claims of the 9/11 truth movement. In fact, I accompanied him to an interview with Vision TV while he was here, and Barry Zwicker was the interviewer. Barry got to the 9/11 events pretty much right away, and Noam dismissed the issue and clearly did not want to talk about it. Later, after he left McMaster, I discussed 9/11 with him (Chomsky) by email. He continued to express disbelief, but I never felt he was contemptuous of me for raising these questions. (I think his views have hardened since then.) At the time I felt he was probably right to doubt the truth movement, but I continued to put anomalies in my files and continued to have an open mind on the issue.

Johan Galtung – Johan is a major figure in peace and conflict studies, and we brought him to McMaster sometime, as I recall, in 2002. He said with respect to the idea that 9/11 was an inside job: “Possible, but unlikely.” He has essentially maintained this position, although he has become increasingly open to the inside job theory. Anyway, I was teaching in the field of peace and conflict studies and had been greatly influenced by him—in fact, I’d helped him when he gave workshops with Afghans in Pakistan in February, 2001. So when he called the inside job theory “possible, but unlikely” it shaped my own views. I decided this was a reasonable position to take, and, in fact, it may indeed be a reasonable position if a person hasn’t taken the time to look into the issue.

To make a long story short, I did eventually decide to look into it for myself. As far as I can recall this happened in 2005. I had yet another encounter with a male, aging anti-war thinker on the left (easy to see who influences me!), Ralph Schoenman. Here’s a video of a talk Schoenman gave around 2008 in case you’ve never encountered him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aci9PD6jNlg

Anyway, Mr. Schoenman and I met a couple of times after his talk at my university and we ended up getting into a heated debate. 9/11 wasn’t the major hot issue (the major hot issue was oil and the question of how much of it was left in the earth), but 9/11 did come up and Ralph pretty much said this was an obvious false flag attack and there was no excuse, this long after the event, for my continued ignorance of the basic facts. This is when I finally took up the challenge of looking into the matter for myself.

I quickly discovered Ralph was right. I don’t remember which particular publication convinced me, but I read David Griffin’s first book (The New Pearl Harbor), and the work of Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan—as well as Barry Zwicker’s work, of course. In any case, I remember the issue that finally ended my doubts. It was the “collapses” of the twin towers. I’d considered these collapses mysterious for some time, and as I read one analysis in 2005 I realized that the official account wasn’t just fishy but absolutely impossible. I can remember the precise instant when I felt this. In that instant I went from suspicion to certainty.

Ever since then I’ve put a lot of time into the issue of the destruction of the buildings. It seems to me that we can talk all we like about suspicions we have about the 19 hijackers, the long history of US involvement in false flag incidents, and so on, but there is a big difference between having suspicions (even if they are strong suspicions grounded in evidence) and being able to prove a thing to be false. In the case of the building collapses (1, 2 and 7) we can prove the official story to be false. Why not seize this opportunity?

****

I’m grateful to all of these accomplished activists and scholars for taking the time to respond to my question. I look forward to reactions and comments to anything or anyone mentioned above. I’ll have follow-up analysis of the answers in a future post. —Craig McKee

Paul Simon stepped to the microphone at Ground Zero and something amazing happened.

The legendary singer/songwriter had been asked to sing the non-threatening Bridge Over Troubled Waters at the ceremony for 9/11’s 10^th anniversary ceremonies in New York, but he didn’t. Instead, he launched into a haunting version of another classic that begins, “Hello darkness, my old friend.” Simon had decided that the most appropriate statement for this occasion would come from The Sound of Silence.

“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows…

Was he protesting the fact that firefighters had not been allowed to attend the ceremony, or was it even deeper, that the real truth about 9/11 was not being spoken? I don’t know, but his choice was not an accident.

This was the most emotional 9/11 moment of the year and possibly the most encouraging. The “acceptable” mainstream response to the anniversary of this dark day was a kind of contrived solemnity (I mean media, government officials, and the like – not the public). It was propaganda that did not honour the victims – it sought to bury the truth about what happened to them.

This 10^th anniversary year was a significant one in the fight for 9/11 truth. I include the anniversary and everything that came with it as one of my nine biggest 9/11 stories of the year. That includes the phony media build-up and all the bogus retrospectives designed to tug at our emotions and bypass our brains.

Here are the other key 9/11 stories as I saw them (in no particular order). I’m sure readers have more, and some may disagree with the ones I’ve chosen. I look forward to your input about what mattered to you in 2011:

2) Gage bails on Citizen Investigation Team, ignores rebuke: The founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Richard Gage, shocked many in the movement in February when he released a statement withdrawing support for the Pentagon research of CIT and their founders, Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis. Gage had offered an endorsement of their work, but had subsequently come under heavy pressure to denounce them and their film National Security Alert.

Apparently Gage caved to this pressure, because in February he released a statement posted on 911blogger.com (the site that has banned most CIT supporters and whose contributors delight in bashing CIT unopposed).

Gage made the incredible statement that despite being initially impressed by National Security Alert, he later was “surprised” to learn that the witnesses who contradicted the official flight path also said they did see the plane hit the building. This was an odd thing to say given that the witnesses say this clearly in the film.

Gage’s statement endorsed the research of such dubious names as Chris Sarns, Victoria Ashley, Jim Hoffman, Frank Legge, Warren Stutt, Jeff Hill, and Gregg Roberts. In doing so, he threw his weight behind the idea that we can’t prove a 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon and that one probably did. He would have been much better to stay out of the Pentagon discussion altogether. The cause and Gage’s credibility have suffered.

In the end, Gage suggests we stick to the idea that a 757 should not have been able to hit the Pentagon and avoid saying the no 757 hit. In other words, allow incompetence as an explanation, thereby letting the perpetrators off the hook.

In April, a group of 27 truthers (I was one) wrote Gage a letter protesting his actions and calling on him to explain his shocking embrace of the anti-CIT hit squad. He never replied.

Gage’s statement:

http://911blogger.com/news/2011-02-08/richard-gage-completely-withdraws-support-cit

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/richard-gage-joins-perplexing-gang-up-on-citizen-investigation-team/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/gage-ignores-challenge-by-911-truthers-to-justify-pentagon-reversal/

3) 9/11 patsy Osama bin Laden is “killed” by U.S. special forces: At the beginning of May, the American media reported that the mastermind of 9/11 had been killed by U.S. special forces in a raid on his compound in Islamabad, Pakistan. No reporters questioned whether this was true or not; they just reported it as fact. And it happened just in time for the 10^th anniversary commemorations of 9/11. How convenient.

And Barack Obama, clearly the darling of big money and the global elite, got the credit for this momentous accomplishment. After all, the government had been hunting bin Laden all those years, right? How clever of him to hide in a large, highly fortified compound a short distance from a Pakistani military installation.

Where does one begin with a story this transparently bogus? To start with, the story changed almost hourly. First it was a firefight with bin Laden being armed. Then he was unarmed. He used his wife as a shield. Then he didn’t.

The most obvious thing was that the body was dumped at sea, supposedly in keeping with Islamic tradition. How religiously tolerant of them. It also saved the government from having to prove that the death had actually happened.

We were also told that plans for future 9/11-like attacks were in the works. It didn’t occur to anyone in the media to point out that killing an unarmed bin Laden (a known CIA asset whose family has ties to the Bush clan going back to the ‘70s) might make it harder to thwart these supposed attacks.

And, of course, there won’t be any messy trials that might bring out information that contradicts the 9/11 official story.

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/obama-and-the-media-use-bin-laden%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98death%E2%80%99-to-further-911-lie/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/media-uncritically-swallows-u-s-claim-that-bin-laden-planned-911-sequel/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/obama-on-60-minutes-cheerleading-interview-an-all-time-journalistic-low/

4) Gallop suit against top Bush officials thrown out of court by Bush cousin: Former U.S. Army executive administrative assistant April Gallop pursued her lawsuit against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Gen. Richard Myers for damages in connection with injuries she and her newborn son suffered at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

What she didn’t know when she first launched the suit was that it would ultimately be thrown out of court on appeal by Judge John M. Walker, a cousin of George W. Bush. As you’d expect, the mainstream media ignored the story (with the exception of CNBC). Gallop’s lawyer, William Veale, tried unsuccessfully to get Walker disqualified from the case.

Gallop was at her desk when a large explosion caused the ceiling above her to collapse. When she regained consciousness, she made her way, son in tow, through the hole the alleged Flight 77 was supposed to have created. She saw no bodies, no airplane parts, no jet fuel, nothing to suggest a plane had hit the building.

Gallop launched the original lawsuit in 2008 alleging that the 9/11 attacks were planned at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and that they were blamed on fundamentalist Muslims as part of a cover story. She claims that there was plenty of knowledge that employees of the Pentagon were in imminent danger, and that had alarms been sounded many deaths and injuries would have been prevented.

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-fix-is-in-bush-cousin-presides-over-911-suit-against-cheney-rumsfeld/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/insult-to-injury-court-denies-911-plaintiff%E2%80%99s-appeal-threatens-sanctions/

5) Toronto 9/11 Hearings virtually ignore Pentagon evidence: One of the major events of the year was a set of hearings that took place in Toronto, Canada that was scheduled to coincide with the 10^th anniversary of 9/11.

The idea was to have expert “witnesses” who would present compelling evidence to a trio of moderators refuting the 9/11 official story. It was decided that only the “least controversial” evidence would be considered because it would more likely lead to consensus. This meant no invitation to CIT or to native Torontonian Barrie Zwicker, a leading member of the Truth movement and avid CIT supporter.

There were numerous witnesses who presented evidence that the World Trade Center was destroyed in a controlled demolition, but the Pentagon was almost ignored. We had a 25-minute presentation about explosives in the Pentagon by Barbara Honegger and a 45-minute talk by David Ray Griffin about anomalies related to Flight 77. That’s less than an hour and a half out of a four-day event.

But there were other fascinating presenters whose focus was less on the physical science of the event and more on the psychological and political aspects (along with evidence regarding the alleged hijackers and the insider trading that preceded 9/11).

The event will result in a final report that is eagerly awaited.

CIT held a Toronto screening of National Security Alert after the hearings were over. This event was successful, drawing about 200 people.

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/will-toronto-911-hearings-ignore-pentagon-to-avoid-%E2%80%98controversy%E2%80%99/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/eyes-on-the-pentagon-new-toronto-event-independent-of-911-hearings/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/quest-for-consensus-toronto-911-hearings-navigate-pentagon-minefield/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/my-toronto-hearings-911-notebook-the-good-the-bad-and-the-uninvited/

6) Griffin looks to mend fences in the movement: David Ray Griffin published his 10^th book on 9/11 this fall (9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed), and it contained a new direction for the prolific and highly respected author. In the book’s chapter on the Pentagon, Griffin went over the case made by CIT critics that a plane did hit, and then countered that with his own arguments that none did.

Griffin’s case was the vastly stronger of the two arguments, and I credit him with not caving to the pressure to denounce CIT as Gage did. But the problem, as I saw it, was that he elevated the importance of the dubious Pentagon “research” of David Chandler, Jonathan Cole, and Frank Legge.

His new position was to put aside the “relatively unimportant” question of whether a plane hit and to concentrate on the overwhelming evidence that a 757 piloted by al-Qaeda did not. The idea, I gather, was to break the impasse created by the entrenched positions for and against CIT’s position that a plane flew towards the building but did not hit.

Griffin’s Toronto address was genuinely perplexing because it relied almost exclusively on positions put forward by Chandler, Cole, and Legge on every aspect of the Pentagon event. In doing so, he gave them a standing that they have not earned.

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/griffins-embrace-of-anti-cit-researchers-a-setback-for-911-pentagon-research/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/griffin%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98no-plane-hit-the-pentagon%E2%80%99-arguments-eclipse-%E2%80%98consensus-approach%E2%80%99/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/conflict-consensus-and-a-decade-of-911-lies-an-interview-with-david-ray-griffin/

7) Griffin unveils 9/11 Consensus Panel: Griffin was involved in another major consensus-related initiative this year designed to create a bank of reliable information about the failings of the 9/11 official story that the media and the public can refer to.

In early September the formation of the 9/11 Consensus Panel was announced. It is an expert panel of academics, scientists, pilots, journalists, and other prominent members of the 9/11 Truth movement. The group was created to assemble a list of points that have achieved consensus status by virtue of receiving the approval of 85% of the panel.

So far, 13 points have already been agreed upon and can be read on the panel’s web site. These are hardly groundbreaking, and only one Pentagon point is listed. But more will be added, maybe hundreds more, according to co-founder Elizabeth Woodworth. The key to this effort will be adding more – and stronger – points to the list as quickly as possible.

Truth and Shadows posts: http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/new-911-panel-consensus-about-the-truth-or-the-truth-about-consensus/

http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/breaking-the-back-of-the-official-story-911-consensus-panel-cant-be-timid/

8) Direct democracy given a chance through Citizens 9/11 Commission:  One of the most promising initiatives by the Truth movement in 2011 was the effort to place a ballot initiative before voters in at least one of the 26 states that have an initiative law. This would allow voters in a given state to vote on whether or not they want a new investigation into 9/11 to be initiated.

Fronted and founded by former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, the commission seeks to get on the ballot in one or more states for the 2012 presidential election. The effort took centre stage when Gravel gave a presentation on the Commission at the Toronto 9/11 Hearings in September.

The initial target of the project was Massachusetts, but the short time frame and lack of funds to collect signatures led the organizers redirect their focus to other states. The ones currently being targeted are Oregon, Alaska, and California.

According to the web site (9-11cc.org): “Because our established federal institutions are unable to address the unanswered questions about 9/11, we have no choice but to circumvent them. And that is why our campaign has turned to the state initiative process, the only legally constituted forum for an appeal to the people through the method of direct democracy.”

Campaign seeking to raise awareness about Building 7 expands: Remember Building 7 is a campaign launched in late 2010 using local TV ads to educate New Yorkers about Building 7, which the majority of city residents had never seen footage of. The goal of the effort is to take the ad campaign to other U.S. cities like Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

In 2011, Remember Building 7 produced new ads calling for an investigation of what happened to Building 7. There have also been print ads in New York and there will be more in the cities listed above. The fundraising goal for this campaign is $1 million. About 8% of that has been raised so far.

Campaigns like this help to show the world that this fight isn’t over, that it’s just warming up.

***

There is much more one could say about 9/11 and 2011. There was a lot of excellent research done, and much creative thinking went into finding new approaches to further the cause of 9/11 truth.

But really, the biggest ongoing story is the tragic fallout from the fake “terrorist attacks” of 2001. Many hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. government is now actively preparing the way for an invasion of Iran.

In the meantime, the freedom of Americans and others around the world is being hacked away in the name of security. The powers that be create fear with false flag operations and then they ride to the rescue with new security measures to keep us safe. The problem is that this safety comes at the expense of freedoms once taken for granted.

The National Defence Authorization Act, for example, would make it legal for the government to arrest and detain anyone they want on American soil and hold them until the “end of hostilities.” In other words, they can be held forever in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution. This erosion of freedom is only getting worse, and elected officials aren’t even pretending to care. They think the country and the world isn’t noticing what’s happening or doesn’t care.

It’s up to all of us to prove them wrong.

By Craig McKee

Is standing up for what you believe worth losing friends over?

Sometimes those friends don’t give you a choice. Other times, you can decide to stay away from certain subjects with certain people.

Recently I parted ways with two people I’ve known for more than a quarter of a century. Admittedly, we haven’t hung out for some time, but we do have a history. I don’t think we’re going to be adding to it, though.

In fact, there are five people I connected with on Facebook who are no longer among my online friends. The short version of the story is that they don’t much like my opinion that 9/11 was an inside job and a false flag operation. But they took it further.

Over the weekend of September 8-11, I was attending the Toronto 9/11 Hearings when I made this comment on FB: “So, according to the U.S., a “specific” and “credible” threat has emerged about a terror attack in NY. But there’s a “great deal of uncertainty” and the warning is being done “out of an abundance of caution.” When are people going to see this bullshit for what it is?? Social control and manipulation through fear!”

So far so good. One of my buddies retorted: “Yup, yet another grand scheme by American authorities. Maybe you should spend just a little of your time this weekend considering the 2700+ dead and their families?”

It was the old, “How can you disrespect the victims and their families by questioning 9/11?” argument. It’s not enough that these friends think I’m wrong, they also think that at long last I have left no sense of decency. Or something like that.

It got worse: “Craig, I consider myself open minded and have read up on the conspiracy theories (Griffin et.al.) and feel that the authors (sorry but this includes you) have a bizarre agenda to create so called ‘fact’ out of conjecture. I have yet to read anything really compelling –it all seems like acute paranoia. Sorry if you feel insulted by my comments.”

I love it when people add an apology after they’ve just trashed you. It’s as if they only meant the trashing in the nicest possible way. Of course, I’m flattered to share a “bizarre agenda” with David Ray Griffin, although I’m not sure he’s thrilled to be sharing one with me.

This exchange ended here, but this person, who I’ll call unfriend #1, would make a return on the back of an even more colourful full frontal attack from another longtime friend-like person. We’ll call him unfriend #2.

I posted a link last week showing that the FAA monitoring system on Sept. 11, 2001 was indicating that Flight 175 was still airborne after it was alleged to have crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

I suggested that this was further evidence that commercial airliners with passengers did NOT hit the WTC. Someone I used to work with wrote back, “Get real.” He unfriended me immediately (we would call him unfriend #3, but he doesn’t actually come back into the story). Unfriend #2 called my comment “reprehensible,” which got a “like” from unfriend #1.

Unfriend #2 went on: “It is an irresponsible and dangerous opinion, I believe. Luckily you live in a country that you are allowed opinions no matter how ridiculous and not be thrown in jail. I know exactly why you were unfriended – you bully anyone who thinks differently than you and my blood pressure goes up when I read your conspiracy ‘stuff’ I consider you a friend from way back but I think you have become obsessed and unhealthy.”

Yes, how lucky we all are not to be thrown in jail. How nice to be “allowed” our opinions. On old high school friend, who I’ve connected with again through FB, came to my rescue: “Craig has never ‘bullied” me or anyone I know. He expresses and discusses his opinions but does not “impose” them. The people that feel pressured could just be reacting with immaturity because they do not want others to have differing opinions from their own.”

Maybe there’s hope after all, I thought.

Unfriend #2 ended with this announcement: “To me you have unfortunately become obsessed and any obsession is very unhealthy. I am de-friending you for no other reason except my health. I cannot stand your opinion and yes, you do have a right to your opinion. It’s just that I really do feel sick when I think of you and others actually believing some of this stuff.”

So now I’m dangerous, obsessed and suffering from acute paranoia (very unhealthy indeed) I’m already down two friends, and I decide that I’m disgusted enough with both unfriend #1 and #2 that I officially “unfriend” #2 and then block them both. Three down.

Actually, it’s really five down. Last fall there was another exchange.

From an acquaintance I obviously didn’t know well enough: “Not long ago the conspiracy theorist came out from whatever rock they live under concerning 9/11 towers being blown up by the government………..my opinion is it is utter nonesense and hurtful to people who lost loved ones that day. Besides if if if it was the government do you really think all the people involved in doing such a horific event could keep such a secret……….surely one of those people now no longer in government, someone in cia fbi nsa………hasn’t written a book in order to cash in and become a bmillionaire !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Next you’ll be telling me Saddam Insane was really a nice guy, who cared about humanity and the greater well being of our planet………..and was not really hung and lives in Akron Ohio working in a walmart…………so Craig take your theories and shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

Okay, he’s not William F. Buckley, but he makes up for it with sheer dull-witted venom. (I got a laugh out of “nonesense” at least.)

Another FB friend joined in: “When you fear mongers attack peoples emotions and psyche, expect to be targetted in return, cause in the long run you guys are just as evil as the governments you try to attack. When theories are debunked, you call them closed mind yet you want them all to accept the shit you spew.”

I told him to apologize for calling me evil; he didn’t, so he’s now unfriend #4. In person, however, we are now “friendly.”

Should I treat 9/11 just like any other subject I’m interested in, and mention it only once in a while? At one time maybe, but, as Geena Davis said near the end of Thelma and Louise, “Something has crossed over in me, and I can’t go back.”

Learning about 9/11, especially since starting this blog, has changed me forever, because it has helped me to connect so many dots I couldn’t connect before. It has helped me to see how so much chaos, violence, and misery is artificially caused by the very powerful elite that runs a good chunk of the world.

9/11 is like the doorway to a shadowy world of control, manipulation and deception. The elites revealed themselves to us with this atrocity, kind of like when the Klingons have to de-cloak to fire on their enemies. But most of us weren’t paying attention when it happened. We’re still not.

This destructive event was the work of people who have a cynical contempt for all of us, for freedom and decency. We’re cattle, or more likely sheep, to these people. They hold all the cards. They have most of us believing that anyone who questions how freedom and human decency are being corrupted is a wack job or doesn’t care about victims. The elites have successfully made the word “conspiracy” seem like a synonym for delusional fantasy.

I have a friend in Toronto who I visited while I was there in September. I met this person while we were both attending York University, and we’ve been close friends ever since. She was someone who opened my eyes to a lot of injustice in the world – my safe, middle-of-the-road political views have never been the same.

But in Toronto I got a rude shock. Not only did my progressive and brilliant friend not agree with me about 9/11, she didn’t even think it mattered that much. Ya, the U.S. might have found out about the plot and let it happen, she allowed, but so what?

I spent a good part of our visit, too much of it really, trying to convince her she was wrong. But in the end, she maintained that I was wasting much time I could be spending making the world better in some concrete, practical way.

This taught me a hard truth. If I really believe in what I’m saying and writing about, then I’m going to have to be prepared to go there alone at times. I’m going to have to decide when to put away what I care about to get along and when to put truth ahead of everything. Sure, many friends are supportive (even if they don’t agree), and I’ve met new friends from all over the world who believe as I do.

But in the end, the passion I have for exposing what I believe to be the truth about 9/11 comes with no guarantee of moral support or any other kind of support.

Many around the world have paid an infinitely higher price for 9/11. Those killed that day, those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Millions of lives have been destroyed based on a massive and obscene lie. And freedoms we all take for granted are being stolen away right under our noses.

Losing a few friends isn’t such a great price to pay.

The limits of debate are established in this country before the debate even begins. Everybody else is marginalized, made to seem like Communists or some other disloyal person. Kook, there’s a word! Now it’s conspiracy. They’ve made that something that can’t even be entertained for a minute – that powerful people might get together and have a plan? Doesn’t happen! You’re a kook, you’re a conspiracy buff! – George Carlin

By Craig McKee

George Carlin made it so clear and so simple. That was his genius.

With humour that we could all relate to, he told us the truth about how our world works and how most of us are cattle for the super rich. How we are conned into believing in the very people who enslave us, how we are conned into believing in the illusion of freedom.

He knew and he told us. We laughed, but did we really listen?

Carlin passed away in 2008. At the time I thought it was sad – just like it’s sad when any beloved entertainer dies. But looking back on it, we lost something unique and irreplaceable when Carlin left us. We lost one of the few people capable of telling us the truth in a way that we are willing to hear it.

The following routine, from his 2005 video Life is Worth Losing, explains it better than I could:

“Politicians have traditionally hidden behind three things: the flag, the bible, and children. No child left behind, no child left behind. Really? Not long ago you were talking about giving kids a head start. Head start, left behind… Someone’s losing fucking ground here.

But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never ever, ever, be fixed. It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it; be happy with what you’ve got…BECAUSE THE OWNERS OF THIS COUNTRY DON’T WANT THAT. I’m talking about the real owners now…the REAL owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice – you don’t. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.

They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right.

They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers … obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in THE BIG CLUB. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.

Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you . . . they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact is that Americans will probably remain wilfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it . . .”

Barrie Zwicker on the 9/11 Consensus Panel: truth is more important than unity.

By Craig McKee

There’s no going back now.

The recently announced 9/11 Consensus Panel has raised the stakes for the Truth movement. The panel cannot afford to fail because many of the most highly respected members of the Truth movement have lent their reputations to the effort – and none more than panel co-founder David Ray Griffin.

They simply have to get it right. And while a cautious start has been made, with 13 points achieving the required 85% support among the 22 voting members of the panel, this is only the beginning. It has to be. To have any impact at all, this list of points must be added to – and reasonably quickly. Hiding from controversy the way the Toronto 9/11 Hearings did simply will NOT work here.

Three members of the 9/11 Consensus Panel I interviewed recently expressed their hopes for the initiative as well as their concerns about the process.

Author and journalist Barrie Zwicker, retired Marine Corps fighter pilot Shelton Lankford, and retired NASA senior executive Dwain Deets joined the panel largely on the strength of Griffin’s considerable reputation within the movement. Despite having varying degrees of apprehension about the consensus process, all three say they remain hopeful that this effort will produce results that will help the media and the public see how wrong the official story of 9/11 is.

Zwicker says that with only four votes needed to derail any potential consensus point, the selection of panelists is hugely important. He says the process depends on panel members being honest and having no hidden agenda.

“In the case of the Consensus Panel I can’t guarantee that,” he says. “It’s open to manipulation by inauthentic persons.”

He says he is also concerned that important arguments against the 9/11 official story may be left aside in order to achieve “consensus.”

“Do we value unity above truth?” he says. “I choose truth.”

When it comes to the 13 points that have already achieved consensus, Zwicker is more positive but not without reservations. He says the points are “useful” and likely to make anyone who reads them more sceptical of the official story. At the same time, he feels that anyone looking at the list could be misled into thinking that this is the full extent of the case being made.

Zwicker, Lankford, and Deets share a concern that the process being used doesn’t allow for face-to-face discussion among panel members leading to consensus.

“I’m having difficulty with that problem,” Lankford says. “You’ve got to have a free flowing process.”

Deets says he would like to be able to discuss with members why they oppose any given point, although he believes the process will be improved in the weeks ahead.

Lankford says he feels that the panel should not be afraid to tackle contentious questions. He adds that it’s critical that important evidence against the official story not be “marginalized” or watered down so that consensus can be reached.

“The way to deal with controversy is to vigorously debate it,” he says.

Deets agrees: “My hope is that over the next six months to a year there will be more points on the Pentagon,” he says.

He believes the statements that were rejected in the first phase should be worked on more, because objections to a given point can be for very different reasons. He adds that there might be a benefit to including minority views.

Zwicker also says it’s important that the evidence compiled by Citizen Investigation Team – eyewitness accounts that place the large plane that approached the Pentagon on the north side of the Citgo gas station – should be considered. He calls this a “litmus test” for how successful the panel will be.

Panel co-founder Elizabeth Woodworth says it isn’t practical for the panel to meet face to face to discuss the points given that members are from all over the world. But she doesn’t believe this will stop the panel from dismantling of the official story of 9/11 through the creation of a bank of information the media can trust.

Woodworth says the use of the Delphi Method will bring a level of credibility to the panel’s work because this method is used to arrive at consensus in the medical field. She says it is particularly used to elicit expert input on a subject when there isn’t a lot of “measureable data.”

“Our aim is to provide information [to the public and the media] at the same level as it’s provided in medicine,” she says. “Our findings [so far] are not very dramatic or earth shaking but they are credible.

“The people who understand best evidence and the Delphi Method are really excited about it.”

The panel’s web site (consensus911.org) explains that the term “best evidence” is used: “…  in the very narrow sense of the “best evidence” available with regard to any specific claim of the 9/11 official story that the Panel challenges.  It does not mean the strongest evidence against the official story in general.  It is simply the best evidence against each particular claim that the Panel addresses.

“Best evidence”, as used by the 9/11 Consensus Panel, is not evidence in support of alternative theories of what happened on 9/11.”

The success of the Consensus Panel depends not only on its willingness to be aggressive but also on the good faith of the participants making a sincere effort to build the strongest possible case against the official story of 9/11. It will mean not rejecting points outright without a damned good reason.

But if the panel goes too slowly or behaves too timidly, it risks being worse than irrelevant. This isn’t to say that the panel shouldn’t be prudent and meticulous in its assessment of individual points, just that contentious issues cannot be avoided.

We can’t settle for “lowest-common-denominator” evidence. The oft-repeated position that the Truth movement should “focus on the strongest evidence – the towers” has got to go.

Maybe we should start calling it the 9/11 Consensus Movement.

Recent developments in the struggle to widely expose the truth about the fake “terrorist attacks” of Sept. 11, 2001 have focused on apparent efforts to overcome divisions between different factions in the movement. Ironically, these attempts at consensus have themselves been highly controversial.

The latest, and possibly most consequential, move towards consensus is the creation of a collection of experts in a panel called “Consensus 911: The 9/11 Best Evidence Panel.”

The group, announced in September, was put together by prolific 9/11 researcher and author David Ray Griffin, his associate Elizabeth Woodworth, and lawyer William Veale, who represented April Gallop in a 9/11 lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Richard Myers.

In an interview this week, Woodworth emphasized that what sets this project apart from other approaches is that the consensus panel is academic, not political, and it is not an effort to unify the movement.

“The question is not how important the 9/11 truth community thinks each point to be,” she says. “It is only the question of whether the point has correctly stated an element within the official story and then, under ‘the best evidence,’ provided good evidence against that element.”

What isn’t clear is whether “consensus” about the greatest weaknesses of the 9/11 official story will lead to greater unity – and therefore credibility – for the movement or whether it will lead to a watered-down case where “controversial” areas of investigation are sidelined or simply discarded from the debate.

The jury’s still out, and the stakes are very high.

Woodworth says the consensus points that do make the list can then be used to “penetrate the media.” She says resistance to the consensus project is based on a misconception of what the effort is all about.

“I think it created a lot of ill feeling and misunderstanding and people feeling left out,” Woodworth says. “But we’re not trying to represent the whole Truth Movement’s best evidence.”

According to the group’s web site (consensus911.org), the best evidence is founded on:

• The opinions of respected authorities, based on professional experience, descriptive studies, and reports of expert committees

• Physical data in the form of photographs, videotapes, court testimony, witness reports, and FOIA releases

• Direct rather than circumstantial evidence.

Woodworth and Griffin initially formulated 16 initial points to be considered by the panel. The points were first submitted to the members in March 2011. They were submitted a total of three times as modifications were made resulting from members’ suggestions.

The result was 13 points that achieved the required 85% support (this approach is based on the Delphi Method, which Woodworth says she learned about during her 25 years as chief librarian for the British Columbia Ministry of Health). These 13 points are now listed on the web site along with an explanation of the methodology.

The vast majority of the points involve the World Trade Center. There is only one point dealing with the Pentagon event and one that looks at Flight 93, which, according to the official story, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Penn.

The Pentagon point, dealing with the unlikelihood of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour being able to negotiate an incredibly difficult (if not impossible) 330-degree spiral to fly into the ground floor of the Pentagon, is valid enough. My concern, however, is that any journalist or member of the public who reads the list as it stands now might be left with the impression that the case against the official story, as it pertains to the Pentagon, is very weak.

Woodworth acknowledges that it would have been a good idea to make it absolutely clear on the site that this is just the beginning of the process and that many more points will be added.

“We plan to develop dozens if not hundreds of points,” she says.

Woodworth explains that the three points that didn’t quite make the cut the first go-round read as follows:

• “The FBI’s report on phone calls from the 9/11 planes, which became public in 2006, said that Barbara Olson attempted only one call from Flight 77 – a call that was “unconnected” and lasted “0 seconds.”
• “Although airliners have hundreds of (virtually indestructible, serially controlled) “time-change” parts, which can conclusively prove the identity of any airliner, the government did not point to time-change parts to prove the identity of any of the four 9/11 planes.”
• “Although some 80 cameras were focused on the Pentagon, as the Department of Justice has acknowledged, the government has not provided a single video that clearly supports the government’s claim about what damaged the Pentagon.”

As far as I know, this is the first time the panel has released these three rejected points to the public. Woodworth points out that as evidence evolves any of these points can be reworked and presented to the panel again, conceivably gaining consensus status in the future.

Currently, the panel is considering another five points, two of which Woodworth says deal with the Pentagon. She says this process will continue, likely for years, which is why it wasn’t possible to wait until the list was complete to release any points.

The panel is made up of 22 members (Veale participates in the evidence reviewing process making him the 22nd member), so it only requires four to oppose or be uncertain about any point for that point to be rejected. This has raised concerns that strong information – particularly involving the overwhelming evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon – might be discarded because of the efforts of a small minority who may or may not be well intentioned.

Woodworth says she believes the panelists are honourable and that she has not seen any pattern in the responses that would suggest that any members have been acting in concert to block particular points.

“Most people are trying to build the points and make them stronger,” she says.

Fortunately, there isn’t heavy representation from the group that regularly attacks and ridicules the work of Citizen Investigation Team and Pilots for 9/11 Truth. One CIT critic on the panel is David Chandler, a high school and junior college physics teacher who has gained a reputation for his research regarding the World Trade Center but who has a far more dubious (if not discredited) “body of work” on the Pentagon.

The rest of the panel includes familiar 9/11 researchers and activists like Steven Jones, Shelton Lankford, Barrie Zwicker, Paul Zarembka, Dwain Deets, Niels Harrit, Tod Fletcher, Graeme MacQueen, Robert Bowman, Roland Morgan, and Daniel Sunjata. The complete list, with accompanying biographies, can be found here.

One notable absentee is Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Gage declined, Woodworth says, because he wants the credibility of AE9/11Truth to rest on the reputations of the more than 1,600 architects and engineers who are on record as supporting its conclusions.

“They don’t want to be associated with anybody,” Woodworth says. “They’re trying to wing it alone. But I completely understand this; Richard has the right to decline to be associated with other organizations that may not always speak his message.”

The quest for consensus was a feature of the recent Toronto Hearings into 9/11 and of David Ray Griffin’s latest book (9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed). I strongly criticized the Toronto Hearings organizers for staying away from evidence deemed by some to be controversial (like that from CIT and Pilots for 9/11 Truth) and from the Pentagon almost entirely (less than 90 minutes of the four-day event dealt with the Pentagon). I also criticized Griffin’s Pentagon presentation for relying so much on CIT critics Chandler, Jonathan Cole, and Frank Legge.

Chapter 7 of his new book also mentions their views extensively (while ignoring CIT and P4T), but fortunately it then makes a strong case that they are wrong in their contention that a 757 did hit the building. My concern about the consensus approach all along has been that it is based on the premise that all sides in the battle over the Pentagon are well intentioned, which I don’t think they are.

But there are a lot of smart and well-intentioned people on this panel who are willing to give this process a shot. If they are, then I will try to keep an open mind and watch what develops with keen interest.

But if strong evidence that a plane crash was faked at the Pentagon doesn’t make the consensus list at some point reasonably soon, there will be vocal objections ahead – perhaps raised by panel members themselves. On this point, Woodworth says evidence will become clearer over time and that patience will be required.

One of the best things about the panel is that it serves as a media resource with contact information for individual experts posted on the site. It is broken down by subject, so reporters with specific questions can find the right person to answer them.

A terrific resource. The trick will be getting journalists to use it.

My next post will feature interviews with three panel members as well as more from Elizabeth Woodworth. It will look in more detail at the methodology for arriving at the consensus points – and at the Delphi Method upon which it is based.

Jonathan Kay would suggest that this man is delusional and has too much time on his hands.

By Craig McKee

Jonathan Kay lives in a truly wonderful world.

In this world, journalists are just dying to break any story that would show that 9/11 is an inside job. And any who did would surely be rewarded with wealth, fame, and maybe a Pulitzer Prize.

Too bad for them there isn’t a shred of evidence for this ridiculous “conspiracy theory.” If there were, we’d have hundreds of ambitious scribes fighting and scratching to find out who could get that April Gallop interview first. Somebody heard bombs going off in the towers before the planes hit? 60 Minutes would have been there. A big plane got sucked into an impossibly tiny hole at the Pentagon? The Times wouldn’t have missed that one.

And if there were any evidence at all that 9/11 was an inside job, poor David Ray Griffin would have to beat the network anchor people off with a stick. There are only so many hours in the day!

Kay, the author of the anti-Truth movement hit-piece Among the Truthers, believes in a world where freedom reigns, journalists are encouraged to write whatever they want, and the common person knows as much about what major world events are coming down the pike as the bumbling political elite does.

In Kay’s world, secrets are virtually impossible to keep. As soon as more than one person knows about something, the cat’s as good as out of the bag. It kind of makes you wonder why governments ever bother with covert operations. After all, they can’t stay covert for long with all those chatterbox CIA agents just bursting to run to a receptive media with all the secrets of state.

Does Kay really believe this rubbish? You be the judge. You can read his book (please borrow a copy; we don’t want to encourage him any more than necessary) or read the interview I did with him last week.

Here are some of the things Kay has to believe for his official “theory” to be true:

• It is possible for the rules of physics to be suspended on any given day
• It is possible to destroy seven buildings with two planes
• It is possible for traces of nano-thermite to naturally occur in pulverized concrete dust
• It is possible for isolated fires to bring down a major skyscraper, causing all supporting columns to give way simultaneously
• It is possible for more than 150 firefighters to think they heard bombs when they didn’t
• It is possible to crash four planes on a given day without being able to retrieve even one airplane part that can be positively connected to any of the planes
• It’s possible for 19 suicide hijackers to succeed in their missions but for about one-third of them to turn up alive in other countries after the fact
• It is possible for an airliner to bury itself in a field and for the dirt to then cover the plane over by itself
• It is possible for someone who can’t learn how to fly a Cessna to pilot a 757, managing manoeuvres that even experienced pilots say are impossible
• It is possible for the government not to imagine a scenario that involved planes being flown into buildings on the same morning they were running multiple exercises that featured planes flying into buildings

Okay, that’s enough. But believe me, I could go on.

In Kay’s world, David Rockefeller and his friends from the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group are bumbling old men who haven’t got a clue what’s going on in the world. They didn’t see many major events – such as the Iraq War – coming. In fact, the rest of us are more on the ball than these old has-beens are, Kay suggests.

Doesn’t that make you feel a lot better about the whole New World Order thing? How could a bunch of rich old guys think they could pull strings behind the scenes? Did you know Rockefeller is over 90?

In Kay’s world, journalists can find evidence unpersuasive without even looking at it. They’re allowed to get tired of Kennedy assassination evidence because the event happened almost 50 years ago. So what if E. Howard Hunt admitted (on tape) that the CIA killed Kennedy, and that he was a part of the plot?

Sorry, the journalistic statute of limitations for giving a damn has long since run out; we have new conspiracies to ignore now.

The fact that Hunt devoted his career to fighting commies and trying to get rid of Fidel Castro doesn’t make his about-face even worth considering. Kay compares Hunt’s confession to a fictitious deathbed confession from Oswald’s “long lost stepmom.” Gee, I haven’t heard that tape.

What I can’t figure out is whether Kay is that clued-out or that disingenuous.

Either way, he dismisses those he disagrees with sweeping generalizations and condescending psychological profiling. Facts are absent as is any concept of how the world works.

Unfortunately, it’s his book that gets reviewed by his mainstream journalistic buddies. The quality work of David Ray Griffin, Barrie Zwicker, Paul Zarembka and numerous other truthers don’t get a look.

It’s a challenge to interview someone you’d rather be debating. That was the case when I interviewed Canadian writer and journalist Jonathan Kay this week. Kay, an editor with the National Post, is the author of Among the Truthers, which attempts to examine and explain the world of conspiracy theorists. Why do these otherwise intelligent people believe the “bullshit” that they do, he wonders? He sees the 9/11 Truth movement as being ridiculous and based on arguments that “even an eight-year-old” would see through. I chose to try and cover as much ground in 45 minutes as I could rather than getting into an in-depth debate on any one point. I did find things in his arguments that cry out for further argument , and I will offer my analysis of his remarks in a subsequent post. I encourage readers to offer their own comments at the end of this article.

CM: What is the difference between a conspiracy theorist and someone who does legitimate research to unearth a real conspiracy?

JK: I define according to the method of argumentation of the people who advance the theory in question. I give the example of Iran/Contra, Teapot Dome, the Sponsorship Scandal or Watergate, which of course were real historical conspiracies. If you’re advancing something like this, one person will advance evidence and the other person will refute it, and by that method you could find out the truth about whether it’s a conspiracy. With conspiracy theories, on the other hand, there’s this kind of argument that takes place, which is that one person, let’s say me, the proponent of the conventional theory, will provide evidence, such as for instance the 9/11 Commission Report or the National Institute of Standards and Technology report or media reports or judicial investigations, and what the conspiracy theorists will do is just swallow that into their conspiracy and say, well, the 9/11 commissioners were all in on it; they were friends with Bush, and the people who did the NIST report, they were all in on it, and the media’s all in on it because they’re all owned by George Soros or Rupert Murdoch or whatever. The conspiracy theorist will just keep building a bigger and bigger conspiracy until the imagined conspiracy includes tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. And this is a method of argumentation that I’ve only seen used by conspiracy theorists. When people use that method of argumentation, I call them conspiracy theorists.

CM: So if someone relies on actual evidence, you don’t consider them a conspiracy theorist?

JK: Everybody thinks they’re using actual evidence. I don’t want to use that formulation because it’s not like I’m debating someone, and they say, I’m going to use bogus evidence; everybody thinks they’re using actual evidence, so it’s hard to use that as a criterion. What I am using as a litmus test is the manner in which people purport to offer what they think is real evidence. If it follows the pattern I described before I tend to think it’s a conspiracy theory.

CM: A lot of people who are on the same side of the 9/11 question as I am would argue that the 9/11 official story is itself a conspiracy theory. What’s your reaction to that?

JK: In the most limited sense of the term, yes, it is a conspiracy theory in the sense that it’s a theory of 9/11 that involves a conspiracy. A conspiracy can involve as few as two people. In this case you had at least 19 people. And more like if you add in the others – several dozen more people. They were involved in a successful conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and one other target which we don’t really know what it was. And yes, that was a conspiracy. In this case the evidence for it is quite straight forward; it’s all the stuff that’s contained in the 9/11 Commission Report, which I realize presumably you don’t find convincing, and it’s also statements from al-Qaeda members themselves, including an admonition against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because he was advancing 9/11 conspiracy theories. Folks in al-Qaeda actually got mad at the Iranian president saying, ‘Give us credit for what we did.’ That’s the most recent incident I know of this.

CM: One of the things that early in the last decade led me to believe the official story of 9/11 was the alleged video confession by Osama bin Laden…

JK: I never actually watched that. I know there are all kinds of theories about how it’s fake and stuff. I think there’s abundant evidence even without that. I’m guessing that you take issue with the authenticity of it?

CM: Yes, I think anybody watching it would look at the person who is purporting to be bin Laden and say, that doesn’t look like the same man. Regardless of what theories might go with that, it just doesn’t look like the same man.

JK: It could be. I never saw the video. There’s a hundred other reasons why I embrace the official theory of 9/11, and to be honest, I haven’t found the individuals who claim it isn’t him in the video particularly convincing. They’ll show images side by side – ya, I always thought that was completely unconvincing. There are photos of me that when I see them on the Internet I say, that’s not me – I look so stupid. I look 20 years older than I am, and my hair colour’s different depending on how the flash is used. It looks like someone from a different race sometimes. People say, oh that doesn’t look like him; that could describe any photograph of anybody. Sometimes photos just don’t capture someone the way they look.

CM: But we’re not talking about a photograph, we’re talking about a video.

JK: When I look at the web sites, I tend to see stills side by side. You’re quite right that we’re talking about video but the blogs I’ve seen that purport to debunk the video, they tend to rely on stills. I guess if you watch the whole video you could say, that doesn’t look like him, but I’ve never met bin Laden obviously, although some journalists have – but again, I’ve never found that form of evidence particularly convincing.

CM: You advocate an anti-conspiracism curriculum in schools. Could you explain what that means?

JK: In the last chapter of my book I say that we’ve been very successful at educating people about things like racism, teaching them not to be racist, teaching them not to be sexist, teaching them not to be anti-Semitic, teaching them not to be homophobic. And we’ve done that because we want to discourage “isms” that we find negative for our society, that are hateful or divisive or whatnot. What I suggest is that conspiracism falls into this category for two reasons: one, it’s bad for society. It doesn’t matter if the object of your conspiracism is Jews or Muslims; I know people who are convinced there’s a Muslim around every street corner who wants to come blow us up and stuff – I don’t think that’s helpful either; I think  that’s just as bad as anti-Semitism. Or Freemasons or the so-called gay lobby – there’s lots of conspiracy theories out there. I think it’s bad for our marketplace of ideas, and I think people should be educated about that. The second way it’s similar to the campaign against racism and sexism and that sort of stuff is the pattern recognition. As I argue in my book, every conspiracy theory is different but they tend to follow the same basic pattern in the way that racists tend to follow the same basic pattern and other forms of toxic “isms” follow the same pattern. The details are different but the basic structure of the ideology is the same. And I think you should teach kids, especially in the context of the Internet where they receive all kinds of propaganda, you should teach them how to recognize the basic ingredients of a conspiracy theory. Some people say there’s this small group of people, and they control the world, and they’re creating terrorist attacks and wars and depressions, and it’s all led by a guy in a smoke-filled room, the Bilderbergers or whatnot – I think people should be sceptical of that.

CM: They should be sceptical, but shouldn’t they evaluate the evidence for and against that?

JK: This goes back to my answer to your first question. You teach kids – when I say kids I mean senior high school students or perhaps university students – you teach them how to recognize and to make distinctions between critical intellectual inquiry and what I regard as non-productive conspiracy theories.

CM: Aren’t there any dangers in that, though? It sounds like you’re discouraging dissent.

JK: That’s a very fair point. It’s a fine line, right? You don’t want to stigmatize legitimate intellectual inquiry, and there is a fine line. And I would never want to say, oh this is illegal or this is a human rights violation – you’re not allowed to create a blog or something about this particular subject; I agree with that. However, I think one of the reasons so many people get sucked into conspiracy theories is that they make a fetish out of scepticism. Scepticism is a wonderful thing, but if you’re sceptical about every single fact of every single opinion of any single piece of information you get you end up inhabiting a world that is completely nihilistic. And some of the people I interviewed for my book fall into that category. They don’t believe anything they’re told by the government, NGOs, the media; they believe they’re living in a complete world of lies, and it’s almost impossible for these people to engage with society cause they just think nothing they’re told is the truth. You can’t have any sort of productive civil society or politics if people believe that. There’s also the fact that it’s just not true; we don’t live in the kind of society. It’s not the case that everyone around us is telling us lies constantly. That kind of society would be unliveable. So I do think people should be sceptical about what the government tells them. My whole profession of journalism is based on that, right? I couldn’t do my job if we couldn’t criticize the government.  But you have to educate people around patterns of thought that we live in this police state where we constantly being lied to every second of the day, which just isn’t true.

CM: I would argue that if I were someone who saw things as you do but I was not a member of the media, I would be inclined to want to blame the media for a lot of these ideas. There are a lot of things that aren’t reported that I think should be reported. The obvious example from 9/11 is Building 7. You mentioned the NIST report – that took seven years to come out. When a friend told me about Building 7 in 2007, I had never heard of it. I couldn’t believe he was telling me the truth that there was a third building. And it’s almost never made an appearance on network television since then. Isn’t the media failing to examine that whole question of how it fell, other than waiting seven years for a report to come out?

JK: Building 7 was not entirely unexamined. There was a whole National Institute of Standards and Technology report that came out about Building 7. Also, the World Trade Center wasn’t just the twin towers and Building 7; there were actually seven buildings in the WTC campus, which ended up being almost completely destroyed. And most people just weren’t that interested in the buildings that didn’t have planes flown into them. For the people who were interested in how the other buildings and how they fell, there was no secret about Building 7; there were plenty of media reports about it, and it was well filmed at the time because it fell at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11 so there were lots of cameras. First responders and firefighters were involved salvaging or trying to salvage things from WTC 7 that were profiled in video documentaries. The only reason I think people complained that there wasn’t enough TV coverage of WTC 7 was because there was this theory that it was destroyed by internal demolition, which, as you know, I don’t believe that theory. If there were a legitimate controversy about how WTC 7 fell and whether it fell from internal demolition obviously I would agree with you; this would call for a huge investigation. However, if you have read the NIST report on the fall of WTC 7 they actually went out of their way to investigate this possibility and found there was absolutely no way WTC 7 fell from internal demolition, and one of the reasons they found was that there was absolutely no seismic data that supported the idea that explosives were used.

CM: You say “if” there was legitimate controversy, but most people didn’t even know about Building 7.

JK: Most people don’t know that the Marriot World Trade Center fell or that 4 World Trade Center fell or 5 World Trade Center fell or that 6 World Trade Center fell – all these buildings ended up being destroyed. No one cares about any of these because they aren’t as dramatic as WTC 1 & 2. In terms of the film, I agree with you. 9/11 Truth activists have done a very good job at propagandizing the video of WTC 7 falling, and the angle they pick does make it look like, hey, maybe that does look like it was an internal demolition, but the angle they show you is deliberately selected so you don’t see the localized fires burning on some of the lower floors, which ultimately were responsible for the building’s collapse. If you’re a layperson and you see this video and you have no idea how buildings fall it’s possible you would think this fell from internal demolition. And a lot of the people I interviewed for the book think that. There’s all kinds of videos you could show me and say, hey, don’t you think that this looks like that? And I’d say sure, why not, I guess. It doesn’t mean there’s a scientific basis for supporting this theory. I see the WTC 7 video as a very efficient propaganda device.

CM: So you’re going to go with NIST no matter what? Because it’s the official report?

JK: Not because it’s the official report but because it’s a complete state-of-the-art finite method for analysing building collapse. It involved the work of hundreds of engineers; I think Purdue University’s engineering department was behind it. I think you know this about me, I used to be a metallurgical engineer. I know a little about how engineering departments work, are staffed, the level of technology that goes into them. I also know a little about these claims that these departments can be infiltrated on a mass basis and be used to churn out government propaganda. These are the kinds of people I used to work with on a day-to-day basis. It’s nonsensical to imagine that legions of these people could be co-opted in a government project and sworn to secrecy and put out this massive report that was just a bunch of lies. This doesn’t happen at places like Purdue or other universities that are used for state-of-the-art research of this kind. So, yes, I’m sticking by NIST.

CM: One last thing on the media, one story I was shocked to hear about, and I certainly didn’t find out about it on a network newscast was the confession that E. Howard Hunt is supposed to have made to having been part of the plot to kill Kennedy. There’s an audio recording that he made and asked his son to release only upon his death. Isn’t that something that should be huge news even if people are disputing its authenticity?

JK: I think there’s a little bit of Kennedy fatigue. I’ll confess, I actually used to be a Kennedy assassination buff 15 years ago, and I remember reading all these books; there have been over 2,000 books published about the Kennedy assassination, and the vast majority of them involve some kind of claim that it was Lyndon Johnson or it was the CIA, and I remember reading several of them, and this is lost in the mists of my memory because it`s been a while since I was into that, that claimed deathbed confessions from Jack Ruby`s grandmother or Lee Harvey Oswald`s long lost step mom or whatever. In many of these books the author got energized by getting what someone claimed was some kind of sensational tip about someone`s deathbed confession or something, and I think a lot of people in journalism who report on this have a sort of fatigue about this, and when someone, even a famous person like Hunt, it’s claimed they had a deathbed confession I think there’s a lot of people who say, ya ya. It’s been 50 years and there’s been all kinds of crazy theories that have come forward, including some that have been supported by alleged deathbed confessions. And people just don’t believe it anymore. By the way, I’m not 100% sure Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t have some help; it’s possible he had an accomplice. You can’t prove a negative. It might be the case that there was someone who at least knew about the plot. I don’t think it was Lyndon Johnson or anything like that; it was probably some other Marxist like Oswald was. It’s possible. I don’t really know. I do think people have kind of moved on from theories about this because they can`t be proved and there`s so many of them.

CM: I guess I find an actual audio recording of Hunt saying he was part of the plot at least worth reporting and evaluating.

JK: It was reported. I did see it in a few sources; it’s not like it was completely ignored. I think people were sceptical. I’m sceptical. I think you’re sceptical, too. You don`t have a hundred per cent certainty that it was Hunt, right?

CM: I don’t have a particular reason to doubt it, but I like to go on evidence. I get suspicious, frankly, and this is what I was getting at with the media being partly to blame here, when you don’t report something like that, people say, what’s going on? Why is this being ignored? It causes conspiracy theories surely to thrive.

JK: I think there’s a grain of truth to what you’re saying. It’s true, the ignore stories sometimes. For instance, many Barack Obama conspiracy theorists I interviewed – these are people who think Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or something – when I ask them why they believe this stuff, a lot of the time they’ll say the media never really investigated Obama’s background, and they always gave him an easy ride. And that’s true; I think there’s some validity to that. Barack Obama was seen as this perfect candidate. He was black, and reporters didn’t want to seem racist by probing some of the less savoury aspects of his background. And I think it was true, a lot of reporters gave him a free pass, and that gave encouragement to conspiracy theorists who said there’s this media conspiracy to cover up some disgraceful aspect of his past. I don’t think that was the case; reporters just didn’t want to seem racist or whatever so they gave him a free pass. There is a grain of truth to saying that there are some stories that reporters just stay away from – there’s sort of a herd mentality. But eventually reporters do come to these stories. The 9/11 Truth thing, the idea that this could have been internal demolition, trust me, I work with dozens of reporters that would love to win a Pulitzer Prize by being the first mainstream journalist to really tear the lid off the story and interview people and get eyewitnesses who planted bombs and everything. Look, I’d be a millionaire, I’d be the most famous journalist in the world like Woodward and Bernstein. This is one of the craziest aspects of 9/11 conspiracy theories. They ignore the fact that almost any journalist in the world would give 10 years off their life to be the one to report this amazing story. It’s crazy to think that we’d actually go in the other direction and avoid reporting the story. Who doesn’t want to be famous?

CM: So there’s no censorship or self-censorship going on in terms of going against the official story?

JK: Look, I mean, Robert Fisk, probably one of the two or three English-language foreign affairs journalists in the entire world, and he wrote a column in the Guardian a couple of years ago that suggested that he was open to 9/11 Truth conspiracy theories, in the Independent I think. Last time I checked he still had his job. I’ve met him. He’s on the other side of the political spectrum from me but he’s done some good reporting, he’s famous. Here’s a guy, he could reporter any story he wants, he has complete autonomy. He hates the United States. If there was one guy who’d be ready, willing and able to follow any legitimate lead that pointed to Dick Cheney or any of the others being complicit in 9/11, he would be the guy who’d investigate it – huge budget, famous, book contracts but he found nothing even though he’d written a column saying that he was open to it. If anyone has any good evidence they should e-mail it to Robert Fisk; 10 years later he still hasn’t found anything.

CM: I wonder what kind of examples you might be able to cite for your contention that people like David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage, and Barrie Zwicker are cranks or men going through a mid-life crisis.

JK: Mid-life crisis… the guy I mentioned was Richard Gage. I identified him as the prototypical mid-life crisis guy, and if you talk to him, everything he describes is textbook mid-life crisis. In 2006 he had this humdrum job. He was an architect and designing two-storey retail malls, he ended up working on this project in Nevada that went bankrupt. In 2006 he was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway and heard David Ray Griffin on the radio. It was the Guns and Butter program on the Free Speech station out of Berkley, as he tells the story, he just pulls to the side of the road; his mind was blown, and within a year or two he’d quit his job, his wife was gone, he was estranged from the kid, moved out of the house, his life turned upside down, he lost his friends, and now goes around the world preaching 9/11 Truth. I have friends who’ve gone through a mid-life crisis and it looks exactly like that. None of the friends have gone through the 9/11 Truth stuff, but in terms of ditching the wife, ditching the kid, ditching the job, and doing some weird thing – climbing Mount Everest or something… This is what a mid-life crisis looks like, and that’s why I describe him that way.

CM: How is that relevant to the case he’s trying to make?

JK: It’s not. But it’s relevant to the chapter in my book. Unlike you, I take it for granted that the 9/11 Truth stuff is bullshit, and I try to analyse why otherwise sane, intelligent, and accomplished people would dedicate their life to it. Now if you believe in 9/11 Truth theory, you’re obviously not going to be convinced by what I say in that chapter. But I wrote that chapter to explain intelligent people would pursue a movement that I find completely ridiculous.

CM: There are a couple of different definitions of crank that I located – one of them saying that a crank is “an unbalanced person who is overzealous in the advocacy of a private cause” and another one that says a crank is “an eccentric person, especially when obsessed by a particular subject or theory.” Which definition are you using in your book?

JK: The second one. In fact, you know what? I’ve confessed this to other people: I regret using the term crank because too many people thought I was using the first definition instead of the second. The words I would have preferred to use in hindsight would be puzzle-solver because I think these people are motivated by a desire to solve puzzles. In this regard, puzzle-solver would describe Barrie Zwicker, and David Ray Griffin. The puzzle-solver, as I describe it in the book, are hyper-intelligent people who often come to their conspiracy theories late in life when they’re retired from a very intellectually demanding job and they no longer have this very taxing intellectual job to occupy their mind, and then they use all this intellectual firepower for chasing ghosts on the Internet and stuff. David Ray Griffin is a good example; he was a process theologian. It’s this extremely technical branch of metaphysics. He was very good at it apparently; I know almost nothing about process theology, but apparently he’s one of the world leaders on the subject at the Claremont School of Theology. Then he was mostly retired but he still had this massive brain looking for something to do, so all this intellectual firepower went into the search for the truth about 9/11. Barrie Zwicker is something similar. He used to be one of Canada’s top journalists – clearly a very smart guy; I met him. And a lot of these guys become prisoners of these obsessions. In some cases they become Shakespeare conspiracy theorists or 9/11 or they become birthers. David Solway was a guy; I think he’s more of a mid-life crisis case, very smart guy, one of Canada’s top poets, lots of intelligence but not a lot to do with that intelligence and they become trapped in conspiracy theories.

CM: We know for a fact that the CIA had a program to infiltrate newspapers, in fact they did infiltrate newspapers. They had quite a number of journalists on their payroll. It was called Operation Mockingbird…

JK: They probably still do. They have a lot of money, and for all I know there’s still CIA personnel on journalistic payrolls, especially in places like Russia or the Middle East or places like that.

CM: What about Western newspapers?

JK: You can’t prove a negative. The way the media works, let’s say you have a hundred journalists at a newspaper, and let’s say there are five CIA agents or 10 – all you need are one or two to break a story. Like if the guy at the next cubicle from me is a CIA agent – to take like a ridiculous example; I’m sure they wouldn’t be interested in infiltrating a Canadian newspaper – who cares? It’s not like he’s going to come over and say, ‘Hey, John, you really shouldn’t pursue that story if you know what’s good for you.’ Even if every American newspaper is entirely permeated by CIA agents you still have broadcast media, you still have British newspapers, you still have European newspapers, you have bloggers. We live in a media world where it’s impossible for any organization, even one as powerful as the CIA, to even begin to try and censor individual ideas from investigation. This might have been possible 30 or 40 years ago; in fact the CIA did this 30 or 40 years ago; there were certain stories you couldn’t report on. Or even stories like JFK’s sexual dalliances. There was no CIA involved, it was just reporters who decided on their own. That’s the kind of thing you could do when there were only three TV networks – all the newspaper journalists were all in their little club. Things don’t work that way anymore, right? There’s just too many outlets for information. People can’t keep secrets anymore. And I guess that’s my big complaint about 9/11 conspiracy theories is that the way government works if there are five government people who have a secret, four of them will eventually go to the media with it. People can’t keep secrets, and people spill stuff to the media all the time when it’s to their advantage. And I see this happen all the time; it’s the basis of leaks, right? And if you had a secret as explosive as an inside job on 9/11 do you really think it would take 10 years before this would come out? It would come out within days. People aren’t good with secrets, I’m not good with secrets. You give me someone’s phone number and I’ll spill it. It’s not in the human constitution to deal with confidential information.

CM: Let me finish with a quote from David Rockefeller speaking at a Bilderberg meeting in 1991. I’d like your comment on it. He said:

“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” –David Rockefeller [June, 1991] Bilderberg meeting in Baden, Germany

JK: In 2009 when I was investigating the 9/11 Truth movement, they were holding a rally, and I joined them, and we were outside the Council on Foreign Relations building in Manhattan, they were chanting, you know, “Down, down CFR,” and “Come out Richard Haas, you can’t have your one-world state.” And then a bunch of us went to protest outside David Rockefeller’s apartment or condo – I think he’s like over 90 years old now – and I remember I’d never really heard of Rockefeller, and some folks were telling me what a horrible person he was, and that’s when I started hearing all this stuff about the Bilderbergers. If you’re interested in the Bilderbergers you should read Conrad Black’s new book. He’s been going to Bilderbergers stuff for decades and decades, and he thinks the obsession with the Bilderbergers is hilarious because every major trend in the world, not only did the Bilderbergers not plan, they didn’t even see it coming. Black writes about being at the Bilderberg meetings in the 1980s, and everyone at the Bilderberg meetings thought the Soviet Union was going to go on for generations. None of them foresaw the end of the Cold War. In 2002, none of them thought the Iraq War was going to happen. Not only did they not plan world events, but they’re actually probably more dense than you and me about predicting world events. Bilderbergers, from talking to Conrad Black who is one of my columnists at the National Post, and talking to a few other people who go there, say it’s like this group of blowhards from Europe and the United States; they think they’re really important. They kind of lend this note of drama to the meetings by not allowing media, which I think is a mistake because it just encourages conspiracy theorists. But these are the types of people who write op-eds in the New York Times, they’re retired politicians or retired foreign affairs ministers. These folks can’t control world events, I mean look at Libya. Libya is this tiny, crappy country in the Mediterranean, and all the major world powers, the United States, Canada, France, Britain, they decided they were going to get rid of Gaddafi and it took them like six months to do it. We live in an age when even the most powerful nations in the world are powerless to bring down the Taliban in Afghanistan, they’re powerless to bring true peace to Iraq. There are terrorists running around who’ve been around for decades because the U.S. government can’t find them. I don’t understand why 9/11 truthers and other conspiracy theorists can actually imagine that a group like the Bilderbergers or their members can control world events when they can barely predict what’s going to happen tomorrow. People just aren’t that smart, including the people who run the biggest countries in the world. And the Bilderbergers is a more a group of blowhards than they are folks who are controlling a New World Order.

CM: So in his quote, Rockefeller’s thanking the media for something they’re not doing?

JK: I’m not familiar with this speech Rockefeller gave; I have no idea if it’s genuine. He could say all kinds of things. I have no idea what he’s talking about or in what context he’s delivering those remarks. But the media itself has written all kinds of scathing things about the Rockefellers. If he’s giving gratitude, I’m not sure what he’s giving gratitude for, because we live in an age when the surest way for the media to write scathing things about you is to be old and rich. Look at the kinds of things that have been written about Conrad Black or George Soros. These guys get the most scathing treatment of any in the media. So if the media is on the side of these rich plutocrats, they’re doing a pretty good job of disguising it.

CM: Thank you.

David Ray Griffin’s newest book is receiving criticism not so much from believers in the government’s official story as from his usual supporters within the 9/11 Truth movement.

In a new essay, Paul Zarembka – an economics professor, 9/11 researcher, and editor of The Hidden History of 9-11 – offers a critique of Griffin’s analysis of the subject of whether phone calls from the four allegedly hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001 were faked. Zarembka challenges the conclusions reached in chapter five of Griffin’s new book, 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed.

“The internal logic of Griffin’s chapter rather surprised me for its weakness,” Zarembka writes in the conclusion of “Critique of David Ray Griffin regarding Calls from 9-11 Planes” (http://ithp.org/articles/davidraygriffincritique.html.

“It isn’t that a case cannot be made.  It isn’t that certain elements of a good case aren’t mentioned.  Rather, problems in the argumentation are significant and supporters of the official story are offered a target.  Trying to defend such work reduces our credibility.”

Zarembka says Griffin is too willing to see lies in virtually all aspects of the official story. This can be problematic, he argues, because it can make it easier for critics to undermine the credibility of the movement.

“A population can be manipulated not only by lies but also by sprinklings of truths, half truths, and distortions,” Zarembka writes. “Indeed, offering some truths is an effective means of undermining critics who argue for lies everywhere.

“A self-confident movement does not need to be exposing just lies and only lies.  It can examine evidence and draw disparate conclusions about differing accuracies of the huge amount of material to work with.  I have felt that the work of David Ray Griffin, a leading commentator on September 11, is an example of turning up stones everywhere with the word “lie” written on them.  He seems called upon to write about everything having to do with September 11 in order to turn over stones everywhere.  Why?”

Griffin’s book has already received criticism on this blog and elsewhere for the chapter that urges the Truth movement to adopt a “consensus approach” to the Pentagon 9/11 evidence. Griffin feels that the “divisive” issue of what did or did not hit the Pentagon is relatively unimportant in comparison to the certainty that a plane piloted by al-Qaeda did not crash there.

In his essay, Zarembka leaves the Pentagon question aside and concentrates on Griffin’s contention that phone calls that are supposed to have come from the four allegedly hijacked planes were faked. Griffin offers voice-morphing technology as a possible explanation for how relatives could have been fooled into thinking that their loved ones had called from the planes.

But Zarembka sees problems with this explanation. He says that a number of those whose voices Griffin believes were morphed were actually late arrivals to their flights, were on stand-by, or had switched to the flight they were on at the last minute. How could the voice morphing have been done in advance, Zarembka argues, when it was unknown that all those who made calls would even be on the flight?

Zarembka refers to evidence in the 2002 book Among the Heroes by Jere Longman that Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Lauren Grandcolas, and Elizabeth Wainio (all of whom are alleged to have made calls) were latecomers to Flight 93. This means that there could not have been any certainty in advance that those people would be on the flights in question. He says that Griffin is aware of this fact (the two discussed it, Zarembka says) but ignores it.

Zarembka singles out the call from Flight 93 flight attendant CeeCee Lyles to her husband Lorne at 9:47 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. At the end of the call, a woman’s voice in the background can be heard saying, “You did great.” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUrxsrTKHN4) Griffin sees this as proof that Lyles was coerced into making the call or that voice morphing technology was used to fake the call.

But Zarembka feels there is an obvious possibility that Griffin is ignoring – that a supportive passenger or crew member was telling Lyles she had “done great” in making this very difficult call to her husband. The tape was offered by the government at the Moussaoui trial in 2006 with this mysterious comment not edited out.

Zarembka looks at the issue of voice morphing in some detail in his essay. He says that Griffin relies on this to explain how calls could have been faked when no other explanations present themselves, but he ignores evidence that contradicts this.

Zarembka also challenges Griffin’s claims that those who are alleged to have called loved ones were calmer than would have been the case if the calls had been real. He says that Griffin only uses pieces of information – and incomplete quotes – that support this contention and ignores points that contradict it. And, some of these are the same passengers whose presence on the flights wasn’t assured until the last minute.

Zarembka points out that to fake calls using voice morphing or other methods would require significant information in advance, including personal details of the person who was supposedly calling, recordings of the “callers’” voices, access to phone billing systems, and knowledge of which planes the passengers were to be on.

My criticism of Griffin’s consensus approach from his chapter seven is that the consensus position he proposes leaves out so much of the most damning evidence that a plane crash was faked at the Pentagon (including any mention of Citizen Investigation Team) because it may be in dispute. In the chapter, Griffin effectively presents the evidence that a plane did not crash, but then undermines the strength of his own case by stating that the question is relatively unimportant.

Zarembka’s criticism of chapter five is different but not unrelated. When it comes to alleged phone calls from the planes, he feels that Griffin is ignoring (in a sense you could say treating as unimportant) any evidence that doesn’t support the position he already holds.